Why kind of fucking moron builds a hoax that includes an admission of criminal activity?
Think about how stupid that course of reasoning sounds. Were it a hoax, I'd imagine they'd have constructed said hoax _without_ the admission of hackitizing MS servers.
I'll field the first question, but really, I get the feeling you're just being trite.
So:
> How does the preview of a movie rate a/. story? Hey, I'm gonna post the Apple quicktime area as a "story."
It answers this in the header: "News for nerds." Last I heard, the jocks were still leaving most of the seats in any given theatre showing a Star Trek movie empty, thoughtfully leaving them for the nerds.
The day my bug-ridden OSS software starts silently self-installing across the web because my box was automagically set up to 'trust' the 1s and 0s, I'll stop making fun of MS.
Until that day, I'll get my kicks from MS bashing. You've read and heard the things Baller & co have said about Linux (I particularly liked the "Linux is unamerican" comment, hehe).. you can't honestly think that the Linux crowd is the only group of users that enjoy crass, glib jabs at the competition now, can you?
So cease thy whining and either bash or don't. No need to pass judgement unless your prepared to accept that the whole world is guilty of the behaviour you are so desperate to eschew.
Bigger issue: If 'trusted' sources can be shown to turn out untrustable code (like the Active X control in this case), there isn't much use in trusting them in the frist place.
Its cute tho; 'trustworthy' computing from Microsoft involves not trusting them. I don't see how you could possibly not find that funny unless you were employed by MS.
the only reason I called ya a troll is because ive read enough of your other posts to think that you don't really think you _cant_ get support without going through that kind of RTFM crowd.
but I see your problem now.. IRC. there are *tons* of better places to get support, although I guess if we're talking real time hand-holding, that narrows the field.
mailing list archives and HOWTOs should do the job, without all the headaches and confusion of IRC (of whose continued existance still confounds me to this day).
ive called up MS and Apple support before, and they were not much more helpful than a 13 year old who didnt _want_ to help, although I grant that they were far more polite (or at least more subdued) than your avg 14 yr old IRCer.
sorry 'bout the cheap shot, but as you note in your reply:
> If I didn't have friends to help me out
doncha think the same thing applies to Windows? I dont know many people who call support, but that doesn't mean friends and family arn't helping each other through Windows problems hand over foot. Im scared of a world where you really _do_ have to call MS support when you experience difficulties.
Problem: need support for software used by 13 year olds cheaply.
Solution: use OS software.
Possible issue: where do you get support?
Whiners: You cant, cause its all 13 year olds who know more than me and say "RTFM".
This software will be used by the very same people you say know the software really well.
Nevermind that the stereotype isn't true: I've never seen ANYBODY say RTFM on any of the following mailing lists: FreeBSD-commits, FreeBSD-hackers, Mysql, omniORB, etc, etc, etc.
Its just funny that you'd denounce the support for the software by saying the only folks you can find to support it will be the very same students that use it! HOLY FUCK, PROBLEM SOLVED, FREE SUPPORT if your stereotype is indeed true. Which it isn't.
As usual, Fort, you gotta make sure your trolls are a little more self consistant.
Which is exactly why CPC (cost per click) aint as popular as it used to be.
CPM (cost per thousand) is the defacto standard.
Furthurmore, most ads dont have anything to offer beyond the clickthru. Internet advertising is primarily a branding medium.. getting the customer to click thru isnt as important to the advertiser as youd like to think. (Although, granted, with aquisition campaigns, usually hybrid deals rear their ugly heads.. like CPM with a little Cost Per Action thrown in.. or sometimes its _just_ CPA.)
Actually _seeing_ the ad for longer than 2 seconds is. (Salon isnt forcing you to click, they're forcing you to watch.. they force the impression out of you, which is actually _good_ for the advertiser.)
I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)
You forgot about the rational, successful, zitless, oversexed posters who time and time again try and post something like the following with a straight face:
"You are all geeks. I am the lone non-geek who has a real handle on life in a way none of you ever possibly could.. mostly as evidenced by you posting to same site I'm posting to. I have you all figured out. Now I need coffee."
Couple this with the 'just world' mentality, so prevailent in our culture today. The 'just world' mentality states that people have assets and wealth (or lack thereof) in amounts they deserve.
How often does some uncaring yokel chime in with, "Yeah well, I know [Walmart] is loaded with cash and lawyers, but thats because they worked hard and made all the money, so they deserve an advantage." According to the same mentality, the small fish are just failed mega-coperation wanna-bes (you really do get punished in this society for not wanting to be the _biggest_), so they deserve being at such a disadvantage.
Before we can fix the inequality with respect to access to legal defence, I think you have to get more people understanding that being rich or being poor doesn't neccessarily denote what you contibuted to your society, nor it the world 'just' in this manner. Too often you see people equating success and wealth with deservedness, so in many people's eyes, your complaints arn't a problem at all.. the richer person _should_ have an advantage according to certain people.
Its an attitude that makes me sick to my stomach, but sadly not an uncommon one.
I'm glad that you're so all knowing that you couldn't _possibly_ eat something thats bad for you without being aware of it. I mean, you're too smart for that, right?
> but stuff like this brings out the free-marketer in me
Scratch that. What on earth does this story have to do with the free-market? This sounds like a fuckup made by a company; are you saying the FDA has no business identifying and notifying the public when stuff like this happens?
And how does the free market work in the drug trade when you dont regulate it? I can hear it now, "See how people stop buying the bad drugs/food once a few dozen people die... ah, the free market at work.. and we only had to kill off a few folks!"
Can someone explain why there is a deadline for negotiating the percentage-of-revenue royalties?
I read the article, but does this date only apply to the copyright holders of the content webcasters were streaming in the past? Ie, does the date only apply to negoating the roytalties with the copyright holders of content you streamed in the past, and does this prevent you from negoating custom roytalities with copyright holders in the future? (I can't imagine it would.)
they dumped some wheat, and they dumped some chaffe.
but they dumped the wheat here that made this job fun. im the lone developer now, and upper managements lack of desire to understand and know the folks in development drove my friend away.
my productivity has gone down, tho my load has increased, only because i care less about my job now that the people that made it fun are gone.
Point made re: testing as being the only method of real world verification.
Hey, the only reason I get warm from OSS is because its everything CS is and more. That simple. Its CS but with the bonus (pretty big bonus to me, as a coder) that I can see how my module is being treated under the hood. (Also helps me develop faster since I dont have to deal with inconsistancies between documents and the actual code.. which isn't entirely rare.)
Nothing is perfect, of course. Point made re: the trojan'd compiler.. but I'd still rather own a car I can take to somebody to get a 2nd opinion, 2nd pair of eyeballs of whether or not its road worthy. Open source is better than CS. CS isnt evil. OS isn't the only answer. Its just better. Its one more thing, especially when the physical real world equivilent of closed source wasn't needed for companies to build a business.
As long as a GM engineer can completetly dissassemble a Ford car, I'm still not sure whats so scary about opening ones source. I really dont think your market viability should be build on the exclusivity of your ideas. If you wanna protect your ideas, you publish them in a patent.. the whole world sees how your doing something, and youve got a law that prevents people from stealing your ideas and work at your own whim.
Sure, lots of people use Windows for firewalls. Do they use them to do the kind of firewalling Tiawan wants to do? Probably not.
I mean, I can't just go "theyre morons, they dont need this." Especially in light to all the 'open market' cries on this thread. If they want the source, they want the source. Thats a demand. Whether MS bows to it, fine, but you cant just selectively question the demands that even one single individual user places on the market.
Specifically, I'm imaging that they _want_ to develop their own firewall to do lots of funky things, but they want to confirm that what their firewall does wont be tampered with by windows.
Sure, they could use a sniffer to confirm, but all the testing in the world doesn't garauntee that you just didnt attack your own server in the 'right way'. Thats what backdoors are.. an access mechanism that is designed to be hidden even from the person who has the product in their hands.
Look, I'm just pointing out that when the importance factor is high, your demands will be more stringant (and likely more specific than the 'use cases' that the majority of other users are in.)
You dont honestly believe these possibilities, do you?:
a) this is just an excuse to get access to Windows source 'for the hell of it'
or, worse
b) nobody over there forgot that they can just hit download.com, problem solved.
They wanna make their own firewall, and they need some SERIOUS confirmation that nothing in the OS is going to circumvent the intended functionality of their firewall. I mean, I wouldn't place my national security on assurances that Cookies in windows work as designed.. just cause the manual says cookies cant be shared between domains, its a reality that they can be. In a situation where its a matter of national security, believe me, you dont just assume the manual is correct and that the software does what it was billed to do. And you cant catch everything through testing. When the risk becomes huge, the demands on assurance of stability, security, etc become very big. Its jus a function of risk management, and its OK for them to ask for the source. I sure as hell would.
I'm pretty sure that web usability includes the notiong that hyperlinks exist, in part, because it allows you to package content in multiple areas.
Your link to archive.org is a HUGE page with TONS of scrolling to get to the bottom. Thats a major transgression when youre talking about usability on the web. (Although, okay, I now see you're talking more about the compatibility and adherance to standards in the code. The design of the page itself nearly negates the advantage of using standards.;)
Nitpicking aside, I know what you mean. Folks who veer off from standards are essentially going it alone and usually are dismissing the tons of work and thought that goes into setting standards.
Sorry, but was I the only person alive when it was deemed MS had a monopoly in the OS industry?
The whole concept here is that due to the actions of package A producer, package B is not used by enough people to make it a viable option in a high profile, high importance situation.
So this 'choice' of which you speak doesn't exist. A judge said so. Whos wrong here? The judge?
I've no doubt the Army outsources lots of work. But I'm also sure it doesn't outsource *everything*. When its cheaper to fill the gas tank yourself instead of hiring a company to do it for you, and you have little choice in using another product, I would hope that you'd have a legal right to fill the gas tank yourself. Thats not a decision that should be left up to the producer which has been found guilty of using its size as a mechanism for profiting instead of relying on its R&D and technology.
In an open market, I agree with you. However, I'm still not convinced there is much of a 'choice' when youre discussing about OSes in a vast number of situations. So the package A has the green light to ignore that 'invisble hand' (or at least influence it.)
> If today's software companies were to just give away everything as you state, they'd die.
Thats just plain bullshit. This _why_ we have legal protection from copying ideas (or a certain level of protection, which is what this is all about.)
I dont wanna build an OS. I cant build an OS for cheaper than MS. But I can build my custom firewall cheaper (and faster, and more customized to my use) than MS.
You can take your ideas to the extreme; everything you see, hear, etc came from somebody. Which took effort. And you're stealing it all. But I'm just curious why physical producers don't lock up their products before they ship them out the door but software producers are terrified. Copying the 'idea' of how to build a good engine starter, which took lots of thinking to come up with, also costs 0 dollars. In fact, you could turn around and sell this knowledge to the next guy and profit off of it. But its illegal to do that, so theres no reason to ensure that nobody is capable of dissassembling a motor starter.
In fact, imagine if it were illegal to make closed source software. You can verify that producer A did in fact steal an idea from producer B (an idea that is protected by a patent of course, because its not illegal simply to use an idea you find in somebody's product unless its patented.) and the issue about detecting law breakers is resolved.
But think about it. Patents exist, in part, to ensure that everybody DOES have access to the details of an idea. If you wanna get protected by law to be owned money when folks use your idea, be prepared to share it (since its been demonstrated over hundreds of years its better for everybody when people can improve on ideas in incremental fasions. No idea is 100% original, and 100% yours. If its an original idea, its an original reformulation of other people's thinking.) Protecting the source of an application is, quite simply, a method of being garaunteed payment for your IP while circumventing the other stipulations in patent laws (that you have to publish your idea).
Its much like how the DMCA effectively renders copyright law a moot point because you can wrap up work with an artificial mechanism that circumvents the processes and laws we put in place in order to balance the interest of the public against the interest of creators.
Its useless to allow people to avoid these institutions using technology. These laws (in theory) are designed to balance interests. If theres something broken about them, lets fix it, but in the very least lets not encourage economical models that can let innovators protect and profit off of ideas without repaying the scientific and engineering community for all the ideas they used in building their product.
well, its a little more understandable that politically sensitive names should be derided by the public at large (and enforced through law if thats what the voters support.)
in corperate/personal cases, one tiny minority has a problem with you using a particular name. seems to me much harder to defend companies seeking to prevent people from giving them homage (or just wanting to use the same name because its a nice name.)
>And the military should also design all their own integrated circuits and processors too?
if its cheaper, sure. um.. if its cheaper (assuming they can build to the same levels of quality as a producer in the market), why not? isnt that what capitalism is all about? utlizing the efficiency of economy of scale when its useful, but not using it when its not?
> how do they know their communication and encryption chips don't have backdoors built into them?
good question, although you _can_ reverse engineer the chips if you want to. its not nearly as difficult as verifying the functionality of a million-lines-of-code binary after its been compiled against its target.
Slashdot Mirror
Why kind of fucking moron builds a hoax that includes an admission of criminal activity?
Think about how stupid that course of reasoning sounds. Were it a hoax, I'd imagine they'd have constructed said hoax _without_ the admission of hackitizing MS servers.
I'll field the first question, but really, I get the feeling you're just being trite.
/. story? Hey, I'm gonna post the Apple quicktime area as a "story."
So:
> How does the preview of a movie rate a
It answers this in the header: "News for nerds." Last I heard, the jocks were still leaving most of the seats in any given theatre showing a Star Trek movie empty, thoughtfully leaving them for the nerds.
The day my bug-ridden OSS software starts silently self-installing across the web because my box was automagically set up to 'trust' the 1s and 0s, I'll stop making fun of MS.
.. you can't honestly think that the Linux crowd is the only group of users that enjoy crass, glib jabs at the competition now, can you?
Until that day, I'll get my kicks from MS bashing. You've read and heard the things Baller & co have said about Linux (I particularly liked the "Linux is unamerican" comment, hehe)
So cease thy whining and either bash or don't. No need to pass judgement unless your prepared to accept that the whole world is guilty of the behaviour you are so desperate to eschew.
Sure there is.
Bigger issue: If 'trusted' sources can be shown to turn out untrustable code (like the Active X control in this case), there isn't much use in trusting them in the frist place.
Its cute tho; 'trustworthy' computing from Microsoft involves not trusting them. I don't see how you could possibly not find that funny unless you were employed by MS.
the only reason I called ya a troll is because ive read enough of your other posts to think that you don't really think you _cant_ get support without going through that kind of RTFM crowd.
.. IRC. there are *tons* of better places to get support, although I guess if we're talking real time hand-holding, that narrows the field.
but I see your problem now
mailing list archives and HOWTOs should do the job, without all the headaches and confusion of IRC (of whose continued existance still confounds me to this day).
ive called up MS and Apple support before, and they were not much more helpful than a 13 year old who didnt _want_ to help, although I grant that they were far more polite (or at least more subdued) than your avg 14 yr old IRCer.
sorry 'bout the cheap shot, but as you note in your reply:
> If I didn't have friends to help me out
doncha think the same thing applies to Windows? I dont know many people who call support, but that doesn't mean friends and family arn't helping each other through Windows problems hand over foot. Im scared of a world where you really _do_ have to call MS support when you experience difficulties.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Problem: need support for software used by 13 year olds cheaply.
Solution: use OS software.
Possible issue: where do you get support?
Whiners: You cant, cause its all 13 year olds who know more than me and say "RTFM".
This software will be used by the very same people you say know the software really well.
Nevermind that the stereotype isn't true: I've never seen ANYBODY say RTFM on any of the following mailing lists: FreeBSD-commits, FreeBSD-hackers, Mysql, omniORB, etc, etc, etc.
Its just funny that you'd denounce the support for the software by saying the only folks you can find to support it will be the very same students that use it! HOLY FUCK, PROBLEM SOLVED, FREE SUPPORT if your stereotype is indeed true. Which it isn't.
As usual, Fort, you gotta make sure your trolls are a little more self consistant.
Which is exactly why CPC (cost per click) aint as popular as it used to be.
.. getting the customer to click thru isnt as important to the advertiser as youd like to think. (Although, granted, with aquisition campaigns, usually hybrid deals rear their ugly heads .. like CPM with a little Cost Per Action thrown in .. or sometimes its _just_ CPA.)
.. they force the impression out of you, which is actually _good_ for the advertiser.)
CPM (cost per thousand) is the defacto standard.
Furthurmore, most ads dont have anything to offer beyond the clickthru. Internet advertising is primarily a branding medium
Actually _seeing_ the ad for longer than 2 seconds is. (Salon isnt forcing you to click, they're forcing you to watch
I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)
You forgot about the rational, successful, zitless, oversexed posters who time and time again try and post something like the following with a straight face:
.. mostly as evidenced by you posting to same site I'm posting to. I have you all figured out. Now I need coffee."
"You are all geeks. I am the lone non-geek who has a real handle on life in a way none of you ever possibly could
Couple this with the 'just world' mentality, so prevailent in our culture today. The 'just world' mentality states that people have assets and wealth (or lack thereof) in amounts they deserve.
.. the richer person _should_ have an advantage according to certain people.
How often does some uncaring yokel chime in with, "Yeah well, I know [Walmart] is loaded with cash and lawyers, but thats because they worked hard and made all the money, so they deserve an advantage." According to the same mentality, the small fish are just failed mega-coperation wanna-bes (you really do get punished in this society for not wanting to be the _biggest_), so they deserve being at such a disadvantage.
Before we can fix the inequality with respect to access to legal defence, I think you have to get more people understanding that being rich or being poor doesn't neccessarily denote what you contibuted to your society, nor it the world 'just' in this manner. Too often you see people equating success and wealth with deservedness, so in many people's eyes, your complaints arn't a problem at all
Its an attitude that makes me sick to my stomach, but sadly not an uncommon one.
I mean, cmon whats the likelihood tha - C:\>FORMAT C:\ *bbbzzzzzzzt*
oh crap.
More them like refusing to sell bread to anybody thats not _already_ in jail where they cant be watched in the consumption phase.
The only downside here is exposing yourself to the possibility of a Denial of Breakfast attack ...
> Tell us what is safe!
... ah, the free market at work .. and we only had to kill off a few folks!"
I'm glad that you're so all knowing that you couldn't _possibly_ eat something thats bad for you without being aware of it. I mean, you're too smart for that, right?
> but stuff like this brings out the free-marketer in me
Scratch that. What on earth does this story have to do with the free-market? This sounds like a fuckup made by a company; are you saying the FDA has no business identifying and notifying the public when stuff like this happens?
And how does the free market work in the drug trade when you dont regulate it? I can hear it now, "See how people stop buying the bad drugs/food once a few dozen people die
Can someone explain why there is a deadline for negotiating the percentage-of-revenue royalties?
I read the article, but does this date only apply to the copyright holders of the content webcasters were streaming in the past? Ie, does the date only apply to negoating the roytalties with the copyright holders of content you streamed in the past, and does this prevent you from negoating custom roytalities with copyright holders in the future? (I can't imagine it would.)
>Since when is a job supposed to be fun?
Hey, I dont have to pay for you inability to locate a job you enjoy with people you enjoy.
If you dont like work, go somewhere else. Its your own fault for staying in a job you dont enjoy.
If you can't find work you enjoy, believe me, the problem is with you (probably your assumption that it must be _unenjoyable_ to count as work.)
> surfed porn sites claiming it was research
...
cause you hired me to track down your real mother, don't you remember? so it _was_ research
they dumped some wheat, and they dumped some chaffe.
but they dumped the wheat here that made this job fun. im the lone developer now, and upper managements lack of desire to understand and know the folks in development drove my friend away.
my productivity has gone down, tho my load has increased, only because i care less about my job now that the people that made it fun are gone.
thats my 2 cents
If my mission is to pick the easier project, Bugzilla would be it.
You can't seriously compare writing a web app with writing the whole client the web app runs through?
Point made re: testing as being the only method of real world verification.
.. which isn't entirely rare.)
.. but I'd still rather own a car I can take to somebody to get a 2nd opinion, 2nd pair of eyeballs of whether or not its road worthy. Open source is better than CS. CS isnt evil. OS isn't the only answer. Its just better. Its one more thing, especially when the physical real world equivilent of closed source wasn't needed for companies to build a business.
.. the whole world sees how your doing something, and youve got a law that prevents people from stealing your ideas and work at your own whim.
Hey, the only reason I get warm from OSS is because its everything CS is and more. That simple. Its CS but with the bonus (pretty big bonus to me, as a coder) that I can see how my module is being treated under the hood. (Also helps me develop faster since I dont have to deal with inconsistancies between documents and the actual code
Nothing is perfect, of course. Point made re: the trojan'd compiler
As long as a GM engineer can completetly dissassemble a Ford car, I'm still not sure whats so scary about opening ones source. I really dont think your market viability should be build on the exclusivity of your ideas. If you wanna protect your ideas, you publish them in a patent
Sure, lots of people use Windows for firewalls. Do they use them to do the kind of firewalling Tiawan wants to do? Probably not.
.. an access mechanism that is designed to be hidden even from the person who has the product in their hands.
.. just cause the manual says cookies cant be shared between domains, its a reality that they can be. In a situation where its a matter of national security, believe me, you dont just assume the manual is correct and that the software does what it was billed to do. And you cant catch everything through testing. When the risk becomes huge, the demands on assurance of stability, security, etc become very big. Its jus a function of risk management, and its OK for them to ask for the source. I sure as hell would.
I mean, I can't just go "theyre morons, they dont need this." Especially in light to all the 'open market' cries on this thread. If they want the source, they want the source. Thats a demand. Whether MS bows to it, fine, but you cant just selectively question the demands that even one single individual user places on the market.
Specifically, I'm imaging that they _want_ to develop their own firewall to do lots of funky things, but they want to confirm that what their firewall does wont be tampered with by windows.
Sure, they could use a sniffer to confirm, but all the testing in the world doesn't garauntee that you just didnt attack your own server in the 'right way'. Thats what backdoors are
Look, I'm just pointing out that when the importance factor is high, your demands will be more stringant (and likely more specific than the 'use cases' that the majority of other users are in.)
You dont honestly believe these possibilities, do you?:
a) this is just an excuse to get access to Windows source 'for the hell of it'
or, worse
b) nobody over there forgot that they can just hit download.com, problem solved.
They wanna make their own firewall, and they need some SERIOUS confirmation that nothing in the OS is going to circumvent the intended functionality of their firewall. I mean, I wouldn't place my national security on assurances that Cookies in windows work as designed
I'm pretty sure that web usability includes the notiong that hyperlinks exist, in part, because it allows you to package content in multiple areas.
;)
Your link to archive.org is a HUGE page with TONS of scrolling to get to the bottom. Thats a major transgression when youre talking about usability on the web. (Although, okay, I now see you're talking more about the compatibility and adherance to standards in the code. The design of the page itself nearly negates the advantage of using standards.
Nitpicking aside, I know what you mean. Folks who veer off from standards are essentially going it alone and usually are dismissing the tons of work and thought that goes into setting standards.
Sorry, but was I the only person alive when it was deemed MS had a monopoly in the OS industry?
The whole concept here is that due to the actions of package A producer, package B is not used by enough people to make it a viable option in a high profile, high importance situation.
So this 'choice' of which you speak doesn't exist. A judge said so. Whos wrong here? The judge?
I've no doubt the Army outsources lots of work. But I'm also sure it doesn't outsource *everything*. When its cheaper to fill the gas tank yourself instead of hiring a company to do it for you, and you have little choice in using another product, I would hope that you'd have a legal right to fill the gas tank yourself. Thats not a decision that should be left up to the producer which has been found guilty of using its size as a mechanism for profiting instead of relying on its R&D and technology.
In an open market, I agree with you. However, I'm still not convinced there is much of a 'choice' when youre discussing about OSes in a vast number of situations. So the package A has the green light to ignore that 'invisble hand' (or at least influence it.)
> If today's software companies were to just give away everything as you state, they'd die.
Thats just plain bullshit. This _why_ we have legal protection from copying ideas (or a certain level of protection, which is what this is all about.)
I dont wanna build an OS. I cant build an OS for cheaper than MS. But I can build my custom firewall cheaper (and faster, and more customized to my use) than MS.
You can take your ideas to the extreme; everything you see, hear, etc came from somebody. Which took effort. And you're stealing it all. But I'm just curious why physical producers don't lock up their products before they ship them out the door but software producers are terrified. Copying the 'idea' of how to build a good engine starter, which took lots of thinking to come up with, also costs 0 dollars. In fact, you could turn around and sell this knowledge to the next guy and profit off of it. But its illegal to do that, so theres no reason to ensure that nobody is capable of dissassembling a motor starter.
In fact, imagine if it were illegal to make closed source software. You can verify that producer A did in fact steal an idea from producer B (an idea that is protected by a patent of course, because its not illegal simply to use an idea you find in somebody's product unless its patented.) and the issue about detecting law breakers is resolved.
But think about it. Patents exist, in part, to ensure that everybody DOES have access to the details of an idea. If you wanna get protected by law to be owned money when folks use your idea, be prepared to share it (since its been demonstrated over hundreds of years its better for everybody when people can improve on ideas in incremental fasions. No idea is 100% original, and 100% yours. If its an original idea, its an original reformulation of other people's thinking.) Protecting the source of an application is, quite simply, a method of being garaunteed payment for your IP while circumventing the other stipulations in patent laws (that you have to publish your idea).
Its much like how the DMCA effectively renders copyright law a moot point because you can wrap up work with an artificial mechanism that circumvents the processes and laws we put in place in order to balance the interest of the public against the interest of creators.
Its useless to allow people to avoid these institutions using technology. These laws (in theory) are designed to balance interests. If theres something broken about them, lets fix it, but in the very least lets not encourage economical models that can let innovators protect and profit off of ideas without repaying the scientific and engineering community for all the ideas they used in building their product.
well, its a little more understandable that politically sensitive names should be derided by the public at large (and enforced through law if thats what the voters support.)
in corperate/personal cases, one tiny minority has a problem with you using a particular name. seems to me much harder to defend companies seeking to prevent people from giving them homage (or just wanting to use the same name because its a nice name.)
>And the military should also design all their own integrated circuits and processors too?
.. if its cheaper (assuming they can build to the same levels of quality as a producer in the market), why not? isnt that what capitalism is all about? utlizing the efficiency of economy of scale when its useful, but not using it when its not?
if its cheaper, sure. um
> how do they know their communication and encryption chips don't have backdoors built into them?
good question, although you _can_ reverse engineer the chips if you want to. its not nearly as difficult as verifying the functionality of a million-lines-of-code binary after its been compiled against its target.