You didn't get it. If the law explicitely specifies "PCs" or "personal computers", and since a workstation isn't a PC, that would be a great loophole, wouldn't it be?
Thank you for clarifying this. I didn't know that GEZ were not entitled to entering homes via police. This is what friends of mine who live in Germany always assumed and I tend to believe them. But if not paying GEZ taxes is really a minor offense, you may be right and my friends would have fallen prey to a, as you put it, common myth.
You don't own a TV, and have a computer, but you have no internet service provider: you just go to the local cafe and leech off the wifi?
That wouldn't help them much, because they would require the tax from every internet-capable PC, which means every PC nowadays. You don't need to have an ISP, because you can use internet-by-call by simply dialing a phone number; a capability that every PC has.
Just thinking about it: if they only plan to tax PCs, they should switch to workstations (SPARC, whatever).
Unfortunately for germans, this ain't an april joke. You can find reprecussions of this PC tax in all their online newspapers. It seems like their politicians found yet another way to squeeze money out of citizens and, to a much wider extent, companies.
The GEZ seldom operates roving vans. Instead, they just knock at your door and require to see either their recipe, or they call the police to forcibly enter your home. If you have a computer (and who doesn't nowadays?), you're in big trouble, not matter what kind of monitor you use.
o that end, I would encourage the creators of open source projects to adopt a named release policy. For example, Perl 6 could be called "Finding Nemo". Debian could rename their next distribution "Fight Club".
That is not a good idea, because such titles are also trademarks. Doing so would only harm those open source projects.
Using this chip is entirely a matter of the operating system (kernel). If Microsoft wants to enforce its use, so let them! As far as Linux and other free operating systems are concerned, there's always the option of turning this chip off.
Hardware security is always a matter of combining kernel und hardware resources. It's the kernel that loads a program, opens a file etc..., not the hardware. The hardware is used by the kernel to do such stuff. If the kernel doesn't want to use a particular chip, it can always do without (e.g. emulating stuff in software, or even using the chip in creative ways that the chip designers never thought about in the first place).
The real restrictions are ultimately imposed by the kernel (and other userland programs), not by the hardware per se.
On a "political" side, the existence of such chips may even be beneficial to Linux: imagine a tightly controlled "corporate" or Microsoft software world where users are being bound by vendors (just like today, but even worse); and a free Linux world where users are free to choose whatever setup they like.
In the long run, if you can do things under Linux that you can't under Windows, esp. popular stuff, do you expect Windows' supremacy to last?
The need could arise much faster than you may think. Imagine some wealthy terrorist (/bin/laden) buying high resolution imagery from commercial spy satellites. Imagine further than said terrorists were able to buy some cruise missiles from the black market. Combine both, and they can program said missiles with very high accuracy.
That's only Munich's worry if Munich want to import the software into USA.
Actually, it is only Munich's worry, if Munich decided to move to the US. That is very unlikely, to say the least... So if they violated US patents, so what? Would they be nuked in retaliation?
Marketing may be a priviledge, but that priviledge can certainly be bought. Since companies with deep pockets can buy their government officers and congress critters without flinching, marketing is effectively their native right.
Never underestimate the "buying power" that monopolies (like MSFT) can exert on whole countries.
One feature that I really miss in ALL search engines is the ability to mark a link as "irrelevant to me", so that it doesn't appear in subsequent searches. Kind of: "Don't show this link again" or "Don't show links from this site again".
Why is such a feature desirable? If you want to monitor the Web for an special topic, and you only want to see new results, it's always a pain in the neck to manually skip over old, known links or sites.
Any search engine that implemented this feature would be a breeze!
With our new and improved INSERT-PRODUCT-NAME-HERE, you can break out of that awful sweatshop where you have to constantly read about penis enlargement, mortages and porn sites all day long for pennies a day and no bathroom breaks...
blah blah blih fish cheese microprocessor blam blom. You need an HTML-enabled mail reader...
This is not nearly enough to satisfy governments. First of all, code that they don't compile themselves is not guaranteed to stem from the same set of sources. Second, the source code to the OS, and to the compilers is needed as well, because, hey, what does that black box kernel, dll, or compiler toolkit add to the pristine source?
Responsible governments would either avoid closed-source products completely, or they should require a complete source code system that they could bootstrap themselves. No hidden binary at all!
Would Microsoft provide such a complete, source code system that could bootstrap itself? It was reported many times earlier that they are having a helluvatime to maintain their own compiling environment. Would they be able to package it in such a way that non-Microsoft personnel could do something with it...
... assuming that they were sincere, and not just pulling a cheap PR stunt?
Slashdot Mirror
/Me too!/
TMDA is absolutely great and the best solution so far. Highly recommended!
Great! More spam to counteract spam...!
You didn't get it. If the law explicitely specifies "PCs" or "personal computers", and since a workstation isn't a PC, that would be a great loophole, wouldn't it be?
Now imagine that, from any web browser, you can access any book in the LoC for which the copyright has expired. I like that idea!
That's the idea of Project Gutenberg. It's been around for quite some time now, and everybody is free to join their distributed proofreading network!
Thank you for clarifying this. I didn't know that GEZ were not entitled to entering homes via police. This is what friends of mine who live in Germany always assumed and I tend to believe them. But if not paying GEZ taxes is really a minor offense, you may be right and my friends would have fallen prey to a, as you put it, common myth.
Even if they know: You can have an Internet Connection, as long as you don't have an Internet capable PC.
Time to buy non-PC workstations (Sun, whatever...) now!
We can expect to see more Linux ports to new arches soon, can we?
he was discovered precisely because some of the other developers were complaining about the reduced performance on the system.
He should've nice(8)-ed it to a better value; and he should have mv setiathome oramon_d or some such...
You don't own a TV, and have a computer, but you have no internet service provider: you just go to the local cafe and leech off the wifi?
That wouldn't help them much, because they would require the tax from every internet-capable PC, which means every PC nowadays. You don't need to have an ISP, because you can use internet-by-call by simply dialing a phone number; a capability that every PC has.
Just thinking about it: if they only plan to tax PCs, they should switch to workstations (SPARC, whatever).
Unfortunately for germans, this ain't an april joke. You can find reprecussions of this PC tax in all their online newspapers. It seems like their politicians found yet another way to squeeze money out of citizens and, to a much wider extent, companies.
The GEZ seldom operates roving vans. Instead, they just knock at your door and require to see either their recipe, or they call the police to forcibly enter your home. If you have a computer (and who doesn't nowadays?), you're in big trouble, not matter what kind of monitor you use.
Oh c'mon! You only need to change the user-agent string with --user-agent to something generic like MSIE or whatever.
Yes, I didn't think of that. Thanks for pointing it out!
o that end, I would encourage the creators of open source projects to adopt a named release policy. For example, Perl 6 could be called "Finding Nemo". Debian could rename their next distribution "Fight Club".
That is not a good idea, because such titles are also trademarks. Doing so would only harm those open source projects.
Now for them to impose legislation that makes it illegal for people to remove spyware, especially when it was installed with a court order...
Since when is a court order necessary to install spyware on someone's computer? IANAL, but AFAICT, only wiretapping etc. are covered by the law.
Anyway, Carnivore and other similar programs are not installed on end-users computers at all.
Using this chip is entirely a matter of the operating system (kernel). If Microsoft wants to enforce its use, so let them! As far as Linux and other free operating systems are concerned, there's always the option of turning this chip off.
Hardware security is always a matter of combining kernel und hardware resources. It's the kernel that loads a program, opens a file etc..., not the hardware. The hardware is used by the kernel to do such stuff. If the kernel doesn't want to use a particular chip, it can always do without (e.g. emulating stuff in software, or even using the chip in creative ways that the chip designers never thought about in the first place).
The real restrictions are ultimately imposed by the kernel (and other userland programs), not by the hardware per se.
On a "political" side, the existence of such chips may even be beneficial to Linux: imagine a tightly controlled "corporate" or Microsoft software world where users are being bound by vendors (just like today, but even worse); and a free Linux world where users are free to choose whatever setup they like.
In the long run, if you can do things under Linux that you can't under Windows, esp. popular stuff, do you expect Windows' supremacy to last?
The need could arise much faster than you may think. Imagine some wealthy terrorist (/bin/laden) buying high resolution imagery from commercial spy satellites. Imagine further than said terrorists were able to buy some cruise missiles from the black market. Combine both, and they can program said missiles with very high accuracy.
How about Math
Imagine the following concepts being patented:
Every single computer, algorithm, and computer program in the world would be infringing one of those patents!
That's only Munich's worry if Munich want to import the software into USA.
Actually, it is only Munich's worry, if Munich decided to move to the US. That is very unlikely, to say the least... So if they violated US patents, so what? Would they be nuked in retaliation?
Marketing may be a priviledge, but that priviledge can certainly be bought. Since companies with deep pockets can buy their government officers and congress critters without flinching, marketing is effectively their native right.
Never underestimate the "buying power" that monopolies (like MSFT) can exert on whole countries.
What about the vuln. in the PNG libs? Any exploit in the wild?
One feature that I really miss in ALL search engines is the ability to mark a link as "irrelevant to me", so that it doesn't appear in subsequent searches. Kind of: "Don't show this link again" or "Don't show links from this site again".
Why is such a feature desirable? If you want to monitor the Web for an special topic, and you only want to see new results, it's always a pain in the neck to manually skip over old, known links or sites.
Any search engine that implemented this feature would be a breeze!
In Zope, Python Script had to be renamed to Script (Python), just because of such silly trademark/copyright issues...
With our new and improved INSERT-PRODUCT-NAME-HERE, you can break out of that awful sweatshop where you have to constantly read about penis enlargement, mortages and porn sites all day long for pennies a day and no bathroom breaks...
blah blah blih fish cheese microprocessor blam blom. You need an HTML-enabled mail reader...
How easy would it be to flood them with even more zombies? Let's hope they won't bite off more SPAM than they can chew... so to speak.
Apologies to Hormel.
This is not nearly enough to satisfy governments. First of all, code that they don't compile themselves is not guaranteed to stem from the same set of sources. Second, the source code to the OS, and to the compilers is needed as well, because, hey, what does that black box kernel, dll, or compiler toolkit add to the pristine source?
Responsible governments would either avoid closed-source products completely, or they should require a complete source code system that they could bootstrap themselves. No hidden binary at all!
Would Microsoft provide such a complete, source code system that could bootstrap itself? It was reported many times earlier that they are having a helluvatime to maintain their own compiling environment. Would they be able to package it in such a way that non-Microsoft personnel could do something with it...
... assuming that they were sincere, and not just pulling a cheap PR stunt?