Both the OnStar operator and the computer they're controlling have no idea what the situation is on the ground. And a rogue cop who's just split up with someone whose car had OnStar fitted (similar example was used earlier) would easily have access to all the information needed to get the car shut down.
Off the top of my head, the closest you could get to a check and balance would be some sort of authorisation code which needs to be enabled by at least two people - but that sort of idea probably won't be implemented because of the time delay it would add in what could be an emergency situation if a car is being driven recklessly.
More likely it would boil down to one person in OnStar's service centre's judgement. And how reliable do you think that judgement is going to be when there's a cop screaming at them to stop the damn car?
when the record industry bent them over the desk for a serious buggering, it turned out to not be as nice as they promised. It is, in fact, a bit of a pain.
Easy enough to resolve. You delete D: altogether, along with the partition which holds the logical drive. Then you create a new partition and install XP in that.
I'm not sure if Windows' drive manager makes this easy, though, as Microsoft seem very keen on hiding such implementation details. A bootable Linux CD, however, will have no such problem.
Actually, I think this is quite a good idea. HP and Microsoft are already doing something similar with Office - some HP PCs come with a trial version of Office preloaded which works in exactly this way.
You say "people will do the lazy thing", but I bet you there's quite a lot of people who will not understand that there has been this change and when Windows prompts them for credit card details saying "You can carry on using Windows for just $99.99, alternatively click here to wipe your PC" will say "You mean I've got to pay extra for Windows? Stuff that".
I've bolded the sentence that worries me. It both sounds too good to be true and sounds like they take my money and promise me something later that's ill defined. What do you think?
I think it sounds a bit like how Costco works.
However, Costco are honest enough to admit that they're a cash & carry, allow you to sign in guests, you can return products and the registration fee isn't that high.
Yes, because most antivirus software also protects against worms and trojans.
There also exists antispyware software and AV vendors have updated their heuristic tests to detect software which looks like it may be malicious, but ATEOTD most of the work done by AV software is through signatures.
Problem is, the only way which has a snowflakes' chance in Hell in being trully effective against all malware is a certificate-based or a signature-based whitelist system with support at a hardware level. But both of these require significant changes to how computing works today, and there's a lot of inertia to overcome.
The problem you describe is, in my opinion, on the nail.
However it's never going to be solved at a hobbyist level. It's not sexy enough for hobbyists to take an interest in, and anyone who's got the ability to do it isn't really that fazed by having to install from a source tarball.
This leaves the proprietary companies like RedHat, Novell and Ubuntu to solve this problem. However, faced with a typical business attitude of "how does this help us in the next year?", they won't solve it either. Because the answer is "it doesn't help you in the next year. It helps you in the next 5 years".
You are aware that it's reasonably common in the PC marketplace for vendors to change the specifications of something beyond all recognition yet keep the same model number? Belkin and Netgear are both guilty of that, and they're far from alone.
Also, many people confuse the law with ethics (as in, if it's legal then it's ethical) but the two are often completely at odds. Copyright law currently appears to be in that category with billions of people being stopped from doing a completely reasonable thing, sharing with their friends and acquaintances, because the originators want completely unreasonable profits for a few hours work.
That was the main purpose of what I was trying to say, though I think you perhaps put it more clearly.
The law did what it said on the tin. The fact that it may be a completely inappropriate tin is only relevant in the big scheme of things - in this particular context, it is neither here nor there.
I don't know how it works in your part of the world, but here in the UK they don't even register the mobile phone as sold until such time as you've signed a contract.
You ever dealt with a UK telephone company? You'll spend 6 weeks just trying to get through to someone who knows that you are within your rights to demand that the telephone be unlocked. It will take them another 6 weeks to find out why their system doesn't generate an unlock code for the iPhone because they weren't paying attention at the most recent training session. (Well, actually it should take them 6 minutes but they'll give up after 3 and you'll have to keep ringing around until you get hold of them again).
Now it's 12 weeks later and they tell you "Er, sorry, can't unlock an iPhone". Assuming you're even aware that it's a legal requirement, your complaint to Ofcom will be carefully placed in their "Ignore for 3 months" pile. Ofcom will eventually write a letter to O2 asking them to unlock your phone, and O2 will write back saying "sorry, can't be done". Ofcom will forward this letter to you, and consider it the end of the matter unless and until they receive thousands such complaints. Whereupon they will finally write a more sternly worded letter to O2.
By this time the iPhone/AT&T exclusivity deal is over, and Apple supply a new version which can be firmware unlocked. This courtesy is not, however, extended to customers who bought the iPhone when it first came out - that remains locked.
Come off it. I think everyone on/. knows how this is going to pan out.
Novell: Now stand aside, worth adversary. SCO: 'Tis but a scratch. Novell: A scratch?! Your in Chapter 11! SCO: No we're not. Novell: Well what's that then? SCO: We've had worse. Novell: You liars! SCO: Come on, you pansies! [More fighting] Novell: Victory is ours! [counsel addresses judge directly] We thank your honour for his... [SCO lawyers interrupt] SCO: Come on, then! Novell: What? SCO: Have at you! Novell: You are indeed brave, but the fight is ours. SCO: Ooh, had enough, eh? Novell: You stupid bastards, you've got no business left! SCO: Yes we have. Novell: LOOK! SCO: It's just a flesh wound. Novell: Look, stop that. SCO: Chicken! Chicken! Novell: Look, we'll have what little cash remains. Right! [asks for a court order] SCO: Right, we'll do you for that! Novell: You'll what? SCO: Come here! Novell: What are you going to do, bleed on us? SCO: We're invincible! Novell: You're loony. SCO: SCO always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then! Novell: [asks judge to order SCO into chapter 7] SCO: All right. We'll call it a draw.
Why do we always have to go to "It's light! It's strong! This will clearly help prevent foreigners from killing our troops!"?
Because that's an extremely good way to get funding without having nearly as much pressure hanging over your head to deliver results immediately because some venture capitalist is getting itchy.
1. Who do you think Blizzard gets the money from to cover these costs? (Clue: It is not the tooth fairy). 2. Follow the money. Large retailers have lots of money, which means they can afford to should loudly "We don't see why we should be liable for this". Banks have even more money, so they can shout even more loudly.
Customers have the least money.
Who do you think they want to hold liable? (Clue: Look at who's liable for card fraud in the UK now we have Chip & PIN).
You can be assured that credit cards with useful smart chips and public key signature capability would be implemented the INSTANT such a law went into effect
True, but they would first spend millions in campaign contributions/political cock sucking in order to ensure that such a law would be so watered down as to be effectively useless.
Easy enough to do - the router acts as the man in the middle.
It is essentially as an invisible SSL proxy - decrypting the clients' request, re-encrypting it for the server at the other end and storing what it's decrypted in the middle.
The worst that happens is the user sees an error message from their browser complaining about the certificate. But seeing as 15 years of Windows have encouraged people to ignore error messages, that's not a particularly big deal.
Even this, however, can be avoided. If you control the client PC, you can tell it to trust the CA which signs the certificates generated by the man in the middle router - which immediately eliminates the error message. SSL was designed on the assumption that you could control and trust your own PC, but if it's a friends PC, it's a PC at a cybercafe, it's owned by an employer or it's been riddled with malware - you don't control it, someone else does.
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With a properly setup check and balance
That's one huge assumption right there.
Both the OnStar operator and the computer they're controlling have no idea what the situation is on the ground. And a rogue cop who's just split up with someone whose car had OnStar fitted (similar example was used earlier) would easily have access to all the information needed to get the car shut down.
Off the top of my head, the closest you could get to a check and balance would be some sort of authorisation code which needs to be enabled by at least two people - but that sort of idea probably won't be implemented because of the time delay it would add in what could be an emergency situation if a car is being driven recklessly.
More likely it would boil down to one person in OnStar's service centre's judgement. And how reliable do you think that judgement is going to be when there's a cop screaming at them to stop the damn car?
You could have the Carly and Patti show. They could give advice on how to run a business the right way.
So presumably all a budding exec would have to do would be to carefully watch the show, then go into work and do the exact opposite?
Sounds like a plan to me.
when the record industry bent them over the desk for a serious buggering, it turned out to not be as nice as they promised. It is, in fact, a bit of a pain.
A pain in the arse, in fact.
With an iPhone?
That being the case, shows all this "may not be released in france because it can't be unlocked" is mindless rubbish.
Easy enough to resolve. You delete D: altogether, along with the partition which holds the logical drive. Then you create a new partition and install XP in that.
I'm not sure if Windows' drive manager makes this easy, though, as Microsoft seem very keen on hiding such implementation details. A bootable Linux CD, however, will have no such problem.
A computer manufacturer also can't support every single OS out there.
Just as well then that most computer manufacturers support only the hardware.
They can continue in this vein very easily by shipping a bootable diagnostics CD with every PC.
Actually, I think this is quite a good idea. HP and Microsoft are already doing something similar with Office - some HP PCs come with a trial version of Office preloaded which works in exactly this way.
You say "people will do the lazy thing", but I bet you there's quite a lot of people who will not understand that there has been this change and when Windows prompts them for credit card details saying "You can carry on using Windows for just $99.99, alternatively click here to wipe your PC" will say "You mean I've got to pay extra for Windows? Stuff that".
Much of the value in OS X is everything Just Works.
As soon as you start pushing it on random, unknown hardware, everything Just Does Not Work.
or it Sort Of Works.
or It Worked In Our Lab, You Must Be Doing Something Wrong.
Sounds like you did the right thing. That would have set off my bullshit detector too.
I've bolded the sentence that worries me. It both sounds too good to be true and sounds like they take my money and promise me something later that's ill defined. What do you think?
I think it sounds a bit like how Costco works.
However, Costco are honest enough to admit that they're a cash & carry, allow you to sign in guests, you can return products and the registration fee isn't that high.
Yes, because most antivirus software also protects against worms and trojans.
There also exists antispyware software and AV vendors have updated their heuristic tests to detect software which looks like it may be malicious, but ATEOTD most of the work done by AV software is through signatures.
Problem is, the only way which has a snowflakes' chance in Hell in being trully effective against all malware is a certificate-based or a signature-based whitelist system with support at a hardware level. But both of these require significant changes to how computing works today, and there's a lot of inertia to overcome.
The problem you describe is, in my opinion, on the nail.
However it's never going to be solved at a hobbyist level. It's not sexy enough for hobbyists to take an interest in, and anyone who's got the ability to do it isn't really that fazed by having to install from a source tarball.
This leaves the proprietary companies like RedHat, Novell and Ubuntu to solve this problem. However, faced with a typical business attitude of "how does this help us in the next year?", they won't solve it either. Because the answer is "it doesn't help you in the next year. It helps you in the next 5 years".
There are hardware compatibility lists available.
You are aware that it's reasonably common in the PC marketplace for vendors to change the specifications of something beyond all recognition yet keep the same model number? Belkin and Netgear are both guilty of that, and they're far from alone.
Also, many people confuse the law with ethics (as in, if it's legal then it's ethical) but the two are often completely at odds. Copyright law currently appears to be in that category with billions of people being stopped from doing a completely reasonable thing, sharing with their friends and acquaintances, because the originators want completely unreasonable profits for a few hours work.
That was the main purpose of what I was trying to say, though I think you perhaps put it more clearly.
The law did what it said on the tin. The fact that it may be a completely inappropriate tin is only relevant in the big scheme of things - in this particular context, it is neither here nor there.
I don't know how it works in your part of the world, but here in the UK they don't even register the mobile phone as sold until such time as you've signed a contract.
Because of this
HAHAHAHAHA!
You ever dealt with a UK telephone company? You'll spend 6 weeks just trying to get through to someone who knows that you are within your rights to demand that the telephone be unlocked. It will take them another 6 weeks to find out why their system doesn't generate an unlock code for the iPhone because they weren't paying attention at the most recent training session. (Well, actually it should take them 6 minutes but they'll give up after 3 and you'll have to keep ringing around until you get hold of them again).
Now it's 12 weeks later and they tell you "Er, sorry, can't unlock an iPhone". Assuming you're even aware that it's a legal requirement, your complaint to Ofcom will be carefully placed in their "Ignore for 3 months" pile. Ofcom will eventually write a letter to O2 asking them to unlock your phone, and O2 will write back saying "sorry, can't be done". Ofcom will forward this letter to you, and consider it the end of the matter unless and until they receive thousands such complaints. Whereupon they will finally write a more sternly worded letter to O2.
By this time the iPhone/AT&T exclusivity deal is over, and Apple supply a new version which can be firmware unlocked. This courtesy is not, however, extended to customers who bought the iPhone when it first came out - that remains locked.
You, meantime, gave up on this months ago.
This isn't the 1500's where getting electronics from around the world was a months long affair.
Centuries, more like. You had to wait for them to be invented first.
SCO Group, who would do best to just run a pest and rodent control business.
It's hard to run an efficient pest control business when all your senior staff are rats.
They're mortally wounded but still standing.
/. knows how this is going to pan out.
Come off it. I think everyone on
Novell: Now stand aside, worth adversary.
SCO: 'Tis but a scratch.
Novell: A scratch?! Your in Chapter 11!
SCO: No we're not.
Novell: Well what's that then?
SCO: We've had worse.
Novell: You liars!
SCO: Come on, you pansies!
[More fighting]
Novell: Victory is ours! [counsel addresses judge directly] We thank your honour for his...
[SCO lawyers interrupt]
SCO: Come on, then!
Novell: What?
SCO: Have at you!
Novell: You are indeed brave, but the fight is ours.
SCO: Ooh, had enough, eh?
Novell: You stupid bastards, you've got no business left!
SCO: Yes we have.
Novell: LOOK!
SCO: It's just a flesh wound.
Novell: Look, stop that.
SCO: Chicken! Chicken!
Novell: Look, we'll have what little cash remains. Right! [asks for a court order]
SCO: Right, we'll do you for that!
Novell: You'll what?
SCO: Come here!
Novell: What are you going to do, bleed on us?
SCO: We're invincible!
Novell: You're loony.
SCO: SCO always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then!
Novell: [asks judge to order SCO into chapter 7]
SCO: All right. We'll call it a draw.
Why do we always have to go to "It's light! It's strong! This will clearly help prevent foreigners from killing our troops!"?
Because that's an extremely good way to get funding without having nearly as much pressure hanging over your head to deliver results immediately because some venture capitalist is getting itchy.
True, but I would consider "apportionate punishment" to be a part of enforcing the law.
Two issues:
1. Who do you think Blizzard gets the money from to cover these costs? (Clue: It is not the tooth fairy).
2. Follow the money. Large retailers have lots of money, which means they can afford to should loudly "We don't see why we should be liable for this". Banks have even more money, so they can shout even more loudly.
Customers have the least money.
Who do you think they want to hold liable? (Clue: Look at who's liable for card fraud in the UK now we have Chip & PIN).
You can be assured that credit cards with useful smart chips and public key signature capability would be implemented the INSTANT such a law went into effect
True, but they would first spend millions in campaign contributions/political cock sucking in order to ensure that such a law would be so watered down as to be effectively useless.
Easy enough to do - the router acts as the man in the middle.
It is essentially as an invisible SSL proxy - decrypting the clients' request, re-encrypting it for the server at the other end and storing what it's decrypted in the middle.
The worst that happens is the user sees an error message from their browser complaining about the certificate. But seeing as 15 years of Windows have encouraged people to ignore error messages, that's not a particularly big deal.
Even this, however, can be avoided. If you control the client PC, you can tell it to trust the CA which signs the certificates generated by the man in the middle router - which immediately eliminates the error message. SSL was designed on the assumption that you could control and trust your own PC, but if it's a friends PC, it's a PC at a cybercafe, it's owned by an employer or it's been riddled with malware - you don't control it, someone else does.