Absolutely right. Off you go then - replace all the JPEGs on every website out there with a file format which the 95% of users using MSIE on Windows can reliably.
While you're at it, remove JPEG support from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and The Gimp.
Submarine patent or not, they've essentially sat on it until well after it became a de-facto standard and only now started suing people. If it were a trademark (which you need to defend or else it becomes invalid) it would be thrown out of court. Why can't the same thing be done with patents?
YES. Agreed. If patents on IT are allowed, they should be 3-5 years at the very longest.
They should also have a "use it or lose it" clause - if patents aren't defended against infringement they become invalid. This already happens with trademarks, and would effectively prevent companies building up patents then sitting on them until infringing technology becomes so prevalent that it cannot be easily replaced.
If manufacturers actually opened the specifications enough to allow others to write drivers for their hardware then Linux would never need a stable ABI.
In these days of 2.5GHz processors for every pathetic little computer out there, it makes me wonder how many other bits of Win there are out there apart from WinModems and WinPrinters.
You say that but I've never yet met an average user who was prepared to open up their case & install hardware. Many are totally unaware that such a thing is even possible, or if they are they ask a friend who "knows about computers".
Peripherals, however, are a different matter. But even then users tend to install whatever came on CD with it - I've found myself explaining more than once that a lost CD doesn't matter as the drivers will be on the web.
Linux needs to support existing peripherals out of the box AND get Linux drivers/software onto the manufacturer's driver CDs. The first part is almost done. But new peripherals require new drivers so the second part also needs doing. Fortunately, drivers on the CD are relatively easy for peripherals. It's hell for internal components as they're far more likely to require a new kernel.
Since WE'RE the origination point of the vast majority of thier "innovation", I say we beat them at their own game.
What with? Luncheon vouchers? If the Open Source community *does* fund lawyers to use Microsoft, MS have the money to keep on throwing lawyers at us ad infinitum. Yes, some lawyers take on pro bono cases. But there are limits.
As a group, we are a lot of people, we could have a powerful loud voice. But it's unlikely we will ever be rich.
Remember, politicians are in the minority and only there because they were voted there. If we can become sufficiently organised as to explain these issues to Joe Voter, we shall be more powerful than any amount of $$$//.
Who's with me? Mail me and I'll post back with numbers.
Even a case where the USPTO is found liable for gross failure of duty, and fined an amount commensuate with its takings, would not stop this stupidness - just because someone has been able to argue that one instance is trivia does not create a precedent for arguing that something else is trivia.
You see any US judges awarding substantial damages against a US government department? Didn't think so.
There may well be similar numbers of "dangerous" vulnerabilities. But what isn't addressed is how many of them exist on a default installation on a typical desktop system.
I would imagine that with Windows the answer would be "most of them". With Linux, the answer would be "very few".
And here you have in a nutshell why the more computer savvy people are reading computer magazines, thinking "this linux thing looks interesting.... free... hmmm... 'easy to install' 'easier than previous version' 'supports most hardware'... might as well give it a try."
As anyone who subscribes to a Linux mailing list will attest, the number of people with little or no IT experience outside of the Windows desktop showing an interest in Linux is definitely on the increase. I migrated because I was fed up of spending hours doing the same mind-numbing stuff just to keep my computer doing what it was doing happily yesterday.
I expect major hardware/system changes to bring about a certain risk of problems. I don't expect (and don't feel I should put up with) a system breaking for no apparent reason during day to day use.
Now, I accept that Win2000/XP are considerably less likely to cause such issues than '9x ever was. But when I migrated, my home machine ran NT4. Win2000 was only just at SP1 and my hardware was barely capable of running it well. So I migrated. It was hard work at first, but now I prefer a Linux desktop.
Today, many of the Windows issues which had me migrating are no longer issues. But I won't be going back. Financially I can't justify the cost, Security-wise, I don't fancy all the patching and anti-virus work. And I object to having an OS which is predicated on the assumption that I don't know what I want to do with my own computer. And I have absolutely no doubt that if these issues were fixed in the future, more even more obnoxious issues will arise.
It'd be interesting to see what happened to attitudes if a means was devised to prolong life to 300 to 500 years. Suddenly all this crap becomes our problem again.
All we'd do is design stuff to fall apart after a couple of thousand years instead of a couple of hundred.
You're right that MS wouldn't need anything other than "normal market forces" to kill off alternative technology.
But they don't actually need to. A few strategically placed patents, sufficient websites demanding a "Trusted" system and BANG! You have to contribute to Microsoft's coffers by licensing their technology, regardless of whether or not you use their operating system.
Where does this leave alternative architectures? Apple Macs? AFAICT they'll either have to license MS technology or be left by the wayside.
Many businesses have various weird & wonderful legacy systems connected to the Internet for various reasons. What happens there? Or will "Business" ISPs make an exception?
Since there won't be any AV or other security tools on these systems (after all, there's no market for them in a "trusted" environment), what happens when the first bug in this system is found and exploited?
Just a few thoughts. I suppose the worst case is that MS will wind up controlling the Internet and everything on it. Given their previous conduct, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the business plan.
But (following the worst-case scenario) you may find that your online bank account no longer works because your browser can't verify itself.
If such technology can reduce card fraud, it's quite likely the banks will push it onto retailers. So you won't shop online because the online stores you wish to deal with only deal with "Trusted" browsers.
Sooner or later, businesses will start to expect documents to be exchanged in Mickeysoft's latest format - particularly if all their systems are set up in a "trusted" fashion. So that company which wants your CV in a "trusted" format and won't accept any other form of application? Looks like you'll have to install Office.
Absolute starkest scenario? Well, this could be extended to a whole bunch of stuff at a very low level. So if you disable the "trusted" stuff, suddenly you can't get support if a part of your PC fails because they "don't support it running in that configuration". In extreme cases, individual components could be nailed to only work properly if installed in a trusted PC. Think how the movie industry would love that! People could still view next-gen DVDs on their PC only this time they could guarantee that no pesky Norwegian kid is going to crack the encryption!
This is all "worst case" doomsday scenario stuff. I very much hope that the current balance of power in favour of huge businesses shifts dramatically before then. Hopefully the continued success of open-source will do this. But don't bet on it - at the end of the day, this is being pushed by Microsoft, most likely to extend and protect their monopoly. All of the above scenarios would be perfect examples of this.
I don't know about you but I find the thought of 100 billion dollars worth of heavy metals being propelled towards the Earth at high speed somewhat worrying.
Not quite sure I follow you but my point was somewhat theoretical.
The point being, if the record industry successfully produces 100% un-crackable (at least to normal consumers) copy protection which still plays on 100% of CD players, would such a CD be illegal in NZ?
Because unless it is, all this law will prevent is the record industry suing people who make copies for personal use. It won't make it physically possible to make such copies in the first place.
does this new law include a provision making it illegal for the recording industry to produce "copy protected" CDs?
Because if not I envision the situation becoming "you're legally entitled to copy it but good luck trying!".
Re:E-mail and address book software
on
Rome Moving to Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Nope. They're doing that first BECAUSE it will be most difficult.
Better to fall at the first hurdle than spend a fortune on getting over every other little problem and find the final hurdle is insurmountable. Exchange migration (including keeping all the existing emails, calendar entries etc) is distinctly Non-Trivial.
If they can find (or write their own) system which Just Works as an alternative to Exchange then not only will they find the path to migraton that much clearer, but if they release it migration will become a real possibility for many organisations which right now couldn't even consider it.
I agree that the PPC is quite capable of emulating the architecture. If the emulation is being done on an API (rather than hardware) level, then the simple answer is you implement the parts which handle cache to disk in such a way that they seem to work (as far as return values are concerned) but don't actually do anything.
Whether or not it's technically feasible to do this I don't know. I reckon it's more likely that MS will still use a hard disk. If you were that concerned about hacking you could set up 2 partitions on it, one for code and one for data. Any changes to this layout result in either the console refusing to boot or wiping the hard disk at boot time - that bit would be handled by the BIOS doing a checksum of the partition table against a known good value at boot time.
The code area would contain stuff which is digitally signed, may be loaded into memory & executed. Hence you can still rip your games. Data may be loaded into memory but would not be executed - IIRC the PPC architecture allows this. This would allow you to keep the flexibility of a disk, while making hacking an order of magnitude harder. It would also sweetly sidestep many buffer-overflow issues which may be used by hackers to get the system running "unauthorised" code.
All that being said, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if this has nothing to do with the hard disk issue. Maybe they just want to build the memory card interface in a proprietary fashion so that they have a monopoly on memory cards.
Remember the rumour that XBOX2 will be based on a PowerPC chip. This is a totally different architecture and would break compatability 100%.
This means that XB2 won't play XB1 games unless MS writes an emulation layer. This would either be at hardware level (slow, awkward but possibly more reliable for some games) or API level (faster to execute, easier to write, some games may not follow the API properly and hence break).
Either way, the XBox1 game isn't being played on an XBox - it's being played on a simulated XBox. Why not simulate the hard drive at the same time as the CPU?
Slashdot Mirror
That's still somewhat after JPEG became the common, de-facto standard.
Absolutely right. Off you go then - replace all the JPEGs on every website out there with a file format which the 95% of users using MSIE on Windows can reliably.
While you're at it, remove JPEG support from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and The Gimp.
Submarine patent or not, they've essentially sat on it until well after it became a de-facto standard and only now started suing people. If it were a trademark (which you need to defend or else it becomes invalid) it would be thrown out of court. Why can't the same thing be done with patents?
and/or a silly mascot that people will remember.
Good idea! Hmm, let me think... maybe an animal of some sort. A tiger? A sealion?
GOT IT. A penguin.
Microsoft does NOT force anyone's hand to use their software. Even on PCs that come with it, you can get a refund
You ever tried to do that?
YES. Agreed. If patents on IT are allowed, they should be 3-5 years at the very longest.
They should also have a "use it or lose it" clause - if patents aren't defended against infringement they become invalid. This already happens with trademarks, and would effectively prevent companies building up patents then sitting on them until infringing technology becomes so prevalent that it cannot be easily replaced.
If manufacturers actually opened the specifications enough to allow others to write drivers for their hardware then Linux would never need a stable ABI.
In these days of 2.5GHz processors for every pathetic little computer out there, it makes me wonder how many other bits of Win there are out there apart from WinModems and WinPrinters.
With any luck the same X server will be chosen as the default by most distributions, eliminating the problem in the mainstream.
Peripherals, however, are a different matter. But even then users tend to install whatever came on CD with it - I've found myself explaining more than once that a lost CD doesn't matter as the drivers will be on the web.
Linux needs to support existing peripherals out of the box AND get Linux drivers/software onto the manufacturer's driver CDs. The first part is almost done. But new peripherals require new drivers so the second part also needs doing.
Fortunately, drivers on the CD are relatively easy for peripherals. It's hell for internal components as they're far more likely to require a new kernel.
You reckon that would be enforceable in any reasonably sensbile country (ie. not the USA)?
What with? Luncheon vouchers? If the Open Source community *does* fund lawyers to use Microsoft, MS have the money to keep on throwing lawyers at us ad infinitum. Yes, some lawyers take on pro bono cases. But there are limits.
As a group, we are a lot of people, we could have a powerful loud voice. But it's unlikely we will ever be rich.
Remember, politicians are in the minority and only there because they were voted there. If we can become sufficiently organised as to explain these issues to Joe Voter, we shall be more powerful than any amount of $$$//.
Who's with me? Mail me and I'll post back with numbers.
You see any US judges awarding substantial damages against a US government department? Didn't think so.
There may well be similar numbers of "dangerous" vulnerabilities. But what isn't addressed is how many of them exist on a default installation on a typical desktop system.
I would imagine that with Windows the answer would be "most of them". With Linux, the answer would be "very few".
As anyone who subscribes to a Linux mailing list will attest, the number of people with little or no IT experience outside of the Windows desktop showing an interest in Linux is definitely on the increase. I migrated because I was fed up of spending hours doing the same mind-numbing stuff just to keep my computer doing what it was doing happily yesterday.
I expect major hardware/system changes to bring about a certain risk of problems. I don't expect (and don't feel I should put up with) a system breaking for no apparent reason during day to day use.
Now, I accept that Win2000/XP are considerably less likely to cause such issues than '9x ever was. But when I migrated, my home machine ran NT4. Win2000 was only just at SP1 and my hardware was barely capable of running it well. So I migrated. It was hard work at first, but now I prefer a Linux desktop.
Today, many of the Windows issues which had me migrating are no longer issues. But I won't be going back. Financially I can't justify the cost, Security-wise, I don't fancy all the patching and anti-virus work. And I object to having an OS which is predicated on the assumption that I don't know what I want to do with my own computer. And I have absolutely no doubt that if these issues were fixed in the future, more even more obnoxious issues will arise.
Ah well, the karma was nice while it lasted.
Not necessarily. The IMEI on my mobile (nokia 6610) also comes back as being from Finland. I bought it in the UK.
All we'd do is design stuff to fall apart after a couple of thousand years instead of a couple of hundred.
But they don't actually need to. A few strategically placed patents, sufficient websites demanding a "Trusted" system and BANG! You have to contribute to Microsoft's coffers by licensing their technology, regardless of whether or not you use their operating system.
Many businesses have various weird & wonderful legacy systems connected to the Internet for various reasons. What happens there? Or will "Business" ISPs make an exception?
Since there won't be any AV or other security tools on these systems (after all, there's no market for them in a "trusted" environment), what happens when the first bug in this system is found and exploited?
Just a few thoughts. I suppose the worst case is that MS will wind up controlling the Internet and everything on it. Given their previous conduct, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the business plan.
But (following the worst-case scenario) you may find that your online bank account no longer works because your browser can't verify itself.
If such technology can reduce card fraud, it's quite likely the banks will push it onto retailers. So you won't shop online because the online stores you wish to deal with only deal with "Trusted" browsers.
Sooner or later, businesses will start to expect documents to be exchanged in Mickeysoft's latest format - particularly if all their systems are set up in a "trusted" fashion. So that company which wants your CV in a "trusted" format and won't accept any other form of application? Looks like you'll have to install Office.
Absolute starkest scenario? Well, this could be extended to a whole bunch of stuff at a very low level. So if you disable the "trusted" stuff, suddenly you can't get support if a part of your PC fails because they "don't support it running in that configuration". In extreme cases, individual components could be nailed to only work properly if installed in a trusted PC. Think how the movie industry would love that! People could still view next-gen DVDs on their PC only this time they could guarantee that no pesky Norwegian kid is going to crack the encryption!
This is all "worst case" doomsday scenario stuff. I very much hope that the current balance of power in favour of huge businesses shifts dramatically before then. Hopefully the continued success of open-source will do this. But don't bet on it - at the end of the day, this is being pushed by Microsoft, most likely to extend and protect their monopoly. All of the above scenarios would be perfect examples of this.
I don't know about you but I find the thought of 100 billion dollars worth of heavy metals being propelled towards the Earth at high speed somewhat worrying.
The point being, if the record industry successfully produces 100% un-crackable (at least to normal consumers) copy protection which still plays on 100% of CD players, would such a CD be illegal in NZ?
Because unless it is, all this law will prevent is the record industry suing people who make copies for personal use. It won't make it physically possible to make such copies in the first place.
Because if not I envision the situation becoming "you're legally entitled to copy it but good luck trying!".
Better to fall at the first hurdle than spend a fortune on getting over every other little problem and find the final hurdle is insurmountable. Exchange migration (including keeping all the existing emails, calendar entries etc) is distinctly Non-Trivial.
If they can find (or write their own) system which Just Works as an alternative to Exchange then not only will they find the path to migraton that much clearer, but if they release it migration will become a real possibility for many organisations which right now couldn't even consider it.
Whether or not it's technically feasible to do this I don't know. I reckon it's more likely that MS will still use a hard disk. If you were that concerned about hacking you could set up 2 partitions on it, one for code and one for data. Any changes to this layout result in either the console refusing to boot or wiping the hard disk at boot time - that bit would be handled by the BIOS doing a checksum of the partition table against a known good value at boot time.
The code area would contain stuff which is digitally signed, may be loaded into memory & executed. Hence you can still rip your games. Data may be loaded into memory but would not be executed - IIRC the PPC architecture allows this. This would allow you to keep the flexibility of a disk, while making hacking an order of magnitude harder. It would also sweetly sidestep many buffer-overflow issues which may be used by hackers to get the system running "unauthorised" code.
All that being said, I wouldn't be hugely surprised if this has nothing to do with the hard disk issue. Maybe they just want to build the memory card interface in a proprietary fashion so that they have a monopoly on memory cards.
This means that XB2 won't play XB1 games unless MS writes an emulation layer. This would either be at hardware level (slow, awkward but possibly more reliable for some games) or API level (faster to execute, easier to write, some games may not follow the API properly and hence break).
Either way, the XBox1 game isn't being played on an XBox - it's being played on a simulated XBox. Why not simulate the hard drive at the same time as the CPU?