How is releasing source code not distributing to the public? Or do you think he was going to only release it to himself?
My questions are: since this law requires a whole bunch of notices at install, will it require changes to package managers? If a user installs a p2papp package, won't apt-get have to prompt the user with a question--at the very least "do you understand? (y/n)" What if they write more "informed" laws like this? Will it nullify the convenience of using a package manager in the first place if you have to read a thousand notices and reply yes, I understand to each one?
So, if you write a program, never intending it to be used on a "protected computer", and some idiot installs it on one, you can be arrested? Wonderful law. So, how is this different than writing the law to say "all computers" instead?
Do you really want to risk going to jail? Maybe you'd better take out any features of your program which define it as a "covered file sharing program" until legal has verified you put in all the correct notices and such, okay?
Yeah, people should have to be certified by Microsoft before they are allowed to use a computer. It'll be great to "educate" people about the wonderful Microsoft. Oh, that special training stuff you were talking about? I guess we'll throw that in somewhere. People should really learn not to install evil viral GPL software anyway, and those open source people are pirate criminal thieves! They don't even buy their software, so they must be stealing it. They make me mad. As an added benefit, if anyone should choose to use an OS other than the "One True OS"(tm), their license will be taken away. Cheer for your benevolent dictator kids! Yay Microsoft!
Oh wait, this isn't what you intended? Do you really think your plan would turn out any other way? If the user interface wasn't designed in a "press a button, execute untrusted code" way, we probably wouldn't have half the problems we do now.
Making things secure requires leadership, starting with the OS developer, then the application developer, then geeks who help "friends" with their computer. If you don't have knowledgeable leadership starting at the top with a bent toward security policies, then computers will not be secure. Why make things insecure by default? Why would a P2P program share everything by default?
It used to be you'd be flamed into the ground in Linux forums for logging into root to do much of anything. Network facing apps which downloaded and executed programs were unheard of. Now many distros automatically set up users unlimited sudo access, so they may as well be root.
Microsoft has always been much worse. "You want this network app to automatically download and execute code? Sounds like a great idea, it'll be in our next version." Microsoft only pretends to care about security now because they seem to be losing some marketshare because of it. As soon as the heat wears off, they won't care again. If enough people kept on them, like getting a child to do its chores, it may not be a problem. But it is, especially since most users don't care about security.
This is why we need strong leadership who is out for the public good. They will push the people to do the right thing even when it is inconvenient, or even painful. Poor leadership like we have been seeing leads to easily rooted boxes and highly inefficient computer programs. Programs which require the user to conform to the program instead of the other way around.
Pigeon-holing laws which restrict how programs are supposed to work, such as in the article won't solve anything either. They'll just impede innovation while the real abusers will just play with technicalities, really.
Plus, why make the ban on "surreptitious installs" and on warnings about what data will be shared only P2P apps? Which by looking at the pdf, it makes me think rsync when run by a script would be included as a "covered file sharing program." Look at section 4.4. Yet other programs are not covered. What about a video game (or audio CD) which tries to install rootkits? Have they passed any laws against those? Even if they did, it wouldn't protect you if the person who made your program is a psychopathic asshole. That is the real problem: you have to trust who writes your programs, otherwise you can't trust your computer.
If the camera doesn't move, a snapshot of the background could be taken, and when the image is significantly different (say, more than X # of pixels changed by brightness Y), it would probably mean the user is there. The comparison wouldn't take much processing time. Though obviously if something was moved or changed in the background, it would cause false positives. Perhaps the area where the user sits could be selected. It would require someone to set this all up, but it would be doable and cheap and should work reasonably well...until the chair moves.;-)
No! You clearly don't know how to train real people. 100,000 volts wired to the doorknob. Shuts off when they log out. Users who forget to log out before they leave die. Natural selection at work. You just need a liberal breeding policy to keep the population stable. (Everyone forgets to log off at some point.)
How about they ban the use of syrup / sugar in food it doesn't belong? Such as additives to pasta sauce and fruit drinks. Not only does it make you fat, (in my opinion) it ruins the taste.
Yeah, sure. Brilliant solution. Except for the study that said fat people and smokers reduce health care costs because they die sooner. So I guess your revised plan would be for insurance and government plans to drop healthy people because they live longer and end up costing more.
Then some of the people who now have no insurance don't get medical treatment for anything until it is so serous they end up in the emergency room of the hospital which turns into a month long visit costing more than most houses, which they can't pay for because they have no medical insurance, and government programs won't pay for them, so the hospitals don't get paid for all this medical care they did which cost them a lot of money to provide, so they all go bankrupt.
...and demanding that people who have health problems have to go through more hoops just to follow their needed diet is an asshole solution. In fact, most of these food "solutions" are based on studies of 50 year old fat men with cholesterol problems and pop crap made up "science". NOT EVERYONE IS THE FUCKING SAME. You are obviously a self-righteous shitheaded fucktard who just spouts out idiotic "solutions" without thinking.
In fact, I have kidney failure and have to follow the renal diet. Watch phosphorus and potassium among other things. Cake and candy and red meat are better for me than "heathy" food such as lots of fruits and vegetables. What a given person should be eating depends on many factors.
Genetics, condition of their internal organs, how much muscle mass and fat they have, how much of various chemicals are in their bloodstream (vitamins, minerals, cholesterol, etc), their current metabolic rate. You can't just say this one magic food is good for everyone all the time or that food is bad, because everyone is different and their condition is always changing. Nor can you say by how much they eat they are going to be fat/unhealthy. It just doesn't work that way.
This is why there is so much information on the side of food boxes: to help you decide if a given food will be helpful or harmful to you. Even too many vitamins, just as too few, can be bad for you. Over 2000 mg of Vitamin C in a day causes diarrhea. What, do you think it should just have a thumbs up or thumbs down on it?
Really, you are just the stupid self-righteous American which makes this country a fucking shitty place to live in.
You can call it a "rental licensing" fee, but everyone had to pay it. In fact, during the beta vs vhs period, they charged hundreds of dollars for tapes (more than a thousand for some). I know because I wanted to buy some, but as a kid I could not even remotely afford it.
Remember, Hollywood didn't like "evil" video tapes and tried to sue various companies out of business for it. Just like they tried to get rid of the "evil" internet, though their strategy there was more to replace it with their controlled version of the internet.
For cut/paste? That would be incredibly stupid because ctrl-c means send SIGINT to the program running on the terminal. It has been this way long before someone decided to use ctrl-c for copy.
Except the end user should not have to configure and install their operating systems. That is the job of the hardware manufacturers and the "friendly" "Geek Squad" types at the local computer / electronics stores. Linux (Unix) was designed for professional admins to fix the computer while the end user doesn't have to worry about it.
For a stupid car analogy, you wouldn't expect someone to have to install the engine (or brakes, or transmission) or tweak the settings on those components just to use a car. They send it to a mechanic if they need one of those things done.
In fact, I have seen people do exactly that with their MS Windows systems, so I don't see why Linux should be different. Only people who work in IT (or are hobbyists or do-it-yourselfers) work on their own computer, just as mechanics and such are the only people who work on their own cars. The real problem is the company who turned choice into "all must use the one true OS!"
I think developers should think about what they are doing. It seems like the developers of KDE, Gnome, and Firefox just mindlessly copy Microsoft.
Like how Firefox changed the bookmark dialog so it hid the folders section and replaced it with a drop down box which only shows the last three folders you put something in. This makes no sense. If the folders confuse users who just dump everything into the top level, then I suppose they would take it out. I don't see how this would make them less confused either.
The new dialog doesn't help users who actually organize their bookmarks because you have to click a bunch more to even get to the folders--unless you happen to be bookmarking a bunch of sites in the same folder. I usually don't go looking around for sites to put in a specific folder at one time, and I doubt most people do.
I think I found out why they made this silly nonsensical change: while fixing someone's computer, I saw that MS Vista does this too! I expect this idiocy from Microsoft--that is one of the many reasons I stopped using their products, but it just shows are brainwashed into the Microsoft mindset.
I see so many comments about how much people hate KDE 4, why doesn't someone just make a distro with the 3.x version? The instructions are on kde.org, and the source still appears to be on their ftp site.
You would think, but we have the technology now for robots to take all the McJobs, yet they have not done so. It is a shame. It would eliminate the need for a slave caste.
How is it that everything can be explained in the Bible? It is easy if you just take a dim, narrow view of the world and relate everything into that view.
IE is not more efficient. IE is just being run in the background during the other browser's tests. You can't turn it off because MS integrated IE into the entire system to evade an antitrust lawsuit. A fact which causes IE to drain your battery whether you are using it to browse the web or not.
Flash using hardware acceleration for its display or not has nothing to do with the browser.
Commodore unknown except for Europe? The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular home computers in the US during the late 1980s. Everyone I knew who had a computer had one of those, but I had an Atari 130XE. There was the really old couple who had an IBM compatible (maybe it was a real IBM, can't remember), but everyone else had the C64. My junior high taught basic on C64s.
During the early '90s, all the other brands (Commodore, Atari, Apple) sort of faded away in the US. Apple being the only one who survived. I'm not sure what did it.
Some may say it was Microsoft's practices, but it seemed to me salespeople didn't want to sell cheaper computers. It could have been some sort of MS "incentive" program. After all, didn't they give special discounts to dealers who sold their products exclusively? There was also the issue of adaptibility. IBM compatibles hardware could be upgraded with cards, the others were hard-wired, so you were stuck with whatever it came with.
While the whole arms race may seem stupid, if you have the soviets making verbal threats to nuke you, and you see them building launching sites all around your country, you would be stupid not to create some sort of defense and counter-attack abilities.
Yes, patent reform would be the ultimate solution, but it is not the reality right now.
The Linux kernel has had such options for a while. Really, you have three cases to optimize: server, desktop, and laptop. Laptop needs extra consideration for power savings, otherwise the battery doesn't last long.
You choose these options when compiling the kernel. Under Processor type and features, look for Preemption Model and Timer frequency. I set my freq to 300Hz because it is a multiple of most video framerates, which makes video look less jerky.
The tickless system option helps save power on laptops. I think there are more settings, but I can't remember them. Hopefully, your distro has done this for you, but I wouldn't count on it unless it is desktop only, or has separate kernels for server and desktop configs. I don't think any distros do this...
You don't have to go to bricklink for spare lego parts anymore, at least as far as I can tell. The official Lego site has a section where you can order individual parts, and they also appear to have a MSWin/Mac program to design your own Lego sets. I don't know. Does the Lego site have parts missing from their database? It looked to me as though they had everything I could think of.
Thinking about the "Legos are for kids" idea, it seems to me Lego sets are 3D puzzles if you follow the directions. Plenty of adults assemble 2D puzzles, so I don't see the difference. Legos are just more adaptable.
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How is releasing source code not distributing to the public? Or do you think he was going to only release it to himself?
My questions are: since this law requires a whole bunch of notices at install, will it require changes to package managers? If a user installs a p2papp package, won't apt-get have to prompt the user with a question--at the very least "do you understand? (y/n)" What if they write more "informed" laws like this? Will it nullify the convenience of using a package manager in the first place if you have to read a thousand notices and reply yes, I understand to each one?
From: President and CEO
To: All programmers
So, if you write a program, never intending it to be used on a "protected computer", and some idiot installs it on one, you can be arrested? Wonderful law. So, how is this different than writing the law to say "all computers" instead?
Do you really want to risk going to jail? Maybe you'd better take out any features of your program which define it as a "covered file sharing program" until legal has verified you put in all the correct notices and such, okay?
Yeah, people should have to be certified by Microsoft before they are allowed to use a computer. It'll be great to "educate" people about the wonderful Microsoft. Oh, that special training stuff you were talking about? I guess we'll throw that in somewhere. People should really learn not to install evil viral GPL software anyway, and those open source people are pirate criminal thieves! They don't even buy their software, so they must be stealing it. They make me mad. As an added benefit, if anyone should choose to use an OS other than the "One True OS"(tm), their license will be taken away. Cheer for your benevolent dictator kids! Yay Microsoft!
Oh wait, this isn't what you intended? Do you really think your plan would turn out any other way? If the user interface wasn't designed in a "press a button, execute untrusted code" way, we probably wouldn't have half the problems we do now.
Making things secure requires leadership, starting with the OS developer, then the application developer, then geeks who help "friends" with their computer. If you don't have knowledgeable leadership starting at the top with a bent toward security policies, then computers will not be secure. Why make things insecure by default? Why would a P2P program share everything by default?
It used to be you'd be flamed into the ground in Linux forums for logging into root to do much of anything. Network facing apps which downloaded and executed programs were unheard of. Now many distros automatically set up users unlimited sudo access, so they may as well be root.
Microsoft has always been much worse. "You want this network app to automatically download and execute code? Sounds like a great idea, it'll be in our next version." Microsoft only pretends to care about security now because they seem to be losing some marketshare because of it. As soon as the heat wears off, they won't care again. If enough people kept on them, like getting a child to do its chores, it may not be a problem. But it is, especially since most users don't care about security.
This is why we need strong leadership who is out for the public good. They will push the people to do the right thing even when it is inconvenient, or even painful. Poor leadership like we have been seeing leads to easily rooted boxes and highly inefficient computer programs. Programs which require the user to conform to the program instead of the other way around.
Pigeon-holing laws which restrict how programs are supposed to work, such as in the article won't solve anything either. They'll just impede innovation while the real abusers will just play with technicalities, really.
Plus, why make the ban on "surreptitious installs" and on warnings about what data will be shared only P2P apps? Which by looking at the pdf, it makes me think rsync when run by a script would be included as a "covered file sharing program." Look at section 4.4. Yet other programs are not covered. What about a video game (or audio CD) which tries to install rootkits? Have they passed any laws against those? Even if they did, it wouldn't protect you if the person who made your program is a psychopathic asshole. That is the real problem: you have to trust who writes your programs, otherwise you can't trust your computer.
If the camera doesn't move, a snapshot of the background could be taken, and when the image is significantly different (say, more than X # of pixels changed by brightness Y), it would probably mean the user is there. The comparison wouldn't take much processing time. Though obviously if something was moved or changed in the background, it would cause false positives. Perhaps the area where the user sits could be selected. It would require someone to set this all up, but it would be doable and cheap and should work reasonably well...until the chair moves. ;-)
Or you could RTFA. Schneier already glossed over that.
No! You clearly don't know how to train real people. 100,000 volts wired to the doorknob. Shuts off when they log out. Users who forget to log out before they leave die. Natural selection at work. You just need a liberal breeding policy to keep the population stable. (Everyone forgets to log off at some point.)
How about they ban the use of syrup / sugar in food it doesn't belong? Such as additives to pasta sauce and fruit drinks. Not only does it make you fat, (in my opinion) it ruins the taste.
Yeah, sure. Brilliant solution. Except for the study that said fat people and smokers reduce health care costs because they die sooner. So I guess your revised plan would be for insurance and government plans to drop healthy people because they live longer and end up costing more.
Then some of the people who now have no insurance don't get medical treatment for anything until it is so serous they end up in the emergency room of the hospital which turns into a month long visit costing more than most houses, which they can't pay for because they have no medical insurance, and government programs won't pay for them, so the hospitals don't get paid for all this medical care they did which cost them a lot of money to provide, so they all go bankrupt.
Wonderful solution!
Fat people costing the health care system more is a myth. PLos Medicine: Does Preventing Obesity Lead to Reduced Health-Care Costs?
...and demanding that people who have health problems have to go through more hoops just to follow their needed diet is an asshole solution. In fact, most of these food "solutions" are based on studies of 50 year old fat men with cholesterol problems and pop crap made up "science". NOT EVERYONE IS THE FUCKING SAME. You are obviously a self-righteous shitheaded fucktard who just spouts out idiotic "solutions" without thinking.
In fact, I have kidney failure and have to follow the renal diet. Watch phosphorus and potassium among other things. Cake and candy and red meat are better for me than "heathy" food such as lots of fruits and vegetables. What a given person should be eating depends on many factors.
Genetics, condition of their internal organs, how much muscle mass and fat they have, how much of various chemicals are in their bloodstream (vitamins, minerals, cholesterol, etc), their current metabolic rate. You can't just say this one magic food is good for everyone all the time or that food is bad, because everyone is different and their condition is always changing. Nor can you say by how much they eat they are going to be fat/unhealthy. It just doesn't work that way.
This is why there is so much information on the side of food boxes: to help you decide if a given food will be helpful or harmful to you. Even too many vitamins, just as too few, can be bad for you. Over 2000 mg of Vitamin C in a day causes diarrhea. What, do you think it should just have a thumbs up or thumbs down on it?
Really, you are just the stupid self-righteous American which makes this country a fucking shitty place to live in.
You can call it a "rental licensing" fee, but everyone had to pay it. In fact, during the beta vs vhs period, they charged hundreds of dollars for tapes (more than a thousand for some). I know because I wanted to buy some, but as a kid I could not even remotely afford it.
Remember, Hollywood didn't like "evil" video tapes and tried to sue various companies out of business for it. Just like they tried to get rid of the "evil" internet, though their strategy there was more to replace it with their controlled version of the internet.
For cut/paste? That would be incredibly stupid because ctrl-c means send SIGINT to the program running on the terminal. It has been this way long before someone decided to use ctrl-c for copy.
Except the end user should not have to configure and install their operating systems. That is the job of the hardware manufacturers and the "friendly" "Geek Squad" types at the local computer / electronics stores. Linux (Unix) was designed for professional admins to fix the computer while the end user doesn't have to worry about it.
For a stupid car analogy, you wouldn't expect someone to have to install the engine (or brakes, or transmission) or tweak the settings on those components just to use a car. They send it to a mechanic if they need one of those things done.
In fact, I have seen people do exactly that with their MS Windows systems, so I don't see why Linux should be different. Only people who work in IT (or are hobbyists or do-it-yourselfers) work on their own computer, just as mechanics and such are the only people who work on their own cars. The real problem is the company who turned choice into "all must use the one true OS!"
I think developers should think about what they are doing. It seems like the developers of KDE, Gnome, and Firefox just mindlessly copy Microsoft.
Like how Firefox changed the bookmark dialog so it hid the folders section and replaced it with a drop down box which only shows the last three folders you put something in. This makes no sense. If the folders confuse users who just dump everything into the top level, then I suppose they would take it out. I don't see how this would make them less confused either.
The new dialog doesn't help users who actually organize their bookmarks because you have to click a bunch more to even get to the folders--unless you happen to be bookmarking a bunch of sites in the same folder. I usually don't go looking around for sites to put in a specific folder at one time, and I doubt most people do.
I think I found out why they made this silly nonsensical change: while fixing someone's computer, I saw that MS Vista does this too! I expect this idiocy from Microsoft--that is one of the many reasons I stopped using their products, but it just shows are brainwashed into the Microsoft mindset.
I thought the problem was most (if not all) webhosts don't provide torrent servers. Trying to provide a server over dialup isn't so great either.
Which is likely why they started suggesting people use it as a darknet--connect only to people / nodes you know.
I see so many comments about how much people hate KDE 4, why doesn't someone just make a distro with the 3.x version? The instructions are on kde.org, and the source still appears to be on their ftp site.
You would think, but we have the technology now for robots to take all the McJobs, yet they have not done so. It is a shame. It would eliminate the need for a slave caste.
How is it that everything can be explained in the Bible? It is easy if you just take a dim, narrow view of the world and relate everything into that view.
IE is not more efficient. IE is just being run in the background during the other browser's tests. You can't turn it off because MS integrated IE into the entire system to evade an antitrust lawsuit. A fact which causes IE to drain your battery whether you are using it to browse the web or not.
Flash using hardware acceleration for its display or not has nothing to do with the browser.
Firefox does not work great in Linux. I assure you, it is just as crappy as you described it on the Mac.
Commodore unknown except for Europe? The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular home computers in the US during the late 1980s. Everyone I knew who had a computer had one of those, but I had an Atari 130XE. There was the really old couple who had an IBM compatible (maybe it was a real IBM, can't remember), but everyone else had the C64. My junior high taught basic on C64s.
During the early '90s, all the other brands (Commodore, Atari, Apple) sort of faded away in the US. Apple being the only one who survived. I'm not sure what did it.
Some may say it was Microsoft's practices, but it seemed to me salespeople didn't want to sell cheaper computers. It could have been some sort of MS "incentive" program. After all, didn't they give special discounts to dealers who sold their products exclusively? There was also the issue of adaptibility. IBM compatibles hardware could be upgraded with cards, the others were hard-wired, so you were stuck with whatever it came with.
Use the correct term. This is vendor lock-in , not DRM.
While the whole arms race may seem stupid, if you have the soviets making verbal threats to nuke you, and you see them building launching sites all around your country, you would be stupid not to create some sort of defense and counter-attack abilities.
Yes, patent reform would be the ultimate solution, but it is not the reality right now.
The Linux kernel has had such options for a while. Really, you have three cases to optimize: server, desktop, and laptop. Laptop needs extra consideration for power savings, otherwise the battery doesn't last long.
You choose these options when compiling the kernel. Under Processor type and features, look for Preemption Model and Timer frequency. I set my freq to 300Hz because it is a multiple of most video framerates, which makes video look less jerky.
The tickless system option helps save power on laptops. I think there are more settings, but I can't remember them. Hopefully, your distro has done this for you, but I wouldn't count on it unless it is desktop only, or has separate kernels for server and desktop configs. I don't think any distros do this...
You don't have to go to bricklink for spare lego parts anymore, at least as far as I can tell. The official Lego site has a section where you can order individual parts, and they also appear to have a MSWin/Mac program to design your own Lego sets. I don't know. Does the Lego site have parts missing from their database? It looked to me as though they had everything I could think of.
Thinking about the "Legos are for kids" idea, it seems to me Lego sets are 3D puzzles if you follow the directions. Plenty of adults assemble 2D puzzles, so I don't see the difference. Legos are just more adaptable.