1.
Ok, when your argument begins with an 7 year old gripe about actions that were directed at you, any suggestion of objectivity goes right out the door. Find, start with that bias. The author admitted it, so it is quite fair of you to take that into account. But the arguments that follow provide clear examples, links to relevant research and articles, and clear non-emotional arguments. The author earned that objectivity back IMHO.
2.
Really, this is blog fodder, not something that should be posted unedited on the Slashdot front page. Yes, it is blog fodder, but Slashdot is a news/blog aggregator. I found this insightful and good information for the next time a Net Neutrality discussion begins.
On a related note, I find it often unfair that someone's arguments are hand-waved away because they are somehow involved. When you do that, you throw away the arguments of the most experienced people on the subject. Of course they are involved, or they wouldn't know so much about it and have an opinion.
Can someone explain why this is being done retroactively? I've seen some pretty stupid laws, but I've never heard of one that takes place retroactively. If the idea was to make this look above board, that part kinda kills the whole illusion. I'm desperately trying to find the "other side" to this issue. It helps when you are explaining it to someone if you have some idea why the law was passed other than "The RIAA is a bunch of jerks and they lined the pockets of the CRB." Surely they have some pretense of a reason...?
My experience is that the companies that do this type of blocking do it because the workstations are inherently insecure. Security is not in the sites someone can visit or the specific file extensions that are allowed. It is in the setup of the network and the access the user has on their workstation. It's like making the kitchen safe by removing the sharpest knife from the drawer.
Can someone explain what is new in DirectX 10? Someone commented that DX10 support just means that XP/DX9 users won't get some of the new fancy graphics. But DX10 doesn't look like it is new features - just restructuring of DirectSound, joystick input, deprecating some old stuff, etc. If that is the case, I don't see how someone can easily make code to support DX10 and DX9 simultaneously without major effort. Maybe DX10 supports geometry shaders? But that wouldn't require a whole new API though - just a few extensions (a la OpenGL).
Is that why Office 2007, PowerShell, Orcas,.NET 3.0, etc all work on XP? Because those are examples of applications that either came out before Vista, or appliccations that were not crippled. Which is why they have nothing to do with my point.
My point is that now that Vista has come-out, Microsoft is intentionally crippling things so that they don't work on XP. This is not a double-standard. Name one example of Apple selling a product where they made it artificially not work on a previous version of the system to force people to upgrade. Splotlight is not an example of that - it is an OS 10.4 feature. It isn't a program you can buy and install that pretends that it requires OS 10.4 and refuses to work.
And you are confused on.NET 3.0: It was never "backported" to XP. It was designed for XP, and pre-bundled with Vista. That's the entire point I'm making: Microsoft has convinced people that they must "backport" applications for "compatibility" with XP when it is the opposite - they are specifically disabling them from working on XP to pretend that Vista is required.
That is completely different and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Apple's inability to support a 3rd-party product on a new operating system is totally different from Microsoft releasing a first-party product and crippling it to not work on XP.
Apple locks their OS to their hardware. That is the antithesis of ensuring compatibility. What?
Tying the OS to the hardware has nothing to do with backward compatibility. Apple's current software runs on G4 macs, G5 macs, and Intel Macs. I know of know Apple software that has a line of code that says:
if OS < 10.4 then MessageBox("You must have OS 10.4 or higher, even though there are no features of OS 10.4 that this application needs")
which is exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista.
When I was taking Computer Engineering at University of Maryland, 3 students were allowed to have their chip designs fabricated. We used a 250nm feature size, which was fine for what we were doing. Perhaps something like this could eventually be good enough that every student could have their chip fabricated. The larger feature size would be sufficient for a learning excercise. 10 micrometers does seem kinda big, but if the wafer is larger, it might still be good enough for academics.
Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP. Xbox Live, DirectX 10, HDCP... There is no technical reason why these things can't work on XP, they just don't. It is very frustrating. Frankly, it is what makes the Mac look attractive. Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility. I wonder how long before somebody makes a hack that lets these things run on XP?
IMHO, the problem isn't just cybersquatters who register based on trademarks. It's cybersquatting in general. I wanted to register a domain name that was an acronym, but I find that various people just register acronyms..gov,.org,.com, and.us were taken (I thought you had to be a non-profit to register a.org? What happened to that?) so I am stuck. I can't afford to pay their silly fees, and I wouldn't want them to profit anyway, so I won't do it. How many legit sites are shut-out by these tactics?
This doesn't make sense. My guess is that the discussion was taken out of context. Or maybe it is FUD.
...started to eye console platforms as a method to battle the financial loss piracy incurs. 1) Expanding into consoles does nothing to stem piracy. If piracy was the cause, then they would stop making the PC version. 2) Selling for console platforms is a method to make more money. Expanding your market is a good move regardless of the existance of piracy.
The technique allows the researchers to strongly reduce or even eliminate reflection at all wavelengths and incoming angles of light, I'm amazed the article doesn't mention military applications. What do they use on stealth planes now?
Is there any evidence that the companies that hold the patents on this held the patents to prevent others from using them? I would be very interested to know this. If it is true, I think it is important to expose. If it is false, then this is a troll-ish statement just to upset the Slashdot anti-patent crowd.
I disagree. This isn't snooping since the tool doesn't hack into systems. It is reading data that is publically available. What good is a watermarking system if there is nothing to look for watermarks? And it isn't an issue of guilty until proven innocent. The tool can't determine your guilt: it can only alert a human being to the evidence, and they can decide to contact the person, prosecute, etc. And even if the tool could send a C&D letter by itself, the court system is not being bypassed, so due process is still involved. This is mroe comparable to having drug-sniffing dogs at airports.
I like watermarks. Watermarks allow copyright holders to essentially put a digital "Copyright (C) 2007 Joe Smith" onto their documents. This makes it possible to track who committed a copyright offense without stripping legitimate users of their rights. Copyright holders can prosecute infringers without having to guess that the file is copyrighted by looking at the file name or something dumb that has high false positives. (No more suing grandmas.) They can also find the original mass-distributing pirate and take them down. So the average person can have their fair use rights back, and the copyright holders can stop the major infringers. That's a win-win for everyone.
I see lots of knee-jerk reactions like "oh, I'll just put watermarks in everything to fool them" or "time to modify robots.txt!" which aren't warranted. First, if watermarks are done properly, they are cryptographic signatures and you can't put them on other things. That's good for you, because nobody can put their watermark on your files. And nobody can put your watermark on their files. Wannabe-pirates can't claim "Somebody forged that watermark to look like I distributed the file."
I would happily download a watermarked movie from BitTorrent. It means I can modify it, format-shift it, loan it to my brother, etc. But if I some one puts it up on BitTorrent then the copyright holder can track down who did it and sue them. I have no problem with the RIAA/MPAA/anyone else going after legitimate copyright offendors. Isn't that what we want?
I believe it because I think people don't understand exactly how many years we are considering here in the long haul. Au contraire! If they are Christians, they know that the Earth is 6000 years old, by adding-up the ages of everyone in the bible.
You could change this situation completely if every person like you just voted _completely randomly_. Close to 50% of the eligible voters don't vote. That means 10 parties could have 5% - which makes them eligible for federal funding. So the government would have recognize about 12 parties -- that would completely change the political landscape.
You've no idea the state/federal regulations involved in the healthcare industry.
You know nothing about me. Ironically, most of my software development career has been in the medical industry. There is no law that says that the receptionist or phone jockeys can't install Winamp or browse MSN on their computer. If you work in this industry, then you know that. The "medical director" has never approved software installations in any hospital, doctor's office, or medical software development group that I've ever heard of.
Everyone clap. You just met the IT guy you have all been loathing, and he posts on Slashdot. Thank you, take a bow.
What need does a biller have in hooking up their IPOD to their work PC? Why would a clientservices-phone jockey need to hook up their USB memory stick? Because if you whitelist sites, then when the boss says "go to site XXX and tell me this..." they can't. And when the HR department says "go to www.friendlyHRpeople.com" to file a complaint they can't do it. But if you blacklist sites, then they can get to what they want anyway using some workaround. slashdot.com is blocked but engaget.com isn't. Or you can see it through someones blog, or redirection, or RSS feed, or a cache, or an anonymizer. This is a battle nobody can win.
This is the type of attitude that gets us into the game of "If I rename the extension to.rar then I can send you this critical document you've been needing!" Then.rar files are blocked the next day. Then you zip the rar and it gets through again. The war escalates forever. Perhaps each employee should make a formal request to their boss, then to the IT department, then write a formal justification for why you need to visit each web site.
Of course, it is probably all moot because you had to give everyone local administrator priviledges so they could run the ActiveX time-sheet application your IT department mandated.
This is the mysterious "IT guy" who thinks he knows the fixed-length list of things that each and every person in the company needs to do their job. They create a blacklist of everything they think you could do on your computer that is bad, and use some 3rd-party product to scan everything you do and disable those actions. They already know better than you every tool needed for every position in the company. Really, this person could just do your job.
I've had users ask me for permission to install some "app" they like to use. The simple answer is "no" and I don't want to waste my breath re-hashing the same reasons. Yes, you surely know every app they are going to need and have pre-installed it for them. And every application you haven't heard of is probably a virus. Of course, if you had setup their permissions properly then they couldn't install applications anyway. Instead of policing each application, set appropriate domain policies and work policies that make sense. Limit the size of email attachments. Put quotes on their accounts. Make sure the network drives have appropriate permissions.
Trying to monitor every application used on every PC is a modern version of micro-management. Do you look at every tool that is on someone's desk? Do you approve each stapler? If you don't let people visit web sites, can they bring in books and newspapers? Do you blacklist/whitelist the phone numbers they can call and receive calls from?
So I say "No. Check your employee handbook, page 12 for why" and walk away. Then you are a jerk.
This will probably get modded as a troll. But I bet every person with mod points on this system has had to deal with the likes of you. I'm glad I got to find you and finally say it.
I'll agree that the problem is the OS, but in my opinion the issue is configuration. In Linux, when I install.deb or.rpm package, I am 100% confident that I can uninstall that application easily. On a Mac, I just need to delete the app from the applications folder. But in Windows, I just assume I'll have to delete files and registry keys manually, and that I will need to reformat before installing the next version of the software.
Slashdot Mirror
I spot-checked my music collection and there are no licenses listed on them, only copyrights. Seems cut-and-dry to me.
2. Really, this is blog fodder, not something that should be posted unedited on the Slashdot front page. Yes, it is blog fodder, but Slashdot is a news/blog aggregator. I found this insightful and good information for the next time a Net Neutrality discussion begins.
On a related note, I find it often unfair that someone's arguments are hand-waved away because they are somehow involved. When you do that, you throw away the arguments of the most experienced people on the subject. Of course they are involved, or they wouldn't know so much about it and have an opinion.
Can someone explain why this is being done retroactively? I've seen some pretty stupid laws, but I've never heard of one that takes place retroactively. If the idea was to make this look above board, that part kinda kills the whole illusion. I'm desperately trying to find the "other side" to this issue. It helps when you are explaining it to someone if you have some idea why the law was passed other than "The RIAA is a bunch of jerks and they lined the pockets of the CRB." Surely they have some pretense of a reason...?
My experience is that the companies that do this type of blocking do it because the workstations are inherently insecure. Security is not in the sites someone can visit or the specific file extensions that are allowed. It is in the setup of the network and the access the user has on their workstation. It's like making the kitchen safe by removing the sharpest knife from the drawer.
Can someone explain what is new in DirectX 10? Someone commented that DX10 support just means that XP/DX9 users won't get some of the new fancy graphics. But DX10 doesn't look like it is new features - just restructuring of DirectSound, joystick input, deprecating some old stuff, etc. If that is the case, I don't see how someone can easily make code to support DX10 and DX9 simultaneously without major effort. Maybe DX10 supports geometry shaders? But that wouldn't require a whole new API though - just a few extensions (a la OpenGL).
I can't speak for xcode. I don't know. Maybe Apple has done the same thing in that case.
That still has nothing to do with hardware compatibility, which is a completely different topic.
My point is that now that Vista has come-out, Microsoft is intentionally crippling things so that they don't work on XP. This is not a double-standard. Name one example of Apple selling a product where they made it artificially not work on a previous version of the system to force people to upgrade. Splotlight is not an example of that - it is an OS 10.4 feature. It isn't a program you can buy and install that pretends that it requires OS 10.4 and refuses to work.
And you are confused on
That is completely different and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Apple's inability to support a 3rd-party product on a new operating system is totally different from Microsoft releasing a first-party product and crippling it to not work on XP.
Tying the OS to the hardware has nothing to do with backward compatibility. Apple's current software runs on G4 macs, G5 macs, and Intel Macs. I know of know Apple software that has a line of code that says:
if OS < 10.4 then MessageBox("You must have OS 10.4 or higher, even though there are no features of OS 10.4 that this application needs")
which is exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista.
When I was taking Computer Engineering at University of Maryland, 3 students were allowed to have their chip designs fabricated. We used a 250nm feature size, which was fine for what we were doing. Perhaps something like this could eventually be good enough that every student could have their chip fabricated. The larger feature size would be sufficient for a learning excercise. 10 micrometers does seem kinda big, but if the wafer is larger, it might still be good enough for academics.
Microsoft is coming out with all kinds of excuses for force people to buy Vista. They are trying to make anything new they create artificially incompatible with XP. Xbox Live, DirectX 10, HDCP... There is no technical reason why these things can't work on XP, they just don't. It is very frustrating. Frankly, it is what makes the Mac look attractive. Apple goes out of their way to ensure compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure INcompatibility. I wonder how long before somebody makes a hack that lets these things run on XP?
IMHO, the problem isn't just cybersquatters who register based on trademarks. It's cybersquatting in general. I wanted to register a domain name that was an acronym, but I find that various people just register acronyms. .gov, .org, .com, and .us were taken (I thought you had to be a non-profit to register a .org? What happened to that?) so I am stuck. I can't afford to pay their silly fees, and I wouldn't want them to profit anyway, so I won't do it. How many legit sites are shut-out by these tactics?
...started to eye console platforms as a method to battle the financial loss piracy incurs. 1) Expanding into consoles does nothing to stem piracy. If piracy was the cause, then they would stop making the PC version.2) Selling for console platforms is a method to make more money. Expanding your market is a good move regardless of the existance of piracy.
Is there any evidence that the companies that hold the patents on this held the patents to prevent others from using them? I would be very interested to know this. If it is true, I think it is important to expose. If it is false, then this is a troll-ish statement just to upset the Slashdot anti-patent crowd.
I disagree. This isn't snooping since the tool doesn't hack into systems. It is reading data that is publically available. What good is a watermarking system if there is nothing to look for watermarks? And it isn't an issue of guilty until proven innocent. The tool can't determine your guilt: it can only alert a human being to the evidence, and they can decide to contact the person, prosecute, etc. And even if the tool could send a C&D letter by itself, the court system is not being bypassed, so due process is still involved. This is mroe comparable to having drug-sniffing dogs at airports.
So if renamed the app to AACS_demo02 and distribute it along with my thesis paper on encryption, it's legit? Great!
While it wouldn't result in a CO2 increase, it wouldn't be renewable either.
I like watermarks. Watermarks allow copyright holders to essentially put a digital "Copyright (C) 2007 Joe Smith" onto their documents. This makes it possible to track who committed a copyright offense without stripping legitimate users of their rights. Copyright holders can prosecute infringers without having to guess that the file is copyrighted by looking at the file name or something dumb that has high false positives. (No more suing grandmas.) They can also find the original mass-distributing pirate and take them down. So the average person can have their fair use rights back, and the copyright holders can stop the major infringers. That's a win-win for everyone.
I see lots of knee-jerk reactions like "oh, I'll just put watermarks in everything to fool them" or "time to modify robots.txt!" which aren't warranted. First, if watermarks are done properly, they are cryptographic signatures and you can't put them on other things. That's good for you, because nobody can put their watermark on your files. And nobody can put your watermark on their files. Wannabe-pirates can't claim "Somebody forged that watermark to look like I distributed the file."
I would happily download a watermarked movie from BitTorrent. It means I can modify it, format-shift it, loan it to my brother, etc. But if I some one puts it up on BitTorrent then the copyright holder can track down who did it and sue them. I have no problem with the RIAA/MPAA/anyone else going after legitimate copyright offendors. Isn't that what we want?
We weren't talking about laboratories. Your post talked about people answering phones. Stop changing the subject to fit your needs.
You could change this situation completely if every person like you just voted _completely randomly_. Close to 50% of the eligible voters don't vote. That means 10 parties could have 5% - which makes them eligible for federal funding. So the government would have recognize about 12 parties -- that would completely change the political landscape.
You know nothing about me. Ironically, most of my software development career has been in the medical industry. There is no law that says that the receptionist or phone jockeys can't install Winamp or browse MSN on their computer. If you work in this industry, then you know that. The "medical director" has never approved software installations in any hospital, doctor's office, or medical software development group that I've ever heard of.
This is the type of attitude that gets us into the game of "If I rename the extension to
Of course, it is probably all moot because you had to give everyone local administrator priviledges so they could run the ActiveX time-sheet application your IT department mandated.
This is the mysterious "IT guy" who thinks he knows the fixed-length list of things that each and every person in the company needs to do their job. They create a blacklist of everything they think you could do on your computer that is bad, and use some 3rd-party product to scan everything you do and disable those actions. They already know better than you every tool needed for every position in the company. Really, this person could just do your job. I've had users ask me for permission to install some "app" they like to use. The simple answer is "no" and I don't want to waste my breath re-hashing the same reasons. Yes, you surely know every app they are going to need and have pre-installed it for them. And every application you haven't heard of is probably a virus. Of course, if you had setup their permissions properly then they couldn't install applications anyway. Instead of policing each application, set appropriate domain policies and work policies that make sense. Limit the size of email attachments. Put quotes on their accounts. Make sure the network drives have appropriate permissions.
Trying to monitor every application used on every PC is a modern version of micro-management. Do you look at every tool that is on someone's desk? Do you approve each stapler? If you don't let people visit web sites, can they bring in books and newspapers? Do you blacklist/whitelist the phone numbers they can call and receive calls from? So I say "No. Check your employee handbook, page 12 for why" and walk away. Then you are a jerk.
This will probably get modded as a troll. But I bet every person with mod points on this system has had to deal with the likes of you. I'm glad I got to find you and finally say it.
I'll agree that the problem is the OS, but in my opinion the issue is configuration. In Linux, when I install .deb or .rpm package, I am 100% confident that I can uninstall that application easily. On a Mac, I just need to delete the app from the applications folder. But in Windows, I just assume I'll have to delete files and registry keys manually, and that I will need to reformat before installing the next version of the software.