The Pirate Bay do not host any copyrighted material so this law does not affect them in any way at all. But I'm sure the relevant authorities will try to do something to make it illegal... once they read the relevant Swedish laws, and manage to understand why this site is legal in Sweden.
Be prepared to defend everything you ever put on a web page.
I hope it's also OK to just admit that you were naive and wrong. You are allowed to learn new things in ten years, and change your opinions. At least I would hope so.
But the point is that it will not at all affect their revenue stream, so since they are still making huge profits, they have no incentive to change their ways.
It's like successfully convincting bank robbers go after then letting them go with a fine of 50% of the money they stole, but letting them keep the other 50%. If they can get away with illegal activities and make a profit from it, what is the point in having a legal system at all? Surely there should be some sort of detterent to prevent them doing it again?
It is not a fault that software requires administrator rights to install into the default location (c:\Program Files on Windows, or/usr/bin on Linux), but it is a problem when you cannot even install and run it from your own home directory without entering the administrator password. This makes it impossible to run software without giving it full control of your machine.
The internet is a hostile environment, and you would be foolish to enter without using secure software. Either software is advertised as secure or it isn't.
If software is advertised as being secure and you get hacked, you can blame the maker of the software for advertising it as secure when it clearly was not. You can switch to another vendor (assuming that the market is not a monopoly). Or you can remove yourself from the hostile environment until the issues are fixed.
If the software is not advertised as secure, why on earth or you going on the internet with it? Only you are to blame in this case.
If you have bought a copy of the DVD, you can legally download another copy where the annoying faetures are removed, under fair use. Well you can in Europe anyway, not sure about other countries.
Oh, and I've never downloaded a feature movie off the net. I've seen them, the quality isn't what I want.
You can use a website to find the checksum of a file that has high quality. If you download at random, you will mostly get bad copies, but if you use a verified downloads site, you get high quality copies.
All the EU did is waste millions in taxpayer money tracking down the evil microsoft for something that no one even really gives a rip about.
If they were that worried about the cost they could just ask Microsoft to pay out another $500 million... but I don't think the money was the main reason for doing this. This is about allowing competition back into the market. They forgot one thing though: they should have forced Microsoft to reduce the price of the Media-Player-less edition.
Acually you can still be convicted for abuse of a monopoly, even if there is a small amount of competition. 90% is a sufficient market share to be able to abuse it. Usually you do not want things to get too bad before taking action against the offenders.
[Lycoris is] not free (the supported version at least) which I guarantee is part of the reason.
Windows and Mac OS X aren't free either but they are popular. Being good (in the eyes of the users) makes an operating popular. What do Lycoris offer that makes them better than the competition?
My computer only has 256MB RAM. A default install of Windows, plus useful utilities (IM, mail, etc) for some reason seems to use about 200MB. When I'm running on Linux I only use 100MB with a similar setup. I assume that the extra 100MB free will make my applications faster and extend my battery life (less swapping), but I haven't tested it scientifically, mainly because I use Windows and Linux for different things, so the results would be useless to me.
My experience: most things are usually fast "enough" on both systems. Some things are faster on Windows, whilst others are faster on Linux. However, if you are running older hardware then you should go with Linux, rather than using an obsolete unsupported version of Windows.
The "fewer bugs" part is due to the fact that more people use [OpenOffice], since it is free.
Most people use a pirated copy of Microsoft Office because it is free, or an older version because it came "free" with their computer. OpenOffice is still a minority program.
If OpenOffice really does have fewer bugs, it is for different reasons.
It wouldn't work - even if you removed one company, others would appear.
How about hitting stupid users over the head repeatedly until they click the 'install critical updates' button...
Then impose heavy fines on the companies that create security-hole-ridden software and charge extortionate amounts to upgrade, despite that the software is a necessary component of most people's systems. They should be forced to provide free security patches for the entire lifetime of the product, or else a free upgrade to the next version.
The judges will obviously be expecting programs that try to delete files or modify them, so they will without a doubt create a separate environment to run the malicious programs in. Probably they will restore the machine to a known clean state after every run.
If they didn't do this, you can bet that someone would try to write a program which would detect competitors' programs running and disable them.
"collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length."
2**69 is still a very large number, so you probably shouldn't be worried just yet. It isn't quite the same as the bit trick for MD5. If anyone knows of a bigger weakness in SHA-1, I would be interested to know.
The combination of two weak hash functions is just another weak hash function. You might be able to buy yourself a small amount of time, but it will be broken. If there is a large set of operations that can modify the file without changing the first hash, and another large set of operations which can modify it without changing the second hash, you can construct the intersection of these two sets to find the modifications which keep both hashes (and therefore also their sum) the same.
Strong hash functions are difficult to design, and require a lot of research and testing.
Slashdot Mirror
The Pirate Bay do not host any copyrighted material so this law does not affect them in any way at all. But I'm sure the relevant authorities will try to do something to make it illegal... once they read the relevant Swedish laws, and manage to understand why this site is legal in Sweden.
Probably not that soon then.
Be prepared to defend everything you ever put on a web page.
I hope it's also OK to just admit that you were naive and wrong. You are allowed to learn new things in ten years, and change your opinions. At least I would hope so.
But the point is that it will not at all affect their revenue stream, so since they are still making huge profits, they have no incentive to change their ways.
It's like successfully convincting bank robbers go after then letting them go with a fine of 50% of the money they stole, but letting them keep the other 50%. If they can get away with illegal activities and make a profit from it, what is the point in having a legal system at all? Surely there should be some sort of detterent to prevent them doing it again?
He is admiting that MS is losing in places, hence has competition, hence is not a monopoly.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the previous statements. You can hold a monopoly in A while at the same time be losing to competitors in B and C.
You still have the monopoly in A.
It is not a fault that software requires administrator rights to install into the default location (c:\Program Files on Windows, or /usr/bin on Linux), but it is a problem when you cannot even install and run it from your own home directory without entering the administrator password. This makes it impossible to run software without giving it full control of your machine.
The internet is a hostile environment, and you would be foolish to enter without using secure software. Either software is advertised as secure or it isn't.
If software is advertised as being secure and you get hacked, you can blame the maker of the software for advertising it as secure when it clearly was not. You can switch to another vendor (assuming that the market is not a monopoly). Or you can remove yourself from the hostile environment until the issues are fixed.
If the software is not advertised as secure, why on earth or you going on the internet with it? Only you are to blame in this case.
It's when I'm paying $10 for a popcorn and a drink that cost the theatre less than 20 cents that I get really ticked off.
But you still go, so you obviously don't mind it that much. If people are willing to pay the high prices, why should they reduce them?
If you have bought a copy of the DVD, you can legally download another copy where the annoying faetures are removed, under fair use. Well you can in Europe anyway, not sure about other countries.
Oh, and I've never downloaded a feature movie off the net. I've seen them, the quality isn't what I want.
You can use a website to find the checksum of a file that has high quality. If you download at random, you will mostly get bad copies, but if you use a verified downloads site, you get high quality copies.
I suggest that Bill Gates tries Linux.
:)
Now that would be fun to watch. He has a lot of talent, I bet he can even get it to blue screen.
All the EU did is waste millions in taxpayer money tracking down the evil microsoft for something that no one even really gives a rip about.
If they were that worried about the cost they could just ask Microsoft to pay out another $500 million... but I don't think the money was the main reason for doing this. This is about allowing competition back into the market. They forgot one thing though: they should have forced Microsoft to reduce the price of the Media-Player-less edition.
Next on my wish list - IE-less version.
Care to elaborate on how [the competitors] were hurt ? This is something that's never been quite clear to me.
Many competitors were forced out of the market due to being unable to compete with pre-installed software. They went bankrupt.
Acually you can still be convicted for abuse of a monopoly, even if there is a small amount of competition. 90% is a sufficient market share to be able to abuse it. Usually you do not want things to get too bad before taking action against the offenders.
How is saying that you don't use a piece of software suddenly equal to bashing?
[Lycoris is] not free (the supported version at least) which I guarantee is part of the reason.
Windows and Mac OS X aren't free either but they are popular. Being good (in the eyes of the users) makes an operating popular. What do Lycoris offer that makes them better than the competition?
For end-users there are no restrictions - you can do whatever you like with it once you have downloaded it!
The only people who are restricted by the GPL are redistributors.
Any idea on how much tickets are going to cost?
To be fair, Microsoft recommend a Pentium III, not a Penitum 233, which is the minimum requirement. From the page you linked to:
Requirement: Personal computer with an Intel Pentium 233-MHz or faster processor (Pentium III recommended)
My computer only has 256MB RAM. A default install of Windows, plus useful utilities (IM, mail, etc) for some reason seems to use about 200MB. When I'm running on Linux I only use 100MB with a similar setup. I assume that the extra 100MB free will make my applications faster and extend my battery life (less swapping), but I haven't tested it scientifically, mainly because I use Windows and Linux for different things, so the results would be useless to me.
My experience: most things are usually fast "enough" on both systems. Some things are faster on Windows, whilst others are faster on Linux. However, if you are running older hardware then you should go with Linux, rather than using an obsolete unsupported version of Windows.
The "fewer bugs" part is due to the fact that more people use [OpenOffice], since it is free.
Most people use a pirated copy of Microsoft Office because it is free, or an older version because it came "free" with their computer. OpenOffice is still a minority program.
If OpenOffice really does have fewer bugs, it is for different reasons.
It wouldn't work - even if you removed one company, others would appear.
How about hitting stupid users over the head repeatedly until they click the 'install critical updates' button...
Then impose heavy fines on the companies that create security-hole-ridden software and charge extortionate amounts to upgrade, despite that the software is a necessary component of most people's systems. They should be forced to provide free security patches for the entire lifetime of the product, or else a free upgrade to the next version.
I don't know where you're [Toby The Economist] from...
;)
If you were reading Slashdot carefully, you would know that he lives five minutes from the Junction, in Cambridge, UK.
The judges will obviously be expecting programs that try to delete files or modify them, so they will without a doubt create a separate environment to run the malicious programs in. Probably they will restore the machine to a known clean state after every run.
If they didn't do this, you can bet that someone would try to write a program which would detect competitors' programs running and disable them.
SHA-1 apparently has the same kinds of weaknesses.
1 _broken.html:
I don't that is exactly true.
From http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha
"collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length."
2**69 is still a very large number, so you probably shouldn't be worried just yet. It isn't quite the same as the bit trick for MD5. If anyone knows of a bigger weakness in SHA-1, I would be interested to know.
The combination of two weak hash functions is just another weak hash function. You might be able to buy yourself a small amount of time, but it will be broken. If there is a large set of operations that can modify the file without changing the first hash, and another large set of operations which can modify it without changing the second hash, you can construct the intersection of these two sets to find the modifications which keep both hashes (and therefore also their sum) the same.
Strong hash functions are difficult to design, and require a lot of research and testing.