Let the rationalizations begin. $20 isn't that much. Companies that contribute to free software products need to make money to survive. I can run a lot of plugins with this.
Here's some food for thought. If this plugin is worth $20, then all the things you get in Windows are definately worth $100. Of course you may just not like Microsoft for one of many good reasons, and therefore are willing to pay elevated prices for all the little pieces that come with Windows. That's your choice. Or maybe you prefer to use all free software, that's also your choice.
I would love to visit Russia. From everything I've seen it has some beautiful Cities. The world has a lot to offer, it would be nice to be able to travel to more of it safely.
Why, in this country of supposed freedom, do we allow companies to control not only specific markets, (in the case of Micro$oft monopoly) but also allow them to lobby towards laws that take away freedoms, such as freedom of speech.
Companies are made up of people. Those people also have a right to free speech. Those people have a right to tell their congressmen that they think there needs to be stronger laws to protect their interests, and that right shouldn't be taken away. Taking away their rights is no better than the govenment stomping on Fair Use with the DMCA. Laws always have to balance the rights of different people. The problem is that the DCMA should not have been passed, and the courts should toos it out.
I know that ElComSoft Co. Ltd made mistakes when they started selling a program designed to defeat a specific type of encryption. I feel that this is wrong. Unfortunately, arresting a programer for giving a speech about how he broke the encryption is hogwash as well.
Sklyarov was arrested because he creating the software and because it was distributed in the United States.
I see no reason why showing an encryption to be faulty and how to circumvent it AS A ACADEMIC STUDY wrong.
Sklyarov wrote the software that brakes the copy protection for a commercial company, and got paid for doing it. He had to know they were going to sell it. The real question is if he knew they would sell it in the United States. It's not an academic study when you're creating the product for money.
There's a good chance Garriott just doesn't like the business side of game development. Attracting investors, planning marketing, and making business agreements doesn't leave much time for creating and developing a game. It may just be that he's willing to take the risk in selling the company so that he can actually develop a game.
Microsoft can't force people to buy XBox, but they can seel them at a loss, and advertise the heck out of it. I suspect you won't see a lot of traditional console titles on XBox to start out. Microsoft is using DirectX on the XBox to make it easy for PC game developers to make games for the XBox. I suspect the first titles will be mostly PC games running on the XBox.
I'm personally not a console gamer, so I'm not sure how many of those people will buy XBoxs. Who do I think will buy XBoxs? Parents who want to steal their computer back from their kids who are always on it playing games. PC gamers who's PC is getting out of date, and for whom XBox is actually an upgrade. People like me who don't have a DVD player, know buying an XBox isn't a cost effective way of getting one, but can't seem to resist buying yet another expensive toy. I don't know if that will be a big enough market to get them started or not. But if they get some decent market share and some decent games, more good games will follow.
That reminds me of something Bill Gates once said about Windows in it's infantcy. He was trying to get developers to write Windows applications, when everyone was still developing DOS applications. He had the vision of a highly integrated Windowed environment with applications that had a consistent user interface. He was far from the first to have this vision, but he felt that it had reached it's time. The x86 platform could finally supply the processing power, and the future was multithreaded/windowed environment. The problem was third party developersdidn't want to develop for it beacuse there was a much larger user base for DOS applications than Windows. So he forced his developers at Microsoft to develop Windows applications because MS developers didn't have a choice, they had to do what he wanted. The result was MS Office, which is undeniably MS's cash cow. That time Bill was right.
Now we have the XBox. Microsoft wants developers to develop for it, but they're not sure. There's a lot of PS2s out there, Gamecube is comming, and what does MS know about the console market? What does microsoft do? They buy some gaming companies to make sure there are some games for the XBox.
Bill has been wrong before, and MS has taken huge losses on projects in the pase (BOB comes to mind). But they're not afraid to try. And you never know, Bill might be right again.
It's a question of if Microsoft has games for the Japanese market to go along with the console. I keep hearing how the japanese console market is different from the US and European markets. If MS doesn't have the games, then they shouldn't release it in Japan. It's better to hold off a few months than to flop.
Remember also that the Japanese economy has been in pretty bad shape for several years, and with our economy not exactly in the best shape I doubt Sony is going to have a really good christmas season in Japan this year. Their console has already been out a year, and if they drop the price of the console to maintain market share, then they are goint to lose even more money on each console. I'm not sure what to think about Nintendo. They have an awsome product in the gameboy advance. It would be even better if it were backlit, but it's still awsome. I'm just not sure if they'll be able to pull off the Gamecube.
Microsoft has the two things that can allow them to get a foothold in the market despite their entrenched competition. They have a well known name, and lots of money. With the release of XP they are going to have lots of cash comming in. They can definately sell at a loss much longer than Nintendo. Sony's consumer electronics division hasn't made much money for several years, but they may be able to siphon money off of their Music sales to keep fund selling their PS2s at a loss to keep market share. It looks like we're going to see a battle in the console market. Hopefully we'll end up with lower prices, good games, and some strong competition. It's kind of weird that Microsoft is the one bringing competioion to a market that's currently dominated by Sony.
Ok, yes Japan is the hear and sould of current console market. Japanese companies have developed the market, and currently rule supreme. But the kinds of games Japanese customers buy are often somewhat different, and the Japaneese market is actually smaller than the US market. It's going to take MS longer to produce games for the Japanese market. If they rush the release there, then they will flop there.
Microsoft has done well in the PC gaming market, and the xbox may allow them to extend that market into consoles. They may not initially lure away many hard core console gamers, but it they can get a good initial response in the US, then they will lure in more developers to create games for the Japanese market, and also get more traditional console style games written for their platform. For XBox to be successful they need to have solid hardware, and have a good development kit. I've hear many times how the PS2 is just too hard to develop for. If Microsoft can get enought consoles in consumers hands, and the developers like to develop for it, then it will be a success.
The second ammendmnet to the US consittution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If the school allows other clubs, then they should allow bible clubs equal access. Otherwise they are prohibiting the free exercise of religion, abridging those student's right to free speech, and preventing them from peaceably assembling on property that is available to others.
This BOIS is a building block to be used in a system that needs to power-up quickly. An example of a place it might be used is a set-top box. People don't want to wait 20 seconds for their TV to come on, and people have also become a lot more aware of appliances that don't really shut down when you turn them off. I can see a market for this BIOS, but I don't really see it in the high availability market.
In my limited experience with a telecom product that needed 5 9s uptime, everything had a level of redundancy, because you had to assume some hardware was going to fail. That means that you are possibly running at reduced performance while the system is comming back online, but the system doesn't go down just because part of it was rebooted. The 79s thing sounds like something someone in marketing though sounded good, even if it's not that applicable. It has that cool buzzword, marketing feel to it.
So Microsoft isn't allowed to evolve as the market evolves? They don't get to change as their customer's needs change? The govenment may as well take Microsoft's intelectual property away from them. Either way you're destroying the company.
Sun, Oracle, and Netscape have looked into subscription services. The problem is that the software people want is Microsoft Office. I remember when there was much more competition in the office suite market. I used and hated Word Perfect for a while. I liked AMI Pro. Incompatible file formats were a nightmare. Maybe with XML things would be differnet now, but what really killed other office suites was that Microsoft saw that people didn't always use the best product for the job, they used the product they were most familliar with. Microsoft's solution was to tightly integrate their office suite. You can easily put tables in Word documents. Features for the most part work the same across the different applications. They did this much better than their competitors, and IMHO that's what made their product the best, and let them run away with the market share.
The market also naturally leans toward a monopoly. People want to be able to go to a computer, find the software they need, and use it. They don't want to learn different interfaces. Choice is nice, but productivity is more important. Most people I know that are not very computer literate really just want something simple to learn, and they don't want to learn different varriations. They want to learn the office suite they can use at home, at work, at their friends house, helping their mom on the phone, wherever. This does not lead to a competitive market with lots of choices.
What this means is that, yes if the market turns toward subscription based services, Microsoft will likely end up with a monopoly there as well. The question is if the government interfereing will do more harm than good. Are competitors really offering good alternatives? Has Microsoft really failed to meet their needs in the past? Or do we just have people who want to compete in a morket that's scewed against competition. If Microsoft is prevented form entering subscription based survices, then innovation in that area will be slowed for years, becuse Microsoft is the one pushing that technology right now. However, competion will likely return for a while until a new market leader arises. But will that competition really help consumers? Will they really end up with better choices? What about all the consumers that have invested in current technology that may not transition well? In the rush to be new market leader, a lot of crap will be released. What about all the consumers that will be stuck with that crap.
Don't get me wrong. I like competative markets. I believe in the free market economy. But the free market has let to monopolies in some markets, and breaking up natural monopolies doesn't make much sense. Microsoft also hasn't failed to meet most of their customer's needs. If they did, then competitors could cut into their market share more.
How do you want the government to address.Net? If you're suggesting that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to make.NET so it only works with Windows clients, then I agree the govenment needs to do that.
If you're saying that Microsoft shouldn't be able to create a subscription based service, then I'd say the govenment shouldn't be directing the path that technology takes.
Microsoft should be kept from using their current Monopoly to Monopolize different markets, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to enter new markets.
Couldn't VA have simply sold "Enterprise Support" for the open product (a la Red Hat)?
Red Hat is the leader in their market, and after several years, they now make enough money from support, sales, and training to barely make a profit. Source Forge has a much smaller market. They don't have the partnerships that Red Hat does. I don't see how they can make enough money selling training and support to pay for the development costs. A smaller market means you have to have larger margins to make money. Source Forge just doesn't have the kind of mass appeal that Red Hat's software and services have.
They've got 80 million left, and they're burning it at a very high rate. Once it's gone, they're done, and the stockholders get nothing. Selling proprietary software is obviously something VA doesn't want to do. It looks like a last ditch effort to stay in business. If they can't make it fly, then things are going to look real bad for getting funding for Open Source based companies. This type of company might be able to do ok when the economy is strong, but they seem to be very vulnerable to economic downturns. Maybe free software is popular when money is tight, but support contracts and training sure aren't. At least with the code under GPL the stockholders can't close the source and sell the IP to pay off the debts if VA doesn't survive.
Bad marketing? It's pretty hard to say that people don't know who they are, and what their products are. I think they've done a very good job of marketing, they just haven't turned the marketing efforts into profits.
Well, the purpose of marketing is to sell products. Their past product was computers running Linux. Computer sales are down for everyone, and in tight times a lot of companies that aren't really good at what they do don't succeed. This lends some justification for your complaints about bad business skills.
Their current business doesn't involve hardware products. They sell advertising and now software. Most of their current revenues come from advertising, and they like many other companies are losing money at an advertising based internet content business. It's not very surprising that they are losing money. If they were just spending money on the web sites they might do better, but in addition they are funding software development. They just can't afford to do that development with no return on their investment. Therefore, they are going to sell enhancements to their GPLed, "free" product.
It might be considered a troll in this forum, but it needs to be asked if part of their poor business practices was not finding a direct revenue stream from their software development sooner. It will be interesting to see if they will be able to make enough money selling customized software and support services.
Since the core product is open source, there's nothing keeping other developers from creating competative add-ons and offering support. There is also the problem that one of the hallmarks of a good product is that it is easy to use and doesn't require a lot of support. It seems like developing a complete, fully functional, and easy to use product is in some ways in oposition to their making money. It will be interesting to see if open source updates to the core code, that would compete with their proprietary code, get added to the project, or if a fork by other developers may need to happen in order for a "complete" package to be done under GPL.
There are some changes in corporate thinking that are going to have to happen for this business model to work. When money is tight the first thing to get cut is the purchase of large capital items (including software) and consulting. A lot of companies are just going to use the free software. They may some consulting fees to get themselves set up once, but after that I just don't see a revenue stream for VA.
I've made backup coppies of some software I've bought.
I've made compilations of songs from CDs I bought.
I make coppies of CDs to listen to in my car.
None of that is illegal, and I shouldn't have to pay extra for the media, because other people break the law.
It seems like Judges, because their jobs require them to deal with criminals all the time, have pretty much come to the conclusion that everyone is a criminal to some extent. One very large problem with this is that if you treat people like criminals, many of them will become criminals. It's not like they have anything to lose.
In general I agree with your comment, but I have to take issue with this statement.
In traditional copyright law, a certain degree of copying and piracy is expected.
The law never found a certain degree of copying and piracy to be acceptable. The law allowed copying ofr fair use. This includes making a copy to listen to in your car, or compiling an album of songs you like from other albums. If also covers free speach issues like using a portion of a copyrighted work in a critique. Fair use is not piracy. Your high school friends making coppies of tapes for everyone was illegal then, and is illegal now. Just because no one caught them and prosecuted them doesn't mean it was legal.
Are you saying that there are no artists who enjoy playing music just for fun? Are there no writers who write stories becuase they love making worlds come to life? No game designers who just want to create some fun and/or bragging right for thier friends?
Sure there's people like that, but they are only a small part of the whole. There are a lot of art forms that just can't be created by a couple of people working on it part time. It takes a lot of money to produce a movie. I even takes a lot of money to record, produce and market an album. The world will miss out on a lot of creative works if the artists are forced to work full time jobs to feed themselves while they create. These people are providing a product that people want. It has real value to others. Why shouldn't they be able to make mony to support themselves from it.
I would seriously prefer local groups, making realistic money (money like a school teacher would make), playing good, interesting, original music to the current sludge that comes out of the entertainment machine.
That's great for you. You have every right to that opinion. Just don't force that opinion on me. I may also like that local band that you're listening to, however I'll never hear them if you have your way. Why? Because they'll never be able to afford to market their music. Putting music on a service like napster isn't much of a marketing plan. I'm not going to spend days listening to crap to find a song or two that I like. Of course there can be review web pages, that showcase music that I might like, but how do those web pages pay the bills? If you haven't noticed, banner adds aren't bringing in much revenue these days.
If you make it so people can't make money off of their creative works, then creativity becomes a luxury for those who can afford it. Not everyone want's to work in services or manufacturing industries and work on their art on the side, and they shouldn't have to.
Fame and money is not a right.
No. Fame and money are something consumers can provide in return for something they feel has value.
You don't see world-renound lecturers shouting out scathing political commentaries to hords of screaming fans who paid $139 for a seat.
Political "fundraisers" often charge considerably more than $139 a seat. Clinton makes a lot of money lecturing. Politics has been very profitable for many journalists, comentators, and politicians.
You don't see scientists mobbed by teenagers when they step out of thier stretched limos.
That's because teenagers aren't very interested in science. I hope you don't judge all creative works on what teenagers think of them. People pay a lot of money to go to seminars where scientists speak. My company has paid for me to go to several training classes where an expert in his/her field has taught about how they go about doing something. This is also a creative work.
It would not be a terrible thing is the score was evened out a little.
What score are you evening out by stealing copyrighted works? What did the creators do to you? How have you been wronged? Who else did they wrong? And how does it justify you getting something for free and the person who created it getting nothing?
I don't like the DCMA either. I buy CDs. I then make a copy for my car. I rip MP3s to play on my portable player, or at work. I also like to make CDs which have the songs I like on them rather than carying around an CD with only a couple of songs on it I like. This is something the RIAA is preventing with the way they are attacking piracy. I don't know if it's intentional on their part, or if it's just a side effect of their attempts to fight piracy.
I have a friend who owns a really small record label. He represents small local groups like the ones you seem to prefer. He's seriously concerned that online piracy may put him out of business, and he may not be wrong. Neither those bands or their producer makes much money when the paly at those small bars. They make a little more money off the CD sales at the shows. Most of their advertising is word of mouth and some fliers in the bars. If they lose a significant protion of their CD sales to pirating, they aren't going to be able to afford the equiment to put on the shows, and more importantly to record the music. These aren't rich people. They don't live in a big house, I'd be surprised if it were worth more than $200k. They do have one nice car, but the other is a beat-up old truck they cart the equipment around in. How is stealing from them evening out some score?
Re:So we might as well shut down Bugtraq...
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Hotmail Hacked
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· Score: 1, Troll
Yes, perhaps one unfortunate day it will be illegal to explain security vulnerabilities in depth, but until then there's little wrong in supporting open disclosure. Security through obscurity doesn't work.
Please explain to me how open disclosure of the details of how this hack is performed helps in this case. This is a closed system. Knowing the details of how the hack is performed doesn't help anyone in the general population fix this problem. It just allows malicious people to invade other people's privacy.
I can understand posting that the bug exists, and general information so that people have an idea if their information is at risk. I think it's great when white hat hackers let a company know that they've got a security hole, and give them a chance to close it. If they don't make an effort to close it, then there may be some justification to full disclosure.
However, claiming you've wearing a white hat while feeding the script kiddies info, when there's no real possitive effect is a load of bull. These people need to learn the difference between helping others and feeding their own egos.
The slashdot community often seems to get up in arms because the media doesn't understand the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Maybe the media can't figure out the difference, because the hackers and crackers can't figure out the difference either.
In my opinion (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway:), every vote should have been counted, and if there was any ambiguity in the vote, toss it. Lesson learned; don't use overly complicated voting systems.
Here's my opinion. Every vote was counted, and they did toss the ones in which there was ambiguity. There were some problems with the voting system in Florida. I saw the ballot and relly don't think it was really confusing. VOters do have a responsibility to take a little bit of time to make sure they understand what they are doing. If they couldn't look over the ballot carefully, then their right to vote wasn't that important to them. A different system will just result in different mistakes.
There was another problem that did concern me. There were punch card machines that hadn't had the chads cleaned out of them for years. It is likely that because these were full, the chads did not completely detach on some people's cards. That was due to unacceptable incompetence by the people in the local elections offices. They are supposed to ensure that the voting equipment was in good working order. They didn't do their jobs. However, that fact was mostly ignored, and those people weren't held responsible for their mistakes. Why? It just didn't make as good of a news story as the system being out to disenfranchise minority voters. The system needs fixing, but it's not going to be fixed until there's some accountability for the local elections officials who didn't perform their responsibilities.
In order to use formal methods to prove something is secure, you have to find a way to represend all the possible variables. In even a system specifically designed for voting, this is likely an impossible task. Each component from the OS, as simple as it may be, to the device drivers that run the touch screen, would have to be designed with an extremely rigorous process to ensure that your formal methods would have any validity. I'm not saying that formal methods shouldn't play a role in the design of a secure system. I just don't think you're going to be able to really prove a system is secure. You can however do better than just throwing a system together and patching the security issues that come up in limited testing. If they want the system to be secure, the first thing they need to do is isolate the network, and strictly limit access. If it's attached to the internet then security will be a much greater risk.
There is another issue that the article takes a nice cheap shot about at the end. Some newer server software like Exchange integrates a lot of functionality in ways it hasn't been done in the past. Exchange allows email which, was once just used to send text messages around, to do a lot more. I don't forsee this trend reversing. There's likely going to be a lot of new types of services made available by servers. Even though there's security issues involved users like having access to those services. I expect this means that there's going to be a lot of work for security consultants in the future. No surprise there huh?
Slashdot Mirror
Let the rationalizations begin. $20 isn't that much. Companies that contribute to free software products need to make money to survive. I can run a lot of plugins with this.
Here's some food for thought. If this plugin is worth $20, then all the things you get in Windows are definately worth $100. Of course you may just not like Microsoft for one of many good reasons, and therefore are willing to pay elevated prices for all the little pieces that come with Windows. That's your choice. Or maybe you prefer to use all free software, that's also your choice.
They sold the software in the US. They committed a crime in the US. When he visited the US he was arrested for a crime that was committed in the US.
He did decide to sell the program. He sold it to his company for his salary. They paid him for it and he gave them the rights to distribute it.
The more important and more specific question is if he knew they would sell it in the United States. I guess that's one for the courts to decide.
I would love to visit Russia. From everything I've seen it has some beautiful Cities. The world has a lot to offer, it would be nice to be able to travel to more of it safely.
Why, in this country of supposed freedom, do we allow companies to control not only specific markets, (in the case of Micro$oft monopoly) but also allow them to lobby towards laws that take away freedoms, such as freedom of speech.
Companies are made up of people. Those people also have a right to free speech. Those people have a right to tell their congressmen that they think there needs to be stronger laws to protect their interests, and that right shouldn't be taken away. Taking away their rights is no better than the govenment stomping on Fair Use with the DMCA. Laws always have to balance the rights of different people. The problem is that the DCMA should not have been passed, and the courts should toos it out.
I know that ElComSoft Co. Ltd made mistakes when they started selling a program designed to defeat a specific type of encryption. I feel that this is wrong. Unfortunately, arresting a programer for giving a speech about how he broke the encryption is hogwash as well.
Sklyarov was arrested because he creating the software and because it was distributed in the United States.
I see no reason why showing an encryption to be faulty and how to circumvent it AS A ACADEMIC STUDY wrong.
Sklyarov wrote the software that brakes the copy protection for a commercial company, and got paid for doing it. He had to know they were going to sell it. The real question is if he knew they would sell it in the United States. It's not an academic study when you're creating the product for money.
There's a good chance Garriott just doesn't like the business side of game development. Attracting investors, planning marketing, and making business agreements doesn't leave much time for creating and developing a game. It may just be that he's willing to take the risk in selling the company so that he can actually develop a game.
Microsoft can't force people to buy XBox, but they can seel them at a loss, and advertise the heck out of it. I suspect you won't see a lot of traditional console titles on XBox to start out. Microsoft is using DirectX on the XBox to make it easy for PC game developers to make games for the XBox. I suspect the first titles will be mostly PC games running on the XBox.
I'm personally not a console gamer, so I'm not sure how many of those people will buy XBoxs. Who do I think will buy XBoxs? Parents who want to steal their computer back from their kids who are always on it playing games. PC gamers who's PC is getting out of date, and for whom XBox is actually an upgrade. People like me who don't have a DVD player, know buying an XBox isn't a cost effective way of getting one, but can't seem to resist buying yet another expensive toy. I don't know if that will be a big enough market to get them started or not. But if they get some decent market share and some decent games, more good games will follow.
That reminds me of something Bill Gates once said about Windows in it's infantcy. He was trying to get developers to write Windows applications, when everyone was still developing DOS applications. He had the vision of a highly integrated Windowed environment with applications that had a consistent user interface. He was far from the first to have this vision, but he felt that it had reached it's time. The x86 platform could finally supply the processing power, and the future was multithreaded/windowed environment. The problem was third party developersdidn't want to develop for it beacuse there was a much larger user base for DOS applications than Windows. So he forced his developers at Microsoft to develop Windows applications because MS developers didn't have a choice, they had to do what he wanted. The result was MS Office, which is undeniably MS's cash cow. That time Bill was right.
Now we have the XBox. Microsoft wants developers to develop for it, but they're not sure. There's a lot of PS2s out there, Gamecube is comming, and what does MS know about the console market? What does microsoft do? They buy some gaming companies to make sure there are some games for the XBox.
Bill has been wrong before, and MS has taken huge losses on projects in the pase (BOB comes to mind). But they're not afraid to try. And you never know, Bill might be right again.
It's a question of if Microsoft has games for the Japanese market to go along with the console. I keep hearing how the japanese console market is different from the US and European markets. If MS doesn't have the games, then they shouldn't release it in Japan. It's better to hold off a few months than to flop.
Remember also that the Japanese economy has been in pretty bad shape for several years, and with our economy not exactly in the best shape I doubt Sony is going to have a really good christmas season in Japan this year. Their console has already been out a year, and if they drop the price of the console to maintain market share, then they are goint to lose even more money on each console. I'm not sure what to think about Nintendo. They have an awsome product in the gameboy advance. It would be even better if it were backlit, but it's still awsome. I'm just not sure if they'll be able to pull off the Gamecube.
Microsoft has the two things that can allow them to get a foothold in the market despite their entrenched competition. They have a well known name, and lots of money. With the release of XP they are going to have lots of cash comming in. They can definately sell at a loss much longer than Nintendo. Sony's consumer electronics division hasn't made much money for several years, but they may be able to siphon money off of their Music sales to keep fund selling their PS2s at a loss to keep market share. It looks like we're going to see a battle in the console market. Hopefully we'll end up with lower prices, good games, and some strong competition. It's kind of weird that Microsoft is the one bringing competioion to a market that's currently dominated by Sony.
Ok, yes Japan is the hear and sould of current console market. Japanese companies have developed the market, and currently rule supreme. But the kinds of games Japanese customers buy are often somewhat different, and the Japaneese market is actually smaller than the US market. It's going to take MS longer to produce games for the Japanese market. If they rush the release there, then they will flop there.
Microsoft has done well in the PC gaming market, and the xbox may allow them to extend that market into consoles. They may not initially lure away many hard core console gamers, but it they can get a good initial response in the US, then they will lure in more developers to create games for the Japanese market, and also get more traditional console style games written for their platform. For XBox to be successful they need to have solid hardware, and have a good development kit. I've hear many times how the PS2 is just too hard to develop for. If Microsoft can get enought consoles in consumers hands, and the developers like to develop for it, then it will be a success.
Oops, right words, wrong ammendment. That was the first ammendment. Guess I can't count.
The second ammendmnet to the US consittution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If the school allows other clubs, then they should allow bible clubs equal access. Otherwise they are prohibiting the free exercise of religion, abridging those student's right to free speech, and preventing them from peaceably assembling on property that is available to others.
This BOIS is a building block to be used in a system that needs to power-up quickly. An example of a place it might be used is a set-top box. People don't want to wait 20 seconds for their TV to come on, and people have also become a lot more aware of appliances that don't really shut down when you turn them off. I can see a market for this BIOS, but I don't really see it in the high availability market.
In my limited experience with a telecom product that needed 5 9s uptime, everything had a level of redundancy, because you had to assume some hardware was going to fail. That means that you are possibly running at reduced performance while the system is comming back online, but the system doesn't go down just because part of it was rebooted. The 79s thing sounds like something someone in marketing though sounded good, even if it's not that applicable. It has that cool buzzword, marketing feel to it.
http://developer.intel.com/design/intarch/pentiumi ii/pentiumiii.htm
It shows a low power pentium III at 400 MHz.
So Microsoft isn't allowed to evolve as the market evolves? They don't get to change as their customer's needs change? The govenment may as well take Microsoft's intelectual property away from them. Either way you're destroying the company.
Sun, Oracle, and Netscape have looked into subscription services. The problem is that the software people want is Microsoft Office. I remember when there was much more competition in the office suite market. I used and hated Word Perfect for a while. I liked AMI Pro. Incompatible file formats were a nightmare. Maybe with XML things would be differnet now, but what really killed other office suites was that Microsoft saw that people didn't always use the best product for the job, they used the product they were most familliar with. Microsoft's solution was to tightly integrate their office suite. You can easily put tables in Word documents. Features for the most part work the same across the different applications. They did this much better than their competitors, and IMHO that's what made their product the best, and let them run away with the market share.
The market also naturally leans toward a monopoly. People want to be able to go to a computer, find the software they need, and use it. They don't want to learn different interfaces. Choice is nice, but productivity is more important. Most people I know that are not very computer literate really just want something simple to learn, and they don't want to learn different varriations. They want to learn the office suite they can use at home, at work, at their friends house, helping their mom on the phone, wherever. This does not lead to a competitive market with lots of choices.
What this means is that, yes if the market turns toward subscription based services, Microsoft will likely end up with a monopoly there as well. The question is if the government interfereing will do more harm than good. Are competitors really offering good alternatives? Has Microsoft really failed to meet their needs in the past? Or do we just have people who want to compete in a morket that's scewed against competition. If Microsoft is prevented form entering subscription based survices, then innovation in that area will be slowed for years, becuse Microsoft is the one pushing that technology right now. However, competion will likely return for a while until a new market leader arises. But will that competition really help consumers? Will they really end up with better choices? What about all the consumers that have invested in current technology that may not transition well? In the rush to be new market leader, a lot of crap will be released. What about all the consumers that will be stuck with that crap.
Don't get me wrong. I like competative markets. I believe in the free market economy. But the free market has let to monopolies in some markets, and breaking up natural monopolies doesn't make much sense. Microsoft also hasn't failed to meet most of their customer's needs. If they did, then competitors could cut into their market share more.
How do you want the government to address .Net? If you're suggesting that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to make .NET so it only works with Windows clients, then I agree the govenment needs to do that.
If you're saying that Microsoft shouldn't be able to create a subscription based service, then I'd say the govenment shouldn't be directing the path that technology takes.
Microsoft should be kept from using their current Monopoly to Monopolize different markets, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to enter new markets.
Couldn't VA have simply sold "Enterprise Support" for the open product (a la Red Hat)?
Red Hat is the leader in their market, and after several years, they now make enough money from support, sales, and training to barely make a profit. Source Forge has a much smaller market. They don't have the partnerships that Red Hat does. I don't see how they can make enough money selling training and support to pay for the development costs. A smaller market means you have to have larger margins to make money. Source Forge just doesn't have the kind of mass appeal that Red Hat's software and services have.
They've got 80 million left, and they're burning it at a very high rate. Once it's gone, they're done, and the stockholders get nothing. Selling proprietary software is obviously something VA doesn't want to do. It looks like a last ditch effort to stay in business. If they can't make it fly, then things are going to look real bad for getting funding for Open Source based companies. This type of company might be able to do ok when the economy is strong, but they seem to be very vulnerable to economic downturns. Maybe free software is popular when money is tight, but support contracts and training sure aren't. At least with the code under GPL the stockholders can't close the source and sell the IP to pay off the debts if VA doesn't survive.
Bad marketing? It's pretty hard to say that people don't know who they are, and what their products are. I think they've done a very good job of marketing, they just haven't turned the marketing efforts into profits.
Well, the purpose of marketing is to sell products. Their past product was computers running Linux. Computer sales are down for everyone, and in tight times a lot of companies that aren't really good at what they do don't succeed. This lends some justification for your complaints about bad business skills.
Their current business doesn't involve hardware products. They sell advertising and now software. Most of their current revenues come from advertising, and they like many other companies are losing money at an advertising based internet content business. It's not very surprising that they are losing money. If they were just spending money on the web sites they might do better, but in addition they are funding software development. They just can't afford to do that development with no return on their investment. Therefore, they are going to sell enhancements to their GPLed, "free" product.
It might be considered a troll in this forum, but it needs to be asked if part of their poor business practices was not finding a direct revenue stream from their software development sooner. It will be interesting to see if they will be able to make enough money selling customized software and support services.
Since the core product is open source, there's nothing keeping other developers from creating competative add-ons and offering support. There is also the problem that one of the hallmarks of a good product is that it is easy to use and doesn't require a lot of support. It seems like developing a complete, fully functional, and easy to use product is in some ways in oposition to their making money. It will be interesting to see if open source updates to the core code, that would compete with their proprietary code, get added to the project, or if a fork by other developers may need to happen in order for a "complete" package to be done under GPL.
There are some changes in corporate thinking that are going to have to happen for this business model to work. When money is tight the first thing to get cut is the purchase of large capital items (including software) and consulting. A lot of companies are just going to use the free software. They may some consulting fees to get themselves set up once, but after that I just don't see a revenue stream for VA.
I've made backup coppies of some software I've bought.
I've made compilations of songs from CDs I bought.
I make coppies of CDs to listen to in my car.
None of that is illegal, and I shouldn't have to pay extra for the media, because other people break the law.
It seems like Judges, because their jobs require them to deal with criminals all the time, have pretty much come to the conclusion that everyone is a criminal to some extent. One very large problem with this is that if you treat people like criminals, many of them will become criminals. It's not like they have anything to lose.
In general I agree with your comment, but I have to take issue with this statement.
In traditional copyright law, a certain degree of copying and piracy is expected.
The law never found a certain degree of copying and piracy to be acceptable. The law allowed copying ofr fair use. This includes making a copy to listen to in your car, or compiling an album of songs you like from other albums. If also covers free speach issues like using a portion of a copyrighted work in a critique. Fair use is not piracy. Your high school friends making coppies of tapes for everyone was illegal then, and is illegal now. Just because no one caught them and prosecuted them doesn't mean it was legal.
Are you saying that there are no artists who enjoy playing music just for fun? Are there no writers who write stories becuase they love making worlds come to life? No game designers who just want to create some fun and/or bragging right for thier friends?
Sure there's people like that, but they are only a small part of the whole. There are a lot of art forms that just can't be created by a couple of people working on it part time. It takes a lot of money to produce a movie. I even takes a lot of money to record, produce and market an album. The world will miss out on a lot of creative works if the artists are forced to work full time jobs to feed themselves while they create. These people are providing a product that people want. It has real value to others. Why shouldn't they be able to make mony to support themselves from it.
I would seriously prefer local groups, making realistic money (money like a school teacher would make), playing good, interesting, original music to the current sludge that comes out of the entertainment machine.
That's great for you. You have every right to that opinion. Just don't force that opinion on me. I may also like that local band that you're listening to, however I'll never hear them if you have your way. Why? Because they'll never be able to afford to market their music. Putting music on a service like napster isn't much of a marketing plan. I'm not going to spend days listening to crap to find a song or two that I like. Of course there can be review web pages, that showcase music that I might like, but how do those web pages pay the bills? If you haven't noticed, banner adds aren't bringing in much revenue these days.
If you make it so people can't make money off of their creative works, then creativity becomes a luxury for those who can afford it. Not everyone want's to work in services or manufacturing industries and work on their art on the side, and they shouldn't have to.
Fame and money is not a right.
No. Fame and money are something consumers can provide in return for something they feel has value.
You don't see world-renound lecturers shouting out scathing political commentaries to hords of screaming fans who paid $139 for a seat.
Political "fundraisers" often charge considerably more than $139 a seat. Clinton makes a lot of money lecturing. Politics has been very profitable for many journalists, comentators, and politicians.
You don't see scientists mobbed by teenagers when they step out of thier stretched limos.
That's because teenagers aren't very interested in science. I hope you don't judge all creative works on what teenagers think of them. People pay a lot of money to go to seminars where scientists speak. My company has paid for me to go to several training classes where an expert in his/her field has taught about how they go about doing something. This is also a creative work.
It would not be a terrible thing is the score was evened out a little.
What score are you evening out by stealing copyrighted works? What did the creators do to you? How have you been wronged? Who else did they wrong? And how does it justify you getting something for free and the person who created it getting nothing?
I don't like the DCMA either. I buy CDs. I then make a copy for my car. I rip MP3s to play on my portable player, or at work. I also like to make CDs which have the songs I like on them rather than carying around an CD with only a couple of songs on it I like. This is something the RIAA is preventing with the way they are attacking piracy. I don't know if it's intentional on their part, or if it's just a side effect of their attempts to fight piracy.
I have a friend who owns a really small record label. He represents small local groups like the ones you seem to prefer. He's seriously concerned that online piracy may put him out of business, and he may not be wrong. Neither those bands or their producer makes much money when the paly at those small bars. They make a little more money off the CD sales at the shows. Most of their advertising is word of mouth and some fliers in the bars. If they lose a significant protion of their CD sales to pirating, they aren't going to be able to afford the equiment to put on the shows, and more importantly to record the music. These aren't rich people. They don't live in a big house, I'd be surprised if it were worth more than $200k. They do have one nice car, but the other is a beat-up old truck they cart the equipment around in. How is stealing from them evening out some score?
Yes, perhaps one unfortunate day it will be illegal to explain security vulnerabilities in depth, but until then there's little wrong in supporting open disclosure. Security through obscurity doesn't work.
Please explain to me how open disclosure of the details of how this hack is performed helps in this case. This is a closed system. Knowing the details of how the hack is performed doesn't help anyone in the general population fix this problem. It just allows malicious people to invade other people's privacy.
I can understand posting that the bug exists, and general information so that people have an idea if their information is at risk. I think it's great when white hat hackers let a company know that they've got a security hole, and give them a chance to close it. If they don't make an effort to close it, then there may be some justification to full disclosure.
However, claiming you've wearing a white hat while feeding the script kiddies info, when there's no real possitive effect is a load of bull. These people need to learn the difference between helping others and feeding their own egos.
The slashdot community often seems to get up in arms because the media doesn't understand the difference between a hacker and a cracker. Maybe the media can't figure out the difference, because the hackers and crackers can't figure out the difference either.
In my opinion (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway:), every vote should have been counted, and if there was any ambiguity in the vote, toss it. Lesson learned; don't use overly complicated voting systems.
Here's my opinion. Every vote was counted, and they did toss the ones in which there was ambiguity. There were some problems with the voting system in Florida. I saw the ballot and relly don't think it was really confusing. VOters do have a responsibility to take a little bit of time to make sure they understand what they are doing. If they couldn't look over the ballot carefully, then their right to vote wasn't that important to them. A different system will just result in different mistakes.
There was another problem that did concern me. There were punch card machines that hadn't had the chads cleaned out of them for years. It is likely that because these were full, the chads did not completely detach on some people's cards. That was due to unacceptable incompetence by the people in the local elections offices. They are supposed to ensure that the voting equipment was in good working order. They didn't do their jobs. However, that fact was mostly ignored, and those people weren't held responsible for their mistakes. Why? It just didn't make as good of a news story as the system being out to disenfranchise minority voters. The system needs fixing, but it's not going to be fixed until there's some accountability for the local elections officials who didn't perform their responsibilities.
In order to use formal methods to prove something is secure, you have to find a way to represend all the possible variables. In even a system specifically designed for voting, this is likely an impossible task. Each component from the OS, as simple as it may be, to the device drivers that run the touch screen, would have to be designed with an extremely rigorous process to ensure that your formal methods would have any validity. I'm not saying that formal methods shouldn't play a role in the design of a secure system. I just don't think you're going to be able to really prove a system is secure. You can however do better than just throwing a system together and patching the security issues that come up in limited testing. If they want the system to be secure, the first thing they need to do is isolate the network, and strictly limit access. If it's attached to the internet then security will be a much greater risk.
There is another issue that the article takes a nice cheap shot about at the end. Some newer server software like Exchange integrates a lot of functionality in ways it hasn't been done in the past. Exchange allows email which, was once just used to send text messages around, to do a lot more. I don't forsee this trend reversing. There's likely going to be a lot of new types of services made available by servers. Even though there's security issues involved users like having access to those services. I expect this means that there's going to be a lot of work for security consultants in the future. No surprise there huh?