Great, so we end up with a bunch of lawyers getting rich off of sueing MS. How does that help consumers? Even if they win huge class action lawsuits against MS's pricing of Windows what do consumers get? Maybe a check for $10?
The settlement would have given OEMs the flexibility to distinguish their products, which is what they wanted. The government would have had some ability to oversee MS's business practices, which would likely leed to more fair and consiestant OEM pricing. Microsoft would have retained control of what features their products contain (with the exception of IE).
The government doesn't seem to think that any settlement that doesn't even the playing field is good enough. Why would anyone want a government leveled playing field. How can any company be expected to inovate and create a better product, if the government will just dictate a level playing field.
I think that MS has done a lot of bad things, but the remedy needs to address the problems. The lawsuit was supposed to address integrating IE into Windows. I believe the States also complained about MS's OEM pricing of Office and Windows as a package. The rest of the testimony was supposed to just show a pattern of poor behavior on MS's part. Why is it that the government's resolution to the problem (breaking up MS) doesn't seem to be a very good solution to the charges they brought against MS?
My main concern at this point is that the government doesn't seem to be trying to help consumers as much as Microsoft's competitors. The worst thing that could happen from this trial is that a legal precedent of the government regulating how software is developed could result. That could be much worse for consumers than a monopolistic MS. After all Microsoft does innovate to some extent, and someone could always just build a better OS and compete with MS. However, few things stifle innovation like burocracy. If you've ever tried managing a software project you know what I mean. It's bad enough trying to get marketing to decide what they want, and determine what you can do with the resources at hand (time, personel, hardware, money). Immagine if those same indecisive marketing people were trying to second guess what the government would let them do? Immagine what happens when your product's significantly better than your competitor's and you start affecting the sales of some company in another Congressman's district. Even if that Congressman's not corrupt, is it his duty to fight for free enterprise, or to fight for the jobs of his hard working constituants, or even the tax revenues that allow the government in his state to perform their operations.
We really need to keep the government out of determining how products are developed, because the results aren't likly to be anything the software industry or consumers really want.
No. I get paid to code. I get nothing extra if people use my program. Perhaps in the future, radio stations and websites will pay musicians to play music, not giving anything extra for the use of it.
I get paid to code too. I don't directly get paid more if people use my programs, but it likely has some effect on me getting raises, or keeping my job.
Being able to make a living on something that others do for free is a privilege, not a right.
Being able to control the distribution of your copyrighted works, and therefore make money off them is a right in the US. There are laws that exhist to protect those rights. If some people choose to give away their creations, they can do that, but that doesn't take away the rights of those who chose to charge for them.
Perhaps in the future, radio stations and websites will pay musicians to play music, not giving anything extra for the use of it.
Then the artists will need to borrow money to record their music, pay people to advertise them to the radio stations and web sites, pay accountants to keep track of the money, and find a way to go after those web sites and stations that don't pay them.
Most artists would never be able to raise enough cash to handle the overhead. Sure a few would make money, just like there are some people who make a decent living off of shareware. One or two might even make it big. The music business is very high risk. It's a very small percentage of artists who ever make much money. I think that the recording industry has gotten too greedy, but I don't think you're being realistic to think that artists would be better off if they all had to fend for themselves. Most have little idea of how to run a business, or how to advertise thier music. They need someone to do that for them. Maybe the industry is currently screwing them over, but I don't think that a large percentage of the artists would be better off without them.
I think you'll find that it's only the big commercial "artists" who are whingeing about Napster. The guys with day jobs aren't making enough money out of CDs to care.
So, because the little guys are too busy working, or just get ignored by the press, it's ok to screw them out of money?
And it's ok to screw the big names, because they have more money than you, and stealing from them is you god given right?
Quit making excuses. People who create something deserve the right to charge something for it if they choose to do so. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But don't steal it either.
I can't say I know much about the schools in "developing countries", or in the UK. Here in the US it does seem like students aren't getting taught much about programming. They're taught enough to be famailiar with how the OS works (usually Windows or Mac OS). Then they seem to learn how to use a word processor and spreadsheet. They may learn a little about programming, but not much.
However, I think this has more to do with what we consider to be a qualified teacher in the US, than with the OS on which they're taught. You can be taught just as little about programming on a Linux system as with a Windows one. If we want to fix the problem in the US we need to start requiring teachers to have more of a technical background instead of training them to be amature child psychologists. It appears that the current process just leads teachers to thing that almost every child has a problem, and to treat them all with Ridilin (sp?). Some math, science, and CS teachers with math, science, and CS degrees might actually produce more students that know those subjects better.
This is the same thing everyone said with Win95 and NT 4.0. At the time Windows 3.11 was the typical business OS, and everyone said they were going to wait for Win95 to mature for a year or so before they upgraded. Same thing with NT 4 on the server side. IS departments running NT 3.51 were for the most part happy to wait for things to mature a bit.
There's good reason's for this. Any software package as large as Win 2000 is going to have bugs. If the OS you have right now is doig ok for you, let someone else figure them out. Even if Win 2000 were perfectly bug free, most people require 3rd party support for hardware or software that isn't ready yet.
This happens every time MS releases an OS. People get on their soapboxes and say it's a failure. Slow addoption, althoug I wouldn't call 1 million coppies in a month slow, hasn't killed MS yet.
Nope, the law actually undermines your privacy. It's a stupid and unenforceable law (you can't detect whether or not someone is listening), and, of course, it does not apply to government and police agencies.
I agree that the average person gains little from this law. I suspect that the law does get enforced when people are caught using information they gained by this means for illegal purposes.
ie. Someone gets caught for credit card fraud, and they find out during the investigation that they got the credit card number by listening in on cell phone calls.
I also think that it's just as illegal for the police to use a scanner to listen to cell phone calls, without a warrant, as it is for an individual. That does provide protection, as long as the police are law abiding.
As for cell phone companies giving their customers a false sense of security, I'm sure they do try to do that, and I'm sure they succeed for the most part. However, I don't think that their misleading comments are what's undermining my privacy. It's the people who are breaking the law, and listening in.
It provides a disincentive for the cell phone companies to actually use good encryption, not that they would want to do so anyway.
What provides the disincentive is that the FCC would likly block any cell phone implementation the includes encryption. Even though wiretaps require a court order, the government still wants to be able to implement that wire tap easily and conveinently. The government has proven many times in the past that they are willing to sacrifice our privacy in the name of being able to "track down criminals."
I agree there's a problem, but I think you're pointing your finger in the wrong direction when you blame the cell phone companies.
Yes but you shouldn't lie to people and tell them they are having private conversations when they use cell phones, either.
Agreed, but getting rid of the law won't solve the problem.
So, your only option is to use a good defense like strong encryption.
This doesn't address the problem that it takes considerable time to develop and implement these systems, and the definition of "strong encryption" changes constantly. I've heard many people on/. say that the 40 bit encryption used in the DVD format was to weak to be considered a reasonable attempt, but at the time it was the strongest encryption that could be implemented in an exprotable product.
Considering the paranoia that exhists in law enforcment any time encryption is mentioned, it's going to be hard to get FCC approval for any system which provides any significant encryption. The current laws against intercepting cell phone calls do little to prevent determined criminals. However, the threat of even a nearly unenforcable law does deter some, and making the equipment illegal will make it possible to prosecute others. When it comes down to it, the laws, while not an ideal solution, seem to be better than not having the laws to me.
People should have a right to privacy. However, they give up that right in situations where they broadcast their conversations in a way that anyone can listen in.
I understand that you feel this way, but that's not how the laws in the US work. There are wiretapping laws that make this illegal, and personally, I'm in favor of those laws.
Give me a break. How are your rights being infringed on by not being able to listen into other people's private phone calls. Those frequencies are reserved for Cellular phone calls, and the law is there to protect people's privacy. The option of having the transmissions encrypted would be good, if it were practical. At the time Cell phones were taking off the technology was very expensive. I don't know the history, but I also expect that had the Cell phone companies tried using encryption, they would never have gotten it by the FCC at the time. Their only real choices at the time were to implement it without encryption, or not to produce the technology.
Now we're at a point that the technology to encrypt the communications is relatively inexpensive, however it's too late to change now. The current equipment is already in widespread use. You can't just tell everyone with a Cell phone that they have to throw that one away and buy a new one that works with encrypted communications.
Personally, I consider the law prohibiting you from listening in on Cell phone transmissions to be a reasonable restriction to protect the privacy of Cell phone users.
The issue of digital cellular brings up another problem. The ability of encrypting the communications in a cost effective manner was availble when digital cellular was being implemented. However, what level of encryption would you have them use. How long will it be before anything they could have practically implemented to provide real-time encryption would be cracked? I'm no expert on these issues, but I expect that by the time something goes through the several year development cycle, then takes a year or so to get approved by the FCC, then takes a while to get implemented and accepted. What was reasonable at the time it was designed, is no longer worth the effort.
Decryption technology doesn't stand still, while the encryption technology has to in order to provide interoperability with the phones and the system. You can try and update how things work every couple years while insuring backwards compatability, however that adds a significant expense to the system and the phones. If also doesn't protect people who don't buy new phones every couple of years.
Laws making it illegal to listen into someone else's phone calls can't prevent people from doing it any more than laws prohibiting theft and murder prevent roberies and murder. However, I think that people do have a right to privacy, and that people who invade that privacy by intercepting their private conversations should be punished.
I am going to go out and buy all the parts and give it a whirl. At the worst, I'm out a few bucks. At the best, I've found a way to save s pretty chunk of change for my boss...
RAID controller $125 IDE $35 Time Spent @ pay rate ??? Savings Very Little
What you end up with is a RAID controller that that has limited reliability. Yes, this hack may work, at least for now. It's quite likely that there's some way the BIOS can tell which version or the card it's running on, and just isn't checking it right now. Next time they release a patch to the RAID BIOS you're hacked board becomes a paperweight. You also lose anything that resembles a warranty.
This seems like a neat thing to try at home, where it's your time your, and your data that's being wasted if things don't work out. But your boss may not be as happy with you as you think when he sees you taking a soldering iron to the board that's going to be used as a RAID controller to store improtant company data.
The flip side is that it would give razor-sharp piranha teeth to the GPL, and if you could actually prove that someone was distributing software in violation of the GPL (i.e. I take GNU Emacs, hack it a little bit, and sell it without releasing source code), then they can be not only sued, but also charged with a crime! Chances are if you can prove they did, they'll be convicted or found liable for damages.
I have no legal experience, but I have a real concern about this. I don't know if UCITA provides for criminal penalties, but I think there may be problems with a civil case. How to you show there were damages when the software is free. What amount of money did they cost you not releasing their source. You gave away the code, and even gave them permission to modify and redistribute the application. I understand that the GPL requires that they provide the source, but is it likely that they'll ever have to pay any damages. I can see the courts stoping them from distributing the software, but without finicial penalties, I don't think the "teeth" are very sharp.
Since I really don't know much about this it would be nice if someone with a little more legal background could clarify this.
I think ist's something that would be nice to be able to turn off, but for some people's applications it could increase performance by increasing hits in the disk cache.
I think MS can get away with having Licensing fees for the X-Box, but not Windows. If the licensing fees are on a per unit basis the developers have little to lose. The idea seems to be that it will take very little effort to port the Windows games to the X-Box. I expect developers will port it, pay the licensing fees, and pass the costs on to the consumers. Maybe an X-Box game will cost a bit more than a Windows game. In the end, it's more profit for developers with little development costs involved. I don't think a licensing fee will make many developers hesitate. The question will be if the price is higher, and if consumers will pay it.
This is just a guess, but I betting the key to a cheap processor is that it won't be an Athlon. AMD is saying that the K6-2+ will be done in a 0.18 micron process. That may allow it to fit into the "up to 1GHz" range they're talking about by the time the X-Box hits the market. As for the prices of the other components, things are much cheaper when you buy direct and in volume. Manufacturers would be willing to give Microsoft good prices and live with low margins if they can get designed in to a high volume product. The prices we see on the market have to include profit for the manufacturer, distributor, and vendor you eventually buy it from.
The AMD K6-2+ won't be able to provide the FPU power of the Athlon, or PIII processors, but the 1GHz clock speed makes for really good marketing among the masses. The $150 price does seem low. Maybe it will be in the $350 range, maybe the Playstation will be getting such a foothold that Microsoft will be willing to lose that much on each unit and make it up on the software somehow. Maybe they'll try to make their money through MSN, or some other service they'll provide.
I expect Microsoft will continue to "leak" info and tweak the features such as the CPU speed as well as the price untill they find the "revenue maximising price", as always.
Considering that the PSX2 is likely to be in the $350 range, and Sony will likely be losing money on them at that price the $150 price tag seems awfully low even if it doesn't come out for a year or more.
However, if Microsoft plans on making money off of the games like Sony does with the playstation, I think they will still get a lot of developer support. Microsoft has done a very good job at providing game developers with tools and APIs. If microsoft continues with this, it will be considerably easier to port Windows based PC titles to the X-Box than any other game console. They've also already have some experience in the console business after working with Sega on the Dreamcast.
Microsoft's hardware is usually pretty well designed, and a console's OS doesn't need to have support for every piece of hardware on the face of the earth, so they can concentrate on getting the features and hardware support they need working well. The oppertunity is there, wether or not Microsoft will pull it off is another thing.
I wonder if the X-Box will work with Microsoft's terminal server? They may be planning to recoup some of their profits by selling Windows 2000 client licenses, or by making Office apps available only by rental or subscription.
It will be interesting to see what they try and do to keep these from becomming cheap Linux boxes.
Actually, in my opinion Microsoft did a pretty good job on IE, at least versions 4 and 5. Some of Microsoft's hardware has been pretty cool in the past. They don't fall short on everything, just most things.
You don't need to patent something to keep it from being patented. Simply publish it. He could have simply written an article for a real time magazine.
It costs $10,000 to get a patent. It really isn't very useful unless it's enforced, so why was it done? It can only be used as a revenue source or a club to make other people do what you want.
If the patent were really unique, I'd have no problem with it. However, it looks like any hard real-time OS that runs non real-time APPs is going to violate this patent. If this guy has any experience with real-time OSs, he knows this has been done in the industry for many years. Patenting something you know already exhists is simply immoral. I hope the costs of defending this bogus patent make him bankrupt.
If you're not going to enforce your patent, then there's no benefit in patenting something. Just publish the idea, then no one can patent it. Save yourself the $10,000 required to get the patent.
AMD has produced a great processor that still has a lot of room for growth. Their yields are up. They seem to have gotten the copper process working well for them, which seems to have been a major problem for chip makers. They're able to meet demand. Everything's going well.
But to say that Intel is going to topple is more than a bit extreme at this point. AMD can meet current demand, and the Dresden FAB will allow them to expand, but their ability to produce chips is still very small compared to Intel. They are going to have one FAB capable of making chips with a.18 micron copper process. Either that's one huge FAB, or if Intel continues to stumble, AMD's going to have some serious problems meeting demand. This gives Intel what they need, time. They've been able to meet demand so far, but due to high costs and shortages of motherboards demand has not been as high as it could be. Now that VIA is producing chipsets, and motherboard should become cheaper and more available, it will be interesting to see if AMD can meet the increased demand.
Even if AMD doesn't crush Intel, the desktop microprocessor market appears to be competative once again. The mobile processor market will be heating up quickly with, Crusoe, VIA's upcomming offering, and even the StrongARM (if x86 compatability isn't required).
Ok, this guy asks people for facts to support their views, and you call him a Troll, and accuse him of spreading FUD. However, you provide no facts, and basicly resort to name calling.
This is not a good way to get your point across.
Wether you believe it or not there are some of us out there who write code that works on multiple platforms. Personally I like to hear both sides of the story without the pro-Microsoft views being shouted down as FUD, with no facts provided.
I'm not saying I buy the idea that Microsoft publishes ALL of their APIs, however, I don't have any specific examples to refute it either.
I think your being a little hard on the poster calling his post a troll. I'm not saying that the EU doesn't have the right to investigate MS on anti-trust grounds, but the timing is very suspect. Windows 2000 has been in beta for a very long time. For EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti to be making a public "formal request" for information just over a week before it's release tells me he either wishes to cast a shadow over the release of the software. Wether it's being done for competitive reasons, or political reasons I have no clue, but I think the timing is a little to obvious to be a coincedence. I don't think the post was a troll, just his opinion.
First of all, I agree that parents shouldn't have to worry about their children seeing pornography in a public place like the library. I think it makes sense for libraries to take reasonable precautions to prevent this.
However, the way it appears to be implemented goes far beyond protecting children. If the purpose is to prohibit children's access to material, find a solution that does that. The problem is that the people who seem to lead the effort want to censor everyone's access to material on these public computers. They sell the solutions to the masses based on the emotional issue of protecting children. Almost any time someone wants to ban something, they base their arguments on protectin children, and seem to never taylor their solution to specifically protect children.
The end result seems to often be that some lawyers make a lot of money, a Judge is forced to overturn whatever solution was implemented, because it's overly broad and inhibits people's Constitutional Rights. How does this "protect children?" If these organizations were actually trying to prohibit only children, they'd likely meet with much greater success. Their current efforts are more likely to divide communities, and make lawyers a lot of money.
There's one last issue in your post I want to address. you don't even have a right to use the system, or have the government provide a system for you to use
These are public systems provided with these people's tax dollars. They do have the right to use these systems. I'm pretty sure this was already addressed in the lawsuit where the Judge ruled the filtering software unconstitutional.
I don't think it would be that hard to move the site. People would just start posting the new site address on slashdot, and it would likely get moderated up. Such seems to be the nature of the Slashdot crowd.
The problem is that Slashdot has been successful for a reason. The editors at Slashdot have done their best to make Slashdot an impartial place to find news that applies to their audience. An impartiality is imposed by the readers, who have the ability to decide what they think is important. If Slashdot is to be reborn you have to find another group of people with those same skills and motivations for it to succeed.
I not saying that's it's impossible, but you do have the problem that there's a lot of $$$ involved, and that can change most people.
Slashdot has done an exelent job of remaining impartial so far. If anyone can resist the swaying power of the almighty $$$, I think they can. However, when there's $5,000,000,000 on the line, there's bound to be a lot of pressure. Remember that although these companies were founded on the idea of supporting free or open software, the board of directors is ultimately determined by the stockholders. This means that the people with the most $$$ ultimately call the shots. Good luck to the people at Slashdot, I hope things don't get ugly.
Companies (like Xing) paid $10M apiece to get a license to build DVD players or write DVD software.
I hadn't hear the $10M figure before, actually I never heard any figure. Usually the terms of licensing agreements are closely guarded info. Licenses also usually sold by a certain dollar amount, for a certain number.
Several companies have applied for licenses to make DVD decoders for Linux, and have been denied each and every time.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought I read yesterday that the DVD CCA specifically told the Judge that no one had requested a license to create DVD software for Linux. I can't seem to find the article back, but if you can tell me where you heard that several companies were denied licenses, I'd happily look there for the info.
My statements are based on the facts I've read in articles. I thought I read the bit about no one requesting a Linux license in the court documents, but I can't seem to find it back. But I have to ask why the DVD CCA wouldn't license the technology to a company that was interested in making Linux software. After all, more licensing fees means more money for them. There's nothing about a Linux client in itself that makes it easier to crack than a Windows client. The only reason I could guess is that the company requesting the license didn't have the finacial backing to afford a reasonable licensing agreement (by the DVD CCA's definition of reasonable), or they had concerns that the company would simply leak the propriatary information.
The cluestick isn't necessary, just show me the facts. Who are the companies? Where did you read or hear that they had tried to attain licenses? I'm also curious where you heard the $10M licensing fee.
The people who created the DVD encryption spent millions of dollars convincing the recording industry and the electronices industry that this DVD idea would work. There are two good reasons why the encryption needs to be there. One, the recording industry isn't going to release the movies unless they think the format provides some method of limiting or reducing pirating. The other is that the people who created the format are making their money licensing the technology. DVD CSS is fighting for their livelihoods. If they lose this trade secret, they have the choice of comming up with a new encryption method, and convincing hardware manufacturers and the recording industry to support it, or they're out of business.
They created the technology, and license it to make money. Now, because someone has stole that technology, they are in danger of losing their shirts. And why? There is nothing preventing a software company from licensing the technology to create DVD software that runs under Linux. This ins't Microsoft Word, where you can only achieve compatability by reverse engineering. It's not free, but don't the people that worked to create this format deserve a reasonable profit for their efforts? And as for the lame excuse that the encryption was so simple that cracking it can't be wrong... I think I read that it lasted 3 years before it was cracked, and 40 bit incryption was as strong as they were permitted to use because of US export restrictions.
Jon Johansen had a reasonable expectation that what he did was wrong, and if the Norwegian courts find that what he did was against their laws, then he should be held accountable for his crimes. If the DVD CSS is smart, they've already applied for a patent on this technology, and if it's awarded, this will become a mute point then, because DeCSS will likely violate the patent. As long as they applied for the patent before the algorithm became widly available, it won't matter that it's been published all over the internet now. Time will tell.
I started wondering what they were trying to do when they said they running the tests with the write through option set so the file system cache was bypassed. Three of the four systems have journeling file systems, and the files are on a RAID. RAID performance is horrible for small transfers. The said they also ran the tests using the file system cache. They provide absolutely no throughput results for the file system tests, but do mention that the NT results were lower than expected. They mention that it might be because of the drivers for the Compaq RAID controller.
The next issue is the performance difference between writing through the cache, and utilizing the cache. They said NT performed 20 times better using it's cache. This doesn't surprise me. Small writes to RAIDs aren't very efficient. The fact that Novel only improved 30%, and Red Hat Linux only 10 to 15% is surprising. Either the RAID is configured in a very strange way, or the test software has some problems. I don't believe that Novel or Linux has that poor of a file system cache. It also seems strange that SCO's performance didn't change. The reason the article gave was SCO's journaling file system, however NTFS is also a journaling file system. I seems strange, but I really don't know anything about SCO.
If they provided some throughput numbers from some of their tests it might be possible to make some sense of their report.
They did provide some numbers from their TCP transaction tests, however these results are even less convincing.
Their test configuration used Intel Pro 100+ NICs. The said they used 4 in the "control machine", I'm assuming they also used 4 in the server they were testing. There results showed the NT box running at 438.199 Mbits/sec. If they're only counting data going in one direction this is simply impossible. If they are counting both directions of a full duplex operation it's still not very believable. Even half this number is not very believable.
The only thing I feel safe in deducing from this report is that the testers aren't very good at presenting their information, and possible arent any good at setting up anything close to a realistic test.
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Great, so we end up with a bunch of lawyers getting rich off of sueing MS. How does that help consumers? Even if they win huge class action lawsuits against MS's pricing of Windows what do consumers get? Maybe a check for $10?
The settlement would have given OEMs the flexibility to distinguish their products, which is what they wanted. The government would have had some ability to oversee MS's business practices, which would likely leed to more fair and consiestant OEM pricing. Microsoft would have retained control of what features their products contain (with the exception of IE).
The government doesn't seem to think that any settlement that doesn't even the playing field is good enough. Why would anyone want a government leveled playing field. How can any company be expected to inovate and create a better product, if the government will just dictate a level playing field.
I think that MS has done a lot of bad things, but the remedy needs to address the problems. The lawsuit was supposed to address integrating IE into Windows. I believe the States also complained about MS's OEM pricing of Office and Windows as a package. The rest of the testimony was supposed to just show a pattern of poor behavior on MS's part. Why is it that the government's resolution to the problem (breaking up MS) doesn't seem to be a very good solution to the charges they brought against MS?
My main concern at this point is that the government doesn't seem to be trying to help consumers as much as Microsoft's competitors. The worst thing that could happen from this trial is that a legal precedent of the government regulating how software is developed could result. That could be much worse for consumers than a monopolistic MS. After all Microsoft does innovate to some extent, and someone could always just build a better OS and compete with MS. However, few things stifle innovation like burocracy. If you've ever tried managing a software project you know what I mean. It's bad enough trying to get marketing to decide what they want, and determine what you can do with the resources at hand (time, personel, hardware, money). Immagine if those same indecisive marketing people were trying to second guess what the government would let them do? Immagine what happens when your product's significantly better than your competitor's and you start affecting the sales of some company in another Congressman's district. Even if that Congressman's not corrupt, is it his duty to fight for free enterprise, or to fight for the jobs of his hard working constituants, or even the tax revenues that allow the government in his state to perform their operations.
We really need to keep the government out of determining how products are developed, because the results aren't likly to be anything the software industry or consumers really want.
No. I get paid to code. I get nothing extra if people use my program.
Perhaps in the future, radio stations and websites will pay musicians to play music, not giving anything extra for the use of it.
I get paid to code too. I don't directly get paid more if people use my programs, but it likely has some effect on me getting raises, or keeping my job.
Being able to make a living on something that others do for free is a privilege, not a right.
Being able to control the distribution of your copyrighted works, and therefore make money off them is a right in the US. There are laws that exhist to protect those rights. If some people choose to give away their creations, they can do that, but that doesn't take away the rights of those who chose to charge for them.
Perhaps in the future, radio stations and websites will pay musicians to play music, not giving anything extra for the use of it.
Then the artists will need to borrow money to record their music, pay people to advertise them to the radio stations and web sites, pay accountants to keep track of the money, and find a way to go after those web sites and stations that don't pay them.
Most artists would never be able to raise enough cash to handle the overhead. Sure a few would make money, just like there are some people who make a decent living off of shareware. One or two might even make it big. The music business is very high risk. It's a very small percentage of artists who ever make much money. I think that the recording industry has gotten too greedy, but I don't think you're being realistic to think that artists would be better off if they all had to fend for themselves. Most have little idea of how to run a business, or how to advertise thier music. They need someone to do that for them. Maybe the industry is currently screwing them over, but I don't think that a large percentage of the artists would be better off without them.
I think you'll find that it's only the big commercial "artists" who are whingeing about Napster. The guys with day jobs aren't making enough money out of CDs to care.
So, because the little guys are too busy working, or just get ignored by the press, it's ok to screw them out of money?
And it's ok to screw the big names, because they have more money than you, and stealing from them is you god given right?
Quit making excuses. People who create something deserve the right to charge something for it if they choose to do so. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But don't steal it either.
I can't say I know much about the schools in "developing countries", or in the UK. Here in the US it does seem like students aren't getting taught much about programming. They're taught enough to be famailiar with how the OS works (usually Windows or Mac OS). Then they seem to learn how to use a word processor and spreadsheet. They may learn a little about programming, but not much.
However, I think this has more to do with what we consider to be a qualified teacher in the US, than with the OS on which they're taught. You can be taught just as little about programming on a Linux system as with a Windows one. If we want to fix the problem in the US we need to start requiring teachers to have more of a technical background instead of training them to be amature child psychologists. It appears that the current process just leads teachers to thing that almost every child has a problem, and to treat them all with Ridilin (sp?). Some math, science, and CS teachers with math, science, and CS degrees might actually produce more students that know those subjects better.
This is the same thing everyone said with Win95 and NT 4.0. At the time Windows 3.11 was the typical business OS, and everyone said they were going to wait for Win95 to mature for a year or so before they upgraded. Same thing with NT 4 on the server side. IS departments running NT 3.51 were for the most part happy to wait for things to mature a bit.
There's good reason's for this. Any software package as large as Win 2000 is going to have bugs. If the OS you have right now is doig ok for you, let someone else figure them out. Even if Win 2000 were perfectly bug free, most people require 3rd party support for hardware or software that isn't ready yet.
This happens every time MS releases an OS. People get on their soapboxes and say it's a failure. Slow addoption, althoug I wouldn't call 1 million coppies in a month slow, hasn't killed MS yet.
Nope, the law actually undermines your privacy. It's a stupid and unenforceable law (you can't detect whether or not someone is listening), and, of course, it does not apply to government and police agencies.
/. say that the 40 bit encryption used in the DVD format was to weak to be considered a reasonable attempt, but at the time it was the strongest encryption that could be implemented in an exprotable product.
I agree that the average person gains little from this law. I suspect that the law does get enforced when people are caught using information they gained by this means for illegal purposes.
ie. Someone gets caught for credit card fraud, and they find out during the investigation that they got the credit card number by listening in on cell phone calls.
I also think that it's just as illegal for the police to use a scanner to listen to cell phone calls, without a warrant, as it is for an individual. That does provide protection, as long as the police are law abiding.
As for cell phone companies giving their customers a false sense of security, I'm sure they do try to do that, and I'm sure they succeed for the most part. However, I don't think that their misleading comments are what's undermining my privacy. It's the people who are breaking the law, and listening in.
It provides a disincentive for the cell phone companies to actually use good encryption, not that they would want to do so anyway.
What provides the disincentive is that the FCC would likly block any cell phone implementation the includes encryption. Even though wiretaps require a court order, the government still wants to be able to implement that wire tap easily and conveinently. The government has proven many times in the past that they are willing to sacrifice our privacy in the name of being able to "track down criminals."
I agree there's a problem, but I think you're pointing your finger in the wrong direction when you blame the cell phone companies.
Yes but you shouldn't lie to people and tell them they are having private conversations when they use cell phones, either.
Agreed, but getting rid of the law won't solve the problem.
So, your only option is to use a good defense like strong encryption.
This doesn't address the problem that it takes considerable time to develop and implement these systems, and the definition of "strong encryption" changes constantly. I've heard many people on
Considering the paranoia that exhists in law enforcment any time encryption is mentioned, it's going to be hard to get FCC approval for any system which provides any significant encryption. The current laws against intercepting cell phone calls do little to prevent determined criminals. However, the threat of even a nearly unenforcable law does deter some, and making the equipment illegal will make it possible to prosecute others. When it comes down to it, the laws, while not an ideal solution, seem to be better than not having the laws to me.
People should have a right to privacy. However, they give up that right in situations where they broadcast their conversations in a way that anyone can listen in.
I understand that you feel this way, but that's not how the laws in the US work. There are wiretapping laws that make this illegal, and personally, I'm in favor of those laws.
Give me a break. How are your rights being infringed on by not being able to listen into other people's private phone calls. Those frequencies are reserved for Cellular phone calls, and the law is there to protect people's privacy. The option of having the transmissions encrypted would be good, if it were practical. At the time Cell phones were taking off the technology was very expensive. I don't know the history, but I also expect that had the Cell phone companies tried using encryption, they would never have gotten it by the FCC at the time. Their only real choices at the time were to implement it without encryption, or not to produce the technology.
Now we're at a point that the technology to encrypt the communications is relatively inexpensive, however it's too late to change now. The current equipment is already in widespread use. You can't just tell everyone with a Cell phone that they have to throw that one away and buy a new one that works with encrypted communications.
Personally, I consider the law prohibiting you from listening in on Cell phone transmissions to be a reasonable restriction to protect the privacy of Cell phone users.
The issue of digital cellular brings up another problem. The ability of encrypting the communications in a cost effective manner was availble when digital cellular was being implemented. However, what level of encryption would you have them use. How long will it be before anything they could have practically implemented to provide real-time encryption would be cracked? I'm no expert on these issues, but I expect that by the time something goes through the several year development cycle, then takes a year or so to get approved by the FCC, then takes a while to get implemented and accepted. What was reasonable at the time it was designed, is no longer worth the effort.
Decryption technology doesn't stand still, while the encryption technology has to in order to provide interoperability with the phones and the system. You can try and update how things work every couple years while insuring backwards compatability, however that adds a significant expense to the system and the phones. If also doesn't protect people who don't buy new phones every couple of years.
Laws making it illegal to listen into someone else's phone calls can't prevent people from doing it any more than laws prohibiting theft and murder prevent roberies and murder. However, I think that people do have a right to privacy, and that people who invade that privacy by intercepting their private conversations should be punished.
I am going to go out and buy all the parts and give it a whirl. At the worst, I'm out a few bucks. At the best, I've found a way to save s pretty chunk of change for my boss...
RAID controller $125
IDE $35
Time Spent @ pay rate ???
Savings Very Little
What you end up with is a RAID controller that that has limited reliability. Yes, this hack may work, at least for now. It's quite likely that there's some way the BIOS can tell which version or the card it's running on, and just isn't checking it right now. Next time they release a patch to the RAID BIOS you're hacked board becomes a paperweight. You also lose anything that resembles a warranty.
This seems like a neat thing to try at home, where it's your time your, and your data that's being wasted if things don't work out. But your boss may not be as happy with you as you think when he sees you taking a soldering iron to the board that's going to be used as a RAID controller to store improtant company data.
The flip side is that it would give razor-sharp piranha teeth to the GPL, and if you could actually prove that someone was distributing software in violation of the GPL (i.e. I take GNU Emacs, hack it a little bit, and sell it without releasing source code), then they can be not only sued, but also charged with a crime! Chances are if you can prove they did, they'll be convicted or found liable for damages.
I have no legal experience, but I have a real concern about this. I don't know if UCITA provides for criminal penalties, but I think there may be problems with a civil case. How to you show there were damages when the software is free. What amount of money did they cost you not releasing their source. You gave away the code, and even gave them permission to modify and redistribute the application. I understand that the GPL requires that they provide the source, but is it likely that they'll ever have to pay any damages. I can see the courts stoping them from distributing the software, but without finicial penalties, I don't think the "teeth" are very sharp.
Since I really don't know much about this it would be nice if someone with a little more legal background could clarify this.
I think ist's something that would be nice to be able to turn off, but for some people's applications it could increase performance by increasing hits in the disk cache.
I think MS can get away with having Licensing fees for the X-Box, but not Windows. If the licensing fees are on a per unit basis the developers have little to lose. The idea seems to be that it will take very little effort to port the Windows games to the X-Box. I expect developers will port it, pay the licensing fees, and pass the costs on to the consumers. Maybe an X-Box game will cost a bit more than a Windows game. In the end, it's more profit for developers with little development costs involved. I don't think a licensing fee will make many developers hesitate. The question will be if the price is higher, and if consumers will pay it.
This is just a guess, but I betting the key to a cheap processor is that it won't be an Athlon. AMD is saying that the K6-2+ will be done in a 0.18 micron process. That may allow it to fit into the "up to 1GHz" range they're talking about by the time the X-Box hits the market. As for the prices of the other components, things are much cheaper when you buy direct and in volume. Manufacturers would be willing to give Microsoft good prices and live with low margins if they can get designed in to a high volume product. The prices we see on the market have to include profit for the manufacturer, distributor, and vendor you eventually buy it from.
The AMD K6-2+ won't be able to provide the FPU power of the Athlon, or PIII processors, but the 1GHz clock speed makes for really good marketing among the masses. The $150 price does seem low. Maybe it will be in the $350 range, maybe the Playstation will be getting such a foothold that Microsoft will be willing to lose that much on each unit and make it up on the software somehow. Maybe they'll try to make their money through MSN, or some other service they'll provide.
I expect Microsoft will continue to "leak" info and tweak the features such as the CPU speed as well as the price untill they find the "revenue maximising price", as always.
Considering that the PSX2 is likely to be in the $350 range, and Sony will likely be losing money on them at that price the $150 price tag seems awfully low even if it doesn't come out for a year or more.
However, if Microsoft plans on making money off of the games like Sony does with the playstation, I think they will still get a lot of developer support. Microsoft has done a very good job at providing game developers with tools and APIs. If microsoft continues with this, it will be considerably easier to port Windows based PC titles to the X-Box than any other game console. They've also already have some experience in the console business after working with Sega on the Dreamcast.
Microsoft's hardware is usually pretty well designed, and a console's OS doesn't need to have support for every piece of hardware on the face of the earth, so they can concentrate on getting the features and hardware support they need working well. The oppertunity is there, wether or not Microsoft will pull it off is another thing.
I wonder if the X-Box will work with Microsoft's terminal server? They may be planning to recoup some of their profits by selling Windows 2000 client licenses, or by making Office apps available only by rental or subscription.
It will be interesting to see what they try and do to keep these from becomming cheap Linux boxes.
Actually, in my opinion Microsoft did a pretty good job on IE, at least versions 4 and 5. Some of Microsoft's hardware has been pretty cool in the past. They don't fall short on everything, just most things.
You don't need to patent something to keep it from being patented. Simply publish it. He could have simply written an article for a real time magazine.
It costs $10,000 to get a patent. It really isn't very useful unless it's enforced, so why was it done? It can only be used as a revenue source or a club to make other people do what you want.
If the patent were really unique, I'd have no problem with it. However, it looks like any hard real-time OS that runs non real-time APPs is going to violate this patent. If this guy has any experience with real-time OSs, he knows this has been done in the industry for many years. Patenting something you know already exhists is simply immoral. I hope the costs of defending this bogus patent make him bankrupt.
If you're not going to enforce your patent, then there's no benefit in patenting something. Just publish the idea, then no one can patent it. Save yourself the $10,000 required to get the patent.
AMD has produced a great processor that still has a lot of room for growth. Their yields are up. They seem to have gotten the copper process working well for them, which seems to have been a major problem for chip makers. They're able to meet demand. Everything's going well.
.18 micron copper process. Either that's one huge FAB, or if Intel continues to stumble, AMD's going to have some serious problems meeting demand. This gives Intel what they need, time. They've been able to meet demand so far, but due to high costs and shortages of motherboards demand has not been as high as it could be. Now that VIA is producing chipsets, and motherboard should become cheaper and more available, it will be interesting to see if AMD can meet the increased demand.
But to say that Intel is going to topple is more than a bit extreme at this point. AMD can meet current demand, and the Dresden FAB will allow them to expand, but their ability to produce chips is still very small compared to Intel. They are going to have one FAB capable of making chips with a
Even if AMD doesn't crush Intel, the desktop microprocessor market appears to be competative once again. The mobile processor market will be heating up quickly with, Crusoe, VIA's upcomming offering, and even the StrongARM (if x86 compatability isn't required).
Ok, this guy asks people for facts to support their views, and you call him a Troll, and accuse him of spreading FUD. However, you provide no facts, and basicly resort to name calling.
This is not a good way to get your point across.
Wether you believe it or not there are some of us out there who write code that works on multiple platforms. Personally I like to hear both sides of the story without the pro-Microsoft views being shouted down as FUD, with no facts provided.
I'm not saying I buy the idea that Microsoft publishes ALL of their APIs, however, I don't have any specific examples to refute it either.
I think your being a little hard on the poster calling his post a troll. I'm not saying that the EU doesn't have the right to investigate MS on anti-trust grounds, but the timing is very suspect. Windows 2000 has been in beta for a very long time. For EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti to be making a public "formal request" for information just over a week before it's release tells me he either wishes to cast a shadow over the release of the software. Wether it's being done for competitive reasons, or political reasons I have no clue, but I think the timing is a little to obvious to be a coincedence. I don't think the post was a troll, just his opinion.
First of all, I agree that parents shouldn't have to worry about their children seeing pornography in a public place like the library. I think it makes sense for libraries to take reasonable precautions to prevent this.
However, the way it appears to be implemented goes far beyond protecting children. If the purpose is to prohibit children's access to material, find a solution that does that. The problem is that the people who seem to lead the effort want to censor everyone's access to material on these public computers. They sell the solutions to the masses based on the emotional issue of protecting children. Almost any time someone wants to ban something, they base their arguments on protectin children, and seem to never taylor their solution to specifically protect children.
The end result seems to often be that some lawyers make a lot of money, a Judge is forced to overturn whatever solution was implemented, because it's overly broad and inhibits people's Constitutional Rights. How does this "protect children?" If these organizations were actually trying to prohibit only children, they'd likely meet with much greater success. Their current efforts are more likely to divide communities, and make lawyers a lot of money.
There's one last issue in your post I want to address.
you don't even have a right to use the system, or have the government provide a system for you to use
These are public systems provided with these people's tax dollars. They do have the right to use these systems. I'm pretty sure this was already addressed in the lawsuit where the Judge ruled the filtering software unconstitutional.
I don't think it would be that hard to move the site. People would just start posting the new site address on slashdot, and it would likely get moderated up. Such seems to be the nature of the Slashdot crowd.
The problem is that Slashdot has been successful for a reason. The editors at Slashdot have done their best to make Slashdot an impartial place to find news that applies to their audience. An impartiality is imposed by the readers, who have the ability to decide what they think is important. If Slashdot is to be reborn you have to find another group of people with those same skills and motivations for it to succeed.
I not saying that's it's impossible, but you do have the problem that there's a lot of $$$ involved, and that can change most people.
Slashdot has done an exelent job of remaining impartial so far. If anyone can resist the swaying power of the almighty $$$, I think they can. However, when there's $5,000,000,000 on the line, there's bound to be a lot of pressure. Remember that although these companies were founded on the idea of supporting free or open software, the board of directors is ultimately determined by the stockholders. This means that the people with the most $$$ ultimately call the shots. Good luck to the people at Slashdot, I hope things don't get ugly.
Companies (like Xing) paid $10M apiece to get a license to build DVD players or write DVD software.
I hadn't hear the $10M figure before, actually I never heard any figure. Usually the terms of licensing agreements are closely guarded info. Licenses also usually sold by a certain dollar amount, for a certain number.
Several companies have applied for licenses to make DVD decoders for Linux, and have been denied each and every time.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought I read yesterday that the DVD CCA specifically told the Judge that no one had requested a license to create DVD software for Linux. I can't seem to find the article back, but if you can tell me where you heard that several companies were denied licenses, I'd happily look there for the info.
My statements are based on the facts I've read in articles. I thought I read the bit about no one requesting a Linux license in the court documents, but I can't seem to find it back. But I have to ask why the DVD CCA wouldn't license the technology to a company that was interested in making Linux software. After all, more licensing fees means more money for them. There's nothing about a Linux client in itself that makes it easier to crack than a Windows client. The only reason I could guess is that the company requesting the license didn't have the finacial backing to afford a reasonable licensing agreement (by the DVD CCA's definition of reasonable), or they had concerns that the company would simply leak the propriatary information.
The cluestick isn't necessary, just show me the facts. Who are the companies? Where did you read or hear that they had tried to attain licenses? I'm also curious where you heard the $10M licensing fee.
The people who created the DVD encryption spent millions of dollars convincing the recording industry and the electronices industry that this DVD idea would work. There are two good reasons why the encryption needs to be there. One, the recording industry isn't going to release the movies unless they think the format provides some method of limiting or reducing pirating. The other is that the people who created the format are making their money licensing the technology. DVD CSS is fighting for their livelihoods. If they lose this trade secret, they have the choice of comming up with a new encryption method, and convincing hardware manufacturers and the recording industry to support it, or they're out of business.
They created the technology, and license it to make money. Now, because someone has stole that technology, they are in danger of losing their shirts. And why? There is nothing preventing a software company from licensing the technology to create DVD software that runs under Linux. This ins't Microsoft Word, where you can only achieve compatability by reverse engineering. It's not free, but don't the people that worked to create this format deserve a reasonable profit for their efforts? And as for the lame excuse that the encryption was so simple that cracking it can't be wrong... I think I read that it lasted 3 years before it was cracked, and 40 bit incryption was as strong as they were permitted to use because of US export restrictions.
Jon Johansen had a reasonable expectation that what he did was wrong, and if the Norwegian courts find that what he did was against their laws, then he should be held accountable for his crimes. If the DVD CSS is smart, they've already applied for a patent on this technology, and if it's awarded, this will become a mute point then, because DeCSS will likely violate the patent. As long as they applied for the patent before the algorithm became widly available, it won't matter that it's been published all over the internet now. Time will tell.
I started wondering what they were trying to do when they said they running the tests with the write through option set so the file system cache was bypassed. Three of the four systems have journeling file systems, and the files are on a RAID. RAID performance is horrible for small transfers. The said they also ran the tests using the file system cache. They provide absolutely no throughput results for the file system tests, but do mention that the NT results were lower than expected. They mention that it might be because of the drivers for the Compaq RAID controller.
The next issue is the performance difference between writing through the cache, and utilizing the cache. They said NT performed 20 times better using it's cache. This doesn't surprise me. Small writes to RAIDs aren't very efficient. The fact that Novel only improved 30%, and Red Hat Linux only 10 to 15% is surprising. Either the RAID is configured in a very strange way, or the test software has some problems. I don't believe that Novel or Linux has that poor of a file system cache. It also seems strange that SCO's performance didn't change. The reason the article gave was SCO's journaling file system, however NTFS is also a journaling file system. I seems strange, but I really don't know anything about SCO.
If they provided some throughput numbers from some of their tests it might be possible to make some sense of their report.
They did provide some numbers from their TCP transaction tests, however these results are even less convincing.
Their test configuration used Intel Pro 100+ NICs. The said they used 4 in the "control machine", I'm assuming they also used 4 in the server they were testing. There results showed the NT box running at 438.199 Mbits/sec. If they're only counting data going in one direction this is simply impossible. If they are counting both directions of a full duplex operation it's still not very believable. Even half this number is not very believable.
The only thing I feel safe in deducing from this report is that the testers aren't very good at presenting their information, and possible arent any good at setting up anything close to a realistic test.