You have a simplified view of reality. All of this might've worked 10 years ago. Then, someone tried it. Then, the spammers found a way around it. Today, you can be sure none of these simple schemes will cause so much as a dent in their revenue stream.
Can you imagine how exponentially greater this amount will be in a few short years?
Maybe, maybe not. It is just as likely that a few years down the road, we've come back to realizing that games are, first and foremost, games and meant to provide entertainment and fun - not income. Then again, maybe not. But right now, anyone claiming to know how it'll play out is simply a fool.
but I think their case would have been stronger if they'd included MSN search in their search options on installation.
Google is making browsers now? I must've missed that announcement, could you point me to the proper website, please?
See, that's the entire point. Google/FF is a cooperation between two independent parties. If Google pisses off FF, then FF 2.0 might well default to Yahoo. But MSN/IE is a monopoly corporation pointing at itself, and there are laws against that. They've even been convicted for breaking said laws already.
Yes, Google is kind of whining. But they're still right.
The thing about Firefox defaulting to Google is the Google isn't a subsidary of the Mozilla Foundation.
The other thing is that the Mozilla Foundation isn't a convicted criminal monopoly.
Google is perfectly correct - this is just another Microsoft move of the "leverage monopoly in one area to gain market share in another" business method, the very one that they were convicted for.
Just because it benefits Google doesn't mean they aren't right.
And even if it were a business, I don't see why running a business has to mean not caring about the rest of the world. Sure, there are compromises you have to make between your agenda and your business needs - but it's up to everyone himself and his consciousness as to the details of the compromise. Many small business owners are open about their political or religious loyalties, and are doing well because they found ways to compromise or to mix business and "message" in a way that hurts neither.
Only if your definition of "professional" includes "not having an opinion and not caring for anything beyond the strict definition of the field".
The quoted attitude of the studio producer explains why Hollywood only produces blanket, uninspiring crap. I don't mind a good movie with a message. Many good books are good exactly because they have something to say, and manage to say it well.
My online game has 2 points where it tells people to switch. One is an occasional (once a week or so) friendly reminder to IE users that they should consider upgrading. The other is a page that simply doesn't work in IE. It's valid HTML 4, CSS 2 and IE breaks it horribly. So I catch IE users, tell them about the problem (i.e. IE doesn't properly support web standards) and then allow them to continue on and see the train wreck with their own eyes.
For the past year or so, Firefox has been the #1 browser in my statistics (currently 51%, IE 37%). It works. It takes time, but it works.
And before you cry - this isn't a personal "me and my dog" homepage, I have around 1500 players and 120,000 visits a month. And it's not a Linux site either, the OS statistics say 93% windows.
While fighting as a sport, or for close combat, will continue to exist and has its right to exist, the art of sneaky assassination is no longer a business. If you want someone dead, hire a hitman. Easier to train, more numerous, thus cheaper.
Errr... I think you got something mixed up there. The Ninjas were the hitmen of their time (and culture). The hitman you hire has to come from somewhere, you know?
And killing someone silently hasn't changed one bit as preferably over shooting him with a sniper rifle (which you can not silence, no matter what Hollywood tries to tell you).
And that's really why people hate Walmart - it shows that capitalism does what utopian socialism never could.
Pay their workers adequately?
Walmart is not an example of great free-market capitalism. It's a parasite of the last remaining aspects of social support. Walmart couldn't exist, for example, if the government wouldn't support a large part of its workforce through wellfare - because those people couldn't survive on their Walmart paycheck alone and would go and find something else. Anything else. Criminal, if need be.
Saying Walmart is just a store is like saying slavery is just a kind of employment contract.
There's enough documentation out there (much has already been linked to in other comments) about how intentionally exploitive the Walmart business strategy is.
Many of these pirated items were not part of the genuine NEC product range.
In other words: The criminal version of "embrace and extend". Plus, of course, it avoids direct comparison which would threaten the appearance of authenticity.
Genius, pure genius.
Also note that the article says the goods were generally of good quality. I wonder if NEC - provided they had known about these before starting criminal investigations - would've simply bought them out instead, expanding its product line at the same time.:-)
Hey, let's pirate the pirate term! Once it's lost all its meaning, the RIAA will have to come up with something else.
In fact, I think it's pretty dumb to use piracy in the first place, at least while the latest hollywood movies promote the usual romantic, somewhat-evil-but-ultimatly-good-at-heart image of pirates.
Encrypting a filesystem prevents arbitrary operating system from accessing it!
I mean -- what the fuck?! -- isn't that the whole idea?
No, it isn't. The idea of encryption is to prevent arbitrary people from accessing data.
PGP doesn't care if you decrypt the mail I send you on Linux, Windos, OSX or your 1973 C64 with your hand-ported PGP version (well, that'll probably take a few hours, but hey).
Filesystem encryption via TPM, with the option to store the key in the BIOS(!!!) is one heck of a fucked up idea. If your BIOS goes toast, so does your data. If you were smart enough to have the key on an USB disk or memorized, you still need a TPM computer to read it after the machine dies.
Now filesystem encryption is one heck of a good idea, and absolutely needed. But like so many M$ implementations, this one is just enough off the mark to ruin the entire idea. It'll probably cause filesystem encryption to be set back 5 years or so, just like everything else M$ tries to conquer.
Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
Depends on your target. Do you want to protect the user's data from foreign parties or do you want to protect data from the user?
In the first case (let's call it privacy), the OS shouldn't matter. As long as I know the key, have the smartcard or whatever you choose as my token to verify me, I should be able to access my data.
But in the second case (let's call it DRM), you're totally right. Only the "trusted" OS should allow me to view my data, and only as long as I satisfy all the various restrictions third parties have put on it.
There's no way they could've received EAL4 (see the product list) without good documentation. The CC have a very strong focus on documentation and EAL4 is not something you'd get with shoddy and incomplete docs.
Now I haven't studied the evaluation target, so I can't say for sure just which APIs it includes and which ones not. Also note that the certifications are for 2000, 20003 Server and XP only and your experience predates those, so yes, M$ has probably cleaned up shop.
an argument that Europe's top antitrust authority dismissed as "absurd" and "frivolous."
This is where I got ears, you know? Lawyers, like tech people, use a very precise language that only happens to have a larger overlap with the everyday language, so it isn't so much noticed as "tech jargon". But like your average RFC's "must" or "should", the word "frivolous" has a very precise and strong meaning when a lawyer uses it.
IANAL, but I judge this as a warning shot across the bows of the M$ lawyers. They might be in for a hard time personally if their arguments are indeed challenged as such and found to be frivolous.
Now you will surely be able to tell me a scheme how I can use my smartcard to reveal, say, 20 different pieces of information, without me having to remember 20 different PINs...
The problem with these smartcards, RFID, etc. is actually quite simple:
I can't choose not to provide a piece of info that's on it.
If they had a way for me to control which information from them I want to reveal, there would be much less trouble, I'm sure. Then I could have a single ID card with all my financial, medical, etc. info on it, but you only get whatever I explicitly give you.
And no, implementing that in the clients, say programming the doc's computer so it only reads the medical data, is not good enough.
Most european nations have had what you americans would call "ID cards" for decades if not centuries. Actually, they are not called ID cards, but passports. That's a bit confusing because you probably consider a passport something for travel, whereas in most of europe, you have a second (and slightly different) passport for that.
Most europeans don't consider national ID cards (let's stick to that terminology) evil in any way and wonder why you americans make such a big issue of it. We've had them for as long as anyone can remember.
And yes, in some european countries it is mandatory to have your ID card with you when you leave the house. I don't think you'll be arrested for not having it, at least I've never heard of that happening after WW2.
You mean they custom built your machine using whatever wacky parts they got for dirt cheap, did little stress testing (if any past 'It powered on!'), and offered no warranty?
No, I mean they built the machine using either what I asked them to or what they considered the best part for the job, did never let a machine leave the shop before it had been running testing software for 24 hours straight (I was sent away once to come back tomorrow!) and if anything broke, or even didn't work as you expected it to, you brought the machine back and they fixed it without looking at the warranty dates first.
I bought several machines there for a reason, even though they would've been slightly cheaper at the large retailer two blocks away.
I may pay (the equivalent of) $30 a month for my ADSL service [...] we're expected to endure countless menu selections, long delays in call-centre queues and lengthy outages as a matter of course.
I agree on the outages. However, the call-center thing is a matter of simple math. At $30 a month - let's be generous and let the phone company's margin be 20%, that's $6 a month in profit. If you keep one call-center agent busy on the phone for 15 minutes, that's about $3-$4 in salary plus overhead - oops, there goes the profit for that month.
The thing is, you can not expect the same level of customer care for $30 as for $30,000. Just doesn't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Three years late - half the features.
That'd make a great slogan for the marketing campaign, wouldn't it? Too bad advertising doesn't have to be truthful.
If it didn't cause them any trouble, they wouldn't bother, right?
You have a simplified view of reality. All of this might've worked 10 years ago. Then, someone tried it. Then, the spammers found a way around it. Today, you can be sure none of these simple schemes will cause so much as a dent in their revenue stream.
Can you imagine how exponentially greater this amount will be in a few short years?
Maybe, maybe not. It is just as likely that a few years down the road, we've come back to realizing that games are, first and foremost, games and meant to provide entertainment and fun - not income.
Then again, maybe not. But right now, anyone claiming to know how it'll play out is simply a fool.
Yes, but MSN search is conspicously absent from Firefox's supplied search engine list
Quite frankly: I'd intentionally exclude anyone who goes around telling people that he'll "fucking bury" me as well.
but I think their case would have been stronger if they'd included MSN search in their search options on installation.
Google is making browsers now? I must've missed that announcement, could you point me to the proper website, please?
See, that's the entire point. Google/FF is a cooperation between two independent parties. If Google pisses off FF, then FF 2.0 might well default to Yahoo. But MSN/IE is a monopoly corporation pointing at itself, and there are laws against that. They've even been convicted for breaking said laws already.
Yes, Google is kind of whining. But they're still right.
The thing about Firefox defaulting to Google is the Google isn't a subsidary of the Mozilla Foundation.
The other thing is that the Mozilla Foundation isn't a convicted criminal monopoly.
Google is perfectly correct - this is just another Microsoft move of the "leverage monopoly in one area to gain market share in another" business method, the very one that they were convicted for.
Just because it benefits Google doesn't mean they aren't right.
Correct.
And even if it were a business, I don't see why running a business has to mean not caring about the rest of the world. Sure, there are compromises you have to make between your agenda and your business needs - but it's up to everyone himself and his consciousness as to the details of the compromise. Many small business owners are open about their political or religious loyalties, and are doing well because they found ways to compromise or to mix business and "message" in a way that hurts neither.
Perhaps not, but that's how you manage it.
Only if your definition of "professional" includes "not having an opinion and not caring for anything beyond the strict definition of the field".
The quoted attitude of the studio producer explains why Hollywood only produces blanket, uninspiring crap. I don't mind a good movie with a message. Many good books are good exactly because they have something to say, and manage to say it well.
And tell you what: It works.
My online game has 2 points where it tells people to switch. One is an occasional (once a week or so) friendly reminder to IE users that they should consider upgrading.
The other is a page that simply doesn't work in IE. It's valid HTML 4, CSS 2 and IE breaks it horribly. So I catch IE users, tell them about the problem (i.e. IE doesn't properly support web standards) and then allow them to continue on and see the train wreck with their own eyes.
For the past year or so, Firefox has been the #1 browser in my statistics (currently 51%, IE 37%). It works. It takes time, but it works.
And before you cry - this isn't a personal "me and my dog" homepage, I have around 1500 players and 120,000 visits a month. And it's not a Linux site either, the OS statistics say 93% windows.
He can always out-out of that prison sentence, right? Just a mail with "remove me"...
While fighting as a sport, or for close combat, will continue to exist and has its right to exist, the art of sneaky assassination is no longer a business. If you want someone dead, hire a hitman. Easier to train, more numerous, thus cheaper.
Errr... I think you got something mixed up there. The Ninjas were the hitmen of their time (and culture). The hitman you hire has to come from somewhere, you know?
And killing someone silently hasn't changed one bit as preferably over shooting him with a sniper rifle (which you can not silence, no matter what Hollywood tries to tell you).
And that's really why people hate Walmart - it shows that capitalism does what utopian socialism never could.
Pay their workers adequately?
Walmart is not an example of great free-market capitalism. It's a parasite of the last remaining aspects of social support. Walmart couldn't exist, for example, if the government wouldn't support a large part of its workforce through wellfare - because those people couldn't survive on their Walmart paycheck alone and would go and find something else. Anything else. Criminal, if need be.
Saying Walmart is just a store is like saying slavery is just a kind of employment contract.
There's enough documentation out there (much has already been linked to in other comments) about how intentionally exploitive the Walmart business strategy is.
Many of these pirated items were not part of the genuine NEC product range.
:-)
In other words: The criminal version of "embrace and extend". Plus, of course, it avoids direct comparison which would threaten the appearance of authenticity.
Genius, pure genius.
Also note that the article says the goods were generally of good quality. I wonder if NEC - provided they had known about these before starting criminal investigations - would've simply bought them out instead, expanding its product line at the same time.
Hey, let's pirate the pirate term! Once it's lost all its meaning, the RIAA will have to come up with something else.
In fact, I think it's pretty dumb to use piracy in the first place, at least while the latest hollywood movies promote the usual romantic, somewhat-evil-but-ultimatly-good-at-heart image of pirates.
Encrypting a filesystem prevents arbitrary operating system from accessing it!
I mean -- what the fuck?! -- isn't that the whole idea?
No, it isn't. The idea of encryption is to prevent arbitrary people from accessing data.
PGP doesn't care if you decrypt the mail I send you on Linux, Windos, OSX or your 1973 C64 with your hand-ported PGP version (well, that'll probably take a few hours, but hey).
Filesystem encryption via TPM, with the option to store the key in the BIOS(!!!) is one heck of a fucked up idea. If your BIOS goes toast, so does your data. If you were smart enough to have the key on an USB disk or memorized, you still need a TPM computer to read it after the machine dies.
Now filesystem encryption is one heck of a good idea, and absolutely needed. But like so many M$ implementations, this one is just enough off the mark to ruin the entire idea. It'll probably cause filesystem encryption to be set back 5 years or so, just like everything else M$ tries to conquer.
Bitlocker would be rather pointless if any OS could read the encryped drive now wouldn't it?
Depends on your target. Do you want to protect the user's data from foreign parties or do you want to protect data from the user?
In the first case (let's call it privacy), the OS shouldn't matter. As long as I know the key, have the smartcard or whatever you choose as my token to verify me, I should be able to access my data.
But in the second case (let's call it DRM), you're totally right. Only the "trusted" OS should allow me to view my data, and only as long as I satisfy all the various restrictions third parties have put on it.
I doubt this.
There's no way they could've received EAL4 (see the product list) without good documentation. The CC have a very strong focus on documentation and EAL4 is not something you'd get with shoddy and incomplete docs.
Now I haven't studied the evaluation target, so I can't say for sure just which APIs it includes and which ones not. Also note that the certifications are for 2000, 20003 Server and XP only and your experience predates those, so yes, M$ has probably cleaned up shop.
an argument that Europe's top antitrust authority dismissed as "absurd" and "frivolous."
This is where I got ears, you know? Lawyers, like tech people, use a very precise language that only happens to have a larger overlap with the everyday language, so it isn't so much noticed as "tech jargon". But like your average RFC's "must" or "should", the word "frivolous" has a very precise and strong meaning when a lawyer uses it.
IANAL, but I judge this as a warning shot across the bows of the M$ lawyers. They might be in for a hard time personally if their arguments are indeed challenged as such and found to be frivolous.
I happen to own one and work with it, yes.
Now you will surely be able to tell me a scheme how I can use my smartcard to reveal, say, 20 different pieces of information, without me having to remember 20 different PINs...
Thought so.
The problem with these smartcards, RFID, etc. is actually quite simple:
I can't choose not to provide a piece of info that's on it.
If they had a way for me to control which information from them I want to reveal, there would be much less trouble, I'm sure. Then I could have a single ID card with all my financial, medical, etc. info on it, but you only get whatever I explicitly give you.
And no, implementing that in the clients, say programming the doc's computer so it only reads the medical data, is not good enough.
I don't know the half of how 'papers' work
Most european nations have had what you americans would call "ID cards" for decades if not centuries. Actually, they are not called ID cards, but passports. That's a bit confusing because you probably consider a passport something for travel, whereas in most of europe, you have a second (and slightly different) passport for that.
Most europeans don't consider national ID cards (let's stick to that terminology) evil in any way and wonder why you americans make such a big issue of it. We've had them for as long as anyone can remember.
And yes, in some european countries it is mandatory to have your ID card with you when you leave the house. I don't think you'll be arrested for not having it, at least I've never heard of that happening after WW2.
You mean they custom built your machine using whatever wacky parts they got for dirt cheap, did little stress testing (if any past 'It powered on!'), and offered no warranty?
No, I mean they built the machine using either what I asked them to or what they considered the best part for the job, did never let a machine leave the shop before it had been running testing software for 24 hours straight (I was sent away once to come back tomorrow!) and if anything broke, or even didn't work as you expected it to, you brought the machine back and they fixed it without looking at the warranty dates first.
I bought several machines there for a reason, even though they would've been slightly cheaper at the large retailer two blocks away.
I may pay (the equivalent of) $30 a month for my ADSL service [...]
we're expected to endure countless menu selections, long delays in call-centre queues and lengthy outages as a matter of course.
I agree on the outages. However, the call-center thing is a matter of simple math. At $30 a month - let's be generous and let the phone company's margin be 20%, that's $6 a month in profit. If you keep one call-center agent busy on the phone for 15 minutes, that's about $3-$4 in salary plus overhead - oops, there goes the profit for that month.
The thing is, you can not expect the same level of customer care for $30 as for $30,000. Just doesn't happen.