Just a "government mandated security" bill... and we all know how well that works. There's no mention of increased penalties for leaking data; my guess is that in practice it will make it more difficult to sue or prosecute institutions that leak public data. ("We are compliant with government security regulations! It's not our fault!!")
According to the article, it doesn't even require public disclosure after a security breach, so consumers cannot identify or avoid institutions that make identity theft easy.
After seeing the headline, I thought the democrats were actually getting some real work done... more of the same, I guess.
No, all of them do, just like in the current line. (If you don't believe me, try logging into your XP pro box more than once simultaneously; once locally, and once via remote desktop. Then try to install the microsoft blue tooth stack under server 2003. Or, consider Media Center Editon which is the only one to contain tivo functionality, but is missing server features.)
The real problem that I see with this scheme is that paying more doesn't get you a superset of the features you'd get for the cheaper version. From TFA, if I want to watch HD-DVD's and print to a UNIX system, I'll need *two* physical computers to do it. WTF?
I guess I could buy a copy of VMWare to run the corporate edition under home edition. Note that I couldn't use Virtual PC, since Virtual PC probably won't support enough hardware acceleration to play HD-DVD under emulation, TFA says Virtual PC won't run under home editions(?!?), and corporate editions can't play HD video... How is this better than the current situation, where server/pro can do most of what XP Home can do?
If the article is correct, the high end version is missing too many features to be useful to pirates/home users. That can't be a good sign for Microsoft, especially given the number of companies that are still running 2000...
I only skimmed the legislation, but other than mentioning "spyware" a lot, I don't see the point of it. It has been illegal to break into computer systems since at least the 80s, regardless of whether you use a technical or social engineering attack.
Similarly, stealing personal information is illegal (or should be, regardless of whether spyware is involved!). The class of social engineering attacks, such as phishing that these bills outlaw, seem to me (IANAL) to be the same thing as the old con artist schemes that were illegal long before the internet.
Has anyone found the section of the legislation that actually makes it illegal to do something that used to be legal? What am I missing?
The first bill mentioned above requires an official investigation into cookies, and their similarity/relationship to spyware. Depending on the result of the investigation, the bill says that it may be applied to "tracking cookies" in the future.
Forcing companies to delete unneeded data and preventing them from reusing consumer data in unauthorized ways are two great steps forward. These policies have great security benifits, and come close to forcing marketers to use 'opt-in' schemes. They also prevent information from being misused in unanticipated ways in the future.
At the risk of repeating myself, here are the main points.
Technology that enables clean, safe and virtually infinite nuclear energy has existed since the '80s. (the chinese reactor is an interesting design, but 1980's technology is already 'good enough,' and works right now)
Today, France is profitably, safely and cleanly producing nuclear power because it standardized on a single "antiquated" reactor design, and has resonable environmental regulations.
Regardless of who is to blame, the US system combines huge subsidies with insane environmental regulations designed to cripple the industry,(*) and has not resulted in safe, clean or profitable nuclear power generation.
The solution to the US's problem is obvious, but vested interests (environmentalists *and* the nuclear industry) have prevented it from being implemented, causing pollution and loss of life.
Also "toxicity" refers to dosage required to kill something (like a human); the mechanisms that cause the death are not so important if you use units like LD50 to normalize it (although since Dioxin and radiation ultimately cause death via comparable mechanisms; cancer, birth defects, etc, *and* the pollutants both have similar lifespans (ones to tens of years in the case of a breeder reactor), it seems like a valid comparison to me...)
(*)The 'hippies' that helped push the regulations through have publicly stated this was their goal. (Why wasn't their goal the protection of the envioronment or production of clean, renewable power???)
Wouldn't happen to be an economist by any chance? Good engineering projects don't work that way - you work out a design that is far superior to everything else FIRST and then that becomes the standard - until you improve it.
Two words: "Mass Production" It's not an engineering project. It's a power plant that needs to run safely and reliably with a finite amount of human resources. If you can reuse your engineering efforts across tens or hundreds of plants then you can save money and end up with a more thoroughly debugged system.
Most people would argue that the French system is far superior to the US system precisely because they didn't try to improve their plants each time they built a new one. They still constantly improve the plants, but since each plant is identical, they focus on retrofitting and safety procedures.
(This seems to be an engineering / quality control argument to me; I am by no means an economist.)
Also, as far as I know, nuclear power in the US was profitable until Cherynobl/3 mile island...since then, the environmentalist movement has systematically killed the industry, regardless of the cost (environmental, or otherwise).
For example, instead of having a nuclear power plant, Columbus, OH has a trash burning plant which is a horrible polluter. Among other things, it dumps dioxin on the south side, causing cancer, neurological damage, and birth defects. This was considered a victory by the environmentalist movement.
(As the link points out, the toxicity of Dioxins rivals that of nuclear waste. Remember that the trash burning plant was designed to dump this stuff into the air, while a nuclear plant is designed to contain its waste.)
Just to clarify, I was referring to nonsensical safety regulations that cut into profitability.
For instance, a sealed barrel of nuclear waste must be spotted by two people while it is being transported, in case the person moving it trips (which makes sense), however, an unsealed barrel that may someday hold nuclear waste is subject to the same restrictions.
Another, more significant issue is that the frequency with which nuclear reactors must be shut down for safety drills and suprise inspections is often so high that the power plant doesn't have time to get to into net production before it is turned off for the equivalent of a 'fire drill'. (Nuclear power plants take a lot of energy, and a lot of time to turn on.)
I'm not saying they should thrown to a free market; I was just pointing out that with proper regulations, they can be commercially/economically viable, and that the US system is a poster child of how to screw it up (throw subsidies at the problem while setting up a regulatory environment that prevents the system from ever becoming practical)
After all, France makes a lot of money exporting electricity to the rest of Europe.
The environmental movement has done a good job at requiring so many frivolous regulations that nuclear power in the US cannot be financially feasible, leading to increased pollution and disease due to other production methods.
However, with mismangement at the level we see at reactors like the Davis Besse reactor, we're lucky that these plants are offline most of the time.
If we really want to do nuclear power right, instead of designing each plan from scratch we should use the (US) design that the French use for all one of their plants. That way, the properties of the reactors would be well understood, and experience gained at one site would be directly transferrable to other sites.
Of course, with our current administration, if we use the design the French are fond of, we'll probably have to call it a "Freedom Reactor."
It might be better to use a more modern design that does not produce long-lasting nuclear waste, and can't melt down, but whatever we do, we should standardize on one reactor design. That would lower the costs of design, construction and operation without sacrificing safety.
Also, what idiot decided these things should be run by for-profit corporations? Has anyone else noticed that the safety of commercially run plants gets worse, not better, over time? (Do we really want Dogbert and the pointy-haired boss having final say over nuclear reactor operations?!?)
Personally, I would rather learn to use an inferior piece of open source software that gets the job done, then a free (as in beer, stolen or otherwise) piece of proprietary software.
Why? Since the source is available, and redistirbution is legal, the open source program is much more likely to exist and be available on the computer I'm using the next time I need it, whether it's next week, or five years from now.
If opera and the mozilla foundation both closed up shop tomorrow, I'd bet that firefox would continue to be available (and compatible with future computer systems) much longer than opera.
Fortunately, I haven't run into any copy protected CDs yet. (although it may be because most of the stuff I buy is over 5 years old or is being released by small record labels or independent artists..) If I do, I'll be sure to demand a refund, or a replacement that plays on my equipment.;)
I think free (as in speech), electronic distribution is the most realistic long term solution. If done properly, we could piggy-back reliable long-term data archival onto the distribution network (so today's creative works will continue to exist over the centuries). Less open distribution channels are inconvenient, and frequently abuse their customers.
Artists could be paid for performances, or by using a 'ransom' funding model, where current sales fund the development of the next album/book/software program/etc. Alternatively, they could reserve some of their collection for paying customers, or limit the public version to 128kbps MP3's, or some other format that sounds fine on anything except for a decent home stereo system.
Right now, the main reason I pay for CDs is that it's worth the money to get a physical backup of the album, and to be able to produce high quality audio files that are in the same format and naming convention as the rest of my music collection. Also, musicians have to eat...
If I bought my stuff from iTunes, or whatever, I wouldn't get a lossless physical copy, the format of the files would be dictated to me, and it would be more difficult to stream my music collection from web browsers, like I do now. All of these problems could be easily solved by an electronic distribution model. (A "Pay once", "download often" model would solve the physical backup problem...)
If it won't use unsigned drivers, then find a security exploit in the windows kernel or use the digital out on your sound card.
Oh wait, content producers can use SAP to disable digital out. That sounds like it will fly with consumers. I can imagine the "this music is incompatible with my speakers" complaints already.
I'll stick with CDs, thanks.
If I really wanted to pay for DRM'ed content, I would look into running the DRM codecs under Linux. If this isn't already supported, you can bet that it will be if significant demand crops up. Barring hardware schemes like TCPA/Palladium, the biggest tricks would be getting any network authentication stuff correct, and reimplementing the API between the "DRM kernel component" and the rest of the system.
As soon as average consumers start losing music that they paid for due to DRM systems, you can bet that tools that circumvent DRM will become commonplace. It doesn't matter how complex the circumvention system is, as long as it works out of the box.
If you try to do this in my wife's '93 GMC 1500, it simply ignores you. Drive -> first or second doesn't do anything until it's going pretty slow. Of course, it is an automatic.;)
I think the US radio stations should take a page out of the cell phone companies books.
First, they should nearly bankrupt themselves by seting up one subtly incompatible DAB variant (each on a distinct frequency range, of course) for each radio station in the city. Then, run one station over each variant. Once the costs of setting up the network is recouped, add more stations. At that point, the technology will be obsolete, and they can scrap it all and start over.
(As I was typing this, it occurred to me that this is already happening with XM / Sirrius. At least there are only two major competing standards in sattelite radio at the moment... *sigh* Why can't access to the sattelite's spectrum be public, and licensed out by an independent, not-for-profit agency? Then we could have competition between our national radio stations, we'd be making more efficient use of spectrum, and there would be more stations to choose from.)
This is all very true, but there's no real technical barrier toward building a user friendly linux PVR. (TiVo's are linux systems, after all!!)
Once MythTV hits a stable release, you could imagine selling preconfigured systems in a quiet, shiny box, and pushing out updates with apt-get. Granted, writing a UI that allows software to be installed is a bit tricky, but the linspire people seem to have already figured that one out with their 'click and run' warehouse. The real tricky is preconfiguring software so that it can be launched and (partially) controlled by the remote control / joystick.
According to mozilla's site, the current version uses an embedded SQL engine for the calendar. It will probably use LDAP for address book stuff, since thunderbird already does that.
I suspect the point of this project is to implement the middleware that is needed to allow collaboration between multiple calendar users. As long as everything written on top of the SQL/LDAP interface is open source, then small organizations could drop in something like postgres, while larger organizations would probably want something like oracle. This seems to be a nice setup for everyone involved.
I'm not familiar with oracle's filesystem layer, but I don't see why straight SQL wouldn't support this application nicely. AFAIK, WebDAV doesn't have sophisticated conflict resolution mechanisms, which is really the main thing that an application like this needs.
It sounds like they found nothing. (Yes, one questionable windows license pre-installed on a system is nothing. In fact, if you suspect it was illegally licensed, report the computer seller to microsoft, and they will send you a shiny, new, legal copy of Windows.)
I suggest you hire a lawyer, and find out if you can (a) Sue them for intimidation and harrassment, (b) Refuse to pay the fine, forcing them to drag you into court to get the money out of you (c) bill them for the three months of legwork and (d) look for uninforcable / illegal clauses in the other agreements your district has signed with the BSA or its members.
Since they obviously have no case, they'll lose in court. Even if they had a case, the publicity would be horrible for them, so they won't drag you into court. The mere threat of having you fight back will probably make them drop chages.
By all means, if it makes financial sense, continue to sever licensing agreements with Microsoft. (This time, pre-audit your systems...even if you re-purchase a few retail copies of windows, you'll probably save money over the educational agreement in the long run. When the BSA comes knocking, you can hand them a copy of the audit, and have your lawyer file for a restraining order, or whatever it is lawyers do.;)
If what you say is true, then someone at the BSA is an extortionist. The only way to get rid of people like that is to get the law involved, and refuse to pay. Any other course of action will encourage them to continue this sort of behavior. Paying 'protection fees' only helps in the short term. If you cave into their demands, you'll still be in the same situation you were in before the audit, execpt that they will know that your district is an easy target.
(I'm not a lawyer, and have never dealt with the BSA, but if five figure expenses are involved, it's probably in your best interest to seek legal advice, especially since you're looking at six figure fines in the future, and since the BSA's behavior sounds a lot like a classic protection racket. If you are not in the position to seek legal advice on behalf of your district, I suggest reporting the matter to whatever internal legal agency or fraud investigation system your school district has in place. When dealing with members of the school distirct, treat this matter as a blackmail scheme, and treat the missing money/time/resources as though they were stolen.)
How is this unlike the computer market? In fact, aren't products like Windows MCE or MythTV trying to take out a big chunk of the DVR market by providing a *platform* that runs software the user chooses?
If I want to install old atari or nintendo console games (or even ascii-art doom) on my cable box, I can do that today with MythTV. How long will it be until Dish's closed, non-consumer-servicable platform supports that sort of thing? What about the other 20-30 apps I'll want to use it for in the next 2-3 years?
I feel like the vast majority of these 'embedded consumer' hardware manufacturers have their heads in the sand. Unless they open their platforms, PC manufacturers will eventually put them out of business.
Generating random text, and attaching a jpeg doesn't work for two reasons.
First, the random text doesn't look like legitimate e-mail, so it will be completely ignored by most spam filters. That leaves a jpeg attachment and bogus headers, which out to look pretty 'spammy' to a mail filter. How often do total strangers send you legitimate email that contains nothing but a JPEG and text that doesn't have any 'important' words in common with your other mail?
Second, if you're like me, then your mail client is set not to render HTML, or display attachments by default, so the only think that is displayed is some random text. (This isn't very effective marketing...) I suspect most people eventually set their mail clients this way, at least if they get penis/porn spam. It usually only takes one JPEG/HTML file to remind me to turn off images in a new copy of thunderbird.
Of course, that's ignoring the fact opening a spam in many mail clients inadvertantly updates spammer databases by default, and disabling HTML fixes that. (The html in the messages load a remote image, and the remote image's filename contains your email address, or a hash of it.)
That's kind of what I thought when I noticed it was set to MyISAM. The debian packages defaulted to it, and I'm too lazy to change it.
If anything, that computer is too uber-l337...I'd be happy to trade 50% performance for hardware stability, but it's what I had laying around...
(I wouldn't have mentioned the MyISAM thing, execpt that I didn't want to accuse MySQL of corrupting my data...)
By the way, I ssh into my TV, and then view the program guide and listen to my ogg's over an encrypted, tunneled http connection. What do you think this is, the nineties?
I had the same problem with MySQL. As I couldn't tell what the problem was from the error message, I cut and pasted it into google, and after 2 minutes, found out that you type this into the MySQL console:
repair table foo;
To think that I could have saved myself all of that time and hassle if I had paid Microsoft for a support contract...
(My MythTV computer tends to overheat and crash, and MySQL is set to MyISAM, so index corruption is to be expected...I would change it to use durable transactional tables if the data was more important.)
In general, I've found that the 'first line' of technical support is internet search engines. Open source offerings generally archive tech support requests made to mailing lists, and these lists are usually read by the developers.
This means that searching for an answer online is often easier and more effective than calling a good tech support line would be.
For example, I've hit bugs that were last seen five years ago by one person and found the solution online. If that bug had been handled over the phone five years ago, and I had called tech support, what are the chances that I would have talked to someone that actually remembered how to solve the problem?
That's not to say that professional tech support can't be worthwhile. However, the full disclosure of bug reports and problem resolutions with open source software give it a huge advantage. This probably means that the job of an open source tech support team is easier then the job of a closed source team, but I've never done professional technical support, so I don't know.
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Just a "government mandated security" bill... and we all know how well that works. There's no mention of increased penalties for leaking data; my guess is that in practice it will make it more difficult to sue or prosecute institutions that leak public data. ("We are compliant with government security regulations! It's not our fault!!")
According to the article, it doesn't even require public disclosure after a security breach, so consumers cannot identify or avoid institutions that make identity theft easy.
After seeing the headline, I thought the democrats were actually getting some real work done... more of the same, I guess.
No, all of them do, just like in the current line. (If you don't believe me, try logging into your XP pro box more than once simultaneously; once locally, and once via remote desktop. Then try to install the microsoft blue tooth stack under server 2003. Or, consider Media Center Editon which is the only one to contain tivo functionality, but is missing server features.)
The real problem that I see with this scheme is that paying more doesn't get you a superset of the features you'd get for the cheaper version. From TFA, if I want to watch HD-DVD's and print to a UNIX system, I'll need *two* physical computers to do it. WTF?
I guess I could buy a copy of VMWare to run the corporate edition under home edition. Note that I couldn't use Virtual PC, since Virtual PC probably won't support enough hardware acceleration to play HD-DVD under emulation, TFA says Virtual PC won't run under home editions(?!?), and corporate editions can't play HD video... How is this better than the current situation, where server/pro can do most of what XP Home can do?
If the article is correct, the high end version is missing too many features to be useful to pirates/home users. That can't be a good sign for Microsoft, especially given the number of companies that are still running 2000...
Californians need this. The year I moved to California, my return was over 20 pages. The return for the state I was moving from was under 5 pages.
I only skimmed the legislation, but other than mentioning "spyware" a lot, I don't see the point of it. It has been illegal to break into computer systems since at least the 80s, regardless of whether you use a technical or social engineering attack.
Similarly, stealing personal information is illegal (or should be, regardless of whether spyware is involved!). The class of social engineering attacks, such as phishing that these bills outlaw, seem to me (IANAL) to be the same thing as the old con artist schemes that were illegal long before the internet.
Has anyone found the section of the legislation that actually makes it illegal to do something that used to be legal? What am I missing?
The first bill mentioned above requires an official investigation into cookies, and their similarity/relationship to spyware. Depending on the result of the investigation, the bill says that it may be applied to "tracking cookies" in the future.
Forcing companies to delete unneeded data and preventing them from reusing consumer data in unauthorized ways are two great steps forward. These policies have great security benifits, and come close to forcing marketers to use 'opt-in' schemes. They also prevent information from being misused in unanticipated ways in the future.
I wish the US constitution considered privacy to be a human right like the rest of the free world does.
- Technology that enables clean, safe and virtually infinite nuclear energy has existed since the '80s. (the chinese reactor is an interesting design, but 1980's technology is already 'good enough,' and works right now)
- Today, France is profitably, safely and cleanly producing nuclear power because it standardized on a single "antiquated" reactor design, and has resonable environmental regulations.
- Regardless of who is to blame, the US system combines huge subsidies with insane environmental regulations designed to cripple the industry,(*) and has not resulted in safe, clean or profitable nuclear power generation.
- The solution to the US's problem is obvious, but vested interests (environmentalists *and* the nuclear industry) have prevented it from being implemented, causing pollution and loss of life.
Also "toxicity" refers to dosage required to kill something (like a human); the mechanisms that cause the death are not so important if you use units like LD50 to normalize it (although since Dioxin and radiation ultimately cause death via comparable mechanisms; cancer, birth defects, etc, *and* the pollutants both have similar lifespans (ones to tens of years in the case of a breeder reactor), it seems like a valid comparison to me...)(*)The 'hippies' that helped push the regulations through have publicly stated this was their goal. (Why wasn't their goal the protection of the envioronment or production of clean, renewable power???)
Two words: "Mass Production" It's not an engineering project. It's a power plant that needs to run safely and reliably with a finite amount of human resources. If you can reuse your engineering efforts across tens or hundreds of plants then you can save money and end up with a more thoroughly debugged system.
Most people would argue that the French system is far superior to the US system precisely because they didn't try to improve their plants each time they built a new one. They still constantly improve the plants, but since each plant is identical, they focus on retrofitting and safety procedures.
(This seems to be an engineering / quality control argument to me; I am by no means an economist.)
Also, as far as I know, nuclear power in the US was profitable until Cherynobl/3 mile island...since then, the environmentalist movement has systematically killed the industry, regardless of the cost (environmental, or otherwise).
For example, instead of having a nuclear power plant, Columbus, OH has a trash burning plant which is a horrible polluter. Among other things, it dumps dioxin on the south side, causing cancer, neurological damage, and birth defects. This was considered a victory by the environmentalist movement.
(As the link points out, the toxicity of Dioxins rivals that of nuclear waste. Remember that the trash burning plant was designed to dump this stuff into the air, while a nuclear plant is designed to contain its waste.)
Just to clarify, I was referring to nonsensical safety regulations that cut into profitability. For instance, a sealed barrel of nuclear waste must be spotted by two people while it is being transported, in case the person moving it trips (which makes sense), however, an unsealed barrel that may someday hold nuclear waste is subject to the same restrictions. Another, more significant issue is that the frequency with which nuclear reactors must be shut down for safety drills and suprise inspections is often so high that the power plant doesn't have time to get to into net production before it is turned off for the equivalent of a 'fire drill'. (Nuclear power plants take a lot of energy, and a lot of time to turn on.) I'm not saying they should thrown to a free market; I was just pointing out that with proper regulations, they can be commercially/economically viable, and that the US system is a poster child of how to screw it up (throw subsidies at the problem while setting up a regulatory environment that prevents the system from ever becoming practical) After all, France makes a lot of money exporting electricity to the rest of Europe.
The environmental movement has done a good job at requiring so many frivolous regulations that nuclear power in the US cannot be financially feasible, leading to increased pollution and disease due to other production methods.
However, with mismangement at the level we see at reactors like the Davis Besse reactor, we're lucky that these plants are offline most of the time.
If we really want to do nuclear power right, instead of designing each plan from scratch we should use the (US) design that the French use for all one of their plants. That way, the properties of the reactors would be well understood, and experience gained at one site would be directly transferrable to other sites.
Of course, with our current administration, if we use the design the French are fond of, we'll probably have to call it a "Freedom Reactor."
It might be better to use a more modern design that does not produce long-lasting nuclear waste, and can't melt down, but whatever we do, we should standardize on one reactor design. That would lower the costs of design, construction and operation without sacrificing safety.
Also, what idiot decided these things should be run by for-profit corporations? Has anyone else noticed that the safety of commercially run plants gets worse, not better, over time? (Do we really want Dogbert and the pointy-haired boss having final say over nuclear reactor operations?!?)
Firefox's RSS feed menu picked a bad place to cut off the title of this one...the story could have been so much more interesting. ;)
Personally, I would rather learn to use an inferior piece of open source software that gets the job done, then a free (as in beer, stolen or otherwise) piece of proprietary software. Why? Since the source is available, and redistirbution is legal, the open source program is much more likely to exist and be available on the computer I'm using the next time I need it, whether it's next week, or five years from now. If opera and the mozilla foundation both closed up shop tomorrow, I'd bet that firefox would continue to be available (and compatible with future computer systems) much longer than opera.
magnatune rocks ;)
I found them using Gnome's (?) streamtuner program.
Fortunately, I haven't run into any copy protected CDs yet. (although it may be because most of the stuff I buy is over 5 years old or is being released by small record labels or independent artists..) If I do, I'll be sure to demand a refund, or a replacement that plays on my equipment. ;)
I think free (as in speech), electronic distribution is the most realistic long term solution. If done properly, we could piggy-back reliable long-term data archival onto the distribution network (so today's creative works will continue to exist over the centuries). Less open distribution channels are inconvenient, and frequently abuse their customers.
Artists could be paid for performances, or by using a 'ransom' funding model, where current sales fund the development of the next album/book/software program/etc. Alternatively, they could reserve some of their collection for paying customers, or limit the public version to 128kbps MP3's, or some other format that sounds fine on anything except for a decent home stereo system.
Right now, the main reason I pay for CDs is that it's worth the money to get a physical backup of the album, and to be able to produce high quality audio files that are in the same format and naming convention as the rest of my music collection. Also, musicians have to eat...
If I bought my stuff from iTunes, or whatever, I wouldn't get a lossless physical copy, the format of the files would be dictated to me, and it would be more difficult to stream my music collection from web browsers, like I do now. All of these problems could be easily solved by an electronic distribution model. (A "Pay once", "download often" model would solve the physical backup problem...)
If it won't use unsigned drivers, then find a security exploit in the windows kernel or use the digital out on your sound card.
Oh wait, content producers can use SAP to disable digital out. That sounds like it will fly with consumers. I can imagine the "this music is incompatible with my speakers" complaints already.
I'll stick with CDs, thanks.
If I really wanted to pay for DRM'ed content, I would look into running the DRM codecs under Linux. If this isn't already supported, you can bet that it will be if significant demand crops up. Barring hardware schemes like TCPA/Palladium, the biggest tricks would be getting any network authentication stuff correct, and reimplementing the API between the "DRM kernel component" and the rest of the system.
As soon as average consumers start losing music that they paid for due to DRM systems, you can bet that tools that circumvent DRM will become commonplace. It doesn't matter how complex the circumvention system is, as long as it works out of the box.
If you try to do this in my wife's '93 GMC 1500, it simply ignores you. Drive -> first or second doesn't do anything until it's going pretty slow. Of course, it is an automatic. ;)
Neutral is probably the best bet in a pinch...
I think the US radio stations should take a page out of the cell phone companies books.
First, they should nearly bankrupt themselves by seting up one subtly incompatible DAB variant (each on a distinct frequency range, of course) for each radio station in the city. Then, run one station over each variant. Once the costs of setting up the network is recouped, add more stations. At that point, the technology will be obsolete, and they can scrap it all and start over.
(As I was typing this, it occurred to me that this is already happening with XM / Sirrius. At least there are only two major competing standards in sattelite radio at the moment... *sigh* Why can't access to the sattelite's spectrum be public, and licensed out by an independent, not-for-profit agency? Then we could have competition between our national radio stations, we'd be making more efficient use of spectrum, and there would be more stations to choose from.)
This is all very true, but there's no real technical barrier toward building a user friendly linux PVR. (TiVo's are linux systems, after all!!)
Once MythTV hits a stable release, you could imagine selling preconfigured systems in a quiet, shiny box, and pushing out updates with apt-get. Granted, writing a UI that allows software to be installed is a bit tricky, but the linspire people seem to have already figured that one out with their 'click and run' warehouse. The real tricky is preconfiguring software so that it can be launched and (partially) controlled by the remote control / joystick.
According to mozilla's site, the current version uses an embedded SQL engine for the calendar. It will probably use LDAP for address book stuff, since thunderbird already does that.
I suspect the point of this project is to implement the middleware that is needed to allow collaboration between multiple calendar users. As long as everything written on top of the SQL/LDAP interface is open source, then small organizations could drop in something like postgres, while larger organizations would probably want something like oracle. This seems to be a nice setup for everyone involved.
I'm not familiar with oracle's filesystem layer, but I don't see why straight SQL wouldn't support this application nicely. AFAIK, WebDAV doesn't have sophisticated conflict resolution mechanisms, which is really the main thing that an application like this needs.
Its compatibilty with 3rd party applications won them the office suite market.
;)
You also have to give them points for creativity on that one.
They might not have invented vendor lock in, but they've more or less perfected it.
It sounds like they found nothing. (Yes, one questionable windows license pre-installed on a system is nothing. In fact, if you suspect it was illegally licensed, report the computer seller to microsoft, and they will send you a shiny, new, legal copy of Windows.)
;)
I suggest you hire a lawyer, and find out if you can (a) Sue them for intimidation and harrassment, (b) Refuse to pay the fine, forcing them to drag you into court to get the money out of you (c) bill them for the three months of legwork and (d) look for uninforcable / illegal clauses in the other agreements your district has signed with the BSA or its members.
Since they obviously have no case, they'll lose in court. Even if they had a case, the publicity would be horrible for them, so they won't drag you into court. The mere threat of having you fight back will probably make them drop chages.
By all means, if it makes financial sense, continue to sever licensing agreements with Microsoft. (This time, pre-audit your systems...even if you re-purchase a few retail copies of windows, you'll probably save money over the educational agreement in the long run. When the BSA comes knocking, you can hand them a copy of the audit, and have your lawyer file for a restraining order, or whatever it is lawyers do.
If what you say is true, then someone at the BSA is an extortionist. The only way to get rid of people like that is to get the law involved, and refuse to pay. Any other course of action will encourage them to continue this sort of behavior. Paying 'protection fees' only helps in the short term. If you cave into their demands, you'll still be in the same situation you were in before the audit, execpt that they will know that your district is an easy target.
(I'm not a lawyer, and have never dealt with the BSA, but if five figure expenses are involved, it's probably in your best interest to seek legal advice, especially since you're looking at six figure fines in the future, and since the BSA's behavior sounds a lot like a classic protection racket. If you are not in the position to seek legal advice on behalf of your district, I suggest reporting the matter to whatever internal legal agency or fraud investigation system your school district has in place. When dealing with members of the school distirct, treat this matter as a blackmail scheme, and treat the missing money/time/resources as though they were stolen.)
How is this unlike the computer market? In fact, aren't products like Windows MCE or MythTV trying to take out a big chunk of the DVR market by providing a *platform* that runs software the user chooses?
If I want to install old atari or nintendo console games (or even ascii-art doom) on my cable box, I can do that today with MythTV. How long will it be until Dish's closed, non-consumer-servicable platform supports that sort of thing? What about the other 20-30 apps I'll want to use it for in the next 2-3 years?
I feel like the vast majority of these 'embedded consumer' hardware manufacturers have their heads in the sand. Unless they open their platforms, PC manufacturers will eventually put them out of business.
Generating random text, and attaching a jpeg doesn't work for two reasons.
First, the random text doesn't look like legitimate e-mail, so it will be completely ignored by most spam filters. That leaves a jpeg attachment and bogus headers, which out to look pretty 'spammy' to a mail filter. How often do total strangers send you legitimate email that contains nothing but a JPEG and text that doesn't have any 'important' words in common with your other mail?
Second, if you're like me, then your mail client is set not to render HTML, or display attachments by default, so the only think that is displayed is some random text. (This isn't very effective marketing...) I suspect most people eventually set their mail clients this way, at least if they get penis/porn spam. It usually only takes one JPEG/HTML file to remind me to turn off images in a new copy of thunderbird.
Of course, that's ignoring the fact opening a spam in many mail clients inadvertantly updates spammer databases by default, and disabling HTML fixes that. (The html in the messages load a remote image, and the remote image's filename contains your email address, or a hash of it.)
That's kind of what I thought when I noticed it was set to MyISAM. The debian packages defaulted to it, and I'm too lazy to change it.
;)
If anything, that computer is too uber-l337...I'd be happy to trade 50% performance for hardware stability, but it's what I had laying around...
(I wouldn't have mentioned the MyISAM thing, execpt that I didn't want to accuse MySQL of corrupting my data...)
By the way, I ssh into my TV, and then view the program guide and listen to my ogg's over an encrypted, tunneled http connection. What do you think this is, the nineties?
Telnet. Geez.
I had the same problem with MySQL. As I couldn't tell what the problem was from the error message, I cut and pasted it into google, and after 2 minutes, found out that you type this into the MySQL console:
repair table foo;
To think that I could have saved myself all of that time and hassle if I had paid Microsoft for a support contract...
(My MythTV computer tends to overheat and crash, and MySQL is set to MyISAM, so index corruption is to be expected...I would change it to use durable transactional tables if the data was more important.)
In general, I've found that the 'first line' of technical support is internet search engines. Open source offerings generally archive tech support requests made to mailing lists, and these lists are usually read by the developers.
This means that searching for an answer online is often easier and more effective than calling a good tech support line would be.
For example, I've hit bugs that were last seen five years ago by one person and found the solution online. If that bug had been handled over the phone five years ago, and I had called tech support, what are the chances that I would have talked to someone that actually remembered how to solve the problem?
That's not to say that professional tech support can't be worthwhile. However, the full disclosure of bug reports and problem resolutions with open source software give it a huge advantage. This probably means that the job of an open source tech support team is easier then the job of a closed source team, but I've never done professional technical support, so I don't know.