"another aspect of it is to prevent someone from taking GPL code, and designing a hardware/software combo that will only run using unmodified versions of the code. In such an instance, they use GPL code, but their modifications are useless to the rest of the world because we can't modify their version and run it on the device."
Right, and Linus' answer to that is it's not the role of the Linux owners to force the hardware open; he thinks it is OK for the vendor to lock up the hardware that way; he said that you have to settle for taking the published source and find your own hardware to run it on.
And as another poster pointed out last time, this makes LT an optomist and RMS a pessimist because there is a serious question of whether hardware that's open in the relevant sense will be generally available if the so-called "trusted computing" DRM scheme proceeds according to plan.
Besides reminding us of those points I would like to wonder in public here about an aspect I haven't seen mentioned anywhere in this debate. RMS and LT and slashdotters and others seem to overlook it completely. And that is: shouldn't it be possible to verify GPL compliance? Or in other words, shouldn't a party that modifies GPL code and redistributes have to prove, or make it possible to for others to verify compliance?
If so, then we have to support the RMS side of this. Suppose Bluehat in the example uses secret digital keys to make it so that only their signed binaries will run on the special Bluehat box - then how do you know that the source they distribute belongs to that binary? The only way to verify that source corresponds to the binary you run is to compile the source and run the result, right? If the secret-key barrier prevents you from doing this then for all you know the binary on the Bluehat box could be from different source (maybe containing something that gives Bluehat a market advantage, or containing a trojan).
I know you will all correct me if I'm wrong, but if you don't have the.pls as a trigger for Winamp as a plugin, you're not vulnerable. Just set your browser to do something else with.pls (like offer to download). Or trash the file type association or set it for something other than Winamp.
Or if you're a luddite like me and can't stand plugins, prevent them all from working by commenting out the plugins lines in: C:\Program Files\Common Files\mozilla.org\GRE\ [version here] \greprefs\all.js
This is assuming you use Mz or FF for web on Windows like a sensible person.
According to the site when it was up (and posts on the previous/. article), it's a "soft touch" design with "membrane technology". Ugh.
The IBM Model M rules. And Dell "Bigfoot" AT101. Fujitsu KB4720 / 4725. A few others. Heavy-duty mechanical switches; seriously clicky; a pleasure to type on. The only kind of keyboard worth having.
/"Forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it!"
If I understand this correctly, if it's running locally, you can be spied upon successfully, because encryption prevents you from analyzing the operation of the program, yet it has access to all your data (presumably including encryption keys):
"While a savvy person may be able to tell that the program is running in the background, they will not be able to tell what data is being selected [...] For example, even if Al Qaeda had an extremely knowledgeable programmer and, say, they steal a laptop with this program, they would not be able to figure out which documents were selected and kept inside the 'secure box' and which were not. [...] The filter cannot be broken in the same sense that one cannot crack time-tested public-key encryption functions such as those already used for Internet commerce and banking applications."
This would necessarily rely on some hardware support, a la "trusted computing"; otherwise you could get at its keys eventually.
But it would be easy to evade if you control and can trust your own hardware - just prevent it from running locally. If it's running elsewhere, say at the ISP, then use a clean-built system, and encrypt your communications, and the bad guys - i.e. NSA spies, Bush administration, etc. - can see what addresses you connect to, and file sizes and such but not the contents.
" By distributing this software all over the Internet to providers and network administrators, you can easily monitor a huge data flow in a distributed, cost-efficient manner, and choose only those documents that look promising based on your secret criteria."
Well, yes, but adept targets can avoid having their data intercepted, by the precautions indicated above, unless they run compromomised systems like Vista or TC-supporting OS's with TPMs.
The relevant keys may be stored in a
"trusted platform module", a hardware device that is designed to wall off its contents from the owner of the computer. The TPM requirement (?) for Vista is one of the first steps in the so-called
"trusted computing" scheme. TC is deceitfully promoted as "security", but is in fact a vast DRM and remote-control system. When ISPs start requiring it to be present and turned on as a condition of internet access, computers will be "trustworthy" from the viewpoint of the commercial software vendors and copyright cartel, but complete, treacherous trojans from the viewpoint of their owners, not only for music and movies but for communication as well.
This case has the potential to set a valuable precedent, either in law or at least in the public image of the RIAA and their jihad against file-sharers.
Even if a lawyer volunteered his/her services, the party must also pay costs. Yes, where is the EFF?
I will contribute what I can afford if I find a way. There certainly is a large enough population who read about these issues, and would like to see her win, that if each gave, say, $25 it would amount to thousands.
There is talk of a defense fund at p2pnet. The article says they're waiting on a script (?!) but I'd settle for a p.o. box.
Black-box electronic voting simply abolishes democracy. No electronic system can approach the public certainty that the announced result is true; they can only take us away from it. And certainty of the result, in a publicly verifiable way, is the only thing that gives any election any legitmacy (in the political-science sense).
But never mind that! Suppose we have to live with the machines. Can a "paper trail" give that approximation to the legitamateness of simple paper-ballot voting?
Well, no, clearly it cannot - for a simple reason that no one above (high-modded at the time I started writing) seems to have noticed. All U.S. states today have laws saying that no contest of an election is allowed unless the election is within a few percentage points. So any nefarious characters manipulating the results (that's a whole other discussion) would merely have to make their candidate win by less than that number of points.
Agreed. I prefer to go to the Google site in the browser rather than use any toolbar, on grounds of security, stability, screen area and a liking of minimalism.
The important thing is that you can still opt out of it. If a piece representing any commercial entity is ever built into the browser in the future, such that you can't get rid of it without hacking the source, that will be the sign to look for that Moz is going over to the dark side.
"Ethics" is not the word. It is a category mistake to speak of a corporation having principles, acting ethically, or caring about anything other than profit or shareholder value. It is a case of attributing human qualities to an inanimate thing. Considered as a person, a corporation is a perfect sociopath. Speaking of what it "ought" to do is nonsensical. Like a shark, all that anyone can expect it to do is pursue its sole interest without regard for the consequences for anyone else or any other considerations.
What we want here is justice, not ethics. We want protection of the moral rights of citizens to appropriate control of information about themselves.
There is a freedom-of-speech aspect. It should remain legal to transmit truthful information. However, businesses should be prevented from using the customers' information for anything beyond the immediate transaction in which it is collected, unless the customer gives separate permission.
Suppose FSF were taken over by, say, Microsoft, and they made GPL version 3.5 say that the author promises support and a warranty. Then anyone who took a copy under an earlier GPL - with the "or later version" clause - could invoke the new obligations.
In effect, SBC is providing the means by which VOIP providers are competing with SBC's phone line business. That's what bother him.
But he has to understand, if SBC is going to offer generic internet service, they have to tolerate customers using it for whatever they want. What Whitacre and his ilk would like is to regulate what customers can do with the service. This would start with shutting out competition and progress to charging for each protocol, port, destination, etc..
We have to preserve the common carrier principle in internet access.
I've never tried Gnome. Unchecking the anti-aliasing checkbox in KDE has no effect, and reportedly (page linked above) the maintainer says it's intended that way.
Linux is easy and can do everything Windows and Mac can, with some exceptions such as games - for people who like anti-aliasing. For those who can't stand the fuzzy fonts, Linux is far from usable.
On Windows, if you like clear fonts, you just find the little check-box for anti-aliasing, uncheck it, maybe reboot, and the interface is *beautiful*, *perfect*. Every letter is crisp with clean, sharp edges, and well-formed, well-hinted at any size.
On Linux, if you can't tolerate the blurry look, you're in for a long ordeal to even try to get readable fonts without anti-aliasing. Getting rid of the a-a, and getting decent hinting are *both* daunting tasks even for techies.
Most "newbie" tutorials are on trivial things like changing the background images or playing media files. You have to locate relatively obscure pages like this and this.
Then you have to find out how to first tweak, and then compile source packages on Linux. Then you have to somehow get the system to use the one set of fonts and version of X rather than the other.
I'm beyond expert status on Windows, yet I still haven't got fonts looking readable after hours of messing with Suse 10. For the non-technical user it's unrealistic to imagine they would ever figure it out, or even find someone to fix it for them.
Evidently most people like anti-aliasing. And that's fine for them. For the rest of us, Linux has a *huge* obstacle to usability.
The drivre situation is not a conspiracy, it's just a vicious cycle.
Hardware makers write drivers for Windows because if they don't they'll lose, say, 30% (server) to 95% (consumer) of their market. MS doesn't even have to pay them; they pay for the privilege with certification fees.
Then MS, in turn, has drivers for all the hardware, and this reinforces its desktop monopoly.
On the Linux side the factors work the other way: lack of hardware support retards adoption, and lack of market share reduces the incentive for hardware support.
Linux devs have gone a remarkable way toward breaking this situation with reverse engineering, persuasion, and a population of determined users. If there were justice, MS would ahve been forced long ago to make its OEM contracts non-secret, to offer the same price list to everyone, to have OEMs state the price of Windows separately, and to let buyers opt out of it, and then the Linux desktop would be much further along..
TFA: "the nation is applying Band-Aids, rather than developing the inherently more secure information technology that our nation requires."
The popular + IT/tech press: more and more statements like this lately...
Quadraginta above: "Goodness, who wants the Federal government to be responsible for general IT security in this country? I mean, let's just think carefully through the kind of power over the network they'd need (or say they need) to be given to achieve it."
Put the clues together, here. Or maybe it's just me, but it seems as if there is gradually increasing propaganda building to support something like the so-called "trusted computing" scheme being foisted on the computer industry under the pretext of "security".
We should all be *glad* these bureaucrats are ineffective.
"Be very glad that your PC is insecure - it means that after you buy it, you can break into it and install whatever software you want. What you want, not what Sony or Warner or AOL wants."
-- John Gilmore, quoted in Ross Anderson, Security Engineering, p. 413.
"So I forsee and fear individuals getting stuck with a (mandatory) needle then being told, "You are anxious", and "You must submit to treatment". The world knows no shortage of elitist M.D.s who hate the notion of a patient not obeying their very learned whim."
Exactly. As soon as the refusal of treatment can be considered evidence of incompetence to decide, the whole principle of patient autonomy is negated. We have to have a legal rule that the content of a decision about treatment cannot be construed as dispensing with the consent requirement. Otherwise, anything that creates even the appearance of an objective basis for their medical paternalism, is a menace to human rights.
Sure, let's have liability. The software must perform substantially as advertised - counting all advertisements, press releases, interviews given by publisher's officers, etc.. But make the amount of damages simply equal the price paid.
This would keep free-as-in-beer software in the clear. It would also have the side benefit of forcing Microsoft to reveal its OEM prices.:D
I like the source code as condition of immunity suggestion above too, but it would be futile without a licence like those the FSF approves, which would actually allow you to fix problems without violating copyrights and patents.
OK, call me paranoid if you want, and this will either be modded troll or never noticed, but here goes.
The one thing Tim Warner has the would really benefit Microsoft is its cable franchises. This would be a big lever to impose Microsoft tech in the entertainment field - Windows Media formats and MS DRM.
If Microsoft took over your cable modem services, that would be the real nightmare scenario. One way or another, subtle or overt, they would require using Windows as a condition of internet access. And the latest version too. Sometime after that they'd demand some sort of remote control.
They might allow Macs for a while as a token "alternative" OS, but never Linux. This would force Linux users back to dialup in large sectors of the USA.
There would be only weak regulatory opposition to this in todays political climate.
Any arrangement that creates an incentive for criminals to increase their level of violence is a Bad Idea. Of course, the backers of these schemes don't care, because the risk falls on the users.
"... Intel is standing up for the interests of consumers in the war between Blue-ray and HD-DVD, by making its support for either format contingent on support for 'mandatory managed copy', the ability to copy content to 'home servers' so that it can be accessed from around the home."
A slightly less onerous DRM regime is "standing up for... consumers"??? And slashdotters don't call "big lie" on this phraseology??? It's just abusing their excessive market power a little less. This is the frog-boiling principle in action.
Ignore me and mod up ewhac above: really standing up for citizens would mean calling Hollywood on its bluff that they wouldn't offer content if they couldn't lock it down.
Whether it's good or evil simply depends on one thing: whether it's optional for the device owner.
If it's wired into the hardware such that the device owner can't use the device without reporting his location, it's evil. That means "capable of abuse", and in practice, human nature being what it is, "capable of abuse" means "will be abused to the maximum extent by whoever has the power to do so"; and that in turn means "will be abused to the maximum extent by government and corporations to exploit individuals".
On the other hand, if it's an optional feature that the owner can use or not use, as he/she chooses, then it's good.
You see, it's really simple. No tin foil hat, just facts and reason.
No, it is about freedom of speech. What happens when they start to extend it to non- PSTN (p2p) VOIP?
"In related news, the FCC has also released a policy document that states that 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.' In theory, under this they could require wiretaps on in-game chat, or key-logging in file encryption programs."
We are fast approaching a kind of showdown between legal requirements and free/open source software. The government will dictate "all applications of type T must include feature X" (e.g., detection of anti-counterfeiting patterns in images) or "...must not include feature Y" (e.g., encryption without backdoors, or removal of anti-copying hobbles). And FOSS devs will make the apps that way - but of course any programmer can remove X or include Y and recompile. Even nonprogrammers can do it with instructions and/or code patches.
Then the confrontation comes. Even technically-clueless politicians will eventually notice that it's not working. Then the state can (a) give up on the requirement/prohibition (b) play whack-a-mole with individual prosecutions (c) start requiring licences for compilers and programmable hardware, and/or prohibiting release of source. Maybe (d) a vast DRM regime like the so-called "trusted computing" scheme.
Am I missing something? Howw else can this go?
And if we ever get to a point where you're not allowed to freely compile and run whatever code you want to, then freedom of speech is abolished in all electronic media. And all possibility of computer security is abolished, because you can't verify source and therefore you can't trust any software to obey you rather than someone else. You won't be able to verify that your comomunications really get to the intended recipient unaltered, or that news you read is what another party intended to send, etc..
Also in the article is reference to a scheme where signals would be sent to disable or blur photos, and electronics in the camera would support this.
It may seem too outrageous to be implemented, but I can easily imagine the likes of **AA and Homeland Security jumping on this idea and getting it required in new cameras. On the pretext of protecting IP rights (not only movies, but buildings, etc.), and "national security", they'll try to prevent us from recording police and corporate misconduct, and charge for photography rights, etc.. The analogies with macrovision, identifying dots in printers, etc. are obvious. Never underestimate the evil that can be done when businessmen get a chance to "monetize" something or government sees an opportunity to tighten control of citizens.
Yes, I know this will be followed by "tin foil hat" comments. Please, *this time*, try to remember how wrong those comments were when it happens.
Trying to give as much credit as possible, maybe the real complaint is that the "alternative" browsers don't hide files from the user like MSIE does.
In Moz/FF you can just delete cache and clear history and URL bar and that's it - it's all really gone. In MSIE, clear those things, and most users will imagine their "tracks" are erased. But then there are "Microsoft's Really Hidden Files" which still preserve a complete history. Not only are these immune to the UI controls; MS has gone to some lengths to deliberately conceal them from the user. Obviously law enforcement can take advantage of this; only advanced geeks know enough to foil the Wiggums.
So what it amounts to is, give the users more power, and would-be Big Brother naturally has some anxiety. Same as it ever was.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, and Linus' answer to that is it's not the role of the Linux owners to force the hardware open; he thinks it is OK for the vendor to lock up the hardware that way; he said that you have to settle for taking the published source and find your own hardware to run it on.
And as another poster pointed out last time, this makes LT an optomist and RMS a pessimist because there is a serious question of whether hardware that's open in the relevant sense will be generally available if the so-called "trusted computing" DRM scheme proceeds according to plan.
Besides reminding us of those points I would like to wonder in public here about an aspect I haven't seen mentioned anywhere in this debate. RMS and LT and slashdotters and others seem to overlook it completely. And that is: shouldn't it be possible to verify GPL compliance? Or in other words, shouldn't a party that modifies GPL code and redistributes have to prove, or make it possible to for others to verify compliance?
If so, then we have to support the RMS side of this. Suppose Bluehat in the example uses secret digital keys to make it so that only their signed binaries will run on the special Bluehat box - then how do you know that the source they distribute belongs to that binary? The only way to verify that source corresponds to the binary you run is to compile the source and run the result, right? If the secret-key barrier prevents you from doing this then for all you know the binary on the Bluehat box could be from different source (maybe containing something that gives Bluehat a market advantage, or containing a trojan).
I know you will all correct me if I'm wrong, but if you don't have the .pls as a trigger for Winamp as a plugin, you're not vulnerable. Just set your browser to do something else with .pls (like offer to download). Or trash the file type association or set it for something other than Winamp.
Or if you're a luddite like me and can't stand plugins, prevent them all from working by commenting out the plugins lines in:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\mozilla.org\GRE\ [version here] \greprefs\all.js
This is assuming you use Mz or FF for web on Windows like a sensible person.
According to the site when it was up (and posts on the previous /. article), it's a "soft touch" design with "membrane technology". Ugh.
The IBM Model M rules. And Dell "Bigfoot" AT101. Fujitsu KB4720 / 4725. A few others. Heavy-duty mechanical switches; seriously clicky; a pleasure to type on. The only kind of keyboard worth having.
/"Forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it!"
Parent is correct.
If I understand this correctly, if it's running locally, you can be spied upon successfully, because encryption prevents you from analyzing the operation of the program, yet it has access to all your data (presumably including encryption keys):
This would necessarily rely on some hardware support, a la "trusted computing"; otherwise you could get at its keys eventually.
But it would be easy to evade if you control and can trust your own hardware - just prevent it from running locally. If it's running elsewhere, say at the ISP, then use a clean-built system, and encrypt your communications, and the bad guys - i.e. NSA spies, Bush administration, etc. - can see what addresses you connect to, and file sizes and such but not the contents.
Well, yes, but adept targets can avoid having their data intercepted, by the precautions indicated above, unless they run compromomised systems like Vista or TC-supporting OS's with TPMs.
The relevant keys may be stored in a "trusted platform module", a hardware device that is designed to wall off its contents from the owner of the computer. The TPM requirement (?) for Vista is one of the first steps in the so-called "trusted computing" scheme. TC is deceitfully promoted as "security", but is in fact a vast DRM and remote-control system. When ISPs start requiring it to be present and turned on as a condition of internet access, computers will be "trustworthy" from the viewpoint of the commercial software vendors and copyright cartel, but complete, treacherous trojans from the viewpoint of their owners, not only for music and movies but for communication as well.
This case has the potential to set a valuable precedent, either in law or at least in the public image of the RIAA and their jihad against file-sharers.
Even if a lawyer volunteered his/her services, the party must also pay costs. Yes, where is the EFF?
I will contribute what I can afford if I find a way. There certainly is a large enough population who read about these issues, and would like to see her win, that if each gave, say, $25 it would amount to thousands.
There is talk of a defense fund at p2pnet. The article says they're waiting on a script (?!) but I'd settle for a p.o. box.
Black-box electronic voting simply abolishes democracy. No electronic system can approach the public certainty that the announced result is true; they can only take us away from it. And certainty of the result, in a publicly verifiable way, is the only thing that gives any election any legitmacy (in the political-science sense).
But never mind that! Suppose we have to live with the machines. Can a "paper trail" give that approximation to the legitamateness of simple paper-ballot voting?
Well, no, clearly it cannot - for a simple reason that no one above (high-modded at the time I started writing) seems to have noticed. All U.S. states today have laws saying that no contest of an election is allowed unless the election is within a few percentage points. So any nefarious characters manipulating the results (that's a whole other discussion) would merely have to make their candidate win by less than that number of points.
Agreed. I prefer to go to the Google site in the browser rather than use any toolbar, on grounds of security, stability, screen area and a liking of minimalism.
The important thing is that you can still opt out of it. If a piece representing any commercial entity is ever built into the browser in the future, such that you can't get rid of it without hacking the source, that will be the sign to look for that Moz is going over to the dark side.
"Ethics" is not the word. It is a category mistake to speak of a corporation having principles, acting ethically, or caring about anything other than profit or shareholder value. It is a case of attributing human qualities to an inanimate thing. Considered as a person, a corporation is a perfect sociopath. Speaking of what it "ought" to do is nonsensical. Like a shark, all that anyone can expect it to do is pursue its sole interest without regard for the consequences for anyone else or any other considerations.
What we want here is justice, not ethics. We want protection of the moral rights of citizens to appropriate control of information about themselves.
There is a freedom-of-speech aspect. It should remain legal to transmit truthful information. However, businesses should be prevented from using the customers' information for anything beyond the immediate transaction in which it is collected, unless the customer gives separate permission.
Suppose FSF were taken over by, say, Microsoft, and they made GPL version 3.5 say that the author promises support and a warranty. Then anyone who took a copy under an earlier GPL - with the "or later version" clause - could invoke the new obligations.
Evidently Russinovich ran the executable and clicked "Agree" on the EULA. He didn't look into what happens if the user opts out.
If you click "Don't Agree" and it installs the rootkit anyway, I'd say there's a crime and a tort, maybe more than one of each.
/ not a lawyer, but am a LS grad.
In context, he is talking about VOIP.
In effect, SBC is providing the means by which VOIP providers are competing with SBC's phone line business. That's what bother him.
But he has to understand, if SBC is going to offer generic internet service, they have to tolerate customers using it for whatever they want. What Whitacre and his ilk would like is to regulate what customers can do with the service. This would start with shutting out competition and progress to charging for each protocol, port, destination, etc..
We have to preserve the common carrier principle in internet access.
I've never tried Gnome. Unchecking the anti-aliasing checkbox in KDE has no effect, and reportedly (page linked above) the maintainer says it's intended that way.
Linux is easy and can do everything Windows and Mac can, with some exceptions such as games - for people who like anti-aliasing. For those who can't stand the fuzzy fonts, Linux is far from usable.
On Windows, if you like clear fonts, you just find the little check-box for anti-aliasing, uncheck it, maybe reboot, and the interface is *beautiful*, *perfect*. Every letter is crisp with clean, sharp edges, and well-formed, well-hinted at any size.
On Linux, if you can't tolerate the blurry look, you're in for a long ordeal to even try to get readable fonts without anti-aliasing. Getting rid of the a-a, and getting decent hinting are *both* daunting tasks even for techies.
Most "newbie" tutorials are on trivial things like changing the background images or playing media files. You have to locate relatively obscure pages like this and this.
Then you have to find out how to first tweak, and then compile source packages on Linux. Then you have to somehow get the system to use the one set of fonts and version of X rather than the other.
I'm beyond expert status on Windows, yet I still haven't got fonts looking readable after hours of messing with Suse 10. For the non-technical user it's unrealistic to imagine they would ever figure it out, or even find someone to fix it for them.
Evidently most people like anti-aliasing. And that's fine for them. For the rest of us, Linux has a *huge* obstacle to usability.
The drivre situation is not a conspiracy, it's just a vicious cycle.
Hardware makers write drivers for Windows because if they don't they'll lose, say, 30% (server) to 95% (consumer) of their market. MS doesn't even have to pay them; they pay for the privilege with certification fees.
Then MS, in turn, has drivers for all the hardware, and this reinforces its desktop monopoly.
On the Linux side the factors work the other way: lack of hardware support retards adoption, and lack of market share reduces the incentive for hardware support.
Linux devs have gone a remarkable way toward breaking this situation with reverse engineering, persuasion, and a population of determined users. If there were justice, MS would ahve been forced long ago to make its OEM contracts non-secret, to offer the same price list to everyone, to have OEMs state the price of Windows separately, and to let buyers opt out of it, and then the Linux desktop would be much further along..
TFA: "the nation is applying Band-Aids, rather than developing the inherently more secure information technology that our nation requires."
The popular + IT/tech press: more and more statements like this lately...
Quadraginta above: "Goodness, who wants the Federal government to be responsible for general IT security in this country? I mean, let's just think carefully through the kind of power over the network they'd need (or say they need) to be given to achieve it."
Put the clues together, here. Or maybe it's just me, but it seems as if there is gradually increasing propaganda building to support something like the so-called "trusted computing" scheme being foisted on the computer industry under the pretext of "security".
We should all be *glad* these bureaucrats are ineffective.
"Be very glad that your PC is insecure - it means that after you buy it, you can break into it and install whatever software you want. What you want, not what Sony or Warner or AOL wants."
-- John Gilmore, quoted in Ross Anderson, Security Engineering, p. 413.
"So I forsee and fear individuals getting stuck with a (mandatory) needle then being told, "You are anxious", and "You must submit to treatment". The world knows no shortage of elitist M.D.s who hate the notion of a patient not obeying their very learned whim."
Exactly. As soon as the refusal of treatment can be considered evidence of incompetence to decide, the whole principle of patient autonomy is negated. We have to have a legal rule that the content of a decision about treatment cannot be construed as dispensing with the consent requirement. Otherwise, anything that creates even the appearance of an objective basis for their medical paternalism, is a menace to human rights.
Sure, let's have liability. The software must perform substantially as advertised - counting all advertisements, press releases, interviews given by publisher's officers, etc.. But make the amount of damages simply equal the price paid.
This would keep free-as-in-beer software in the clear. It would also have the side benefit of forcing Microsoft to reveal its OEM prices. :D
I like the source code as condition of immunity suggestion above too, but it would be futile without a licence like those the FSF approves, which would actually allow you to fix problems without violating copyrights and patents.
OK, call me paranoid if you want, and this will either be modded troll or never noticed, but here goes.
The one thing Tim Warner has the would really benefit Microsoft is its cable franchises. This would be a big lever to impose Microsoft tech in the entertainment field - Windows Media formats and MS DRM.
If Microsoft took over your cable modem services, that would be the real nightmare scenario. One way or another, subtle or overt, they would require using Windows as a condition of internet access. And the latest version too. Sometime after that they'd demand some sort of remote control.
They might allow Macs for a while as a token "alternative" OS, but never Linux. This would force Linux users back to dialup in large sectors of the USA.
There would be only weak regulatory opposition to this in todays political climate.
"Now, thieves will cut the fingers off people they mug."
It has happened.
Any arrangement that creates an incentive for criminals to increase their level of violence is a Bad Idea. Of course, the backers of these schemes don't care, because the risk falls on the users.
"... Intel is standing up for the interests of consumers in the war between Blue-ray and HD-DVD, by making its support for either format contingent on support for 'mandatory managed copy', the ability to copy content to 'home servers' so that it can be accessed from around the home."
A slightly less onerous DRM regime is "standing up for ... consumers"??? And slashdotters don't call "big lie" on this phraseology??? It's just abusing their excessive market power a little less. This is the frog-boiling principle in action.
Ignore me and mod up ewhac above: really standing up for citizens would mean calling Hollywood on its bluff that they wouldn't offer content if they couldn't lock it down.
Whether it's good or evil simply depends on one thing: whether it's optional for the device owner.
If it's wired into the hardware such that the device owner can't use the device without reporting his location, it's evil. That means "capable of abuse", and in practice, human nature being what it is, "capable of abuse" means "will be abused to the maximum extent by whoever has the power to do so"; and that in turn means "will be abused to the maximum extent by government and corporations to exploit individuals".
On the other hand, if it's an optional feature that the owner can use or not use, as he/she chooses, then it's good.
You see, it's really simple. No tin foil hat, just facts and reason.
No, it is about freedom of speech. What happens when they start to extend it to non- PSTN (p2p) VOIP?
"In related news, the FCC has also released a policy document that states that 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.' In theory, under this they could require wiretaps on in-game chat, or key-logging in file encryption programs."
We are fast approaching a kind of showdown between legal requirements and free/open source software. The government will dictate "all applications of type T must include feature X" (e.g., detection of anti-counterfeiting patterns in images) or "...must not include feature Y" (e.g., encryption without backdoors, or removal of anti-copying hobbles). And FOSS devs will make the apps that way - but of course any programmer can remove X or include Y and recompile. Even nonprogrammers can do it with instructions and/or code patches.
Then the confrontation comes. Even technically-clueless politicians will eventually notice that it's not working. Then the state can (a) give up on the requirement/prohibition (b) play whack-a-mole with individual prosecutions (c) start requiring licences for compilers and programmable hardware, and/or prohibiting release of source. Maybe (d) a vast DRM regime like the so-called "trusted computing" scheme.
Am I missing something? Howw else can this go?
And if we ever get to a point where you're not allowed to freely compile and run whatever code you want to, then freedom of speech is abolished in all electronic media. And all possibility of computer security is abolished, because you can't verify source and therefore you can't trust any software to obey you rather than someone else. You won't be able to verify that your comomunications really get to the intended recipient unaltered, or that news you read is what another party intended to send, etc..
Also in the article is reference to a scheme where signals would be sent to disable or blur photos, and electronics in the camera would support this.
It may seem too outrageous to be implemented, but I can easily imagine the likes of **AA and Homeland Security jumping on this idea and getting it required in new cameras. On the pretext of protecting IP rights (not only movies, but buildings, etc.), and "national security", they'll try to prevent us from recording police and corporate misconduct, and charge for photography rights, etc.. The analogies with macrovision, identifying dots in printers, etc. are obvious. Never underestimate the evil that can be done when businessmen get a chance to "monetize" something or government sees an opportunity to tighten control of citizens.
Yes, I know this will be followed by "tin foil hat" comments. Please, *this time*, try to remember how wrong those comments were when it happens.
Trying to give as much credit as possible, maybe the real complaint is that the "alternative" browsers don't hide files from the user like MSIE does.
In Moz/FF you can just delete cache and clear history and URL bar and that's it - it's all really gone. In MSIE, clear those things, and most users will imagine their "tracks" are erased. But then there are "Microsoft's Really Hidden Files" which still preserve a complete history. Not only are these immune to the UI controls; MS has gone to some lengths to deliberately conceal them from the user. Obviously law enforcement can take advantage of this; only advanced geeks know enough to foil the Wiggums.
So what it amounts to is, give the users more power, and would-be Big Brother naturally has some anxiety. Same as it ever was.