>> The thing I would like to know is, why is anyone afraid of this? Surely the argument is that Apple hardware is cheaper and better than any other, and the experience, due to it all coming from one supplier, hardware and software, is also far better than the comparable Windows experience.
So why will Apple's hardware sales suffer at all? It will make no difference.
The thing is there are millions of idiots out there who look at the advertised price of a Dell computer and don't realize they'll have to pay three times as much to get the machine that they want.
Why should Apple let Dell take the money of those idiots, instead of making them buy Apple computers?
Can't be right. Viri would be the plural of virus, virii would be the plural of virius. Virii would only be correct if virus were an adjective, and virii would be the plural of the comparative form (virus, virius, virissimus, with plural viri, virii, virissimi). Since virus is a noun, virii is wrong.
>> I have heard this over and over again. "Macs don't have viruses because they don't have marketshare." I have seen people saying that for years, and it's starting to grow extremely stale. Macs are inherently more secure machines. They are not susceptible to viruses. Until proven otherwise, this remains a truism.
It is really a combination of things. 1. Less incentive to write Mac viruses. Infecting x% of all Macs would be useless compared to infecting x% of all Windows PCs. 2. No virus writer expertise readily available. 3. All else being equal, a Mac virus would propagate much less because there are fewer Macs. 4. Macs are inherently more secure (which is likely, but not proven because of 1-3). Nobody knows how many people tried to create a MacOS X virus and gave up.
>> Fortunately for the masses, Steve just shot his strategy in the foot here. With PPC, they could always justify that an Intel box couldn't run it. However now they are locking the OS to their hardware. Thanks to IBM, DOJ, the Supreme Court and the many other fine organizations who have established through case law again and again that tying software to your hardware when it could otherwise run on any other hardware is illegal. All we need is one brave soul to sue Steve.
Go and try it.
Steve's reply #1: "Ok, we will sell you MacOS X on Intel. It is only tested on Intel Macs, on no other computer. There is no warranty whatsoever that it will run on hardware that is not identical to a Macintosh. Support is $200 per call, plus $5 per minute. It is sold for $599 a piece. Oh, you think that is too expensive? You see, what we ship with our Macs is the OEM version, and OEM versions are always cheaper than full versions. And when we sell MacOS X 10.5 for Intel Macs, that is an upgrade, and upgrades are always cheaper than full versions."
Steve's reply #2: "You want us to sell you an operating system for your PC? Ok, here it is. It costs $99 and it is called Redhat Linux. "
If Microsoft stops selling Windows, and Redhat, Novell and all the others stop distributing Linux, and Dell can't sell any computers because they don't have an operating system, then I am sure Apple would be forced to make MacOS X available to all PC manufacturers. As long as that isn't the case, tough.
>> So why can't this check for TPM_Owner be removed?
You can remove the check. The check is: "I have this operating system here. Unfortunately, it is all encrypted. If your owner code is APPLE then you can decrypt it, no problem. But you don't have to. "
>> [The labels] also wanted to change the pricing structures... lower unpopular song prices, raise popular.
The record labels never, ever would suggest to lower the prices for anything. Change in pricing structures was _always_ restricted to raising prices for popular songs.
>> The Apple G5 updates FINALLY gave us 1mb l2 cache per core(and of course the industry standard 64k L1 cache per core) and whil the Intel/AMD world is slightly better in this regard, it's not by much.
Remind me again, how much L1 cache exactly does a Pentium 4 have? Wasn't it something like 8KB fast cache on the older ones and 16KB at half the speed on the newer ones?
>> At this point, though, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include an admission by SCO that they never had any evidence.
At this point, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include a smoking crater in the exact location where the SCO headquarters used to be.
Maybe 8 years backward compatibility is enough for you. I would want proof of my payments into a pension fund to be available at least fifty years. I would like proof of the ownership of my house and the land it stands on to be available for longer than that. But that's just me.
Absolutely no need to get any judges involved there.
Massachusetts stated their requirements. Microsoft stated that they wouldn't fulfil these requirements. Massachusetts decided they don't want Microsoft software that doesn't meet their requirements. The market decided. Against Microsoft.
Microsoft is one hundred percent allowed to create software that people don't want. I mean, they are already creating software that people don't like, so this is just a small step. Doing so is absolutely legal and no court should prevent Microsoft from making software that doesn't sell.
"AFAIK the embedded computer in my VCR has never crashed, never needed an upgrade, and never caught a virus. "
My first VCR (bought either late '80s or early '90s) has most definitely crashed. I couldn't get it working again until I found the reset button, which was very well hidden and couldn't be pressed without the help of a pen.
>> Yeah, you can point the finger at management issues, but I say competency is another. Letting anyone and his cousin's brother develop software is another major cog in the wheel.
Sure, you have to weed out incompetent idiots. But above a certain level, developing bugfree software is just a matter of time and money. I can write bug free code, no problem, at an amazingly slow rate. You want a bug free word processor? No problem. You have two choices: A. Invest thousands and thousands of man years. B. Invest hundreds of man years, getting a word processor with much much less functionality than your most basic word processor has today.
Decide what records you really really want to buy. Then don't buy them. Don't download them. Don't make copies from a friend's CD. Just go without it. You are allowed to listen to the music on the radio:-)
In order that you don't buy records that were lower down on your list, which would defeat the purpose of that action completely, spend the money on something else that you wouldn't have bought otherwise. Buy books. Or buy some real artwork. You are allowed to buy CDs from musicians who sell them on the street; that way you know the money goes to the musicians.
>> So, let me just understand this. You have purchased *one thousand five hundred dollars* worth of music in the two years since the iTunes Music Store opened, but you could not find any way to afford a 100 GB external hard drive for $100 to back it up, and you could not cut out 30 minutes of your iTunes music browsing time to copy the music folder to the drive?
You don't even need an extra harddisk. Just burn data CDs, and instead of putting CDs into your computer, put in recordable DVDs. 1500 songs is about six gigabyte; that fits easily onto two DVDs. Doesn't take more than fifteen minutes.
"AllOfMP3 may be operating legallly in Russia, but is it legal for US citizens physically in the USA to use their service?"
It seems to be illegal for AllOfMP3 to deliver the songs to the USA, but not illegal for the US citizen to download. Whether it is legal or illegal, the US record industry and western musicians will not get any money for what you download.
Next you can discuss whether it is morally right or wrong to download music from AllOfMP3 that you have on an LP, or on a copy-protected CD that your computer cannot read, or that you downloaded from iTMS, or that is on a broken CD, or that was on a CD that you bought and lost - all cases where you already paid for the music, and you haven't given the music away.
"When I worked in a convenience store, one parent insisted on having his kid arrested when caught shoplifting. It only happened once (The kid learned either not to shoplift or not to get caught)."
What we would all like to know: What happened to the kid? If an adult is caught shoplifting, you probably get the goods back or payment, plus some fees for the work that shoplifter caused. Can you get that fee from a kid? (Of course you can tell the parents to pay or you call the cops, but as you noted they don't have to pay - and you called the cops).
If kids are young enough, they cannot legally enter contracts. So if a kid comes to your store, and hands over cash to buy a CD, the parents could come back the next day and ask for the money back (not sure what happens if the CD is opened, damaged etc.). Of course, it is not illegal for you to sell the CD, and as most parents are not that anal, there is a 99% chance that you will be fine.
But I am not quite sure how a kid who cannot enter a contract to buy the music can be held responsible to pay huge amounts of money for copyright infringement.
Most contributions to open source projects nowadays come from major companies anyway: Redhat,Novell, IBM etc. etc. Complete commercially developed packages suddenly become open sourced.
That is how OpenOffice was created, for example: It started as plain proprietary software, created by professional developers who were paid monthly salaries by their company. Sun bought the software, and Sun developers added. All IP that couldn't be open sourced got replaced, and suddenly we have an open source application. No hackers working during lunchtime and evenings involved at all.
"At the risk of sounding like an apologist, Apple's actions make perfect sense here. There was no need to find out who leaked the information since it was about a product that never existed in the first place. "
This can't be right. If Apple had made up stories about a non-existing product within the company to find out where leaks are, then leaking this information would not be a violation of a trade secret! Only _true_ information can be a trade secret. There are laws that make leaking trade secrets illegal. There are no laws that make leaking fake information about non-existing products illegal.
"IANAL, but I would've thought that the court/judge should have verified that Apple "thoroughly" investigated it's staff in-house, before violating the journalist's freedoms. After all, if any one could just show up in court and say: "Looky here judge, it's like i say it is, y'hear?" then there wouldn't be much of a judicial process, would there... But please correct me if i'm wrong... "
You're welcome.
Apple went to the court and asked the judge: "Please make these journalists tell who leaked our trade secrets". The journalists got some lawyers how are telling the judge: "No, don't make them tell!". Apple's lawyers and the journalists' lawyers now send papers to the court with their reasons why the journalists should have to tell the names or why the shouldn't.
In one of these papers Apple explains what they have done to find out themselves where the leak is. That paper was "sealed" so that nobody can read it except the judge and the lawyers, apparently because it itself contains trade secrets. The other side managed to "unseal" the paper, so that everyone can read it except for the trade secret bits. All that is absolutely normal business.
The unusual bit now is that the EFF, which pays the lawyers, goes and publishes the contents of that paper - that is a strategy that you would usually expect from the likes of SCO. They also give an interpretation of the contents of the paper - that Apple hasn't done enough to find the leak themselves, therefore the journalists should not be made to tell their sources.
So what we have is a paper; we can consider the contents of the paper as fact (because lying to the court would be a very very bad idea), and we know how the EFF wants the judge and the world to interpret the contents of the paper. You can assume that Apple's lawyers have a very different opinion, but Apple apparently wants to handle their court cases in the courts, and not in the press, unlike the EFF. So while some bits of the article are based on fact, the headline and the conclusion that they want you to draw is pure spin by one of the two competing sides.
What the article presents as its headline: "Apple Fails Due Diligence", is exactly what the judge has to decide. No such decision has been made. This is the same situation as if a man accused of theft went to court, the defense lawyer says "my client is not guilty", and then you write an article with the headline "Client not guilty of theft!", stating his innocence as fact when all you have is what the lawyer said.
The article is not based on any decision made by a judge, it is based on what the opposing lawyers say. It is not even based on the _opinion_ of the opposing lawyers (which they might be very wise to keep to themselves), but on their interpretation that is most helpful to their clients.
It would be interesting to see what Apple's lawyers think about it. Maybe, just maybe, they have a slightly different point of few. Maybe they don't quite agree that the victim of a crime has to shoulder all the cost and hardship of the investigation.
"Of course, the next version will likely be pirated just as quickly as the last one..."
Well, it will be pirated a bit slower than the previous one, because you can bet that Apple has downloaded the pirated versions as well, has figured out what people have done to make it run, and has created a few extra problems for them.
But most important, getting MacOS X to run on a Dell is fun the first time; it is less fun the second time and you can bet it gets less fun the third and the fourth time. I expect new MacOS X versions in December and March, and they will break compatibility again.
At the same time, the hackers have to be careful not to give away their identity (unless they want another court case that ends with a settlement for an unknown amount of money).
"My brother's father in law sold safes. He once found a case where a bank manager wrote the safe code on the wall next to the safe with a marker. At least it did provide fire security..."
A company that I worked for bought a safe with broken lock very cheaply exactly for that purpose. And they didn't have to write down the safe code...
"My brother gave me an iTunes gift certificate. So bought some albums. After my windows hard drive died..."
You just learnt the hard way what backups are for. Anything that you buy from the iTunes music store should be backed up. One CD can backup about $150 worth of music as downloaded from iTMS.
You should also consider burning one audio CD from every CD that you download. That way, not only do you have a backup, but you can also play the music basically everywhere you like, and it is possible to convert to any format you like. That includes Apple Lossless or FLAC, so you can hold the music on any computer without loss of quality. And today, a 200 GB harddisk holds about 10,000 songs with lossless encoding, so this is not very expensive. No hacks needed, iTunes software does all that out of the box (you'd have to find a FLAC plugin if you want to use FLAC).
"Here in Norway, if my car goes through a speed camera, all I have to do is say I wasn't driving, and the police have to prove that it was me, based on the picture the camera took."
That's interesting. In Britain, if you say you were not driving, they will ask you who was driving and you better have a good explanation if you can't tell them. If you claim you were not driving and they can prove you did, that is trouble.
In Germany, you do that, and a judge will let you off and tell you that for the next few years, you will keep a diary specifying exactly who drove your car and when and where and how far. The next time anything happens, they will ask for your diary. Either it contains the name of the driver, or it doesn't, and you are in trouble again.
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>> The thing I would like to know is, why is anyone afraid of this? Surely the argument is that Apple hardware is cheaper and better than any other, and the experience, due to it all coming from one supplier, hardware and software, is also far better than the comparable Windows experience.
So why will Apple's hardware sales suffer at all? It will make no difference.
The thing is there are millions of idiots out there who look at the advertised price of a Dell computer and don't realize they'll have to pay three times as much to get the machine that they want.
Why should Apple let Dell take the money of those idiots, instead of making them buy Apple computers?
>> Virii, for crying out loud, not viruses.
Can't be right. Viri would be the plural of virus, virii would be the plural of virius. Virii would only be correct if virus were an adjective, and virii would be the plural of the comparative form (virus, virius, virissimus, with plural viri, virii, virissimi). Since virus is a noun, virii is wrong.
>> I have heard this over and over again. "Macs don't have viruses because they don't have marketshare." I have seen people saying that for years, and it's starting to grow extremely stale. Macs are inherently more secure machines. They are not susceptible to viruses. Until proven otherwise, this remains a truism.
It is really a combination of things. 1. Less incentive to write Mac viruses. Infecting x% of all Macs would be useless compared to infecting x% of all Windows PCs. 2. No virus writer expertise readily available. 3. All else being equal, a Mac virus would propagate much less because there are fewer Macs. 4. Macs are inherently more secure (which is likely, but not proven because of 1-3). Nobody knows how many people tried to create a MacOS X virus and gave up.
>> Fortunately for the masses, Steve just shot his strategy in the foot here. With PPC, they could always justify that an Intel box couldn't run it. However now they are locking the OS to their hardware. Thanks to IBM, DOJ, the Supreme Court and the many other fine organizations who have established through case law again and again that tying software to your hardware when it could otherwise run on any other hardware is illegal. All we need is one brave soul to sue Steve.
Go and try it.
Steve's reply #1: "Ok, we will sell you MacOS X on Intel. It is only tested on Intel Macs, on no other computer. There is no warranty whatsoever that it will run on hardware that is not identical to a Macintosh. Support is $200 per call, plus $5 per minute. It is sold for $599 a piece. Oh, you think that is too expensive? You see, what we ship with our Macs is the OEM version, and OEM versions are always cheaper than full versions. And when we sell MacOS X 10.5 for Intel Macs, that is an upgrade, and upgrades are always cheaper than full versions."
Steve's reply #2: "You want us to sell you an operating system for your PC? Ok, here it is. It costs $99 and it is called Redhat Linux. "
If Microsoft stops selling Windows, and Redhat, Novell and all the others stop distributing Linux, and Dell can't sell any computers because they don't have an operating system, then I am sure Apple would be forced to make MacOS X available to all PC manufacturers. As long as that isn't the case, tough.
>> So why can't this check for TPM_Owner be removed?
You can remove the check. The check is: "I have this operating system here. Unfortunately, it is all encrypted. If your owner code is APPLE then you can decrypt it, no problem. But you don't have to. "
No check, no encryption. No encryption, no OS.
>> [The labels] also wanted to change the pricing structures... lower unpopular song prices, raise popular.
The record labels never, ever would suggest to lower the prices for anything. Change in pricing structures was _always_ restricted to raising prices for popular songs.
>> The Apple G5 updates FINALLY gave us 1mb l2 cache per core(and of course the industry standard 64k L1 cache per core) and whil the Intel/AMD world is slightly better in this regard, it's not by much.
Remind me again, how much L1 cache exactly does a Pentium 4 have? Wasn't it something like 8KB fast cache on the older ones and 16KB at half the speed on the newer ones?
>> At this point, though, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include an admission by SCO that they never had any evidence.
At this point, IBM's not interested in any settlement that doesn't include a smoking crater in the exact location where the SCO headquarters used to be.
Maybe 8 years backward compatibility is enough for you. I would want proof of my payments into a pension fund to be available at least fifty years. I would like proof of the ownership of my house and the land it stands on to be available for longer than that. But that's just me.
Absolutely no need to get any judges involved there.
Massachusetts stated their requirements. Microsoft stated that they wouldn't fulfil these requirements. Massachusetts decided they don't want Microsoft software that doesn't meet their requirements. The market decided. Against Microsoft.
Microsoft is one hundred percent allowed to create software that people don't want. I mean, they are already creating software that people don't like, so this is just a small step. Doing so is absolutely legal and no court should prevent Microsoft from making software that doesn't sell.
"AFAIK the embedded computer in my VCR has never crashed, never needed an upgrade, and never caught a virus. "
My first VCR (bought either late '80s or early '90s) has most definitely crashed. I couldn't get it working again until I found the reset button, which was very well hidden and couldn't be pressed without the help of a pen.
"So, I have to dumb down the software and make it idiot proof."
I always think lots of problems with software are just caused by bad attitude. Anyone who sees their customers as idiots should look for another job.
If you think of your customers as idiots, you shouldn't even get a job at McDonald's.
>> Yeah, you can point the finger at management issues, but I say competency is another. Letting anyone and his cousin's brother develop software is another major cog in the wheel.
Sure, you have to weed out incompetent idiots. But above a certain level, developing bugfree software is just a matter of time and money. I can write bug free code, no problem, at an amazingly slow rate. You want a bug free word processor? No problem. You have two choices: A. Invest thousands and thousands of man years. B. Invest hundreds of man years, getting a word processor with much much less functionality than your most basic word processor has today.
You can do the right thing completely legally.
:-)
Decide what records you really really want to buy. Then don't buy them. Don't download them. Don't make copies from a friend's CD. Just go without it. You are allowed to listen to the music on the radio
In order that you don't buy records that were lower down on your list, which would defeat the purpose of that action completely, spend the money on something else that you wouldn't have bought otherwise. Buy books. Or buy some real artwork. You are allowed to buy CDs from musicians who sell them on the street; that way you know the money goes to the musicians.
>> So, let me just understand this. You have purchased *one thousand five hundred dollars* worth of music in the two years since the iTunes Music Store opened, but you could not find any way to afford a 100 GB external hard drive for $100 to back it up, and you could not cut out 30 minutes of your iTunes music browsing time to copy the music folder to the drive?
You don't even need an extra harddisk. Just burn data CDs, and instead of putting CDs into your computer, put in recordable DVDs. 1500 songs is about six gigabyte; that fits easily onto two DVDs. Doesn't take more than fifteen minutes.
"AllOfMP3 may be operating legallly in Russia, but is it legal for US citizens physically in the USA to use their service?"
It seems to be illegal for AllOfMP3 to deliver the songs to the USA, but not illegal for the US citizen to download. Whether it is legal or illegal, the US record industry and western musicians will not get any money for what you download.
Next you can discuss whether it is morally right or wrong to download music from AllOfMP3 that you have on an LP, or on a copy-protected CD that your computer cannot read, or that you downloaded from iTMS, or that is on a broken CD, or that was on a CD that you bought and lost - all cases where you already paid for the music, and you haven't given the music away.
"When I worked in a convenience store, one parent insisted on having his kid arrested when caught shoplifting. It only happened once (The kid learned either not to shoplift or not to get caught)."
What we would all like to know: What happened to the kid? If an adult is caught shoplifting, you probably get the goods back or payment, plus some fees for the work that shoplifter caused. Can you get that fee from a kid? (Of course you can tell the parents to pay or you call the cops, but as you noted they don't have to pay - and you called the cops).
If kids are young enough, they cannot legally enter contracts. So if a kid comes to your store, and hands over cash to buy a CD, the parents could come back the next day and ask for the money back (not sure what happens if the CD is opened, damaged etc.). Of course, it is not illegal for you to sell the CD, and as most parents are not that anal, there is a 99% chance that you will be fine.
But I am not quite sure how a kid who cannot enter a contract to buy the music can be held responsible to pay huge amounts of money for copyright infringement.
Most contributions to open source projects nowadays come from major companies anyway: Redhat,Novell, IBM etc. etc. Complete commercially developed packages suddenly become open sourced.
That is how OpenOffice was created, for example: It started as plain proprietary software, created by professional developers who were paid monthly salaries by their company. Sun bought the software, and Sun developers added. All IP that couldn't be open sourced got replaced, and suddenly we have an open source application. No hackers working during lunchtime and evenings involved at all.
"At the risk of sounding like an apologist, Apple's actions make perfect sense here. There was no need to find out who leaked the information since it was about a product that never existed in the first place. " This can't be right. If Apple had made up stories about a non-existing product within the company to find out where leaks are, then leaking this information would not be a violation of a trade secret! Only _true_ information can be a trade secret. There are laws that make leaking trade secrets illegal. There are no laws that make leaking fake information about non-existing products illegal.
"IANAL, but I would've thought that the court/judge should have verified that Apple "thoroughly" investigated it's staff in-house, before violating the journalist's freedoms. After all, if any one could just show up in court and say: "Looky here judge, it's like i say it is, y'hear?" then there wouldn't be much of a judicial process, would there... But please correct me if i'm wrong... "
You're welcome.
Apple went to the court and asked the judge: "Please make these journalists tell who leaked our trade secrets". The journalists got some lawyers how are telling the judge: "No, don't make them tell!". Apple's lawyers and the journalists' lawyers now send papers to the court with their reasons why the journalists should have to tell the names or why the shouldn't.
In one of these papers Apple explains what they have done to find out themselves where the leak is. That paper was "sealed" so that nobody can read it except the judge and the lawyers, apparently because it itself contains trade secrets. The other side managed to "unseal" the paper, so that everyone can read it except for the trade secret bits. All that is absolutely normal business.
The unusual bit now is that the EFF, which pays the lawyers, goes and publishes the contents of that paper - that is a strategy that you would usually expect from the likes of SCO. They also give an interpretation of the contents of the paper - that Apple hasn't done enough to find the leak themselves, therefore the journalists should not be made to tell their sources.
So what we have is a paper; we can consider the contents of the paper as fact (because lying to the court would be a very very bad idea), and we know how the EFF wants the judge and the world to interpret the contents of the paper. You can assume that Apple's lawyers have a very different opinion, but Apple apparently wants to handle their court cases in the courts, and not in the press, unlike the EFF. So while some bits of the article are based on fact, the headline and the conclusion that they want you to draw is pure spin by one of the two competing sides.
What the article presents as its headline: "Apple Fails Due Diligence", is exactly what the judge has to decide. No such decision has been made. This is the same situation as if a man accused of theft went to court, the defense lawyer says "my client is not guilty", and then you write an article with the headline "Client not guilty of theft!", stating his innocence as fact when all you have is what the lawyer said.
The article is not based on any decision made by a judge, it is based on what the opposing lawyers say. It is not even based on the _opinion_ of the opposing lawyers (which they might be very wise to keep to themselves), but on their interpretation that is most helpful to their clients.
It would be interesting to see what Apple's lawyers think about it. Maybe, just maybe, they have a slightly different point of few. Maybe they don't quite agree that the victim of a crime has to shoulder all the cost and hardship of the investigation.
"Of course, the next version will likely be pirated just as quickly as the last one..."
Well, it will be pirated a bit slower than the previous one, because you can bet that Apple has downloaded the pirated versions as well, has figured out what people have done to make it run, and has created a few extra problems for them.
But most important, getting MacOS X to run on a Dell is fun the first time; it is less fun the second time and you can bet it gets less fun the third and the fourth time. I expect new MacOS X versions in December and March, and they will break compatibility again.
At the same time, the hackers have to be careful not to give away their identity (unless they want another court case that ends with a settlement for an unknown amount of money).
"My brother's father in law sold safes. He once found a case where a bank manager wrote the safe code on the wall next to the safe with a marker. At least it did provide fire security..."
A company that I worked for bought a safe with broken lock very cheaply exactly for that purpose. And they didn't have to write down the safe code...
"My brother gave me an iTunes gift certificate. So bought some albums. After my windows hard drive died..."
You just learnt the hard way what backups are for. Anything that you buy from the iTunes music store should be backed up. One CD can backup about $150 worth of music as downloaded from iTMS.
You should also consider burning one audio CD from every CD that you download. That way, not only do you have a backup, but you can also play the music basically everywhere you like, and it is possible to convert to any format you like. That includes Apple Lossless or FLAC, so you can hold the music on any computer without loss of quality. And today, a 200 GB harddisk holds about 10,000 songs with lossless encoding, so this is not very expensive. No hacks needed, iTunes software does all that out of the box (you'd have to find a FLAC plugin if you want to use FLAC).
"Here in Norway, if my car goes through a speed camera, all I have to do is say I wasn't driving, and the police have to prove that it was me, based on the picture the camera took."
That's interesting. In Britain, if you say you were not driving, they will ask you who was driving and you better have a good explanation if you can't tell them. If you claim you were not driving and they can prove you did, that is trouble.
In Germany, you do that, and a judge will let you off and tell you that for the next few years, you will keep a diary specifying exactly who drove your car and when and where and how far. The next time anything happens, they will ask for your diary. Either it contains the name of the driver, or it doesn't, and you are in trouble again.