Look at applications like Gaim and The Gimp - they work wonderfully on Windows and any sort of Unix-ish environment.
That's a very poor example because Gimp wasn't originally written as a cross-platform app. Tor Lillqvist ported it to Win32 (and in the process of porting it, also ported GTK). That was no small undertaking.
Excerpts, and their size, have nothing to do with fair use. Fair use is quite a subjective concept.
Consider: - take a 2 minute clip of someone's song / video and work it into a satire*. Fair use? Sure, you say. - take an 8 second sample from someone else's CD and use it as part of a song your wrote for your own album. Fair use? Hmm maybe not... See Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Brothers Records
Examples like this demonstrate why copyright law is so confusing. Congress needs to put forth some effort to simplify it, both to protect the little guy, and to cut down on the burden to the legal system caused when the big guys fight.
*interestingly, many satirists (think: Weird Al) get permission from the copyright holder in advance to avoid the murky legal water surrounding fair use.
Here's a question: if Nixon, as the head of the executive branch, wasn't allowed to go snooping through tax records, by what authority would the FBI be able to do so? The answer is only in the investigation of a crime.
Or by consent. Giving away consent is so ubiquitous today that people don't even think twice about it. Next time you call your phone company's support line, try to really digest that boilerplate message which is usually something like:
"To ensure the highest quality service, this call may be recorded or monitored".
If you continue with the call you are consenting to wiretapping.
Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect better of the telcos.
I'm just telling you why it's not going to happen. In a nutshell, they were handed a golden goose by the government. In order to keep that money-train rolling, they've willingly cooperated with government requests -- including unlawful ones.
Yes, nowadays there's more of a duopoly between them and the cable companies. But don't think they are any better. One reason the government is scrutinizing VOIP is because they want the same level of oversight that they've had with the telcos for years prior.
So when you see members of Congress pass bills such as the Patriot Act and others, granting overreaching powers to the FBI, think carefully for a moment. Considering that the average age of Congress members is 55 for Representatives and 60 for Senators, most of them should be familiar with J. Edgar Hoover. That should be required history for the younger generation as well. Substitute "terrorist" for "radical", with superior surveillance technology, and that's what you have today.
When your elected representatives express shock and disbelief that the FBI could ever abuse its power, don't believe them. They know damn well what they are voting for from the start.
The phone companies are about as close to a government agency as you can get. Bell was essentially a government-sanctioned monopoly for years. Even since the breakup, the baby bells have slowly been merging back together. The U.S. government has ALWAYS had a hand in the telcos. Expecting phone companies to protect your records from the government is like trying to get a home loan without revealing your credit history. Good luck with that one.
If you want privacy you're better off finding other means of communication.
The only way such a project will succeed is if it can be implemented side-by-side with the existing infrastructure, and then provide a migration path to keep costs down for companies. If the hardware changes are minimal, and their existing business is not impacted, then companies may make the jump. However, part of it is a chicken-or-egg problem. Companies don't want to migrate to an arena with no consumers, yet consumers don't want to use an Internet with no stores.
There would have to be additional, compelling benefits to switch. Say, for example, the existing Internet continues to degrade in performance under the burden of spam and DDoS attacks. If the new network provides built-in avoidance of those issues, then the incentive to use it is stronger.
When you're talking about releasing source that may violate the DMCA, I'd argue that intent is slightly different from what the law describes as primary design. A judge is going to look at how that code is likely to be used. You can intend all you want for the code to be used for research but if it is easy for pirates to use, you're in trouble, because a judge will see that as its primary purpose. In several places in the DMCA you'll see the phrase:
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection
So the comment about RSA could be correct, for example, if they were releasing a general-purpose demonstration of a weakness in AES to security researchers. Their primary purpose would be protecting people from a vulnerability, esp since AES is a U.S. government-approved standard. Maybe the tool could be used to decrypt an HD-DVD with some modification and technical knowledge.
If I release a tool that handles AES in such a way that I can decrypt HD-DVDs in a drag & drop fashion, well, that's primarily designed to circumvent protection.
Mods can call the parent a troll, but he's a correct troll. To reword in a more PC-fashion:
In order to get elected President in the U.S., you almost always need to carry the Midwest and the South. Those regions tend to have few liberal voters, and most are very traditional and even prejudiced. They like their Presidents to be white male Christians, preferably married (to a woman of course).
For a woman or a minority to succeed, they'd need to be unbelievably popular across traditional party divisions, and the opposition would have to be unbelievably incompetent. I do think we'll elect a minority president someday, but I don't think it will happen in the next election. The Republicans have some popular figures such as Giuliani and McCain, and the Democrats will need a strong traditional candidate like Edwards to compete in the South. Hillary and Obama will have problems.
Of course all this speculation doesn't matter if one of those candidates pulls a foot-in-mouth move like the Dean Scream or Kerry's "don't study: go to Iraq" soundbite. Then all bets are off.
Dungeon Keeper was an interesting take on this problem. I had a lot of fun finally being able to play a game where my job was to squash the pesky adventurers.
Granted, it was more of an RTS than RPG. But even in that regard it was a lot different than other RTS games currently on the market, because you were creating the maze as the game progressed.
NINE times we have voted on a sales tax. 9 times it has been voted out... and they STILL keep proposing it.. When will the wastrels we call Gu'bmint figure it out? WE know your game and we want NO PART OF IT HERE!
Funny... it's the exact same thing with income tax in WA state. We keep voting it out; legislators keep putting it on the table. (For those not familiar: Oregon and Washington state legislatures are both fairly liberal and love their taxes. OR has a state income tax but no sales tax. WA has the reverse. Citizens of each state are borderline fanatical about keeping it that way.)
While Oregon and Washington state citizens may differ on what kind of tax we prefer, we both know that once a SECOND tax is allowed to creep in, we'll never get rid of it.
Actually, as an afterthought: to be fair, if CFLs were used statewide in California, they'd greatly reduce the power consumed from coal-burning plants. Coal burning tends to release mercury into the air. So we're getting it either way. Hopefully they'll come up with a good recycling program for the bulbs, though.
The patent system is yet another case where old laws don't sufficiently extend to current technology. Patents were originally targeted at physical inventions. That realm moves at a much slower pace than computer software. I think the U.S. would be much better off without software patents allowed at all. But assuming there are here to stay for a long time, other reforms that would greatly cut down on the nonsense patents would be:
- Greatly reduce the duration of software patents. If they only lasted 5 years or less, there'd be somewhat less interest in filing for them.
- Issue them only to individuals, not corporations. This is sort of the case right now as individual names are always listed on patents. But corporations then take ownership of them. The rights should be permanently stuck to the person(s) it was issued to.
- Make them non-transferrable. If corporations want to amass a huge patent portfolio, they better keep those individual patent owners happily employed.
- Have Congress create better rules for handling patent disputes. Get the endless litigation out of our court system. Put the power back in the hands of the inventors and prevent bullying of those who don't have large resources for legal defense.
Obviously a lot of the problems with the patent system are a reflection of problems in the U.S. legal system, and the expenses it incurs, so improving patents requires much broader legislative work.
Search on google or the FCC site for TV stations and "right to carriage" on cable networks.
In almost all cases, the cable networks are directed to carry the local broadcast channels unencrypted. So provided your TV has a digital (QAM) tuner -- which not many do yet -- you don't need a cable box to pick these channels up.
Now I probably misspoke when I said HD. *Some* of those channels are in HD in my area. That's the big networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. The rest of the unencrypted stuff appears to be standard def digital cable.
Anyways, my point is that *if* you have digital cable in your area, and *if* the local broadcast stations specifically request the cable company to carry their content, then the FCC directs them to do so.
Perhaps in your area the stations choose not to do this for some reason?
Finally...
The cable line is only so big and can only hold so much signal.
Last I heard, ~50+% of the signal was eaten up by analog 8VSB cable content. I bet you guys are itching for 2009 to ditch analog.
If you're talking about the Super Bowl, it's going to be on a broadcast network anyhow. So you can either hook up an HD antenna to your TV, or if you have *drumroll* Basic Cable, you can just plug it straight into the TV without a cable box or cable card (as long as your TV supports QAM). The law requires cable companies to provide the OTA HD channels unencrypted.
Add in that there isn't any tax preparation software for Linux.
Most of the web-based tax preparation packages are fairly solid - I don't see why you'd need a Linux-specific one. I've used Turbotax on the web with Firefox in the past with no hassles.
Preempt and low latency kernel work were patched in during the 2.4 kernel series. They were not part of the standard Linux distribution. After several cycles of working with them, they were eventually added under the experimental kernel config options, and then finally became a part of the standard kernel options.
If a few people want a kernel feature, they can write patches for it. That gets the ball rolling, and then if the patches are effective, demand rises and they eventually work their way in as a fully acknowledged feature. No reason for the grandparent to call it hopeless.
Yes I realize current, supported versions of Windows are also the target of exploits.
But by your logic, if intruders *might* be able to root your system, regardless of security updates, then that's the green light to just run a system with NO updates. Yeah brilliant.
Nowhere did I say that running a current version of Windows is a green light to ignore all other security precautions. I'm just saying that by running an OS that is no longer updated, you expose yourself, permanently, to exploits that are already in the wild.
All you have to do is briefly read any security-vulnerability website, and you'll see why this is a bad thing.
As far as ports open, Win9x always had the SMB ports (135/137? can't remember) open by default. That's something you need to clamp down in any Windows installation. Not to mention, Windows XP has Windows Firewall which isn't great, but it does offer another layer of protection versus a Win9x machine that's basically naked.
Screw it. I never upgraded to XP, and I don't believe that I'll be upgrading to Vista. I have finally moved from Windows 95 to Windows 98 despite the fact that W95 boots faster and runs as well. But only because I think eventually I will need USB that works and I don't think that will ever be available in Windows 95.
People like you are the reason the rest of the Internet has to put up with assaults from 10,000+ zombie botnets. Would you run a Linux distribution that became dead in the water and stopped issuing security updates? You're doing effectively the same thing by continuing to run Windows 9x.
Now if you want to run such a machine without connecting it to the Internet then knock yourself out. But since you posted on Slashdot, the assumption is that you are connected and vulnerable.
Live with it. You install an application, you MUST get permission. This is good security policy for your users.
I think part of the complaint is the WAY Vista deals with this. Dialog for every installation. Nasty dialog for unsigned.exe files.
Compare that to a package manager in any modern Linux installation. You open the package manager gui, enter your superuser password, and proceed to install as many things as you want. That's what developers of downloadable games for Vista want (Steam would be a prime example).
The security dialogs in Vista dont require you to put in a username and password every time you try to acess a flash game on the web, and this article clearly is full of it.
I've worked on migrating some projects to be Vista compatible and it has some strange "features". With regard to what you said: Flash games aren't installed. That alone is a world of difference in Vista's rules. Attempting installation of an app pops up the privilege elevation dialog (try renaming some random.exe file to setup.exe and run it...)
There are various other cases where Vista brings up this dialog. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a heuristic but that's a pretty close assessment.
Furthermore, Vista considers whether or not an executable is digitally signed. If it isn't, you get the "WARNING THIS MAY DO BAD THINGS... do you still wish to elevate?" dialog, whereas a signed exe generates a friendlier message.
So once again, the small dev shop gets screwed because digital signatures cost money. WildTangent can handle the cost but they repackage 300 some games so they have to resign them and retest them. Not terrible but not exactly a smooth migration either.
I can see why they'd be upset though, if Microsoft is allowing/causing Vista to give MS games special treatment.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that mean its supposed to be pronounced way-rd. Now that is wierd.
E .htm
http://www.spelling.org/Books/Mastering_I_before_
Look at applications like Gaim and The Gimp - they work wonderfully on Windows and any sort of Unix-ish environment.
That's a very poor example because Gimp wasn't originally written as a cross-platform app. Tor Lillqvist ported it to Win32 (and in the process of porting it, also ported GTK). That was no small undertaking.
Excerpts, and their size, have nothing to do with fair use. Fair use is quite a subjective concept.
Consider:
- take a 2 minute clip of someone's song / video and work it into a satire*. Fair use? Sure, you say.
- take an 8 second sample from someone else's CD and use it as part of a song your wrote for your own album. Fair use? Hmm maybe not... See Grand Upright Music Ltd. v. Warner Brothers Records
Examples like this demonstrate why copyright law is so confusing. Congress needs to put forth some effort to simplify it, both to protect the little guy, and to cut down on the burden to the legal system caused when the big guys fight.
*interestingly, many satirists (think: Weird Al) get permission from the copyright holder in advance to avoid the murky legal water surrounding fair use.
Here's a question: if Nixon, as the head of the executive branch, wasn't allowed to go snooping through tax records, by what authority would the FBI be able to do so? The answer is only in the investigation of a crime.
Or by consent. Giving away consent is so ubiquitous today that people don't even think twice about it. Next time you call your phone company's support line, try to really digest that boilerplate message which is usually something like:
"To ensure the highest quality service, this call may be recorded or monitored".
If you continue with the call you are consenting to wiretapping.
- SEAL
Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect better of the telcos.
I'm just telling you why it's not going to happen. In a nutshell, they were handed a golden goose by the government. In order to keep that money-train rolling, they've willingly cooperated with government requests -- including unlawful ones.
Yes, nowadays there's more of a duopoly between them and the cable companies. But don't think they are any better. One reason the government is scrutinizing VOIP is because they want the same level of oversight that they've had with the telcos for years prior.
So when you see members of Congress pass bills such as the Patriot Act and others, granting overreaching powers to the FBI, think carefully for a moment. Considering that the average age of Congress members is 55 for Representatives and 60 for Senators, most of them should be familiar with J. Edgar Hoover. That should be required history for the younger generation as well. Substitute "terrorist" for "radical", with superior surveillance technology, and that's what you have today.
When your elected representatives express shock and disbelief that the FBI could ever abuse its power, don't believe them. They know damn well what they are voting for from the start.
The phone companies are about as close to a government agency as you can get. Bell was essentially a government-sanctioned monopoly for years. Even since the breakup, the baby bells have slowly been merging back together. The U.S. government has ALWAYS had a hand in the telcos. Expecting phone companies to protect your records from the government is like trying to get a home loan without revealing your credit history. Good luck with that one.
If you want privacy you're better off finding other means of communication.
The only way such a project will succeed is if it can be implemented side-by-side with the existing infrastructure, and then provide a migration path to keep costs down for companies. If the hardware changes are minimal, and their existing business is not impacted, then companies may make the jump. However, part of it is a chicken-or-egg problem. Companies don't want to migrate to an arena with no consumers, yet consumers don't want to use an Internet with no stores.
There would have to be additional, compelling benefits to switch. Say, for example, the existing Internet continues to degrade in performance under the burden of spam and DDoS attacks. If the new network provides built-in avoidance of those issues, then the incentive to use it is stronger.
When you're talking about releasing source that may violate the DMCA, I'd argue that intent is slightly different from what the law describes as primary design. A judge is going to look at how that code is likely to be used. You can intend all you want for the code to be used for research but if it is easy for pirates to use, you're in trouble, because a judge will see that as its primary purpose. In several places in the DMCA you'll see the phrase:
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection
So the comment about RSA could be correct, for example, if they were releasing a general-purpose demonstration of a weakness in AES to security researchers. Their primary purpose would be protecting people from a vulnerability, esp since AES is a U.S. government-approved standard. Maybe the tool could be used to decrypt an HD-DVD with some modification and technical knowledge.
If I release a tool that handles AES in such a way that I can decrypt HD-DVDs in a drag & drop fashion, well, that's primarily designed to circumvent protection.
IANAL but 17 U.S.C. 1201 is fairly clear on this.
Mods can call the parent a troll, but he's a correct troll. To reword in a more PC-fashion:
In order to get elected President in the U.S., you almost always need to carry the Midwest and the South. Those regions tend to have few liberal voters, and most are very traditional and even prejudiced. They like their Presidents to be white male Christians, preferably married (to a woman of course).
For a woman or a minority to succeed, they'd need to be unbelievably popular across traditional party divisions, and the opposition would have to be unbelievably incompetent. I do think we'll elect a minority president someday, but I don't think it will happen in the next election. The Republicans have some popular figures such as Giuliani and McCain, and the Democrats will need a strong traditional candidate like Edwards to compete in the South. Hillary and Obama will have problems.
Of course all this speculation doesn't matter if one of those candidates pulls a foot-in-mouth move like the Dean Scream or Kerry's "don't study: go to Iraq" soundbite. Then all bets are off.
Dungeon Keeper was an interesting take on this problem. I had a lot of fun finally being able to play a game where my job was to squash the pesky adventurers.
Granted, it was more of an RTS than RPG. But even in that regard it was a lot different than other RTS games currently on the market, because you were creating the maze as the game progressed.
Too bad the game was somewhat buggy.
I don't see a way out of this.
Start your own business?
NINE times we have voted on a sales tax. 9 times it has been voted out... and they STILL keep proposing it.. When will the wastrels we call Gu'bmint figure it out? WE know your game and we want NO PART OF IT HERE!
Funny... it's the exact same thing with income tax in WA state. We keep voting it out; legislators keep putting it on the table. (For those not familiar: Oregon and Washington state legislatures are both fairly liberal and love their taxes. OR has a state income tax but no sales tax. WA has the reverse. Citizens of each state are borderline fanatical about keeping it that way.)
While Oregon and Washington state citizens may differ on what kind of tax we prefer, we both know that once a SECOND tax is allowed to creep in, we'll never get rid of it.
Actually, as an afterthought: to be fair, if CFLs were used statewide in California, they'd greatly reduce the power consumed from coal-burning plants. Coal burning tends to release mercury into the air. So we're getting it either way. Hopefully they'll come up with a good recycling program for the bulbs, though.
Hope the legislators have a plan on how to dispose of all those CFLs, since they are toxic when broken.
The patent system is yet another case where old laws don't sufficiently extend to current technology. Patents were originally targeted at physical inventions. That realm moves at a much slower pace than computer software. I think the U.S. would be much better off without software patents allowed at all. But assuming there are here to stay for a long time, other reforms that would greatly cut down on the nonsense patents would be:
- Greatly reduce the duration of software patents. If they only lasted 5 years or less, there'd be somewhat less interest in filing for them.
- Issue them only to individuals, not corporations. This is sort of the case right now as individual names are always listed on patents. But corporations then take ownership of them. The rights should be permanently stuck to the person(s) it was issued to.
- Make them non-transferrable. If corporations want to amass a huge patent portfolio, they better keep those individual patent owners happily employed.
- Have Congress create better rules for handling patent disputes. Get the endless litigation out of our court system. Put the power back in the hands of the inventors and prevent bullying of those who don't have large resources for legal defense.
Obviously a lot of the problems with the patent system are a reflection of problems in the U.S. legal system, and the expenses it incurs, so improving patents requires much broader legislative work.
Yes, yay to the courageous anonymous coward./i. ... because a Slashdot user-id is so much LESS anonymous?
Search on google or the FCC site for TV stations and "right to carriage" on cable networks.
In almost all cases, the cable networks are directed to carry the local broadcast channels unencrypted. So provided your TV has a digital (QAM) tuner -- which not many do yet -- you don't need a cable box to pick these channels up.
Now I probably misspoke when I said HD. *Some* of those channels are in HD in my area. That's the big networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. The rest of the unencrypted stuff appears to be standard def digital cable.
Anyways, my point is that *if* you have digital cable in your area, and *if* the local broadcast stations specifically request the cable company to carry their content, then the FCC directs them to do so.
Perhaps in your area the stations choose not to do this for some reason?
Finally...
The cable line is only so big and can only hold so much signal.
Last I heard, ~50+% of the signal was eaten up by analog 8VSB cable content. I bet you guys are itching for 2009 to ditch analog.
If you're talking about the Super Bowl, it's going to be on a broadcast network anyhow. So you can either hook up an HD antenna to your TV, or if you have *drumroll* Basic Cable, you can just plug it straight into the TV without a cable box or cable card (as long as your TV supports QAM). The law requires cable companies to provide the OTA HD channels unencrypted.
Add in that there isn't any tax preparation software for Linux.
Most of the web-based tax preparation packages are fairly solid - I don't see why you'd need a Linux-specific one. I've used Turbotax on the web with Firefox in the past with no hassles.
Preempt and low latency kernel work were patched in during the 2.4 kernel series. They were not part of the standard Linux distribution. After several cycles of working with them, they were eventually added under the experimental kernel config options, and then finally became a part of the standard kernel options.
If a few people want a kernel feature, they can write patches for it. That gets the ball rolling, and then if the patches are effective, demand rises and they eventually work their way in as a fully acknowledged feature. No reason for the grandparent to call it hopeless.
Yes I realize current, supported versions of Windows are also the target of exploits.
But by your logic, if intruders *might* be able to root your system, regardless of security updates, then that's the green light to just run a system with NO updates. Yeah brilliant.
Nowhere did I say that running a current version of Windows is a green light to ignore all other security precautions. I'm just saying that by running an OS that is no longer updated, you expose yourself, permanently, to exploits that are already in the wild.
Your humble opinion would be wrong, then. Microsoft stopped issuing security bugfixes for Win9x last year:
a n18
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/gp/life
All you have to do is briefly read any security-vulnerability website, and you'll see why this is a bad thing.
As far as ports open, Win9x always had the SMB ports (135/137? can't remember) open by default. That's something you need to clamp down in any Windows installation. Not to mention, Windows XP has Windows Firewall which isn't great, but it does offer another layer of protection versus a Win9x machine that's basically naked.
Screw it. I never upgraded to XP, and I don't believe that I'll be upgrading to Vista. I have finally moved from Windows 95 to Windows 98 despite the fact that W95 boots faster and runs as well. But only because I think eventually I will need USB that works and I don't think that will ever be available in Windows 95.
People like you are the reason the rest of the Internet has to put up with assaults from 10,000+ zombie botnets. Would you run a Linux distribution that became dead in the water and stopped issuing security updates? You're doing effectively the same thing by continuing to run Windows 9x.
Now if you want to run such a machine without connecting it to the Internet then knock yourself out. But since you posted on Slashdot, the assumption is that you are connected and vulnerable.
Live with it. You install an application, you MUST get permission. This is good security policy for your users.
.exe files.
I think part of the complaint is the WAY Vista deals with this. Dialog for every installation. Nasty dialog for unsigned
Compare that to a package manager in any modern Linux installation. You open the package manager gui, enter your superuser password, and proceed to install as many things as you want. That's what developers of downloadable games for Vista want (Steam would be a prime example).
The security dialogs in Vista dont require you to put in a username and password every time you try to acess a flash game on the web, and this article clearly is full of it.
.exe file to setup.exe and run it...)
I've worked on migrating some projects to be Vista compatible and it has some strange "features". With regard to what you said: Flash games aren't installed. That alone is a world of difference in Vista's rules. Attempting installation of an app pops up the privilege elevation dialog (try renaming some random
There are various other cases where Vista brings up this dialog. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a heuristic but that's a pretty close assessment.
Furthermore, Vista considers whether or not an executable is digitally signed. If it isn't, you get the "WARNING THIS MAY DO BAD THINGS... do you still wish to elevate?" dialog, whereas a signed exe generates a friendlier message.
So once again, the small dev shop gets screwed because digital signatures cost money. WildTangent can handle the cost but they repackage 300 some games so they have to resign them and retest them. Not terrible but not exactly a smooth migration either.
I can see why they'd be upset though, if Microsoft is allowing/causing Vista to give MS games special treatment.