I'd also like to add that, originally, copyright gave a limited monopoly on "publishing". Copying from your own copy of a book was not covered by the law - and at the time, the extent of protection was 7 years
You are actually entitled to do many things, like reverse engineering (excpting where the DMCA is involved), and making copies of small amounts for various purposes (like education), without any permission from the copyright owner
What most software vendors do, is force you to agree to a "license agreement". Agreement as in contract, which is used to actually restrict you further than copyright alone would.
Many software licenses (ignoring the issue of whther they are valid for the moment) actually prevent anyone else from using the software - even when it remains on only one computer.
So no, while you can lend your hardware to someone else, you may not be entitled to allow them to use the software.
But it's crucial for scientific research to be public.
This is not the first time that a researcher was threatened for intending to publicize security information.
We do not need the legal system to define what we (the public) is allowed to learn.
The freedom to read and the freedom to learn are key to our way of life; and yet, since they were so obvious at the time of authorship, the constitution does not guaranty them.
Since they are not written into the constitution, they must actively be defended every time there is the slightest challenge.
The security implications are minor, and must take second place to our freedom.
I haven't yet tried emusic, or other similar ilk, but perhaps I will - I can't stand giving a cut to the RIAA every time I buy music just so they can screw me by bribing congress.
That's not a very good analogy. I've already had a lot of use out of all my mp3 purchases. All my cd's are now ripped in mp3 format. mp3 is already the consumer devices format defacto standard.
It would be nice, however, if there were a website where you could buy mp3's in the same way you can buy tracks from iTunes.
The thing I don't like about iTunes is this:
I've invested in mp3 infrastructure (mp3 players, car mp3 cd, etc) but I can't download mp3s from iTunes, nor am I allowed to convert the aac file or whatever to mp3.
And don't even talk to me about burning a cd, then ripping it - it's not even worth mentioning.
Set up a Linux system with email, www, Open Office, etc,etc... you know your audience.
Then challenge them to find fault in certain defined areas:
Try and catch a virus
Try to get infected with malware of any kind (without running Wine)
Find a problem in compatibility - say between MS Office docs and Open Office.
Hack in from outside
Hack your way to escalated privilege
Find some hidden piece of info
You get the picture
Make sure that the software is all configured correctly - give them user accounts, etc. You don't want anything to break due to incorrect configuration.
Some things may not be hard to break - like Office compatibility, but that's not necessarily a downside: You can't hide issues. It'll be fun figuring out what fit's well in your environment.
The move to lock out pirated copies of Windows from the download sites is part of Microsoft's effort to fight software piracy, a major issue for the software vendor.
Microsoft has bigger issues than that. Like, for example, the huge number of businesses that are realizing they over-reliant on Microsoft, and are finding that there are ways of running their businesses very succesfully without being completely beholden to them.
And how can anyone sympathize, when you consider that Microsoft has ripped off many companies' code without permission - and regularly settles over the resulting lawsuits?
1. If it's likely to make money for Microsoft, they'll sue. The only reason they won't sue it if it would probably fail in the courtroom.
2. What this does mean is that someone wishing to create an instant messenger with custom smilies is in for trouble. No lawyer is going to advise possible infringement.
3. So with this Microsoft may be differentiating their products, making it impossible for other products to have the same feature.
4. Worse, there is no legal requirements (IIRC) on licensing. In other words, although the patent system was instigates to promote publishing ideas in such a way that more companies implemented them, there is no requirement for the patent holder to actually allow it (with or without a fee).
5. Is it MS's fault or the patent office's?
Abusing a broken system is immoral and unethical. Microsoft have shown themselves to be both, which is why I will never buy or recommend their products.
Actually, the similarity between the functioning of the major players has increased.
The community has no reason to use incompatibilities to differentiate their product the way Microsoft (and others) do, and see standardization as the future.
Part of the problem with the clipboard, for example, is that the X specification was horrible, tried to do to much, and wasn't clear. So implementations were incompatible.
X is generally horrible, tries to do too much, and isn't clear. It was probably the best move Apple ever made (with OSX), creating a new windowing system. The worst move was probably the "funneling" used to hack a microkernel onto a BSD based system.
Anyway the point of this post is that, although there are many technologies aimed at the same problem, they don't so much compete as coexist, and such things as compatibility and "user interface standards" (for want of a better term) will inevitably improve.
"But you don't just want a free society, you want a just society." No we want a free society. People have been fighting for freedom throughout the ages.
Most people here in the US have relatives who died giving us this freedom.
You want justice at the expense of freedom, go live somewhere else - like a police state, with ID cards, where the authorities have a right to search anyone and sieze anything.
Where they can identify suspected dissenters by tracking their reading material. And where they handle them by making them silently vanish.
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
"When people can commit crimes anonymously, there is no punishment."
You obviously haven't encountered many criminals. They aren't in the habit of (intentionally) identifying themselves.
"There really isn't anything wrong with Windows at work."
So there's nothing wrong with the usual windows experiences like:
Downtime (the Exchange servers where I consult are constantly dropping).
Virii. Our IT staff do a great job of keeping virii out, but the work this entails is very costly. And when a virus does get through, it's even more costly.
Incompatibility. The Microsoft world does not play well with others. They change SMB, Kerberos, the TCP/IP stack and sockets programming. They even change the Office files documents. HTML, CSS, the list goes on and on.
Training. Microsoft ensure that their products change enough that people need training on things they already new. They change the location of menu items, files, configuration options, etc. More cost.
Upgrade cycle. Bill gates once said that the main competitor to Windows 98 was Windows 95. So they terminate support for previous versions, and force customers to spend more money - even if they were content with their setup (some people don't need the latest and greatest; it's true!).
And you say there's nothing wrong with Windows at work!
About the most you can safely say is that is extremely unlikely.
Rate it up there with the US government collaborating with aliens.
These sweeping changes to law here and over there (the Patriot Act etc) taken together paint a very dark picture.
9/11 was an excuse that persuaded many people to allow this violation of privacy.
But, taken together, the gestalt effect implies tighter monitoring and control of the local population - not foreign terrorists - and with NO JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT.
The BBC set up a huge network. To get the simplest solution at the lowest cost, they removed all of the options and modules they didn't need. In doing so, they reduced the memory footprint and removed unnecessary threads and processes, allowing them to make the most economical use of the hardware.
They also customized the DNS servers, adding in more sophisticated load-balancing (which also improves efficiency, and failover).
Could you, cheaply, customize Windows and IIS that way?
See the mouse cursor - the thing that's pointy. And see the handles, and the menu that you can operate with the mouse.
And notice that when you type winfile or progman, another of those square thingies (let's call them windows) pops up.
yeah? well they're all part of the GUI (it means "graphical user interface"). When you're running without a GUI, those windowy thingies don't pop up - winfile and progman return a text error message. You know - one without any "ok" or "cancel" button - and no "frame" around it.
It was a pain to set up, but mostly due to a combination of me wanting to use a firewall with NAT and the Cable provider refusing to allow another MAC address to see the internet.
Once I got it set up, though, it's been great.
The audio quality can drop slightly when there's a lot of traffic, but it's rare that the volume get's that high. I'd like to monitor the actual bandwidth calls take.
And I've had excellent up-time.
I haven't tried 911. I'd probably do it from my cell phone anyway - I tend to use it more than the VOIP line.
FYI for anyone having trouble setting up the Telephone Adapter (TA). If the IP address given to the TA when it boots is a non-internet routable number (10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x for example) it could be that your internet provider is refusing to give out another IP address for the new MAC address.
You can get around this on many devices by going into the settings (try user/pass of admin/admin or blank/admin) and mimicking the MAC address of the previously-connected device (ie the computer or the firewall - whatever is plugged into the cable-modem).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd also like to add that, originally, copyright gave a limited monopoly on "publishing". Copying from your own copy of a book was not covered by the law - and at the time, the extent of protection was 7 years
You are actually entitled to do many things, like reverse engineering (excpting where the DMCA is involved), and making copies of small amounts for various purposes (like education), without any permission from the copyright owner
What most software vendors do, is force you to agree to a "license agreement". Agreement as in contract, which is used to actually restrict you further than copyright alone would.
Many software licenses (ignoring the issue of whther they are valid for the moment) actually prevent anyone else from using the software - even when it remains on only one computer.
So no, while you can lend your hardware to someone else, you may not be entitled to allow them to use the software.
"Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."
If you look at some of the patents that have been approved, you'll see they are already doing ecstasy and drinking rum in the office.
This is not the first time that a researcher was threatened for intending to publicize security information.
We do not need the legal system to define what we (the public) is allowed to learn.
The freedom to read and the freedom to learn are key to our way of life; and yet, since they were so obvious at the time of authorship, the constitution does not guaranty them.
Since they are not written into the constitution, they must actively be defended every time there is the slightest challenge.
The security implications are minor, and must take second place to our freedom.
I haven't yet tried emusic, or other similar ilk, but perhaps I will - I can't stand giving a cut to the RIAA every time I buy music just so they can screw me by bribing congress.
It would be nice, however, if there were a website where you could buy mp3's in the same way you can buy tracks from iTunes.
I've invested in mp3 infrastructure (mp3 players, car mp3 cd, etc) but I can't download mp3s from iTunes, nor am I allowed to convert the aac file or whatever to mp3.
And don't even talk to me about burning a cd, then ripping it - it's not even worth mentioning.
Then challenge them to find fault in certain defined areas:
You get the picture
Make sure that the software is all configured correctly - give them user accounts, etc. You don't want anything to break due to incorrect configuration.
Some things may not be hard to break - like Office compatibility, but that's not necessarily a downside: You can't hide issues. It'll be fun figuring out what fit's well in your environment.
Microsoft has bigger issues than that. Like, for example, the huge number of businesses that are realizing they over-reliant on Microsoft, and are finding that there are ways of running their businesses very succesfully without being completely beholden to them.
And how can anyone sympathize, when you consider that Microsoft has ripped off many companies' code without permission - and regularly settles over the resulting lawsuits?
1. If it's likely to make money for Microsoft, they'll sue. The only reason they won't sue it if it would probably fail in the courtroom.
2. What this does mean is that someone wishing to create an instant messenger with custom smilies is in for trouble. No lawyer is going to advise possible infringement.
3. So with this Microsoft may be differentiating their products, making it impossible for other products to have the same feature.
4. Worse, there is no legal requirements (IIRC) on licensing. In other words, although the patent system was instigates to promote publishing ideas in such a way that more companies implemented them, there is no requirement for the patent holder to actually allow it (with or without a fee).
5. Is it MS's fault or the patent office's?
Abusing a broken system is immoral and unethical. Microsoft have shown themselves to be both, which is why I will never buy or recommend their products.
The community has no reason to use incompatibilities to differentiate their product the way Microsoft (and others) do, and see standardization as the future.
Part of the problem with the clipboard, for example, is that the X specification was horrible, tried to do to much, and wasn't clear. So implementations were incompatible.
X is generally horrible, tries to do too much, and isn't clear. It was probably the best move Apple ever made (with OSX), creating a new windowing system. The worst move was probably the "funneling" used to hack a microkernel onto a BSD based system.
Anyway the point of this post is that, although there are many technologies aimed at the same problem, they don't so much compete as coexist, and such things as compatibility and "user interface standards" (for want of a better term) will inevitably improve.
So what do you think of PPT files? And, please, don't hold back this time - say what you really feel!
-22 Idiotic
"But you don't just want a free society, you want a just society."
No we want a free society. People have been fighting for freedom throughout the ages.
Most people here in the US have relatives who died giving us this freedom.
You want justice at the expense of freedom, go live somewhere else - like a police state, with ID cards, where the authorities have a right to search anyone and sieze anything.
Where they can identify suspected dissenters by tracking their reading material. And where they handle them by making them silently vanish.
"When people can commit crimes anonymously, there is no punishment."
You obviously haven't encountered many criminals. They aren't in the habit of (intentionally) identifying themselves.
So there's nothing wrong with the usual windows experiences like:
And you say there's nothing wrong with Windows at work!
The collective term for Unix systems is boxen.
The collective term for Windows is "crap"
But I'd be ecstatic to see Mac OSX overtake Windows.
I recommend Macs to all my non-geek friends and colleagues, and Linux to geeks.
I recommend that everyone avoid Microsoft or be plagued by virii and malware.
And I'd bet that a sizeable percentage of the servers sold had Windows replaced by Linux or FreeBSD
Rate it up there with the US government collaborating with aliens.
These sweeping changes to law here and over there (the Patriot Act etc) taken together paint a very dark picture.
9/11 was an excuse that persuaded many people to allow this violation of privacy.
But, taken together, the gestalt effect implies tighter monitoring and control of the local population - not foreign terrorists - and with NO JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT.
Does no-one remember Watergate?
I learned Smalltalk before Java. C before both.
With Smalltalk, I learned more from the existing code of the platform, than from everything else combined.
Access to the source code is so beneficial, you could say it's critically important.
Going back to proprietary platforms, and black-box APIs is so painful!
I'd rather my kids appreciate sex than violence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4606719.stm
The BBC set up a huge network. To get the simplest solution at the lowest cost, they removed all of the options and modules they didn't need.
In doing so, they reduced the memory footprint and removed unnecessary threads and processes, allowing them to make the most economical use of the hardware.
They also customized the DNS servers, adding in more sophisticated load-balancing (which also improves efficiency, and failover).
Could you, cheaply, customize Windows and IIS that way?
See the mouse cursor - the thing that's pointy. And see the handles, and the menu that you can operate with the mouse.
And notice that when you type winfile or progman, another of those square thingies (let's call them windows) pops up.
yeah? well they're all part of the GUI (it means "graphical user interface"). When you're running without a GUI, those windowy thingies don't pop up - winfile and progman return a text error message. You know - one without any "ok" or "cancel" button - and no "frame" around it.
Once I got it set up, though, it's been great.
The audio quality can drop slightly when there's a lot of traffic, but it's rare that the volume get's that high.
I'd like to monitor the actual bandwidth calls take.
And I've had excellent up-time.
I haven't tried 911. I'd probably do it from my cell phone anyway - I tend to use it more than the VOIP line.
FYI for anyone having trouble setting up the Telephone Adapter (TA). If the IP address given to the TA when it boots is a non-internet routable number (10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x for example) it could be that your internet provider is refusing to give out another IP address for the new MAC address.
You can get around this on many devices by going into the settings (try user/pass of admin/admin or blank/admin) and mimicking the MAC address of the previously-connected device (ie the computer or the firewall - whatever is plugged into the cable-modem).
That's total hogwash.
If you don't start windows, you're in DOS. Even if it's DOS renamed to Windows xx, it's still real mode. Single tasking, no win api (or win32 api).
So no. There's no comparison to Linux sans X