you ensure that it's not possible for the general public to break the seal (store the computer in a metal box) so that there's only a very narrow range of people who could possibly do the tampering meaning a conviction would be very easy and discourage tampering from taking place.
There's nothing to stop someone pouring a bottle of water in ballot boxes with paper ballots and invalidating a poll but this doesn't happen because it would result in a conviction
If you're going to be pedantic on the hack/security researcher issue then it's worth mentioning that a hacker actually means any coder. A cracker is the correct word for the common use of hacker.
Security researchers discovered a shocking flaw in the paper ballot system, they found that there were a number of flaws including one that said they could discount any number of votes just by saying the ballots were spoiled when counting! They also discovered that it was possible that overseas soldiers could send in multiple votes and have them counted!
Jeb Bush discounted these flaws as unmerited after he was seen at the security conference this was revealed taking notes.
Joking aside I have to wonder about the methods they use to hack into these ballot PCs. Most of the hacks I've seen required physical access to the PC and opening it up. If you removed all the ports for voting machines and secured the monitor connectors, you could simply put the PC in a box with a tamper proof seal and have a decent level of security. When the votes are counted, you have election inspectors observe the seal and do a quick checksum test to ensure the code hasn't been altered. Sounds secure enough for me and it would still be much quicker than paper ballots.
With all the sales figures and general negativity about Vista, it's got me wondering if Vista is the modern equilivant for Windows ME. Like Vista ME had a handfull of genuinely usefull features (the high EMS dos mode was a godsend to gamers) but it wasn't considered worth upgrading. With Vista it's the price and the fact it eats resources, with ME it was that it was too unreliable and wasn't worth the upgrade price.
However after ME they came up with XP which, despite what Linux users say, was a huge leap in reliability (generally XP will only crash completely for hardware/driver reasons). Makes you wonder if the next OS MS are working on will be a similar leap.
Via systems are designed to be efficient and I don't believe there's much of a price difference between them and celerons. It's possible they did want a low power PC although Via do some very integrated systems so they could've chose them so they'd spend less time and effort on assembly
Some of the examples given could have valid claims for copyright.
Layouts are protected under the Berne Convention. Sure the words of a Shakespeare play are free from copyright but the way they're laid out on a page is classed as a new work. You cannot scan in every page, then print the book as your own.
In terms of art pieces on birthday cards, who is to say they haven't done extensive alterations to the original painting? Also, as petty as it may seem, putting "happy birthday" on the front is an original work and although "obvious" design choices could be reproduced in other works, straight out scanning and copying is a no no.
Nicotine is a toxin.
Heck it's more toxic that arsenic and roughly the same toxicity of cyanide (roughly 50mg). Something as dangerous as that shouldn't be prescribed for non-life threatening situations (smoking can be considered life threatening).
With the GPLv3 I have to wonder if Microsoft expected this and have been working towards a courtroom confrontation. Microsoft have been keeping the 200 or so patent infringements of Linux secret when they could've gone to court at any time (chances are they'd eventually win, it's extremely unlikely that all the violations would be able to be proved to be invalid over) which would give them free reign to sue any company that has been using or distributing the code (doesn't matter if offending code is removed after the ruling, they'd still have used illegal code at some point).
The main reason they haven't done this so far is the sheer logistics of sueing so many companies and the fact it'd be a PR nightmare.
But what if Microsoft's hand was "forced"? If MS were taken to court over GPLv3 they'd almost certainly bring up the patents, possibly as a defence, possibly to countersue. They could/would be perceived as having no choice but to bring up the infringed code. Worst case scenario (for the OSS movement) is that Microsoft argue that infringing code is owned by them and isn't covered by the GPL so they're free to licence it (and the vouchers only cover the infringing code), MS win the case, proceed to sue everyone to maximise to effect of their patents. Best case scenario is that MS lost the case, have to pay damages and stop the novel deal but with their patents exposed they'd still go around and sue everyone.
As you've probably guessed, I'm no lawyer but seems that's what I would see happening.
OSS vs MS seems a bit like a mini cold war. Both sides have weapons which although not powerful enough to actually wipe each other out, would do some extremely heavy damage to each side.
Wants to go back to the 'good old days' where you'd have to tab 20 times to get to the text box you want (enevitably you'd press it 21 times and have to start over), have to remember different key combinations for every program (most keep the basics the same but advanced functions usually are different) and generally do most graphical activities slower?
Users like icons and using mouse for most activities because it's easier, safer and there's less risk of doing the wrong thing by accident. Who here hasn't experienced the frustration of losing 20 minutes of typing or resetting a connection because they pressed 'backspace' to try and delete some text only for a browser to go back a page?
The trouble is, you need business to be on board. There's no way a group of separated individuals working in their own time would be able to produce a large project that rivals something produced by dedicated teams from Microsoft, Adobe or any other large corporation. At some point all the large major OSS applications have had the input and time from a big business to improve on them, particularly in the case of simple user interfaces which are all too often a stumbling block for OSS.
There are laws to prevent unauthorised access in most countries, however there's also a lot of things which rely on the fact that a file is encrypted for legal protection as the file has to be publically available for a system to work. Actually using this information (say if it's user/pass combinations or some privacy data on it's users) to do something would be illegal but if you've removed all the protections against the content through the GPLv3, I could see if being possible to post any info from cracked files on a website with it being a legal grey area.
So, the draft removes the right to prosecute someone for cracking protected content? Businesses will love that extra complication for prosecuting hackers or disgruntled employees.
The patent thing is going to backfire big time. It's going to scare away businesses who would either stand to lose huge amounts of money or because they're unsure about whether it would invalidate patents they already have (what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence? Would patented business practices that use OSS be threatened? Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?
For a licence that was supposed to be simple and easy to understand, section 11 makes for a hard read, even for geeks and I imagine lawyers will love the the potential vague nature of those terms. God knows what a layperson would think when reading it.
There's some bad science on right there. They effectively say radio waves are the same kind of radiation as light. Whilst this is true (being on the electromagnetic spectrum) his use implies that it has similar effects. Not even even all types of light are without risks (UV for example) let alone things far apart on the scale. Gamma radiation is also on the scale, I doubt he'd suggest that's harmless.
low level microwave exposure is thought to be (mostly) harmless but it's not known 100% and large level exposure is known to have bad effects. Even if there's a 1% chance that longterm exposure could have some effect we don't know about, then it's well worth having studies done. You can dismiss things you think you already know about and be safe most of the time but very occasionally something unexpected happens and these can affect huge numbers of people.
Oh and BBC stuff is copyrighted, posting the entire episode hardly counts as fair usage.
Kinda missed the point I was making. Windows and Mac OS' GUI's have practically eliminated Command lines, Linux has yet to achieve that still requires it's users to perform certain tasks with a command line interface.
The blinking 12:00 was a famous issue with VCRs and it was representative of how annoying it was to use advanced features on videos.
However now a good number of DVDs, Consoles and other AV stuff either have an option to change the clock on the main menu or even when you turn it on. Most stuff also has a battery or capacitor so that this time doesn't reset to 12:00 if you unplug it. Heck Sky+ (and I imagine most DVR) boxes don't even require users to know to bother with times of programs, you can just select a program from an EPG and record it or even record the whole series with the press of a single button.
It's an example Linux needs to follow if it wants to be competitive. Command line interfaces (my largest pet peeve that stops me converting), although powerful, are a dinosaur and GUIs have progressed to the point where they're simply not needed. I can't remember the time I've needed to use command line stuff in windows, the only times I think even advanced users need to use it is for third party software that insists on command line or if their doing system repairs and booting to the command prompt (which isn't actually windows)
Didn't RTFA but that quote doesn't actually feature a denial from Sony, just that they haven't made any noises about a price cut publically.
In the UK prices dropped £25 ($50) as a special offer for the Easter holidays. However despite these holidays ending the price remains reduced as stores are trying to clear stockrooms filled with PS3 units. Consoles have very tight margins compared to games but take up huge amounts of space. Stores can't sell the consoles at the current price, the longer they have these boxes gathering dust, the less keen stores will be to place more orders.
165,000 units sold at launch, 34,000 a week later, 17,000 a week after that. Those aren't good figures.
You do not have the right to go into a pub or shop without permission.
Look in at a door or a window at the front of a shop and what will you see? An "open" sign which gives you permission or a "closed" sign which doesn't. Just because something has a flashy front and is on a high street, doesn't mean you have right to enter.
I didn't know that they had accurate thermometers 1000 years ago!
Also from one of the wine links: "There are nearly 400 commercial vineyards in England and Wales covering approximately 2000 acres of land in total. Nearly all are in the southern half of England and Wales. Most English and Welsh vineyards are small (less than 5 acres), many very small (less than 1 acre). Only a small number exceed 25 acres and just a handful 50 acres. The largest (Denbies, Dorking, Surrey) has around 200 acres of vines under cultivation."
Pretty much all of them are in the south. There is strong archaeological evidence of wineries well north of Hadrian's Wall. Considering with all the advances in technology and agricultural techniques since the roman times, it doesn't strike you as odd that the romans were capable of creating wine in a region that is, if the "cyclic climate" deniers are correct, is cold, wet and grey with little sunshine for 9 months of the year?
This seems to be a much better system for Western school kids (and geeks). A 900mhz ULV intel opposed to a 350mhz AMD Geode will be a huge huge difference. Also key is the fact it's using a real life OS, either XP or this linux distro. The OLPC uses a highly customised OS which bears little resemblance in terms of usage to anything else and despite being OSS, doesn't have a great deal of compatibility from what the devs are saying.
I'm sure there are plenty of brits here who used Acorn Archimedes at school and know how useless it can be getting taught on an obscure OS.
Most of the games and software for mobile phones runs on JavaME. To protect software there are DRM features but surely if Java goes GPLv3 support for these DRM functions will have to cease.
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you ensure that it's not possible for the general public to break the seal (store the computer in a metal box) so that there's only a very narrow range of people who could possibly do the tampering meaning a conviction would be very easy and discourage tampering from taking place.
There's nothing to stop someone pouring a bottle of water in ballot boxes with paper ballots and invalidating a poll but this doesn't happen because it would result in a conviction
If you're going to be pedantic on the hack/security researcher issue then it's worth mentioning that a hacker actually means any coder. A cracker is the correct word for the common use of hacker.
Security researchers discovered a shocking flaw in the paper ballot system, they found that there were a number of flaws including one that said they could discount any number of votes just by saying the ballots were spoiled when counting! They also discovered that it was possible that overseas soldiers could send in multiple votes and have them counted!
Jeb Bush discounted these flaws as unmerited after he was seen at the security conference this was revealed taking notes.
Joking aside I have to wonder about the methods they use to hack into these ballot PCs. Most of the hacks I've seen required physical access to the PC and opening it up. If you removed all the ports for voting machines and secured the monitor connectors, you could simply put the PC in a box with a tamper proof seal and have a decent level of security. When the votes are counted, you have election inspectors observe the seal and do a quick checksum test to ensure the code hasn't been altered. Sounds secure enough for me and it would still be much quicker than paper ballots.
With all the sales figures and general negativity about Vista, it's got me wondering if Vista is the modern equilivant for Windows ME. Like Vista ME had a handfull of genuinely usefull features (the high EMS dos mode was a godsend to gamers) but it wasn't considered worth upgrading. With Vista it's the price and the fact it eats resources, with ME it was that it was too unreliable and wasn't worth the upgrade price.
However after ME they came up with XP which, despite what Linux users say, was a huge leap in reliability (generally XP will only crash completely for hardware/driver reasons). Makes you wonder if the next OS MS are working on will be a similar leap.
Via systems are designed to be efficient and I don't believe there's much of a price difference between them and celerons. It's possible they did want a low power PC although Via do some very integrated systems so they could've chose them so they'd spend less time and effort on assembly
Strange how the headline doesn't mention it comes with Windows Vista installed...
Some of the examples given could have valid claims for copyright. Layouts are protected under the Berne Convention. Sure the words of a Shakespeare play are free from copyright but the way they're laid out on a page is classed as a new work. You cannot scan in every page, then print the book as your own. In terms of art pieces on birthday cards, who is to say they haven't done extensive alterations to the original painting? Also, as petty as it may seem, putting "happy birthday" on the front is an original work and although "obvious" design choices could be reproduced in other works, straight out scanning and copying is a no no.
Nicotine is a toxin. Heck it's more toxic that arsenic and roughly the same toxicity of cyanide (roughly 50mg). Something as dangerous as that shouldn't be prescribed for non-life threatening situations (smoking can be considered life threatening).
With the GPLv3 I have to wonder if Microsoft expected this and have been working towards a courtroom confrontation. Microsoft have been keeping the 200 or so patent infringements of Linux secret when they could've gone to court at any time (chances are they'd eventually win, it's extremely unlikely that all the violations would be able to be proved to be invalid over) which would give them free reign to sue any company that has been using or distributing the code (doesn't matter if offending code is removed after the ruling, they'd still have used illegal code at some point). The main reason they haven't done this so far is the sheer logistics of sueing so many companies and the fact it'd be a PR nightmare. But what if Microsoft's hand was "forced"? If MS were taken to court over GPLv3 they'd almost certainly bring up the patents, possibly as a defence, possibly to countersue. They could/would be perceived as having no choice but to bring up the infringed code. Worst case scenario (for the OSS movement) is that Microsoft argue that infringing code is owned by them and isn't covered by the GPL so they're free to licence it (and the vouchers only cover the infringing code), MS win the case, proceed to sue everyone to maximise to effect of their patents. Best case scenario is that MS lost the case, have to pay damages and stop the novel deal but with their patents exposed they'd still go around and sue everyone. As you've probably guessed, I'm no lawyer but seems that's what I would see happening. OSS vs MS seems a bit like a mini cold war. Both sides have weapons which although not powerful enough to actually wipe each other out, would do some extremely heavy damage to each side.
Wants to go back to the 'good old days' where you'd have to tab 20 times to get to the text box you want (enevitably you'd press it 21 times and have to start over), have to remember different key combinations for every program (most keep the basics the same but advanced functions usually are different) and generally do most graphical activities slower?
Users like icons and using mouse for most activities because it's easier, safer and there's less risk of doing the wrong thing by accident. Who here hasn't experienced the frustration of losing 20 minutes of typing or resetting a connection because they pressed 'backspace' to try and delete some text only for a browser to go back a page?
The trouble is, you need business to be on board. There's no way a group of separated individuals working in their own time would be able to produce a large project that rivals something produced by dedicated teams from Microsoft, Adobe or any other large corporation. At some point all the large major OSS applications have had the input and time from a big business to improve on them, particularly in the case of simple user interfaces which are all too often a stumbling block for OSS.
There are laws to prevent unauthorised access in most countries, however there's also a lot of things which rely on the fact that a file is encrypted for legal protection as the file has to be publically available for a system to work. Actually using this information (say if it's user/pass combinations or some privacy data on it's users) to do something would be illegal but if you've removed all the protections against the content through the GPLv3, I could see if being possible to post any info from cracked files on a website with it being a legal grey area.
The patent thing is going to backfire big time. It's going to scare away businesses who would either stand to lose huge amounts of money or because they're unsure about whether it would invalidate patents they already have (what if the software is designed specifically to perform a piece of CAM in a way that's patented? Would that patent become invalid because of this licence? Would patented business practices that use OSS be threatened? Why risk losing millions in licence fees when you could spend a few hundred thousand and fit your systems with software you know doesn't rob you these rights?
For a licence that was supposed to be simple and easy to understand, section 11 makes for a hard read, even for geeks and I imagine lawyers will love the the potential vague nature of those terms. God knows what a layperson would think when reading it.
Isn't it Swing you use to have a near identical UI on any platform in Java? Been a while since I've used it.
low level microwave exposure is thought to be (mostly) harmless but it's not known 100% and large level exposure is known to have bad effects. Even if there's a 1% chance that longterm exposure could have some effect we don't know about, then it's well worth having studies done. You can dismiss things you think you already know about and be safe most of the time but very occasionally something unexpected happens and these can affect huge numbers of people.
Oh and BBC stuff is copyrighted, posting the entire episode hardly counts as fair usage.
Any decent router should list all that info for any system connected to it and there are countless ways of finding out your own IP.
Kinda missed the point I was making. Windows and Mac OS' GUI's have practically eliminated Command lines, Linux has yet to achieve that still requires it's users to perform certain tasks with a command line interface.
However now a good number of DVDs, Consoles and other AV stuff either have an option to change the clock on the main menu or even when you turn it on. Most stuff also has a battery or capacitor so that this time doesn't reset to 12:00 if you unplug it. Heck Sky+ (and I imagine most DVR) boxes don't even require users to know to bother with times of programs, you can just select a program from an EPG and record it or even record the whole series with the press of a single button.
It's an example Linux needs to follow if it wants to be competitive. Command line interfaces (my largest pet peeve that stops me converting), although powerful, are a dinosaur and GUIs have progressed to the point where they're simply not needed. I can't remember the time I've needed to use command line stuff in windows, the only times I think even advanced users need to use it is for third party software that insists on command line or if their doing system repairs and booting to the command prompt (which isn't actually windows)
In the UK prices dropped £25 ($50) as a special offer for the Easter holidays. However despite these holidays ending the price remains reduced as stores are trying to clear stockrooms filled with PS3 units. Consoles have very tight margins compared to games but take up huge amounts of space. Stores can't sell the consoles at the current price, the longer they have these boxes gathering dust, the less keen stores will be to place more orders.
165,000 units sold at launch, 34,000 a week later, 17,000 a week after that. Those aren't good figures.
Look in at a door or a window at the front of a shop and what will you see? An "open" sign which gives you permission or a "closed" sign which doesn't. Just because something has a flashy front and is on a high street, doesn't mean you have right to enter.
Also from one of the wine links: "There are nearly 400 commercial vineyards in England and Wales covering approximately 2000 acres of land in total. Nearly all are in the southern half of England and Wales. Most English and Welsh vineyards are small (less than 5 acres), many very small (less than 1 acre). Only a small number exceed 25 acres and just a handful 50 acres. The largest (Denbies, Dorking, Surrey) has around 200 acres of vines under cultivation."
Pretty much all of them are in the south. There is strong archaeological evidence of wineries well north of Hadrian's Wall. Considering with all the advances in technology and agricultural techniques since the roman times, it doesn't strike you as odd that the romans were capable of creating wine in a region that is, if the "cyclic climate" deniers are correct, is cold, wet and grey with little sunshine for 9 months of the year?
I'm sure there are plenty of brits here who used Acorn Archimedes at school and know how useless it can be getting taught on an obscure OS.
but surely any future updates would be GPLv3 to keep it in line with Java and to incorporate any changes to the base language
Most of the games and software for mobile phones runs on JavaME. To protect software there are DRM features but surely if Java goes GPLv3 support for these DRM functions will have to cease.
I know at least half of those have linux and apple sections, not to mention PDAs and smartphones...