More importantly, he did it with the knowledge, consent, and help of MS for a controlled test.
If I own the copywrite, and say "sure you can run that through the copier.", then there is no legal issue at all. That's what they did here, they gave him permission to run a pirated copy - in fact sent him the CD he used to do the install. That's the thing about big companies, if you sweet talk them a bit - dangle the publicity carrot infront of them - they usually give you nice stuff.
That is why they were granted the warrant: to see if there is useful information on the video. They had probable cause to get the warrant (seeing him filming near the protests). Nobody's rights are being violated here, this is just a run-of-the-mill protecting protesters case where some kids makes himself out to be a victim. They should charge him with felony obstruction of justice. Get over yourself Slashdot, this is NOT a "your rights online" paranoia-fueled big government tin foil hat case!
Um, there is one little tiny point you missed. This is being processed as a Federal Case because the State has laws in place to protect him from this type of lawsuit. The police car is registered to the State - not the Federal - Government. The incident occured on a public road - not Federal Land. The type of crime - arson - is State - not Federal. The Federal Government has no jurisdiction. What they are using is an extremely far fetched claim of partial ownership of the police car, based on the fact that DHS gave the City govt a Block Grant.
The problem is that Block Grants are just that Grants - they don't impart any degree of ownership. If the US Govt isn't listed on the car's title as a joint owner, and the value of the part ownership isn't listed in the DHS accounting books, they don't own it & don't have standing for jurisdiction in this case. The issue isn't that somebody is trying to get him to fork over his tapes, it's that the people who are doing it don't have the legal standing in a sane world to do it. California put into place a law specifically to avoid intimidating the press like this, by making it a Federal case under extremely dubious context, the Federal Government is sidestepping that law and vastly overstepping it's jurusdiction.
Because the Fed Gov gives money to CA for "anti-terrorism" which is then used to fund things like police cars this is now a federal matter.
I have to agree that this is pretty damn flimsy. The Feds are saying - "We gave you a block grant, so everything you buy/use is now partly ours." I've never seen anything in any of the grants that says that. Last one I looked at said 'here's $x. We want to see A, B, & C implimented in the next 12 months.' The feds always give money to the towns. Just because they got a DHS grant doesn't change things, it's still a grant, not purchasing part ownership in the city.
As far as I can see from the artical, the Feds want the case so they can bypass the state laws. I'm just not sure how the Feds can control jurisdiction with that argument. All of the crimes are state & local, and not performed on federal land.
32 'X' / 'XXX' = 10/w 2-
how to 'have sex with 10 other people and a midgit' in a pickup?
Hmm, ambitious - I would recommend a 1 1/2ton pickup for that.
Can I point out that NO developer will ever run a locked down DRM box for development? Doing so would require resigning for every recompile of any module - do you really think that marketing/ITsecurity would give every developer the signing software?
It's not going to happen. I don't like GPL v3's take on DRM, mostly because it's not DRM that inspired it, it was a trusted computing issue with TIVO. The Tivo hardware was hardwired(or flashed) to only run the OS it came with, and not tweaked versions of it. The reason behind that was in fact a DRM issue, by only running certified versions of the software, TIVO could go to **AA and say, "look, DRM is in place & secure, so stop suing me." Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but Tivo did exactly what they were required to do, they made changes to the code & returned those changes to the community. Could you further change the code and run it on a Tivo? No, but the changes to the code were available and you could incorperate those changes into your own project - and to me that has always been the core of the FOSS community. I am free to learn from your stuff & use it, just like you can use mine.
The problem I have with GPL v3 is that I can see reasons to use trusted computing - banking, military, and medical records - by deliberatly voiding the core of trusted computing (being able to control/identify exactly what code is running), you exclude the possibility of using any GPLv3 code in those applications. In other words, by artificially forcing freedom, I see GPLv3 actually restricting it. I think that's been Linus' point also.
Actually, if the copywrite holder has given his blessing, then it's no longer circumventing copy protection. Once the copying is 'liscensed' then the DRM becomes something else - technological co-conspiritor to deny you your civil rights? breach of contract?- Steamboat Willy goes public domain on November 18,2027. How does that jibe with DRM? If it's public domain, it's public domain, you can't restrict copying/reproduction of it.
They (DRM pushers) do not want to push a public domain/creative commons/GPL vs DRM suit through the legal system yet. If they can have years of caselaw saying DRM is legal, they can possibly bludgeon that PD/CC/GPL isn't inhibited, but now - not a chance. By strict reading, DRM that doesn't expire with the copywrite is un-Constitutional in the US. Copywrite is explicitly stated to be for a limited time. DRM by it's current nature extends copywrite in perpituity.
Do you realize what creating more would do to the rent-a-zilla market. Not to mention the permits? Think of the poor permit people. Take pity on their poor scheduiling souls. (Mega-Tokyo reference)
Is that Google won't have to pay above and beyond their already astronomical bandwidth costs.
Remember, the Telco line is that Google is making a fortune using their networks & they are getting nothing out of it. They are currently hoping people ignore/don't know that while you pay for your connection, the site you connect to is also paying - again the whole double dip thing.
The telcos got over $5B in tax credits/subsidies in order to improve the network - they promised 40Mbps. Now they say that unless they can get more money by charging for priority and bandwidth, they can't improve the network. I know that $5B only runs so much fiber ($1M/mile in urban areas), but since up to 70% of fiber is unlit (2005 data) I don't think the problem is running more fiber.
Personnally, I think that the next time some telco asshat says they don't make any money from Google, Google should have a press conference with a printed hardcopy of it's entire montly bandwidth bill. I figure opening the backdrop curtain to reviel a dumptruck of paper being poured onto the stage should get the idea across.
For the record it says Microsoft & Genuine printed at 45 deg bend sinister with a metalized strip on the right side- in visible light, I'm not sure what other goodies show up under laser light or non visible light. However, I have to say that if I hadn't looked, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.
I used to work for the company that MFG's the holograms for UL - the pretty ones that go on the xmass lights. There are up to 24 seperate holographic items on those little suckers. However, if it has a pretty hologram on it, how many people actually sit there & examine every string of lights they buy to check that they have the right hologram? I'm going to bet pretty close to nobody.
Last time I bought & activated a copy of Windows, I never even opened the package, just used my copy of the CD & read the numbers off the Genuine sticker through the celophane & typed them in. (I toss the CDs & sticker in the bottom of the case if it's not vented there - that way I never loose the driver CDs.) If it was a bad copy, I would have never known.
All that said, if I had bought a copy from a company to do an artical about the experiance, you had better believe I would have another blog posted about how they charged me full price for a pirated copy of XP. Since there's nothing except an 'opsie but MS is great' - either this guy is on happy drugs, or it's a shill.
Hmm, $17 if you mail out the fritzed chip. $30 if you have a new one mailed to you.
Or you could splurge & spend the $58 and buy the programmer yourself.
Interesting choices there.
How about this:
Your doctor connects to 'Your health history on line'
You have 2 choices:
You can know for certain that the server is running the correct software & hasn't been hacked by some asshat who is randomly reasigning health histories to requests.
You can have untrusted computing so you can be free.
Now you can keep spouting your "master's bidding" crap, or you can pay attention to what is going on around you. There are enough pieces of crapware/malware/spyware out there that the average user is getting screwed left and right. Virus writers are testing their new code against the newest versions of AV software before they go into the wild. Read the actual specs & RFC's.
What I see people screaming about is the far edge of TCM - total lockdown of a system. Is that a possibility, of course it is - hell it's a goal for specific high security markets. Now I want you to pull your head out of your ass & load up your calculator program. Tell me exactly how many permutations of OS/patch/driver/firmware can you come up with? Each and every one of those is going to have to be certified to make it work. Yeah, I see a gig eprom sitting on every motherboard stuffed with each of those keys - though I'm not sure a gig will be enough when you add in all the software keys too.
Oh wait, in your world, we are going to put lynksys, dlink, nvidia, ati, and all the other companies that make cards out of business in order to lock everything to a motherboard with integrated everything. Oh, and development of software will require that every test compile be transfered to a certifying agency prior to being allowed to run.
The TCM strawman is total lockdown of a PC to a single OS w/ specified software.Can it be done, yes. Will it be done, yes - under controlled circumstances for those customers who require extremely high levels of trust both internally and between their external counterparts. Will it be done for the general public? No, not because the RIAA & MPAA & asshats in congress don't want to do it, but because it's not technically feasible to do in the real world. Remember, China, Japan, Russia, and the EU are not going to hand every computer in thier country over to the US govt because they insist on a total lockdown via TCM. You are much more likely to see TC models with degrees of trust rather than total lockdown. And as long as I get to decide what I get to trust on my system, I have all the freedom I need. I don't need to be able to decide what YOU get to run.
Plus, even if it is, anyone who has gotten suckered into phone support and actually has enough knowledge to understand this themselves will probably get fed up with it and have little trouble saying "Sorry, we don't support that. Thanks for calling." and hanging up if it becomes a problem.... or maybe I was just an asshole when I did phone support.
Obviously you were the asshole who took the call before I did & passed the previously frustrated and now angry customer on to me.
Seriously, in today's call center you are not allowed to hang up on customers. Never, no matter how much they abuse you, no matter how stupid they are. I've worked in 2 & know people in 3 others. The customer just calls back, yells for a supervisor & you get reamed for hanging up on them, even after recordings show they used every curse known to western civilization and a few new ones. I once got yelled at for hanging up on a customer who had just issued a death threat.
As for the not working with other software, it comes down to DRM - to stay inside the DRM lines, you have to be able to engage in some level of 'Trusted Computing'. If I can't trust your new app not to violate the rules I need in place to satisfy my content supplier, I can't run your new app.
I have to agree that trying to impose the GPLv3 onto hardware mfgs isn't smart. Like it or not some levels of 'trusted computing' will be needed or desired in the future - especially by governments and big businesses, and saying that it's unacceptable is only going to kill FOSS in those areas.
The way Treacherous Computing works is by only allowing privilaged operations to be run by "Trusted" (i.e., crpytographically signed) binaries. Even though you could get a binary of the Linux kernel signed by the certificate authority, it destoys the point because if you exercise your rights under the GPL by modifying and rebuilding the software, it's no longer "Trusted" because it's not signed.
Yes it's true. After you make changes to the sourcecode of software and re-compile it, it's no longer 'Trusted'. BECAUSE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!
Back off of piracy and conspiricy issues. If I write 'FSM-wordprocessor' and get it signed, you and everyone else gets to trust that I & the signing agency have verified that the software is exactly as I intended it to be. Currently if Bob decides to create a virus, he can create one that rewrites one of my modules to do what it was originally intended to do, as well as whatever malicious thing he want's it to do. Currently there is no way for me to verify that when I run 'FSM-wordprocessor', I am running the original code, or the one with the virus. Trusted computing does that. That's why the military wants it. It fulfills a vital security role for them.
For the average user, it also fulfills a vital role. "Hey my OO2.0 pops up as not trusted... but I didn't change anything. Perhaps I have a virus." It's again a way to verify that changes you didn't make, arn't being run. In that respect it grants the user more control over their computer, because it provides them with more information.
The only time trusted computing doesn't make sense, is when you are working in a development environment. In any live production environment, knowing that what you think you are running is what is actually running is a good thing. When you are doing development, obviously you can't get things certified each time you recompile it - hell on a bad day, that would be 30-40 recerts for a subroutine. What you need is degrees of trust.
High order Trust:
3rd party certificate
verification that provided software is 'clean' and un-altered.
automatic acceptance on all systems
Group Trust
signed by a local agency - the company IT dept
verification that the provided software is suitable to run within the group
automatic acceptance within the group - untrusted on all others
Personal Trust
signed by you
no verification other than personal accptance & active signing
automatic trust only on the system it was signed on - untrusted on all others
Untrusted
Not signed
no verification
no automatic trust
If you want to tweek & recompile the kernel, go ahead & then hit it with a 'personal trust' cert. But don't hand it to me & say this is the greatest mod to the kernel ever & expect me to trust it. The problem is not with 'Trusted Computing' the problem is with implimentation. If there is only Trusted/UnTrusted, then there's an issue. If I can define who I trust and what I trust, then things are good. If I can only trust what somebody else tells me is trustworthy, then it's bad.
The problem is going to be when you take your personal signed kernel and try to run trusted software that is going to go looking for a 'High Order' cert. Let's face it, if my concern is securing data - state secrets or 'Boy Band of the Week vol 1' - I can't verify that the data is secure if you have changed the kernel, since you could be ghosting every buffer to a non-secure memory space. Now is that a problem? only if you are trying to use software that explicitly requires the OS to be certed. Most FOSS isn't going to care. The stuff that does is going to be related to securing other people's Data. IE. you won't be able to run 3rd Party Secure Data Relay Proxie v4 on an unCerted Kernel because the 1st & 2nd p
Hmm, here in MA - between I91 & Worcester at least - it still seems to be going along nicely. But a good chunk is people from Boston who are crazy enough to do an 1.5 hour + commute, so they are used to paying Boston prices & think we're a steal:)
It's also a localized thing close to the MA pike (I90) - get too far from it & prices crash again.
Actually, it's 17 miles from my driveway to my work parkinglot (dead center of the city). The 2 towns (suburbs) I drive through are actually cheaper to own/rent than where I do. The general feel I get (I've owned mine for 12 years) is that almost all the rental properties outside the city proper are new owners trying to milk a RE boom for quick rental money - hence high rental prices. In city the whole dynamic changes since there's almost no single family dwellings there - and multi-family rentals are a whole different kettle of fish.
[shrug] It's really the same anywhere. Any landlord who's going to stay in business not only has to pay the same taxes/utilities I do, they also have to cover enough to live, and they don't get the tax break for primary residence. Usually you see rentals in multi-family dwellings where you pay 50% more for the building then get to charge 80% of owning to each family. Gives you a 10% gross profit - usually minus a 7% loan for 3% net profit. Not good, but if you add in even a 5% increase in the property value per year, you have averaged an 8% return. Also remember your loan stays the same while housing costs increase - so 10 years down the road, you may be charging 80% of owning but still 130% of what the cost of owning a house was when you bought the property. That changes they dynamic to 260%-150%-7%=103% or essentially the cost of owning a house 10 years ago is going into the landlords pocket.
Sometimes what you will see is a community where property speculators come in trying to get on the leading edge of that curve, when that happens you have the new owners trying to make money on that 3% profit. In places where the owners have had the properties longer, they can drop from charging 80% of the cost of owning to 50% and still make a better profit.
OK 80% of Pirate CD stands (physical media) were closed in a Mexican city -> 25%+ increase in sales. .25/.8=.3125 = 31%+ of all sales in the city were pirate CD's - physicals not downloads - and not including impulse buys because they were cheap.
I really think that the record companies might want to redirect their efforts from the P2P users & back to the sources. 30%+ of the CD's were not being cranked out in somebody's basement. This is & always has been big business.
Kaazzaa was stupid, IIRC they offered tracks for sale, but they also encouraged trading.
Personnally, I'm not certain how a P2P company can effectively filter files. Most titles contain common words. Filtering out audio files titled 'Stupid Boy Band #1' is also going to filter any podcast review of it. MD5 checking on the file? Rip w/ a different bitrate & it changes - hell you can rip a random watermark into the file & no 2 source copies of the song would have the same MD5.
The only effective thing is to respond to requests to remove specific indexes. But any bets on **AA surfing & submitting a request to every search engine every day? P2P has a lot of legitimate uses, some that distributers are starting to recognize, and it's not going away. So somewhere/sometime there has to be a compromise. So far the **AA isn't willing to see that. But as long as they are going to keep dumping restrictions people don't like onto how people can use thier media, they are going to see people pirating things en masse.
My mortgage/taxes/water/etc on my 4 br house w/ 2 acres of land & barn comes in at about 1K/month (27 years left) - I am refinancing to bring it to about 1.5K/mth w/ a 19 year payoff & a remodel. Rent in town is $800/mth for a 2 bedroom walkup. Renting a 4br house would be about 2K/mth. So in western MA, buying is substantially cheaper than renting.
As for the RE party being over - it's never over - people just have to get sober enough to enjoy the next round, might take a couple of years, but they'll get back to it.
I would suggest talking with someone who will help you do some long term as well as short term financial planning.
Check out Primerica they do a free Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) for you and will come back with a long term (retirement) as well as short term (what to do with what's in your bank) assessment. They also base the recomendations on things like - when you want to get married, own a house, retire etc. It's tailored to you not to some actuary table.
Things to note:
I am biased, I'm an agent (part time)
Primerica is Citigroups middle income investment/mortgage/insurance/financial planning branch.
28K in a mutual fund by 30 w/ 12% return is almost 2 million by 66 with no other money added. (Invest early, invest often)
It's 56K by 36 for the same effect.
The rule of 72 is your guidline here - every 6 year delay doubles the amount of money needed for the same effect.
Burn all but 1 of your credit cards (keep the citibank one - see 1 & 2 above;) )- and only use that one in a true emergency.
CC debt is one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy
Credit cards/ buy on credit - is contrary to a sound investment strategy - unless you pay every bill in full as soon as it comes in. (Using it as a simplified check)
they sold coffee at temperatures known to cause burns.
they bare some responsibility for her burns.
they made a cost/risk analysis that said very hot cheap coffee > hot expensive coffee.
What I do have a problem with is
saying 80% of the fault was McD's.
issuing a punative damages judgement that was massive compared to the actual damages award.
Look at it this way. If McD's had sold the coffee at the 'average' temperature, she would have suffered 1st & 2nd degree burns over the same portion of her body, and likely suffered some 3rd degree burns anyway. How much fault would you have then assigned to McD's? I doubt you would assign any. In that concept, how can you then assign 80% because it's hotter? Worst case here it should have been 49% McD/51% hers. Remember - under 'average' temperatures, she would have been burned. The fault is not the burning, but the severity.
As for cost/risk analysis, every company does that. MS, Sony, and Nintendo do it when they sell consoles - how much to invest in cord attachments vs. risk of being sued because one ripped out & electrocuted someone. There are thousands of cost/risk analysis that go on for any product that comes to market.
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly, he did it with the knowledge, consent, and help of MS for a controlled test.
If I own the copywrite, and say "sure you can run that through the copier.", then there is no legal issue at all. That's what they did here, they gave him permission to run a pirated copy - in fact sent him the CD he used to do the install. That's the thing about big companies, if you sweet talk them a bit - dangle the publicity carrot infront of them - they usually give you nice stuff.
Um, there is one little tiny point you missed. This is being processed as a Federal Case because the State has laws in place to protect him from this type of lawsuit. The police car is registered to the State - not the Federal - Government. The incident occured on a public road - not Federal Land. The type of crime - arson - is State - not Federal. The Federal Government has no jurisdiction. What they are using is an extremely far fetched claim of partial ownership of the police car, based on the fact that DHS gave the City govt a Block Grant.
The problem is that Block Grants are just that Grants - they don't impart any degree of ownership. If the US Govt isn't listed on the car's title as a joint owner, and the value of the part ownership isn't listed in the DHS accounting books, they don't own it & don't have standing for jurisdiction in this case. The issue isn't that somebody is trying to get him to fork over his tapes, it's that the people who are doing it don't have the legal standing in a sane world to do it. California put into place a law specifically to avoid intimidating the press like this, by making it a Federal case under extremely dubious context, the Federal Government is sidestepping that law and vastly overstepping it's jurusdiction.
As far as I can see from the artical, the Feds want the case so they can bypass the state laws. I'm just not sure how the Feds can control jurisdiction with that argument. All of the crimes are state & local, and not performed on federal land.
32 'X' / 'XXX' = 10 /w 2-
how to 'have sex with 10 other people and a midgit' in a pickup?
Hmm, ambitious - I would recommend a 1 1/2ton pickup for that.
Can I point out that NO developer will ever run a locked down DRM box for development? Doing so would require resigning for every recompile of any module - do you really think that marketing/ITsecurity would give every developer the signing software?
It's not going to happen. I don't like GPL v3's take on DRM, mostly because it's not DRM that inspired it, it was a trusted computing issue with TIVO. The Tivo hardware was hardwired(or flashed) to only run the OS it came with, and not tweaked versions of it. The reason behind that was in fact a DRM issue, by only running certified versions of the software, TIVO could go to **AA and say, "look, DRM is in place & secure, so stop suing me." Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but Tivo did exactly what they were required to do, they made changes to the code & returned those changes to the community. Could you further change the code and run it on a Tivo? No, but the changes to the code were available and you could incorperate those changes into your own project - and to me that has always been the core of the FOSS community. I am free to learn from your stuff & use it, just like you can use mine.
The problem I have with GPL v3 is that I can see reasons to use trusted computing - banking, military, and medical records - by deliberatly voiding the core of trusted computing (being able to control/identify exactly what code is running), you exclude the possibility of using any GPLv3 code in those applications. In other words, by artificially forcing freedom, I see GPLv3 actually restricting it. I think that's been Linus' point also.
Actually, if the copywrite holder has given his blessing, then it's no longer circumventing copy protection. Once the copying is 'liscensed' then the DRM becomes something else - technological co-conspiritor to deny you your civil rights? breach of contract?- Steamboat Willy goes public domain on November 18,2027. How does that jibe with DRM? If it's public domain, it's public domain, you can't restrict copying/reproduction of it.
They (DRM pushers) do not want to push a public domain/creative commons/GPL vs DRM suit through the legal system yet. If they can have years of caselaw saying DRM is legal, they can possibly bludgeon that PD/CC/GPL isn't inhibited, but now - not a chance. By strict reading, DRM that doesn't expire with the copywrite is un-Constitutional in the US. Copywrite is explicitly stated to be for a limited time. DRM by it's current nature extends copywrite in perpituity.
Submitting a form is simple, use a post datastring in the object.send() line - and set it to 'post' not 'get' in the open statement.
Do you realize what creating more would do to the rent-a-zilla market. Not to mention the permits? Think of the poor permit people. Take pity on their poor scheduiling souls. (Mega-Tokyo reference)
Remember, the Telco line is that Google is making a fortune using their networks & they are getting nothing out of it. They are currently hoping people ignore/don't know that while you pay for your connection, the site you connect to is also paying - again the whole double dip thing.
The telcos got over $5B in tax credits/subsidies in order to improve the network - they promised 40Mbps. Now they say that unless they can get more money by charging for priority and bandwidth, they can't improve the network. I know that $5B only runs so much fiber ($1M/mile in urban areas), but since up to 70% of fiber is unlit (2005 data) I don't think the problem is running more fiber.
Personnally, I think that the next time some telco asshat says they don't make any money from Google, Google should have a press conference with a printed hardcopy of it's entire montly bandwidth bill. I figure opening the backdrop curtain to reviel a dumptruck of paper being poured onto the stage should get the idea across.
surprised me that nobody mentioned switchgrass - which is supposed to be 4-6 times more effective for ethanol & require less water/tending than corn.
Hmm, perhaps Brazilian ethanol is so expencive because there's a 100% import duty on it?
For the record it says Microsoft & Genuine printed at 45 deg bend sinister with a metalized strip on the right side- in visible light, I'm not sure what other goodies show up under laser light or non visible light. However, I have to say that if I hadn't looked, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.
I used to work for the company that MFG's the holograms for UL - the pretty ones that go on the xmass lights. There are up to 24 seperate holographic items on those little suckers. However, if it has a pretty hologram on it, how many people actually sit there & examine every string of lights they buy to check that they have the right hologram? I'm going to bet pretty close to nobody.
Last time I bought & activated a copy of Windows, I never even opened the package, just used my copy of the CD & read the numbers off the Genuine sticker through the celophane & typed them in. (I toss the CDs & sticker in the bottom of the case if it's not vented there - that way I never loose the driver CDs.) If it was a bad copy, I would have never known.
All that said, if I had bought a copy from a company to do an artical about the experiance, you had better believe I would have another blog posted about how they charged me full price for a pirated copy of XP. Since there's nothing except an 'opsie but MS is great' - either this guy is on happy drugs, or it's a shill.
Hmm, $17 if you mail out the fritzed chip. $30 if you have a new one mailed to you.
Or you could splurge & spend the $58 and buy the programmer yourself.
How about this:
Your doctor connects to 'Your health history on line'
You have 2 choices:
- You can know for certain that the server is running the correct software & hasn't been hacked by some asshat who is randomly reasigning health histories to requests.
- You can have untrusted computing so you can be free.
Now you can keep spouting your "master's bidding" crap, or you can pay attention to what is going on around you. There are enough pieces of crapware/malware/spyware out there that the average user is getting screwed left and right. Virus writers are testing their new code against the newest versions of AV software before they go into the wild. Read the actual specs & RFC's.What I see people screaming about is the far edge of TCM - total lockdown of a system. Is that a possibility, of course it is - hell it's a goal for specific high security markets. Now I want you to pull your head out of your ass & load up your calculator program. Tell me exactly how many permutations of OS/patch/driver/firmware can you come up with? Each and every one of those is going to have to be certified to make it work. Yeah, I see a gig eprom sitting on every motherboard stuffed with each of those keys - though I'm not sure a gig will be enough when you add in all the software keys too.
Oh wait, in your world, we are going to put lynksys, dlink, nvidia, ati, and all the other companies that make cards out of business in order to lock everything to a motherboard with integrated everything. Oh, and development of software will require that every test compile be transfered to a certifying agency prior to being allowed to run.
The TCM strawman is total lockdown of a PC to a single OS w/ specified software.Can it be done, yes. Will it be done, yes - under controlled circumstances for those customers who require extremely high levels of trust both internally and between their external counterparts. Will it be done for the general public? No, not because the RIAA & MPAA & asshats in congress don't want to do it, but because it's not technically feasible to do in the real world. Remember, China, Japan, Russia, and the EU are not going to hand every computer in thier country over to the US govt because they insist on a total lockdown via TCM. You are much more likely to see TC models with degrees of trust rather than total lockdown. And as long as I get to decide what I get to trust on my system, I have all the freedom I need. I don't need to be able to decide what YOU get to run.
Seriously, in today's call center you are not allowed to hang up on customers. Never, no matter how much they abuse you, no matter how stupid they are. I've worked in 2 & know people in 3 others. The customer just calls back, yells for a supervisor & you get reamed for hanging up on them, even after recordings show they used every curse known to western civilization and a few new ones. I once got yelled at for hanging up on a customer who had just issued a death threat.
As for the not working with other software, it comes down to DRM - to stay inside the DRM lines, you have to be able to engage in some level of 'Trusted Computing'. If I can't trust your new app not to violate the rules I need in place to satisfy my content supplier, I can't run your new app.
I have to agree that trying to impose the GPLv3 onto hardware mfgs isn't smart. Like it or not some levels of 'trusted computing' will be needed or desired in the future - especially by governments and big businesses, and saying that it's unacceptable is only going to kill FOSS in those areas.
Yes it's true. After you make changes to the sourcecode of software and re-compile it, it's no longer 'Trusted'. BECAUSE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT! ... but I didn't change anything. Perhaps I have a virus." It's again a way to verify that changes you didn't make, arn't being run. In that respect it grants the user more control over their computer, because it provides them with more information.
Back off of piracy and conspiricy issues. If I write 'FSM-wordprocessor' and get it signed, you and everyone else gets to trust that I & the signing agency have verified that the software is exactly as I intended it to be. Currently if Bob decides to create a virus, he can create one that rewrites one of my modules to do what it was originally intended to do, as well as whatever malicious thing he want's it to do. Currently there is no way for me to verify that when I run 'FSM-wordprocessor', I am running the original code, or the one with the virus. Trusted computing does that. That's why the military wants it. It fulfills a vital security role for them.
For the average user, it also fulfills a vital role. "Hey my OO2.0 pops up as not trusted
The only time trusted computing doesn't make sense, is when you are working in a development environment. In any live production environment, knowing that what you think you are running is what is actually running is a good thing. When you are doing development, obviously you can't get things certified each time you recompile it - hell on a bad day, that would be 30-40 recerts for a subroutine. What you need is degrees of trust.
If you want to tweek & recompile the kernel, go ahead & then hit it with a 'personal trust' cert. But don't hand it to me & say this is the greatest mod to the kernel ever & expect me to trust it. The problem is not with 'Trusted Computing' the problem is with implimentation. If there is only Trusted/UnTrusted, then there's an issue. If I can define who I trust and what I trust, then things are good. If I can only trust what somebody else tells me is trustworthy, then it's bad.
The problem is going to be when you take your personal signed kernel and try to run trusted software that is going to go looking for a 'High Order' cert. Let's face it, if my concern is securing data - state secrets or 'Boy Band of the Week vol 1' - I can't verify that the data is secure if you have changed the kernel, since you could be ghosting every buffer to a non-secure memory space. Now is that a problem? only if you are trying to use software that explicitly requires the OS to be certed. Most FOSS isn't going to care. The stuff that does is going to be related to securing other people's Data. IE. you won't be able to run 3rd Party Secure Data Relay Proxie v4 on an unCerted Kernel because the 1st & 2nd p
Hmm, here in MA - between I91 & Worcester at least - it still seems to be going along nicely. But a good chunk is people from Boston who are crazy enough to do an 1.5 hour + commute, so they are used to paying Boston prices & think we're a steal :)
It's also a localized thing close to the MA pike (I90) - get too far from it & prices crash again.
Actually, it's 17 miles from my driveway to my work parkinglot (dead center of the city). The 2 towns (suburbs) I drive through are actually cheaper to own/rent than where I do. The general feel I get (I've owned mine for 12 years) is that almost all the rental properties outside the city proper are new owners trying to milk a RE boom for quick rental money - hence high rental prices. In city the whole dynamic changes since there's almost no single family dwellings there - and multi-family rentals are a whole different kettle of fish.
[shrug] It's really the same anywhere. Any landlord who's going to stay in business not only has to pay the same taxes/utilities I do, they also have to cover enough to live, and they don't get the tax break for primary residence. Usually you see rentals in multi-family dwellings where you pay 50% more for the building then get to charge 80% of owning to each family. Gives you a 10% gross profit - usually minus a 7% loan for 3% net profit. Not good, but if you add in even a 5% increase in the property value per year, you have averaged an 8% return. Also remember your loan stays the same while housing costs increase - so 10 years down the road, you may be charging 80% of owning but still 130% of what the cost of owning a house was when you bought the property. That changes they dynamic to 260%-150%-7%=103% or essentially the cost of owning a house 10 years ago is going into the landlords pocket.
Sometimes what you will see is a community where property speculators come in trying to get on the leading edge of that curve, when that happens you have the new owners trying to make money on that 3% profit. In places where the owners have had the properties longer, they can drop from charging 80% of the cost of owning to 50% and still make a better profit.
OK 80% of Pirate CD stands (physical media) were closed in a Mexican city -> 25%+ increase in sales.
.25/.8=.3125 = 31%+ of all sales in the city were pirate CD's - physicals not downloads - and not including impulse buys because they were cheap.
I really think that the record companies might want to redirect their efforts from the P2P users & back to the sources. 30%+ of the CD's were not being cranked out in somebody's basement. This is & always has been big business.
Kaazzaa was stupid, IIRC they offered tracks for sale, but they also encouraged trading.
Personnally, I'm not certain how a P2P company can effectively filter files. Most titles contain common words. Filtering out audio files titled 'Stupid Boy Band #1' is also going to filter any podcast review of it. MD5 checking on the file? Rip w/ a different bitrate & it changes - hell you can rip a random watermark into the file & no 2 source copies of the song would have the same MD5.
The only effective thing is to respond to requests to remove specific indexes. But any bets on **AA surfing & submitting a request to every search engine every day? P2P has a lot of legitimate uses, some that distributers are starting to recognize, and it's not going away. So somewhere/sometime there has to be a compromise. So far the **AA isn't willing to see that. But as long as they are going to keep dumping restrictions people don't like onto how people can use thier media, they are going to see people pirating things en masse.
My mortgage/taxes/water/etc on my 4 br house w/ 2 acres of land & barn comes in at about 1K/month (27 years left) - I am refinancing to bring it to about 1.5K/mth w/ a 19 year payoff & a remodel. Rent in town is $800/mth for a 2 bedroom walkup. Renting a 4br house would be about 2K/mth. So in western MA, buying is substantially cheaper than renting.
As for the RE party being over - it's never over - people just have to get sober enough to enjoy the next round, might take a couple of years, but they'll get back to it.
Check out Primerica they do a free Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) for you and will come back with a long term (retirement) as well as short term (what to do with what's in your bank) assessment. They also base the recomendations on things like - when you want to get married, own a house, retire etc. It's tailored to you not to some actuary table.
Things to note:
- they sold coffee at temperatures known to cause burns.
- they bare some responsibility for her burns.
- they made a cost/risk analysis that said very hot cheap coffee > hot expensive coffee.
What I do have a problem with is- saying 80% of the fault was McD's.
- issuing a punative damages judgement that was massive compared to the actual damages award.
Look at it this way. If McD's had sold the coffee at the 'average' temperature, she would have suffered 1st & 2nd degree burns over the same portion of her body, and likely suffered some 3rd degree burns anyway. How much fault would you have then assigned to McD's? I doubt you would assign any. In that concept, how can you then assign 80% because it's hotter? Worst case here it should have been 49% McD/51% hers. Remember - under 'average' temperatures, she would have been burned. The fault is not the burning, but the severity.As for cost/risk analysis, every company does that. MS, Sony, and Nintendo do it when they sell consoles - how much to invest in cord attachments vs. risk of being sued because one ripped out & electrocuted someone. There are thousands of cost/risk analysis that go on for any product that comes to market.