If governments were more open and didn't try to keep so many secret, it wouldn't be so bad if they got hacked. By definition, if there were no secrets, they'd be nothing to hack. Perhaps this a motivation behind the attacks by Anonymous: they want to show governments that keeping secrets is no longer worthwhile.
I think future governments have three choices: 1. Pay the cost of maintaining highly secure systems to keep their secrets (which can never be guaranteed) 2. endure the costs of their secrets being discovered/revealed by hackers or enemy states or 3. learn to make do without secrets.
It might seem that governments that keep secrets have an upper hand against those who do not. However, this advantage is entirely dependant on maintaining those secrets and maintaining secrets has an associated cost. The cost of maintaining secrets may very well be rising as cracking techniques become more sophisticated. However, by giving up on secrets, you are letting go of the associated costs. Perhaps in some ways you are giving up everything so that there's nothing left to loose. Though if the costs of keeping secrets becomes high enough, nations without secrets may have the overall advantage.
Would a more FOSS friendly approach be for Google to use Trademark law, by only allowing mobile phone carries to advertise their phone as using Android if it uses a derivative that meets Google's standards? I presume this would still allow anyone to freely use the source code for Android and manufacturers to freely produce phones with an Android based OS and lock it down however they want. However, for end-users who are concerned over the implications of Android fragmentation can avoid phones that are not advertised as 'Android, as approved by Google'. Is this feasible? Is this fair?
I'm so waiting for an MMO game that doesn't feel like WOW disguised with prettier graphics and different models. I hoped Champions Online, in a completely separate setting, would feel more refreshing to play, but ultimately did not. The original Guild Wars was fantastic, and I'm yet to play an RPG game that felt anywhere near as compelling to play as Guild Wars. I'm expecting ArenaNet to deliver something that will be as much a joy to play as Guild Wars, perhaps even better.
I think ArenaNet may well be the 'Valve' of the MMO sphere. I'm hoping they're going to introduce some much needed innovation to what's become somewhat stagnant MMO industry. I'm glad ArenaNet have been prepared to take some risks as I think it will take guts to innovate past Blizzard's behemoth.
If you're worried, Nintendo, then I suggest you make sure your expensive games really do differentiate themselves from the cheap games. I doubt this will be difficult to do: the majority of games in the $1-$2 range, while fun, offer limited content. I doubt consumers attribute as much value to these cheap games as expensive games. Would you pay $40 for Angry Birds? I think if Nintendo continue to produce games that are immersive and with plenty of compelling content, people will be prepared to pay a premium price. I think a range of games of different qualities and pricing is a good thing and will serve as an opportunity to for Nintendo to increase the perceived value of their premium games, rather than as a threat.
What a fantastic idea! The mere though of eating insects is probably enough to put everyone off meat so we won't have to farm any meat. Perhaps it'll be even be enough to put people off food altogether so we can give all our food to 3rd world countries.
World problems solved!
'Ispa firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.'
I think it's very important that government lets parents take responsibility for theirchildren. If the government thinks they have to take responsibility for the safety of children on the behalf of parents, it will only encourage parents to take less responsibility for their children: From their point of view they don't need to because the government is doing it for them. However, can we really trust the government to be able to effectively take responsibility for our children? No, because only parents can take responsible for their children. The government needs to be supporting parents in being responsible for their children, rather than taking it away from them, which is what this filtering will do. Essentially, it will do little to protect children, and in the long run will do more harm that good.
Of course, as has already been suggested, rather than a misguided attempt at 'helping the children', this is purely a façade to drip-feed in some form of government censorship, which makes the whole thing even more disgraceful.
In my opinion it does not matter whether or not content creators should have a right to control their work. Assuming that they should have the right to control their work, it is not possible to enforce this against individuals in a way that would not violate more fundamental rights such as Privacy, Freedom of Speech and Presumption of Innocence. It is my opinion that an individual's right to Privacy, Freedom of Speech and Presumption of Innocence are more important that copyright, therefore copyright should be changed to respect those rights. I'm not against copyright, as it stands at present, being enforced against commercial entities as I don't think the concepts of Privacy and Freedom of Speech should not apply to commercial entities (although Presumption of Innocence should).
I was disappointed in the response by Trading Standards, who compared to other consumer protection bodies around the world are generally good eggs:
"The Trading Standards Institute said that it could not comment on whether such letters were standard across the industry, but that it could understand that Apple would want to protect its reputation by trying to reach a confidential settlement."
How can there be an incentive to produce safe products if companies like Apple can just cover up such instances? I think they deserve damage to their reputation; hopefully it will teach to ensure that their products are safe.
It's a flawed metaphor anyway. If you take the soap, it's gone, whereas when you download an MP3, it's still there.
I completely agree. We continuously see the recording industry and politicians equating copyright infringement with physical theft. This is dangerous and misleading, let alone defiant of logic. It seems obvious when I say that when I take, for example, a bar of soap from you, you no longer have the bar of soap. When this is applied to intellectual property, I simply cannot take it from you as it is not tangible. This is significant, yet this seems to be forgotten or ignored my some.
Should all GPL projects switch to LGPL eventually?
on
Qt Becomes LGPL
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· Score: 1
I think once a GPLed application has become well development and stable, it's good that it lowers its restrictions. Perhaps free software developers should eventually feel free obliged to release the software under the LGPL or some other weaker copyleft license. In the early stages of a project, a need for contributions from the community and corporations is strong, but as the project develops that need diminishes. As this need diminishes, perhaps it is fair that in return the project reduces its restrictions.
I think it's aimed at occasional users. I like the idea that I can pay a couple of quid and use when I'm travelling occasionally. However, what puts me off is the outrageously expensive USB stick you need to get. It claims to be a 'memory stick' as a well as a modem but it is really a microSD card adapter and it does not appear to come with a card. I would not pay more £20 for such a device.
In my opinion, self-regulation concerns me far less than than government regulation, simply because it only affects the one site. Although YouTube might have a monopoly on video streaming, if they decide to impose certain regulations or censor that too many members of the community disagree with, they can go to another site.
When the government sets regulations they will apply to all UK websites and a result those affected with have little if any alternatives to turn to.
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
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· Score: 1
Firefox is likely to much more secure that Google Chrome. Because of its age it has had more time to be scrutinised and have bugs and exploits fixed.
I suppose it would possible to dissect license agreements into numerous 'attributes' (e.g. freedom to copy, freedom to modify, freedom to use for any purpose, etc.) which can be compared and where two licenses do not have any conflicting attributes, they could be considered compatible.
Unlike university degrees, where 68% is always an upper second class degree (though maybe not if you're somehow able to 'talk' yourself into another one), what rating of 68% means is going to depend on the individual. While 68% might indicate a good game to one individual, another might not buy a game if its less than 80%.
Interestingly, in a likewise fashion, while 68% is always a upper second class degree, whether that is good or not is going to depend on the employer considering your application (although I'd hope most employers would consider an upper second 'good').
A review is an opinion and attempting to remove such reviews would be censorship. If they want to sue them for copyright infringement, fine because there are laws against that. However, if Atari were successful in getting the reviews removed would be, in my mind, unjust.
If there is no actual child involved is the law merely protecting against the possibility of offenders committing future crimes against real children?"
According the news article, the motivation for the law is close a loophole in the law whereby a paedophile manipulates a illegal photography in order to make it legal:
"The government has acknowledged that paedophiles may be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons."
* GPL code cannot be priced up if a monopoly is ever achieved. The terms of the GPL prohibit charging for GPL code ever, so real predatory pricing is precluded. The only restriction the GPL states with regards to charging for distribution is that you can't charge more for the source than you did for the binaries. The reason for this restriction is prevent access to the source being 'restricted' by a ridiculously high fee. In any other respect however, the GPL offers complete freedom in charging to distribution: you can charge nothing or a million. In contrast, a monopoly would require control of distribution and the fee for doing so.
Surely using Stand By would be a more effective method for saving power while a system is idle. It's much easier to configure and I'd imagine would save a hell of a lot more power. This is assuming the article author defines 'idle' as not being used.
Slashdot Mirror
If governments were more open and didn't try to keep so many secret, it wouldn't be so bad if they got hacked. By definition, if there were no secrets, they'd be nothing to hack. Perhaps this a motivation behind the attacks by Anonymous: they want to show governments that keeping secrets is no longer worthwhile.
I think future governments have three choices: 1. Pay the cost of maintaining highly secure systems to keep their secrets (which can never be guaranteed) 2. endure the costs of their secrets being discovered/revealed by hackers or enemy states or 3. learn to make do without secrets.
It might seem that governments that keep secrets have an upper hand against those who do not. However, this advantage is entirely dependant on maintaining those secrets and maintaining secrets has an associated cost. The cost of maintaining secrets may very well be rising as cracking techniques become more sophisticated. However, by giving up on secrets, you are letting go of the associated costs. Perhaps in some ways you are giving up everything so that there's nothing left to loose. Though if the costs of keeping secrets becomes high enough, nations without secrets may have the overall advantage.
May be it would be easier if we gave a Java expert a crash course in Law and let him be the judge. Or may be not...
Would a more FOSS friendly approach be for Google to use Trademark law, by only allowing mobile phone carries to advertise their phone as using Android if it uses a derivative that meets Google's standards? I presume this would still allow anyone to freely use the source code for Android and manufacturers to freely produce phones with an Android based OS and lock it down however they want. However, for end-users who are concerned over the implications of Android fragmentation can avoid phones that are not advertised as 'Android, as approved by Google'. Is this feasible? Is this fair?
I'm so waiting for an MMO game that doesn't feel like WOW disguised with prettier graphics and different models. I hoped Champions Online, in a completely separate setting, would feel more refreshing to play, but ultimately did not. The original Guild Wars was fantastic, and I'm yet to play an RPG game that felt anywhere near as compelling to play as Guild Wars. I'm expecting ArenaNet to deliver something that will be as much a joy to play as Guild Wars, perhaps even better. I think ArenaNet may well be the 'Valve' of the MMO sphere. I'm hoping they're going to introduce some much needed innovation to what's become somewhat stagnant MMO industry. I'm glad ArenaNet have been prepared to take some risks as I think it will take guts to innovate past Blizzard's behemoth.
If you're worried, Nintendo, then I suggest you make sure your expensive games really do differentiate themselves from the cheap games. I doubt this will be difficult to do: the majority of games in the $1-$2 range, while fun, offer limited content. I doubt consumers attribute as much value to these cheap games as expensive games. Would you pay $40 for Angry Birds? I think if Nintendo continue to produce games that are immersive and with plenty of compelling content, people will be prepared to pay a premium price. I think a range of games of different qualities and pricing is a good thing and will serve as an opportunity to for Nintendo to increase the perceived value of their premium games, rather than as a threat.
.llegal?
What a fantastic idea! The mere though of eating insects is probably enough to put everyone off meat so we won't have to farm any meat. Perhaps it'll be even be enough to put people off food altogether so we can give all our food to 3rd world countries. World problems solved!
'Ispa firmly believes that controls on children's access to the internet should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISPs provide, rather than being imposed top-down.'
I think it's very important that government lets parents take responsibility for theirchildren. If the government thinks they have to take responsibility for the safety of children on the behalf of parents, it will only encourage parents to take less responsibility for their children: From their point of view they don't need to because the government is doing it for them. However, can we really trust the government to be able to effectively take responsibility for our children? No, because only parents can take responsible for their children. The government needs to be supporting parents in being responsible for their children, rather than taking it away from them, which is what this filtering will do. Essentially, it will do little to protect children, and in the long run will do more harm that good.
Of course, as has already been suggested, rather than a misguided attempt at 'helping the children', this is purely a façade to drip-feed in some form of government censorship, which makes the whole thing even more disgraceful.
In my opinion it does not matter whether or not content creators should have a right to control their work. Assuming that they should have the right to control their work, it is not possible to enforce this against individuals in a way that would not violate more fundamental rights such as Privacy, Freedom of Speech and Presumption of Innocence. It is my opinion that an individual's right to Privacy, Freedom of Speech and Presumption of Innocence are more important that copyright, therefore copyright should be changed to respect those rights. I'm not against copyright, as it stands at present, being enforced against commercial entities as I don't think the concepts of Privacy and Freedom of Speech should not apply to commercial entities (although Presumption of Innocence should).
I was disappointed in the response by Trading Standards, who compared to other consumer protection bodies around the world are generally good eggs:
"The Trading Standards Institute said that it could not comment on whether such letters were standard across the industry, but that it could understand that Apple would want to protect its reputation by trying to reach a confidential settlement."
How can there be an incentive to produce safe products if companies like Apple can just cover up such instances? I think they deserve damage to their reputation; hopefully it will teach to ensure that their products are safe.
Have a look at SugarCRM. May I also recommend this podcast: http://twit.tv/floss32
It's a flawed metaphor anyway. If you take the soap, it's gone, whereas when you download an MP3, it's still there.
I completely agree. We continuously see the recording industry and politicians equating copyright infringement with physical theft. This is dangerous and misleading, let alone defiant of logic. It seems obvious when I say that when I take, for example, a bar of soap from you, you no longer have the bar of soap. When this is applied to intellectual property, I simply cannot take it from you as it is not tangible. This is significant, yet this seems to be forgotten or ignored my some.
I think once a GPLed application has become well development and stable, it's good that it lowers its restrictions. Perhaps free software developers should eventually feel free obliged to release the software under the LGPL or some other weaker copyleft license. In the early stages of a project, a need for contributions from the community and corporations is strong, but as the project develops that need diminishes. As this need diminishes, perhaps it is fair that in return the project reduces its restrictions.
I thought it had been decided that Phorm was only legal in the UK if it was an opt-in service, rather than an opt-out service?
I'd want to use the USB model with my Eee PC which has the standard Xandros OS installed. I wonder if it will work?
I think it's aimed at occasional users. I like the idea that I can pay a couple of quid and use when I'm travelling occasionally. However, what puts me off is the outrageously expensive USB stick you need to get. It claims to be a 'memory stick' as a well as a modem but it is really a microSD card adapter and it does not appear to come with a card. I would not pay more £20 for such a device.
In my opinion, self-regulation concerns me far less than than government regulation, simply because it only affects the one site. Although YouTube might have a monopoly on video streaming, if they decide to impose certain regulations or censor that too many members of the community disagree with, they can go to another site. When the government sets regulations they will apply to all UK websites and a result those affected with have little if any alternatives to turn to.
Firefox is likely to much more secure that Google Chrome. Because of its age it has had more time to be scrutinised and have bugs and exploits fixed.
I suppose it would possible to dissect license agreements into numerous 'attributes' (e.g. freedom to copy, freedom to modify, freedom to use for any purpose, etc.) which can be compared and where two licenses do not have any conflicting attributes, they could be considered compatible.
The FSF already discuss computability with GPL and licenses that are compatible and incompatible with the GNU GPL so they must have done this already.
Unlike university degrees, where 68% is always an upper second class degree (though maybe not if you're somehow able to 'talk' yourself into another one), what rating of 68% means is going to depend on the individual. While 68% might indicate a good game to one individual, another might not buy a game if its less than 80%.
Interestingly, in a likewise fashion, while 68% is always a upper second class degree, whether that is good or not is going to depend on the employer considering your application (although I'd hope most employers would consider an upper second 'good').
A review is an opinion and attempting to remove such reviews would be censorship. If they want to sue them for copyright infringement, fine because there are laws against that. However, if Atari were successful in getting the reviews removed would be, in my mind, unjust.
I think this a great way for Mozilla to publicise Firefox and increase its market share. And I pledged, of course. I look forward to Firefox 3.
According the news article, the motivation for the law is close a loophole in the law whereby a paedophile manipulates a illegal photography in order to make it legal:
"The government has acknowledged that paedophiles may be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons."
Surely using Stand By would be a more effective method for saving power while a system is idle. It's much easier to configure and I'd imagine would save a hell of a lot more power. This is assuming the article author defines 'idle' as not being used.