The argument is what an operating system is. MS claims it is basically a full distribution. Most of the Linux companies give distributions as well. Basically, what AC was referring to is allowing alternative distributions different from Microsoft's.
The OEMs want this basically because they can sell placement in their distributions (or at least buy cheaper). Microsoft, of course, does not want this, as it means they have to make each component better than the alternative, instead of just having a better total distribution. It also (perhaps more importantly) allows Microsoft to create full branding across multiple programs, creating the notion of using only Microsoft software ("mind-share"...everything I use is Microsoft, so I should chose Microsoft's version of the next application/server I need).
If you want to create a distribution with kernel-only, that is certainly possible (although it would be of limited usefulness). More important is that you can create a distribution that re-implements all of the functionality currently provided by the other programs and ship your own binary-only Linux (modulo kernel code: I'm not sure what it's license is).
The joy and pain of the US system is you can sue anyone for anything. Winning is, of course, is harder. To win, you must have more money than the other guy. That's why Justice keeps her scale around.
Be very careful how you phrase this. "Put me on your 'do not call' list" (given by bludstone) will often be followed by a query sounding like a clarification "You wish to removed from our list?" A response of "yes" can be construed to mean that you want to be removed from their 'do not call' list. Extremely sleazy, clearly twisting what was wanted, but a possible interpretation of the English anyway.
I repeat "Put me on your 'do not call' list" as a mantra to anything they ask, just so there is no confusion on what I want done.
Eventually, the calls reduce as they learn not to waste their time (until you move). I still get the non-profit calls, but they are much more rare (for me) and do not upset as much (generally).
If only SPAM had the same cost involved (yes, I know there is all sorts of proposal to attempt to do this).
So, will there be popups in the advertisements as well, a la Gator. Then, we can go to pop-ups in the pop-ups. I see the revenue opportunities endless! You can then sell for non-pop-up "premier" advertisements. Or they could go back to the cable subscribers and try to sell them on "premier" non-pop-up channels (much like the "advertisement-free" channels).
Perhaps we could just go back to charging people competitive prices for a good product instead of decreasing the prices and producing a worse product?
That would be the information with which I was unfamiliar. Thanks for the correction. From the link:
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of
another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is
used in no other manner, or
that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the
computer program should cease to be rightful.
"essential step" is a little vague, but it certainly covers copying into RAM and probabily installing on to hard drive if it cannot be run from the original CD (or whatever it came on).
Yes, you may own the copy. However, under copyright laws, you cannot produce a copy of that copy without permission of the copyright holder. Thus, in order to copy the code into RAM or a hard disk, you must agree to a license which allows you to do so. Otherwise, you are creating a copy without permission of the copyright holder
This ignores the notion of "fair use" because I'm not familiar enough with the restrictions (IANAL, just in case that was not obvious). Creating a copy of the program on your hard disk is hardly a "backup" of the original if it is the only copy you use (and this ignores the second (partial) copy of the program in memory). This is somewhat akin to the GPL argument on copying, where you do not have to accept the license, but if you do not, then nothing else gives you permission to distribute copies (or derivative works).
I recall a similar argument has been used before in court for disallowing copies. Unfortunately, I do not recall the specific case or the result.
I've had four banks that I've done online banking with. They all had the same interface with slightly different skins. Now, the third bought out the second, so that does not really count, but yes, I do believe that banks buy their internet banking applications. Not all, perhaps, but many of the "not huge" ones, where it makes much more sense economically.
My current bank (EverBank) has as their URL for their online banking of "mids.com" (M&I Data Services), which according to google has become Metavante. Metavante describes their electronic banking service at their web site.
I disagree. Design is the only part. I'm more concerned with the fact that the design is focused on the storage technique (XML or something else), when the real problem in my mind is the access technique. If you write APIs to get configuration information, the storage technique can be varied behind those APIs and it won't matter. Of course, you need APIs for shell, perl, and C/C++, which is problematic, but that's the design issue.
So, what do the APIs look like? How do I address within this space? There are three basic operations that I see: getting and setting variables is pretty easy once you define an address methodology. The harder problem is getting the configuration description (how is a program set-up). Perhaps this is just another get, but the structure of the description language is important.
Rather than focusing on the backend issues, start with the user issues (both sysadmins and programmers). You can write really bad implementations of the APIs to start with (think.Xresource data format as the backend) but if you get the interface issues right, you've succeeded.
I removed emacs and all libraries it used and suddenly my entire system stopped working. After some testing, I discovered that if I left the libc library around, removing of the remainder of emacs did not cause the entire system to become unusable.
Libraries used by an application are not the application. This is the root of the debate. Microsoft has defined IE to include libraries used by other programs, and other people have a more limited definition.
I could define IE to include the entire Windows operating system as part of it. I do not consider that a valid definition, as there are very few computers with Windows installed for the express single purpose of using IE. As soon as the HTML engine was being used by other applications than IE, it was no longer part of the IE application.
Unfortunately, this data is presented in such isolation that one cannot really draw a conclusion about it.
What was Condon's track record before? If Condon expected (as I imagine) to be softer on monopolies, then of course Microsoft would support him and then he would act his conscience and support the comprimise.
What about other people who received contributions? Did they behave differently than expected once they received the contribution?
Most "buying" of politicians is buying of elections (not all, however). If the public would vote properly, I would argue, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, advertising works, especially against news outlets.
My guess is the situation is not bug fixes but feature requests. For example, if I suggested to Everquest as part of a beta program that item creation when mobs regen be based on the people around the mob creation location (to reduce farming), would I have IP rights to that idea? My personal belief is that I did until I handed that suggestion over to Verant (or whoever makes Everquest) "apparently" with my IP rights to it.
Imagine if someone suggested a new way to look at movies that resulted in a much better compression algorithm. Who owns the compression technique? One had the idea, one developed it to completion, so they both contributed to it intellectually.
Regardless, this should be discussed in a beta agreement.
It's not that simple. A web site, for example, could provide individualized pricing, perhaps done as a bargaining style (like you buy cars and houses). You choose some products (at some base price), and then you can start bargaining on the shopping cart with the computer. The web site nows your price points from previous bargaining and it has a clue about how interested you are in the shopping cart. Think Priceline, but more interactive.
I'm not sure how well this would work in the real world, but I believe it could still transfer. You pick your goods, go to the register, where they are collected. You then go to the bargaining table and dicker on the price.
Like cars, the seller could offer other items that you might have interest in as bargaining chips (well, we can't give you that price, but we'll throw in this "free" book/subscription/faster shiping here too instead).
Perhaps if they learned that telephone calls are anti-effective on me (I was going to subscribe to NYT until they called me soliciting for subscriptions), and e-mail is ineffictive unless I request it (although not so negative unless they fail to stop sending it), I'd be happier.
However, they don't seem interested in learning such things.
Consider the following (almost certainly bad, but workable) scheme:
Convert a chunk of the file into an order-k polynomial (use the coefficients of the polynomial to encode the chunk)
Send the evaluation of the polynomial at several distinct locations (more than k+1).
Receiver gets at least k+1 packets.
Using math, it recreates the original polynomial, and thus the chunk.
Please note that I'm not saying this is a good scheme. It is just an example one, and one that doesn't detail the chunk polynomial conversion, which would be very important. There are several papers describing schemes where people have actually worked at making them tenable.
Modulo compression, if you want such a system to require only receiving k packets (although you send more than that), the sum of the size of the k packets must be at least the size of the original file (otherwise, you could use such a scheme to compress the file).
I presume what is meant is what you describe, where a trusted company writes a access ticket which can be used for access.
You could also split the knowledge between a variety of companies. 'Here are my user credentials, give me Package Foo credentials (which I'm paying for).' 'Here are my Package Foo credentials, give me Service Baz credentials.' 'Here are my Service Baz credentials, give me Web Page Bar credentials.' (all done by software, of course). This, of course, has abuse possibilities, but there could be an out-of-band method to track the credentials back.
The larger problem is that there is too much value in knowing the user's activities, so companies are much more likely to support the user/service credentials model.
That said, I think we do want something like Passport, to provide, among other things, the following:
Centralized billing (whether packages, line
items, or pay as you go), which becomes much more important the more web pages you use.
Fewer passwords to remember (you authenticate to your 'service provider' and then all you have to do is re-present the credentials to get credentials for a service).
Less trust of the sites/more authentication for the sites (credential-based electronic credit cards. You go get credentials for a $134 charge to your credit card and present it to the web page, and your new hard drive comes in the mail).
Of course, I prefer a model such that I can buy my set of services through Microsoft, AOL, or my local flower shop. This would require a portable and open system, though. That might end up being Passport (through legal actions), but I hope it doesn't get that far.
...but it did strike me that it was awfully easy for them to accomplish their "mission" even though the "bad guys" had vastly superior technology and advanced genetics
The only reason I have hope about that is that the characters commented about that ("This is going to be easier than I thought" or something to that affect). My hope is that the aliens let them get easy. It's true that this is inconsistant with their 'Get Klang' mentality, but maybe the Mysterious Man changed the instructions why we weren't looking.
I'm sorry, the entire country will be down for four hours while Mitrosoft `upgrades' the system. We appologize for any inconvience with your cars, doors, televisions, computers, or refridgerators while we work on this problem. But, really, you'll find that your life grinding to a halt is really a feature in the system, more than a `bug' per se.
You may notice minor data glitches after this upgrade, due to cosmic rays. You can rest assure that you probably won't be executed for any murdering sprees that may show up on your ID (*cough* Stallman *cough*).
Please remember that by living in the US, you accept the EULA, which specifically exempts us from any problems that may result as use of Mitrosoft Pastport(TM).
Remember that an airport has a pretty good notion of who's going to show up tomorrow. You could probably get 99% hits by preloading it with 'morrows passengers (and crew/staff/etc., but those would be there anyway).
That assumes that you don't allow others in the party to pass as well, but given the system, you can probably predict with high likelihood who is likely to come with various people (Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smi...er, Ms. Jones).
Of course, caching has it's own set of problems, as callbacks would be very important, but it's not clear how stable the entries would be. If half your cache is marked bad every day, it ain't gonna help much.
It doesn't allow you to pick the host, and it's only a subset of the Internet (since otherwise the rendering is slow and not very pretty), but this VRML file does show the 'Internet as it looks to a packet.' (the moving viewpoint may not be the default one).
As the writer of the layout code, I can tell you it was certainly not a design goal. The original goal was just to be able to look at the results of the traceroutes that were being collected.
Via a variety of bugs in the layout code over the years, I've produced interesting images, such as rings, clovers, and (my favorite) hearts. However, they almost always have a fractal feel at the micro-level. This is true for almost any Eades-like layout that I've seen, so it's probably a function of the layout algorithm.
Interestingly enough, corporate networks layout much differently that the Internet. Corporate networks tend to be very clean, while the Internet is very stringy (almost looks like the strands within some fiberglass).
As I understand the situation, they used the logger to get passwords to decrypt data. The veracity of the encrypted data, as I understand it, is not the question here. Assuming the passwords decrypted the data, the only question is the legality of collecting the passwords.
Thus, the question of 'bearing witness' it moot, as it's not using the correctness of the passwords as evidence, but the decrypted data. I suppose you could argue that the passwords are wrong and the fact that the decrypted data corresponds to English text is pure coincidence, but that's is, to say the least, not a strong argument.
Slashdot Mirror
A story about ISPs blocking pop-ups that has a pop-ups? Is Salon.com charging Earthlink for the additional enticement?
The argument is what an operating system is. MS claims it is basically a full distribution. Most of the Linux companies give distributions as well. Basically, what AC was referring to is allowing alternative distributions different from Microsoft's.
The OEMs want this basically because they can sell placement in their distributions (or at least buy cheaper). Microsoft, of course, does not want this, as it means they have to make each component better than the alternative, instead of just having a better total distribution. It also (perhaps more importantly) allows Microsoft to create full branding across multiple programs, creating the notion of using only Microsoft software ("mind-share"...everything I use is Microsoft, so I should chose Microsoft's version of the next application/server I need).
If you want to create a distribution with kernel-only, that is certainly possible (although it would be of limited usefulness). More important is that you can create a distribution that re-implements all of the functionality currently provided by the other programs and ship your own binary-only Linux (modulo kernel code: I'm not sure what it's license is).
The joy and pain of the US system is you can sue anyone for anything. Winning is, of course, is harder. To win, you must have more money than the other guy. That's why Justice keeps her scale around.
Be very careful how you phrase this. "Put me on your 'do not call' list" (given by bludstone) will often be followed by a query sounding like a clarification "You wish to removed from our list?" A response of "yes" can be construed to mean that you want to be removed from their 'do not call' list. Extremely sleazy, clearly twisting what was wanted, but a possible interpretation of the English anyway.
I repeat "Put me on your 'do not call' list" as a mantra to anything they ask, just so there is no confusion on what I want done.
Eventually, the calls reduce as they learn not to waste their time (until you move). I still get the non-profit calls, but they are much more rare (for me) and do not upset as much (generally).
If only SPAM had the same cost involved (yes, I know there is all sorts of proposal to attempt to do this).
So, will there be popups in the advertisements as well, a la Gator. Then, we can go to pop-ups in the pop-ups. I see the revenue opportunities endless! You can then sell for non-pop-up "premier" advertisements. Or they could go back to the cable subscribers and try to sell them on "premier" non-pop-up channels (much like the "advertisement-free" channels).
Perhaps we could just go back to charging people competitive prices for a good product instead of decreasing the prices and producing a worse product?
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
- that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is
used in no other manner, or
- that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the
computer program should cease to be rightful.
"essential step" is a little vague, but it certainly covers copying into RAM and probabily installing on to hard drive if it cannot be run from the original CD (or whatever it came on).Yes, you may own the copy. However, under copyright laws, you cannot produce a copy of that copy without permission of the copyright holder. Thus, in order to copy the code into RAM or a hard disk, you must agree to a license which allows you to do so. Otherwise, you are creating a copy without permission of the copyright holder
This ignores the notion of "fair use" because I'm not familiar enough with the restrictions (IANAL, just in case that was not obvious). Creating a copy of the program on your hard disk is hardly a "backup" of the original if it is the only copy you use (and this ignores the second (partial) copy of the program in memory). This is somewhat akin to the GPL argument on copying, where you do not have to accept the license, but if you do not, then nothing else gives you permission to distribute copies (or derivative works).
I recall a similar argument has been used before in court for disallowing copies. Unfortunately, I do not recall the specific case or the result.
I've had four banks that I've done online banking with. They all had the same interface with slightly different skins. Now, the third bought out the second, so that does not really count, but yes, I do believe that banks buy their internet banking applications. Not all, perhaps, but many of the "not huge" ones, where it makes much more sense economically.
My current bank (EverBank) has as their URL for their online banking of "mids.com" (M&I Data Services), which according to google has become Metavante. Metavante describes their electronic banking service at their web site.
What do you think they are going to do when they are a little low on their expected revenue for the month?
"Let's see...we're about $60M short this month. That's 480 Petabits. Start the traffic generators early this month!"
:)
Warning: meandering ahead.
.Xresource data format as the backend) but if you get the interface issues right, you've succeeded.
the design is the easy part.
I disagree. Design is the only part. I'm more concerned with the fact that the design is focused on the storage technique (XML or something else), when the real problem in my mind is the access technique. If you write APIs to get configuration information, the storage technique can be varied behind those APIs and it won't matter. Of course, you need APIs for shell, perl, and C/C++, which is problematic, but that's the design issue.
So, what do the APIs look like? How do I address within this space? There are three basic operations that I see: getting and setting variables is pretty easy once you define an address methodology. The harder problem is getting the configuration description (how is a program set-up). Perhaps this is just another get, but the structure of the description language is important.
Rather than focusing on the backend issues, start with the user issues (both sysadmins and programmers). You can write really bad implementations of the APIs to start with (think
And if they are trying to propose a "slimmed down" release of Microsoft as the remedy? Suddenly, these assertions become extremely important.
I removed emacs and all libraries it used and suddenly my entire system stopped working. After some testing, I discovered that if I left the libc library around, removing of the remainder of emacs did not cause the entire system to become unusable.
Libraries used by an application are not the application. This is the root of the debate. Microsoft has defined IE to include libraries used by other programs, and other people have a more limited definition.
I could define IE to include the entire Windows operating system as part of it. I do not consider that a valid definition, as there are very few computers with Windows installed for the express single purpose of using IE. As soon as the HTML engine was being used by other applications than IE, it was no longer part of the IE application.
Unfortunately, this data is presented in such isolation that one cannot really draw a conclusion about it.
What was Condon's track record before? If Condon expected (as I imagine) to be softer on monopolies, then of course Microsoft would support him and then he would act his conscience and support the comprimise.
What about other people who received contributions? Did they behave differently than expected once they received the contribution?
Most "buying" of politicians is buying of elections (not all, however). If the public would vote properly, I would argue, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, advertising works, especially against news outlets.
Imagine if someone suggested a new way to look at movies that resulted in a much better compression algorithm. Who owns the compression technique? One had the idea, one developed it to completion, so they both contributed to it intellectually.
Regardless, this should be discussed in a beta agreement.
It's not that simple. A web site, for example, could provide individualized pricing, perhaps done as a bargaining style (like you buy cars and houses). You choose some products (at some base price), and then you can start bargaining on the shopping cart with the computer. The web site nows your price points from previous bargaining and it has a clue about how interested you are in the shopping cart. Think Priceline, but more interactive.
I'm not sure how well this would work in the real world, but I believe it could still transfer. You pick your goods, go to the register, where they are collected. You then go to the bargaining table and dicker on the price.
Like cars, the seller could offer other items that you might have interest in as bargaining chips (well, we can't give you that price, but we'll throw in this "free" book/subscription/faster shiping here too instead).
Perhaps if they learned that telephone calls are anti-effective on me (I was going to subscribe to NYT until they called me soliciting for subscriptions), and e-mail is ineffictive unless I request it (although not so negative unless they fail to stop sending it), I'd be happier.
However, they don't seem interested in learning such things.
Please note that I'm not saying this is a good scheme. It is just an example one, and one that doesn't detail the chunk polynomial conversion, which would be very important. There are several papers describing schemes where people have actually worked at making them tenable.
Modulo compression, if you want such a system to require only receiving k packets (although you send more than that), the sum of the size of the k packets must be at least the size of the original file (otherwise, you could use such a scheme to compress the file).
I think 'no windows' is the key reason.
You could also split the knowledge between a variety of companies. 'Here are my user credentials, give me Package Foo credentials (which I'm paying for).' 'Here are my Package Foo credentials, give me Service Baz credentials.' 'Here are my Service Baz credentials, give me Web Page Bar credentials.' (all done by software, of course). This, of course, has abuse possibilities, but there could be an out-of-band method to track the credentials back.
The larger problem is that there is too much value in knowing the user's activities, so companies are much more likely to support the user/service credentials model.
That said, I think we do want something like Passport, to provide, among other things, the following:
items, or pay as you go), which becomes much more important the more web pages you use.
Of course, I prefer a model such that I can buy my set of services through Microsoft, AOL, or my local flower shop. This would require a portable and open system, though. That might end up being Passport (through legal actions), but I hope it doesn't get that far.
...but it did strike me that it was awfully easy for them to accomplish their "mission" even though the "bad guys" had vastly superior technology and advanced genetics
The only reason I have hope about that is that the characters commented about that ("This is going to be easier than I thought" or something to that affect). My hope is that the aliens let them get easy. It's true that this is inconsistant with their 'Get Klang' mentality, but maybe the Mysterious Man changed the instructions why we weren't looking.
I'm sorry, the entire country will be down for four hours while Mitrosoft `upgrades' the system. We appologize for any inconvience with your cars, doors, televisions, computers, or refridgerators while we work on this problem. But, really, you'll find that your life grinding to a halt is really a feature in the system, more than a `bug' per se.
You may notice minor data glitches after this upgrade, due to cosmic rays. You can rest assure that you probably won't be executed for any murdering sprees that may show up on your ID (*cough* Stallman *cough*).
Please remember that by living in the US, you accept the EULA, which specifically exempts us from any problems that may result as use of Mitrosoft Pastport(TM).
Remember that an airport has a pretty good notion of who's going to show up tomorrow. You could probably get 99% hits by preloading it with 'morrows passengers (and crew/staff/etc., but those would be there anyway).
That assumes that you don't allow others in the party to pass as well, but given the system, you can probably predict with high likelihood who is likely to come with various people (Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smi...er, Ms. Jones).
Of course, caching has it's own set of problems, as callbacks would be very important, but it's not clear how stable the entries would be. If half your cache is marked bad every day, it ain't gonna help much.
It doesn't allow you to pick the host, and it's only a subset of the Internet (since otherwise the rendering is slow and not very pretty), but this VRML file does show the 'Internet as it looks to a packet.' (the moving viewpoint may not be the default one).
As the writer of the layout code, I can tell you it was certainly not a design goal. The original goal was just to be able to look at the results of the traceroutes that were being collected.
Via a variety of bugs in the layout code over the years, I've produced interesting images, such as rings, clovers, and (my favorite) hearts. However, they almost always have a fractal feel at the micro-level. This is true for almost any Eades-like layout that I've seen, so it's probably a function of the layout algorithm.
Interestingly enough, corporate networks layout much differently that the Internet. Corporate networks tend to be very clean, while the Internet is very stringy (almost looks like the strands within some fiberglass).
As I understand the situation, they used the logger to get passwords to decrypt data. The veracity of the encrypted data, as I understand it, is not the question here. Assuming the passwords decrypted the data, the only question is the legality of collecting the passwords.
Thus, the question of 'bearing witness' it moot, as it's not using the correctness of the passwords as evidence, but the decrypted data. I suppose you could argue that the passwords are wrong and the fact that the decrypted data corresponds to English text is pure coincidence, but that's is, to say the least, not a strong argument.