Tcpa and palladium

[denoir 0]

First: unix are from design still superior to windows.

I very much disagree there, but it's a useless discussion, so I'm not going to get into that.

Quote[/b] ]Look for example at library handling, which is the cause of the many reboots. Unix systems have to rebooted when you install a new kernel (for all you windows users out there: this is equivalent to an "me to xp upgrade" kind of install, except that it only takes a few minutes and leaves your services and date as it was before).

You forget to mention that every time you add a little thing like a driver, you have to recompile your kernel.

Quote[/b] ]When i look at the windows and at the unix systems from an administrators point of view i have to laugh about windows.

That I believe you, but looking at Unix from a software engineer's point of view, I have to laugh about windows.

Quote[/b] ]Second: unix has standards for decades.

And which standard would that be? Solaris? HP-UX? DEC? SGI? Linux? It's a programmers nightmare. Very similar but yet so very different. Each and every one of them having structures that look the same but work entirley different. Ever tried porting your code across Unix platforms? ANSI C/C++ HA!

Quote[/b] ]MS perverted nearly all standards it used to force it's users to stay with ms. How come that i can e.g. take a postscript (open standard for a long time) document from an apple and print it out with solaris but that no other system can print out an windows postscript file?

So your made all your postscript files with ms software? Sorry, you can't take them to any other platform then.

Sorry, but that's bullsiht. I regulary print my files to poscript and then print them to a real printer through DEC Unix workstations at my uni.

Quote[/b] ]Hell, even within the ms line... ever tried to open an office 2003 dicument with an older office version?

Yes, it's word 97 compatible...

Quote[/b] ]Third: open standards are a joke. Everything is patented and afaik only some apis or something are made public.

The whole .NET platform is open and that is the framework that Longhorn is entirely built on. There's already a Linux implementation called Mono and there's a Gnu DotNet as well. How is this possible? Because Microsoft built it on an open standard and gave all the documentation to the public. Please try to know what you are talking about before posting so definite statements.

[kegetys 2]

You forget to mention that every time you add a little thing like a driver, you have to recompile your kernel.  

Errmh... thats what modules are there for. And when you add/remove those you dont even have to reboot, unlike the windows approach with drivers (except for video card driver, in some cases it can be re-initialized "on the fly" even in windows)

Please try to know what you are talking about before posting so definite statements.

[EiZei 0]

EDIT: Gah, damn the opera cache, keg got to answer first.

[theavonlady 2]

Ever tried porting your code across Unix platforms? ANSI C/C++ HA!

I once made an assessment of porting standardized C++ code across Windows and multiple Unix platforms. The project managers were astoundedly shocked and disappointed with the different compilation errors that resulted on each and every platform.

[denoir 0]

You forget to mention that every time you add a little thing like a driver, you have to recompile your kernel.  

Errmh... thats what modules are there for. And when you add/remove those you dont even have to reboot, unlike the windows approach with drivers (except for video card driver, in some cases it can be re-initialized "on the fly" even in windows)

Please try to know what you are talking about before posting so definite statements.  

Hehe, I knew you would react on that one Yeah, I know Linux has support for dynamic modules. Older Unix revisions don't. For instance DECs and HP-UX don't have it at all and Solaris just recently introduced it.

[denoir 0]

Ever tried porting your code across Unix platforms? ANSI C/C++ HA!

I once made an assessment of porting standardized C++ code across Windows and multiple Unix platforms. The project managers were astoundedly shocked and disappointed with the different compilation errors that resulted on each and every platform.

Yeah, tell me about it. A couple of years ago I attended an operating system course. We had a number of programming excersises which included writing some low level memory management handlers and a process scheduler. At home I had linux running while at the uni we programmed on DEC machines and the target platform was Solaris. It was the worst mess I've ever seen. All three systems had functions with the same names but which did completely different things, or took completely different inputs.

Once you get over that part, you realize that both process management and memory management is completley different. In one system when you kill a parent process, all the children die as well - in another they become separate process trees etc etc

My point being that there is no consistency across unix platforms, which in the end is what was its death (and opportunity for microsoft). Each major unix company had its own standard and they could not agree on anything - not even the core libraries. With Microsoft it's only Microsoft and nothing else. It may not be the best solution but it's standard - both for users and developers. And they keep improving their products. The .NET framework for instance is brilliant. Ok so it's largly a Java platform rippoff, but it's still better and now it's standard.

[kegetys 2]

With Microsoft it's only Microsoft and nothing else. It may not be the best solution but it's standard - both for users and developers.

Yes, until you want/need to use <insert a non-microsoft OS here>. Thats what the MS monopoly is all about, and thats how they like it.

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

Um... yeah.. I am dyscalculic (dyslexic with numbers), so I'm not too good at the whole programming thing, or understanding what you guys are talking about, but...

This sounds bad. Very bad.

I'm more worried about the potential for abuse by 'well meaning' governments, pressure groups, or whatever in censoring things.... if this goes ahead, say goodbye to free speech. Say goodbye to even mildy deprecating Microsoft (eventually). This is 1984-style shit.

Say goodbye to porn. Goodbye to open forums. Goodbye to 'naughty' language. Shit, say goodbye everything that christians don't like if Ashcroft, Bush and the rest of the US fundamentalist assholes get a hold of this.

[GoOB 0]

Um... yeah.. I am dyscalculic (dyslexic with numbers)

Offtopic, me too. Quite a rare diagnose atleast over here....

Now back on topic.

This whole deal reeks of bullshit, and so does everything that has to do with setting a standard. If I buy a music download (wich I would never do) I want to be able to treat it like a regular CD. Let my mates borrow it, and listening to it in different places than the computer I downloaded it to.

And this whole deal about deleting pirated software, who is saying that Bill Gates and co. wont use that against me? How do I know what the heck they are doing with my files?

Quote[/b] ] TC will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buy it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. So if you stop paying for upgrades to Media Player, you may lose access to all the songs you bought using it.

That is also total bull, if I pay for one upgrade to WMP I want to keep that version and be able to play songs intended for play with that version of WMP.

And this whole thing making me feeling more secure about using computers, I somehow doubt that. Quite the other way around. Then I would have to worry about paying my Windows media player bill, my Outlook express bill, my IE bill, my MS word bill, my Excel bill need I continue? I payed good money for the Office package back in 97 and I don't want to pay to keep using the programs I bought.

Down with TCPA!

[theavonlady 2]

Speaking of the Devil .............................

[theavonlady 2]

Longhorn Q&A at MS.

[suma 8]

I would like to note that secure platform like Palladium can finally make most ways to cheat not only hard, but impossible. No cheater will be able to change any signed exe or signed data. This sounds like interesting option to me.

[kegetys 2]

I would like to note that secure platform like Palladium can finally make most ways to cheat not only hard, but impossible.

Indeed its impossible to cheat if you cant even play the game (who would run a home system with palladium enabled?)

[drewb99 0]

I just read the Longhorn thing- sounds to me like they've done away with another perfectly good system and replacing it with a 'might or might not work'-type system.

 

Quote[/b] ]Data will reside at the platform level, instead of at the application level. E-mail address book information, for example, will be accessible from multiple applications, instead of just the e-mail client, Gates said.

Well what the hell would we need the adress book for in anything but the Email program !?

Quote[/b] ]Cooperman also opened a DOS application in Longhorn, demonstrating Microsoft's "over 20 years of commitment to interoperability."

They go the extra mile to get DOS to work, yet want to make running Linux as painful as possible.  Lovely.

There's a reason nobody's tried an XML-based operating system, and it looks like i'll be sticking with XP for a loong time, and that's assuming Linux doesn't get better.

[SolidSnake-(SNK) 0]

Oki, i dont understand much of what you guys are talking abouth, but what do we do abouth this shit.

I asume i'am safe on my current computer with WinXp automatic updates turned off, but what when i buy a new computer, cant i run my old MP3's and games on it without it beeing deleted?

I have read the faq, but it was loong, and i dident understand that much of it.

What abouth Linux, will i be able to play games on this OS any time soon?

[ale2999 0]

I can barely cope with this conversation.....

A solution for this will just be to run a legit machine and a cracked one....

If all this stupid programmers didnt assign licenses to computers but to a household this would be FINE by me, as piracy is a BIG problem. All software makers lose tons of $$$ every year, but it is just ridiculous that you can use software on one pc only. Like gee we got 4 computers at our house... I am lucky some come with xp preloaded, I am stuck on 98 on a couple! STEAM by valve, is great as it allows me to play all the half life game as long as I have my user id, password and the internet; u still get only 1 copy of the game, but it is way better than the TCA

[blackdog~ 0]

I can barely cope with this conversation.....

A solution for this will just be to run a legit machine and a cracked one....

If all this stupid programmers didnt assign licenses to computers but to a household this would be FINE by me, as piracy is a BIG problem. All software makers lose tons of $$$ every year, but it is just ridiculous that you can use software on one pc only. Like gee we got 4 computers at our house... I am lucky some come with xp preloaded, I am stuck on 98 on a couple! STEAM by valve, is great as it allows me to play all the half life game as long as I have my user id, password and the internet; u still get only 1 copy of the game, but it is way better than the TCA

Maybe publishers should stop charging over $499 for their award winning software then.

[petrel 0]

In all honesty, I would love a Linux world but we're just not there yet.

But we're not too far off. Unless you already do this, try running a modern Linux distro in parallel with your Windows one, perhaps on an older machine. This is what I do and I find myself using Windows for less and less though it's still essential for a few things.

As to what people have been saying about .NET and Microsoft's alleged commitment to open standards: there is a beeeeeg trap here. Things are only "open" so long as M$ chooses not to enforce restrictive patents and sue anyone who tries to reverse engineer access to their apis, etc. A good way of shafting Linux would be for M$ to encourage world+dog to move over to these apparently open standards, then cut the ground from under them by sending in the intellectual property lawyers under one pretext or another. A large number of Linux programmers would be in a quandary: start all over again, or continue with .Net, Mono or whatever but now coding for Windows applications. Neat one.

[kegetys 2]

Having now educated myself a bit about "palladium" (that name isnt in use anymore) its not really has bad thing as it is "hyped" at.

this is a suprisingly good read even though its at microsoft.com ;)

NGSCB seems like a possibly good thing, except this:

Quote[/b] ]

Q: Could Linux, FreeBSD or another open source operating system create a similar trust architecture?

A: From a technology perspective, it will be possible to develop a nexus that interoperates with other operating systems on the hardware of a nexus-aware PC. Much of the NGSCB architecture design is covered by patents, and there will be intellectual property issues to be resolved.

I would suppose those patents are owned by Microsoft, which means they would be able to lock out non-MS OS's after all... They might be "open" at first (even the source for the windows implementation should be available) but once the thing gets to wide public use they could start using it to enforce people to MS operating systems.

As for DRM, it seems its just another copyprotection attempt for media, doomed to fail as everything else. As long as you can play a media you can copy it too...

[benu 1]

(who would run a home system with palladium enabled?)

Everyone, at least when the next stage arrives where you can't turn it off anymore. As functionality will be built into the cpu you don't have much say in that (except to use old hardware which does not have this feature).

First: unix are from design still superior to windows.

I very much disagree there, but it's a useless discussion, so I'm not going to get into that.

I'm sure this is more a prioritites thing than something you can measure and prove. But i put it into a context to make clear how i mean it and you just ripped it out of that context.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Look for example at library handling, which is the cause of the many reboots. Unix systems have to rebooted when you install a new kernel (for all you windows users out there: this is equivalent to an "me to xp upgrade" kind of install, except that it only takes a few minutes and leaves your services and date as it was before).

You forget to mention that every time you add a little thing like a driver, you have to recompile your kernel.

We both know this is not true for linux. And iirc i did not have to reboot my SGIs after operating system upgrades, but it's been awhile... And if you want to compare windows to 30 year old unix systems then please comare 30 year old windows versions with 30 year old unix versions. Or be fair and compare stuff like windows xp with newer unix os like eg linux with 2.4 or 2.6 kernel.

And this is the point i tried to make with my design statement: the way windows handles drivers and libs is totally shitty. They clutter up the memory and you have to reboot for updates. That is inacceptable and... well, linux is 10 years old... so i would say this kind of technology is really outdated.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]When i look at the windows and at the unix systems from an administrators point of view i have to laugh about windows.

That I believe you, but looking at Unix from a software engineer's point of view, I have to laugh about windows.

Typo? I thought you liked windows better? And i guess i would agree with you on that one. As all apis and stuff are out of one hand it all behaves more similar than the multitude of different unix...

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Second: unix has standards for decades.

And which standard would that be? Solaris? HP-UX? DEC? SGI? Linux? It's a programmers nightmare. Very similar but yet so very different. Each and every one of them having structures that look the same but work entirley different. Ever tried porting your code across Unix platforms? ANSI C/C++ HA!

No. I never said there was "one standard unix" but that unix uses standards, like in rfc for example. You can use nfs to export filesystems between different unix, nis works with different, and they comply to most of the other standards. MS does not do this. With nearly every protocol they use. On purpose.

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]MS perverted nearly all standards it used to force it's users to stay with ms. How come that i can e.g. take a postscript (open standard for a long time) document from an apple and print it out with solaris but that no other system can print out an windows postscript file?

So your made all your postscript files with ms software? Sorry, you can't take them to any other platform then.

Sorry, but that's bullsiht. I regulary print my files to poscript and then print them to a real printer through DEC Unix workstations at my uni.

Maybe that's dated now, but we had that case. And when you looked at the file you saw that ms made additional headers which were not part of the ps definition, so that other systems did not recognize it as valid ps (which in fact it wasn't).

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Hell, even within the ms line... ever tried to open an office 2003 dicument with an older office version?

Yes, it's word 97 compatible...

That's bullshit and you know it. I see this everyday at work. And don't come with "export file as word 97 document". Cause if it would make no difference if you save a file as word2003 or as word97 than there would be no reason for a word2003 format. And for word to save in the format by default. Or wait.. maybe there is a reason: to make those documents incompatible to the previous word versions so companies have to upgrade to the new version...

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]Third: open standards are a joke. Everything is patented and afaik only some apis or something are made public.

The whole .NET platform is open and that is the framework that Longhorn is entirely built on. There's already a Linux implementation called Mono and there's a Gnu DotNet as well. How is this possible? Because Microsoft built it on an open standard and gave all the documentation to the public. Please try to know what you are talking about before posting so definite statements.

Did you even read what i read? I know about mono. I've read lots of articles about the legal state of dotnet and mono. MS has patented everything and they can shut mono and all non-ms platforms down in a moments notice. And besides that this is the same kind of tactic they have been using before they told in numerous interviews that it is their goal still.

[denoir 0]

Did you even read what i read? I know about mono. I've read lots of articles about the legal state of dotnet and mono. MS has patented everything and they can shut mono and all non-ms platforms down in a moments notice. And besides that this is the same kind of tactic they have been using before they told in numerous interviews that it is their goal still.

It's not patented because:

1) You can't patent software (at least not yet)

2) It's not microsoft that has defined the .NET standards - it's a subset of a general open framework.

And about mono, if you check their website you'll see that they are getting active support from Microsoft. As a matter of fact to facilitate projects like Mono, Microsoft released the entire source code for the 1.0 framework (named Rotor).

Is Microsoft's goal world dominance and a monopoly? Hell yeah, it would not be much of a company if they didn't have those goals. It seems to me however that they have realized that brute force, closed development and lawsuits is hurting them more than it's doing them any good.

It's funny to what extent some people loath Microsoft. I personally try to be pragmatic. And the fact is that in most areas because of one reason or another, you end up doing it the Microsoft way and the users of your code expect you to do it the Microsoft way. And software development is far more than just the technical aspect of it.

Quote[/b] ]That's bullshit and you know it. I see this everyday at work. And don't come with "export file as word 97 document". Cause if it would make no difference if you save a file as word2003 or as word97 than there would be no reason for a word2003 format. And for word to save in the format by default. Or wait.. maybe there is a reason: to make those documents incompatible to the previous word versions so companies have to upgrade to the new version

There is no such thing as a word2003 format. The format for word has not changed since Word 97. Don't take my word for it here, open this document that was created in Word 2003 in for instance WordPad. This is the default format for Word 2003. The next generation format will be XML which is also supported by Word 2003. Here is the same document in XML format. It's text only, open standard and self describing. In short, no more custom filetypes. You can bet the creators of OpenOffice sent flowers to Microsoft.

Now, I don't care for what reason but the fact is that Billy boy's company has made a 180 turn when it comes to basing their work on open standards as opposed to proprietary closed formats. And that's very good - but I guess that is also why it is met with such resentment by the Microsoft-haters.

[kegetys 2]

It's not patented because:

1) You can't patent software (at least not yet)

You can in the US

[der bastler 0]

Inside my home network the migration is nearly done. I did install Gentoo Linux on my gaming PC last week and Enemy Territory works "out-of-the-ebuild". Total control of what is running on my machine, idle memory usage << 100MB, no need for AntiSpy...

XDM Login Screen (customised; 700kB photo)

The XFce4 Desktop (700kB photo)

I noticed an untouched game market regarding the Linux platform. Therefore I'll re-activate old programming skills (DOS and $a000, those were the days) in 2004 --my todo-list still reads "make a game"... Good to know I don't have to start from scratch (An engine. Another engine. A third engine.)

Besides: There will be no escape from TCPA or what it's named today. Nearly-monopolist Microsoft will start and the hardware vendors will follow --rules of capitalism. IBM is working on an open source version of TCPA support for Linux (http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/).

And for the file formats: OpenOffice uses XML for it's documents. Now Microsoft jumps on... should we be scared? It's well-known that Microsofts conquers and commands formats and standards, e.g. with own "internet standards" (:crazy:).

[denoir 0]

It's not patented because:

1) You can't patent software (at least not yet)

You can in the US

The page doesn't load for me. Anyway, I watched a BBC documentary on software and patents the other week. What they said was that pure software is considered to be the same as a mathematic algorithm i.e not patentable. If you have however a real-world solution that includes software, then the software can be patented as a part of the solution. They gave an example of a chemical process optimization that used a computer control system. That control system was patented as part of the complete solution.

However, there are other things besides patent. While you can't for instance patent a graphical user interface, you can sue somebody for plagiarism if they make it similar to yours. And then it depends on how lucky you are and what judge you get. Apparently there is no pattern at all to the rulings.

[denoir 0]

And for the file formats: OpenOffice uses XML for it's documents. Now Microsoft jumps on... should we be scared? It's well-known that Microsofts conquers and commands formats and standards, e.g. with own "internet standards" (:crazy:).

They are sticking to the book with XML. As I'm saying, in recent development they've gone the other way - instead of enforcing their own special brand of format they now advocate open formats.

But yes, in general Microsoft likes to introduce its own formatting and styles - and then through aggressive marketing and rapid improvement push out the original one. The advantage is of course that in the end there is just one standard, the Microsoft standard and you have no issues between platforms and the users don't have to re-learn a completely new interface for each new piece of software.