Posts by copsewood 519 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009
Software ideas are patentable in the US but not the EU. E.G. the FAT extended filenames patent Microsoft used to beat TomTom up with recently. This wouldn't have worked in european courts but did as well as MS needed in US ones to get TomTom to license MS patents. Could be the Supremes will see much if not most US software innovation going offshore because small innovative businesses are too afraid of being sued out of existence and will want to try stopping this.
These activities and mistakes are an inevitable consequence of the learning curve Microsoft now has to go through as part of the massive culture change resulting from having to go open source for an increasing range of their products . Clearly they can't outcompete open source on quality and can't afford to develop all code within their products in house.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, and then you win. I'd much rather have Microsoft do all their development in public and have access to all open source code and all open source projects have equal access to Microsoft's code, than for Microsoft to go out of business. But it will take a while to get there, and we'll have to be ready to point out these process mistakes to Microsoft when they make them, and give MS an opportunity to correct them acting in good faith.
'Graham Cluley, senior security consultant a Sophos, explains: "What's to say that the bad guys couldn't analyse COFEE, and write their own code which neutralises it (or wipes sensitive data from their computer) if they determine it is being run on their own computer?"'
For this reason, it seems obvious that either those using this tool are a lot less clued up than the high tech crime cops I have met, or this tool doesn't analyse a running system at all. If this USB stick doesn't boot it's own operating system from cold, read lock the fixed media and analyse the latter as static read-only objects, then it would have no value for its stated purpose.
The system it analyses would have to be in a shut-down state first and booted from this device. To argue in court that the USB stick modified the system being examined would then either require the defendant sustain a claim that the system BIOS ran software not on the USB stick first, which changed the contents of the system, or that the media read locking of the OS on the USB stick wasn't effective. Likely to be a flimsy defence, but it might just about convince a thick jury.
So I guess the Police might only risk using the BIOS of the system being investigated against such a defence to help boot it if they are prioritising getting results quickly in a situation where a caution would suffice or someone could be pursuaded to assist in their investigations or prosecution of their real target. As I understand it, they remove the hard disk or SSD and write protect it to copy and analyse media entirely outside the context of the defendant's running system.
That the High Tech Crime Unit would allow their software to interact with the system of a suspect in the manner suggested in this article (i.e. on a suspect's live system) is either unimaginable incompetence or more likely ingenous misinformation.
"It's almost as if, we need a system of economics that isn't based on money to save the energy crisis... if only one such system existed!"
Good point. You might want to consider the potential of local currencies (LCs) :
http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/ combined with transaction taxes:
http://copsewood.net/writings/kaytax.html
instead of income, VAT and profits taxation. A minor legislation change affecting taxes due on these could enable LCs to grow from currently less than 2% of the economy (mostly barter, some LETS, air miles etc) to transact up to an estimated 50% or so of the current economy.
We'd then be able to figure out how to make the rest of the economy more sustainable.
These ideas and their practical applications are still money, but not money as we know it, i.e. a system designed (in the words of economist John Maynard Keynes) to maximise the accumulation of capital. If you want JMK's justification for why we need to be thinking about changing this historical system optimisation, read his "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" 1930 essay :
http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
1. All forms of electricity are subsidised. Fossil fuel is subsidised by not paying the pollution and climate change cost, and nuclear is subsidised by being unable to afford the insurance or decomissioning costs. Government intervention in the sustainable electricity market creates a more level playing field than would otherwise exist.
2. Pumped storage potential is just a fraction of hydro stored energy potential if all existing dams (used for water supply and continuous electricity) are uprated, and used to store some energy for use during wind calms. Water is very unlikely to be in short supply in the UK in the weeks after long winter calms, so there seems little reason why water supply dams can't be dual purposed and existing hydroelectric continuous supply dams uprated to help balance wind output.
3. Hydro stored energy can be supplemented using smart charged transport battery reserve and biofuel reserve to some extent.
4. Biofuel energy can be doubled using the Fischer Tropsch process. Burn it once in a static electricity plant, capturing the CO2 (first use). Then combine the C02 with hydrogen from wind electricity generated during peak wind output to make synfuel for mobile fossil fuel application replacements (e.g. aircraft), also for winter calm backup generators (second use).
5. Others have mentioned tidal potential.
6. Most people will welcome occasional holidays of a few days announced by meteorologists a couple of days in advance when most industrial and commercial electric use will be shut down during an anticipated long winter calm. Because of this fact, we don't really need expensive 3rd level thermal backup to cover depletion of hydro stored energy on perhaps an average 2 - 3 days per annum, if extra holidays can be enjoyed. We will only all benefit from increased automation if we gradually increase holidays anyway, and this will be the optimal way to create extra holidays.
"However, the fact that an *independent* developer was able to find the bug by reviewing the source code is something that could not have happened with either Windows or OSX."
Not the case. OSX is open source except for desktop cosmetics. One of my work colleagues put a Windows source CD on my desk, made available under Microsoft's "Shared Source" program. I haven't read it, because I don't want Microsoft suing me for copyright or patent infringement if I contribute anything they consider similar to an open source program. To sell Windows to government and security sensitive environments, MS wouldn't make these sales without disclosing source. So Windows users are not protected from code review because of Microsoft's inability to keep source code in house.
This gets worse, because black hats who have no intention of contributing to open source have access to Windows source code and white hats, who also technically have access, for reasons given above are unlikely to want to read it unless paid by employers with very large security budgets specifically to do so.
Having done a clean install of the RC on the spare partition everything just worked on my desktop. Used EXT3 without disk encryption so this is compatible with the older (8.04 LTS) production system. I need to do further testing and configuration of my somewhat weird (research) mail system before making this partition the production system.
For those doing the full install or upgrade, and are complaining about imperfections or worse, better to report the bugs upstream and remember that this is the only way open source improves. If you can't stand the heat of something going wrong then either stay out of the kitchen by using LTS releases preinstalled on hardware chosen and built for Linux by someone else who knows what they are doing.
Those who imagine it's a good idea to control uses of works for the purposes of private interest already seem to know all they want about how to draw up copyright licenses which protect their own interests at the expense of the consumers' interests, e.g. which attempt to justify gross violations of user privacy as with the Sony rootkit and Kindle 1984 debacles, or which suppress open criticism, disclosure or debate as applies to restrictive technology NDAs.
Those who give a toss about consumer rights are already using Creative Commons or Open Source approaches. I don't see what the government can contribute here to square this particular circle, other than making certain gross violations of section 8 of the ECHR (right to privacy) matters for criminal law and/or unenforceable in civil law.
@Richard Scratcher
BT certainly had breakage alarms along larger cables when they went when I worked for a contractor for them in the seventies. This is probably why the thieves struck in the early hours of the morning - as it takes longer for someone from a regional response centre to get to the crime scene than local staff.
@Simon10
Simon10
The urban cables or those beside large roads are in ducts. Many rural cables alongside quiet roads were (in the seventies and probably still are) simply buried beside the road using a trenching tool. Not so strong against this kind of attack as a ducted cable but a much cheaper solution.
When the penny fully drops on copyright owners that they will never again be able to control non-commercial distribution, then they will be able to look for commercial beneficiaries and go after them directly. You pay for music when you visit a shop or restaurant that plays it indirectly as a small take on your bill and that is how it should be. The same could reasonable apply when you use the Net, once the content industries stop pissing us off by trying to order back the tide. But copyright owners either have to agree fully to legalise non-commercial distribution in order to get a fair take from commercial beneficiaries, i.e. your ISP or politicians have to be made to force this upon them.
Until then those who have an interest in their own human rights must demand that the constitutional privacy rights of the many trump the relatively limited copyrights of the few.
Mandy obviously values his being able to rub shoulders with celeb dinosaurs and getting favours from old media editors more highly than the European Convention of Human Rights section 8, which guarantees privacy of home life and private communications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHR#Article_8_-_privacy
These back each other up nicely when there is plenty of energy storage represented by weight of water behind dams which can be turned into electricity during calm spells. A few back of the envelope calculations shows that storing the equivalent of 7 cubic kilometers of water 300 metres uphill is enough to provide the UK electricity demand for 2 days, without needing gas, coal or nuclear backup.
So all a nuclear advocate who doesn't want us to make rational choices in the energy debate has to do is repeatedly ignore the facts that hydro exists and that it can be uprated.
"What has Microsoft come to when two people inspiring small companies -- Shuttleworth and Jobs -- can for their own particular reasons independently release strong competitors to Microsoft's key product. For Microsoft's level of staffing and their expenditure on development they should be years ahead of anyone else."
If the proprietary methodologies used by Microsoft are much less cost effective than the open source methodologies used by Apple (for all but cosmetics) and by Canonical then this would explain why Microsoft is doing so badly in comparison. It wouldn't matter how much money Microsoft has and spends, they could not easily outcompete an open source Mac with proprietary cosmetics or a fully open source Linux.
What is likely to happen is that Microsoft will have to opensource increasing parts of the Windows system, so they can benefit from collaborative development, rather than having to develop and own everything in house. Ubuntu and Apple do as well as they do simply because most of the software they package is developed collaboratively elsewhere and by other people.
But when Microsoft do start to opensource their system (e.g. as with their so called "shared source" program) they are still several years behind and have much to do to catch up.
Having to practice the longbow on Sundays was part of the price freed serfs had to pay for the settlement following the peasants revolt. The black death and the peasants revolt had reduced both taxes and military expenditure, so to avoid loss of military effectiveness, commoners had to train with the longbow and be prepared to fight. Previously, warfare had been the preserve and basis of the aristocracy. The French nobility at Agincourt were taken completely by surprise, expecting easily to defeat what they had thought to be a much smaller, hungry, tired and dysentric rabble.
It is rumoured that the V sign started with English archers showing French knights this sign as disrespect, to indicate that they had not previously been captured, resulting in amputation of fingers needed to use the longbow.
And it is most definitely the best Ubuntu ever. Very impressed with how smoothly it was able to install within a slightly weird setup on 5 year old hardware and handle all devices: printers, display, sound, cameras, scanners, USB gadgets and integrate regrettably non-free or patent encumbered but necessary content (various video codecs, Flash, MP3 etc) with a few extra mouse clicks. Everything works faster than ever. No nasty licenses, no license keys having to be input, no unacceptable big brother remote control or calling home without my consent, nothing in the base product that I can't explore and study, though everything now works so well that for most users and purposes there will be very little need to do so other than natural curiousity and the wider need for IT literacy and competence. This makes non free software look like it's built by a bunch of amateurs in comparison
Well done Canonical, and the entire free world which makes all of this possible.
Collins English Dictionary, 1979, p1233, religion, definition 5: "something of overwhelming importance to a person". The evidence of this being an organised system of belief (in "Thereis Nogod" ) exists through Atheists having temples. I was once invited and was happy to speak in one of these, the Secular Hall in Leicester:
http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/secularhall.htm .
You'll be able to see on the above link that this grand building has all the splendid architecture of a temple. They even have a bust of Jesus there, alongside Socrates, Voltaire, Paine, and Owen, though they don't seem fully to grasp who He is. I'm always interested to visit the places of worship of other religions. Us Christians were also called Atheists originally, because we refused to worship the Roman Emperors or state.
Any organisation which adheres to and promotes a particular faith position is a religion in my book, and deserves the rights accorded to such, e.g. of freedom of belief within the law.
The number of XBoxes is greatly outnumbered by the number of TVs and Satellite/Cable/Freeview boxes. Most of the latter and an increasing number of new TVs generally run Linux without the end user ever becoming aware of it until they want to start hacking their own property.
According to the RIPA, forgetting your encryption password can now get you 2 years in the slammer. The assumption is that you are guilty until proven innocent by remembering your password and being able to prove that the data on your disk wasn't criminal. I don't know how long we'll have to put up with this travesty of a law before whichever of a jury or the ECHR or our new supreme court throws it out first by refusing to convict despite clear evidence of failure to provide a key on demand.
It won't prevent me from creating plenty of encryption passwords which I promptly forget. Why should I have to remember them all if I only need to use a key once, e.g. to send a single file containing malware to a responsible party for analysis securely ?
This is one law I'm going to ignore because it deserves an appropriate level of respect, i.e. none whatsoever.
One reason is that many are closet Agnostics, keeping their bets covered. A second reason is that some self-professing Atheists don't really have the courage of their Atheist convictions by failing to specify a secular/humanist service in advance and leaving grieving relatives to make the default, seen as more socially acceptable, choices about their funerals.
"agree the Internet is very useful, but I don't know about it being a right. Hey, does that mean if the record or movie industry had your Internet access terminated they could be sued for breaching your rights? Humm... I am liking this more and more."
Well spotted. Fundamental human rights, e.g. included with the US Bill of Rights and the EHCR include freedoms of expression, communication and privacy. These constitutional rights don't protect the business models of copyright owners: copyright is a lesser right. Ultimately this will result in 3 strikes laws, internet connection monitoring by copyright owners and aspects of the DMCA all being declared unconstitutional, but it could take between a couple of years or several decades for supreme courts to get around to enforcing constitutional rights in this way, depending upon how effective activism in support of these consitutional rights becomes within this context.
Slavery, denial of citizenship to blacks and various other horrors all took several decades of activism before the US constitution became effective.
"I write a program. I copyright it. I can give the binaries to whoever I want, any way I want.
If I license it under the GPL I can't do that unless I give them source."
No, if it's your own work entirely, as you suggest, then there is nothing to prevent you from providing it under GPL (versions of your choice) to whomever you want, and under other terms to others as and how you choose. It is only when you _receive_ work (e.g. part of a program) under the terms of the GPL, under this license from someone else, that you are under any obligation to provide source code, and this obligation only occurs if and when you perform onwards (downstream) distribution of work you obtained under GPL terms from someone else.
So you only break the GPL license obligation in connection with the ability of someone upstream of you to enforce your license. The person downstream of you only has rights to source code in the sense you break the license provided from your upstream provider if you don't provide your downstream with source code. Your downstream distributee can't enforce this while the upstream copyright owner can.
But the practice is that no-one accused of a GPL 2 violation has ever had the guts or the budget to fight on these somewhat esoteric points. They all settle out of court before it gets that far, because it is cheaper and easier for them to do so. This only applies to those distributing GPL2 covered work anyway. Ordinary non distributing users don't need a licence, and those distributing GPL2 covered work generally seem to understand the straightforward obligation which comes with this license i.e. to make source code available to distributees.
No-one distributing work seems to want to have a court banning the sale of their products containing GPL2 code - it's much too big a commercial risk compared to the minor cost of publishing the source code.
This is old news anyway - anyone following the debate over the tightening up which came with GPL3 would understand why these points were tightened up with the GPL3.
"Anyone here who has *ever* owned a car, and says they wouldn't take free petrol if it was as easy as torrenting, is a flat-out liar."
Wrong. Copying something doesn't deprive the original owner of anything they had before the copy was made. Taking petrol from a car deprives the owner of the petrol and is theft, i.e. a criminal offence with which the police will get involved. Copying in breach of copyright comes under civil law which does not concern the police. In most cases this is both undetectable and unenforceable.
To the extent attempts to enforce copyright interfere with privacy of communications and freedom of expression, defence of these fundamental rights requires opposition to extreme attempts to enforce copyright.
"I forgot all you pirate freetards were on a moral crusade against...er...paying for stuff."
Wrong. It's about whether freedom of expression concerning reverse engineering is more important than the business interests of content creators. And it's about whether privacy of communications is more important than an outdated business model. Business interests vested in particular distribution models are not fundamental human rights while freedoms of expression and privacy of private communications are.
I messaged a relative with a RFC1738 compliant URL containing a username and password. It seems Facebook software decided to strip out the credentials. They don't seem to like me sharing private family photos which they are not themselves authorised to vet. I had to send him the URL outside Facebook using ordinary email.
I think I'll stick with email. At least I can run my own email server and decide for myself what to relay and I don't have to put up with corporates deciding for me what I'm allowed to communicate and how I'm allowed to communicate.
"Synthetic jetfuel made from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch process is already certified on many US military aircraft, but this is actually worse in carbon emissions than using crude oil. About a tonne of coal has to be burned to produce a tonne of synthifuel with this method."
AFAIK, the Fischer-Tropsch process is more flexible this. Given sources of hydrogen and CO it can produce synthetic fuels as described. But there is nothing other than cost to prevent the CO coming from burning sustainable vegetation or algae and the hydrogen coming from electrolysis of water using wind or other renewable electricity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
Where I used to live the low life used to kick a ball over a fence where they planned to carry out a burglary. By claiming ownership of the ball they were pretending to have rights to access the garden containing the ball with a view to using the opportunity to break into the house from the relative invisibility of the back garden. If caught in the back garden by the property owner they would use recovery of the ball as excuse for trespass.
It looks as if this bank is attempting this same kind of inherently crooked trick. They want to compromise the privacy of the email account holder so they email some information to this address and then use bullying tactics to assert ownership of all the details needed to identify the email account owner.
Google are acting entirely correctly to tell them to go away and prove they have the legal right to what they claim and to warn the email account holder about this attempted security compromise.
"At some point there needs to be some motivation to getting a completely working product out the door. Apple and Microsoft do this with something called a "paycheck." This is why they have better than 0-1% market penetration."
Linux is mainly developed by those collecting paychecks.
Only 11% of code contributed to Linux 2.6.20 was known to have been done by those self employed - 70% was by paid employees of well known companies: http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/ and 19% by those of unknown employer. Of the 30% contributed by those of self and unknown employment we don't know how many contributors made money from this and how many didn't. You are probably running Linux in your webcam, broadband router, cable or sattelite box or TV - it's a multi-billion dollar business. More than 90% of software is developed for a cost centre as opposed to a profit centre. When it's a cost centre it benefits those funding its development to collaborate with other developers with similar interests.
As to <1% using it on the desktop, Linux desktops tend to have specialist applications or users. If I used a helicopter and you a car why should I care if there are 100 times as many cars as helicopters ? It's not that I can't drive a car - it just wouldn't do what a helicopter does. Also if any proprietary packaged software product were "completely working" why do companies supplying these need to keep on dropping and patching old products and developing and marketing new ones ?
The agenda this argument serves to hide is that laws are "bought" through influence by lobbyists acting for vested interests who want lucrative government-granted monopoly rights.
If you were a small software innovator choosing where to locate, where would you conduct your business ? In a country like the US where you could be sued out of your home and livelihood or in the UK where software patents don't apply ?
"Linux has been trying for many years to become the dominent (sic) player in the desktop market and has resolutely failed, a fact which Linux fans should wake up and accept."
It is also a fact that there are more flies than humans. So by your argument humans should all buzz off and eat excrement ?
No need to port Fortran numerical function libraries to other languages. These functions are routinely called from other languages. You only need to get the Fortran language and toolset out again on the odd occasions when the library or ancient applications needs recompilation, e.g. to another instruction set or library API. Maintaining the toolset in the longer term is easier now that the Fortran compilers still being used for such purposes are written in 'C'.
What else does Microsoft have to sell other than so called intellectual property ? The unpopularity of Vista combined with recession delayed PC purchasing decisions have created a hole in the finances of a business done pyramid style because it doesn't account employee share options as a cost:
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
I'm told various other large recession-hit businesses are being creative to generate cash flow in order to stay afloat.
"CSS is the classic example of why DRM is pointless - it will always be possible to circumvent it, one way or another. This is why CSS is obsolete."
CSS is technically obsolete, apart from being present in every DVD and player. But one of the more insidious threats of stronger DRM is that the hardware can be made very difficult to subvert, which results in history becoming what the owners of claimed "intellectual property" choose to rewrite it to become. Libraries and museums will always want to be able to preserve genuine history as opposed to the revisionism that suits IP owners. But these laws intentionally suppress discussion enabling freeing of hardware and media between legitimate preservationists and the engineering experts who are criminalised in the process.
Well, if this occurred in a regime which constitutionally respects freedom of expression, the only other thing he did apart from the expression of the engineering modification was the thinking behind the modification. And if the expression couldn't have been a crime due to the first ammendment, then the crime must have been the thought behind the expression.
Clearly "intellectual property" for those who claim ownership of it isn't enough to satisfy them. They want to own and control the space inside your head in order to protect their claimed IP.
It's been based entirely on open source Linux host and Debian guest software and it has been rock solid for this period. This is a much cheaper way to rent a hosted server than using a physical machine. As the entire software stack is open source, licensing isn't an issue. As far as patch management is concerned, the upstream server host ISP (Bytemark) which owns the hardware gives a choice of custom built guest kernels to users such as myself, and on the very rare occasions when a security patch has to go into one of these due to remote exploit potential, guest users are informed in advance when a reboot will be required. I apply patch updates and routine upgrades to the guest non-kernel OS and applications myself using apt-get which automates the whole business pretty well.
This approach brings the cost of operating Internet servers down to similar prices to high end mobile phone contracts. I'm a very satisfied user.
"This will in no way be anything to do with Microsoft refusing point blank to learn from better systems (Unix/Linux) "
Actually Microsoft have been learning from these more open systems for many years. Examples have included the Mach kernel, WIMP (x-Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer) interfaces, multi-user discretionary access control, preemptive multitasking and preventing applications from overwriting the address space of other applications. Of course those of us who use open systems instead of MS-Windows have had the benefits of these things years earlier. What Microsoft have not been learning very well so far is openness. As they become more reliant on GPL code (which they originally called "a cancer") due to the need to cooperate in order to compete within a world based upon open network standards (i.e. Internet), they are increasingly being forced into more openness to avoid being sued for GPL licensing violations.
The other factor driving this is Microsoft's desire not to have anti-trust out of court settlements and fines imposed by courts increased by another order of magnitude. When they were spending $100M/year on this it wasn't affecting the bottom line. Now this is costing them closer to $1G a year, they need to keep the legal cost of abusing their monopoly position from going much higher.
"Anyone know an e-mail provider that doesn't require your immortal soul?"
Yes - implement Internet RFC email standards and become your own email provider. If you want full control over your email identity and messages, as opposed to being marketing/identity fodder, then you'll need your own domain name, your own MTA program, and a server (hint: Linux virtual machines are cheap) plus a static IP address to run it on, in order to talk these email standard protocols. Either that or you get someone else, e.g. pay a techy friend or a small and good ISP to do this for you, but then you will have to be able to trust them not to abuse the long-term control over the identity your.prefix@their.domain gives them, or the ability to read your incoming messages. If you don't want to run your own server, better to start by registering and maintaining your own domain, because then at least you can relocate your own independent identity if your email/hosting provider gets less competitive or more intrusive than others.
There are such major errors, biases and dodgy assumptions in the article it's difficult to know where to start. For example, over a regional area of just a few thousand square kilometers, wind energy is predictable a few days in advance with some accuracy through weather forecasting. So someone operating a plant using a lot of electricity, where the cost of electricity matters to the bottom line, will want to shut it down for a dozen days a decade during exceptional wind calms covering a third of Europe in preference to paying punitive electric charges. We will all know a few days in advance that electricity charges will be punitive. So we won't need fossil fuel backup generation to cover a few days a decade - we will instead use less electricity on those days. Those who have a choice will charge their electric cars in anticipation and limit travel for the duration of the calm. Those without choice will get to pay the premium prices.
Global warming flood and extreme weather insurance, which we all carry through bigger premiums or through the cost of disasters ourselves if uninsured, isn't factored into current fossil electricity prices. Then there is the cost of trying to get food supply security in an unstable climate future or the cost of not having food supply security - climate refugee camps all over the countryside will look a lot worse than wind generators. The alternatives to wind and other sustainable energy sources, conservation, economies and efficiencies together replacing fossil fuels entirely are not pleasant.
Lewis - next article please take on board the fact that the above scenarios are not sensible options.
Instead please properly investigate solutions to intermittent supply including:
a. arbitraging renewable electricity on a continental basis through high voltage DC interconnector grid links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
b. uprating existing hydro plant to store hydro energy behind the dam and deliver it when needed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage#Hydroelectric_dam_uprating
c. opportunistic price-based electricity demand management (economy 7, smart metering, charging the car and doing the wash after 11pm when wind power is cheap etc.)
Sure if you use ROM or hard wiring for your code then it can't be changed. Fine if it was secure in the first place, but proprietary "security through obscurity" code doesn't have a good reputation here either. Flash upgradable systems are all vulnerable unless there is a hardware reset required to enable it so this can't be done without physical access to the device. But that also makes the router cost a few pennies more and prevents full remote administration.
Besides which, I doubt the firmware in question was designed with security against someone or software with LAN access in mind. Seems useful to someone parked outside who has just cracked your WEP keys and wants to take over your router and run something on it more permanently though.
"However, if you take a look at the number of drivers the Linux kernel still needs on hardware here, you'll see just how far Linux lags Windows on some basic plug-and-play functionality."
This statement is meaningless because it presumes that having support for a particular hardware device on one version of Windows is equivalent to having the same support for the same device on all versions of Windows, past present and future. Many Vista users are all too well aware that not all of their older XP supported hardware peripherals are supported on Vista.
There is a great difference between availability of a binary-only non-free Linux driver for hardware which has been known to work with a single Linux kernel and having a GPL2 compatible source code driver which can be maintained and compiled for future versions of Linux. But very few device drivers for hardware on Windows come with source code, making nearly all Windows-driven hardware second class when it comes to future proofing and bug fixing, because this depends upon continuing interest by a manufacturer which may have stopped selling the hardware or which might have gone bankrupt or been taken over by a company with different interests.
So if you are using an unmaintained binary Windows or Linux driver, there is an equally good chance this will force you to choose between managing without the hardware or being unable to upgrade your system whatever the security risks of not doing so.
Windows users wanting good quality hardware are therefore best advised to check if a GPL Linux driver exists for a prospective hardware purchase before buying. If one does, there is a better chance that the hardware is of higher quality by supporting relevant interfacing standards, and isn't a rubbish device made cheaper by offloading all its processing onto the computer driving it. Even if the hardware will never be used with Linux, Linux-supported hardware should still be able to work reliably after the next Windows upgrade.
"... locations have been chosen as the result of financial assistance in the form of grants and loan guarantees from their respective governments."
Small businesses and individuals pay taxes, businesses big enough to be able to move capital and jobs to wherever taxes are low, subsidies are large and laws suit them don't. So political election candidates compete to do the bidding of our real masters. Politicians who won't play this game get booted out by mass media telling us to vote for someone who does.
The public service announcement which is part of Kevin's sentence shows that it is not enough for big brother to destroy all opposition to unlimited copyright: all opponents guilty of this thought crime have to be re-educated by the Ministry of Love and be made to broadcast public confessions. It's apt that it makes you think of China as a place of democracy in comparison. This is America, folks, and big business gets to decide which parts of the US Bill of Rights suit their interests.
"Well, they might have chosen Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451."
My pragmatic German grandfather put his Jewish-authored books less visibly behind other German authored books on his bookshelves during the Nazi regime (when those more prone to mass hysteria were burning the former) and he switched these books around after liberation during denazification.
Richard Stallman predicted this kind of thing in his "Right to Read" short story in 1997: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Copyright extremism and democracy don't combine.
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