ComputerHunter.org |
|
|
|||
|
 |
PC Owners - The Largest Criminal Gang Ever?
The year is 1981. IBM has just released the Personal Computer; a low cost machine it hopes will create a winning brand. Several models are produced in quick succession accompanied by an ad campaign featuring a Charlie Chaplin figure. The message is clear: It's cheap and it's cheerful. The growth vector for the product turns out to be a software application called a spreadsheet. Its many early forms - VisiCalc, Multiplan, Lotus 1-2-3, along with WordStar word-processing and of course games all help drive hardware sales. Nobody seems to question the rapid and promiscuous spread of these programs by copying onto 5.25" floppy disks and passing them from person to person. That was then. This is now. Harsh fines and jail sentences are threatened to anyone involved in doing what came naturally back in the early '80s. It's a Very Bad Thing to copy software without having a license to do so. They say 'this stuff is ours, we want to be paid for it', and of course they're right. But here is a problem. Software's binary information is a kind of digital DNA, always wanting to replicate. It's what has made and sustained the digital revolution. When transmitting information, whether from one disk to another or over the Internet, errors can be corrected, faint signals regenerated as new, and even lost portions of messages recreated. This is the essence of the digital world, and replication is its big trick. One of the things most of us did with our first computer was to copy something. In our early PC vocabulary COPY was the most popular word. Doing it was so easy and so immediately rewarding. It did nobody any harm ? did it? The user got the software and the manufacturer got their product widely distributed. But a company has to make money, not just gain market share, and at some point in time a shift occurred. It's as if the manufacturers decided to play the soccer off-side rule and grab the high moral ground at the same time - nearly every PC owner in the world was suddenly wrong-footed. And no one after all can disagree with their position. But how will they play catch-up on their lost revenues? How can they now make all their customers compliant? A London analyst who specialises in intellectual rights issues says "the paradigm we have at present where the license chases the product doesn't seem to be an effective mechanism for compliance by itself." In other words trying to push a license into everywhere the software has gone without the ease with which the software got there in the first place will prove difficult. But that's not all. An account manager for a hardware firm in the US says "It can be difficult to keep the licensing nailed down. The hardware changes, the software moves on, departments, even companies, merge. The picture is always changing" Demand has always fuelled innovation in Information Technology. Fluid, dynamic, competitive, the elements of IT constantly move. Suppliers apply different strategies at different times for different reasons: Market share, volume shipments, profit. Licensing is a big weapon in their arsenal. Then new technologies emerge, legislation changes, big players go bust and others are created. It's hard to see how a static and legalistic document can cover all this. There are also the licensing arrangements that software manufacturers employ. Licenses may be priced according to whether they are academic, charity, large volume, product upgrade, competitive upgrade, client server, thin-client, or one of several other types. On top of that there are the popular service add-ons of maintenance and technical support. Of course if we all started afresh that would make things easier. But as that's impossible we must do two things; look at new software in terms of correct quantity and correct type of license. That's the easy part. The not so easy part is to look at what your company already has and see what licenses, if any, are missing or incorrect. 'The biggest criminal gang in history' is about to be disbanded. ©2003 Jamie Plenderleith
About The Author Jamie is a software design engineer with Everyman Technologies of Dublin Ireland. He attends Trinity College Dublin part time and is a Sci-Fi fan.
Google News - Top Stories
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Internet Explorer Shortcuts for Mouse-o-phobes If you're like me, you occasionally find the ubiquitous mouse inconvenient. Here are keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft's Internet Explorer (I.E.), the default browser for most personal computers in the business environment. Why Build Your Own Gaming Computer? The best way to get the gaming computer that you want, that will provide optimum performance is to build your own computer. If you think you do not have the technical knowledge or are not capable of building a computer you are wrong. I'm pretty certain that I could teach my mother (who has a hard time working a VCR) how to build a computer. If you can plug a sweeper into a wall outlet and use a screw driver, you too can build a computer. 10 Tips to SPEED Up Your PC 1. Let your PC boot up completely before opening any applications. Computer Viruses are Bad Luck OK, so you caught a computer virus and your system is all screwed up and you're frustrated and angry and upset. Bad luck. Have You Invited A Spy Into Your Computer? Yes, it's true. You may have inadvertently invited a spy into your computer. This spy is known as "spyware, adware, or trojans", and once it is in your computer it starts taking statistical information as you travel the Internet. In some cases, it may send you pop-up ads and slow down your computer. A wired.com article, mentions it "could even collect your credit card information". Home Video? Bring it On So you got yourself a digital camcorder. If you want to be able to edit and produce awesome home videos, you'll need some tools. Temporary Fixes to Spyware, Ad-ware, and Virus Infections So you've got some spyware, ad-ware, or viruses on your system. For whatever reason, you are unable to get ahold of a virus detection & removal program, or a good ad-ware scanner. Maybe this certain infection has disconnected you from the Internet. Such viruses do exist. Toshiba Wins Hollywood Support for the HD DVD format What led them to this choice, as all four studios stated separately, is better performance for the price and copyright protection. Linux Power Tools - Great Tools to Make System Administration Easy World War II - Germany decided to attack Poland. Poland had many great warriors. They all prepared to fight the Germans. They were all ready with the best armor, the best and well trained horses, and ofcourse the best weapons , swords , spears .... And the Pols were brave and were ready to give their lives for their country. Sadly they did just that... give their lives. The Germans had tanks... It is very important to have the right weapons when one goes for a war. Taking Advantage of the iPod Experience Music lovers have been carrying around radios and other bulky music devices in order to take their tunes along with them as they go from place to place. With the iPod ? a portable unit that's manufactured by Apple ? the music experience offers a higher quality in a much more compact size. SOBIG.F Virus Promises Ill Be Back On 21 August 2003 Symantec Security Response upgraded the W32.SOBIG.F threat to a category 4. Apache, MySQL & PHP for Windows Apache, MysQL and PHP for Windows could be a nice nice thing to have on your Windows workstation. You could try and experiment with all kinds of nice PHP and MySQL based applications right on your Windows desktop running Apache, instead of having to access a full-featured server. Things You Can Do To Speed Up Your Computer Upgrading your processor will always speed up your computer, but sometimes this will not be the best thing to do. The first thing you need to do is find out where the bottle neck is in your system. The first step you would take to finding this out is by using the computers task manager. You can tell in here how much the computers resources are being used. If you want a more advanced diagnostics program then click on start, then run and type in perfmon. A program will now open and you will be able to monitor all of your computer components. Can Movie Theatres Compete with Home HD TV in the Future? The battle is heating up for market share, home movie theatre, X-Box, Playstations and virtual reality take on the big screen and theme parks. You might be surprised to learn that the war is just beginning. You won't believe how high the stakes are now and what lengths they are willing to go to get your dollar. Quick System Restore with ASR Backups ASR (Automated System Recovery) is a feature available on the Windows XP Pro and Windows Server 2003 operating systems for quick and efficient system backup and restore. How to Place Home Theater Speakers You have your television and home theater receiver; you just bought your new speakers and subwoofer and are ready to test things out. It's time to break out the measuring tape because precision is vital to achieving the full potential of your home theater system. For this article, we are going to focus on a 5.1 surround sound system. The term "5.1" refers to the number of speakers and subwoofers in the system respectively. So for a 5.1 surround sound system, there are five speakers (the center channel, the two front speakers, and the two rear speakers) and one subwoofer. How to Save an Image in a SQL Server Database? Most of the web applications have a lot of images used in it. These images are usually stored in a web server folder and they are accessed by giving the relative path to the file with respect to the root folder of the website. .Net being the platform for distributed application now, ASP.Net can be used to store images that are small to be stored in a database like SQL Server 2000 and later versions. For this purpose the SQL Server database provides a data type called "image" which is used to store images in the database. Is Desktop Search Deserving? Google, in their march to stay ahead of the pack of competition, has released Google Desktop Search. With Microsoft's MSN in the lead position and nipping at Google's heels, and Google's new shareholders to please, Google has more incentive than ever to deploy technology both better than the other guy's, and sooner. After all, the first to get loaded to the desktop is more likely to build and retain user loyalty. Enhanced Web Browsing With Toolbars As the Web grows more crowded and just plain "noisy" with information bombarding us from every angle, most people welcome any tool, trick or shortcut to help them wade through the mountains of data to find what they want. Learning To Navigate Ciscos Online Documentation When studying for your Cisco CCNA, CCNP, or CCIE exam, you've got a powerful online weapon at your disposal. It's Cisco Connection Documentation, found at www.cisco.com/univercd. This site contains product, code, and protocol documentation for all Cisco products.
|
|
|
|
|
