Akuma no Houkon
Certified Guru
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2004
- Messages
- 1,194
- Age
- 44
- Location
- USA > Washington > Everett
- Website
- akuma.gp32news.com
Self-Help
Self-help is a funny name for something rather dangerous. It's mentioned in UCITA - the consumer code for software licensing that's up for ratification in 48 of the "united" states (it's been ratified by two). Both self-help and UCITA are meeting with considerable resistance - from, among others, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and just about every ethical legal expert in the world - but that does not mean that Microsoft will wait for UCITA to use self-help. Microsoft was the major force behind the creation of UCITA, and they're itchy to get the show on the road.
What is self-help? Self-help is the use of any means whatsoever to punish the improper use of software, with no regard for damages caused and no legal liability for the perpetrator. Microsoft, as the licensor of your software, may, if they find you are using their software illegally, enable stealth downloads to your computer to disable not only their own software, but your entire system.
They may purposely infect email messages they send you with viruses; they may install trojans on your computer; they may send you Internet worms - they may, with the full protection of the self-help clauses in UCITA, do anything they please, and cause any damage they wish, to not only your computer software, but to the hardware itself. They may even download faulty disk drivers so that your hard drive controller physically breaks - all this and more is their right, according to UCITA.
UCITA does not limit the scope of self-help: In theory (although hardly in practice) the vendor could literally burn down your office building and still not be indemnified. And as one of the two contributors to UCITA (everyone else was against it), Microsoft have already demonstrated that they are not going to wait for UCITA to pass state legislatures to start using it.
Windows XP and other "XP" products such as Office XP give Microsoft, for the first time, the physical means to implement self-help: Once any XP product is installed, all the software logic Microsoft need on your computer to enact a self-help measure is already there and waiting to be used.
Now technically this only affects those who microsoft thinks "illegally" (by their standards) use their software products, but just seeing the control microsoft has over your computer, your hardware, imagine what otherthings lurk under the hood for those who even legally and "properly" use microsofts products. Scary thought.
And I know that while many of your really own XP, a huge % illegally install it, be it an illegal download or just because you buy it and install it on all family computers, or whatever. Its just a scary thought that there is the possiblity of that, programmed into the OS, and thats what we know about...., I cringe to think about what hides within that no one has figured out yet....
Self-help is a funny name for something rather dangerous. It's mentioned in UCITA - the consumer code for software licensing that's up for ratification in 48 of the "united" states (it's been ratified by two). Both self-help and UCITA are meeting with considerable resistance - from, among others, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and just about every ethical legal expert in the world - but that does not mean that Microsoft will wait for UCITA to use self-help. Microsoft was the major force behind the creation of UCITA, and they're itchy to get the show on the road.
What is self-help? Self-help is the use of any means whatsoever to punish the improper use of software, with no regard for damages caused and no legal liability for the perpetrator. Microsoft, as the licensor of your software, may, if they find you are using their software illegally, enable stealth downloads to your computer to disable not only their own software, but your entire system.
They may purposely infect email messages they send you with viruses; they may install trojans on your computer; they may send you Internet worms - they may, with the full protection of the self-help clauses in UCITA, do anything they please, and cause any damage they wish, to not only your computer software, but to the hardware itself. They may even download faulty disk drivers so that your hard drive controller physically breaks - all this and more is their right, according to UCITA.
UCITA does not limit the scope of self-help: In theory (although hardly in practice) the vendor could literally burn down your office building and still not be indemnified. And as one of the two contributors to UCITA (everyone else was against it), Microsoft have already demonstrated that they are not going to wait for UCITA to pass state legislatures to start using it.
Windows XP and other "XP" products such as Office XP give Microsoft, for the first time, the physical means to implement self-help: Once any XP product is installed, all the software logic Microsoft need on your computer to enact a self-help measure is already there and waiting to be used.
Now technically this only affects those who microsoft thinks "illegally" (by their standards) use their software products, but just seeing the control microsoft has over your computer, your hardware, imagine what otherthings lurk under the hood for those who even legally and "properly" use microsofts products. Scary thought.
And I know that while many of your really own XP, a huge % illegally install it, be it an illegal download or just because you buy it and install it on all family computers, or whatever. Its just a scary thought that there is the possiblity of that, programmed into the OS, and thats what we know about...., I cringe to think about what hides within that no one has figured out yet....