Hi Richard! On 01/02/07, Richard P Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Technically speaking, I wonder whether others have thought about self destructive files? ... I will be very interested if such a management system already exists.
Certain they do. Unfortunately, that they work is total make-believe. Not today, not tomorrow. It will never, ever work. Why? At their core, computers store, copy and modify information. You can try to put locks in computers to be less good at doing what they do, but the locks are always breakable. A computer that doesn't store, copy and modify information isn't a computer. Consider a bicycle. A bicycle without wheels is not a bicycle, and a bicycle with wheels but locks on them is, literally, lame. If you bought a bicycle from a vendor who had installed locks on the wheels, and not given you the keys, you would be somewhat agitated. If someone downloads a file from a website, and their computer treacherously deletes that file, they will be somewhat agitated. Most people will be helpless to do anything about that, other than feel bad about themselves for not understanding whats going on and thinking computers are shit. But eventually, someone who is not helpless will become agitated, and they will disable the mechanism. Then they will publish how to disable it, and then everyone who wants to, will. The law is such that you may, perhaps, on the off-chance, and after the fact, be able to sue or have arrested some individuals. But you won't stop us all. A current example is the DRM system in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - famously disabled this month. Will your shareholders be happy for your company to waste your money on such a wild goose chase? :-) More in-depth explanations of how all this works - given to Microsoft and HP - are at http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt and http://www.craphound.com/hpdrm.txt -- Regards, Dave - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
