Slashdot Mirror

The firewall blocks sites by IP, so sites like yours are collatoral damage when one server hosts a lot of sites (called vhosting), one of which has probably been deemed objectionable.

Other people have said that Geocities is inaccessible, but it looks like your actual site is still accessible. Just tell all the Chinese Monday Night Football fans to go directly to the Geocities site.

Nevertheless,
www.google.com works, as do
images.google.com and
groups.google.com.

Trying to check whether the cached version of Amnesty International is reachable in China, I found that the system returned an error message stating that the Great Firewall blocks requests only by URL and thus the parameters should be removed from the request.
Apparently, the server containing the cached page, "http://216.239.37.100/", can be reached from China.

I am inclined to think that the Chinese Government may already have more subtle methods to block content. On the other hand, they keep shutting down internet cafes...

Nevertheless,
www.google.com works, as do
images.google.com and
groups.google.com.

Trying to check whether the cached version of Amnesty International is reachable in China, I found that the system returned an error message stating that the Great Firewall blocks requests only by URL and thus the parameters should be removed from the request.
Apparently, the server containing the cached page, "http://216.239.37.100/", can be reached from China.

I am inclined to think that the Chinese Government may already have more subtle methods to block content. On the other hand, they keep shutting down internet cafes...

Nevertheless,
www.google.com works, as do
images.google.com and
groups.google.com.

Trying to check whether the cached version of Amnesty International is reachable in China, I found that the system returned an error message stating that the Great Firewall blocks requests only by URL and thus the parameters should be removed from the request.
Apparently, the server containing the cached page, "http://216.239.37.100/", can be reached from China.

I am inclined to think that the Chinese Government may already have more subtle methods to block content. On the other hand, they keep shutting down internet cafes...

Just keep making web caches of the banned documents and they will have a "whack-a-mole" problem.

A mini cache with the most subversive web pages that could fit in 2MB could be automatically distributed to hundreds of web sites.

You can walk around the so-called "Great" Firewall right now by using existing web caches. Can you imagine how bad they'd lose if there were thousands of caches of subversive pages?

click me
Me too.

Just keep making web caches of the banned documents and they will have a "whack-a-mole" problem.

http://slashdot.org - Reported as inaccessible in China
http://www.slashdot.org - Reported as accessible in China

Throw your result in (slashdot.org accessible), and what we get is either a filter on the fritz, or else this tester still has some bugs to be worked out of it. According to the FAQ, China's filter is based on IP address. Does slashdot's homepage have multiple IPs? (sorry, too lazy to check).

For whatever it's worth, it seems that Saudi Arabia is not known to block slashdot.

Having a look at the recent requests on the main page I see:

http://slashdot.org - Reported as accessible in China

But on the Inaccessible Sites page I see:

# http://slashdot.org - 8/29/2002 11:39:06 AM

Something wrong with the test?

Having a look at the recent requests on the main page I see:

http://slashdot.org - Reported as accessible in China

But on the Inaccessible Sites page I see:

# http://slashdot.org - 8/29/2002 11:39:06 AM

Something wrong with the test?

Geocities appears to be completely blocked.

The Chinese government doesn't like Playboy or sex.com - hmm, do we see a correlation between repressive government and antisexual morals there? Nah, couldn't be.

I have no idea why they censor {Insert Something Funny}, an obscure weblog, an anti-tobacco group, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Columbia Earthscape, or Columbia University.

Google is on their shitlist. No surprise given its cache and large index. The Wayback Machine isn't - I'd expect that to change in the long term. Anonymizer is accessible as well.

Peek-A-Booty and Freenet are not accessible, of course. It appears that all SourceForge sites are blocked (unless the testing engine is slashdotted and not working properly, but other sites are reported as accessible). I presume this might be because Freenet is hosted at SourceForge.

When I ran the test for slashdot.org I got the result:

Testing complete for http://slashdot.org. Result: Reported as accessible in China

How would we know how elite a programmer was

Interesting attitude. You need to read up on the history of copyright. It was originally intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." This is something that very few people understand, even many lawyers. The interpretation of copyright law has evolved into basically what you're describing, but that was not the original intent.

Since radio astronomy on the whole requires larger telescopes than their optical counterparts (radio waves being that much larger than those of visible light) getting an equivalent project in orbit -- or on the far side of the moon -- would be that much more prohibitively expensive to build and lift into orbit.

The only real advantage of placing radio telescopes on the moon would be a relative lack of interference with earthly radio signals.

I don't doubt that space-based astronomy is ultimately the way to go, but don't count out the significant advances ground-based telescopes have made in recent years.

8-{)}

Fermi's paradox doesn't do it for me, although it is a neat way of looking at the problem.

It's too neat, and that's my problem with it. There are just so many other variables. Like stick no FTL in there. Or no "cryo-sleep". Or not even any way of reliably going, say, past 0.3 C for any kind of duration. And let's face it, interstellar empires of the kind that Fermi was suprised weren't knocking on doors, need one or more of those things to exist. At least "life as we know it" "knocking on doors" type galactic empires. As far as "life not as we know it" goes, I'm not even sure we could detect them if they were living on the Moon. Their goals, communication methods, etc. would surely be truly alien.

I'm not convinced. Maybe everyone goes "Dyson". Or to achieve true technological mastery you must achieve a kind of "spiritual" way of working in large groups that knocks you out of the "galactic resource race", (another prerequisite for Fermi) think of your own reasons, we sure haven't figured any of even the stuff I've listed out yet. Not that these are even close to my favourite explanations. but they serve, I think.

There are other famous "equations" Sagan's or Baugher's, which tends to show nothing more, I guess, than that Clarke's famous axiom, which he attributes wisely to "Anonymous" is usually pretty spot on.

Nuts, I nearly bought Offive v.X for Entourage and the Palm Sync (academic, so I wouldn't be spending $500 on sync software). But then it came out that it was blowing pdbs up to fill your memory (or some such).

That's a pretty fatal blow, for the moment, and since 10.2 is going to have iSync...

Of course, I'm an exception: I use LaTeX and noweb to write papers, and AppleWorks' spreadsheet is enough for my non-scientific use.

But the truth is, I need working functionality a lot more than I need another whiz-bang feature; I don't use Office for the same reason I don't troll for new software on freshmeat; I don't feel safe putting my data in their hands.

You might want to check the links (including court papers currently filed) provided by the GrepLaw story on this topic. The suit is being brought under Title 17, Section 512(j) of the US Code, which explicitly gives the right to a plaintiff with standing to seek an injunction against an ISP or backbone provider to block a particular infringing site. I'm not sure whether the offending provision was inserted as part of the DMCA, but I suspect it was. I'm sure you can come to your own conclusions about the kinds of burdens that this provision could place upon backbone providers given the number of infringing sites out there.

is here

Would like to mod that up.

Yes, set a good example. You don't have to "effect larger changes to policy and science". Start making a difference at home. Get yourself off the grid, whether it's geothermal or solar and wind. Thoroughly insulate with the right materials. Support your local farms by buying their products. Eat less industrially produced meat. Drive less. Use Natural Biological Pest Controls. Expand on this list.

Then teach your kids, they are our future.

Yes, these things are harder than just handing over some money to a cause and continuing on as always. But starting at home has a greater impact. Setting an example has a greater impact. You will feel so much better by doing something. And of course we can't all just donate money while continuing to cause the problems in the first place. What good does that do?

Well, they do have cochlear implants for the hearing impaired. This link is to an article from 1994, so I'm sure you could find a ton of info with a google search. As for the rest, I wonder too ;-)

If so, let him know -- I was pretty surprised when someone had a crush on junk@rpgexchange.com, a dummy address I have never used or published ever :)

"Disclosure to Third Parties

We may occasionally, for entertainment purposes, disclose non-personally identifiable information to registered Crushlink users about other users.

We do not share our mailing list with any other company, person or entity."

For your entertainment purposes, the CrushLink founder Greg Tseng's contact emails at Stanford (physics dept.) and his Harvard alum email:

gytseng@stanford.edu

gtseng@post.harvard.edu

Show him you have a crush on him too by offering him things like "Free Inkjet Printer Cartridges", the "Lowest Mortgage Rates Around", how to make "$204,000 in 2 months", and hell how to "Increase Your Energy and Sex Drive!" :)

-fren

I think it is fair to allow an artist to protect his work from mutiliation. An interesting example of this was the Monty Python troupe's suit against a broadcast network for cutting unwanted material that an American audience might be offended by. The case can be found here In sum, Gilliam didn't like some bonehead at a broadcast netword redoing his comedy. Ya gotta admit -- he had a point.

Damn, that Greplaw is good stuff.

Mr. Edelmen has responded to me via email. He's travelling abroad right now and is fighting with limited email access through an accoustic couple (!) dial up connection that is very unreliable. He's going to look for a Cybercafe or the like in order to get better access.

He included the following, and requested that I forward it on to everyone:

- - - BEGIN Ben Edelman's Comment - - -

My apologies not to post this myself -- I have bad 'net access at the moment, effectively email only, as I connect with an acoustic coupler at a pay phone.

It seems to me that the core question here is why we might hope that this case succeeds even where others have failed. Now, as I recall, there has only been one appellate case that has upheld the DMCA, so in fact the DMCA is still new & untested in important respects.

In addition, the Librarian of Congress already recognized the problem here and provided an exemption that goes part of the way (though, as the complaint and FAQ try to describe, not all the way!) towards addressing the needs of those who seek to study filtering software. The problem the Librarian saw here is, it seems to me, a real one -- that the public has quite a substantial interest in knowing what filtering programs block, whether they work as advertised, etc. These public interests in disclosure of the block list are made all the stronger by the government's role as purchaser of such software (in libraries, public schools, etc.).

So notwithstanding the failures of multiple DMCA challenges to date, I'm cautiously optimistic here.

Ben Edelman
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman

- - - END Ben Edelman's Comment - - -

Somewhere in a book (Pinker, maybe), I recall reading that the people who live in the Appalachian (sp?) Mountains speak closer to Shakespearean English than anyone in England itself. For instance, the current dialect in England which pronounces "castle" as "cah-sell" is apparently rooted in an 1800's fad. This is, of course, nothing compared to the Great Vowel Shift.

I want views!!! Precious views!! I need to secure certain data from the prying eyes of account managers and sales folk.

Sounds to me like you're really trying to hammer that socket-head capscrew into place, rather than finding an appropriate Allen wrench.

It's amazing to me how many people in the open source community continually try to force mySQL into doing jobs it's clearly not up to. This is especially puzzling, since there *are* good, modern, high-performance, high-function databases out there, things like Postgresql, Interbase,and the Sleepycat Berkeley DB (not SQL, but really fast and solid) among many others.

For quick, dirty, and fast, without the hassles of dealing with SQL at all, there are options like NoSQL and Starbase, both of which are based on the Stream/Modifier concept of the original /rdb that allows fast, flexible database operations and allowing the use of the full power of the Unix environment. ( It's easy, leverages a zillion other existing tools, and everything you learn is directly applicable to anything else you do in a Unix environment.)

It seems most people want SQL just because it somehow legitimizes their project as "serious", when in reality, it often just adds undesirable complexity and support cost. SQL is often unnecessary and actually undesirable, if you allow yourself to consider the possible benefits of NOT using a SQL database.

Also, keep in mind that *any* database (and especially ones that are already very fast,like BerkeleyDB or Starbase) is lighting fast in RAM, and memory is now cheap enough to make putting the whole DB in memory a very do-able thing: A gigabyte or several of database is BIG, and easily supportable on very affordable server hardware.

And of course, there is a reason those commercial database companies exist: They often offer capabilities that open source users may never have. I am looking right now at a new application which will be *much* faster and cheaper based on Intersystems' unique Cache database than it eould be on any of the more common big names. It's important to choose the right tool for the job. (In this case, I need lots of transactions in a very large sparsely populated database, Cache is excellent there, an order of magnitude better than Oracle or DB2, which is why Cache is the leading DB choice for electronic medical records systems, and has been for years.)

MySQL is not the answer to every database problem. Or even most of them, truth be told. Personally, I find it to be a minimally competent, fussy, and underpowered tool. It's good for some things, but to be honest, I've always thought its appeal had more to do with being the first real open source SQL DB than with being good.

As always, this boils down to choosing the right tool for the job. Not exactly rocket science, but something way too many people don't bother to do.

And heres a link to past research he has done on Internet filtering systems, Here. Interviewed him once as a source for a paper I had to write for school, good guy.

It is true that Felton was threatened with a law suit if he were to present non-functional speech on weaknesses in SDMI, but the RIAA would have gotten no where with a law suit, because Felton's speech would not function on its own.

Sklyarov was not arrested for speaking at DefCon. He was arrested because his company sold a copy of its DMCA violating software in the United States, and because he held the copyright on that software.

You can read section 1201 for yourselves. It says:

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;

By the same token, you can publish specs on how to circumvent macrovision. You just can't traffic in the device itself.

I am not a lawyer. If you plan on taking my advice, talk to a lawyer first.

...in the "I wouldn't worry" camp. But if you *like* worrying, take a look at all the other objects out there:

They are currently active in fighting the DMCA and Fritz Hollings' efforts regarding the CBDTPA, and lots more worthwhile stuff.

Blah. If they wouldn't waste their donations on lost causes like the DMCA and (especially) the Felton case, then maybe I'd consider giving them some money. If you want to donate to a cause that actually has a chance of winning in the Supreme Court, try Eldred

It occurs to me that when security tools such as nmap, or crack or airsnort or SATAN come from places OTHER than the government, they are seen as threats to Internet security. Some people in government even want to make them illegal.

But when the government itself comes out with software to expose security holes, it's called the "Gold Standard".

What gives?

This is taken from the Saudi Internet Services Unit Content Filtering pages:

"Blocking the sites by ISU follows a specific policy, it had been stated by the government institutions responsible for introducing the service in Saudi Arabia.

"Pursuant to the Council of Ministers' decree concerning the regulation of use of the Internet in Saudi Arabia, all sites that contain content in violation of Islamic tradition or national regulations shall be blocked. A security committee chaired by the Ministry of Interior was formulated. One of the tasks assigned to this committee is the selection of sites to be blocked and the oversight of this process. However, due to the wide-spread and diverse nature of pornographic sites, KACST was commissioned to directly block these types of sites. Other non-pornographic sites are only blocked based upon direct requests from the security bodies within the government. KACST has no authority in the selection of such sites and it's role is limited to carrying out the directions of these security bodies."

The Berkman Ceter study was done with the cooperation of the Saudi ISU and reported nothing particularly surprising for anyone using commercial software: lots of pornographic sites were blocked, sites they no doubt added were blocked, some other sites that might be otherwise harmless (although not necessarily by Saudi standards) are blocked, and no particular conclusions can be drawn from the types of sites that are (possibly) inadvertantly blocked. [Slashdot is not one of them, according to the study.]

If nothing else, studies like this should help those of us in more permissive countries like the United States in demonstrating that depending on filtering as a technological cure-all has flaws.

I would like to think that the SISU is looking at the list of blocked sites and saying "hey--we didn't mean to block that" and contacting their vendor. Even their home page has an unblocking request form.

Is there something wrong here?

I forgot to mention, the Avalanches latest release blows my mind. Everyone should go pick it up (actually buy it), now. Go!!

This ILAW seminar seems surprisingly similar (almost identical) to a HLS class taught by Zittrain I took this past spring as a cross-registered MIT student. See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is02/ for class notes, links, etc.

:)

References for your amusement:

• link to ADS abstract, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 31, p.1504
• full image of the presented poster :)

Ever thought that a) may be related to b)?

Well yeah. Except in (a) I'm blaming the engineers while in (b) I'm blaming the government. :)

And you're absolutely right...it ain't broke. I don't mind the outdated software so much. I mean, I kinda miss the flashy animations of PowerPoint XP, but I can definitely manage with what I have.

But I am rather bitter at the fact that I haven't received the hardware upgrade yet. How's a guy supposed to play MiniPutt 2 during work hours when it takes 5 minutes to minimize a window??

I should have done this first, but Google for "25 hour day".. i think the quotes are significant to the search. A front page hit is this article from Harvard. The next hit says the brain's day is 24 hours, 11 minutes long, not the 25 hours earlier studies concluded.

You can read the rest of the Google hits.

Regardless of the cultural meme that the RIAA/MPAA have shoved down people's throats, copyright is not a natural right, but is rather a legal falsehood. Without the government's good graces to grant you exclusive rights for a limited time then all things published would be in the public domain.

The framer's intent in Article I, Section 8, clause 8... was to provide an incentive for authors to publish. Thus, given time, filling the public domain with a great wealth.

Jack Valenti is a greedy bastard, Sonny Bono was a damn fool and Eric Eldred is right as rain (so says quite a number of Nobel Laureates in economics (amongst others)).

Regardless of the cultural meme that the RIAA/MPAA have shoved down people's throats, copyright is not a natural right, but is rather a legal falsehood. Without the government's good graces to grant you exclusive rights for a limited time then all things published would be in the public domain.

The framer's intent in Article I, Section 8, clause 8... was to provide an incentive for authors to publish. Thus, given time, filling the public domain with a great wealth.

Jack Valenti is a greedy bastard, Sonny Bono was a damn fool and Eric Eldred is right as rain (so says quite a number of Nobel Laureates in economics (amongst others)).

Harvard University Law School is about to roll out both SFTP (FTP over SSH) and SPOP (POP3 over SSL). OpenSSH server is used on the Unix machines. SSH is also already in active use in the IT department for terminal and X sessions.

I think you are confusing gnome abuse with dwarf tossing ABC news story or paper in legal journal.. Gnome abuse doesn't seem to be considered a crime in most jurisdictions, although it has motivated the formation of a bleeding heart "liberation front" type organization. When it comes to gnomes, let you conscience be your guide.

You mustn't forget The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord.

Things like number 50: My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

- grunby

See this story on the Harvard Wireless Club web site.

-Phil (a.k.a. "Anonymous Coward") K9HI/1, Watertown, MA

Do you have a source on this? Fair use is a part of US law, Title 17, Chapter 1, Sec. 107. I've never heard of it being established by judicial decision.

It was first established by
judicial decision, then later codified into law.

It's a matter of free speech.

Is copyright law "categorically immune from challenge under the First Amendment?" That's yet to be decided.

The D.C. Circuit has ruled that copyright law is categorically immune from challenge under the first amendment. The Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled whether or they were correct.

I knew that someone would finally get the sack to do this. The DMCA is in direct violation of space-shifting and fair use (anyone remember the Betamax case??), which have both been declared constitutional by the supreme court. Why can't people see that you can't (or at least shouldn't be able to) pass laws that are in direct opposition with existing laws without strinking the earlier ones down?

It's like passing a law saying that you can't kill people, then passing one that says you can 20 years down the road!

Then, we've got to have class action lawsuits like the one in court now to clear it up..

Why is this allowed to happen?

They think it because it's true. For example, see the emission spectrum of a standard white LED. This spectrum has two very distinct peaks, and poorer coverage in other areas of the spectrum. This still produces something approximating "pure" white light, but it's done by combining two relatively narrow-spectrum sources, and that's what makes it seem unnatural.

The Sun produces a much more constant intensity over the entire visible spectrum, as can be seen on this page. The Sun's spectrum is far from "poorer and narrower", as you described it - it would more accurately be described as "richer and wider". It does have somewhat lower intensity at the blue end, but that's nothing compared to the gaps in a white LED's spectrum.

The above link also lets you see the spectrum of a fluorescent bulb, which despite some peaks, is still more constant across the spectrum than the LED is.

The issue here is not purely one of human preference, either - in a room illuminated with white LEDs with a spectrum as shown in the first link, reds will be poorly illuminated, and objects with some colors will appear brighter than others. So, I stand by my statement that current LED technology has "a much narrower spectrum of light than any commonly used bulb technology - sort of the opposite of the 'natural light' bulbs that some companies sell."

In future, it's quite possible and likely that LEDs will be used to produce lamps with a wider and more even spectrum, but that certainly isn't the case today.

Just pump those photons through this thing and you'll end up with the interesting combination of extremely high bandwidth with extremely low speed.

When works pass into the public domain

Growth rate of the public domain

Not whoring, at 50, yadda yadda, just thought this may be useful