Domain: interesting-people.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to interesting-people.org.
Comments · 175
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Re:Al Gore
If Vint Cerf thinks he was an important early believer on the political side that's good enough for me.
Agreed. Obligatory email reference.
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Re:The new-tab page isn't a chrome invention
To people like us, the contributions of Tim and Vint are more widely-recognized as the contributions which directly led to the internet existing today.
I'd say let Vint and Bob and others speak for themselves about how they think about this matter.
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Re:LIAR
Note that "create" is not the same as "invent."
From Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn :
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his
role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective..I know both of these gentlemen, and getting them to agree on anything is not easy. Anyone, at this late date, who thinks its funny to denigrate Al Gore in this fashion is, IMHO, an idiot.
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Re:Brute force tool, not a "crack"
Yes! So it's a device design flaw, the encryption itself is pretty secure if used properly. I see their software also lists Blackberry. Better change my 4-digit password too! gulp.
Here is a great analogy of how strong the encryption is, if a secure password is used:
Imagine a computer that is the size of a grain of sand that can test keys against some encrypted data. Also imagine that it can test a key in the amount of time it takes light to cross it. Then consider a cluster of these computers, so many that if you covered the earth with them, they would cover the whole planet to the height of 1 meter. The cluster of computers would crack a 128-bit key on average in 1,000 years.
If you want to brute-force a key, it literally takes a planet-ful of computers. And of course, there are always 256-bit keys, if you worry about the possibility that government has a spare planet that they want to devote to key-cracking.
from: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200607/msg00058.html
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Re:epic FAIL
The mere presence of a _folder_ with the offending name triggered the AV. That AV's gotto be the new benchmark as far as being crappy goes.
It's hardly anything new. There was this notorious case from 8 years ago, when the RIAA sent threatening C&D letters to Professor Peter Usher at Penn State, because his web site contained files with "Usher" in their name, including several
.mp3 files. So the RIAA concluded that he was illegally distributing songs by the band Usher. As in this case, they looked only at the file names, and couldn't be bothered to check the files' contents. You can read lots about this case by googling "Professor Usher copyright" (without the quotes).The problem has long existed outside the computer industry. The TSA has blocked people from flying simply because their surname was the same as (or sometimes just similar to) a name on their do-not-fly list. Security agencies have done this for ages, and every year we read of a number of arrests of people with names similar to a name on an arrest warrant.
This sort of thing has probably happened to a number of people reading this forum. Maybe they'll speak up
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The internet is Hear to stay
I never quite understood the whole net neutrality bandwagon. It seems that whenever this issue appears, there are always hoards of people screaming about the end of the internet and how bad corporations are and how if we don't get the government to regulate something right away, then the world is going to explode. But then again, this is Slashdot after all.
David Farber gives a good response on why we should be cautious of NN: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200606/msg00014.html
Particularly one idea that lawmakers should focus on is the monopolies that are essentially granted to the cable companies for their service. It's hardly a free market system as most people seem to think. -
They should get rid of email tooExactly! I'm reminded of this post by email researcher Meng Weng Wong, where he talks about DSL and providing good email service:
DSL providers should just say to their customers, we'll just drop your price by $X a month if you decline POP --- that way we save on machines, sysadmins, and software licensing fees, and we get to say we're 20% cheaper than the competition
... and you'll just go off and use Hotmail, which is what you were going to do anyway!Maybe they'd use gmail instead of hotmail today, but the same principal applies.
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Re:chill out shareholders
Troll, read what Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf have to say about that.
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html
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Been tried before
This particular scam has been tried before, especially by convicts. At best it creates a lot of spurious legal paperwork that has to be dealt with. It's a great way to cause headaches for the legal folk.
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Re:So what was he *really* standing in front of?
oh, they must have used highly advanced software to detect the minute discrepancies between lighting angles. it must have taken a team of experts several weeks to uncover the fraud.
this seems like typical nationalistic BS, but it's really not any worse than the kind of stuff you see in magazines or the kind of audience manipulation TV networks like Fox and CNN do on a regular basis. i'd be more worried about Army psy-ops "interning" at CNN or NPR.
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Re:"Server" vs "Desktop" OS
Again - just because Microsoft says it is true doesn't make it so.
What is a server? The workload is different from a desktop? That's it?
So - what is the difference between a database server and a web server? What about file server?
So now we're talking about 4 different OSes then? Desktop/database server/webserver/file server?
That's all just bullshit. Oh, wait, you said something about tuning for additional cpus and how it uses more or less resources. That's just bullshit. How much of a performance delta are you talking about? Less than 1%? In which case, the damned screen saver you used would have more impact.
Stop smoking that bullshit, will ya?
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199609/msg00023.html
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David Farber?
I don't know enough about Bill Joy's personality (versus his software contributions which I think many here are familiar with) to have an opinion either way.
I do think David Farber is politically astute and familiar with dealing with government enough that he could make a productive contribution to USA as a solid adviser on technology, based on his track record of "getting it" with historic technologies like that Internet thing, Plus he is a EFF trustee, Fellow of the ACM and IEEE, Oh, and he is a interesting people.
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Re:that's the misleading part, though
Rather, he simply supported a bunch of generic programs that arguably had a role in the creation of the internet.
Cerf and Kahn have to say the following about that matter:
But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time. [...]
The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. [...]
He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.
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Re:Concern?Please keep any eye on the Xerox repairman as well as the router guy.
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199909/msg00020.html -
Re:Losing my faith in politicsTry reading what Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf had to say about Al Gore and the Internet. Their conclusion:
"There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth
since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support
for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced
networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually
engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the
Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the
councils of government and with the public at large.
The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value
of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and
consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American
citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world."
If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. -
Old
This was leaked at least 4 years ago.
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Time to stretch the truth."BitTorrent traffic doesn't mysteriously take up more bandwidth per bit than any other form of traffic - it costs as much bandwidth as anything else, though people may send or receive more BitTorrent traffic than other forms of traffic." Dave:
It always pays to be skeptical of statistics, especially those
profferred in an attempt to sell products. However, it's also
important to note that Mr. Godwin's skepticism is itself
self-serving, coming as it does from a long time advocate of P2P.
In this particular case, the statistics actually do jibe with what
most ISPs report.
Here are some more statistics from our own ISP, which -- like all
others -- is caught in the middle between eager customers (who
would quit if we cut off their P2P connections), the record
companies (who, we fear, will attempt to use us as a bulwark or as
scapegoats in their battle against P2P), and bandwidth costs (which
are coming down, but not nearly rapidly enough).
While we are located in a college town, only about 1/3 of our
clients are college students. (This is because the University
provides them with subsidized Internet access if they live off
campus, or practically free access -- via the government-funded
Internet2 no less -- if they live in the dormitories.) Yet, about
2/3 of our traffic is demonstrably P2P: Kazaa, BitTorrent, etc. And
this is a conservative estimate; it's only what our patterns
detect. One student, without bandwidth restrictions, could easily
soak up 10 Mbps of continuous backbone bandwidth, which in our
location can cost as much as $6,000 per month wholesale.
That's why we were among the first ISPs to implement P2P
mitigation. Had we not done so, those users -- perhaps unwittingly,
because many of them did not realize that they were transmitting as
well as receiving illegal copies of music -- would have choked off
those engaged in legitimate activities and we would have lost their
business. Many P2P applications, upon discovering an unfettered
fast "pipe," quickly make the computers on which they're running
major hubs in the P2P network, consuming all the bandwidth they can.
Also, of all of the P2P users we've queried about their activities
over the years, we have found only two who are using P2P for legal
downloads. In both cases, they are obtaining software which is
licensed in such a way that it may be freely redistributed. All of
the rest were downloading music and similar media.
Thus, CacheLogic's claims seem to be substantially accurate, at
least from our measurements. And we do face a great dilemma: we
will lose our customers if we do not allow downloads and will not
have sufficient bandwidth for customers' legitimate needs if we do
not throttle P2P activity to a sane level.
--Brett Glass Source
If your copy got lost in the stack, or you'd rather read the Cliff's notes, this week's translation focuses on my top pick from the 2006 collection: A meticulously researched look into how the file-downloading scheme known as BitTorrent affects broadband networks.
The short answer: Badly.
# There is a misconception that there is bandwidth savings for the end user. If you want to download a 1gb size file, 1gb of data will be delivered to your PC. There is no savings of bandwidth on the client side. In fact, the client is charged a bandwidth premium because after they have received the entire file, they are asked to participate in the peering by delivering parts of the file to other users. -
Re:Delusional
They actually have been giving away free software, or deeply discounted, to school systems. Of course this is in the US of A.
A class action lawsuit accusing overpricing results in MS proposal to give free software to schools. "In addition to all of these hard-dollar commitments, Microsoft has also agreed to provide free software to eligible schools. The value of this software can only be estimated as it depends on the volume requested by schools, but it may exceed $500 million valued at Microsoft's heavily
discounted academic prices." Yeah, because it costs them money to give away fre software?
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200111/msg00294.html
"Unfortunately, as much as the proposal would no doubt help schools, it creates a situation where Microsoft isn't so much paying a penalty for monopolistic abuses, but is instead being allowed to spend $1 billion to extend their reach into the hotly contested education market"
http://db.tidbits.com/article/6645
Here's south africa, where they claim the plan had been in the works before the SA government announced support for open-source:
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2002/0202151028.asp?S=Computing&A=COM&O=FRGN
Oh, I guess that means you were right. -
Re:Go China!
This has happened in the US, in New Orleans and a few other places. It seems to be quite good at reducing crime, with murder rates down 57% and auto thefts down 30%.
The scary thing here isn't the video cameras, it's the RFID tags. No car thief is going to carry an ID to let themselves be tracked. This is to track the citizens, see what they are doing; to know what their patterns are, to determine if they are subversive. What other purpose can there be? -
This confirms the theories of L. Detweiler.L. Detweiler created the theory called the Snakes of Medusa that large numbers of anonymous identities were being created, called tentacles, and that these snakes were conspiring with each other for nefarious purposes.
Some cypherpunks discovered that Detweiler was using his own theories, and that he had several tentacles of his own.
This incident confirms the Detweiler theory.
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Re:The best part.
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Re:DNS DNS DNS DNS
Think about it - when's the last time there was any major DNS failure? Never? Me too.
I remember when Network Solutions forgot to load about half the
.com zone file one night, and most of the internet disappeared. That was only 10 years ago.Rich.
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Hilf suffering from a sever case of projection ..
Generally when someone goes about telling *you* what your problems and intentions are, he is in some scence engaged in what the Freudians call a sever case of projection. So lets take a look at some of Hilfs utterances.
'If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more'
Just who exactly in Open Source are you referring to to here. Who is this 'someone' who says this. All you are doing here is invoking the strawman. The last resort of the Usenet troll. Shame on you Mr. Hilf. An insulting and total distorting of the situation. Linux/Open Source is about collaboration and not being controlled by any one company.
That you have to invoke some distorted hippy fud here tell us more about you than Open Source or the people involved in it. As someone who has personally met some of the leading developers in Open Source I can categorically state that I never once seen anyone wearing Jesus sandles or beads. Maybe you are confusing us with some of billgs retreats.
"People ask me, why are you doing this? Why did you do the Novell deal? Why aren't you doing Office on Linux? The summary is quite simple. Growth of the ecosystem equals growth of the [Windows] platform"
Here's a question, why are you using the Novell deal to extort money out of the Open Source community. The real reason you don't do Office on Linux is that your whole monopoly would collapse. Ain't that so.
"When I talk to open source developers, at least half are talking about Windows, from SugarCRM, MySQL, PHP. Every single one"
Keep desperatly talking about Open Source on Windows. What developers and can we have their names? Which half of every single one is 'talking about Windows'. And Bill, you being highely 'technical' what is the point of running LAMP on Windows?
'there's this complex balance between innovation and standardisation. I think the EU has been learning'
Here we have a presumably fine one time Open Source advocate reduced to shilling for the Microsoft organization. In short nothing but an intellectual prostitute. The EU issue is about MS polluting the protocols in order to shut out Open Source. As one of your researchers once put it by extending these protocols you can deny OSS projects entry into the market.
'People do not want ODF (Open Document Format), but they want a way to control the information they create'
Yet again we have MS chief FUD architect telling us what we want. What people don't want ODF and can we have their names? If MS was really innovati~1 why do you need to control the formats and protocols and threaten people with litigation if they don't use your product~1.
"Standards is the first thing you go to in the competitive strategy playbook"
I've noticed a curious thing in other utterances out of Redmond. Whilst accusing others of doing something nefarious they are in actuality projecting their own twisted strategies and prejudices onto the other fella. I suppose only in the distorted and rarefied athmosphere of the Linux Lab could you come up with twisting standards as a legitimate strategy to compete. Meaning making our stuff not work with the other fellas.
Now considering what MS is actually doing rather than saying what do you suppose MS real strategy is in relation to 'standards'? In this case MS is indeed going about subverting standards to leverage its own proprietary product. So the above sentence should be rewritten as 'subverting standards is the first thing you go to in the competitive strategy playbook'.
'Today, Microsoft seems to be nibbling away at the same market as Flash through Vista's Windows Presentation Format-Extended (WPF-E). Hilf said that was defnitely not anti-competitive and it was simply compet -
Link to Cerf's and Kahn's support for Gore
Here is a link to V.Cerf and B.Kahn's message.
As a personal note, I was on the Internet in 1985, long before most people had heard of it, because I was a cs student at the time, and I was wildly fascinated by its potential. And I remember discussions later with people who worked at developing proprietary data networks for consumer use just before the Internet took off, that they didn't stand a chance. One of my main argument was that U.S. vice president was advocating the Internet every day to US industry and congress.
Nonetheless, like everybody else I laughed at the "Al Gore invented the Internet" claim when I first heard it, considering that I was already on it before Al Gore got involved.
But the more I thought about it, the more his actual quote "[I] took the initiative in creating
the Internet" seems only stupid in one way; Namely that everything a politician says must survive being twisted and presented out of context to people ignorant on the subject. The Internet, as the popular phenomen we know today, was still being created, and and Al Gore definitely took the initiative in doing that. At the time, being locked into competing, closed proprietary networks run by phone companies was a quite likely outcome. Consumers would have the choice of services provided by their phone company, plus a few third party service providers approved by the phone company, and delivering part of their revenue to the phone company. It would have been a safer, duller and much less inventive world.
In fact, I suspect that even if he somehow succeeds in minimizing the rise of the greenhouse effect, his contribution to the creation of the Internet as we know it might dwarf any of his other accomplishments, as well as all the accomplishments of Bill Clinton, measured in the effects on human society. The Internet has transformed society, and is still transforming society. The possibility of instant communication and collaboration between people all over the world has that effect. Much more than a few degrees rise in temperature, and raising water levels. -
what's really at stake ..
The commision ruled in 2004 that Microsoft broke European competition laws and directed them to release complete interoperability documentation on the protocols, MS pretended to not understand what the Commision was on about and released some source code. The Commision also said that MS acted to stifle innovation by tying Media Player to Windows.
The real question is whether a single company should get a lock in on PROTOCOLS, never mind what they should charge for them. Is this an example of the polluted protocols MS talked about in that Valloppillil email.
"By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can DENY OSS projects ENTRY into the MARKET."
'At what point has/will the EU overstepped its bounds'
At what point will MS realise it isn't dealing with the DOJ? -
The More Important Question...
...is when the credit card industry is going to grow some balls and stand up to the religious fanatics in the Bush administration who have been pressuring them to stop supplying credit card services to lawful. consenting adult erotica providers?
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200210/msg00036.html
When are we going to start acting like America, instead of like some horrid Middle Eastern "Islamic Republic"? -
What I learned at OfficeMax
When I saw that Officemax was stupidly storing atm pins, I gave up. Now, the only machine that sees my atm card is my bank's. And even there, I look at the machine to see that it hasn't been tampered with.
For everyone else, I've reverted to checks and cash. -
Not just network vulnerability
The main network printer for my workgroup is the copier down the hall. Copiers can increasingly be used for espionage. This is actually nothing new, the CIA had Xerox outfit copiers in the Soviet Embassy with cameras to photograph the documents being copied.
Nowadays, many copiers don't use traditional xerography, but are just fast scanners with printers attached. The network copier/printer down the hall can be used as a document scanner, and even spits out PDFs with searchable text. I don't think it would be too difficult, if one knew the model they were working on, to write a script to send off a PDF of every single document that's scanned, printed, or copied using that machine. In a business with lots of sensitive work, that could be as bad as letting someone rifle through your files after hours. -
Re:Awesome
You would have thought that after the whole threat was rubbished by just about anybody with any basic knowledge of classroom chemistry, the home office and BAA would have downgraded the threat.
I thought it was now common knowledge that the whole thing was a sham. It was to get another embarrassing item off the news at the time; our ongoing support for the bombardment of Lebanon when every other country in the world was crying out for a ceasefire. It was getting pretty embarrassing for them just as this story "broke".
UK intelligence agencies have said (off-the-record of course) that they wanted to continue observing the group and taking notes, getting contacts and so on. There was never any danger; not only did they not have any chemicals or plane tickets, most of those involved did not even have passports!! It was amateur hour and I believe that the intelligence agencies were waiting to see if they actually knew anyone relevant that they could further investigate.
It was said at the time that the push to make arrests came from the US intelligence service and that this was in spite of vocal opposition from those watching "the group". Now, from what I understand, the only reference to actually attacking planes comes from the torture of someone in Pakistan. The person in question had fled the UK on suspision of murder charges. So, what do you get when you combine an untrustworthy person with torture? Fairytales.
Further reading:
This was a non-story and I am amazed that the sham has held so long. I'd make a point of arguing the banality of it when passing through an airport, but it's just not worth the cavity search. I guess I should just be a nice, compliant citizen and be afraid and keep my mouth shut.
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Re:Microsoft Brand FUD
Microsoft escaped their "punishment" because the Bush administration, to which Microsoft is a heavy contributor, let them off the hook immediately upon taking office in 2000. One of the first (and sadly, most minor) examples of the corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration.
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Re:Looks like it was a good thought, dreadful summ
Calling a chemistry student who admits to working off from second hand reports, and then guessing as to the process involved, and who doesn't have any stated expertise in binary explosives or especially the formulations or processes that may have been developed by real chemists with a background in explosives working for Al Qaeda, an expert is a bit much:Now, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I'm back at school, studying chemistry, and I'm spending this summer in a lab doing organic synthesis work.
....
A disclaimer, I'm working entirely off of news reported by people who don't know the difference between soft drinks and nail polish remover, but the information I've seen has the taste of being real. As near as I can tell, it is claimed that the terrorists planned to make organic peroxides in situ on board an airplane and use them to destroy the plane.
Given the history of peroxide based explosives used in terrorism, I wouldn't want to assume that he was right about the chemical process, the inteded use, and the practicalities of it without a lot more evidence from someone with direct knowledge of all three.
This doesn't even get into the question of his status as a neutral commentator. -
Looks like it was a good thought, dreadful summary
Experts have pointed out that the UK peroxide bombing plot, as discussed, was wildly implausible.
You are completely correct that both liquid and binary explosives exist. Nitroglycerin has been used as an explosive in the past.
However, the restrictions on carryon luggage didn't seem to be solving any actual security problem and don't really seem intended to. (If you're really worried about binary explosives, why make them pour the containers into the same bin, in front of what could be hundreds of people?) -
Re:Not to be trusted
Looks like that Oxley-Manton amendment was eventually defeated. I'd never heard of it, although, similar laws pertaining to key escrow do exist in England (and I'd guess other countries). So whatever Seagate is selling -- and whatever Apple is selling -- could be compromised so that they don't get shut out of those markets.
Yeah, I'll use something I can be fairly confident isn't backdoored, thank you very much.
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Re:Not to be trusted
I'd be worried their encryption algorithm had some sort of back door / administrative override password to let, say, law enforcement decrypt people's drives if they wanted to. For example, Apple's FileVault encryption can be decrypted with at least two separate passwords -- your login password and the "master" password you can set as an emergency recovery option -- so who knows if these drives wouldn't have a master password safely kept by Seagate and available to your friendly neighborhood DHS spooks?
Not only is it possible, its mandatory for them to have a back door.
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MS redefines the meaning of Open Source
"[Take open source.] Open source is not a new technology area. It was a new business model", SB
First RFC April 1969 for the ARPANET. The Open Source Initiative originated in Feb 1998.
"In the last three or four years, we have competed very well by extending our value", SB
"Microsoft has proposed a licencing agreement blatantly tailored to exclude free software from accessing it.", FSF Europe
" RealNetworks .. sued .. Microsoft on antitrust charges .. Our case is based on .. failure to disclose interface information and imposing restrictions on PC makers"
"Open source never goes away as a business model or competitor. We have learned how to compete with open source", SB
"Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over .. a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license .. Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications"
"competing with open source will have to be something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people", SB
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects' entry into the market."
"In the case of open source, we couldn't adopt the business model. We adopted a competitive approach that so far has worked very well", SB
Under NO circumstances lose against Linux"
"Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more money out there and they would clearly rather use Baystar "like" entities to help us get signifigantly more money if we want to grow further or do acquisitions"
"Microsoft and Sun .. announced the antitrust settlement/technology pact between the two on Friday"
"Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) has signed a deal to license SCO Group's Unix intellectual property"
"Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO"
"there are cases where software gets monetized through hardware", SB
Like years ago when you bought hardware and the software was included for free.
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Re:Can't say I'm surprised...
>That's bullshit, and you know it.
Hypothesis: the long parade of blatant security problems in Diebold voting machines is not deliberate.
Analysis: incompetence is common and can explain a lot, and much dishonest activity is to cover up incompetence. Evidence against the idea of simple incompetence is that the company was run by political activists, "[anonymous Diebold whistleblower]Dieb-Throat said that management "felt that if they controlled an election company, they could have great influence over the outcome." "((Credibility open to question). Further, they designed systems without a printer and actively discouraged buyers from adding one by inflating the price of a printer to four figures(http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7665). In California they certified one set of software and deliberately installed something else(Voting Systems Panel meeting ).
This falls short of being probative but is more than enough to rule out "That's bullshit, and you know it". -
Re:Can't say I'm surprised...
After all, these machines were never seriously designed with security in mind...they were designed to be easily compromised.
That's bullshit, and you know it.
When these systems are vulnerable, it's just as easy for ANYONE to take advantage of that fact. Not one party or one political stripe.
As for ATM security:
Citibank ATM fiasco "worst ever"
ATM reprogrammed to give out 4 times more money
Diebold ATMs hit by Nachi worm -
No Reference to David Farber's Article?
This article read like a paraphrased version of David Farber's article yet there's no reference to it as a source. Plagarism?
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On the implausibility of the explosives plot
There was a good post by a chemistry student on this subject on Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list.
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200608/msg00087.html -
related posting on Interesting People list
Here (long, funny, interesting).
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Planes aren't as fragile as you think
There's reality-based experience that says cabin de-pressurization won't have anything like the effect you describe. Doesn't anyone remember Aloha 243? The top of the plane peeled right off (not just a wussy little window blow-out) at altitude. There was one fatality, a flight attendant who wasn't strapped in. The pilots landed the plane safely.
As for mixing the explosives being "certainly possible" I think you should look at the Perry Metzger article I've also cited elsewhere. -
I have a much better article here
This post is very interesting, I found it on Bruce Schneier's blog.
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An even better article
Perry Metzger wrote an excellent post to the interesting-people mailing list last Friday. He goes into more detail than the Register article does, offers first-hand information, and packs in more irony and sarcasm besides.
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What's the point
IANAC (I am not a chemist) but this guy seems to make a pretty solid arguement: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/intere
s ting-people/200608/msg00087.html -
Gore and the InternetYou know, I'm sick of this crap.
[A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective
You know who wrote that? Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. If anybody's qualified to talk about Gore's contribution to the early days of the 'Net, it's those two.
Original Document
Look, in the early '90s, 6 years before Slashdot, when there were less than a 1/4 million hosts on the 'Net, Gore introduced the Act that would ultimately fund the development of Mosaic. In the '70s, Gore was pushing support for networks, when nobody was talking network. Through the '80s, he pushed for consolidation of disparate government networks.
In the '90s, he drove the Clinton administration's focus on the 'Net. Was that administration perfect on technical issues? Far from it. But Gore was generally a positive force. He pushed against the CDA (which was getting rammed down the admin's throat riding on the Telecommunications Act). He was wrong on key escrow, but he pushed back on Clipper.
The Internet was not built exclusively on protocols and software. It required funding and political support. Gore has been a net positive force for us. Nobody is going to take us seriously and stand up for the issues that are important to us if we eventually go after everybody who does just that. -
Re:Not as good as it claims to be
Windows users are used to this, though. Remember the FAA even had procedures in place to reboot their Windows boxes regularly since they would crash every 49.7 days (or was it minutes). I'd say "about ten" will about double the effectiveness of NTFS compared to the primary vendor(90% joking).
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Re:The real questionThe illegal to listen to cellphone frequencies comes from the Newt Gingrich and Clinton era. Bah, even before then. Some other bills. Your congresscritter Billy Tauzin was the original sponsor of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
Your searches may vary -- this is enough to get the ball rolling.
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Re:go even further
It's being sold as an audio CD. You have a reasonable expectation that it will work in your audio CD player(s). If it doesn't, then as far as I'm concerned either the CD or the player(s) is faulty. Assuming your player(s) work(s) with other CDs, the implication would be that it's the CD that's faulty. Therefore, you're entitled to a refund, end of story.
Actually, right from the beginning, Philips has made a stand that these copy protected CD's are never sold with the 'CD-Compact Disc' label on it, since they do not comply with the Red Book standard Sony and Philips published back in 1982.
So if you're shopping for a CD and the logo is not on it, it's a good signal to read a the small print. In my experience, you'll often find copyright notices for the copyprotection on there somewhere. :-P
However, it seems to me that right from the beginning this stuff has gone the wrong way. Hackers and pirates are way more inventive that 'regular' consumers, so any copy protection will be cracked (after all, if it was IMPOSSIBLE to get the audio off there, it would never sell), while Joe Average will never get it to play on his car stereo.
I rip all my CD's to my harddisk, since I like variation, and a big harddrive with WinAmp is a much better CD-changer than a real CD-changer ever will be. I have over time bought several DRM'ed CD's, and none of them have EVER given me much trouble ripping them. Most work was one that required the 'black marker on the outer ring' trick.
My two cents... -
Re:Stop watching Fox
Your conclusion is mistaken. From Al Gore and the Internet by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf:
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises. -
Re:What about...
I know it's meant as a joke, but since it's not true, it's even less funny? What do Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn say..? and A Salon.com Gore Internet Invented Article or More Gore Internet Invented, Invention Research
...don't you think?