Slashdot Mirror

mwuhahahahahahaha
mwuhaaahahahhahaaa
mwuha mwuhahahahaha

So you think being at the top of the food chain is so great?

Once again, Scientology finds that a major attack against the Internet boomerangs around and kicks them in the ass. Some great PR you scored, guys. (I may add that they first caught my attention when they tried canceling the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup, and I haven't stopped watching since).

This news, and the immediate backlash regarding the submission of the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" make me wonder if it's possible companies and large organizations will be losing their grip on government? The important factor in this, which I haven't yet seen mentioned is The passing of the "landmark Campaign Reform Bill", which elimiantes "soft money" contributions that companies like the MPAA, RIAA, etc are relying on.

This bill seems like a radical change in how our government works. Will the result be that bad laws like the DMCA go away now that politicians won't be AS paid for by corporations and other large organizations?

Take a look at the byline at the bottom of the commentary.

William M. Arkin is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington and an adjunct professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies. He is also a consultant to a number of nongovernmental organizations and a regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Officials are looking for nuclear weapons that could help against a foe like Al Qaeda.

No, I don't understand the last sentence either...

Ok, let me get this straight, the LA.Times gets a secret reports about a possible nuclear fiasco and no one smell trouble? I mean, how often does the LA Times gets secret reports? I wouldnt think something like this just leak its way out of congress just like that at this time. According to reuters the Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Sunday the United States was trying to intimidate other nations with reported contingency plans to use nuclear weapons. But then again, Powell Says Secret Nuke Report Was Routine Planning accordings again to reuters. Where is the love?

Ok, let me get this straight, the LA.Times gets a secret reports about a possible nuclear fiasco and no one smell trouble? I mean, how often does the LA Times gets secret reports? I wouldnt think something like this just leak its way out of congress just like that at this time. According to reuters the Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Sunday the United States was trying to intimidate other nations with reported contingency plans to use nuclear weapons. But then again, Powell Says Secret Nuke Report Was Routine Planning accordings again to reuters. Where is the love?

The LA Times also ran a story today about the erosion of civil liberties following the Sept 11 attacks.

W

"The agency which Poindexter will run is called the Information Awareness Office. You want to know what that is? Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with 'instant' analysis on what is being written on email and said on phones all over the US. Domestic espionage."
--John Sutherland of UK's Guardian.

Is It?

The secret report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or "in the event of surprising military developments.

This is very disturbing. What kind of people you have elected to run your country?

This is very disturbing. What kind of people you have elected to run your country?

On can wonder how long it will be until Steve will announce that the next Pixar movie won't be released by Disney.

Well, Jobs statements and the skewering Pixar gave Disney in Shrek. You don't think Lord Farquaad, er, Eisner was amused do you? Perfect little boring kindom, nasty leader, gates at the entrances, work it out!

Sharman Network/Brilliant Digital/KaZaA have finally responded to accusations that they were behind the attack on Morpheus. In an interview with the LA Times a spokeswomen for KaZaA, Kelly Larabee, said the company had nothing to do with Morpheus' network problems adding that we have no reason to have them go away. We'd rather them stay on FastTrack.

Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, he already holds a California elected office.

As for the third charge -- that copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation -- what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection.

No, Mr. Valenti, what we mean when we say "innovation", are things that give the consumer, the end user of your products, the choice of what we want. Surely, as head of the MPAA, you must be aware of your own members outstanding lawsuits against the truly innovative device makers Replay TV and TiVo. Perhaps it is time for you to stop treating your customers like criminals and thieves.

Times are a changin'. Those who choose to go forward will reap the rewards of satisfying consumers needs. Those who choose to drag their heels will fall by the wayside.

Hey, it's a free country. For a start, you're free to leave.

Not if you're her! :-p

In my estimation, there's a high likelihood this guy's got the CIA behind him. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the CIA has been using LA's expat Iranian community for intelligence-gathering, as well as satellite broadcasting into Iran.

This story shows the reaction of our government to limit information potentially damaging to the United States. In this case, librarians are being asked to become "Firemen" and destroy information in their care. Many people who are tasked to protect their data (backups, archives, etc.) , would be outraged if they were then asked to destroy it before scheduled, that is, unless they work for Enron. How would your students react to being asked to destroy books from their library, or music CDs?

One quote from the LA Times article sums up the motivation behind these acts that your students will be forced to challenge on their own when they graduate:

"We have to get away from the ethos that knowledge is good, knowledge should be publicly available, that information will liberate us," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "Information will kill us in the techno-terrorist age, and I think it's nuts to put that stuff on Web sites."

I'm not sure if sheep can recognize their own sheepness, but have your students try to identify such traits in the characters of the book as well as the main character's transition. It is safe to think freely, but eventually you are forced to act on those beliefs. Have your students discuss amongst themselves what concrete beliefs they are willing to stand up for.

Someone at the LA Times did something similar to this in the middle of last year. It's a much more amusing article. At least I think so.

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000037171jun3 0.story

Here you go

Lycos holiday console sales

Nemesis Online

Slashdot

La Times

In the US,
the H1-B program is dramatically lowering US technical wages.

Check out AOL --basically these folks keep these company alive by getting special immigration legislation. If you don't like this, speak out.

Hmmmm... Interesting. The first link on the TimeDomain's website is this LA Times Article about how the FCC is set to aprove the technology next month and how they used UWB during the World Trade Center disaster to look for victims.

Like Johnny used to say: "I, I did not know that."

-Russ

LA Times Story here

From the article:

"The Federal Communications Commission still is negotiating with opponents, but Bruce A. Franca, acting chief of the FCC's office of engineering, said he is hopeful that an accord can be reached and that the FCC will approve the technology next month."

Try saying that at Airport Security or on an airplane. See if you get on the plane or even get to join one of the thousands of detainees. In addition, with Carnivore, FBI could read all your emails and if you email something regarding an assasination or something, it would probably get logged and you'd probably be investigated by the Secret Service.

Remember..telling yourself you have freedom is not the same as actually having freedom.

The LA Times has a great article on the coming copy protection for video. It has a truly halarious ending...

Consumer-electronics executives say they don't want consumers who've invested in HDTVs--about 2 million so far--to lose any of the value of their investment. But Preston Padden, an executive vice president of Walt Disney Co., said the impact would be extremely limited. "If the biggest problem to getting this solved is the 13 people who've already purchased HDTVs, I will personally drive the converter boxes to their homes and install them myself."

If it really is 2 million people, Preston Padden has some serious work ahead of him.

Basically, the article says that the studios and networks are desparately trying to get a standard in place for watermarking video before they are mandated to begin transmitting digital signals in just a few months. The article unfortunately doesn't explicitly point out the implications of this technological solution -- that all current computers would have to be made illegal for this to work.

thad

This guy is right on the money. Making security a priority can only be accomplished through making good design and good code a priority. And those won't be a priority unless there's some sort of pressure for it. Lowering insurance costs is one pressure. Positive PR is another. But more powerful than both of those is the pressure to keep customers from switching to a viable competitor.

And this, I think is exactly the thing we need: a viable competitor to Microsoft. Microsoft, of course, doesn't want this. Interestingly enough, this will also help deal with Rep. Rick Boucher's recent thoughts on the prevention of cyberterrorism. With all due respect to the many good ideas that Rep. Boucher has made, when he suggested enforcing product liability requirements on software producers, he assumed that was the only way to get better software. But it's not. Competition will be much more effective. "When Microsoft starts creating good software, we've won." - Linus Torvalds. Unfortunately, not only is Boucher's suggestion not as effective as competition, it's got a really nasty side effect: it would effectively kill the only potential competitor to Microsoft on the horizon: open source & free software.

Competition will breed better software. If a competitive market place still produces unsafe products (as was the case with the automobile manufacturers of the '60s) then perhaps new laws make sense.

The point is that the solution to both problems ("cyber-terrorism" and software security) is competition. If the government is going to do anything, let's encourage them to do something that opens up competition to the MS juggernaut. There currently is none, so make laws that produce competition. If, and only if, that doesn't work, then think about other ways to enforce accountability - like product liability for software producers. But don't put the cart before the horse.

$.02

First of all, it truly scares me that Bill Gates's announcement that Microsoft will "empasize security and privacy over new capabilities" is considered, in his own words, to be "a major strategy shift." Any reasonable developer knows that security is an inherent part of every feature - not a feature in itself.
Second of all, it can't be said that this is the first time a company has put forth a gung-ho effort (if that is even the case) to secure their products - Oracle's Unbreakable database is clear evidence of this. To me, this seems Microsoft has placed itself further into the security spotlight, and that more holes will be exposed as a result.
Finally, above all else, one has to admit that this announcement seems like the reactionary brainchild of Microsoft's PR department. On /. alone, this is the third article in 24 hours (not including the "Unbreakable" story) with direct relevance to Microsoft's security (or lack thereof). The case can be made that there is a low likelyhood that Microsoft would pay that much attention to the /. community - but on the other hand, I'd think they'd listen to this.

It isn't that no one reads the Los Angeles Times, it's that no one reads the Los Angeles Times Magazine .

check out this article, look at the last paragraph

Since Slashdot rejected this story, I will post it here.

There is a related item reported in the LA Times about a bill being introduced to amend the DMCA - which will allow for consumers to copy digital works without running afoul of the law.

LA Times Story

The question on the table, was merely to submit an application for a disposal site to DOE and NRC. The application will take approx 7 years, and will have to answer all those lingering questions.

This is not an approval for construction.

LA Times

Yeah, I'm getting sick of hearing about M$ astroturfing, as has been reported here and there and everwhere!. I wish that company would devote as much time to making a decent program instead.

What supprises me more is the crowd of trolls like you who always come to the aid of M$.

If you won't buy them they won't stock them. Basic business 101. These CDs are a corrupted version of the Redbook specification, and should be called that, "Corrupted" Over the past two years the recording industry has been winning the war of words. To even discuss "copy-protected" cds, implies the acceptance of the term, which is in fact should be refered to as "corrupted".

The LA Times has a quote from the CEO of the company that operates Tower Records states they will refund the money if need be. The Fast and Furious CD is supposed to have a sticker that designates that it is a protected CD. Boycott-riaa.com has a list known corrupted CDs as well as Fatchucks.

Perhaps a better alternative to buying then returning for refund, is to tell the store manager you will not purchase ANY copy protected discs, and then don't.

There is a "management shakeup" occurring right now. Daniel Goldin, the longtime administrator of NASA, has retired (see what he's up to and his new computers at the L.A. Times Celebrity Setup).

Dr. Daniel Mulville is the current Acting Administrator while Sean O'Keefe is waiting for confirmation.

C|net Editor's Choice

New York Times Review

Business Week Sweet Music

Wall Street Journal Review

LA Times Review

PC Magazine 5/5 Rating

But more to the point, who has played the cell-phone style hidden game on the iPod? With new hacking sites popping up all over, has anyone found a firmware update that gives them any more games yet? Or playback of even more media formats or other abilities? Of couse it will soon have Windows compatibility and people have been booting off their iPods since the beginning, but lately I've seen someone modifying it for use as a simple address book, people trying to get it to work under *BSD and Linux, and development of a new graphic EQ for it. Anyone else made cool hacks?

Congress passes, without due consideration, a draconian anti-terrorist bill that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft demands, and only one senator--Russell Feingold (D-Wis.)--dares to rise in opposition. The president doesn't even bother to consult Congress as he detains more than 1,000 prisoners without charges, approves wiretaps on lawyer-client conversations and issues an executive order implementing military trials for those accused of terrorism. Secret military tribunals are defended by Harvard's Laurence Tribe, a preeminent liberal law professor, as necessary to "protecting our lives from terrorism." His colleague Alan Dershowitz assures us that the Constitution does not prohibit "torture" and argues that it be kept within the legal system: "If we are to have torture, it should be authorized by the law. Judges should have to issue a 'torture warrant' in each case." With the exception of a few stalwarts, such as the ACLU, we have witnessed the sorry spectacle of most civil libertarians remaining silent or actively supporting the most sweeping and ill-considered assault on civil liberties since the roundup of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Foreigner's can be held with secret evidence:

Washington Report
----------------
Burning books & destroying CD's.

Libraries destroying information
----------------
The FBI can tap your communications without a warrant(carnivore). See the ATA for other violations of the constitution.
----------------
Dimitri? Held for how long for allowing Russians to exercise their fair use rights. Suppose Iran would arrest an american for creating a porn-program and posting it on the Internet (forcing their laws on you). Would you be angry?
----------------
DMCA. Take away your fair use rights, who wants to view DVD's on linux anyway? Copy media for your own use, thou shall not. 'Quoting' something (for a review or such), not allowed. Viewing an e-book in a non-approved browser: no, the traditional reverse engineering for interoperability is forbidden. Who needs competition anyway?
----------------
Mandatory censorship in libraries. Who needs freedom of speech? A good thing your daughter can't find info on birth control, the US would risk losing it's nr. 1 position in teenage pregnancies.
----------------
Randal Schwartz? A security advisor at Intel who forgot to inform his boss of running a password-auditing program. Even without hostile intent he was convicted. The same law can get you 15 years in Oregon if you run Napster on your computer or change the color of your screen without informing your boss (the judge gave that last example, I didn't make it up). They don't have to tell you it's wrong in advance.

Oregon vs our favorite Perl programmer
----------------
'But, but...other countries are far worse'

That's what I expect someone to say now.

People, this is about not being quite so liberal with the plans for our US infrastructure. Note the article says that the information was "yanked", and not destroyed.

So a Syracuse University library clerk broke the disc into pieces, saving a single shard to prove that the deed was done.

What's next? Torch-lit parades and book-burning rallies?

How does shipping a tape recorder qualify as terrorism?

Because it could have an evil message from Osama bin Laden with a coded secret message to terrorists. We must stop these evil people from communicating.

After all, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty", right? That means you must suspect everything and everyone of terrorism.

And Jon Ashcroft is personally arresting people?

Not exactly. He's generously passing that joy on to others.

</sarcasm>

Sounds like the definition of terrorism is getting pretty loose these days.

You got that right...sadly...

I just found this link which makes it more obvious that Pixar != Disney.

Normally don't follow myself, but "this just in" . It seems the spammer did try go to the Supreme Court of the United States to ensure his "god given right" to annoy us.

He appealed the Washington State Supreme Court's decision and on Monday (29-oct-2001) the US' highest court said "we don't want to hear this", which means they agree with the state court's decision and find it constitutional. There's a blurb about it in the LA Times.

The spammer's lawyers must be running the show as Heckel can barely afford a dial-up connection. Back to district court the case goes and since the spammer violated the law, a decision should come down against him. The lawyer says if this is the case he'll start a whole new set of appeals. He probably loves all the press. [Dale Crandall Bar#: 781708; 280 Court St NE #14; Salem OR 97301; Phone No: 503-363-4971]

Upon further reading, my first post was in error, there were two sets of idiots involved in the Washington state court system, the appellate court and the trial court judge - King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson (palmer.robinson@metrokc.gov). Judge Palmer somehow found, in her mind, that the state anti-spam law was unconstitutional and the spammer was right. This was supported by the state appellate court, but was smacked down when it reached people who actually know constitutional law.

There is an article in the Los Angeles Times here which says AOL TIme Warner was objecting to the amendment for unspecified reasons.

The article also mentions that (surprise!) the MPAA also backed the bill.

Another interesting excerpt: The RIAA and MPAA have made no secret of their interest in a technological counterattack against piracy, particularly on the Internet's increasingly popular file-sharing networks.
The measures they've explored include software that can detect a song or movie as it's being copied through the Net, replace the unauthorized copy with a different file and even disable the original on the sender's computer.

Wil,
You mention in this LA Times article that you dumped Linux for Windows because

"While I'm a champion of open source, I don't think Linux is there yet"

Was there a specific bug in Linux that prompted you to dump it, or was it just the entire operating system?

Thanks!

Music Firms Fail to Get Anti-Piracy Proposal on Bill

To process payments electronically, you need phone lines. And if all your phone lines get cut, either due to terrorist attack, natural disaster or whatever, you can't buy or sell anything until they get fixed. (See details in this story from the Los Angeles Times.)

Unless you have cash.

Sure, in normal operation, you can go days without cash, using credit and debit cards and automatic payments. But until we get better support for secure wireless transactions, cash will remain the necessary fall-back for disasters when the land lines get cut.

(And this isn't even considering the issue of cyber-terrorism....)

Here is a graphic with some building identification. The rest is up to you.

dookdookdook

From the referenced story, Afghanistan Is Like Nothing You've Ever Seen, Soviet Vets Say:

First, there are no real "bases" for terrorists, they say. Fighters live in ordinary villages. Air or artillery strikes against them will invariably kill civilians.

Moreover, there are few targets other than villages, the veterans warn. There are few bridges, no factories. Most of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed in decades of civil war.

"Even in Iraq you had something to bomb," Lisinenko said. "But there are no targets in Afghanistan. There's nothing there to bomb."

I'm very happy that Slashdot is covering this. If the U.S. government starts a huge war, it will affect our computer jobs. Not only that, if I did not read Slashdot, I would never have seen the article.


The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people: What Should be the Response to Violence?

According to this La Times story, Federal law enforcement authorities did not notify American Airlines that two men with links to terrorist Osama bin Laden were on a "watch list" before they helped hijack a flight from Dulles International Airport last week, according to individuals with direct knowledge of the matter. .

If they can't responsibly handle their current responsibilities with what information they *do* know, what makes us think that they will all of a sudden get better if we let them violate our privacy to boot?

According to this article, retired CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite has called for the immediate appointment of a censorship board to monitor the strict secrecy that Ashcroft has announced. Cronkite said that secrecy is necessary in the war against terrorism, but that the government should immediately appoint a board of journalists and historians that will be aware of all the government's plans and actions. Secrecy must not be used to protect political decisions or government failures, but only for military purposes, Cronkite said.

An interesting proposal. And I haven't heard a word breathed about it, except briefly at the end of that LATimes article.

--S

Here's an latimes article about news' sites traffic.

9 million requests in one hour at cnn.com.

Jeff Bates and Slashdot are mentioned near the end, though in a different context from the main thrust of the article.