Slashdot Mirror

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

And wrote to my parents and friends an e-mail about this. It's extremely rare for me to say "Please forward" in anything I send. (Forgive me if you think this to be karma-whoring...)

Reading Slashdot every day sometimes makes me want to shoot every corporate and government entity on the planet as I figure out what they are doing to the US public every day. The DMCA, if you didn't already realize, is already doing some heavy damage, and it is highly unconstitutional: The DMCA in plain English.

Here's some of the latest abuses of the DMCA:

Writing a eBook convertor for the blind (the Sklyarov case): 1 2
No DVD software player for Linux and no research on cryptology
Blocking anti-Scientology sites

If you think that's scary, that's not even the icing on the cake! The newly-proposed law going to the Senate right now, the SSSCA, funded by the RIAA and the MPAA, is like the DMCA on crack. Passing it is suicide to all things technological!

The SSSCA in plain English: 1 2 3

The SSSCA (now the CBDTPA) is in the Senate

If this new CBDTPA gets passed, computers several years from now will not be the computers we have today. They will be limited pieces of hardware, hard-coded to prevent you from doing "bad things". They will monitor your activities. And this will affect everything from car stereos to TVs to anything else "computer related". If it has a format or something to "protect", it will be affected. This includes you and the way you use computers!

How can you make things secure, if you don't have the tools to test security? This is on par with banning crowbars because they can be used to break into a home, instead of arresting the robbers that use them.

So, what can you do about it? The ACLU actually isn't paying much attention to this one, because it's not really their realm. The real freedom fighter in cases like these is the EFF. The EFF is a well-known organization that some people have called "the ACLU for technology". Many computer techs are members. Wil Wheaton was one of the Star Trek guests on a "Weakest Link" special episode, who chose the EFF as his donating organization. (He won them $10,000 on that show.)

The EFF is truly the only line of defense for this. Voting doesn't work. Petitions don't work. The only thing that works (unforunately) is money, and fighting the system with its own laws. The RIAA and MPAA "donated" over $50 million dollars to both political parties! We need to fight back and donate to the EFF! I just donated my dues to the EFF today, because they are going to need it now.

Please forward this to all of your friends! Donate to the EFF now!!!

The chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) opposes the bill and won't bring it up therefore the bill is DOA.

You can get more info over at Wired. That little Disney shill Hollins can try and repay his evil mouse ear masters but it won't avail him...

A reply to one of my comments in the slashdot article about ORBZ Shuts Down has pointed to a new article which reveals the identity of the party who threatened ORBZ operator Ian Gulliver with jail.

In that new article it is mentioned that Ian's lawyer advised him against releasing a copy of the search warrant. Why? Is it copyrighted?

Two recently published polls show that support for a national ID card has decreased. Results from a poll on the February 27 Washington Post Federal Page showed that public opinion was divided on the issue, with 47% of Americans thinking that national ID will improve interaction with government and business and 44% viewing it as "an invasion of people's civil liberties and privacy." A new survey released on March 12 by Gartner Inc. found that 26 percent of Americans are in favor of a national ID card, while 41 percent oppose the idea.
See Wired News: Support for ID Cards Waning

-

Most likely old news to many here but state Department of Moter Vehicles used to, as a general practice, sell personal information collected from people's driver's licences to marketing organizations. That was pretty lame, as the DMV has a monopoly on driver's licences, of course.

I say used to, as the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled it to be wrong in early 2000.

You, sir, is quite arrogant, making such statements..

Quote from the article: The Russians devised a number of other simple but ingenious strategies to increase reliability and keep costs down. They applied special coatings to internal machine parts to protect them from extreme heat, and routed kerosene around hot rocket nozzles to cool them down. More important, they emphasized what's known as "producibility," handing off designs early in the process to the engineers who were actually going to be building the stuff. "It's a European design philosophy," Ford explains. "Over there, engineers are trained to produce things that work."

Now that you've read all the posts about how the Russian space program is done, read this Wired article (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.ht ml) that describes how US companies are launching their payloads using Russian propulsion.

Here's a quote: "They build the thing and test the shit out of it. This engine cost $10 million and produces almost 1 million pounds of thrust. You can't do that with an American-made engine."

They even have an ISP up in Nunavut...in fact Wired had an article about net access up there in the permafrost.

- adam

I think there are a few things amiss with the pfir plan and I'd like to suggest and comment on some alternatives and have a few comments about our continues use of 20th century DNS.

Look back at the creation of ICANN and it's not difficult to see why it has failed. The timeline goes something like this: when the Wired article came out in 1994 where Joshua Quittner reported he registered mcdonalds.com and McDonalds didn't want it he ended up selling it to Burger King. At the time InterNIC registrations were taking about 3 days. This shot up to 11 weeks in a matter of days. The NSF, who funded NSI to run the InterNIC, did not feel it's role, which is to foster academic and scientific advancement, included subsidizing deodorant.com and the like, so, it asked the FNCAC to do something. What they did was instruct the NSF to tell NSI to begin charging for domains. This caught the Internet community rather off guard and discussion ensued on a "newdom" mailing list (whose archives can be found here). Several forces came into play. First was the rift between the group that felt they too could run a TLD and the group that though this should be run from a great big central registry. The latter became the IAHC/CORE thing while the former became the first alternative root. The US Government shut down the IAHC and began it's own proceedings: the white paper was produced. Other governments, most notably in the form of Paul Twoomey from Australia
and Chris Wilkinson from the EU balked at the plan and the revised plan, the green paper took out the language about creating 5 new TLDs immediately (thereby throwing each conflicted group at least one bone). At the time Mikki Barry and Kathy Kleinman suggested in Becky Burr's office that a set of global meetings take place, not to decide answers to tough problems, but to determine just where there was consensus on the various issues. This became the IFWP forum and 3 meetings were held in Reston Va., Geneva, and Singapore. There was to be a followup meeting to merge these consensus points into a framework for the new corporation that was to replace IANA. While this was happening, NSI and IANA were negotiating, and Ira Magaziner, Clinton's senior science advisor and Roger Cochetti, a VP of IBM were running around selecting a new board. The IFWP wrap up meeting never happened, it was scuttled by Mike Roberts (suspicion is high he had been told be would be president) and the vast amount of time and energy, money, hopes and aspirations that was IFWP went down the toilet - which is a real shame as it was a significant body of work. Three proposals went in to the US government to form the new corporation. The IANA/NSI proposal drafted by Joe Sims and NSI, the Boston Working Group proposal (which is where the wrap-up meeting was to have been) which was a sane version of the NSI/ICANN proposal, and the ORSC proposal which was the BWG plan with greater fiscal responsibility and an existing corporate shell. Citing popular public support for the IANA/NSI plan it was selected - but if you read the public comments on the NTIA site carefully you'll see far less support than implied and much of it was tentative, frankly. A board materialized out if thin air, selected because they didn't know anything about DNS. So what went wrong? Was the original ICANN plan flawed or were the people just the wrong choices? I suggest that if Karl Aurbach and 9 people like him has been the original board we would not now be even talking about DNS; the board appointed from in high did not represent the Internet community whatsoever and instead represented telco, government and trademark special interests. It is believed the concessions made so that foreign government supported the "green paper" was that they got to pick certain members of the board. The first big clue there was trouble was when the board missed it's deadline to define a process for their replacement and simply extended their jobs; they should have been gone over two years ago now.

So what have we learned from this? In my opinion, no group that says "we're in charge" really is; respect is earned, not asserted and I think this was the great failing of both IAHC and ICANN. So while I generally like Weinstein, Newman and Farber, I do distrust the IAB to some extent based on previous debacles like the Boston Tea party where they were thrown out for claiming OSI and not TCP/IP was the way to go. The ISOC is another non-starter, it's wanted to get it's hands on the DNS for over a decade and has been a great supporter of the authoritarian regimes of both IAHC and ICANN. The key, I believe, is not some group claiming they should be in charge or that they have all the answers - nobody does - but the good old fashioned and time proven method of Internet collaborative cooperation. And this means actually doing it, not paying lip service to it like ICANN did. Oh and cut out the 5 star hotels and first class Concorde flights.

Is this about Internet governance? No. Absolutely not. In it's most basic form this is nothing more than an institutionalized debate between Dave Crocker and Karl Denninger in 1986 taken to it's logical conclusion. But it's nothing to do with governance of the Internet. Face it, if all you do is read and write email and/or usenet news, and play on ISC or muck about on the web, you may never have heard of ICANN and it certainly has zero effect on you. This is just about new top level domains, period; the IP addresses have virtually all been handed over to the regional registries and the port allocations are handles by somebody than CAN add one to a number and write it down on a piece of paper.

But didn't ICANN break up NSI ? Nope. That was Ira Magaziners plan executed through the Department of Commerce. You don't really think NSI gave in because ICANN though it was a good idea do you? What has ICANN really done in 4 years? They've knuckled under to WIPO and given us the horribly flawed UDRP and 7 really stupid TLDs that despite $2.$M worth of scrutiny still had huge problems to the point of being dragged into court over it.

What alternative roots exist? Quite a few actually, and while on the face of it you might think this would be a problem, but face it, if you can pick up your mail and get to Yahoo! then they work, and any of them will let you do that. The differences in them are what new TLDs they publish in their root zones. I need to disclaim right away that I coordinate, with Brian Reid's help, the ORSC root, and it's generally believed to have the greatest penetration and is certainly the longest continuously operating one. The barrier to entry it low: show us working TLD servers and we'll list you. Other notable ones are the TINC root which is operated by some old time Usenet people such as Peter da Silva which has a policy of one tld per entity, which I don't like think can be made to work (the now defunct eDNS tried this and it was found to be too easily worked around), PacROOT which in my opinion swings too far the other way with their NameSlinger client - I don't think I know the proper number of TLDS any entity should operate but I do know it's not in the hundreds if not thousands; this raises anti-trust issues, and OpenNIC which is pretty good but only has a small number of new TLDs. There is also NameSpace which believes they should run all tlds. This grates against the notion of the root as a collection of independantly run TLDs in my opinion. But, it doesn't matter to me which one people use as long as they use one of them. Vote with your nameservers - it is in nobody's interest to break anything and using any of these roots will let you see all current DNS names and a whole universe of new ones although how many depends on which one you pick.

Why do we still use root servers? Now this is where it gets interesting. What if the US Government suddenly shut off the legacy root servers? 90% of the net would feel some sort of perturbation immediately especially since at least one TLD (.SE) is name-served directly from the root (not TLD!) servers as are many in-addr.arpa delegations. As the TTLs to TLD servers expired, users of the legacy root would not be able to resolve any DNS names. But, people that use other root servers would be immune to the demise of the legacy roots (modulo one of Swedens 7 .SE nameservers of course) but an even better tactic in my opinion is to primary the root zone for yourself. Then, any or all root servers could be shut off and you wouldn't notice a thing. This would leave you with one remaining problem and that is where could you get the root zone from. Your upstream might be a good place or as DJB has suggested, a cryptographically signed root zone could be posted to usenet periodically. This has the inherent advantage of being out of band of TCP/IP; that is, even a UUCP connection could inject the zone into the news stream. That's one answer to "how do you bootstrap DNS without DNS".

Do I think ORSC should be the next ICANN as the ICANNWATCH poll suggests? No and hell no! Nobody should be in charge, and given that the net and the DNS itself is edge controlled - that is, whoever has the root password to a nameserver determines what dns names exist and what don't - any model that asserts a central authority is doomed to fail. There is need for coordination, but not authority.

Vote with your nameserver; vote early and vote often.

Richard Sexton
March 19, 2002

IANAD; but, could sk8's odd behavior possibly be explained by Asperger Syndrome?

People with Asperger are often extremely bright, have a single, strong interest (which they talk about obsessively), take many things too literally, don't understand non-verbal social cues, spend lots of time in fantasy worlds, &c.

I wonder whether this has anything to do with his strange reactions. Interestingly, Asperger seems to have an unusually high incidence in children whose parents are in the high-tech industry.

Or, maybe he's just bipolar, and is delusional while in a manic state. I don't know much; but, I agree that the guy probably suffers from some sort of illness. =-(

Jerome Heckenkamp, aka MagicFX, also brought down a major porn site not too long ago, redirecting visitors to Disney's website.

I like his style!

More info here.

It was a weak attempt at humor because the ten user limit ON THEIR SERVER just happened to match MSFT's hard coded limit on the MSFT workstation OS.

Actually, if I recall right, Windows NT, 2K, and XP workstation operating systems don't limit incoming TCP connections to ten but rather incoming connections to IIS Personal Edition. (Note that IIS serves HTTP 403.9 error messages instead of "connection refused" messages.) If you're using Apache and friends instead of IIS, you can not only handle more connections but also protect yourself from Revenge of Son of CV.

When Wired covered this, they noted that "companies typically start out blocking what filtering firms call the "sinful six" categories: pornography, gambling, illegal activities, hate sites, tasteless material and violent content."

Hell, I understand porn and gambling, but tastelessness and violence pretty much runs out the whole damn Internet. Guess I'll have to get my news about Mid-East turmoil from Zoog Disney...

There is an interesting article over at Wired about ICANN's future directions following an ICANN meeting in Africa.
The main issue seems to be fear of increasing US influence. Looks like Esther Dyson has less money to roll naked in since she pledged $10k to studey of "at-large outreach".
How this square with
Quote "Lynn (The ICANN CEO) also published a 17,000-word proposal calling for elections to be abolished and to more closely involve national governments"
unquote
is beyond me.

A review of this author's latest book can also be found at:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.09/newrules.h tml

This gave me an idea for protecting my wife's laptop.

I edited the ifup script to e-mail the IP address to me. I want the thief to use the computer for a long period of time, and use it repeatedly, so I can track them. There is an autologin feature available for gdm and kdm, so I enabled it (I didn't know it could be used as a security feature). I also put some familiar looking icons on the desktop so the thief will feel at home and use the machine frequently, and hopefully they will click the big "connect to internet" icon.

Of course, I usually just use this to eject the CD-ROM when my wife is using the computer. I think it's funny, but I think she rolls her eyes. I can't be sure. Maybe a webcam...

TOKYO -- On the streets of Shibuya, Shinjuku and other popular teenage hangout districts in Japan, the days of composing a provocative pick-up line and mustering the courage to utter it smoothly are on their way out. Young lovers are letting Lovegety do the talking for them. It was only a matter of time before the male and female Tamagotchi, toys that hook together to breed kids, would spawn another animal. And this one is at least as popular as its ancestors. "In the two and a half months since the product entered markets, we've already shipped 350,000 Lovegetys. Right now we can't produce enough of them to meet demand," says Takeya Takafuji, executive of Erfolg, the company that manufactures Tamagotchi and Lovegety. Affectionately called the "Lovege," the oval device has three buttons the user sets according to the kind of activity she or he has in mind: "talk," "karaoke," and "get2." (The latter is a wildcard -- but perhaps could mean "get to it.") Once the holder selects a mode, the device searches for Lovegety holders of the opposite sex in a five meter radius. If it locates a holder with the same mode, the "get" light flashes and the device beeps, so the pair can find each other.

wyldchild37 writes "Through all the hype about 802.11b, I haven't seen too many real applications being talked about."

Huh? Yeah, no one's talking about using wireless because EVERYONE'S ALREADY USING IT. Christ, there's an article from 2000 that talks about how popular wireless on college campuses was getting two years ago. These days, it's almost the norm. There've been numerous articles posted to Slashdot about particular colleges using wireless and loving it.

Aside from 802.11b on college campuses, there are plenty of other applications. I hope I don't sound like I'm scolding you or something, it's just that you seem to be a bit out of the loop, which is fine :-)

MONOLINUX :: The Safe-Haven For Linux Power Users

But it fails to mention the "dumb motherfucker" -> George Bush search hit perpetrated by the Hugh Disk site. It helped expose the potential flaw in Google's ranking algorithm.

I'm a bit surprised that when people picked up on this six months later it's considered clever and original.

..in itself, but in practice, there's no way at all something like this will avoid abuse, commerical, governmental, or privately. What's to stop someone with a smartcard writer from creating their own, or modifying someone else's? As well, if they decide on implementing access to banking information, credit cards, what happens if you lose your card and don't notice right away? Someone could pick it up and have full access to all of it. And they could really rack up late charges if they put the library card function on it :) There's also another article on this at wired.com.

It was heard about here in a conference announcement from Marc Garneau and discussed on Slashdot.
And recently, it was pointed out that Canada does have critical exploration technology for drilling for samples.

Wired is also carrying the story.

And even allowing for all that, there is also the small matter of Sony Corporation. The company has already warned the German duo against using its logo and made threatening noises regarding the use of the name if the pair ever wanted to commercialize their product.

Newsforge linked to a Wired article here.

Rep. Howard Coble is one Repubilcan who is against the bill, who was mentioned in this article.

Actuallt, the Republicans ARE leading the charge in the House against this bill. House Cool to Copy Protection.

This story is from 4 March 2002. Not complaining that my submission was rejected then, I probably detracted from the facts too much when I submitted.

Anyway, the information is there, cheers!

Why can't it be both consious and easy? If the burden of typing in a number can be done away with securely then fantastic! I can buy what I want with less trouble and that's good for everyone.

You mean like this?

Audio devices must implement Digital Rights Management

Does this mean hardware support for DRM in sound cards?

This means implementing SAP (SECURE AUDIO PATH). Not only must the hardware contain DRM, but the software must be approved and signed by Microsoft. If the driver is not signed it won't work. Read this Wired article explaining SAP. Wired: "SAP adds 'static' interference to media files that require video and audio cards to authenticate themselves with Windows software before they can be played."

What happens when you take your pefectly good sound card out of your Win98 500mhz system and stick it in your shiny new XP 2000mhz system?

You can't play your windows media player files.

Why? Two reasons.

Number one) It is your sound card that is incompatible. Therefore it is not Microsoft's fault. Blame the sound card manufacturer.

Number two) You are a Pirate. Therefore it is not Microsoft's fault. It is your fault for being a Pirate.

It's just another case of Microsoft leveraging it's operating system monopoly to enforce a new DigitalRightsManagementSystem monopoly. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to see here, please move along...

-

From Wired, a judge has refused to dismiss the case against Streamcast,Kazaa, and Grokster...looks like Morpheous got out just in time. Kazaa probably did them a big favor by sending em to Gnutella (and further weakened Kazaa's own case in this lawsuit to boot)

Jury to Hear File-Trading Case

--jordan

If the courts find that the U.S. can hold foreign companies to US copyright law because they transact over the net, the ramifications go much father than just businesses. This means that China (under US interpretation of law) can hold the Founder of FaLun Gong guilty of breaking their intellectual property laws. The average person won't be able to buy controversial items (such as satanic verses, hitler's smoking jacket, DVD's of any kind) because of the expense involved in maintaining dozens of country / locality / product type blacklists as well as location verification. In short (and probably in redundant) this will dumb down the net to the LCD. Basic Yahoo vs. France stuff.

Of course, it would be a shame if this were the case to set a prescedent, as many articles have pointed out that Elcomsoft ran a server out of Chicago, communicated with US customers in english, and was quite aware of the law. Yes, this is why their approach is so novel: they are arguing that the infrastructure of the net on the US soil is not under US law. Novelty is no substitute for intellectual prowess. They really haven't a snowball's chance with that line of legal reasoning any more than an indian tribe who asserts sovereginity and tries to grow hemp. It's that specific that makes it so sad that this case will be applied overly broadly to anything American corporations don't like. We own our net, so QED we own yours.

See this article from the New York Times: Florida Community Can't Shut Down 'Voyeur Dorm' - October 5, 2001; upheld in the Supreme Court as cited in Wired - Court Rejects VoyeurDorm Case, February 25, 2002.

Granted, it's limited to the discussion of zoning laws in a local jurisdiction, but the courts seem to have held that businesses that only conduct commerce on the Internet are not limited by the regulations of the locations in which elements of the business are physically located.

Also, it's a messy can of worms, but they have definitely found that the Internet is a 'place' different from physical space, so the Elcomsoft lawyers have just made the next step.

Gonna be fun to watch!

For example, when a Californian governor-wanna-be spammed his voters (and apparently lots of Canadians), his spam provider routed the spam through a hapless Korean elementary school.

First the spammers polluted usenet, then email, now they're dicking with international relations. What a lovely bunch of lowlifes.

Reuters has an article on this topic as well.

Geez it would help if you people kept up with whats going on, instead of spouting nonsense. For further info read here. Just because you haven't heard anything about it doesn't mean there's nothing to it. Small-minded scientists who reject anything new are a dime a dozen.

And for further evidence perhaps you'd like to check out this book, which is supported by Arthur C. Clarke entitled "Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed."

In addition to this there's an article on Wired about Cold Fusion here.

Then perhaps you'd like to read about how MIT devised a fraudulent experiment to discredit Cold Fusion here.

So you'd rather trust your personal data to Sun who's CEO said "Privacy is a myth, get over it".

ROFLMAO.

Sen. Sam Brownback ( R-Kansas) echoed McCain's misgivings. "While I do believe government has a role to play in the development of a converged digital environment, I would be extremely hesitant regarding any proposal for government to mandate copy-protection technology."

Brownback said he was "comfortable on relying on existing law to address copy protection issues raised by the onset of digital convergence and the use of content by law abiding consumers in their own homes."

Disney is ingenious. According to this Wired article (I believe another Slashdotter got to this before I did), they're also beginning to manipulate their television programs so that they include anti-piracy messages.

"If we can't stop the current generation from benefitting from fair use, we can certainly instill 'revenue increasing morals' on those generations to come!" It's a bit ironic considering that Disney is notorious for plagiarizing a superior artist's work and releasing it as their own.

I can only imagine the army of influenced five year olds uninstalling their older brother's copy of [Napster|Grokster|Kazaa|Morpheus|WinMX]. "But Rob, Goofy said that it was bad not to purchase a RIAA licensed copy of that CD!" "Garsh," Disney sucks.

According to this story at Wired, Xybernaut's Mobile Assistant® V product will be used at COMDEX Chicago by the event staff to reduce queues. I could envision two different ways that slashdotters could protest. If they are actually going to attend, they could wear something that states their position about the company and its practices. If they are not going to attend, but live in or near Chicago (big place, should be a few around somewhere), they could do the usual protest thing on public property at the border of the convention (I'm sure the COMDEX people would never allow them in the convention area).

in one article i read about this said that white hatters were blaming script kiddies. They said it was very easy for them to get credit card info from AOL's customer service reps and then duplicate what was happening to these people. See Wired article on this topic.

The problem does go back to AOL, but it's not a software problem like many would be quick to accuse. If it was a software glitch, a *lot* more than 100 people would be victimized by this, it would be more in the thousands. The problem taht AOL has is keeping their customer service reps happy enough to not give out customer info.

If anyone is thinking of making a campaign contribution, you might want to look at whoever runs against Ted Stevens in his November 2002 senate reelection in Alaska, for the following reasons.

While most Replublicans seem skeptical of SSSCA, Ted Stevens cosponsored it. Without Stevens' support, this kind of bill will seem much more partisan, reducing its chances unless the democrats manage to get control of both houses of congress and the white house.

Alaska has a small population, so a little money should go a long way in an election. Stevens has $1.5 million, including PAC contributions, an amount within the fund raising capabilities of a bunch of slashdot's wealthier nerds, less than half of the 1996 national average of $3.6 million. Also, Stevens might not get critical support from his fellow Republicans if he finds himself in need, as he has embarassed his party with his pork barrel politics, netting Alaskans $766 per capita of federal money (making the state #1 in this category), in comparison to the national average of $25.52, as calculated here. By the way, I'm not trying to pick on a Republican. It's just that the Democratic sponsor of the bill, Fritz Hollings, does not run for reelection until 2004.

Please note that I really have not done much research on this. Other more researched specific suggestions are welcome.

As a professional in the field, I feel qualified to say that everything that comes from the Mouth of Raskin should be consumed with a liberal serving of NaCl. The field of HCI moves as fast (some would even say faster) than the technology it works with. Anyone whose major claims to fame are the original Macintosh (~18 years old) and the Canon Cat (~15 years old) is only showing his distance from the bleeding edge.

During the summer of 2001 I was unfortunate enough to attend a Humane Interface workshop led by Mr. Raskin. The day long session served only to show how out of touch he truly has become, acting more as a soapbox for venting about his importance to the HCI world than as a platform for teaching. He frequently contradicted his own book (a copy was provided for each table), strayed from his own agenda which he had liberally changed from the published one, and told un-interesting stories about his major innovations from fifteen years ago. The only worthwhile part of the day was to hear the one-mouse-button justification from the mouth of the man who originally created it. A significant number of attendees (myself included) asked for and were granted a full refund of the CDN$150 fee due to the poor quality of the session.

Anyone hear about Micsosofts plans with XP SP1?
I just thought you all would like to know but what are the odd of getting Taco to post such info to the main page? What about Morpheus being down meaning it's not actually even real p2p debunking nearly their entire defence strategy? I guess it's only posted if it's good news for the open source linux hippies in the world. /. is yellow journalism for unrealistic open source hippies.

Let's hope Mr. Jones doesn't set a precedent. The next article at Wired talked about how the Catholic church sees the Internet as a great opportunity for evangelism:

Foley also quotes the Pope as saying, "Consider ... the positive capacities of the Internet to carry religious information and teaching beyond all barriers and frontiers. Such a wide audience would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of those who preached the Gospel before us.... Catholics should not be afraid to throw open the doors of social communications to Christ, so that his good news may be heard from the housetops of the world."

I can see it now, hundreds of "Get Eternal Life FAST" and "Jesus and his horny college teen friends want to see you in church" from HotPope@blasphemy.nu all sent via open Korean servers. Sigh.

Look at the first and second stories on this Wired story.

Bwahahahahahaha!!!!

Feel the burn babeeee!!!

Anyhoo, it's been interesting I suppose. But I guess concentrated zealotry, st00pid "editorial work", JonKatz and overall high suck factor will only take you so far. Count me along with the zillions of trolls and flamers that will leave this pace in droves. In any case, /. is nothing more than a big collection of links to other sites that have... wait... Ads! Hehehe.

In passing, I'd like to say I cannot freaking believe that anyone would even contemplate charging for this. I mean, sure. It's funny sometimes. Informative once in a while. But absolutely not worth it, not by far. Not even if you guys all leave, OSDN hires two amateur bloggers and then puts up one of those "Under New Management!!!1!!" signs on the front page. Nope, not a chance in hell I would ever pay for Slashdot.

Oh, and not only that - since ya'll have been giving away the code, ya'll can now expect 1,000 little Slashdots to pop up all over the Internet. Here's to giving away the crown jewels! Really mad #props for that!!!

So it was indeed karma (the bad variety) that eventually took this place down.

But - I'd like to propose a toast. Raise your glasses along with me.

Here's to the howling masses, demanding everything be free because they deserve it for some strange cosmic reason. Here's to all the open source "geeks", punks and 1337 h4xx0rz that think the most important thing in the world is to have a kewl mod case, 20 /. karma points and be able to compile a kernel. Here's to companies run by people who don't have a goddamn clue of how to run a business. Here's to all the times I saw an interesting thought being censored and sent to the troll bin because it gave a different point of view than all the kiddies and weirdos with mod points to burn. Here's to the ending of the "dream". Here's #props to ESR saying that "cheap PCs will kill Windows" while the "free software and beer and everything else has to be free" "movement" is slowly killing itself without help from anyone else.

So long live... whatever.

You may now start wasting mod points on me. Ta-ta!

Why did you stop reading wired.com? Their ad's aren't that annoying. Especially if you view via the correct URL. (http://www.wired.com/news/nc_index.html)