Slashdot Mirror
Media On MS Asking Slashdot To Remove Comments
The mainstream media has followed yesterday's story about
Microsoft Asking Slashdot to Remove Comments
with several stories. These include one from
The Washington Post,
Salon,
news.com
Wired, and
Linux Journal.
Finally, After Y2k has a comic (important, pecs shown in pixels may be larger than those in real life).
With all that free advertising they're getting, their stock should go through the roof ...
The ramifications of this are more far reaching than /. later
<//-------------//> /. but you can tell it was designed by programmers..."
"I like
I see that upper management and the lawyers probably did get together
Which would make for an interesting discovery part of any legal battle, I can see the headlines now "Smoking gun email shows more Microsoft monopolisation", time to start a new DOJ case against M$, if they can they prosecute them again while an appeal is happening for the other case.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Oh, and IANAL, and my apologies if someone's posted this idea already. I don't have time to read everything, but I just had to get this idea out. /. should do, you have been moded up to 5 and I didnt get a single mod point, I shall now go and be paranoid :)
I posted the same idea on the first of the threads regarding what
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Maybe we are getting into a semantical issue here. If you can sign away your right to damages and you can sign away all express and implied warrenties and you hold the vendor blameless even if they knew about the problem when you bought the product, you have effectively signed away your right to sue.
By signing away express and implied warrenties, you have signed away any grounds for suing. By signing away damages, there is no point in suing since the court can only grant damages in a civil case.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
Mod #101 up please cause I'm really interested in reading some answers...
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Of course it's also very likely that Time, which is owned by Time/Warner (soon to be owned by AOL, which will be one of the only 5 companies on the planet by 2012 at the rate we're going) has an interest in portraying Napster in a negative light: Time/Warner is one of the Big 5 record labels.
(Who, you'll remember, just settled with the FTC over illegally fixing the prices of CDs too high. So they are not inspiring confidence in me just now)
I don't believe that objective reporting is common. I *really* don't believe that it's possible for media that contain 3rd party ads or who are not independently owned 99.44% of the time
So I don't really trust Time to fairly report on Napster at all. Traditional or not.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Re: "Fast forward is *occasionally* worth reading"
:)
Now that's a quote to put on the resume. I think...
(Actually, I'm just bitter that John jumped into this thread before me. Don't you have work to do here?
Rob Pegoraro, Consumer Technology Editor
Another online article. This one by some Mac folk. http://lowendmac.net/musings/kerberos.html
-- V was its Victim who cried out "But why?" --
I see your point, but this isn't about where you get the information from; it's about making sure people agree to a licence agreement before being allowed to view the document. Yes, the information is free one way or the other, but Microsoft wants people to agree to their licence first.
This is why Microsoft is invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in this case. If I recall correctly, the DMCA says that you can't circumvent any mechanism that controls access to copyrighted information or a copyrighted work. I don't agree with that, but that's what the law says. The executable program that you must download and run controls access to the Kerberos document.
Do note, however, that the DMCA does make an exception to that rule for purposes of compatibility. So if Microsoft did not provide Macintosh or Linux versions of the program to view the Kerberos specification, we could argue that those messages on Slashdot that describe how to view the document without going thru the program are there to make the Kerberos specification accessible to Macintosh or Linux users. However, the fact that this also allows people to bypass the licence agreement might create a problem.
I think it depends on the industry. Case-in-point; my C++ instructor was a Ski Patrol type at Copper Mountain (a Colorado ski resort) and once in an irrelevant aside told us how, at any given time, every major ski resort is fighting at least a dozen different lawsuits brought on by people who hit a tree in some out-of-bounds area, in spite of EULA type gibberish on the back of every ski pass (and the off-limits signs, and the rope or fence they had to jump over, and the innate danger in a sport that involves strapping one or more slabs of wood/plastic to one's feet then sliding rapidly down a hill). But ski resorts have deep pockets and history shows that they can survive these legal tussles, no matter how idiotic. Whereas, the software industry is new enough (and profitable enough) that lawmakers are taking a "don't kill the golden goose" approach and passing stunningly bad laws to "protect" an industry that, IMHO, needs to be shaken up instead (as in "Bad code! No biscuit!" instead of "Bad code! Too bad I clicked through the EULA.").
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
We've heard from Slashdot's readers, and we've heard from the press. I want to know how Microsoft's own employees feel about the ongoing Kerberos battle (not just the attack against Slashdot).
Upper management doesn't always reflect my opinions, and legal *absolutely* doesn't. Of course I can speak only for myself, but frankly I don't think your characterization of this Kerberos issue is at all correct.
I know a few people in the Win2k team, but I've never worked there myself. Of course their aim is to become the premier backend server, but honestly they don't think they *have* to fight dirty in order to achieve that. And I agree. Win2k really *is*, in my opinion, a far superior product. Hell, if I didn't think that about most of our products, why would I work here at all?
I know none of you have any trust left when it comes to MS. Sometimes your suspicions are just, but often I find that people's suspicions are based upon a weak foundation of reiterated rumours and second-hand false characterizations. For people who already believe (despite evidence) that NSAKEY is a government plant, that FrontPage Extensions has a "weenies" backdoor (it's actually a bad attempt at encryption), that Win2k has 65000 real bugs, and so on, the slightest hint that MS is up to dirty tricks with Kerberos is enough to convince them.
Personally, when the NT team tells me that their implementation is interoperable with MIT's reference implementation, when they tell me that they have managed to get interoperability in mixed environments, and when they assure me that this was a bad PR move rather than a malicious plot to kill Samba, I believe them. I work on the inside and when I weigh the truthfulness of the people I work with against the eagerness of Slashdot to inflame passions against us, I'm inclined to side with MS.
Now, don't get the impression I always agree with the company. Many times I don't, and I've almost been fired for being a little too rude in expressing my difference of opinion. But in this case, I'm going to side with the people who think the Samba team is paranoid and the slashdot crowd is attacking when it should be pausing for reflection.
Now, as to the legal thing: dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But only because it obviously is terrible PR, not because I think they're wrong. If I could have my way, the proprietary extensions (it wasn't the entire Kerb spec, if you actually read the doc - just the extension struct) would have been published without a legalese watermark and click-thru, but I can't have my way, and the fact is that those comments did infringe MS property rights.
Would you all be happier if MS had never published the extensions at all? Perhaps you would, because then you could reverse engineer without contamination. But while you see this release as a deliberate ploy to kill Samba, I see it as a stupid move by legal, and I, unlike some, am equipped with the capacity to forgive stupid people for their stupidity.
So, basically, my answer is: I don't agree with you. If I did agree, would I be out the door? Maybe. But most likely, I will stay at MS until I am convinced their products are no longer the best. And with our current lineup and the project I am working on, I don't see that happening for a long time.
yours,
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
You can sign away your right to sue. From what I understand, if you pay more money, you can sue for more money. (if you are poor, a rich guy is drunk and hits you, sorry, you didn't pay the higher premium!)
Oh!... the one with the innovative DoubleSpace?.. Hmm.. BTW... Was dblspace the original name or the one they gave it after being sued?
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Let's say that MS wins against /. (yeah, right). But, just for a minute, pretend that they do. All that is needed is for a good programmer to write an article discussing the code.
Remember the Halloween documents? Microsoft did nothing because of the "fair use" clause in copyright law. All that is needed is an article that "discusses" the code, and MS has NO defense.
As long as there is enough "discussion" of the code (probably a 3:1 margin of discussion vs. code), any action by MS would get QUICKLY thrown out of court.
For this to be completely bulletproof, however, it would have to be written by someone in a country that has different copyright laws, and Eulas don't apply. Once written, the article can be GPL'd, and copied ANYWHERE in the world.
Enjoy,
-Mark
Not true. Some of the posts they objected to did contain the verbatim text, and most users had no problem with Slashdot taking down those particular posts.
However, they did not stop there. They also wanted posts that had links to the text. This is a gray area with, to quote Al Gore, "no controlling legal authority".
Plus, Microsoft also wanted Slashdot to delete posts that observed the FACT that if you use pkunzip to unzip the file, you do not see licensing agreement.
The last is definately a Free Speech issue and has nothing to do with copyright protection.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
Poor, poor Microsoft. Being picked on by open-source bullies. Poor, poor Microsoft.
Any comments by anyone really in the know? It was inaccessible for about 2 hours in the morning and about 3 in the afternoon.
--
So now /. have their first hostile witness for the defence, Jim Cullinan of M$, put him on the stand and show M$ are trying to have it both ways, that amount of obvious hypocracy on M$ part will show how utterly shallow and zapid they really are, I doubt the jury hearing the case could never side with them after that, you may have just won the case for /. well done that AC :)
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
It's interesting that the online media are much more favourable to Slashdot than the print media. That's just an observation, so it could prove wrong still. Please post links to any other stories you see on this (or summaries of stories by print only media), and maybe we can draw some conclusions.
What a brilliant analogy!
.exe can be opened without even seeing the click-through, which shouldn't have come as a suprise to the MS technical experts, their legal restrictions can't seriously be considered to have been a precondition to viewing the document.
Incidentally, the point above about the document only being copyrighted if it is qouted verbatim and a reworded analysis of it being entirely "fair use" would certainly hold true of UK copyright law.
That said, Slashdot should leave the posts in place since a "trade secret" that is available to anyone who chooses to read it is just nonsense.
Also, since the
The fact that MS want posts which explain how to use winzip to be removed too has to be the most ridiculous part of all this.
A thing can be a secret, or it can be freely available on ther internet, it can't be both.
Rewrite kerberos, in a way thet win2000 can't access it. That will teach them.....not.
I know. I've been on the Freenet mailing list since the Slashdot inteview :).
Not a typewriter
New fight upon open source: Microsoft vs. Slashdot
http://lenta.ru/internet/2000/05/12/ms/
The line must be drawn somewhere and there's no one better to do it than Slashdot. After all, if Slashdot, the most vehement supporter of free speech on the net, doesn't stand up to them how could you expect anyone else to?
Surely this is the golden moment we've all waited for for years? M$ has made a huge legal blunder in front of a target too big and too well supported, and just too damned annoyed, to back down, and while they're on the ropes from the DoJ too.
Wipe them out now, don't wait for break-up, just kill the bastards now. Put every amoral SOB who ever took the M$ shilling on welfare. Take the company assets and burn them. Plough the M$ HQ building into the ground and sow the ground with salt. Deny bread, water and salt to Gates and the scum who serve him. Break his glasses and pitch his wife and children into the street. Burn his filthy house to the ground and give his money to the Red Cross.
Make an example of Gates for all those who see him as a "business genius". Show the world that people can only be pushed so far in the name of one man's greed.
Hang his bloodless body heel-first from a lamp post to show children what happens when you live by stealing other people's work and speak only lies and deceit.
Your country is supposed to be based on "Government by the people, for the people"; show that is has not irreversibly become "Government by the rich, for the rich".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Washington Post:
The site is, in no small part, an online clubhouse for Microsoft haters; news items about the firm are accompanied by a small picture of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates as a Borg, one of the human-machine chimeras from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" who say, "Resistance is futile -- you will be assimilated."
The Washington Post makes me sick with their pro-MS slant to everything, and their tech writers in their business section are -horrible-. Fast forward is *occasionally* worth reading, but that's it. Thank god they really only run tech stuff once a week..
That got me to thinking this morning as I bought my paper.. wouldn't it be cool to have a print version of what's going on/what had happened in the web the previous day? I would certainly plunk down a quarter to get some slashdot headlines, the register headlines, some article blurbs, security stuff, recent security holes, penny-arcade, sluggy, and friend bear on the comics page, some 20 page editorials by Jon Katz :)..
I find print format a lot more friendly to read for longer periods, and it's nice to have something to read on the metro (not all of us have laptops, and even if I did, the paper is a more efficent way of reading all this I think.)
BilldaCat
You rabid Slashdotters gotta be careful. MS is in the right on this when they ask that copyrighted material be removed. If you make a big stink about that particular point, you're gonna lose, and that publicly. You might still help The Cause (that of bringing MS to heel) through sheer publicity, but you also run the risk of being viewed as anarchists for opposing the use of copyright law. In case it's slipped your mind: anarchists are not generally appreciated by the mainstream (by which I mean the vast majority of MS's users).
That's a good question. That seems like the kind of news that would get reported here. I wonder how many story submissions there are that read
Wired reports that popular tech news site Slashdot was hit with a DDOS attack...
Here's the quote from Wired (don't worry, I didn't circumvent any EULA to get it)
"About 400 readers weighed in over the first 30 minutes. Then we got hit by a DDOS," wrote Slashdot founder Rob Malda in email to Wired News.
There's news for ya! Wired scoops Slashdot... with Rob's help...
Hopefully we'll here more about this when Andover's had time to investigate and give us a full story.
- StaticLimit
Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins and gets exclusive IP rights to Kerberos and the Justice Department feels so sorry that it decides not to break them up after all Slashdot... um... breaks even.
Because it's clear that the public is on our side now. These articles are not presenting Microsoft in a favorable light. They are giving a good accounting of open source, explaining what MS did, and citing third-party lawyers who mostly seem to agree with us.
If this becomes a trial situation, what we're going to have isn't a lawsuit against Slashdot, but an honest-to-god test case. And with a test case like this comes public support, angry letters, and the ACLU and their army of mutant squirrels. It would be the best thing we could hope for if one of the first cases prosecuted under DMCA were something well-known and obviously unjust. As long as there's not some kind of backlash in the next few days, I think the long-term outlook is quite lovely.
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Somebody with moderator points, go back there and give this guy some karma! :)
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
Here's a thought. Can the Kerberos group sue MS to prevent them from using the Kerberos name? Sun did the same with Java when MS "embraced and extended" Java.
Probably depends on the way Kerberos is licensed.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Way back when, Public Domain was the legally correct term to denote free software. Along comes a lawyer who some people think should be put against the wall, and poof: asserting copyright became a necessity.
Along comes Richard Stallman, and the GPL, and all of a sudden the term "free" takes on an entirely new meaning. Whichever side of the divide you're on, the consequences baffled coders and legal experts alike.
Sun's real problem with Java has been with openness: applying patches from the field, providing easy access to the good bits, and allowing less than perfect ports out. As it stands, I'm using kaffe to much greater effect than Java, because of Sun's stoopid handling of the issues.
There are no easy answers.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence
All of the people at Microsoft I know share a sentiment common to all hackers: that incompetent lawyers, marketers, managers and coders should be kicked out. Feet first if necessary.
Especially in Microsoft, which has been under siege ever since reaching market dominance, it is very frustrating to contribute good work, only to see it being burned into a jumble of cinders by the above mentioned.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Bill Gates can lick my nuts...
But thinking more about the suggestion, I've come to the conculsion that Microsoft has earned the image through its own actions - why would someone have come up with the analaoy otherwise? In the networked age a company has to take responsibility for it's own actions, and will ultimately be forced to do so. If a car company gets a reputation for making cheap cars that break down, it's almost certainly because they make cheap cars that break down. If the company wants to change their image, they've gotta make good cars. If Microsoft wants to lose the Borg image, they'll have to stop acting like the Borg.
The ZDNet comparison doesn't work for me either. ZDNet is a "traditional media company" that does little more than report sterile facts (a useful and needed role to be sure.) Slashdot is different - it's a community of individuals, expressing their individual and collective feelings and opinions.
So here's the billion-dollar question for Microsoft: What has greater influence over a company's success in the networked era? Sterile "facts" about its products and services, or the persona it chooses to adopt in the community it serves?
How about just the opposite? The kerberos crowd and propose and implement an open extension which will use the same resource space as the proprietary win2k extension.
It might seem pretty stupid that in the midst of the anti-trust decision that Microsoft is doing things like hounding slashdot, but in fact, I think Bill gates wants microsoft broken up. Why do you think that Microsoft has really acted up in the last several months with the "netscape engineers are weenies" thing. The stockholders certainly wouldn't let Microsoft split itself up on its own after all the money the company made them. However, if Bill Gates rams Microsoft into the justice department, he can accomplish the breakup without have to deal with the stockholders or board of directors. Isn't it interesting that he stepped down from his top position and into the "new technology" position? Once Bill rams Microsoft into the justice department, he'll be able to get what he sees as the profitable piece, the X-box internet appliance. After years of Microsoft being threatened by internet appliances, Bill Gates can finally get broken off into his own little division (along with a good chunk of resources that his former company)
that specializes in that area. And if he is able to get X-box and the application devision broken off into a single company, he can have X-box appliances that run MS office, possibly from an MS Office ASP. Give the user a console with a basic W2000 kernel, and and them charge them subscriptions to microsoft applications that work over the web. Long ago Bill found out it was the appications that actually make the money, and with the X box, he would be taking that to the extreme.
what i can't wait to see is a security analysis of kerberos, even if it does break the license. you are allowed to discuss it with other people that have seen the license so there's a work around. but i would really love to see what someone like scheiner has to say about it.
--
J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
Ejercisio Perfecto: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!
--
And Justice for None
Not in the context we're talking about here, because somebody (f'rinstance Microsoft) suing Slashdot would not be suing for damages incurred by Slashdot's negligence or anything like that, but instead for Slashdot's putative copyright infringement. Therefore, signing away the right to damages wouldn't save our beloved /.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
It was mentioned on Wired that you suffered from a DDOS yesterday - do you have any more information about this yet?
~P
I agree that Katz is out of line wrt his book, while the WP is not. HOWEVER, the comments are not Public Domain. Nothing, for better or worse, is p.d. unless the author explicitly says so - which is generally not the case on /. - or the copyright expires, which could be as soon as 2070 IIRC.
But this doesn't mean that it's good that the comments and lots of other content, are copyrighted at all, much less for such long lengths of time.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
With all that free advertising they're getting, their stock should go through the roof ..
... ok, I guess it is time to buy /. shares if MSFT is suing.
Actually, the market is risk averse. Negative publicity and the implicit potential for costs related to a lawsuit usually drive a stock down. Of course, if you believe in the net effect of increased revenues and further growth, this would make it attractive to a long term investor.
Hmm
Will in Seattle
too bad you couldn't have put him in front of a Mac. Or an Ultra Sparc.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I mean, with all these virii going around, there's no way I ever open a self-extracting file without scanning it and ignoring anything that isn't supposed to be there.
Isn't that what we're supposed to do?
Will in Seattle
By that same reasoning, then, it should also be illegal to a) rob banks, b) explain to other people how to rob banks, and c) produce tools (e.g. masks and guns) that allow others to rob banks. Seems to be a lot of movie and television producers, clothing manufacters, and gun makers are in deep kimchee if this is true... I say we slap an injunction on the corporate officers of Victoria's Secret, since the stocking they produce may be used in a crime!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If Slashdot is serious about holding an intelligent discussion of MS buisness practices, lose the Borg image. It's old, petty and no more mature that the legal papers MS served Slashdot with. When ZDNet posts a story about Slashdot on its website, it does not do so with an image of Lenin super-imposed over the Slashdot logo.
This is almost a big time story.
But it's not realy there until the National Enquirer picks it up.
If only we could prove that that Fillipino college dropout was covertly a Microsoft employee.
And why is it that it's the Phillipine Islands, but people who live there are Fillipinos? Why aren't they Phillipinos? Why aren't people from Canada Terrance-inos?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I like how other media's seem to start to realize that /. is on the front lines! Take that WIERD er... WIRED... ummm.. and ummm... I would like renew my subscription to wired... thanks... when's slashdot going to have a printed magazine that I can read on the throne?!? Well... hmmm webpads can't come soon enough...
Heh heh, "on online clubhouse for Microsoft haters". It's interesting to see what spin the mainstream media ("an online clubhouse for Microsoft lackeys?") attempt to put on this issue. Of course, Salon and Wired are necessarily kinder in their reviews. (Salon actually has some real, decent quotes! Yay!)
.EXE file format)? Ooo, sue us under the DMCA, I'd love to see that get struck down because of you...
"Open source postings"? Hmm, that's an idea.
This post is released under the LGPL. By replying to this post, you are giving me the right to modify and incorporate your replies into my later posts. As this is the LGPL, you can "link" to this thread for any use. You can find this thread on Slashdot; gosh, I hope they keep it available for three years...
"Slashdot readers improperly posted specifications for the Windows 2000 operating system"?? What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? W2K is *way* too big for that. I guess technically they're adding their Kerberos stuff to W2K, but that's just some confusion there.
At least the news.com article got the facts right on the "trade secret" issue. Their lawyers are far superior than their technical people, apparently...
Hey, Microsoft, if your program is in an ".EXE" file, and I have to run Wine to run it, is that reverse engineering? Are we circumventing a protection device (the
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
As I understand it, MS's reasoning is that under the new law, it's illegal to a) circumvent the licence, b) explain how to circumvent the licence, and c) produce software ('tools') that allow others to circumvent the licence.
Focusing on point (c) for a moment: Does this mean that as soon as this licencing agreement was written, WinZip (and other zip extraction tools that can bypass the licencing acceptance code) suddenly became illegal?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
None of the staff seem to be admitting otherwise, they probably can't confirm or deny for legal reasons.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As I posted in the previous thread, SlashDot should take this to the MS antitrust team at the Department of Justice. It shows MS continuing to violate the law, and if the judge is told of it, may result in a more severe penalty.
The fact that the WP and other media have picked this up should make the DoJ (and the Judge in turn) more receptive to SlashDot's complaint. But there's little time since AFAIK the DoJ punishment brief is due soon!
The Fishman case, IIRC.
Pretty much an issue of republication of freely distributed content. Again, IIRC.
The KKK had a somewhat similar run in, inserting fliers into a free hardcopy newspaper. I dont recall the results
Didn't Winamp have the same sort of problems a few versions back? They had to release a new version of the WMA plugin in a 0.01 version, just so you couldn't use it with the Disk Writer plugin, because MS threatened/complained at them.
I sure hope all of this greatly influcing the DOJs dession on breaking up MS. I hope the rest of the world starts waking up to MSs crap and takes action. Its just a matter of time .... First they ignore Then the laugh at you Then they fight you Then you win! ( I forget who thats by )
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Not at all, since the DMCIA says " [...] devices SPECIFICALLY to circumvent copy-protection"...
--
Here's my mirror
Wouldn't be suprised if Voltaire said something like that, but Diderot definetly said the quote I attributed to him...he believed that all monarchs and priests must be destroyed...
The only good thing the Slashdot community got was that in the original e-mail, the lawyer referred to "BlueUnderwear" twice, and "anonymous Coward" Several times. Thanks BLueUnderwear!, but to bad your name wasn't Mr.Bills Microdick or Something.
BTW, if any of You Microsoft Scum are reading this, I hope you are punished after death for helping THe Microsoft Machine take over!
Way ahead of ya.. and remember.. changing your sigline on slashdot is retroactive.
How we know is more important than what we know.
GPL GPL GPL.. yada yada yada.. listen up, this is not about RMS.. this is about the supression of humanity with laws that were invented to ensure that everyone has access to works of art. If you want to look for a masiah, look to the Grateful Dead who has predicted this event nearly 20 years ago.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I run linux. Is there any way for me to unzip this file?
I loved it. I think it's going in my .sig.
Very amusing... the banner ad for The Register's article that I read was a M$ banner. Ironic.
Anyway, I think everyone should take a closer look at the Register's article. It doesn't only give an account of what is going on, but it gives legal insight into what a possible legal battle between M$ and Andover could be.
--- Quote from The Register's article ----
Slashdot could alternatively argue that the reverse engineering for interoperability and security testing provisions of the DMCA justifies what has happened, because making it possible for developers to improve interoperability and for Microsoft's Kerberos security provisions to be tested.
-------------------------------------------
I find this very interesting. This would make for a good argument. This holds true as long as no copyrights are infringed, as far as the DMCA is concerned (The article goes into more depth with this.) No copyrights were infringed in this case. The only thing that happened was information was made available. That isn't a copyright violation, is it?
I can see how censoring the articles on how to circumvent security would be a violation of free speech. But if someone posts code of M$'s, isn't that a copyright violation? Assuming it's this bullsh!t "trade secret" code, then no, that's not a violation. As said here before, once a trade secret is made public, it's public domain. A company must try to secure it's trade secret, which M$ did not do. But if it's copywritten code, and someone posts it, is that a copyright violation? Maybe a little off-topic, but something to think about. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe the answer to this is obvious.
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
Move /. offshore.
That's all I have to say about that really.
What saddens me is that a company with so many smart people is collectively acting so foolishly IMO. I started this thread mainly to shed light on that paradox. Microsoft has an enormous opportunity to take a leadership role in the open source community, but there appears to be a very small constituency in the company that is preventing that from happening. Your own comments would suggest that it's a very small constituency indeed!
I would like to respectfully disagree with you, Mr. Cthulhu.
I believe that Kerberos is a fairly strategic technical standard. In short, it is major. Think Echelon, think crypto policy. Data security is information security, it's power. It's actually what this whole fight is about - the abiltiy to control information. If MS-Kerberos becomes the standard, and Microsoft controls it, it could easily become tomorrows NSAKey. To more than just browser transactions. MS must not be allowd to quash the open version of this standard, and then control it's proprietary version, while it becomes the defacto and very likely the dejure standard. When that happens, freedom will be well and truly fucked.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You mean, "It's times like this that I wish I were a better writer"?
They do, it's not common though. I suspect the time difference has more to do with it than any fear of competition.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I agree that the post of the text of the extension spec breaks MS's Trade Secret protection, however MS may have already broken it by publishing. And although I think one should be allowed to quote from the spec, I think that I agree that publishing the whole thing is a copyright violation. However, it's short and there may be a case that meaningful commentary requires the context of the whole thing, so I'll leave that one to the lawyers.
However, I think that you have the extensions issue right. I think that the MS engineers that designed it were using a wrongheaded method for extending Win2k security through Kerberos, in their own windows-centric sort of way, without worrying about Samba. But when I look at the whole standards interaction thing, I see that upper management and the lawyers probably did get together and say something like:
"hey, those standards people have a point. This could make it hard to run workstations without a Windows server. Bonus! Score!"
I agree that the legal thing was a dumb PR move, but again, I think you trust your lawyers too much if you imagine they weren't trying to prevent uncontaminated reverse engineering for interoperability. Heck, I don't even work in the private sector, and we often do things with two agendas -- the "if it flies, fine, but if they give us guff we'll spring the fine print on them" sort of thing. Your boss's boss does more than sign timesheets :-).
In short, although I agree that the inital concept was not to kill Samba, I very much doubt that the Samba-killing agenda didn't enter into the process at a higher level, and that Samba-killing might be behind the selection of the particular technological design that made the final cut, even if the engineer that proposed it didn't start there. Me, I'd have picked a more straightforward way to do it (like printing "Microsoft Kerberos Server Required" right on the box), but if I were a MS exec, I'd try to kill Samba too. It's not that they want to kill Samba or Kerberos, it's that they want to do it by sleight of hand, while promoting a false openness, that rankles.
Gee.. All the /. gang dressed as leathermen ready for action! Who's the hot daddy bear up front? Katz?
"Monopolies cannot come to exist without the assistance of government".
Not true. Monopolies exist when one entity has enough control over a commodity. They do not have to be goverment supported. Also Monopolies in and of themselvs are not bad.
Invalidating the MS copywrites and Patent would mean others would be able to copyrite/patent them. What they should do is make MS no longer persue copyrite/Patent infringment, which would eventually make them Public Domain.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not an Objectivist, and I think this view of monopoly is rather trivial, but.....I think ragnar has a point here.
If you read Microsoft's latest pleadings you see that they argue that their intellectual property should not be taken away from them just because they became dominant in their field. True. But being a monopolist is not in itself illegal--it's only illegal when it is used to restrain competition in certain manners, such as preventing a computer manufacturer from substituting their splash screen for Microsoft's.
Judge Jackson and the DOJ have repeatedly noted that claims to copyright are not sacrosanct and do not override the public's rights to protections against monopoly abuses. For example, in the case of Microsoft attempting to prevent Slashdot posters from distributing Microsoft's copyrighted materials, this is another attempt of a monopolist to illegally use alleged ownership of copyright--and a flawed copyright law in DMCA--to prevent others from making Unix servers into Kerberos domain servers and replacing Windows 2000 boxes.
Copyright is not an absolute right and Judge Jackson would have the authority to devise a remedy that prohibited Microsoft from exercising such complete control over ideas as they try to do now. The DOJ is proposing a "clean room" at Redmond where others could examine code for interoperability and open APIs. But other remedies might be suggested if Microsoft keeps up its current practices. Or, the EU could make Microsoft change its intellectual property practices as a condition of its investigation into Microsoft's attempt to monopolize servers as well as desktops.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
s /Q80/5/20.ASP
Maybe this is old news to some, but I didn't
realize that M$ used UNIX to make their CDs!!
---------- Quote from M$'s homepage ---------
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/article
Disks are duplicated on a variety of industrial strength, quality focused systems. Most of these systems are UNIX-based.
---------------------------------------------
Here M$ admits it:
You don't want any viruses? DON'T USE OUR SOFTWARE!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Chumps....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
I think this has all been a stunt, so the /. people could test there new machines.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Microsoft has no comment at this time," said a Microsoft public relations spokesperson.
Doesn't that tickle you pink! Bwaaahahahahahaha!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
No seriously. As far as I can tell, many european countries have had something like the DMCA for ages. In the Netherlands for example, an ISP is regarded as a publisher, and just as "ordinary" publishers, it's responsible for what it's publishing.
Besides, it wouldn't be censorship. These messages contain copyrighted information, not opinions (at least not the opinions of those who submitted them).
Just my $.2
--
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
Hmm. The Register article is interesting.
:)
Of course Slashdot has editorial control over its content, but...
1) They didn't post this document as a story.
2) Reader's posts are never intentionally deleted. (why attribute to malice what can be more easily blamed on a very strange MySQL configuration?)
3) Just because you *have* editorial control doesn't mean you *use* it. Any ISP can censor their users; AOL does. The trick is not to do it, so you won't be responsible for it...
4) I still haven't figured out how Napster is different here. Waiting for someone to sue Microsoft for their "Network Neighborhood", though, since that's all college kids use it for anyway.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Regards,
January
Now that Microsoft has painted itself into a corner, here's what they can do... release their proprietary Kerberos extensions, and offer them to the standards committee. This way, they can back out of having to sue Slashdot, with all the awkwardness, bad press, and risk that presents, and maybe even earn a few brownie points in the community.
The cost is minimal... they lose a chance to "embrace and extend" a relatively minor technical standard. And the risk is tremendous... if this really does go to court, besides the fact that MS will be painted as jackbooted thugs even by the mainstream press, there is a significant chance that it could lead to a precendent-setting ruling that is not in MS' favor. Simple risk analysis says they should back off.
It'd be nice to see, just once, that Microsoft can learn from its legal mistakes. But more likely, the psychology of paranoia will drive them to even bigger and clumsier mistakes, until the drive to win at all costs destroys Microsoft, as surely as the tragic hero of a Greek drama.
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Of course, you realize that if Slashdot complies, we should be expecting an email from Natalie Portman any day requesting that Slashdot remove all those "hot grits" articles.
Segfault
segfault@bellatlantic.net
well spoken.
i think this may be a good time for people to remember what Thoreau's Civil Disobedience essay is all about.
- jonathan.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
If anyone knows why my post, to which this is a reply, was twice moderated "troll," I'd really appreciate an explanation. "overrated" I could understand and uncomplainingly accept, but "troll" comes as a complete surprise. It would be of great help to me in improving future comments if someone could point out its flaws.
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
-Elendale (awake now...)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
I said the goverment is not necessary for a monopoly, not that monopolies can't use a goverment to maintain status quo. You just need sufficiant force. Whether that be Physical force, market force, or govement protected force. Even an Illusion of force can be enoough in some instances. These tactics are used in some contries around the globe.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Uh, I'm unaquainted with the US judicial system, but isn't the judge supposed to pass judgement based solely on what he has heard in court?
If you're talking about the case I think you're talking about, they didn't sign away their right to sue. They signed away their right to damages. Not the same thing.
My
But, Microsoft doesn't have public relations people: it has public opinion management people. Microsoft has never had any relation with the public (unless you define "relation" in the same way as used in this example: "The larger of the two prisoners had relations with the smaller").
www.eFax.com are spammers
questions that you might be able to answer about the Kerberos
extension.
Did folk at Microsoft talk about how they thought the Kerberos
extensions would be received in either the security/academic
community, or in the developer community? One of Bruce Schneier's
points about the Kerberos extensions is that a changed security
protocol simply doesn't inherit the trust of its parent. Trying to
keep the protocol secret had the predictable-from-the-outside
consequence of losing the already thin trust of the security
community. Did anyone talk about this in Microsoft?
What you say about the internal culture at Microsoft strikes me as
fair and true. I have several colleagues who work at various MS
research labs, and all of them have been very flattering about the
high quality of staff at MS. However a darker side emerges about the
arrogance of the MS world: the long list of protocols broken by MS
owes more to developers within MS simply not being interested in
finding out how things were done by developers outside MS than to
deliberate attempts to undermine standards (though that too has
indubitably happened). Is this unfair? If it is, I think it is quite
appalling.
Warning: nitpick.
You're not supposed to use metaphors and/or similes in classical haiku.
If someone posted a copywrited article from The Washington Post, Wired, Salon or news.com, and the publisher knew about it, he would be obligated to tell you to stop doing that. That is how they defend their copywrite. You can't say that because the article is published in a journal, newspaper, magazine or even the internet, that anyone can duplicate and distribute the copywrited material. That's the law. No problem here.
Microsoft published a document and is utilizing a new law to protect their copywrite on that document -- just like The Washington Post would do.
Was the material copywritable? It is for the courts to decide. New laws need to be tested, refined, changed and sometimes repealed. Its a process. Just like creating software. You think about it, write it, test it, fix it and sometimes throw it away.
You are participating in the process by expressing your opinions and (hopefully) contacting your elected representatives with clear, rational comments about their legislation.
Is Microsoft the good guy or the bad guy here? I don't know yet. But, they are participants in this process just like you are.
This is not something to get emotional about. Enjoy the intellectual challenge. Read and comment. Lets participate in history and have a good time.
The significance of a trade or certification mark is control over branding. Forking the code, extending it, whatever, is allowed, but, as an example, Microsoft cannot call its forked Kerberos "Kerberos", if the trademark-holding authority says that they can't (note that a trademark search at the USPTO's website for "kerberos" produces no hits).
The trick is that the trademark owner can establish his/her own standards for licensing, which can be loose (Linux (TM)), strict (Xerox (TM)), or subject to meeting some standard (Harris Tweed (TM), Underwriters Laboratories (TM)). And if the mark holder wants to change the terms (to head off noncompliant extensions), it's their right to do so.
Licensing terms are an arbitrary decision on the part of the mark holder. The obligation of the markholder, however, is to uphold the mark. Trademarks can be lost -- asprin is one, dixie cups (IIRC) is another. A lawyer friend once had to do research in defending the Hooters (TM) trademark (I kid you not).
What we've seen in the past are modifications to code which wasn't subject to trademark (kerberos), or attempts to regulate ability to modify code directly, rather than certification of compliance (Java). Neither mode works particularly well, as we've seen.
The use of a mark to insure compliance means that someone contemplating a code fork has to weigh the strategic advantages of noncompliant operation with the loss of branding or certified compliance. Likewise, the licensing authority is under pressure to keep terms reasonable enough that a seperate compliance program isn't launched in competition, with more reasonable (or easier to comply with) rules.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
And often, expressing an opinion, thought, or idea that is a response to another one requires the one reguritate, partially or wholly, the target of your response. (As, for example, my quote of your post above.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If i used windows as my os when circumventing the spec, does that mean that in addition to what ever extraction utility i used, windows is illegal? Now of course I could be completely mistaken, but the courts are so happy to interperate things the way that seems flakiest that the irony of the situation should drive them to do this :)
"Arrogance and Stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you." - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5.
Since Microsoft is calling their mess Kerberos, a known open source standard, have they not legally implicitly (even specifically stated that they would, I believe, make them Open Source) agreed that their mods are also Open Source? Also, to use a copyright argument do they not have to show that the Slashdot reader's caused them harm to intellectual property? And, was not Kerberos one of the items legally judged to be used by Microsoft soley as an illegal monopoly tactic to disrupt Open Source standards (I'm not sure about this but I seem to recall it as one of the items in the ruling)? If so, is it not then already been legally proved that their copyright argument is invalid , i.e. their(MS) whole point being to disrupt Open Source, not create a legal intellectual property. In other words, seems like an argument could be made that they have no copyright and this is in fact an illegal monopoly tactic from MS to disrupt competing Open Source products.
Today there are people who think that we can find a peacfull balance with the copyright status quo, even though they can see first-hand the problems caused by intellectual 'property' enforcement. But the scenario with MS along with the conflicts with RIAA and the MPAA are just more proof that there is no reconciliation, and that especially copyrights and patents must be sone away with at all costs. I say at all costs, not because I know what the consequences are, but because consequences of other resulting conflicts like the civil war were far worse and far more evil than ayone ever expected.
it doesnt come up.
It's times like this that I wish I was a better writer.
The thing about our modern, connected world is that the internet, and technology in general empowers us. I mean it REALLY empowers us.
Slashdot... sure.. it's a news site. We slam on Taco and Hemos and whoever else... there are trolls... there are lots of attention-grabbing posts... but in the end.. it is an example of how society has changed.
Taco et-all are my age. We are still fairly young in the grand scheme of things. Technology has empowered this generation, and those to come, to communicate like no other generation in the past. We can communicate en-masse WITHOUT the need to ask our neighbors (governments, etc.) for help.. we can arrange it ourselves. And we DO!
The fact remains... We like technology, we like to learn more and more about technology, and we don't like people telling us we can't.. and we have the technological means to share it. It seems natural!
Sure.. the law says pirating music is illegal, and the law says that exposing MS crap is illegal, I agree that lots of things are illegal.. but that's just the law. Most of us in our generation, agree that the law is out of hand, and too complicated. We also agree that corporations are getting too powerful. We agree that racism is bad. We agree on a great many things, in principle... yet the law prevents us from acting on many of these things. It's a tangled web to unravel. It is very difficult to re-write the law, and the way modern courts work it is even harder. How many people realize that a Jury has the right to declare someone not guilty simply because they don't FEEL that the user should be punished? Seriously.. if a jury feels that the laws themselves are unjust.
Technology gives us the ability to circumvent certain laws.... but it also makes those laws irrelevant. Think 'bout it.
Music... sharing music... we can all debate who stole what from which artist/record label.. but in the end, music can be compressed into an ever smaller amount of data, and the available bandwidth is ever increasing.
The addition of encryption layers like IPSec to the internet will make content sniffing much more difficult for law enforcement.. or for anyone.
If it can be reduced to data, we can move it around. If people think that the way we move DeCSS around in order to not let a court order quash it is hard.. they must think again. What could we do if we REALLY applied our collective geek efforts to the problem? Freenet is a great example. So is gnutella. Both are fundamentally very simple applications.
The world is chaning. People from different cultures talk on the internet. Politics matter less. Laws matter less. Communications matter more.
Not true. The only way a company can *ensure* it's monopoly is to be a government. Even then, it's only ensured until someone with a bigger army comes along.
If a government will not protect it, an entity will never have "enough control over a commodity."
They got hit with a sustained DDOS yesterday.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Coincidence? Hrmph.
...and the one on c|net...hoo hoo hoo ha ha ha hee hee ha ha hee hee...there is a M$ PR person somewhere that just wants to curl up and die.
On the lighter side, I just found the aforementioned Wired article...and the one on ZDNe t
Hang in there, Rob!
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
Hmm...
Jell-O in their eyes
stinging, burning, shades of green
apparently not
(Jell-O is a registered TM of somebody or other.)
I tried to go to this "slashdot.org" place that all these news sites mention this morning, but it's totally slashdoted. Does anybody have a mirror?
--
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
When DeCSS was released and caused the MPAA to get in such an uproar, we grabed the source code and binaries and mirrored it all over the world. Why not do the same here?
All we have to do is grab several formats of these documents, put them in tarballs (or just as is), and set up some places to keep track of the mirrors. This way, it will be near impossible for Microsoft to stop this.
To Microsoft: You can make crappy software. You can overcharge for your software. You can refuse to back it up with bug fixes. But this will /not/ be alowed.
Not a typewriter
Employees of Microsoft, does your company's upper management and legal department speak for YOU? Microsoft is effectively declaring war against open engineering standards and the progress that open standards foster, an openness enjoyed by all other engineering disciplines. How do YOU feel about that?
So, post anonymously if you feel you must, but post and tell us YOUR position! Or are you all to stricken by Redmonditis and your own FUD tactics to let the world know how you feel?
If the brass at Microsoft does not speak for you, let yourself be heard. If you (and all of us) are lucky, the Microsoft "spies" that allegedly lurk on Slashdot might see how their employees feel. And maybe, just maybe, Gates and the rest will hop on board the cluetrain next time it stops in Redmond.
My view: it was a colossal screwup. The (speculative) history of it looks sorta like a train wreck - slow but inevitable.
They've been working on putting kerberos in win2000 for years now. They must have always planned to embrace & extend. However, a brief was about to be filed in the antitrust case about antitrust case regarding their proprietary extensions. Someone got scared and decided they'd better publish, since this was pretty damned blatant and really could be the last straw. But unfortunately their legal boys decided it couldn't hurt to slap on an EULA, call it a trade secret, whatever. Bad idea.I have a theory about this. As I recall, in the
DeCCS case, among other things, there was a claim of "missapropriation" of a "trade secret" that become public through an unrelated third party, and that this claim was sustained as part of the injunction against DeCCS code.
My guess is that this package was put out specifically to "poison" the public pool and provide a legal basis for Microsoft to challenge the kerberos support in Samba. By "publically" placing this information with weak protection, they are looking both to have it become published/known, and looking at the same time to retain it's "status" as a trade secret.
As we know the Samba team is busy working on reverse engineering the kerberos extensions through legitimate means, and this work would likely be successful eventually. By the precidence of the DeCCS actions, Microsoft can now claim that this work was most likely completed as a result of this "trade secret", even if by a distant party, and thereby put a very difficult
and potentially very expensive legal hurdle in front of the Samba group.
Heh, wondered how long before I came aross something like this. Sure, it makes complete sense...
/. just for good measure.
Microsoft knew they would lose in court and face a break up. They figure they can somehow scare all of us into not breaking them up because this would somehow leave us vulnerable to haccker attacks (read the Time intervew? Gates actually said we would get more Melissa and ILOVEYOU type problems is MS were split up). So they launch major DDOS attacks on yahoo and everyone else to get our attention. Then they write and release ILOVEYOU and frame some poor Philipino student. Next they send a letter to the evil, lawbreaking hacker nest that is slashdot, telling them to stop breaking the law by posting their trade secret 'innovations'. Then they DDOS
How will this all end? Bill Gates will go on TV one night to reveal to the world that he has single-handedly uncovered the perps of the now fabled DDOS attacks, and proceeds to show a national audience the face of the depised individual behind the entire Melissa/ILOVEYOU/DDOS/whatever conspiracy...
Rob (CmdrTaco) Malda!
(god that was a stupid rant, but I'm bored)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Pretty much. Basically, these sweepingly broad clauses have been drafted with an eye towards selective enforcement, which is a nice way of saying that only those who can afford to wage protracted war in the courtroom can develop inter-operable software. (Yes, I know there's allegedly an exception for interoperability, but that applies AFAIK only to reverse-engineering; tools which make infringement possible are illegal under the DMCA, period.)
I wouldn't be suprised to see archiving/compression tools like WinZip but w/ "rights-management features" (think SDMI) built into Windoze at some point, followed by a rash of DMCA-derived lawsuits. In their zeal to ensure an eternal gravy-train to holders of "intellectual property" (who happen to be major campaign contributors), Congress may well drive the most innovative (not in the sense MS abuses the term) software development out of this country, killing the proverbial goose. It's already happened with encryption, where the recent changes to our export laws were too little, too late. The industry had already moved off-shore.
Of course, the masses won't take any notice until it's too late; in 1994, I was written off as a kook for my opposition to the DMCA, but then the masses get their information spoon-fed to them by the very same media companies who pushed for the law. Noam Chomsky knows what's up.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
A real lawyer can correct me but as far as I know you can *never* sign away your right to sue, even if you do.
In other words signing a non-suit agreement does not mean you cannot still sue them.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^
Is there any way for me to unzip this file?
The third most portable program in the C world (after Hello World and one implementation of the Kermit protocol) is the Info-ZIP software. You don't need PKWARE or Nico Mak to unzip anymore.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Mmm. Probably a good idea, but not enough to stop Embrace and Extend (Engulf and Devour?)
I'm not an expert student of Microsoft's activities and offenses, but as I understand it, the problem isn't so much that MS variants/extensions don't conform to the established standard, as that they add to the established standard (hence the term "extensions") in proprietary ways. Then, because of Microsoft's well-known dominance of the market, the world at large starts using the larger, extended variant that Microsoft controls, under the assumption that everyone has the software for it ("everyone has Windows, right?") Suddenly, the de facto standard for the net is Microsoft's standard, which nobody else can wiggle into, since they control it.
Actually, Netscape did that a while too (and I remember how much it annoyed me!). They added all those extensions to HTML, and then everyone used them in their web pages, and suddenly you had to use Netscape or you'd miss all that formatting. There are several features now in HTML that started out as Netscape "extensions". It was a naughty thing when Netscape did it, and it's as naughty when Microsoft does it (if not naughtier).
Sorry if the above was a rehash of the obvious for anyone following Microsoft's history, but the point is that regression tests won't help. A regression test generally specifies that the product must conform to the minimum specification, without mandating that it necessarily fail for things that break the specification. That's good design; it allows for graceful degradation in the face of later versions. But it means that a version with "extensions," à la Microsoft's Kerberos or Netscape's HTML, will pass such a test, with flying colors. Of course they support the standard... they just support some more stuff too. So we're back in the same boat.
There may be other ways to accomplish what you're after... maybe the license specifies that you can't add extensions? Sounds like a bad (if not disastrous) idea, and very much Not the Free Software Way. Maybe there's something. But as I understand it, the tests aren't it.
Just who is the guy with the censored mouth in the censorship icon? He kinda looks like Woody Allen, but with even less hair.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
/. is a webzine? I often thought that they were more (and sometimes less) than that.
broadband that fucker!!!
s/cdrom.com/freesoftware.com/; I forgot Walnut Creek/BSDi moved cdrom.com hosted projects to a new domain, freesoftware.com.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The DMCA does declare it illegal to circumvent reasonable copy protection except in very restricted circumstances.
However, to make WinZip (and other similar utilities that can extract files from archives) illegal, the purpose of the software would have to be to defeat copyright protection. I think we can all agree that WinZip, PKZIP/PKUNZIP, GZIP/GUNZIP, tar, etc. have a far wider range of usefulness than "made to defeat copyright protection".
I personally cannot think of another instance where a copyright holder thought that the way to protect copyright was to compress a file.
Its pretty obvious when a company starts using this tactic its really desperate. The Kerberos extensions document license was specifically designed to promote this conflict, it seems.
Microsoft are throwing their weight around the usual bullyboy fashion, but the DOJ surely must be seeing all this.
They're being threaten with all sort of shit and they still act like arseholes.
Hope you MS people are reading this - from now on I'm refusing to recommend any MS product in my work for this. Its bad enough Exchange sucks (when you have to support it) when you get the parent company openly strangling competition.
Any new "NT" boxes I install are gonna be Samba from now on. Im not an open source zealot and I can see the use of open and closed source at times, but man, MS are making me sick to the stomach of this.
Grow up MS, face some competition without being an asshole about it.
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
I still think that the response of honest, good-natured intelligent people should be very simple.
The DMCA was signed into law by a man who is either a fascist, or who is a dupe of other fascists. Multiple White House officials have admitted now that they feel it was a mistake, yet apparently they don't feel bad enough to actually do anything about it.
I don't think we should do anything about it either. Nothing. Nada. Well, maybe one small thing of significance by way of response.
I feel that it should be two fingers raised to the sky in a simple display of peaceful civil disobedience.
...one on each hand.
You must have Java-Script enabled, try this
Isn't it funny how every single time some corporation wants to trample free speech, it trots out a spokesman to say, "This isn't about free speech?"
Noooo... that'd only make it worse. Microsoft would sue slashdot for patent infringement, hey the whole "stupid-eula" thing was their idea first!
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
I would like to propose an ammendment to that. Courts might frown on totally exclusionary clauses but Slashdot could sell -licences- to sue, thus making it non-exclusionary, and providing an extra source of income. Slashdot could then patent the process of suing without a licence. Anyone who sued them (without a licence) would then be in violation of the EULA and the patent. And anyone who -did- have a licence will have paid enough to cover costs, any penalties, pay for the period, and a luxury cruiser.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I hope I'm being redundant, the post-comment page needed 10 minutes to load, but I have to post that.d ll?action=get_message&ID_Community=Compute rsAndTheInternet&ID_Message=149&LastModified=95804 6877000
Sorry, no link so try to past it:
http://content.communities.msn.com/isapi/fetch.
Guess what it is.
Censorship is restriction of the freedom of expression of peoples opinions, thoughts and ideas.
The posts Microsoft is objecting to do not contain any original opinions, thoughts or ideas , but rather a regurgitation of copyrighted material. It might suit your purpose of demonizing Microsoft to pretend this is an issue of Microsoft attempting to censor comments but when you get your head out of your ass you will realize that the only people you have fooled are the others who have their heads similarly up their asses.
Mmmm.. Donuts
This is a _damn_ funny solution, but probably a pain in the neck.
"Monopolies cannot come to exist without the assistance of government".
I think, in this case, it relates to absurdly overbearing patent and copyright protection.
Instead of breaking it up into smaller versions of itself that may each continue to act like the parent, why not take away the weapon that allowed them to get into the dominant position?
As punishment for being found guilty of unfair monopolistic business practices, the US government should permanently invalidate all copyrights and patents held by Microsoft.
Win or lose, one thing's for certain; life is good for the MS Lawyers.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
> Assume that I take /. posting, article, etc. or /. feel?
/.
> cnn.com posting, article, etc. and posted it on
> my own site without permission or formal
> process. How would
How do domain names ever feel?
Slashdot is not a person, it is not even an animal
like a monkey, wher eyou could make a case that it
might "feel" something.
Now, How would the people who work putting
together feel? Beats me, I don't know them.
How would the community feel? Hard to say. There
would be alot of reactions, depending on how
you did it.
There would be people like me who would be pissed
if you claimed to have written it yourself,
afterall, its not nice to lie. However, if you
did not commit fraud (ie lie about who wrote it)
then, I would say "More power to ya". I couldn't
care less....its just some text. Hell...mirror
my website for all I care.
(for anyone who looks at my site and once again
calls me a hipocrite: I put those notices in
telling people NOT to do that a LONG time ago,
I havn't updated in 4 years - I consider it more
a historical snapshot than a changing web page)
Then...there woul dbe others who would call you
a theif and be all mad about it. There would be
still more who would think its a silly issue and
not really care one way or the other.
The range of response would be wide. There is no
single "/. opinion".
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yes, censorship is bad. We shouldn't try to censor people.
BTW, do you think CmdrTaco will ever set my default posts back to +1? Oh wait, I guess it's OK for him to try to censor me. But we shouldn't censor other people. Let's practice what we preach Slashdot.
See my User Info if you need more information.
I guess between my last post and the one before that, CmdrTaco fixed my account. Thanks Taco!
One thing we should all know and realize is Microsoft has some of the best media spin artists. That is what is scaring me about this. I believe it was the salon article that said Microsoft's PR guy said no comment. Is Microsoft up to something? Or are they in fact sobbing on their desks as roblimo suggested they do? Let us hope it is the latter. Can you imagine if suddenly we start seeing commercials on TV making microsoft look to be picked upon. While most educated, and especially all /.ers will see through this, it is amazing how easy the masses can be swayed. If suddenly we start looking to be the bad people elected officials slowly start to get more sympathetic to MS then we all have problems. Hopefully, MS will realize how wrong they are here and back down, maybe even posting freely the next time the release a MS standard. Just my worthless $.02.
I am 31337 or something.
2) Distributing copies of (c) material without the cp-holder's consent is illegal. This gives MS a reason to write to /. and demand the removal of the messages, links, etc.
Put 2 and 2 together ... you can get around the copyright problem quite legally in ANY case of information distribution by simply LEARNING from the original work, and rewriting your own work! If someone studies the Kerberos file that is now publically available, and then writes up what they have learned IN THEIR OWN WORDS, MS has no control over that writeup.
So for anyone out there with technical knowledge on the subject, and more time than I have, make such a writeup and post a link to it here. Lets see MS try to put a stop to that!
If you put your name on it though, you'd better make sure that there's no way you can get caught on having 'agreed' to some trade secret contract though. Maybe release it anon just to be safe, or at least have proof that you read the MS document from a publically available source WITHOUT agreeing to a trade secret contract. I know it's been mentioned that there is legal precident that this CAN'T be a trade secret anymore, but better safe than sorry I always say.
Oh, and IANAL, and my apologies if someone's posted this idea already. I don't have time to read everything, but I just had to get this idea out.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
Unfortunately, you're right. The only purpose of the proprietary extension to Kerberos is to hide important authentication functionality, in order to keep Free software from fully interoperating - more to the point, to keep Samba from being able to act as a Primary Domain Controller for W2K.
But at some point, they still need to do risk analysis... is the risk of having key parts of the DMCA thrown out for First Amendment violations worth the benefit of keeping Samba from being a domain controller?
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Why not fight M$ with their own methods?..
I propose that from now on (using a click-through agreement of course) slashdot readers/posters must agree not to persecute slashdot in any court american or non american and that no material posted on slashdot is allowed to be used in any legal way to fight slashdot, it's owners, it's readers, it's posters, their friends, pets and whatever.
It's partly a joke, but so is M$'s EULA. So please give it a thought...
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
I wonder who could be behind the DDoS..
Censorship is like
hitting Jello with hammer
Can't Microsoft see?
--
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Why not use this against MS and "purport" to be the owner of any or all software on MS websites. Send a formal notification as required. According to the Act, MS has to remove the software for a 15 day hiatus.
No, they don't. The ISP is only required to comply with such notification if they wish to take advantage of the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA. The only penalty for not doing so is that they don't receive immunity from copyright liability if they don't, and would have to defend an infringement suit.
Further, the declaration is made under penalty of perjury, so it would be a pretty good way to get a ticket to take "Mr. Bubba's Wild Ride" in the slammer.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
bzzzzt! thanks for playing.
...) did.
you're trying to imply that there are two options: release the spec the ms did or not release the spec at all. they could have released the spec like the developers of kerberos (or pam or nis or nfs or ext2
the "legalese" you refer to can't be described as anything else *but* a dirty trick. it essentially states that by reading the document you cannot do any development on a competing implementation. and then they release the document out in the wild. in a sense slashdot should cancel all the posts that microsoft has requested canceled (including the ones with links and or instructions) BECAUSE THEY ENDANGER FREE SOFTWARE PROJECTS TRYING TO MAKE ALTERNATIVES TO MS KERBEROS.
you excuse a lot of crap ms is doing with an "oh well, wish it could be different" attitude. just how often will you say that before you need to quit?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
You finally posted taco.. wow, I thought you'd never link those articles. I think it's a show of support - just like how the NYT linked directly to the DeCSS mirror list when 2600.com was attacked by the RIAA for providing links to DeCSS. You guys should be proud - don't back down - fight them. Time to show them Slashdot is more than just another webzine out to make a buck.
> but isn't the judge supposed to pass judgement based solely on what he has heard in court?
IANAL, but I think so. However, MS is pressing for new hearings, so they may be about to shoot their other foot off. The DoJ already has a memo re the recent e3 move against Kerebos, and I'm sure they would be more than happy to share it with the judge if new hearings come up.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Was MS expecting for the mainstream media to pick up this story? Were they expecting this kind of reaction - or did they think that the editors at /. would automatically comply with their demands?
/.? They are the most vocal about protecting the First Amendment - especially in David & Goliath situations like this one.
Now, in light of the increasing attention to this story, I wonder what MS's next statement on the issue will be. The more attention it gets, the harder it will be for them to back down - but it will also be all the more necessary for them to do so. This situation can only hurt their current status with the DOJ - especially now that they are in the remedy stage. You just have to know that the judge is watching stuff like this closely.
What I am really waiting for is a reaction out of groups like the ACLU - have they contacted anyone, or are there any indications that they are going to make a support statement for
Check out Magic Firesheep!
If Microsoft insists on trying to maintain that information they release to anyone on the Internet is a trade secret they are going to get smacked down by a judge. The whole idea is completely ludicrous.
If Microsofts case that posting about how to use Winzip to get around the EULA is ruled as being illegal under the DMCA then Winzip by extension must also be illegal and so anyone using it or distributing it is doing so with the intent to violate Microsofts trade secrets. This is also completely ludicrous. The only place where they have a chance in succedding is getting the repostings of the documents off of slashdot.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
Of course w2k's kerberos is fully interoperable with unix versions, nobody doubts that.
But the question still remains if the unix kerberos is interoperable with all the "features" of the ms version.
It's all a matter of perspective, and I fear that your view is at least as jaded as mine.
He bombed some terrorists. (Who were they anyay, and amazing we didn't get the guy we were bombing, say Saddam Hussein and that guy in Yugoslavia).
Heck, there was even a movie about it! (I know, released before actual events, but where else did Bill get his Ideas.)
Maybe outlook and vbscripting is the way Bill will fight when he goes down?
See, you can make anything up, say anything you want. Doesn't mean it is real. Doesn't mean you won't get sued or censored for the heck of it.
We all know well how problematic the problem of viruses is under Windows.
Well, generally these aren't technically Viruses but Worms; they need that the user execute the viruses to reproduce themselves.
A potential way of being infected is if somebody sends you an autoextractable file. The problem is that the code executed to autoextract the files can be anything, including a virus.
To avoid taking the risk to execute a virus when opening this kind of files you should ALWAYS use an extraction software (like WinZip www.winzip.com or WinRar). The steps to do so are:
1. Install the software (refer yourself to your software's installation procedure).
2. With most such softwaree, to use them without launching the possibly infected code you can click on the right button of your mouse when the aforementioned device is positioned over the autoextractible file.
3. Select the "extract in folder XXXXX" option, or the similar option depending on your software, XXXXX generally being the name of the file you want to uncompress.
4. The files should now be uncompressed in the XXXXX directory.
Remember, DO NOT OPEN YOUR FILES WITHOUT SUCH A TRUSTED SOFTWARE, THEY MAY CONTAIN NASTY VIRUSES THAT COULD ERASE YOUR DATA.
I hope that no company is against free speech to the point of wanting to censor people trying to help others to protect themselves from that company errors.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Commodore Sloat
This Kerberos "extension" was intended to lock Samba out of the server market. The other features of Win2k are easily emulated using LDAP and so forth. But if only Win2k can authenticate, Samba is relegated to second fiddle.
That's why everyone is making such a big deal about this extension.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Watch out Nitrozac! Don't want Micro$oft to sue you for reproducing Gates' likeness. They must have copyrighted that by now. God knows, they think they own everything else.
In any case, I have to say while I thought CmdrTaco was a cutie before, I think I'll be drooling over that picture for QUITE a while.
-Elendale (wonders if HTML tags work in subjects... Nope!)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Yes, that was Microsoft's plan all along. Until yesterday, I had never heard of them.
;-)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Excellent point, and it shows the importance of trademark and certification mark in free software. While there's a strong argument to distributing spec and code in free software, there's an equally strong argument to retaining and reserving the rights to the trade name of the product being released.
One of the better ways to do this is to provide a regression test for the software in question, requiring it to meet the test. Microsoft, in this world, would be free to embrace and extend all it wanted, and would have free access to the source to do this. However, unless they met the terms for the trade name usage, they would have to call the product by some other name -- defeating the whole marketroid check-off item school of product promotion.
Many free software firms and propenents don't yet see the importance of this. Sun Microsystems in particular has just plain got it wrong in attempting to enforce compliance through code regulation rather than certification marks and compliance/compatibility testing. Very frustrating, as I've worked with some of the folks involved in the SCSL concept. IMO most of the issues Sun has seen in licensing Java would be non-starters had they used an alternative approach. As things stand, they're fighting with Microsoft for the standard, while IBM emerges as the market leader in workable Java implementations.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
here is theregister article about the subject. isn't it odd that /. never link theregister.co.uk stories? afraid of a little competition? it doesn't have the community of slashdot, but it is a great news site.
-ali
Comply or we will
This email notification is a statement made under penalty of perjury that we are the copyright owner of the referenced Specification, that we are acting in good faith, and that the above-referenced comments, as part of http://www.slashdot.org, is posting proprietary material without express written permission.
smack you with a DOS attack
We request immediate action to remove the cited violations from Andover's servers, in accordance with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
The likes of which
This email is not intended to waive any of our other rights and remedies.
You've never seen before!
My point being that Microsoft knowingly unleashed their "intellectual property," their "trade secret" with the intention of using our community to make a point in the online world. No doubt there are Micro$erfs who read slashdot to see what we're up to. They know of our extreme dislike of them. They _MUST_ have known that someone _WOULD_ post the frickin source on our forum. They knew this would happen and that would then give them the leverage they need to make it more apparent for the US' "need" of the DMCA. I personally think it was stupid and irresposible of the poster to actaully post the damn thing, but even I knew it would happen. I feel that M$, not Andover.net should feel the consequences for this stupid act.
Bob
I have a cunning plan, lets all send Crapograms from Anonymous Coward, heres the URL :-
:) and which one you're going to send.
;)
http://www.crapogram.com/
Prices from $12 (a little one) to $100 for the 10lb elephant droppings, hehe, come on everyone reply to this message and with the day you pick to send one ( all under AC of course
BTW I have no affliation with Crapgrams, I just think its a great way to send the message
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
that 'one click' agreements, which appearently have the power of signature, don't apply to people under the age of majority?
It's about time consumers get SOME rights back - the illegalily of circumventing protection mechanisms is another case of banishing a tool of crime rather than the crime itself, presupposing criminal tendancies, like the DAT tax, reduction of freedoms, etc. It's not addressing the root cause, just the symptom and is right up there w/ other bad laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, passed on behest of the cell phone business/lobby,
which makes it illegal to own a device and merely 'tune in' certain bands of radio frequencies, such as old 70's era TV UHF sets can. The law used to be you could listen to anything, but it was a crime to use that ill gotten information. Another of it's problems is that it's horribly unenforcable and thus innately unjust, as it can only be used selectively at chosen 'enemy' targets, it can't apply to everyone equally. You end up with a society with many people happily scanning and evesdropping on what the calling parties consider a 'secure' conversation (that's what the phone sales flak said!) that really isn't, and a few unlucky evesdroppers who get the book thrown at them and made an example out of which doesn't stop the others from secretely scanning away, with very little chance of ever getting caught. As we all know, Msft has about a 27% unlicensed software 'shrinkage' and I'm sure there are lots of developers out there who will ask friendly Bob down the hall for the Kerberos spec printout with impunity, while highly visible sources like Dash Slot here get trounced on.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
There's The Register too, and also Zdne t. Any publicity is good publicity, right?
So what's up with the Mankitian MS? Is it not good enough?
-----------------
Help the Unfortuante please.
Dearest /. readers and editors, Isn't this case all about copyright protection ? so, if the source has been included, so should the copyright notice. RIGHT ? Well, according to my reading of the article in /. and it's subsequent postings ( yes, the one in question) the copyright has been included. because the posting from by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02, @05:37PM EDT (#197) starts with the full text of the copyright which means that reasonably anything from that point on falls under the copyright. reasonably everyone has read the posting so it can be assumed that reasonably anyone reading the following source code is aware of the copyright and it's consequences. The source is freely available on the net so it can not be the distribution that's the problem just the copyright. From my view one could say that that is covered as well. Maybe i'm just ignorent but according to me M$ sees problems where there are none. they were just waiting for someone to persecute and condemn to get the attention away from the real issue: M$ breakup :) (wouldn't that be nice) regards, yours infantly senile, vvk
Maybe the whole lawsuit threat happened because MS is scared of losing market share in the 'everyone on the net hates us' sector to Metallica?
- Andy R
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Multiple
Source
Denial
of
Service
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Everyone please remember to change your .sig line to the information Microsoft has asked us to remove (and remember that it comes from a public domain help manual):
"You can open self extracting archives using PKZIP25.EXE or unrar" - censored by Microsoft.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
1) If DCMA is the law, then some of the posts in question do appear to violate the law. They should be removed and replaced with a note that they where removed due to apparent violation of the DCMA. References to where the original information can be found could be inserted as well.
/. could move offshore.
2)DCMA is bad law - it needs to be fought politically or alternatively with your feet.
3) It is interesting that MS is suggesting more openness as a settlement for the anti-trust action rather than break-up at the same time that they are sending legal threats with respect to openness. MS's letter and this entire thread needs to be sent to Janet Reno and the Attorney's General of the various states that are part of the anti-trust action. It makes it quite clear that MS has no intentions of changing its ways.
Noam Chomsky knows what's up.
Just incase anyone is unfamiliar with Chomsky I'd seriously recommend Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media, its a two video set and there is a companion book.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
If you try to hack the OS to get slashdot web pages, then they will make you pay $500. (Oh wait, wasn't that like....)
Let me get this straight (not entirely up on the issues so might be misunderstanding): This information in question is PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE on the Msft automated information distribution web site to ANYONE who, I guess, checks a box or clicks on a button that states that they'll abide by a non-disclosure agreement? To ANYBODY? That don't make no sense. If so that's a pretty liberally watered down non-disclosure agreement if ANYBODY can access it. Who are you going to refrain from disclosing it to if they can simply go to the Msft site and make the same agreement? If so this is clearly an abuse of power that has nothing to do with keeping proprietary information out of potential competitors hands, just showing who's the boss.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I haven't
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^
Only through hard work and perseverence can one truly suffer.
The Register already has two articles, here and here.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
And maybe, just maybe, Gates and the rest will hop on board the cluetrain next time it stops in Redmond.
The cluetrain no longer stops at Redmond after it was deliberately derailed some years ago by a certain Mr. Bill Gates and a hoard of angry lawyers who go by the name Cluetrian Reduction Army Pantomime or CRAP as they are better known.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
What we're dealing with here is the silencing of free thought and expression, and luckily the mainstream media pounces on that stuff like a rabid weasel on some unfortunate rabid-weasel food.
-Militane Elf (A PFY for a BOFH)
Remove the sos for deliverable flames)
I hope that's a lance Tux is using to fight that lion on Roblimo's t-shirt.