Slashback: cubans, crises, code-dependency

It's been a busy week inside the 40-story glass monolith that is Slashdot, as our cleverly disguised agents manipulate reality to conform with their own twisted idea of how things should be. Just the same, in an effort to defuse suspicion by appearing fallible, here is another thimbleful of spin in the form of Slashback: Episode IV.

Leveling mountains back to molehills ... Mitch writes "I have read further in the Borland license agreement. People need to be more careful before posting news. Twisting words or only giving half the facts can cause problems and does most of time. This, in my opinion, was an unfair thing to do to Borland. If anyone looked at the rest of the agreement, it says:

'Nothing in this license statement permits you to derive the source code of files that Borland has provided to you in executable form only, or to reproduce, modify, use, or distribute the source code of such files. You are not, of course, restricted from distributing source code that is entirely your own. Code which you generate with a Borland code generator, such as AppExpert, is considered by Borland to be your code.'" Michael Swindell from Borland wrote with much the same information. Thanks to both for the level-headed clarification.

deet-de-deet-deet deet HAVANA: Steve Arner writes "On May 18, 2000, the Associated Press ('The AP') declared that it would not pursue legal action against the creators of a widely-viewed parody combining images of the goverment?s recent seizure of Elián Gonzalez at gunpoint with sounds from Budweisers popular 'Whazzup?' advertising campaign."

Sneaky little devil. Nik would like you to read this Salon article about BSD. Trust him -- it's an interesting overview. It will make you want to spend more time poring through the BSD Section of Slashdot.

No towel-throwing just yet bork bork bork. Audent writes "There's a nice thank you note on the Dialectizer site saying he's still reviewing his options and to check back regularly". You can read his notice here, and since it's on the rinkworks site, you can even read it in psuedo-Swedish or redneck.

Don't line up for tickets yet ... they're still fixing the odds. emmons writes "Judge Kaplan has ordered that the trial concerning DeCSS' legality under the DMCA be moved from December 5th to July 17th. The order is posted on cryptome.org's website." By that time, the law could say that the moon in made of green cheese until proven otherwise, while forbidding lunar analysis.

Aren't you glad you use ... pine? pq writes "John Markoff at the NYT followed up on the Love bug with this story (no login needed). Apparently it simply faxed itself as text to fax numbers in your Outlook addressbook - an interesting article for the Neal Stephenson 'Life imitates Art' angle." Also nice to know that the NY Times writers are reading Neal Stephenson.

Comments

Re:Notes on ILY.

[kaphka]

The other day, I sent out a few spam complaints to ISPs. I don't usually bother, but this spam was unusually obnoxious. ("Type remove if you wish to be removed")

Of course, I forwarded a copy of the message (as inline text,) and Outlook added "FW:" to the subject line. At least one of the complaints has already bounced. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but is it possible that some clueless ISPs have started filtering out all mail with "FW:" in the subject? (To protect against the "new love bug"?)

I know why Borland says this:

[Russ Nelson]

I know one possible reason for why Borland says this:

Nothing in this license statement permits you to derive the source code of files that Borland has provided to you in executable form only, or to reproduce, modify, use, or distribute the source code of such files.

Because, back in 1987 or thereabouts, the Borland C library had a bug. I reverse-engineered their source (for all memory modules), fixed the bug, posted it to the net, and sent it to them. They sent me a demand letter demanding that I stop distributing their source code. Hehe. Not theirs, mine!! Still, they wanted to stop people from fixing bugs in their software, so they now have this in their license.
-russ

Re:Those rools have changed

[greenrd]

His type of socialism breeds the worst kind of unnecessary, almost universal poverty.

Oh, right, and the US embargo has nothing to do with it. Okay.

Obviously starving people to death to get them to change their political system is perfectly ethically acceptable. After all, the US has been doing it for ten years to Iraq as well. Let's just heap all the blame on Castro and Hussein, because of course the US government has the most saintliest of intentions, doesn't it - just looking out for "democracy". The very idea that the US government could starve an entire nation to supress alternatives to capitalism is just laughable.

[sarcasm]

Re:Those rools have changed

[Lemmy Caution]

It should also be noted that a political refugee to the United States gets $17,000 just for entering, in order to 'start a new life.'

If we offered this to, say, people from Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, or any other Latin country, we would be utterly inundated with immigrants from those countries.

Notes on ILY.

[Black Parrot]

First, it seems that some folk are eager to throw out the baby so they can preserve the dirty water. I have already received one letter from a bureaucratic organization that I have to deal with, where their .sig file warns me not to send them any attachments, since they now automatically delete all attachments to protect themselves from viruses. I find it shameful that people are stupid enough to disable genuinely useful features in order to protect their dangerous inno-ware.

Second, certain pundits seem to have their heads up the same loophole, as it were. I saw one the telly this morning suggesting that the problem would go away if we started using digital signatures. One wonders whether he has figured out yet that the viruses really are coming from who they say they're comming from. His second suggestion was that the US Postal Service could start delivering authenticated e-mail, which of course suffers from the same problem, as well as divers others.

Truly, I think these viruses have been carrying the dreaded subliminal message, which in this case must be something to the effect of "Try any solution but the obvious one!"

--

Re:AP nonsense.

[echo]

I'd like to point out to you, that parody, satire and the like is protected under current copyright law. It's called "Fair use"

Oh, that explains it.

[Serf]

inside the 40-story glass monolith that is Slashdot

So that's where they keep all the trolls.

Heh

[Darchmare]

I have a somewhat unique perspective on this, as I'm the main Abuse handler for Dreamhost - the web host for rinkworks.com. I mostly handle spam and the odd copyright violation...

The way I see it, what he COULD do is provide an opt-out list of some sort for sites that don't wish to be Dialectized. So, if SomeBigCorp.com doesn't like their site being munged, they can specifically request removal. You don't need to take the whole thing down, just make it fair to all involved. I personally think most people wouldn't mind at all.

You could have a basic MySQL database with domains that have opted out, or a flat-file or something. If the URL being parsed is in the list, the person using the service gets a notice that due to complaint the process can't continue.

SpamCop does something like this as well, for ISPs that don't want spam reports from their service (kind of lame, but...).

I guess the big trick is making sure that the person opting out is legit, but that's mostly an implementation and policy detail.

Anyhow, I hope Mr. Stoddard finds a way around this. It's a pretty nifty site, I think.

<PLUG TYPE="shameless">
Oddly enough, when I first saw the original story I skipped over it. As a web host, I think it's pretty cool that we were prone to the dreaded Slashdot Effect and didn't even notice. :>
<PLUG>

BTW: these comments are my own, not that of my employer. etc. etc...


- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

Those rools have changed

[Forge]

Those rools have changed and they changed a looong time ago. My brother went there with a teem of missionaries in around 1993. A few interesting things to know about Cuba that most Americans are seriously mistaken about;

Cubans are allowed to leave the country. It's just hard to get a US visa. No visas are required for going to other Caribbean countries and the nearby University hospital has around 150 Cuban nurses and 30 Cuban doctors on staff. ( That's hardly enough to notice, really ).

The tourism sector in Cuba is booming. Mostly from Americans who go there via Jamaica.

Citizens get rations of basic foods and cloths in addition to whatever they may earn but salaries are low, like in most pore countries.

Cuban prostitutes are on average the most beautiful anywhere west of the atlantic. Girls who look that good in other countries do not need to walk the streets.

Cubana ( Cuban Airlines ) has daily flights to Jamaica.