Slashdot Mirror
Alan Cox talks about laws... and Linux
1) European DMCA
by Yohahn
Given that you won't visit the USA given the enactment of the DMCA. If the DMCA equivalent passes in Europe, will you move? If so, is there anywhere that is safe from this kind of insane law (it sounds like peru may be a new haven for free software)?
Alan:
It's very hard to fight laws in foreign countries. Dmitry for example was almost certainly chosen because he was Russian. It's sadly much easier to win a case in almost any country when you use your historical enemies and prejudices to set the precedents. "Foreigner attacking US business interests" just sounds so much better in court than "clever kid helping his grandma read ebooks", especially when someone notices you can easily get a longer sentence for helping grandma read than kicking her down the stairs.
In the EU we are doing what we can to make the EUCD harm limited, and also trying to educate politicians on the damage they have done. If we can tell them in advance the problems the EUCD is going to cause we can help them frame futher law to prevent those abuses, and to update it.
Knowing the EUCD will trip up its much easier to ensure that there is a nail bed where it will land and you know when to stick your foot out as it streamrollers past, than it is to attempt to hit it head on. We've already had some interesting pointers. In a recent case the judge accepted that the law favoured the bad guys, but said openly that had it been brought up several other ways they would have had no defence. So we have some good ideas how to hit back.
See www.eurorights.org and www.fipr.org for more information
I will be staying put for now. Its my job to hell fight the EUCD just as its the US folks duty to fight the DMCA if they believe in the values the USA claims to hold high. Maybe someone can find a way to use the US flag to defeat a copy protection system. That should make a most entertaining hearing.
Slowly the political wheel is turning, although not entirely in ways I like. The european parties advocating that the nation comes before europe and before international treaties are winning more and more votes. Sadly these parties also advocate racism and forced repatriation of foreigners. It is becoming very important for a lot of reasons that mainstream parties recognize what is going on, otherwise there is a real risk the racists will win real power, because it may be the only way people can vote for these other extremely important political changes.
2) What is your political goal?
by Capt_Troy
What is the goal you hope to obtain in regard to the DMCA dispute? How to you intend to meet those goals ?
Personally, I think that as time passes, people will become more and more technical and eventually the absurdity of the DMCA will be exposed on a more general population than just the techies that it is now. So the best means to an end IMHO is educating the general public. Is this your intention?
Alan:
The ultimate goal has to be to find a middle way that addresses both the rights of copyright holders to protection of their works, and the rights of society to ensure those protections are limited and don't do harm to the general good. Copyright was invented for government censorship and military purposes. It became something for the good of society, and the USA acquired it in that form. Its important it remains for the good of society.
The truth is that the DMCA has no value at all in stopping piracy, only in stopping innovation. It takes one person to break the protection on something and the game is over. That person may be anywhere and well beyond US law. What you can do is to deal with the actual folk who distribute such material. Lets face it, to get a copy of something on the internet you must be able to find it. If you can find it, so can law enforcement.
We need to get to a point where people who actual commit real crimes are punished not people who make tools that might be misused. The 'logic' of the DMCA extended to other regimes makes grim reading for any US citizen:
Photocopiers can be used to copy - ban them, control the libraries
Typewriters can be used to make copies - license then
Web sites can be used to publish illegal material - license/censor them
Which leaves you with a state remarkably similar to the old stalinist block.
The SSSCA mark two and the digital TV rights in the USA are very similar problems. The digital TV one is confused by the fact that encryption of free to air digital tv is heavily restricted in the USA. It isn't in the UK which makes that simpler and you can get Digital TV cards here. The UK encrypted to air TV people went spectacularly bankrupt but thats market forces at work.
I'd like to see the SSSCA stuff solved by market forces and sanity too. Let the Hollywood folks make themselves an antitamper PCI or USB2 hardware card that has only encrypted data in, a smartcard slot for per user rights management and an SVGA analogue overlay/analogue out. If the market is right they can sell/give away such hardware and make a profit on the films. No software system will survive a cracker long, and indeed things like vmware already make a mockery of software only stuff like windows digital media protection since people can record the audio output of the virtual pc trivially.
A tamperproof hardware card also means they can publish all the programming information to load and play movies on it with any OS. That will cut down the number of people interested in cracking it by 99% too.
Keep the government well out of it. Neither Hollywood or the US government (or indeed government in general) has been very good at meddling with technology and innovation. The SSSCA mark 2 is basically an attempt by the studios to make someone else pay for the technology they want to use to sell their product. Thats utterly cynical misuse of power. If its worth doing - let them pay for it.
Educating the public assumes you have access to media that the public proper read and which sees the DMCA as bad. You don't, the media empires helped create that law. That makes such a process very slow and hard to achieve as it has to be done person by person.
3) Microsoft .NET and Linux
by SL33Z3
What are your feelings on Microsoft's .NET and any initiatives to make the technology work on Linux?
Alan:
Microsoft has publically stated that it has patents on critical parts of .NET and will enforce them. If you think that .NET is a good idea, or cloning .NET is a good idea, remember you won't have a US market unless they find you amusing enough to allow to live on. And if you think Microsoft can be trusted on this look at their recent activities against Samba.
The system itself is mildly interesting as a technology. Its yet another virtual machine, roughly equivalent to picojava in capabilities. It has an interesting way to self generate IDL, but one which their own papers say cannot represent all programming languages.
The more dangerous parts of all this are not so much .NET but chunks of the model that not only the .NET product and the Java standards rely on. Things like xmlrpc, soap and the stuff on top of them are designed to "interwork through firewalls". A better phrase would be "go through the firewall like a knife through butter in a way that prevents the companies involved monitoring the activity".
When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company or someone in your company uploading your entire company customer database?
4) Organizing the OSS community for activism
by akb
Free software programmers and the extended community are arguably the most organized non-hierarchical, grassroots constituency in the world. The community includes the tens of thousands developers and millions of endusers tightly networked through institutions like sourceforge, slashdot, countless LUGs, etc. The ability to produce projects of the scale and complexity of the Linux kernel, the Debian distribution, or the engineering behind the Internet itself is a testament to the community's ability to organize more than anything else.
Despite this incredible organizing for software production, support and distribution very little of this gets translated into the political realm. In his last slashdot interview [slashdot.org] Lawerence Lessig chided the community for this.
Organizers of traditional political campaigns for social justice or equitable distribution of power would drool over having a constituency as organized as that which we have. How do you think the community can translate its effective organizing in the technical arena into the political realm?
Alan:
Most organised grassroots constituency. Nowhere near. It's an elitist rather unrepesentative bunch of lazy people. They have far too small an overlap with the masses or with the political powers. I also think that the church would probably find any claim of that nature by the free software people rather funny. Walk into a random record shop and say "Tipper Gore" then, assuming you survive, count the percentage of people who don't know. Repeat the same by going into a random pcworld type computer shop but saying "EFF". The mainstream awareness just is not there.
The way you fix that is to get up off said backsides and write to politicians, propose alternatives, write letters to the mainstream newspapers and organise events to publicize things. Unfortunately everyone thinks it will be OK because someone else will get up off their backside instead.
You achieve change because everyone gets off their backsides and does stuff. Gandhi didn't free India alone, women didn't get the vote because one person rang the prime ministers office and asked for it. The same goes for much smaller and less important goals too.
5) The end of cheap "open" hardware?
by I91MM
It looks like us PC hardware hackers are likely to have a much harder time in the next ten to twenty years as the average (desktop) PC becomes increasingly integrated. I see a trend away from the PC of today towards an increasingly closed 'black box' where the components are no longer a set of cards which are easily replacable. This is inevitable, especially at the lower end of the PC market, since increasing integration leads to lower costs for the manufacturers. Correspondingly, custom hardware will become more expensive and be increasingly restricted to the high end...
How do you think such a trend away from "open" hardware would affect open source development, especially at the lower end of the spectrum? As the computer becomes more and more of a mysterious black box, do you think that the would-be hardware hackers of tomorrow are more likely to turn towards software and application development, and would this be mostly good or mostly bad for open source software (more applications/systems programmers, but fewer hardware-level programmers)?
Alan:
The desktop PC is an anachronism already to most people. The high flexibility of the system makes it scary to use, expensive to manufacture, and hard to make reliable. PC's are also noisy, they are hard to reset to the state they arrived in without losing your personal data and so forth.
The low cost sealed box PC is an inevitability, and one that is badly needed to push computing on a stage. It is much cheaper to do safety and approvals work on a system that the user can't poke a screwdriver inside and which doesn't contain connectors sticking up off the board like small aerials.
I don't see all custom hardware getting more expensive, or the inability to fit cards as a problem. If the entire system is cheaper than the new card it is a quite serious recycling problem rather than a financial one. A lot of electronics hackers have found things like USB very good too. Its not hard to write USB devices and its a great way to plug fun electronics into a PC, USB even provides device power for you.
There is a temptation for some manufacturers to make it deliberately hard to twiddle with a computer, to fit non standard external connectors and the like but I'm hopeful the market will address that - preferably better than it did laptop docking stations.
I'm also not sure sealed boxes make less "open" hardware in the free software sense. It may even be advantageous. If the systems are very integrated it becomes easier for all OS vendors to handle things like driver writing because there are less drivers to write. A piece of silicon is pretty opaque without the manual whether you have to saw the box open or undo screws.
It might mean a reduction in the number of programmers with good hardware experience, it might also mean there are more good programmers free to work on the next critical things - user interfaces, security models, or replacing the current web services garbage with something that is scalable and can be made to work for example
6) Free vs Commercial
by div_2n
With free versions of software such as Open Office constantly improving, what place do you perceive commercial software to have in the free software world as free alternatives mature to an acceptable and usable state?
Alan:
It really comes down to people having a business model that justifies the extra cost of their proprietary product, both in convenience to the user and development cost to them.
Sometimes that equation makes real sense. For example I'm sick of deleting bug reports from people with the Nvidia kernel modules. I've talked to Nvidia folks about why they do it. The bottom line is that I can't make a good case for them to open source it. Their worries about what it might do to their performance relative to competitors are quite well founded.
If the governments would do something properly about the Microsoft monopoly, patent abuse and other false pressures the markets ought to sort it out. Right now its not the "invisible hand" guiding the markets its the "lobbyists jackboots"
7) Beards?
(Score:5, Funny)
by WinstonSmith
I've been programming a computer since I was 8 years old. I'm 29 now. That's 21 years of "experience". Lately, however, I've come to the realization that I'm never going to make it "big" unless I grow a Big Ole Programmer's Beard. I'd like to think it's possible to be a wise UNIX guru without one, but I think it would be easier if I had a beard. A big one.
My question is: Since my wife won't let me grow the Big Ole Programmer's Beard, what should I do to make it "big" in the world of UNIX gurus?
Alan:
You could try a disguise kit. Maybe a stick on beard would work? I'm glad to see that you have at least decided the wife is more important than a beard.
Linus is proof that you can change the world without a beard, even by accident. In my opinion you have to do two things to be a Unix guru. Firstly you need to know a lot about the system and the philosophy. Being able to say "V7 was the last real Unix" and justify your claim is a good test. Secondly you need to be actively helping and teaching other people that knowledge - which in turn also improves yours immensely. If you want the holes in your knowledge showing up try teaching someone.
8) The future of Linux
by halftrack
With the rise of KDE3, increased user friendlyness and "simple" distros such as Mandrake and Lindows. Do you belive the development of Linux and the open source comunity would be harmed in any way, if Linux ever became mainstream?
Alan:
Linux is already mainstream in the embedded world and in the server world. Take a look at the huge Wall Street companies using Linux if you doubt that.
The desktop is much more challenging, but I don't actually see it as a "problem" if it becomes mainstream. It will certainly add pressure to improve standardisation work in the LSB for the user interface libraries.
The bigger challenge in terms of not breaking the OS is embedded. The drive for size is not that major a problem but the goal of extremely good real time response does have potential conflicts. Solving those of course also helps on the desktop.
9) What should we fear the most?
by jmv
There are many plagues that threaten the open-source community and even the software industry in general. There are software patents, DMCA and the like, frivolous lawsuits, MS bullying to name a few. In your opinion which one is the most dangerous? Also, what do you think is the best way to fight it?
Alan:
Most of them depend what country you are in. I don't see the USA or western europe as a long term software development market for example. They are too expensive and there is too much stupid (as opposed to justified) red tape and expense.
Software patents and frivolous lawsuits all sit together. When you look at the kind of rubbish the USPTO has allowed to be patented - stuff like merge sorting web logs - you being to realize the scale of the mess. Fortunately everyone is now telling the US government this, even patent attorneys. It is going to take a lot of cleaning up and will require political will alas.
Microsoft certainly are a threat. If they are given a slapped wrist then their behaviour after the lawsuit is going to make their behaviour before it look quite saintly. It won't be politicially acceptable for the US to drag them straight back into court. They know that from their last slapped wrist. The fact they have been able to avoid paying shareholders dividends has given them huge amounts of cash and power. Typically a corporation pays over 80% of its profit as shareholder dividends in the USA.
Its actually quite ironic for them to describe Linux as un-American. Work out the tax that would have arisen if they paid dividends like normal companies on their 30 billion plus cash mountain. Now convert that into extra on the ground US security service employees and ask the obvious question..
10) Do you have any other interests?
by gosand
Do you have any other interests, besides Linux? I know in order to get to the "guru" status you have to be pretty dedicated to one thing. But what else do you like? Or are you a 100% Linux-kernel-hacker? I swear I saw you the other day riding a Harley. ;-)
Alan:
I don't think you can obtain guru status without having other interests. If you never look out of your own windows you will miss so much that has direct relevance and is usable in your own field of work.
The things I actually do tend to vary, the last couple of weeks have involved playing Illuminati and practicing my world domination skills (one win, one joint win out of two) and investigating furniture. Next week may involve repotting plants I think, and trying to work out why one of my spiderplants is dying.
I know I'm getting older too. There comes that certain point in life when you actually find things like furniture catalogues interesting. As a friend summed it up "I have found in me the urge to buy power tools".
You wouldn't find me riding a Harley however. I've never been keen on bikes. and my mother promised long ago if I ever got one she'd smash it into little pieces (a close relative ended up with a permanent limp from a bike accident). I've done enough damage falling off a real horse, I'll skip iron ones.
It's very hard to fight laws in foreign countries. Dmitry for example was almost certainly chosen because he was Russian. It's sadly much easier to win a case in almost any country when you use your historical enemies and prejudices to set the precedents. "Foreigner attacking US business interests" just sounds so much better in court than "clever kid helping his grandma read ebooks", especially when someone notices you can easily get a longer sentence for helping grandma read than kicking her down the stairs.
Dmitry was not in hot water just for "helping grandma to read", he made it possible for millions of copywritten works which make up for some people's livleyhoods, to be exploited without proper compensation by 10's of millions of people. If he wanted to help grandma read, he would bring some books from the local library and get grandma some warm tea and a bright light.
I am sure that there were certain portions of the way he was procecuted that were not fair, but this sort of gross exageration does not fool anyone and really does more harm than good.
Of course my idea is that eventually it all talks to each other and tells me what it all needs and prints me out a list for when I drive down the road to the nearest Wal Mart (O.K. Asda).
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Shareholders know they don't pay dividends, they invest full well knowing that. They bet that by reinvesting that money back into the company, the shareholder value will increase. That in of itself is better than a dividend.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
> investigating furniture.
Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one! In the UK, the only acceptable place to buy furniture is Ikea (or so I've been told) and they run redshat:-
* alan walks into ikea.
[alan] "ooh a vt420"
[alan] "ooh a redhat box"
* alan admires his work smugly.
* alan leaves ikea with cheap flat pack furniture that will break during assembly.
--- And on the 7th day, God created Windows. He must have been tired by then.
Really Alan? Please direct me to a commercialy available DVD->DVD copier, or a DVD->VHS unit?
I almost wonder if his is a space alien (like something out of Men in Black). I wonder which one he would be.
In any case, it sounds like he has been putting his courses in improvisational science and cultural reconfiguration to good use.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
That's a nice thought, but as there currently aren't that many distros that even manage to comply with the current LSB, how likely is it that UI libs will be standardised? I don't think it's possible to introduce standards into Linux now, it's too late for that. We just have to make do with whatever standards were set by the UNIX heritage, or by market forces.
I'm still trying to figure out if that's a good thing or not.
I'd like to see the SSSCA stuff solved by market forces and sanity too. Let the Hollywood folks make themselves an antitamper PCI or USB2 hardware card that has only encrypted data in, a smartcard slot for per user rights management and an SVGA analogue overlay/analogue out. If the market is right they can sell/give away such hardware and make a profit on the films. No software system will survive a cracker long, and indeed things like vmware already make a mockery of software only stuff like windows digital media protection since people can record the audio output of the virtual pc trivially.
The real problem is that Hollywood wants their cake and to eat it too. They want to use commodity PC hardware (DVDs). They should kill the DVD, create a propritary platform (players only) and NEVER aloow it to run on a PC. Geez, I publish something in a public format I then I'm surprised the public can share it? Get real.
This whole screw-up is Hollywoods fault. Don't let them stick it to us for their mistakes.
Hmm... what is it with beards and UNIX gurus and Jedi. When Obi was an apprentice, he was clean shaven (and his master Qui-Gon had a beard). Now that he's the master, he's all fuzzy. Maybe it's a UNIX thing too :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I think I foresee that linux will be the server, while osx.2 will be the desktop
I always thought that Be would have made the perfect desktop for a Linux backend. It looks as though that will never happen now though.
I don't see where AC asserts that Sklyarov was interested in "helping grandma read." He's just drawing an extreme contrast between the way DS's actions were portrayed and one that would clearly not have flown. It seems pretty clear that DS' actions fall somewhere in the vast middle of AC's spectrum.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
initial the rumour was redhat, back in the days when Enlightenment, was the default manager. The rumour was that Redhat was going to buy beos and stick in front of linux.
You mean you weren't born with the desire to buy powertools? What sort of a man are you?
psr --History is ending.
Every time I read an interview like this, it strikes me how odd my own life is - I'm at least as concerned about the Microsoft trial and the latest versions of software as I am about my relationship w/ my wife. It's a kind of techno-myopia - you get so immersed in it all that priorities become skewed. And I think I'm safe in saying that I share this w/ a large portion of the Slashdot community. Every time I have this insight (about once a month or so), I go get out my guitar and start practicing for a few days, and I think about my life and what's important, and I always resolve to spend less time worrying about the things that don't really matter - like whether an Athlon or Pentium preforms a particular test better. But then I go back to work, and I start worrying about the same old crap again.
I sometimes wonder if the Slashdot community's collective myopia and whether it will lead to the community's downfall - worrying about trivia while the rest just gets ignored. Is the latest version of Linux really more important than getting out and taking a walking holding hands with someoue you love?
Yeah, it may be OT and it may be flamebait, but Alan mentioned this one...
After V7, more and more got thrown into the kernel. V7 was the last "minimalist" kernel, where small was beautiful.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
In fairness, the guy was talking about organization for software production and distribution. His point was that the political side was weak and asking about how to change that.
He's still wrong, and I agree with Alan that this isn't someone familiar with organized religion.
An additional point is that, as much as Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman and Slashdot editors would like to believe that involvement with free software necessarily involves certain political views, that's not the case. You're not going be able to mobilize all Linux users, or Linux developers, for denouncing gun control, eliminating copyright or guaranteeing children the right to view porn in public libraries for the simple reason that most of those users and developers don't believe in those things.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
While I'm fascinated to hear Alan's views on life, the universe and everything, I can't help but notice that a minimal boot of my 2.4.18 kernel with nothing running but a serial console, bash and free, is leaking memory, a few K every couple of seconds.
Still, I expect that's due to racist European politicians or the EU-DMCA. Those Belgian bastards are stealing my memory!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company or someone in your company uploading your entire company customer database?
.net going over it (whatever .net is?).
I dunno if I can agree here.
What exactly would be the difference between running ipsec over a firewall?
All the firewall admin will know is that there is data going over the ipsec interface.
That's just as much as when there is encrypted
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor? Copyright was something an author sold a publisher, and didn't exist in any form, really, until it got put in the American constitiution. The problem then was the publishers were ripping off the writers, and it was made to protect a writer's (and the publishers he contracted with) rights. The pirates, from the start, were publishers.
He's right about the political machinations though. When the only alternatives are some fruitcake space cadet with a bunch of platitudes or a racists with a promise to make the trains run, people are going to say, hell with it -- if we can't have a decent government, at least we can have reliable transportation.
When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company or someone in your company uploading your entire company customer database?
This is supposedly referring to the dangers of .NET - but if you allow an encrypted SSL session to send data outside your company, you don't need .NET or any other particular technology to upload sensitive company data.
The right way to do it would probably be to require SOAP connections to be done unencrypted on the inside, encrypted at the firewall and communicated externally that way.. Then the firewall gets the ability to examine the data before encrypting it and sending it out (or not).
HTTP supports posting data and files through encrypted sessions - you don't need anything more than a copy of Netscape to send a sensitive document out in a way the firewall can't prevent (assuming you allow any outgoing SSL connections.. and most companies do).
SOAP doesn't require that it be done over port 80 HTTP; that's one of the implementations but not the only one, and if you don't like it, don't use it. It's really easy to move it to another port, for example, or use a different transport completely like SMTP, straight TCP, or even Jabber.
- Steve
A small example of misinformation from this interview:
The fact [MSFT] have been able to avoid paying shareholders dividends has given them huge amounts of cash and power. Typically a corporation pays over 80% of its profit as shareholder dividends in the USA.
This is bulls**t -- first, MSFT has huge amounts of cash because they have very high operating margins and astronomical sales; second, he makes it sound like there is something wrong with avoiding paying out dividends (there isn't). Maybe it is true in the UK, but here in the US, corporations have lately tended to slow down dividend payments as it is more tax efficient to either a) retain the earnings and use the cash to grow the business (MSFT does this) or b) use the cash to buy back stock in the open market. Either option tends to increase the stock price, so investors realize a profit through capital gains, which are given preferred tax treatment versus dividends.
There's more stuff in there that sounds a little fishy; others will probably point them out. Don't forget: just like anyone with an agenda, Cox is going to skew the "facts" to back up his position...
The Daily Build
What are your feelings on Microsoft's
Alan:
Microsoft has publically stated that it has patents on critical parts of
This is FUD, plain and simple. The fact is, that the
The system itself is mildly interesting as a technology. Its yet another virtual machine, roughly equivalent to picojava in capabilities. It has an interesting way to self generate IDL, but one which their own papers say cannot represent all programming languages.
Once again, the technology takes ideas from Perl (foreach, anyone?), Java (VM, OO style) Visual Basic (properties done right this time). Best of all, it's designed to be able to integrate with existing code -- existing Gnome/KDE/console programs will be able to call a simple C library to invoke functions from a cross-platform
And of course it "cannot represent all programming languages." You of all people should know that Alan -- this is by design, not a flaw of the architecture. There's always a balance to be made between running code natively and running it on a Virtual Machine. What I can say is that
The more dangerous parts of
all this are not so much
When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company or someone in your company uploading your entire company customer database?
And this is a bad thing? Point-to-point crypto, as you point out so aptly, is something that allows the decentralisation of control. Sure, this may be a bad thing for packet-Nazis ("legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company" as you say), but the fact is that the world is begging for a secure point-to-pont encryption technology that's both relatively secure and simple to set up (I am a GPG junkie but that doesn't mean I expect the rest of my family to be).
Alan's ideas are usually good and I've been involved with the formation of the AFFS in the UK as well as having donated to the EFF in the US several times, but he will not make any friends by insulting some of the smartest developers on the Linux desktop today. Like it or not,
The Mono
Debian users will be able to apt-get install a JIT virtual machine that can play cross-platform applets in their browsers for the first time ever without resorting to propriterary software, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the most important thing we can ask for from a desktop OS -- a good, modern infrastructure for the development of desktop and server applications.
Any legal objections are simply false. Eben Moglen, rofessor of Law he will then once again have my full support.
Hmm. Alan Cox states that Linux has a definite future in the enteriprise/server/embedded area, but that in the desktop its future is sketchy, and you say that this is not at all interesting.
And then you state the same thing.
If you do not believe that this comment was at all interesting when Alan Cox said it, why do you believe that we would find it interesting when you said it?
...but, there is no special protection/rules for the US flag in the USA. There was an *attempt* to make it illegal to burn (or otherwise malign) the flag, but it was not successful. You are legally entitled to step on, spit on, or do other indignities to the US flag!
So, I'm kinda confused as to the point of this whole line of thought.
Any legal objections are simply false. Eben Moglen, professor of Law and Legal History, and the Free Software foundation's top lawyer, has already given the go-ahead for the Mono , therefore I can only explain Alan's anti-.NET arguments to be either misinformed, or written to misinform. I hope he will redirect his efforts to more worthy issues in the future; he will then once again have my full support.
This set of interview responses from Linux hacker Alan Cox is overtly political, in line with the questions we asked him on May 6th. Alan doesn't just talk about problems here but proposes sensible solutions for them. Very nice. Thanks, Alan.
1) European DMCA
by Yohahn
Given that you won't visit the USA given the enactment of the DMCA. If the DMCA equivalent passes in Europe, will you move? If so, is there anywhere that is safe from this kind of insane law (it sounds like peru may be a new haven for free software)?
Alan:
It's very hard to fight laws in foreign countries. Dmitry for example was almost certainly chosen because he was Russian. It's sadly much easier to win a case in almost any country when you use your historical enemies and prejudices to set the precedents. "Foreigner attacking US business interests" just sounds so much better in court than "clever kid helping his grandma read ebooks", especially when someone notices you can easily get a longer sentence for helping grandma read than kicking her down the stairs.
[read the rest of the comment here]
Fair use is neither piracy nor theft. Fair use does not infringe the compensation of copyright owners. Perhaps, one could keep the issues of fair use and piracy/theft seperate rather than simply regurgitating industry FUD designed to co-mingle the two.
> Next week may involve repotting plants I think, and trying to work out why one of my spiderplants is dying.
...
I wonder if he has any ulterior motives for having spider plants
:)
(RMS allegedly has a phobia of spider plants
http://www.geocities.com/stallmanus/ )
Built by the manufacturers - not an after-market hack. Able to view DVD's from all regions with macrovision disabled.
I own one because I teach my kids portuguese and no region 1 DVD's come with portuguese - I buy from Brasil.
World Imports is a very reputeable company.
http://www.world-import.com/dvd.htm
Microsoft is a financial scam worse then Enron. Some links http://www.billparish.com and http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/12/pf/agenda-msft/ind ex.html. The law firm of Klayman & Toskes, P.A. ("K&T"), representing numerous employee stock option plan participants throughout the Technology and Telecommunications industries in securities arbitration suits, continues to pursue claims on its clients' behalf against prominent brokerage firms for alleged unlawful conduct. Recently, a suit was filed on behalf of Microsoft, Inc. employee stock option plan participants before the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. alleging unlawful conduct at Merrill Lynch ("Merrill"). Subsequent to the filing, K&T has received numerous inquiries and information with regard to the alleged allegations. The suit alleges that Merrill failed to recommend to Microsoft employee stock option plan participants hedging strategies to protect their concentrated position in Microsoft as a result of the exercise of their stock options through the use of margin. Claims have been brought against Merrill for mismanagement of their clients' portfolios given the fact that there were options strategies available at the time of exercise that would have protected the value of the margined, concentrated portfolio, known as a "zero cost" collar. K&T represents numerous Microsoft employee stock option plan participants who have lost tens of millions of dollars. The sole purpose of this release is to investigate, on behalf of our clients, sales practice violations of licensed brokers at Merrill. The firm is investigating securities violations including the misuse of margin, the misuse of stock option plans, failure to supervise, unsuitability claims, misrepresentation and material omissions of fact, unauthorized transactions, and excessive trading/churning of customers' accounts. We would greatly appreciate any information from customers concerning the method or process used by Merrill with regard to clients' stock options and the handling of their accounts. Klayman & Toskes, P.A. has offices in California, Florida and New York and represents investors throughout the nation. If you wish to discuss this announcement, have done business with Merrill or a major brokerage firm with regard to the execution of stock options, and feel you have been a victim of stockbroker misconduct or have information relevant to our lawsuit, please contact Lawrence L. Klayman, Esquire of Klayman & Toskes, P.A., 888-997-9956 or visit us on the web at http://www.nasd-law.com/.
Alan Cox admits he just can't make an economic argument to Nvidia why they should open source their drivers. He tries to save the situation by doing some hand-waving about patents and IP but eventually has to acknowledge that open-sourcing the drivers would help Nvidia's competitors.
Let's be blunt, if Nvidia were to open source their drivers even Alan Cox is admitting that say ATI could act as a parasite on Nvidia's IP. And that would simply be wrong. Nvidia has invested in a unified driver model where Linux support is almost on par with Windows support whereas ATI has chosen to not invest in skilled driver writers. It is incredible that card generation after card generation the universal complaint about ATI is always about the drivers, the company is based in Canada where presumably with any sort of effort they could hire extraordinary programmers to write these drivers, yet ATI management chooses this area to skimp on spending money.
Why should a company that is too cheap to hire sufficiently skilled programmers be given a free ride on Nvidia's investments?
" the last couple of weeks have involved playing Illuminati and practicing my world domination skills"
I knew microsoft wanted to hire him for a reason.....
It was not a troll. I just think even Alan has to have something say, to say. Now he did not. It is called criticism.
troll:
1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flame s; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbie s" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT
If the US flag itself could be used as a device to circumvent an access control then it would technically become illegal.
Personally, I suspect you'd have more luck with an ASCII Constitution but that's the principle. Can't see it happening (it's too artificial and would get laughed out of court) but it would be entertaining...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Let's just say, that as a somewhat interested code-monkey, I've been wondering off and on now about a bit of what the following answer touches on
Blockquoth the poster (evermore till the
So, I'm mostly curious. Is the whole XMLRPC, SOAP, Web-Based Client, Firewall circle self driving? Network administrators started putting up firewalls so that undesireable traffic would go no further. Then the *.net busted onto the scene and port 80 sort of popped right open pretty much everywhere. Now we write complicated schemes (and schemas) and wrap all our data into a session-oriented layer on top of a connectionless protocol, and shuttle it out (often, as noted in the quote, with great encryption) across the ubiquitously open ports.
To what end? We've essentially arrived at a multipurpose protocol layered atop a single purposed sub-section of a multipurposed protocol, the firewall vendors make the bank, the network admins get a bit more automated every day, and all that's old is new again.
Wierd.
You people kill me laughing
The idea of creating and using a independant language based development facility to create software has no basis in reality.
.Net, it is a ludicrously expensive software API to develop on, and offers no real value in developing internet based applications as a result.
I for one don't care about language independance as there is no use for a application written in X different languages. US Military tried that two decades ago and said enough is enough, and created ADA to solve that problem.
It would seem Microsoft hasn't kept up to date on the historic research in antiquidated software development practices.
Not surprising, it hasn't kep up to date with MODERN practices either!!
.Net was created with one thing and one thing in mind only, to destroy Java and to sell more software, not because it solves a pressing problem in the market place. (Beyond people flocking to Java to solve the decade old problem of keep software alive and well between hardware upgrades.)
.Net was not created because it offers something of value to the market place.
.Net was not created because it solves a technology problem in our industry like Java. (i.e. Truly portable code over target machine hardware)
.Net in short is a solution looking for a problem.
It offfers NO advantage over its target market it wants to kill, (i.e. Java developers) and actually restricts your organization by not allowing your software to run anywhere but on Microsoft's own limited vision of what computing power is, (i.e. PC hardware).
Like so many other times I have commented on
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
It's interesting how most of the questions have a self-serving angle, as if the asker is just trying to get Mr. Cox to agree with him. And moreso, those questions were exactly what you'd expect from zealots without much real-life experience. Someone actually thought that "open source" was the worlds largest grassroots organization? And I love the guy who sees PC has being "open." Open in what sense? Do you have the VHDL for your Athlon or GeForce 2? Is being able to swap one overpriced video card with a bad driver for another really all that empowering?
Kudos to Alan for some level-headed responses, given the loons who asked questions.
Sure.
But, this is why the "sing the decryption algorithm" recordings are interesting, because a song falls under the auspices of free speech in the US. And, thus, is a protected legal right of US citizens. So, you have the opposing legal rights of free speech and DMCA laws.
But, the flag does not enjoy such priviledges. So, while using the flag would be symbolicly interesting to entangle in this mess, it would be much less interesting legally.
Or at least the history of copyright in the UK. Which is where Alan lives. And is a country whose legal history had quite a bit of influence on the US, where you live.
The historical origin of copyright there was censorship laws that restricted printing rights to publishers, and made the publishers responsible for making the system work. The publishers then created a system where the right to create copies of specific documents was property that could be bought and sold between them. It was initially sold by the author to a publisher, and the publishers then could resell or keep (their choice) the copyright.
This worked for a couple of centuries until censorship laws were struck down in the late 1600's. The resulting vacuum left publishers in a bad place, which they solved with a bill passed by Queen Anne circa 1710 (IIRC). This bill created the idea that an author owned their works by virtue of creating it, albeit only for a limited time. This allowed the publishers to resurrect most of their old system. The open question then became whether there was a common law justification for *permanent* copyrights (because in common law once property was created, it was owned indefinitely). Courts went back and forth and this was finally settled in the negative some decades later by the House of Lords, at roughly the time of the American Revolution.
For a detailed history I highly recommend Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Often the hardest part of history is putting aside how we think about topics to appreciate how people of that day approached what were then novel issues. This book does an excellent job of that.
I should pass an incidental note. Much of the official US theory of copyright stems from Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on the matter, which stem from French, not British, jurisprudence. In this view copyright is a tradeoff between the harm done to the public by removing what should be their right (the right to make copies) and the benefit from giving authors an incentive to create original works. This differs markedly from the British discussion of whether the production of literary works is or isn't the creation of property, which being property should be protected as all other forms of property are. (A view that remains popular with publishers, Hollywood, the RIAA, and so on.)
Blaming Dmitry is pure scapegoating - he had remarkably little to do with the extremely few illegal actions that have been committed with his code.
This further quote from your post is apropos:
Yeh. Right. Do me one. You're going to try to take the stand and make the case that you know more about "maximising total return to the shareholders" than Bill Gates, is that right? Good luck.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This is FUD, plain and simple. The fact is, that the .NET CLR and C# specifications are right up there on the ECMA [www.ecma.ch] standards board for anyone to freely implement.
Just beacuse it is an open spec doesn't mean that it isn't burdened with patents. About 6 months ago I was down at the PTO filing a provisional (I do this often on the stuff that I write... with no intention to follow up; it just puts my stuff in the public domain so no one can patent it) and ran into the fella from IBM. He had a huge stack of patents (about 40 or so). I asked him how often he does this... he smiled and said "about once a week". I multiplied 50*40=2000 patents? And he just grinned, proud of this legal terror they had constructed. I can't imagine that Microsoft is much different. In those few hundred (perhaps a thousand or more) software patents I bet there are several on CLR. And I bet if/when you seriously come close to threatening Microsoft, they will use them against you. So please. Calling something FUD when it isn't is just niave.
Theoretically, it might allow one to distribute a modified DeCSS and say, "This is not a copyright circumvention device. It does nothing useful by itself. If it's used with an image of the United States flag, then one might use it to view DVDs on an unapproved device, but without the flag, it's harmless." Now, how would this be prosecuted in court? I imagine it would be tough for a prosecutor to stand up in court and argue against distributing the code, which does nothing useful. And no sane (or politcially ambitious) prosecutor will stand up and argue against distributing a copy of the flag. So how would the prosecutor prosecute this case?
IANAL, but I am sure that this is not an ironclad defense. I wouldn't try encrypting a detailed plan to Do Something Really Bad with an image of the flag and say, "Nothing illegal here unless you have the flag!" It's more of a political statement that says, "The DMCA is so bad that it can make an image of the flag illegal."
It wouldn't be really effective unless you could outrage a large corporation enough to arrest you ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H have you arrested, then you make a spectacle of the trial, get the media on your side, etc. I'm not Russian, though, so I probably couldn't get arrested for this. Even if I were Russian, I'm not willing to do this, and I don't know anybody else who is.
1. Independent Discovery
Anyone who creates the same secret information independently -- even if it is identical to your business' trade secret -- is free to use and disclose that information. In other words, creating a trade secret, by itself, does not grant you exclusive rights to use that secret.
EXAMPLE: Dudely Company and Manly Company sell competing after-shave products. Dudely creates a database that compares different brands of after-shave advertising and resulting annual sales. Dudely uses this trade secret information to determine how to allocate its advertising budget. Manly's president independently creates a similar database and publishes it in a business book. Dudely will be unable to protect its formula under existing NDAs because its database is no longer a trade secret.
To preserve a possible claim of independent discovery, many companies will not look at materials furnished by an outsider who wants to sell something to the company. By refusing to consider unsolicited materials, the company has a better argument for its independent creation of similar products. One method of proving independent creation is to use clean room techniques (see "Clean Rooms" below)
An ASCII constitution (or Bill of Rights, or First Amendment) would be the better way to do this. Have the tool only work if the Bill of Rights is provided as a text file or typed into a dialog box. I like it.
sulli
RTFJ.
The flag icon for Slashdot's 'United States' section is missing its first stripe - the stripe that represents Delaware, the first state admitted to the Union. While a simple oversight could be forgiven, it should be known from here on out that Slashdot is in fact aware of the missing stripe, and even worse, refuses to do anything about it!
This vulgar flag desecration and rabid anti-Delawarism must be put to a stop. Let the Slashdot crew know that we will not accept a knowingly mutilated flag or the insinuation that Delawarians deserve to be cut out of the union. I ask you, what has Delaware done to deserve this insolence, this wanton disregard, this bigotry?
This intentional disregard of a vital national symbol is unpatriotic. Why, the flippant remarks CmdrTaco made about our flag border on terrorism! I urge you to join the protest in each 'United States' story. Sacrifice your karma for your country by pointing out this injustice. Let's all work together to get our flag back. Can you give your country any less?
Don't forget, the taxes were already paid on these funds when earned. Mr. Cox, and many others like him, just want taxation to be a revolving door for corporations.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
If what Alan said about the patents they hold is true, then nothing you said is very relevent.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Dad: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
Me: I dunno.
Dad: So they can hide in cherry trees.
Me: Uh, I've never seen an elephant in a tree.
Dad: You see how well it works!
the story on your userlan link is a bad example. Why?
Because Paul has potnetially violated Kirks alleged copyright on the syntax, this was then used by Richard.
Paul has allowed Richard to use somthing which he may not hold copyright to, this is a clasic example of piracy by proxy.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What kind of flag? a GIF flag, JPEG flag? does it have to be compressed to 75% quality as opposed to 90%?
;)
I dunno if it's possible to factorize the key into some random bits such that it can be combined with _any possible image of the US flag_. If it isn't then it's not the American flag, it's just a sequence of bits that can be interpreted as a JPEG that looks like a particularly compressed particular view of a particular flag.
... </nitpick>
I'm surprised there are still people on Slashdot who haven't heard of the exception to patent law called Independent Discovery. I could go ahead and describe it here, or I could quote one of the more eminent legal resources [nolo.com] on the Web. Basically, if you didn't copy the patent directly off their patent claim sheets, then they don't have a case against you (US and UK law):
Independant discovery only works in a trade secret environment. Independant discovery is not a defense against patent infringement. The book you link to and the stuff you quote is all about trade secrtes, not patents.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Read again. You are talking about trade secrets which have nothing to do with patent law...
You're both a couple of nationalist dickweeds. Get a grip and recognize the existence of individuality, you goddam baby racists in training!
Play the resultant VHS tape
Observe the pretty noise (Courtesy of Macrovision(R)(C)(TM)(SM))
The point you're missing here is, piracy is an illegal act of redistributing another's work without compensation to the original author. By definition, this is an illegal activity, so how is any law outlawing the tools that allow this going to prevent the act?
The legitimate customer who HAS purchased the software/DVD/widget now cannot exercise his right to make backups of the content. He also cannot transfer the content (which he purchased -- he did NOT purchase only the media, he purchased the right to use the content) from the delivery media to a media of his choice for use. This restricts his ability to use the product as he sees fit (in the privacy of his own home).
If THAT is not enough, the protection schemes many companies use on their products prevent the normal operation of the product. The region codes of the DVD are an example of this. I can buy a movie that's only distributed in Hong Kong, but if I use a region enabled player, I won't be able to view it at all, even though there IS NO EQUIVALENT for my region. Another example is software copy protection... if the copy protection can't read the non-standard CD format on a given drive, it is
not useable.
The DMCA says that if I find a way to make this work on my equipment (which it does not, as the manufacturer sold it to me), or I make a backup copy of it, then I am a criminal.
This is what the DMCA does to a law-abiding citizen.
What does it do to a pirate?
Given that a pirate is intending to redistribute copyrighted material (which is itself already an illegal violation of copyright law), and that they know perfectly well that they are breaking the law by doing this... how is one more law going to deter them?
i'm working on this as we speak.. =)
.jpeg of a flag, at any size, it will work.. =)
basically you feed it a
of course I'm going to post this anonymously once the code is done, but i think it would be great
the problem is that the flag of the US will not be viewed as a copy-protection circumvention device.. the code that reads the flag and cracks the code will be associated with it..
the reason being is also the reason why the DMCA shouldn't have ever been enacted. circumvention code by itself cannot crack copy-protection schemes, it takes a computer to run it on.. so the computer WITH the code together should be the item that is illegal, not just one part of it.
just like rocks are not illegal, but rocks enroute to target + person who throws them + target that will be damaged by rock makes the rock an illegal tool. it is because the rock was used in the commission of a crime.. the same way that guns are legal, but using them to hold up a bank is not.
-fc
. echo -e \\04 >
Yes, I would still win the bet, but I seriously doubt you would have $5000 US or any other currancy to pay with.
Thanks for playing, now go back to your box with John Draper.
Montag
I'd like to see the SSSCA stuff solved by market forces and sanity too. Let the Hollywood folks make themselves an antitamper PCI or USB2 hardware card that has only encrypted data in, a smartcard slot for per user rights management and an SVGA analogue overlay/analogue out. If the market is right they can sell/give away such hardware and make a profit on the films.
I can't believe I'm reading this bullcrap coming from AC himself. If I pay for digital content, I have every right to expect to have open access to the original digital stream for whatever the heck my Fair Use desires may be. (Hey, maybe I have a digital projector and want to run the signal through a de-interlacer, sharpen filter, or perhaps scale the output to a different resolution for doing multi-channel viewing). And it is NOT hollywood's right to dictate via DRM, hard-coded or otherwise, what I may do with the content I've legally gained access to, whether cable subscription or open air broadcast. So if I want to take the HDTV stream from my favorite TV show, edit out the commercials, scale it down to 160x120, encode it to DivX and play it on my iPaQ, I should have every right to do so. Same goes for any type of audio-only format. The beauty of open technology is flexibility. I can be creative with it and bend it to suit my needs.
What Cox is suggesting would be better than SSSCA-like government mandated PC hardware / software copy controls, but it is by no means good for the consumer and it is still by any means, an anti-innovative technology. Oh yeah.. and it wouldn't prevent 'piracy' either.
See Subject.
You can find the former at Pricewatch
And here's a link to VHS->DVD units; I haven't found any DVD->VHS units in my quick searching.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
If he wanted to help grandma read, he would bring some books from the local library and get grandma some warm tea and a bright light.
Dear billstr78:
My name is Jim Shyster, and I represent Global Tetrahedron Publishing, the largest book publisher in the world. It has come to our attention that you are distributing instructions describing how to circumvent the patented access control device which protects our valuable printed content.
Our patented access control system, which is sold under various names, including Darkness(tm), NoLight(R), and Hey-I-Can't-See(tm), is an effective system for protecting copyrighted works from unauthorized duplication and use. Over 10,000 man-hours have gone into developing this popular system, which is licensed to thousands of usersworldwide.
Your description clearly outlines a method for circumventing this system, by use of a "bright light", in violation of US copyright law, specifically Code Title 17, Ch. 12, Sec. 1201. The reading license in our books states that only our NightVision(R) Glasses can be used to read these books in an otherwise darkened room, which are available from our distributors for $199.99. A reader may also purchase a Perpetual Sunshine License ($1,999) which grants members of a household the right to read outdoors, under solar illumination, at any time. These are the only authorized uses of our products.
You might also note the section of the license that forbids license holders from using public libraries or any other system of "free" or "unauthorized" reading, lending, or copying; in order to prevent book piracy.
We trust that you will remove the infringing material within 7 days.
Most Very Truly Yours,
Jim Shyster, ESQ
Dewie, Cheatham, and Howe LLP
Programs don't violate copyright, PEOPLE violate copyright.
I understood you. I just wanted to make sure people understood this would only be a political statement, nothing more.
Why? This is the idea I was questioning. Who cares if the flag is used to make this point? It is a grandstanding tactic designed to draw attention, but has little to do with legal issues.
Simple, he argues that in fact this item (in this case a flag) *is* a circumvention device. He could demonstrate how using it (with some other item maybe) decrypts a DVD. The real question is how could the defense use the fact that the device resembles a US flag in its arguement.
Now, rethink the situation where you can involve a free speech arguement, such as in the example of singing the DeCSS source code. Now, the defense does have an arguement. Free speech.
The UK encrypted to air TV people went spectacularly bankrupt but thats market forces at work.
Same in the Netherlands. They wanted to hide our premier football league (American? read: soccer) behind a subscription model. Noone used it, the "Sport 7" channel went bankrupt and football is right back on public TV.
Turns out you can't cheat the public from what they think should be available. Piracy wasn't an issue here (weekly matches are much permanent than movies and audio, which you tend to *keep*). Only bad thing: many of the smaller teams now have huge debts because they made huge investments based on a multi-year sponsor contract of Sport 7.
Let's hope the general audience will also be smart enough to ignore any devices and software overly protected just for the sake of getting more money. Educating them indeed seems the proper way to fight.
See Section 296 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)
So you'll take a handout, but you'd call a government "facist" that supplied one? You're slaying me here, man, that's funny as hell!
If businesses/industry do not exist to serve the needs of the socio-cultural matrix that allows them to exist, what are they for? Is the existence of widgets of inherent value aside from the generation of taxes and payroll checks during their production? Perhaps all the Happy Meal toys are really Objectivist Holy Relics?
Now I'm cracking myself up. I'm easily amused today.
I'm sick of deleting bug reports from people with the Nvidia kernel modules. I've talked to Nvidia folks about why they do it. The bottom line is that I can't make a good case for them to open source it. Their worries about what it might do to their performance relative to competitors are quite well founded.
Could you explain this further? The source code for the Nvidia kernel drivers is available (though copyrighted, not GPL) and appears to be well commented. What exactly do they fear from GPL'ing it? That it may degrade in performance? Obviously not that their competitors will be able to see it, as they can already.
Ian (from Cropredy, ukpml & Sydney linux.conf.au)
I have found in me the urge to buy power tools
I am waiting for a cordless drill that is fully 802.11b compliant.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I have been searching within for a reaonable system by which to determine the ethics of allowing a given tool. Recently I have come to believe that the gun lobby's (NRA) fight is my fight. A gun is just a tool and actions, not tools, should be legislated and punished. Often with varying degrees of success I have seen people argue that guns are far to devistating and they and other tools like them should be regulated and banned.
I think the fact that guns are the prime focus of the "should tools be regulated" debate is catastrophic to our cause. A gun is a special case. It can end any chance of correcting a wrong doing. Murder has special consequenses beyond any other crime. Other crimes can (often) be corrected, and their damages reversed, but once a humans heart beats for the last time reporations can not be made. Guns are designed to kill things, movie decoding software isn't.
Any tools distribution or use should not be regulated, unless fatal harm can come directly from it's use. Ownership or posession of potentially fatal tools can only be regulated in publicly shared places.
Perhaps an amendment is in order, to stop hysteria and lying stupidity every time a signifigant new technology comes around the bend.
As far as I can see, this fits well with misused tools(hit and run homicide), and intended killing machines,(glock 9). Anything that happens on private property is still protected by laws governing actions. It also shows foolish laws that regulate tools in a way that benifits the establishment and defeats/punishes creativity for what they are. The DMCA will fall.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Just what we need, an excuse for the govt to outlaw the Constitution
At least he didn't start going on about Darmok at Tanagra...
Didn't I read recently that SCO released the rights to the V7 source? Was it just the kernel or the whole OS?
How difficult would it be to target this for x86? How difficult would it be to make it run XFree? Would the kernel need to be updated for POSIX?
The urge to buy power tools can rather easily be subverted int an urge to buy machine tools.
Machine tools are to power tools what Linux is to Windows, and will gratify any hacker (especially one who already has the inclination to wield a soldering iron).
Why is it that people can write kiddie porn essays and not get charged, but when a programmer writes De-CSS, etc, he is thrown in the slammer?
AC is 100% correct, the writing of the code does not break copyright law, only using the tool in certain ways is criminal.
The DMCA == censorship at best, at worst it is an attack on a minority group, developers, as big money attempts to control what they can't buy.
Its astounding to me that a person in the US can buy a 9mm Glock, a weapon made specifically for killing other people, but if they distribute certain censored works, like De-CSS, its into the slammer.
What's next? Illegal Mathematical formulae?
Because:
They learn the art of efficiency. It is a complete waste of time to shave your beard if it just going to grow back. You spend 3-5 minutes every stinking day shaving. So why do it? That's around 15 hours a year for a Mon-Fri schedule. Grow a beard and trim it for 5 min every two weeks. Done.
History of Publishing Website covers press control and censorship under Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and censorship used for military ends during the English Civil War (1642-1649).
The more dangerous parts of all this are not so much .NET but chunks of the model that not only the .NET product and the Java standards rely on. Things like xmlrpc, soap and the stuff on top of them are designed to "interwork through firewalls". A better phrase would be "go through the firewall like a knife through butter in a way that prevents the companies involved monitoring the activity".
.NET and Linux by SL33Z3 .NET and any initiatives to make the technology work on Linux?
... I simply do not get that freaking panic about SOAP and firewalls.
.html request for a plain web site posting what I like to that side.
When all you have is an encrypted SSL session how are you going to figure out if its a legitimate bit of ebusiness with a related company or someone in your company uploading your entire company customer database?
This is a part form the answer to the qestion:
3) Microsoft
What are your feelings on Microsoft's
Hu hom
If I run a corporate network and I have a server inside of my network, which exposes its functionality via SOAP, my firewall does not NEED to filter it. Well, sure, I'm paranoid, so I filter the adresses so that outside requests only go to the HTML web server or to the SOAP server.
What the heck should be the security issue with SOAP via HTTP if *I* run a soap service. I can configure everything to make it bullet proof.
So other scenario:
Someone outside of my network is running a SOAP service. Clients inside of my network like to access it. My firewall should "be involved".
So again, what is the freaking security problem?
A guy inside of my network likes to upload the client data base to an outside destination?
So, first thing: I only alow SOAP requests to known SOAP servers where my business processes rely on.
Second, "of course" I need a inspecting fire wall. I only allow requests which fit my restrictions of service endpoint and called method.
Third, if you in fact use SOAP you install a forwarding SOAP server inside of your network. That one is configured to accept all requests which are ment to reach a known outside destination. All requests are prechecked if needed or simply forwarded if the destination is accepted or dropped if the destination is not accepted.
The firewall is configured to accept and pass through HTTP requests with content type text/xml or text/soap only from that server.
So what is the problem?
The remaining problem is one can write a custom application using SOAP via SSL to bypass the internal server. The firewall can not check the content because of SSL? I think the firewall still can recognize the content type, only the body of teh request is encrypted, right?
So, you think that is a SOAP problem? Isn't that a generic problem of firewalls?
I can write a custom application, a ten liner in Java or likely a one liner shell script with CURL, just using plain HTTP for a plain
What does the firewall do in that case? The same like in case of SOAP. Either it is statefull and well configured or not. And for inside out attacks firewalls are hard to make water proof I would say.
Bottom line: I see no SOAP inherent problem regarding firewalls. But thats only because the guys who are much smarter in that respect fail to make clear WHY there is indeed a problem.
I would love to see some good points showing why SOAP messes everything up(security wise). I only found statement snd no backing, even from Bruce Schneier.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hype it up and shhhh lets make our money before the other suckers know we will have siphoned off the real $$$$ and left the other suckers holding worthless paper. Cook the books like the "Devil in flaming Hell" yeah by the time they find out whats up will be long gone with their life long savings and investment. If the DOJ was smart they would have the Judge impound the real PassPorts of Bill Gates and Company just in case he plans to flee and by the way the European Union is still not done with Bill Gates and Company. Bill Gates and Company you will not get away with the scam you have been pulling unless of course you have reservations at Cave Osama Bin A$$hole. Even so in time a drone from the sky powered by GNU Linux and the power of the Penguin will asset the US Government in dropping a big Penguin powered turd supreme on Osama Cave. Osama why do you not come out of your cave and fight you big pussy. Shove your Jihad up your loser A$$!~
If I've just gone to the movies, the conversation is usually about the movie.
If I'm at work, conversation is about work.
When I'm on Slashdot, conversation is about Linux.
What makes you think this behavior indicates "myopia"?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Dmitry was not in hot water just for "helping grandma to read", he made it possible for millions of copywritten works which make up for some people's livleyhoods, to be exploited without proper compensation by 10's of millions of people. If he wanted to help grandma read, he would bring some books from the local library and get grandma some warm tea and a bright light.
Here's my question. What's the difference? Authors don't get any revenue when you check a book out of your local library, and many times authors donate books to libraries denying themselves that initial purchase. So why is reading a downloaded copy of a book I'm probably going to delete in a few days different from checking out a book from my local library and returning it in the same ammount of time?
If businesses/industry do not exist to serve the needs of the socio-cultural matrix that allows them to exist, what are they for?
If the socio-cultural matrix that grows up around the businesses/industries (that fulfill real human needs) is allowed to exist, what is it for?
The problem was the advertising in the site where the software was sold. It claimed in BIG LETTERS to overcome the copy protections for that effect.
If they just publicited the product to enable blinds to read e-books... they would be just off the hook! (as is stated in the DMCA)...
[the servers in US and the payments thru US wheren't also very helpfull... but they are just details]
What i find funny is that US is claiming liability to a foreigner company...
Acording to the US legal code, legal bi-directionalidy exists... are they opening their doors to legal troubles brought all over the world?
Cheers...
P.S.- And i don't like ADOBE... specially for their part in this whole stuff... (yes... YOU CAN'T ERASE THE RESPONSABILITY)
I just hope the case is dismissed so they can counter-sue and demand compensation from the state and from Adobe...
The word is copyrighted. It is a right to copy. (this isn't intended as a flame. I'll be the first to admit that I make mistakes too)
Great idea:
:)
1. Write a program that embeds a file in a jpeg image
2. Write a program that extracts a file from a JPEG image and executes it.
3. Encode the DeCSS algorithm over the American Flag.jpg
4. You're done.....
(Slashdot thinks I'm logged in on the main page, but not here. Go figure)
This has been happening since the last
slashcode upgrade. Seems random, yet
very persistent.
OOO... no, it's a copyright circumvention device LOL.
Financial Pyramid Scheme Exposed at http://www.billparish.com. http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/12/pf/agenda-msft/ind ex.html. The law firm of Klayman & Toskes, P.A. ("K&T"), representing numerous employee stock option plan participants throughout the Technology and Telecommunications industries in securities arbitration suits, continues to pursue claims on its clients' behalf against prominent brokerage firms for alleged unlawful conduct. Recently, a suit was filed on behalf of Microsoft, Inc. employee stock option plan participants before the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. alleging unlawful conduct at Merrill Lynch ("Merrill"). Subsequent to the filing, K&T has received numerous inquiries and information with regard to the alleged allegations. The suit alleges that Merrill failed to recommend to Microsoft employee stock option plan participants hedging strategies to protect their concentrated position in Microsoft as a result of the exercise of their stock options through the use of margin. Claims have been brought against Merrill for mismanagement of their clients' portfolios given the fact that there were options strategies available at the time of exercise that would have protected the value of the margined, concentrated portfolio, known as a "zero cost" collar. K&T represents numerous Microsoft employee stock option plan participants who have lost tens of millions of dollars. The sole purpose of this release is to investigate, on behalf of our clients, sales practice violations of licensed brokers at Merrill. The firm is investigating securities violations including the misuse of margin, the misuse of stock option plans, failure to supervise, unsuitability claims, misrepresentation and material omissions of fact, unauthorized transactions, and excessive trading/churning of customers' accounts. We would greatly appreciate any information from customers concerning the method or process used by Merrill with regard to clients' stock options and the handling of their accounts. Klayman & Toskes, P.A. has offices in California, Florida and New York and represents investors throughout the nation. If you wish to discuss this announcement, have done business with Merrill or a major brokerage firm with regard to the execution of stock options, and feel you have been a victim of stockbroker misconduct or have information relevant to our lawsuit, please contact Lawrence L. Klayman, Esquire of Klayman & Toskes, P.A., 888-997-9956 or visit us on the web at http://www.nasd-law.com/.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Funny, when I read it I thought - what the heck is he talking about.
Then I looked it up and started laughing. It seems that she was the one bringing us the "explicit lyrics" sticker on records, also known as "the north american sticker for high quality music".
What I also didn't know was that Walmart and others are refusing to sell those records, which seem to be a big deal, since Walmart alone makes about 20% of the US sales volume in records. So what happens can be described as censorship.
In my opinion, everybody has the right to say fuck if she likes to, the only thing that is hurt is other peoples opinion about her vocabulary and/or her manners. :)
I also have to agree with Alan's statement about "our" state of political organization, although I wouldn't use his rather harsh sounding words. ... well, your technical interests.
The first question we need to adress is "What level of political organization do we want?"
My anwer would be "None". The free software community is all about getting that cozy warm feeling if you could chat with similar technical interested people about
So what you (akb) see as a potential political grassroots movement is just the equivalent of a global rabbitbreeder club.
As an example I might recap a political, free software related, argument with a friend I had, it boiled down to those two opinions:
one: "IBM is good for the free software movement. They help us get recognition through giant ad campaigns they invest millions in. They bring linux to the corporate market so everyone can see what a great OS this is and eventually switch their machines at home. they contribute code back (thus playing nicely) and help us standardize."
the other: "IBM is bad. We do not need recognition by ad campaigns we need recognition for our superior os/usability experience. What people see if you bring them Linux is what a great server-os linux is. No end user would switch his pc at home because he likes the CLI. IBM has taken over the LSB only to impose the standards on us they control (the recent rpm vs deb decision being one example), not the ones that are technically best."
If I take the rpm vs. deb descision of the LSB.
"Traditional" geek-politics would be that the technical superior technology wins, aka deb would become a standard.
This wasn't the case.
how do you expect the politics outside of the realm of technical descisions to be, if even our own political descisions are that inconsequent?
<flamebait> And don't even get me started about the neo-capitalist fuckers from the EFF. The only way I can explain their famousness is the complete lack of political education among their admirers. <flamebait>
So my advice would be: forget about political organization. If you feel like engaging in politics, it's very likely you find more people with the same opinion as yours outside of the so called nerd community. Brainpower has a tendency to diversify.
In Ghandi's words:
Whatever you do is insignificant -
but its very important that you DO it.
So I have to agree with Alan again. :)
Kind regards -Ahaldra
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
the harm a gun can do is of a different order than
the harm misuse of software tools can.
you are bascally saying "Guns don't kill people,
People do."
Even the nraa knows how lame that sounds and don't use it that much.
Despite what the Supreme Court might think
( they used to think Jim Crow laws and anti-suffragette laws were okdokey too)
The constituiton is clear:
lacking an official army that was well equiped,
armed, trained and organized,
the nascent state realized that it's defence was
reliant upon volunteer local militias.
All they did was ensure that the member's ( the members, not anybody else)of a "well regulated milita "( ie, on a short leash)
had the right to own and bear arms.
It pretty clear.
Of course, like the Bible and Astrology you can
read anything you want into something.
Microsoft is a financial scam worse then Enron. Some links http://www.billparish.com and http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/12/pf/agenda-msft/ind ex.html. The law firm of Klayman & Toskes, P.A. ("K&T"), representing numerous employee stock option plan participants throughout the Technology and Telecommunications industries in securities arbitration suits, continues to pursue claims on its clients' behalf against prominent brokerage firms for alleged unlawful conduct. Recently, a suit was filed on behalf of Microsoft, Inc. employee stock option plan participants before the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. alleging unlawful conduct at Merrill Lynch ("Merrill"). Subsequent to the filing, K&T has received numerous inquiries and information with regard to the alleged allegations. The suit alleges that Merrill failed to recommend to Microsoft employee stock option plan participants hedging strategies to protect their concentrated position in Microsoft as a result of the exercise of their stock options through the use of margin. Claims have been brought against Merrill for mismanagement of their clients' portfolios given the fact that there were options strategies available at the time of exercise that would have protected the value of the margined, concentrated portfolio, known as a "zero cost" collar. K&T represents numerous Microsoft employee stock option plan participants who have lost tens of millions of dollars. The sole purpose of this release is to investigate, on behalf of our clients, sales practice violations of licensed brokers at Merrill. The firm is investigating securities violations including the misuse of margin, the misuse of stock option plans, failure to supervise, unsuitability claims, misrepresentation and material omissions of fact, unauthorized transactions, and excessive trading/churning of customers' accounts. We would greatly appreciate any information from customers concerning the method or process used by Merrill with regard to clients' stock options and the handling of their accounts. Klayman & Toskes, P.A. has offices in California, Florida and New York and represents investors throughout the nation. If you wish to discuss this announcement, have done business with Merrill or a major brokerage firm with regard to the execution of stock options, and feel you have been a victim of stockbroker misconduct or have information relevant to our lawsuit, please contact Lawrence L. Klayman, Esquire of Klayman & Toskes, P.A., 888-997-9956 or visit us on the web at http://www.nasd-law.com/.
[
I doubt if a bright light would help if she has non-functioning light receptors. I'm interested in what sort of software she does use to read stuff however. Please tell us.
I remember one time I had a tech support job and I had to help a blind user who couldn't work out why she couldn't get her computer to work after rebooting it. The problem was that she left a non-system floppy disk in the drive before rebooting, so the OS didn't load, and the screen reader never got anywhere near loading. With my working eyes, I could tell straight away what the problem was, so I explained it to her. I showed her how to tell if there was a floppy in the drive by feeling if the floppy eject button was sticking out (floppy inserted) or not. She never reported that problem again, so I guess that was a small help for her.
One reason I'm interested in screen-reading software is because I don't always want to use my eyes as the computers main interface to me. It'd be nice if I had a choice to get the computer to whisper quietly into my headphones. If we get more people using screen readers and stuff, then computers should get easier for all people including blind people. We also need to encourage web sites to make sure their text web pages are working properly and don't depend heavily on things like Javascript which I think can be a problem.
I also really like Alan's idea of sticking a fake beard on. That sort of thinking is what'll get us to where we need to be!
(Speaking as a Brit)
The interest to me lies in the Pledge of Allegiance. Having a country who've been brought up pledgeing allegiance to a flag enact a law making that flag illegal would be amusing.
However, due to the nature of the thing, I have to think that text is a better tool. Also a plausible one.
Instinct says I could construct a hypothetical tool which decrypted DVDs (for example) using the constitution as a key. It would be a trivial modification from an existing program, I'd just XOR the current key against the constitution and store that. Combine the two and I have a valid key... and a legal stunt which would get laughed out of court because there would be no way I could state that the constitution would be an integral part of this whole. Any judge worth their salt would instantly point out that I could have replaced the constitution with any text at the initial stage and made _that_ the critical factor, at which point the fact that I user the constition makes it a legal stunt and nothing more.
However, I'm sure we can beat this. There's enough access controls that need keys out there to provide a large pool of possible targets. Remember the fun a while ago with the 'illegal prime number'? Someone had found a large prime which happened to also be a vaild GZIP file of DeCSS IIRC.
Let's imagine that someone takes a large pile of keys and Project Gutenberg. Searches for byte equivalents of these keys within various texts. Sooner or later we'll hit one somewhere. Maybe the constitution won't unzip that eBook, but what if lines 2-7 of a Shakespearean sonnet cracks WPA? Or 3 verses from Collosians as translated in the NASB crack Warner DVDs?
Remember the fun with various strings connected with Microsoft, carefully arranged, whose ASCII sums totalled 666? This may well be possible...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Bullshit. It's about copying stuff you write. That's why it's called copywrite. Please check your facts before you post nonsense on Slashdot. I always do.
Someone needs to write a lucid response to this!
n io n/3299375.htm
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opi
For those that don't know, take out the space in opinion for the link to work.
Samsung DVD-v1000 DVD Player / VCR Combination
Samsung DVD-v2000 DVD Player / VCR Combination
Panasonic PV-D4742 DVD/4-Head Hi-Fi VCR Combination with MP3/CDR-RW and Component Video Output
Panasonic PV-D4761 DVD/VCR Combo
Toshiba SDV280 DVD/VCR Combo with DVD-R and MP3 Playback
GoVideo DVR4000 Combination DVD/4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Go Video Dual Deck DVD/VCR Combo (DVR4250)
Panasonic PV-DF2702 27" Pure Flat TV/DVD/4-Head VCR Combo Television with MP3 Playback
Panasonic PV-DM2792 27" DVD/4-Head Hi-Fi VCR Television Combination
Panasonic PV-DM2791 27" Triple Play TV/VCR/DVD Player Combination
Panasonic PV-DM2799 27" TV/DVD/VCR Combination Unit
Panasonic PV-DF2000 20" Pure Flat TV/DVD/4-Head Hi-Fi VCR
Hitachi DV-PF2 DVD/VCR combination
...Why yes, you are a moron... why do you ask?
Sure, the judge won't mind that you've encoded a criminal tool into the U.S. Flag.
...for the motion control system for the flying cameras to film the models.
For the original Star Wars.
8-).
(Yes, it *is* good to know everything...)
If they just publicited the product to enable blinds to read e-books... they would be just off the hook! (as is stated in the DMCA)...
i get a kick every time i hear this type of argument. it's always the advertised intent of the product that matters.
this is why anyone can run into a "head shop" and get a nice 10 foot tube that their friend has to light while they inhale the tobacco smoke from it. or maybe the fancy ones that have a huge bowl in the middle for placing the tobacco and then has 6 tubes for your friends to all share the tobacco smoke with. but then again, when you're really jonsin' for some tobacco and don't have one of those fancy schmancy devices around, you can always grab an empty pop/beer can which can easily be converted for your enjoyment.
then there's the cable tv descramblers that are to keep you from having to pay those outrageous rental prices from the cable company to use their boxes.
after all, it's the intent of the product. my opinions on weather those tobacco smoking devices or tv descramblers should be leagal is for a different thread, i just get a kick out of the whole "intent" thing. if it's an apple, call it a apple, not a red shiny teacher's desk decoration.
Furthermore, the ECMA-334 Standard does not specify:
Most of these issues are critical to implementing ECMA-334. Thus the standard is not entirely open. Why did Microsoft leave these particular issues out of the standard? Microsoft may well have patented the only practicle means of implementing these aspects of the standard. Even if they did not, Microsoft certainly holds patents on other aspects of the .NET architechture.
Finally, if Microsoft does hold patents on the ECMA-334&5 standards, the only penalty for not disclosing them, is that they will have to license their patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, which effectively closes out open source.
None of these schemes will work because the US flag is _physical thing_, i.e., a piece of cloth with certain color components and proportional dimension relationships. A _picture_ of a US flag is not the flag itself. Nor is any computer file (JPEG, GIF, whatever) that can be interpreted to present a picture of the US flag itself a US flag.
album its management finds objectionable, that's exercising editorial discretion. They have the right
to refuse to sell it, and you have the right to buy the album in uncut form elsewhere (there's this thing
you might have heard of... the World Wide Web). It's censorship when measures are taken to prevent
anyone from distributing the material...like requiring that CDs that don't have the appropriate DRM
keys can't be played.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I believe it is you who has proven himself to be the fool.
In other words, STFU troll
Now your talking! You haven't smelt a Unix guru lately have you?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
jackass
Here in Australia this issue of double-taxing was sorted out some time ago. Public companies can pay so-called franked dividends, where the company tax has been paid and the investor gets the dividend tax-free.
the PC is open in the sense that ISA, PCI, AGP, IDE, SCSI busses are open. You could design extention to PC without much troubles. Well, I don't know much about patents on these, and royalties one might have to pay to design extentions, but the PC architecture is open.
That's why Alan speak then about USB, which may keep the PC extensible in a simplier way for the end user.
Osama doesn't come out because osama knows that if he comes out he dies. Apart from the facts of what he may or may not have done, ask yourself this question: would you come out of a room if you knew that doing so would mean certain death?
Hmm Maybe its not quite what you want but last night i saw a UK tv advert for a phillips DVD Recorder They were selling it as a replacement
for recording TV
How is this different from any other network service?
Think about it. Why do you bother with a firewall at all? Since you are such a hot-shot administrator, you only have certain services running on the computers on your network, and these services are running for a reason. Unlike in the movies, a "hacker" can only do certain things from outside your network - mainly send packets in (possibly with forged data), and get responses back out. The responses can only come from services you have configured, so why bother to filter anything?
If you haven't caught my point yet: obviously your firewall is useful, because it takes away some of the burden to secure every single service on your network. Now only certain services are reachable from the outside world, and you can concentrate on making sure those are properly configured and secure.
Enter SOAP. It tunnels through HTTP - a design point intended to minimise hassle reconfiguring firewalls. Or to put it another way: SOAP was explicitly designed to circumvent the protection of a firewall, trading it for the convenience of an open network transport. Currently you say you explicitly configured a service that uses SOAP, and it therefore should pass through the firewall. But what if SOAP catches on as a way to deliver generic services, similar to raw TCP ports? What if every new install of Windows 2006 comes with "Simple SOAP Services" including echo, daytime, bgiqotd (BG's inspirational quote of the day) and so forth?
Back in 1988, everyone wrote his own inetd.conf file (or was inetd even around back then?) and knew exactly what TCP ports he was using. Now Unix boxes come with telnet, rlogin, rexec, lpd, and lots of other junk enabled by default, a lot of which is a good idea to firewall off. SOAP or XML-RPC could easily be in the same boat, say, five years from now.
Tunneling through port 80 created an unnecessary arms race between firewall vendors and web services vendors. "I can tunnel through your firewall" ... "I can intelligently block your flows" ... "I can use SSL to keep you from making decisions about my flows" ... "I can use MITM to decrypt your SSL" ... "I can use and verify certificates" ... Why? It's one thing to have an arms race with an actual adversary. In this case the two are on the same team - unless you consider "defeating your own firewall" to be an actual conflict situation.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Ooops, I should 've checked my numbers: Walmart makes about 10% of the US sales volume in records.
I think I formulated the point about censorship wrong, the better way to put it is "Some people describe as censorship."
Because record sales are higher the more exposure they get (more spontanous sales), a record lacking the exposure might not make as much money as it could (or no money at all). Editorial discretion is self censorship. So what would happen if Walmart would own 90% of the market?
The record sales of the explicit lyrics branded records would drop to nirvana, so no major record company would sign up a band/artists who uses these words.
The prices for uncensored or rare material rocket. Or uncensored material is simply not available, because the record company in anticipated obediency chooses not to make it public.
This happened to me with Kittie's new album "Oracle" where all the live-tracks are virtually unhearable (at least for a picky audiophile like me), because they edited all the so called bad words by reversing sound direction ("Come on you crazy srekcufrehtom"). Sounds horrible.
The uncensored version is simply not available in my country, not even in my well sorted local record store. Sony simply chose not to publish it. (if the person from the record store would've found a way to get it, it would've cost me three times the price of a normal cd, which in itself is a form of censorship).
From the so called www and the shops therein... well amazon for example doesn't list if it's the censored or uncensored version.
The only difference between self censorship and state imposed censorship is that anyone selling you the cd the state has forbidden has to face a severe fine.
The effects on you, the buyer, are nearly the same: You don't have easy access to the records. The record's cost for the time you have to invest to find it and money wise are higher. Or the records are simply not available in hearable form.
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
encode DeCSS in the physical form of a handgun.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Puh ...
... or if I SSH.
... BTW: actual linux distributions are not better. Ever looked into /etc/inetd.conf?
:-(
this does not explain what the security problem with SOAP is or might be.
If I had a Win 2000 machine exposing itself into the internet via SOAP I would blcok the port or clean the machine.
The problem is not SOAP in this case as this could happen with everything.
If I would run a SOAP service I would run it by convenience not via the standard HTTP port but over its own port.
Allan Cox particulary mentioned: somone inside of the network would easily be able to upload my corporate data via SOAP(to an outside destination). Thats wrong. Thats not a SOAP problem but a generic one. Regardless via wich port and what protocol something is going.
The same could happend if I SOAP via SMTP
The problem is indeed default enabled junk
Be lucky if the top line is a comment like: all services disabled, look in XYZ how xnetd(or however it is called) is configured. And then you only get TeX-Info for the "state of the art über demon" which needs emacs and other ugly stuff
So, I still lack a good crafted soluition how to use SOAP securely and what to avoid and whre teh in depth problems reside.
Lets say: ok, I accept it. I do not use HTTP for SOAP. What should I use then? And why?
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Don't worry, we serious -1 browsers know the patent-pending troll style of the one true Serial Troller -- to CAPITALIZE and bold CERTAIN words so to add extra OFFENSE.
I give the parent an F for plagiarism. S/he didn't even try to cover it up...
I find reading most of the career trolls as entertaining, but only when maximum vulgarity and total lack of tact is used liberally. I simply hate crap-flooders like Recipe Troll. The ART of trolling requires creativity, not copying and pasting.
Then again, perhaps that's the point of recipe troll - to avoid these things and thus capture the true spirit of trolling - PISSING PEOPLE OFF.
Love always,
hendridm
Ok, you can do that. The fact remains that the designers of SOAP intentionally subverted common firewalling practice. Like I said, an arms race to no purpose. Build a better firewall, we'll build a better way to tunnel through it, y'know? The guy providing the legitimate network service and the guy running the firewall are theoretically on the same team, so what's with the one-upmanship?
It seems the SOAP designers figured they knew better than the firewall administrators whether or not SOAP services should go through firewalls. Else why tunnel through HTTP? HTTP is a stateless protocol; it's quite poorly suited for maintaining sessions and interactivity (not to say it isn't used for that a lot!) so they could just as well have picked a more suitable transport. CIFS, say. Except that Microsoft already did that - see the ncacn_np transport for DCE/RPC....
Yah, I never did get that argument. I figure it's a lost cause trying to keep your data in - people will always figure a way to break out, and for this purpose SOAP isn't any worse than, say, a POST method CGI program over HTTPS.
Anyway, the main point: if you are vigilant enough to block off all incoming data to port 80 of any machine other than your public web servers / SOAP servers, then you are fine. Assuming the SOAP services on a particular machine should either be all open, or all closed. Because SOAP is a whole transport mechanism, not just a single service at a time, so you can have any number of services muxed through the same port 80 (or other) of the same IP number. (That's another minor gripe: SOAP makes it more difficult to filter out specific services since they all use the same host / port. By contrast, look at ONC (aka Sun RPC, used for NFS/NIS/etc on most Unix boxes): the portmapper gives each service its own port, so assuming you can control the portmapper, you can use port-based firewalling to mask off individual RPC services. The firewall itself doesn't have to be stateful or indeed even ONC-aware at all.)
You got me. I don't particularly know SOAP. Serious question: why do you need it? What exactly does it bring to the table that ONC, DCE, or CORBA didn't already have? (XML-based wire encoding? Someone please explain that one - wire encoding is a solved problem, and no application writer need concern himself with the details anyway. Sheesh, use a library already.)
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Wow, you had soooo much information to come to that conclusion?
First, try reading what we both said.
You accused me of never needing a handout, and I disagreed. BTW, you owe me $5000.
I never got any "handout". Funny thing, those of us that actually paid for thyose services never seem to get them when we need them. Generations of people that never paid for them get them in perpituity.
Also, I called the government facist when they forced businesses to be charity.
Reactionist retards like you need to just stay on campus.. Start a voter strike or something.
SOAP alone is not particular interesting.
... it opened far more questions then it closed).
Its in some sence more lightweight than CORBA, it lacks activation and sessions however.
It a simple message/response protocol.
The SOAP server is a simple extended HTTP server. Interesting are the standards based on top of SOAP: UDDI, WSDL.
However I find SOAP overcomplicated in its specifications and abilities.
Ease of use for dummy developers is however, great. Just enter the URL of your web service into your IDE and it genreates you local stup classes to communicate with the server, the rest of the code does not see that you use remote objects.
As I said: good for dummy users/programmes, nothing for me. If you dig into it and try to understand how it is working and what the restrictions are, you hardly find good material(I spend a month to craft a presentation about SOAP
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Heh, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" - have I dated myself better now?
I didn't say you never needed a handout, I said (cut'n'pasted quote)you've never had to look far for a handout. Comprendez, or did too much tax-subsidized education curdle your brain? Making businesses pay taxes to support the environment that makes their profits possible is not facism by any real definition of the word (except Brezhnev's, where facism means "anything you don't like"). If you want to make a less inane criticism, complain about the socialist police state, not a mythical facist welfare state.
God, I've never felt like a troll before. Guess I'll have to dye my hair blue and go live under a bridge! And you can go pull the beam out of your eye.
I didn't say you never needed a handout, I said (cut'n'pasted quote)you've never had to
look far for a handout.
And I said I looked for and was denied one.
Comprendez, or did too much leftist claptrap lack of education curdle your brain?
Yeah, I comprendo, those grapes were probably sour. Or some undeserving, lazy minority got them first?
I s'pose I shouldn't be replying to anonymous digs; the real Monday has probably been replaced by a troll toting a copy of "the Fountainhead". Hard to tell.