Alan Cox talks about laws... and Linux

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.

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.

Comments

Mabe true but, exagerated

[billstr78]

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.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[MrDoh!]

I think the interesting part of the original quote was;
"especially when someone notices you can easily get a longer sentence for helping grandma read than kicking her down the stairs"
That's the point I find amazing. Someone defeating the copy protection mechanisms would most likely get into more trouble than someone causing bodily harm. Come on, we know how this stuff works, I don't think it IS an exaggeration.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, the point he was making was that it would have been a lot harder to prosecute Dmitry if he HAD been a cute clever kid "helping grandma to read".

Whether you agree with that is of course another matter, but disagreeing with something Alan didn't say is silly.

Daniel (Slashdot thinks I'm logged in on the main page, but not here. Go figure)

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[ahde]

Actually, there have only been a few dozen "trial" e-books and Dmitry didn't hurt their sales. At all. That is, they didn't sell. At all.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[checkitout]

Actually, there have only been a few dozen "trial" e-books and Dmitry didn't hurt their sales. At all. That is, they didn't sell. At all.

Right, but he did sell his software which cracked the ebooks. That's where he really got into trouble. It's not like he was giving away free ebook cracking software and they decided to come after him, even though reg codes and key generators exist for nearly everything. No, he was directly trying to make some money from cracking their protection scheme and that's a huge part of where his trouble began. If you're going to warez stuff, at least have some morals.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[TheCrazyFinn]

Well, there's a hell of a lot more than a couple dozen. I own about 45 from one publisher alone, and that's less than 1/4 of that publisher's catalogue. Of course, Dmitri's work wouldn't affect this publisher, because they don't use any encryption.

There are two companies making money in the E-Book business, Baen Books, and Fictionwise. Both sell E-Books cheap, and avoid encryption if at all possible (Some Fictionwise stuff is encrypted, no Baen stuff is encrypted.)

So go check out the Free Library at www.baen.com
for free E-Books from popular SF and Fantasy Authors.

The Crazy Finn

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[aronc]

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.

My wife is blind. Completely and totally. Tell me how a bright light helps her read the ebook I just bought for her. Go ahead bright boy, tell me.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[markmoss]

Someone defeating the copy protection mechanisms would most likely get into more trouble than someone causing bodily harm.

We're definitely moving towards a sliding scale of punishment for crimes, depending on whom got hurt how. Lowest to highest:

1. Bodily harm to a welfare client or other ghetto dweller. (Thieving in the ghettos doesn't even rate a police investigation.)
2. Hurting a consumer/employee in the pocket book (burglary, e.g.)
3. Causing bodily harm to a consumer/employee.
4. Hurting a corporate chief in the pocket book (DMCA violations, using drugs not made by corporations...)
5. Bodily harm to one of our government masters (assault on a police officer, for example)
6.

Well, you ought to be able to guess what #6 is, but with the bodyguards the corporate chiefs can hire it doesn't seem likely to be an issue anyhow...

How do you like the new world order?

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[HydroCarbon10]

Had you actually read and given thought to Alan's remarks you would realize that your comment has no relevence. Dmitri created a tool which could possibly be used to pirate copyrighted works. Dmitri did not force you to use his tool for illegal purposes nor did he make copyrighted works available. As Alan said, those caught doing the crime should be charged.

this sort of gross exageration does not fool anyone and really does more harm than good.

Agreed, read your own comment with that in mind.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[Jon Howard]

It's the server. Particularly the server's name: "slashdot.org" is different from "interviews.slashdot.org", therefore you shouldn't be sharing cookies (which have your login info in 'em) between servers. If you login on each and get a cookie for each, it will have you logged-in on all of them.

I'm sure there's a way to get around this limitation (on the server's side), though it might violate privacy and security policies, and may involve a hack.

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[clone304]

And while we're at it... Damn those dastardly half-price book resellers, too!!! Pirates, the lot of them!!! ARRR!! And, the next time a friend tries to loan me a book, I'll serve him up to the feds!! That'll teach the IP-stealing little bastard!!

Re:Mabe true but, exagerated

[God! Awful]

My wife is blind. Completely and totally. Tell me how a bright light helps her read the ebook I just bought for her. Go ahead bright boy, tell me.

The eBook format doesn't prevent the books being read out loud, per se. It merely allows the copyright owner to control whether this operation is allowed. I'm not sure why people assume that reverse engineering the copy protection was the only recourse. Some advocacy group for the blind could have sued the publishers, demanding that this particular bit be removed, or at least that blind people be provided with special eBooks/readers.

-a

White goods

[matthew.thompson]

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".

I can fully sympathise with this one - I have this urge to buy all sorts of household electronic and electric devices. Sorta drummed it home when I spent £450 (That's GBP incase the symbol doesn't display) on a Washer Dryer.

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).

Re:White goods

[matthew.thompson]

I live in rented accomodation with a kitchen smaller than my car - I could not keep leaving towels hanging around the house to dry during winter so I bought a washer drier.

As for reliability - I bought AEG so I expect it to last a bit longer than some of the cheaper models (I also bought the most energy efficient model I could find - AAB for Wash, Rinse, Electricity for those of you that understand the European rating system).

Microsoft and Dividends

[Pave Low]

Where is this notion that Microsoft "avoids" paying dividends come from? They have no obligation whatsoever to pay out dividends if management decides not to. You can't avoid doing something where you might otherwise have to.

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.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[sphealey]

Where is this notion that Microsoft "avoids" paying dividends come from? They have no obligation whatsoever to pay out dividends if management decides not to.

Up to a point. However, if the company stops growing, and continues to retain cash in excess of its reasonable operating requirements, there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders.

What is that point? Hard to say since it varies from industry to industry, from board of directors to board of directors, and from presidential administration to presidential administration. However, in the auto industry the tipping point has usually been around $5 billion (USD, US billion) on annual sales of $50B. Past that point shareholders, the SEC, and the Justice Dept. start getting restive.

sPh

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[Alan Cox]

Title 26, Chapter 1 subchapter - G

IRS pub 542

IRS ruling 75-305

There is no direct obligation to pay dividends but a company choosing to retain the cash as and above its needs (clearly the case IMHO) is required to pay tax on it

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[GMontag]

Apparently your opinion ignores the market, proper application of your refrences and reality.

Plenty of other firms have been doing this for years, legally, especially firms in wildly cyclitical industries, like Microsoft. Any Finance 201 student, instructor or Professor can and will tell you that.

Plenty of other real issues with that company, but this failure to pay dividends nonsense is not one of them.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[sphealey]

Plenty of other firms have been doing this for years, legally, especially firms in wildly cyclitical industries, like Microsoft.

Agreed - up to a point, it is legal. However, any student of the auto industry will tell you that when cash reserves become excessive, both Kirk Kekorian and the Justice Dept. come knocking, and the reserves either get used for some constructive purpose or paid out. Particularly in an anti-trust situation having a $40B overhang of cash is generally not going to be in accordance with the corporate charter.

sPh

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[GMontag]

I understand all you are saying as true, however I *think* Toys R Us sucessfully did this for quite some time, at least in the 90's when I got my Finance Degree.

As far as the other example of anti-trust nonsense from the auto industry: the Big Three kept AMC afloat for quite some time just so there would be enough "players" in their industry to keep the anti-trust facists (yes, facist is the right word for when government makes industry a tool of the welfare state) away.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[Shimmer]

Here's a link to the top citation: Title 26, Chapter 1 subchapter - G

-- Brian

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[GigsVT]

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.

And they are fools to do that. A stock is worthless if it never really represented anything of worth. Suppose MS decides to never, ever, pay dividends. Well, then what did that stock really mean anyway? Not much of anything.

Basically, unless MS eventually either buys back stock, or pays dividends, all everyone was really doing was gambling, there was no real equity involved. It's zero-sum.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[__aanekd3853]

However, if the company stops growing, and continues to retain cash in excess of its reasonable operating requirements, there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders.

Maximizing total return to stockholders is not that simple. You see, when a company pays a dividend the value of the stock decreases on the ex-dividend date. Thus, the shareholders get the cash dividend but the value of the stock they hold decreases accordingly. There was a great article by Fischer Black (of the option pricing fame) that analyzed the various tradeoffs. I doubt you will find the paper on the net though.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[sphealey]

There was a great article by Fischer Black (of the option pricing fame) that analyzed the various tradeoffs. I doubt you will find the paper on the net though.

Yes, I have a copy at home. Spent 2 years of MBA finance classes staring at it and similar stock/bond/option pricing models. Interesting to look at, and your point is well taken.

However, there are two other things to consider: (1) human behaviour changes based on experience and is not fully rational in any case. So it is not entirely clear that these pricing models work over the long term (2) $1 cash in hand is worth some amount > $1 of retained earnings locked up in the corporation. Yeah, they might spend it wisely. But they might waste it on a corporate jet, too. Lots of work done in this area as well. And don't forget Mr. Kerkorian! He seems to like his cash up front.

sPh

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[tlbtlbtlb]

Suppose the government never actually pays you gold for your paper money. Is it worthless too?

There is certainly equity behind MS shares: brand equity, expected future sales, and a huge pile of cash. It doesn't ever have to get actually liquidated in order for the shares to represent real value.

Re:Microsoft and Dividends

[GigsVT]

Paper money is only worth what people are willing to trade me for it. It is, however, backed by the combined equity of one of the largest (economy wise) nations on the planet. There is still the risk that US money will be worthless one day, but that risk is tiny compared to the probability that MS stock will be worthless someday.

If there is never a chance to get at the underlying assets of the company, then it's just a glorified ponzi. It's zero sum. No one can make money without someone else losing money. Note that "making money" in this case is realizing a gain by selling the stock. Paper gains don't count, because not everyone could sell out and realize these paper gains, only a small percentage of the current holders could sell at any one time without depressing the stock price for future sellers.

Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[dejectuk]

> 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.

Re:Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[swb]

IKEA furtniture is attractive, in a simple-meets-modern kind of way, but from what I've seen and bought, it's totally retrograde in quality.

I had a table that I used as a computer table until the top became so warped (it looked wavy) the mouse wouldn't track anymore. I cut the top open when I trashed it and it was two pieces of particleboard supported by *cardboard* between the pine trim surrounding the table.

The last time I was in an Ikea (Tustin/Irvine) I checked all the furniture and it was for shit; almost exlusively bad composite materials that would disintegrate if they ever got even damp.

If Ikea is the only acceptable place to buy furniture in the UK, the UK really is a fallen empire...

Re:Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[dejectuk]

i agree. Theres always MFI here (which make even worse shit!).

I bought my desk in Ikea. It didn't like 2 Sun 21" Trinitrons on it one little bit. I had to strengthen the middle with Dexion industrial shelving :P

btw try a Ratpad (or ratpadz) for a mouse surface. Very good - even for us non gamers :-)

Re:Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[Alan Cox]

We have a variety of these people. There is a long standing joke that MFI furniture is good for people who move house a lot - one kick and it flatpacks again.

The best desks I've found lurk in dusty old second hand furniture shops. My desk has a 1.5" thick solid wooden top.Hardly sustainable forestry, but at least being old and second hand its not doing any more damage

Re:Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[Mike Connell]

My IKEA desk is curently supporting two monitors, one of them is an old 24" weighing 50Kg. It (the desk) is solid as a rock.

How can this be? Simple - I live in Sweden. We keep all the good stuff and ship the rejects abroad :-)

Re:Thats a busman's holiday if there ever was one!

[56ker]

I remember I built a table myself out of three pieces of very flimsy 9mm MDF. It supported the weight of a 14" TV for years! A table would've cost about 6 times the cost. Which just goes to show that the table can be a terrible table (I can't even saw straight or hammer a nail in straight) but still do its job.

Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system!?!

[Software]

Maybe someone can find a way to use the US flag to defeat a copy protection system

That's an awfully good idea. Maybe use DeCSS, but modify the key so that it has to be combined with a JPEG of the US flag in order to work. I'd like to do this myself, but sadly I lack the ability to do so and the desire to risk jail time. Pretty sad.

DMCA does work.

[glrotate]

The truth is that the DMCA has no value at all in stopping piracy

Really Alan? Please direct me to a commercialy available DVD->DVD copier, or a DVD->VHS unit?

Re:DMCA does work.

[tuanjim_2001]

Hate to say it dude-mar, saw a DVD/VHS unit in the ole wally-world yesterday. Not sure on the specs, or who made it, but for about $200 you could buy it.

Re:DMCA does work.

[stain ain]

Readily available DeCSS + DivX is a good choice if you want to copy DVDs. I have heard there is plenty of people using it!
Definitely, at least for DVDs, DMCA has proven completely useless at stopping piracy. And for a DVD->DVD copier, just wait a little...

Re:DMCA does work.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.circuitcity.com/ewebIMa/detail.jsp?BV_S essionID=@@@@1428767154.1021909585@@@@&BV_EngineID =ccdjadcfelmdfmlcfngcfkmdffhdffk.0&bookmark=bookma rk_0&oid=50241&catoid=-8039#specs

Re:DMCA does work.

[inkfox]

The above unit does not copy commercial DVDs. From the page: "Note: This unit can not copy Macrovision protected DVDs to VHS tape."

It is currently illegal to make a video recording device which will properly record when Macrovision is present.

One of my (many) problems with the DMCA and prior copyright bills is that they specifically endorse and protect a single company's patented form of protection. Macrovision has been, in turn, trying to leverage this to make theirs the standard protection for software and other mediums, expecting similar governmental subsidy.

Re:DMCA does work.

[Alan Cox]

Why pray do you need a commercial DVD to DVD copier. I doubt all the people who grabbed things like the leaked Star Wars II movie needed a DVD copier. All they needed was a network interface and a hard disk.

Do you not think that a couple of thousand students getting hit by small claims actions after their machines are shown to be used for mp3 distribution without the authors permission is going to have more effect ?

If you are thinking "they'll just go underground" thats perfect. The other 99% of the population won't be able to find the stuff.

Re:DMCA does work.

[Sc00ter]

Consumer DVD and VHS all in one units do now allow you to copy a DVD to a VHS tape. At least not without a hack of some sort.

Re:DMCA does work.

[kasparov]

Whether or not there are commercially available means to do DVD to DVD or DVD to VHS copies is irrelevant. Taking the information stored on one DVD and copying it to another (or to VHS) is technologically trivial--therefore it will be (and is) done. Therefore, the DMCA has no value in stopping piracy.

Re:DMCA does work.

[GMontag]

Why pray do you need a commercial DVD to DVD copier.

I would like a personal one, but it is not a question of need. It is a question of US government's (intended-to-be) limited powers and authority. Not sure where any level of government was granted the power to restrict whatever I want to manufacture, within reasonible limits of the Commerce Clause and Copyright and Trademark powers of the government. Beyond that, my wants are none of their business. Wanting to be able to make my own DVDs and copy them falls within my business and nobody elses.

Hummm, just noticed this is my second response to one of your comments and never realized before that we disagree this much! Cheers and good luck with your efforts!

Re:DMCA does work.

[macro]

This is a first line from google search:

http://www.peripheralstorage.com/cdduplicators/c op ystar/copystar_dvd2.htm

Re:DMCA does work.

[ahde]

I will sell you a Pioneer DVD Burner for $400 right now. Let me know.

Re:DMCA does work.

[meringuoid]

Really Alan? Please direct me to a commercialy available DVD->DVD copier, or a DVD->VHS unit?

DVD->VHS HOWTO

Take DVD player.
Take VHS recorder.
Take RF or SCART cable.
Connect output of DVD player to input of VHS recorder.
Press 'record' on VHS recorder.
Press 'play' on DVD player.
Wait.

Re:DMCA does work.

[bofkentucky]

Saw it two weeks ago, ~$200-250 (US). I believe it was a phillips, could have been a sanyo or sharp as well.

Re:DMCA does work.

[wurp]

If the DMCA had stopped people from building DeCSS, someone would just build a program that takes an encrypted DVD image file and build a virtual drive to represent it, like Daemon Tools does for an iso. You'd just pull the DVD contents as a file off the drive and send it encrypted over OpenFT instead of sending the unencrypted version.

Encryption can't stop copying.

Re:DMCA does work.

[MrResistor]

You can pick up an old silver top-loading VCR at any number of yard sales and thrift stores for $25 or less. I have never encountered one that recognized Macrovision, although many of them have only co-ax IO, and IIRC most DVD players are RCA IO only.

Alternatively, you can buy a little signal conditioning box the removes macrovision for about $100.

In case you are unaware of the technology involved (and I'm guessing you are if you've even bothered to ask this question), Macrovision is the "copyright protection technology" that makes VHS copies of DVDs look crappy. Generally it's effects are limited to making the copy fluctuate between a dark, perhaps barely visible picture, and a bright, perhaps washed out picture. Highly annoying, but it doesn't actually prevent copying, it just degrades the video quality of a copy to the point that most people won't bother.

Macrovision is also responsible for that little "curl" you sometimes see at the top of the screen while watching "protected" VHS tapes. It is a common misconception that this is caused by the tracking mechanism being misadjusted or the heads being dirty, but in actuality it is a side effect of the Macrovision "technology". This is why the above mentioned singal conditioners can be legally sold.

In summary, it is quite easy for any consumer, with a modest outlay of cash to purchase perfectly legal consumer technology, to make DVD to VHS copies.

I have no experience with making DVD to DVD copies, but my understanding from the little research I've done is that it's just as easy, if perhaps a little less legal. DVD-ROM drives are in the $40 range right now, and I've seen DVD burners for under $250 (though IIRC DVD burner formats that will play in consumer DVD players are more expensive, being around $400).

Note, though, that as far as I can tell CSS in no way prevents copying of DVDs (it's still possible to copy a DVD, CSS and all), but merely limits the equipment that the consumer can watch the DVD on to that officially approved by the MPAA for that particular part of the world. In theory, I could play a pirated copy of a region 1 DVD in my region 1 DVD player without difficulty. That's just a theory, mind you, as I haven't actually tried it. However, I have tried to watch legally obtained legitimate copies of region 2 DVDs and have been prevented from doing so. I have also had problem with low quality, but perfectly legitimate region 1 DVDs.

In summary, the "copy protection" on DVDs hurts only the legitimate consumer trying to watch their legitimately purchased media, without having any actual effect on pirates, since the equipment needed to make those copies is readily available at consumer level prices.

Re:DMCA does work.

[Bootsy Collins]

I think you misinterpreted his response. I read Alan Cox's "Why pray do you need a commercial DVD to DVD copier?" *not* as saying "what earthly use could you have for one?", but rather as responding to the poster's assertion that the DMCA is effective at stopping piracy, and its effectiveness is demonstrated by the fact that DVD-to-DVD copiers are not commercially available. Alan Cox's reply, quoted above, was to say `you don't need such a copier to commit piracy, so this consequence of the DMCA is not much evidence of its effectiveness at stopping piracy.' That's my read, anyway.

Re:DMCA does work.

[iabervon]

You can copy DVDs trivially if you have a DVD burner. What do DVD burners burn? DVD images. What do you read off of a DVD? DVD images. This was demonstrated during the DeCSS trial: they made a copy of an encrypted DVD.

As for a DVD->VHS unit, what's the point? Why would you want a VHS tape if you had a DVD, unless you didn't have a DVD player? And if you didn't have a DVD player, you'd buy a DVD player, not a DVD->VHS converter to use with your VHS player. Of course, you could be making illegal copies for people who don't have DVD players. But in that case, why wouldn't you either tell them to get DVD players and copy the DVD without decrypting it, or get a VHS version and copy that?

These devices don't exist because they're not commercially viable, not because of the DMCA. The only thing that the DMCA does with respect to DVDs is prohibit people from watching them without using a licensed player. And the only licensed players would theoretically be ones that don't let you play copies, aren't region-free, etc. But, of course, there are region-free players, players that will play copies, and so forth, properly licensed and not prohibited by the DMCA.

Re:DMCA does work.

[NearlyHeadless]

Note, though, that as far as I can tell CSS in no way prevents copying of DVDs (it's still possible to copy a DVD, CSS and all), but merely limits the equipment that the consumer can watch the DVD on to that officially approved by the MPAA for that particular part of the world. In theory, I could play a pirated copy of a region 1 DVD in my region 1 DVD player without difficulty. That's just a theory, mind you, as I haven't actually tried it.

No, that doesn't work. An ordinary DVD-burner does not copy all the parts of the DVD. Specifically it does not copy the parts that are necessary to decrypt the CSS-encrypted video.

Re:DMCA does work.

[GMontag]

Ah, gotcha. My bad and apologies to Mr. Cox! Guess I do not disagree with him here either.

Thank you!

Re:DMCA does work.

[aderusha]

which is the reason for the RF converter - you'll lose some signal quality, but the resulting signal is macrovision-free.

Re:DMCA does work.

[MrResistor]

Thanks for the correction.

You say "an ordinary DVD-burner";is it a limitation built into consumer grade DVD*R, or is that info in an area only accessable with a press?

Re:DMCA does work.

[scm]

It was difficult to copy VHS->VHS before the DMCA. So why do we need another law? Does it help that it's more illegal now?

Re:DMCA does work.

[NearlyHeadless]

You say "an ordinary DVD-burner";is it a limitation built into consumer grade DVD*R, or is that info in an area only accessable with a press?

The limitation is built into the medium:

http://www.mediasupply.com/dvdr/faq.html

Can I use a DVD-R recorder to copy commerical DVD movies?

No. DVD-R discs have an area called the "CSS decryption key area" molded at the factory with information that prevents copying.

Re:DMCA does work.

[james_underscore]

I have a friend who will copy a DVD onto VHS for you, its called buying a DVD play and a VCR machine, play the film on the DVD player and press record on the VCR, it sounds complicated I know but you get the hang of it.

world domination?

[Alien54]

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)

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.

Re:world domination?

[Archie Steel]

Yes, I do see him playing the UFOs (and, if he's playing Illuminati: New World Order, with a Science/Space/Computer themed deck).

Illuminati rocks! Now if someone would only make an online computer version...

Re:world domination?

[vrmlguy]

An online version of either Illuminati or INWO would be nice, but I'm thinking that someone needs to organize a game at the next LinuxWorld or something. (And yes, I realize that Alan won't be attending any US-based conferences.)

LSB

[IamTheRealMike]

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.

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.

It's hollywoods fault

[MountainLogic]

Alan makes a very important point:

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.

Beards and UNIX and Jedi

[Xpilot]

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 :)

Re:Beards and UNIX and Jedi

[Hydrogenoid]

Easy one...
If Jedi were born with a beard, they would be too easy to spot, and the Empire (or whatever the arch-enemy is at that time) could eliminate them without any trouble...

Re:Beards and UNIX and Jedi

[Rupert]

They make padawans shave with a light sabre ...

Re:Beards and UNIX and Jedi

[MrResistor]

And yet, Yoda, Mace Windu, and Linus Torvalds are all beardless...

Perhaps there is an exception for such 'MetaGurus'?

Re:Beards and UNIX and Jedi

[MikeBabcock]

They have learned the ability to prevent the growth of facial hair painlessly using the force.

Re:Maybe true but, exagerated

[arthurs_sidekick]

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.

The Linux microcosm

[MajorBurrito]

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?

Re:The Linux microcosm

[NineNine]

If I had mod points, I'd mod the parent up.

But the fact is that a large part of Slashdotters are either college kids or uber-geeks that quite honestly, have nothing better to do. I think that you're view is pretty typical... once you grow up and get a "life", then this stuff gets put in perspective for most people. This is pretty irrelevant in th e grand scheme of things. Shit, it's just software. Who, outside of this little community actually cares? I mean, shit, we're not talking about saving the planet from terrorism here. It's just software. The world will go on just fine regardless of who "wins" assuming that one "side" will actuall "win". Life goes on.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[wfrp01]

Shit, it's just software

Yes and no. There's the code you use, and there are the laws that govern how we can use it. In the larger scheme of things, whether you use Jack or Jill's text-mogrifier code probably doesn't matter a whole lot. But the politics surrounding code use does matter. A lot.

No? Think about what it would mean if general purpose computing were outlawed, for example. Impossible, you say? If you think that goes to far, well maybe we can scale back and just criminalize the production and use of free software. The only people that would affect are a few wing-nut hippie communists anyway.

The issues are very real. Jail is very real. Ask Dmitry.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[roman_mir]

-bitchslap-
Snap out of it, you are histerical!
-slap-, -slap-

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Cyno]

I would reply to this, but the last comment I read said it all. So I'll reply anyway. :P These things aren't important because they are virtual. But so is IP and law. The next version of the DMCA may make open source OSs illegal because they lack and always will lack digital rights management. Now who really cares about digital rights management? I know my rights. I don't break the law by exercizing my rights to fair use. But I do break the law whenever I play my DVDs on my linux box. :( I don't want to go to jail or be fined or stoned to death for these virtual crimes. They don't really matter, right? Then tell that to the MPAA, RIAA, and our representatives.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[cgrayson]

As with all good points - already touched on by Monty Python. From from The Meaning of Life:

CHAIRMAN: ...Which brings us once again to the urgent realisation of just how much there is still left to own. Item six on the agenda: the meaning of life. Now, uh, Harry, you've had some thoughts on this.

HARRY: That's right. Yeah, I've had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and, uh, what we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: people are not wearing enough hats. Two: matter is energy. In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia. [pause]

BERT: What was that about hats, again?

HARRY: Oh, uh, people aren't wearing enough.

CHAIRMAN: Is this true?

EDMUND: Certainly. Hat sales have increased, but not pari passu, as our research initially--

BERT: But when you say 'enough', enough for what purpose?

GUNTHER: Can I just ask, with reference to your second point, when you say souls don't develop because people become distracted,... [rumble] ...has anyone noticed that building there before?

Re:The Linux microcosm

[NineNine]

Again, here's another example of a myopic view of the world. Most people don't know what Linux is, never mind use it, never mind play DVD's with it. Buy a Playstation for $200, put a movie in, and get on with the rest of your life.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[VB]

Oddly enough, I got caught up in tech when MIDI came around and I could do more with my songwriting using it. I've since picked up the guitar, but along the way I got more immersed in tech than music.

About a year ago, I shifted priorities, let the screensaver keep the PC company at 5pm and go pick up the guitar / keys for the rest of the day.

Of course, not everyone plays the guitar; some people don't have any other interests (and, that's not a bad thing). But, be grateful you still know how to break free. Enjoy the walk. Great point!

Re:The Linux microcosm

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Computers and software are what I use for expression and creation. Human expression and creation being the only things that matter to me, I will fight to the vicious, bloody, violent end before I let some corportation take them from me.

History and literature are full of examples of people asked to leave the ones they love to fight for their cause. Just be greatful that you still have a love and cause to give you such a dilemmma.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Jon Howard]

you get so immersed in it all that priorities become skewed

All news outlets are becoming tabloids, the Internet is helping this occur because it allows us to see the failings of people who we then consider ourselves better-than. Clicques develop around shared interests and elitism (over one crowd or another), and those clicques focus so much on one aspect of living (the one that makes them elite), that they neglect something they consider to be less important becuase it is difficult to do both at once (Nerds neglect social skills, generally). Tabloids use your interest to get your attention, and abuse their understanding of your inabilities to make you paranoid about things you would otherwise see through.

Relax, take your paranoia and apply it to something personally applicable, rather than a grand ideal, and live as you would like. If you are intelligent and moral, your actions will speak louder than a hundred Slashdot posts ever could.

Simply put: you're jaded, but only toward things which aren't within your field of expertise. If you think people who use computers, but don't know how they work are stupid, the previous sentence should be nearly self-evident. Diversify, and don't allow your peers to insert you into a heirarchy which makes you paranoid.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[NineNine]

No, I'm not saying just capitulate to everything... it's just that unless it REALLY means something to you, and you can actually have any kind of impact whatsoever... what's the point? I don't care what happens to MS. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not writing actual OS code, and I'm not a CEO of a competing company. I'll use whatever works for me, and get on to more important things in my life. I mean, if the big Linux/MS thing really *is* your life, then by all means, enjoy. I just don't honestly believe that as an individual who uses one of them, I can't really have any impact, and even in the long term for my life, it really doesn't matter what OS I happen to be using.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Starcub]

LOL!

So appropriate and so true -- except for the part about ab initio existence of the soul. Some people are just more aware of the "guiding force" than others. I suspect most don't fully come to realize this, if at all, until they reach a mature age.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Starcub]

All news outlets are becoming tabloids...

...Tabloids use your interest to get your attention, and abuse their understanding of your inabilities to make you paranoid about things you would otherwise see through.

Yup, actually it seems to me to have moved beyond the profit motive and into the realm of ridiculousness...

Relax, take your paranoia and apply it to something personally applicable, rather than a grand ideal, and live as you would like. If you are intelligent and moral, your actions will speak louder than a hundred Slashdot posts ever could.

Simply put: you're jaded, but only toward things which aren't within your field of expertise. If you think people who use computers, but don't know how they work are stupid, the previous sentence should be nearly self-evident. Diversify, and don't allow your peers to insert you into a heirarchy which makes you paranoid.

Thanks, that was insightful -- a little sanity in an insane world.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Black_Logic]

Is the latest version of Linux really more important than getting out and taking a walking holding hands with someoue you love?

Not yet.. But hopefully someday that will be the case (not linux necesarilly, but intellectual persuits) I'm not suggesting we should collectively castrate ourselves, But all the simple needs that our meatsack is always bugging us about (eating, pooping, sex, sleeping) only seem like fun because of an evolved, behavioral system. carrot on a stick kinda stuff-- Maybe someday we should evolve past that.. or maybe this will make more sense as become closer to technology.

Woops, did I say that outloud? For the record, I'm NOT a machine and I DON'T plan on harvesting the eletrical energy of your speices. :)

Re:The Linux microcosm

[AxelBoldt]

I can't believe it. Here Alan makes an excellent cogent case for activism against corporate sponsored laws that take away our rights, and all you have to say is: "is it that important?", "don't you want to take a walk instead?" You just said precisely what the corporations want you to say. "It's not that important. Don't worry. It's just code and copyrights, who really cares? Why don't you take a nice walk? We will take care of it for you."

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Cyno]

Where would you be if the internet or Linux didn't exist? What if your only options for communication were AOL and MS software and services. You can't block spam or pop-ups or advertisements. You can't record movies off the cable TV you pay for. You are forced to watch advertisements with every bit of media or not watch the media at all. And ALL your communications are monitored by your government and corporations for demographic data mining and policing. That's the world we will be living in if people like me give up this fight for freedom. Is that the world you want to live in? I don't really care. Its a lot of effort learning about all the technology and legislation that they are trying to use against us. The main reason I've been concerned with this is I use Linux and the internet. Been using them for years. They are nothing new, but all this legislation and post 9/11 stuff is new and is a real threat to my way of life. But I don't have to live in America and help American businesses with their systems and network troubles. I'm just having a hard time finding other countries and companies that want to work instead of make money. Communism is looking better all the time, the more I live in a capitalist society.

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Jon Howard]

Thank you. I just happened onto something which appears to be an Abe Lincoln quote that's very related to my comment - but you might want to verify the source:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.... Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-Abraham Lincoln

Re:The Linux microcosm

[Starcub]

I don't know if he said it or not. However, he often claimed to rely on God's grace. I would suspect it's less unnerving if you know that this world is not your final destination. However, most people don't have that much faith, so maybe then that is why he found it unnerving.

Flamebait: V7 *WAS* the last real unix.

[Amazing Quantum Man]

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.

In fairness...

[Otter]

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.

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.

Re:In fairness...

[Otter]

I doubt you'd be implying that the three entities you mention share a politics if you knew what their various views were.

Yeah, that'd be the point.

The thing they have in common is the belief that using free software (or, in the case of Slashdot editors, pretending you use free software) is equivalent to believing in some set of crackpot ideas. The fact that ESR, RMS and Jon Katz all think that is precisely my point.

Re:In fairness...

[ahde]

Reread the last paragraph of Alan's first response. It's exactly how you mobilize a constituency. You make a reasonable claim that appeals to them and use their loyalty to that cause to support your other causes. Do you really think most union workers or minority voters actually care about the environmentalist or pro-choice or some other liberal political agenda? Of course not, but that's the vast majority of their constiency, who because of loyalty earned for some other cause, support the party unilaterally.

It's called compromise. It happens in politics all the time. Only the politicians aren't the ones doing it, its their supporters, who will compromise on one or more issues to in order to obtain representation for themselves. And that's what Alan was afraid of. People with reasonable goals giving their allegiance to those who may support their aims, but also have other agendas, including racism.

Re:In fairness...

[akb]

He's

I am "he" :)

still wrong, and I agree with Alan that this isn't someone familiar with organized religion.

Religion is strongly hierarchical, so I would eliminate it right off the bat as not relevant to a discussion of grassroots politics.

I don't think the average religious person is nearly as knowledgable about the community's history and "doctrine", is able to communicate as well with the range of other community members, is able to participate in important community institutions and discourse as the average person in the free software community. For things as obscure as the SSSCA and DMCA to be discussed by the community at large is truly remarkable, that kind of discourse just doesn't happen within tradional political organizing campaigns.

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.

There are definitely shared values in the free software community which are threatened by the goings on in the political world. The SSSCA provides the easy example, banning free operating systems would probably be something that would would unite people for political action.

I think there are other issues as well that very large parts of the community could agree on, encryption and patents come to mind. I think there is a split in the community between libertarians and progressives that will play itself out politically. But those kinds of political growing pains are natural as a political entity comes into being.

Very interesting, but...

[Rogerborg]

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!

Re:Very interesting, but...

[mikeee]

Eh. Are you actually losing memory, or is it just filling the buffer cache up with random logs and such? No reason not to - if you need it, it's already in RAM, and if not, it's easy enough to toss...

I get complaints about this weekly on our Solaris boxen.

Re:Very interesting, but...

[Ralusp]

You are likely not leaking memory. Linux caches almost EVERYTHING if you have free memory. dentry stuff, inode stuff, etc... Why waste that good fast memory by just leaving it unused? If your system were to need the memory though, the caches would be cleaned up so that applications could use it.

ssl and firewalls

[LinuxGeek8]

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?

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 .net going over it (whatever .net is?).

Re:ssl and firewalls

[ILikeRed]

It's the outgoing that's the problem, not incoming.

If I want to prevent outgoing ftp from my system, I block port 21. I block port 25 from all IP addresses but my email server, and I no longer have to worry about unauthorized email servers, or MicroSoft viruses emailing directly out to the internet. MicroSoft finds it difficult to work with ports, and wants to get rid of them. Remember the story about MicroSoft calling HTTP the cockroach of the internet?!?

HTTP and port 80 are fine, unless you want to use it as an RPC mechanism. And with MicroSoft's track record for security, I really do not want them replacing my security mechanisms.

Re:ssl and firewalls

[RGRistroph]

At some point you packet nazis are going to have to throw in the towel.

If you want to control the behaviour of people and what data they transmit, you will have to come out of the server room, don the brown shirt and black boots, and stamp your way into the cubicles and stand guard over the shoulder of each and every peasant. Of course, you will only be able to guard one peasant at a time, and therein lies your defeat, because there are more of us than you.

Universities blocking known ports didn't kill napster or file sharing. Blocking connection initiation from one side or the other just lead to people soaking up even more bandwidth with polling from the inside and "push" mechanisms. Firewalls were invented to fight the flat nature of the internet, and now so many apps and protocols take them into account and route around, through or over them that they aren't seen as a henderence at all. All your attempts to stop humanity from having the free exchange of information are doomed.

What the hell will you do when IPv6 comes out ?

Unless you are willing to spend about 1/4 of all the cpu horsepower on the internet running systems like this, you are doomed, and you are probably doomed anyway.

My advice: give up. As long as that weird IRC server that has compiled-in packet flooders that suddenly appeared on your machine isn't deleteing any of your data, just share and let it be. Open all your ports. Give accounts to street urchins, or make a standard account "street" passwd "urchin". Run a wireless access point with password "passwd". Try to back up your files often enough to recover from their mistakes that fuck your box. Just bite the bullet and dive into the new century.

Because eventually all of our personal hardware will just be little nodes and bits of a giant cloud of humanities collective investment in computing; the filesystem will be a giant freenet or plan9 kfs type thing that doesn't care when your disk breaks, the cpu cycles will be swapped around according to need. A reputation based system will penalize you by not offering you the use of cloud unless you contribute to it, so you will WANT all those other people running shit on your box, because you need the currency to buy space to hold your backups.

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. Your current fumbling efforts to compartmentalize your assets while leaving just enough of a window through the wall for you to reach out and grab some of the goodies are futile attempts to remain in a pre-cyberspace society.

Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[ahde]

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.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[mpe]

Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor?

Sounds like Alan knows perfectly well what he is talking about. History didn't start at the same time as the USA.

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 US Consitution borrows ideas from all over the place. The IP section is taken from a 1710 piece of legislation, "The Queen Anne Copyright Statue".

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.

Until 1710 the concept of "authors rights" was not recognised. The situation of authors ending up having to assign copyright to publishers most certainly does cover the current situation, nearly 300 years later.

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.

One important think to consider is that there is a lot of diversity in European politics. I'd expect people in the US to have been suprised at the number of political parties competing in the recent French, Dutch and Irish elections. Assuming these were covered at all...

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[greenrd]

Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor?

No, he's right. You just aren't aware of the history of copyright.

Copyright was something an author sold a publisher, and didn't exist in any form, really, until it got put in the American constitiution.

That's breathtakingly wrong. Americans invented copyright? I love this "oh no-one had ever heard of X until Americans invented it" view you USians have.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[Panaflex]

Hmm.. besides being wrong, another interesting point about the American copyright system is:

Before the 19th century, America was popularly considered a Pirates paradise for copyright infringement by Europeans.

Another interesting item: You'll find that numerous books published before 1930 in the USA contain no copyright at all.

Pan

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[Simon Brooke]

Copyright was something an author sold a publisher, and didn't exist in any form, really, until it got put in the American constitiution.

Why are Americans so embarassingly ignorant of history? Are schools in the United States really that bad?

Unsurprisingly, copyright in the United Kingdom dates back to before the revolting colonies threw their tea out of the pram. And Alan is absolutely right that - in England, anyway - it was based on the 1662 Licensing Act, whose aim was primarily censorship.

I'm not claiming the United Kingdom had the first copyright laws; I think at least the French and the Dutch had them before we did. But we had them before the United States even existed.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[akmed]

He is more likely than most on slashdot to understand copyright. Copyrights and patents have their beginnings in Britain. The crown would give to inventors/creators the right to produce certain things in exchange for a hefty kickback. It was a method of controlling information as well. No grant from the crown = no ability to publish/produce. These were also used to halt manufacturing developments in the American colonies and people could be put to death if found guilty of relaying secrets relating to how certain machines worked. So that's what he meant by oppressive regimes.

-Mike

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[Nygard]

That's breathtakingly wrong. Americans invented copyright? I love this "oh no-one had ever heard of X until Americans invented it" view you USians have.

Whoa, slow down there, tiger. Yeah, the poster wasn't thinking too clearly -- no question. Just don't lump me in with him (or her). I don't eat pork rinds, watch wrestling, talk REALLY LOUDLY in English when I'm in France, or think Walt Disney invented the Notre Dame or hunchbacks.

Your broad brush has splattered paint on my shoes.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[LarsG]

Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor?

As other people have already said - Alan is right.

A good introduction to the history of copyright law can be found in the first part of the article Copyright in a frictionless world by Brendan Scott.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[angel'o'sphere]

Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor?

Sounds like Alan knows perfectly well what he is talking about. History didn't start at the same time as the USA.

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 US Consitution borrows ideas from all over the place. The IP section is taken from a 1710 piece of legislation, "The Queen Anne Copyright Statue".

Well,
the italics author is right, up to the point that Allan Cox is wrong and probably has no idea about history of copyright.
The italics author is wrong in claiming that copyright did not exist before it was put into the constitution of the US. (The US was one of the last countries in that time adopting authors rights)
The bold author is also wrong ... as Alan Cox is.

Copyright dates back to about 1500 when Albrecht Dürer visited the Emporer and asked for the privilege that he only is allowed to exploit and distribut his own work. The case was that italian copiests copied his work, including even the AD signature and sold them in hughe quantities in north italy.
The Emporer granted him that privilidge and that would extended over time to the so called copy right and was granted to all authors ...

The actual copyright dates back to the french revolution and the Code Napoleon which was one of the first fixations of "authors" rights against the publishers who robbed their work and got rich from it.

As the UK early started in its industrialization also the book printing "industry" started up.

Around 1700 (to tired to search a date for you as YOU ALL can use google to get facts before you make your opinion) in the UK copyright laws got introduced.

YES: the copyright was invented to protect authors against publishers. Not by a governemnt conspiracy as Alan Cox said in his interview and teh bold poster above supports.

Before copy rights existed everybody who could print could just print everything, without paying any royalities to the author. You could even ask someone, write for me, and after you got his work: thanx and kick him(without paying).

The united states book industrie started by printing european books without honoring copy rights. I believe the copyright stuff in the american constitution came pretty late... but I never checked that. Enlight me :-)

I realy hate that people start more and more to bring up false statements in discussions which are far to important to mess them up by sacrisfying credibility.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[ahde]

I didn't know about Albrecht Durer being the original, but by failing to preview my own post, i erased a word where my statement should have been:

"Copyright didn't exist in any [realistic|practicible|codified|whatever] form, really, until it got put in the American constitiution"

I don't know what the right word should be so it got left out. Of course copyright existed. But certainly not in practical use.

Its even more ridiculous to say America was pirating European books than to say America invented copyright. As far as I know there weren't any international copyright treaties 200 years ago. A copyright was only good in 1 country until late in the last century (the 1900s.) It was up to customs to prevent the importation of books not licensed under copyright for that country. American publishers did print foreign books without licensing copyright from the publisher. But so did every other country. If you've ever seen a copyright contract, they still specific domestic/foreign rights.

The Dutch printing industry, in particular, thrived on printing censored British books, especially political and religious texts, but it was libel laws, not copyright, that was the censoring force in Britain, a country notorious for *not* enforcing copyrights, but the government/church/etc. were very draconian in shutting down any publishing house that printed anything that was unfavorable to them.

Don't confuse copyright with royalties. The system of royalty payment is only one form of contract under which copyright is sold. It is not an essential part of copyright.

If the French revolution had anything to do with copyright, it was after the American constitution anyways.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[angel'o'sphere]

"Copyright didn't exist in any [realistic|practicible|codified|whatever] form, really, until it got put in the American
constitiution" I don't know what the right word should be so it got left out. Of course copyright existed. But certainly not in practical use.

STOP it now. Several posters pointed out that you have no clue about history. USA was the LAST country of the western civilisation to put up copy right laws. ALL OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES allready HAD them.

I do not confuse copyright with royalities, I made only an example.

Of course censorship came along with copyright. But censorship allready existed before that. A book printer never was allowed to print with out the granted right by the governmental or church authorities.


If the French revolution had anything to do with copyright, it was after the American constitution anyways.
Probably. But the declaration of independency and the french revolution where in the same year. I thought the french revolution was first ... hu hom ... I also thought the copyright paragraph in the constitution was added later. As you are the US guy you should check that and point me wrong, I'm to lazy to look up if the constitution got changed or not.

angel'o'sphere

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[anaxamander]

>Copyright dates back to about 1500 when Albrecht Dürer visited the
>Emporer and asked for the privilege that he only is
>allowed to exploit and distribut his own work. The case
>was that italian copiests copied his work, including
>even the AD signature and sold them in hughe quantities
>in north italy.

This is an interesting story, which I had never heard. You refer I
suppose to Durer's (sorry for the lack of an umlaut, but I'm too lazy
to try to figure out how to produce it ... ) woodcut prints? It is a
little different than the printed word, perhaps.

Can you provide a reference where one can read a bit more about this?

To me though it seems possible that a grant that the emperor gave
individually to Durer could have been a one time event. If it was not
codified in law or statute, it would have meant very little for most
printers and artists. Not all artists could count on gaining the
favour and protection of the emperor.

>The Emporer granted him that privilidge and that would extended over
>time to the so called copy right and was granted to all authors ...

Can you provide a reference to specific common law or statute
supporting that claim?

>The actual copyright dates back to the french revolution and the Code
>Napoleon which was one of the first fixations of "authors" rights
>against the publishers who robbed their work and got rich from it.

The Statute of Anne (1710) predates the French revolution by 70
years. The Napoleonic code surely arose only some time after the fall
of the ancien regime. The American Revolution and the Constitutional
Congress predate the French revolution and the Napoleonic code, and
the often forgotten (here in America at least) English revolution
predates both of these. So your discussion seems somewhat
anachronistic, unless you want to claim that both the Americans and
the English had no copyright law?

As far as the rights of authors it might well be that in
practice these rights were eventually better protected under the
Napoleonic code, since copyright granted to authors under the Statute
of Anne certainly had to be transferred to a publisher if the author
wished to profit from his work, so that the copyright did not
necessarily amount to very much. But rights are explicitly given to
the author in the Statute of Anne, as I had thought, for the first
time in codified law. In addition, the duration of those rights was
specifically limited, so that works would eventually fall into the
public domain. So it seems that the Lords did make an effort to
balance public and private interests in drafting the statute.

>As the UK early started in its industrialization also the book
>printing "industry" started up.

The printing industries in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland
started a very long time before there was any move towards widespread
industrialisation. One generally dates the industrial revolution in
England, on the continent and in America to the nineteenth century.

>Around 1700 (to tired to search a date for you as YOU ALL can use
>google to get facts before you make your opinion) in the UK copyright
>laws got introduced.

The date was 1709. The Statute of Anne was enacted by parliament on 10
April 1710. This event followed hard on the Act of Union, and the
proximity of the dates would appear to be no accident. Scotland, which
was at the time becoming, at least argueably, the greatest center of
the Enlightenment, and which had very high literacy rates even among
the rural population, far exceeding the literacy rates in England, had
by then a thriving publishing and printing industry.

Formerly, Scottish printing houses had been subject to Scottish common
law and statute. Scottish and English law are quite different in their
antecedents and their philosophy. Upon union of Scotland with England
there inevitably arose disputes between Scottish printers and English
printers concerning their respective rights.

Before the Statute of Anne disputes over rights to print books had to
be resolved under common law in England. The Statute of Anne appears
to have been at least in part an attempt to resolve some of the
problems arising when Scottish printers came under the authority of
the English Crown, and so came into direct conflict with the English
printing oligopoly.

In England, the King had tried to regulate the book trade with the
Licensing Act of 1662. The licensing act was an attempt to protect
printers against piracy, and in addition it was a clear effort to
control what was being printed. It established a requirement to
centrally register a copy of all books which were to be licensed to be
printed, which copy had to be centrally deposited with the Stationers'
Company.

The Stationers' Company were also given power to seize any books
thought to contain writings hostile to the Crown or the Church. In
1681 the licensing act was repealed, but the Stationers' Company by
then had an effective oligopoly. It simply established ownership of
books for a few of its members and it continued to act as the de facto
regulator of the book trade.

>YES: the copyright was invented to protect authors against
>publishers. Not by a governemnt conspiracy as Alan Cox said in his
>interview and teh bold poster above supports.

Well, I would say that this is a complicated question, but it seems
clear enough that the State, in England, certainly acted to preserve
its own interests as far as it could, and it certainly did so when it
saw those interests to be threatened by the extreme ease of printing
and distributing views contrary to the Crown. At times, it acted very
brutally against certain writers on its own behalf. Consider some of
the fates of pamphleteers during the revolution of 1688 and at other
times.

Just on reading the Statute of Anne, I get the feeling that the
conflict between the rather less centrally regulated Scottish printing
industry and the English printing oligopoly led to some good
effects. In practice the rights that the authors got perhaps did not
amount to very much, but the limitation on the term of copyright seems
to be very much in the public interest.

I had thought that this statute was actually the first law in the
world to combine these two elements ... can you provide a specific law
that predates it on the continent?

>Before copy rights existed everybody who could print could just print
>everything, without paying any royalities to the author. You could
>even ask someone, write for me, and after you got his work: thanx and
>kick him(without paying).
>
>The United states book industrie started by printing european books
>without honoring copy rights. I believe the copyright stuff in the
>american constitution came pretty late... but I never checked
>that. Enlight me :-)

I don't really know much about the history of the American printing
industry, but what you say doesn't sound very likely. American
printers would certainly have printed European books in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but so far as I know only
English books would have been under copyright and only in the
eigteenth century. America rather quickly became, for many intents and
purposes an English colony. English common law and statute were the
laws of the land. (Though I do know that it's quite a bit more
complicated than that.) Of course, it was hard for the English Crown
to really enforce all of its wishes in the American colonies, but the
King still had a strong influence in pre-revolutionary times. Even
during the War of Independence about 1/3 of the population were still
Royalist.

The earliest American copyright law dates, I think, to about 1790,
just after the constitution was finally drafted, but copyright was
certainly discussed before this during the constitutional conventions.

>I realy hate that people start more and more to bring up false
>statements in discussions which are far to important to mess them up
>by sacrisfying credibility.

Can you maybe enlighten me a bit by providing a specific reference to
the European copyright law that you say predates the Statute of Anne? I'ld be most interested to
learn more about it.

cheers!

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[anaxamander]

STOP it now. Several posters pointed out that you have no clue about history.

Well, as they say: `Those who live in glass houses ...'

USA was the LAST country of the western civilisation to put up copy right laws. ALL OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES allready HAD them.

The American colonies inherited copyright law from pre-existing English statute. The USA of course could not really make new law before the new government of the USA and its constitution existed. Canada, I believe is one of the nations in `western civilisation' and it was not independent of England until 1867.

I do not confuse copyright with royalities, I made only an example.

Of course censorship came along with copyright. But censorship allready existed before that. A book printer never was allowed to print with out the granted right by the governmental or church authorities.

If the French revolution had anything to do with copyright, it was after the American constitution anyways.

Probably.

No. Unfortunately for your argument, I would say that this is pretty definite. The constitution was mostly written by 1789, though not yet ratified by all the states until that year. The US Copyright Act was passed by congress in 1790.

It was some time after the French revolution before Napoleonic Code was even in effect, much less before it became settled law. Among certain other circumstances, this probably made the situation in Napoleon's Empire regarding copyright law somewhat uncertain ...

Code Napoleon first in effect: 1804

On the other hand:

Declaration of the Rights of Man: 1789. Final Ratification of the US Constitution by Rhode Island: May 29, 1790.

(The others of the original 13 states all ratified the constitution earlier.)

US Copyright Act passed by Congress: 1790. Major revisions thereof: 1831, 1870, 1909 and 1976.

But the declaration of independency and the french revolution where in the same year.

No, sorry, that's wrong, too: the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution were not `in the same year.'

Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1776. Second Continental Congress: May, 1775. Revolutionary War begins: April 19, 1775. Battle for Bunker Hill: June 17, 1775. Battle of Yorktown, War Ends: October 19, 1781.

I thought the french revolution was first

But you were wrong:

French Revolution: 1789-1793

... hu hom ... I also thought the copyright paragraph in the constitution was added later.

I don't really think it that important to find out exactly when the paragraph was added, since Congress passed the Copyright Act in 1790, three years before the end of the French Revolution, which is usually said to end with the execution of the King in January 1793. Of course, right after that was that enjoyable little period during which Robespierre was cheerily lopping off heads he didn't approcve of in Paris, I don't imagine les citoyens were worrying too much about copyright law then!

As you are the US guy you should check that and point me wrong, I'm to lazy to look up if the constitution got changed or not.

That's OK. It's been done for him already!

cheers!

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[loopkin]

end of the French Revolution, which is usually said to end with the execution of the King in January 1793
execution was on 21st of January, 1793, right, but something is wrong in the analysis.
3 analysis are possible:
1- French revolution took place in 1789 (Bastille and so on), and ends same year, when the king recognizes the Assembly and privileges are abolished
2- French revolution is dated 1789-1792. In September 1792, the rolyalty is abolished, and the first Republic starts
3- French revolution is dated 1789-1795. In October 1795, the "Convention" stops, after war against France has ended in 1794 and Robespierre has been executed same year.1794 is also the end of the regime of the "Comités" (Comitee in English, Soviet in Russian).After one year killing those Jacobins who headed that Comités regime, in October 1795, the first stable regime, "Directoire", is established.

In no way, the death of Louis XVI is an important date as for the French Revolution, simply because when he was executed, he wasn't in charge for quite a long time already.

Now as for Copyright.
It was invented in Anne Stuart's act in 1710, in a very light way, to protect authors. But the protection was very thin, and short in time (two periods of 14 years). This law was therefore present in the "American Colonies", and the US Congress passed it as a US law, in the Constitution on 17th September 1790.
But, after that, the French Revolution "improved" it a lot.
In 1777, Beaumarchais created the first association of authors, as a lobby to negociate prices of author's work for every use of it being done, not only in printing, but also for instance playing theatre (so not only pure copy right, but more widely author right). This paved the way for a law, much larger than the 1710 English one.
In 1789, Declaration of Human Rights recognizes implicitely Authors Rights (Articles 11 and 17), though not explicitely.
The law was passed by the Assembly on 19th January 1791, and improved again in 1793.

So as a whole, absolutely nothing is clear in that. The principle was invented as a law, a thin one, in England in 1710, though the idea of it as always been known (Platon, the Greek philosopher, asks for it 4 centuries BC). And the French Revolution, a few years later, improves it a lot.
Considering Beaumarchais action, it's pretty clear that, at least in France, the aim was really to protect authors.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[ahde]

I would have stopped it now, since you made a dipshit of yourself much easier than I could do, but just to laugh at your complete ignorance of history, and to show you that you aren't tough enough to command me to STOP it now. I'm posting a reply.

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[angel'o'sphere]

he he, dear ahde:

I would have stopped it now, since you made a dipshit of yourself much easier than I could do, but just to laugh at your complete ignorance of history, and to show you that you aren't tough enough to command me to STOP it now


but I have now what I wanted ... two posters made an excellent review about dates and orders in which what happend.

I was partly right and partly wrong and you where more wrong ... so what .-)

Probably I'm to confused because partly the same people where involved ... ex minister for foreign affairs the of france was just some years later the minister for foreign affairs in the US.

Anyway, I have to admit I did not read it up, and you neither I asume. I also have to admit I learend the european part of history, and forgott most details but not the grand shape, and I asume you learned the american part of history and not much about us.

In fact I was stupid, I pretty well knew the dates of the 1789(frensh revolution) and 1776(american declaration of independency), I just did not think about them :-) Both where the favorite questions of my last history teacher.

Anyway, nice posts, nice summaries, thanx!

angel'o'sphere

Re:Doesn't understand copyright, but politics

[anaxamander]

[snip]

In no way, the death of Louis XVI is an important date as for the French Revolution, simply because when he was executed, he wasn't in charge for quite a long time already.

Thanks for your correction and for your criticisms above this statement, as to the ending date of the French Revolution. I think them to be on point, and I assure you they are well-taken. Thanks also for your perceptive analyses: your analysis #3 is the one I find the most convincing on a quick reading.

Nevertheless, I will quibble with you a bit.

Given the extraordinarily vast literature that exists on the subject of the French Revolution I doubt that your list of analyses totally exhausts the possibilities. You seem to leave out for example an analysis such as that of Furet, which I would freely admit is probably rather too subtle for someone with my experience ever to grasp fully, but which I believe divides the age of revolution into two parts, one consisting of an egalitarian movement (roughly 1789-1793) possibly lasting up to the end of the Jacobin Republic, depending on one's position on the Danton vs Robespierre controversy and the extent to which one can rationalize to oneself the Terror, and the other consisting of an authoritarian counter-revolutionary movement, which ultimately quashed most of the aims of the first period.

Based on such a hypothetical dichotomy, I would tend to place the end of the revolution rather later, I think, than your analysis #3 allows for: I would put it probably sometime after the downfall of Napoleon. But to do so would surely underemphasize the importance of the events of 1789 and the years immediately subsequent. In addition, 1793 (possibly better: summer 1792) seems to be a significant if a somewhat arbitrary dividing point.

In the end certainly there emerged a stable Republic, and certainly the French experience was central in modern European history, and the French involvement in America was absolutely critical in the success of the American Revolution. One only has to remember names such as the Marquis de La Fayette and the Comte de Rochembeau, to understand just how critical French involvement was for the Americans. For its part the French monarchy seems to have viewed the support given to the American cause mainly as a useful tactic in the war against England.

For France to support the Americans against the English I think really must be seen as a colossal miscalculation on the part of Louis and the aristocrats of the ancien regime. They cannot have seen what the stakes really were in that decision. They cannot have seen that the war which was to come for France was not only over territory, not only with their aristocratic rivals in the rest of Europe and in the British Isles. They cannot have seen that the war was going to be over ideas. Or, if they did see and they knew these things, they must have imagined that their ideas and intellects were superior and that they would be able to triumph, possibly even by divine will. It seems that they misunderstood, and greatly underestimated their enemies, and they failed to draw the correct lesson from the English experience in 1688 which seems to me at least possibly to be an understandable blind spot.

The cost to France of the war, over the five years of the American Revolution, became on the order of 1 billion livres: it was a serious drain on the treasury. Following the capitulation of the British expeditionary force at Yorktown, triumphant anti-royalists and their ideas flowed into France. There was less money to keep up the system of payments on the basis of which the regime had been maintained.

Among those forming the core of the French Revolution were many of those who had supported the American cause.

I disagree with your statement that the execution of Louis XVI is an event of no importance in the revolution, even as I completely agree that Louis was not in any sense in charge at the time of his death. When his head fell in the Place de la Revolution, certainly no one rose up to fight against any perceived injustice to an anointed monarch, though of course he was then a deposed, despised and disgraced one, and a proven traitor.

It seems as though in many French minds, the idea of the monarchy had been already dead, and the king himself an enemy: after his trial also a proven collaborator with the enemies of the nation. But if one limits oneself to these considerations one ignores that the Convention in addition to declaring a Republic, in one of its significant initial actions declared the Year I of the Liberty to be 1793, when this year should have been the Year IV. In other words: the assembly adopted language that reset the calendar, reclassifying the events of 1789 and following to have happened during the ancien regime.

Why such a strange piece of legislation? Why was there any need for the Convention to devote itself to carrying out a carefully arranged and meticulously prosecuted trial of Louis? In fact, Robespierre appears to have opposed the trial initially. His question was along the lines: `If Louis could be found innocent could the Republic be found guilty?' One might even imagine that he favoured just killing the man and being done with it. But that man's motives are for me very hard to discern. In the end the Convention voted to try Louis and they appointed a Commission to that end. The king was with the Commune. The commission was still considering how it might proceed, when some of the king's papers, containing his personal correspondence were `accidentally' discovered in a secret cupboard in the Tuileries, or so the story continues. With these letters they had the needed evidence to convict Louis. But it must have been obvious to all parties what the desire of the king was in any case: it was the complete opposite of that of the republicans and Louis attempts to encourage war must have been well known.

I just think that the case is that the question of what to do with the king was one that too greatly vexed the Convention for it to be said that his execution had no importance.

The date of the king's death, the fact that he was executed, must have at the least a symbolic significance for the French Revolution. Perhaps it simply had to be done, because by voting for his trial and execution the Conventionelles took an utterly irrevocable step, their lives being unquestionably forfeit if any monarch was ever restored to the throne.

Michelet put the significance of the execution in a very striking way, I'll quote a fragment from Furet's short volume (The French Revolution 1770-1814):

It was necessary to expose to the light that ridiculous mystery which barbaric humanity had for so long turned into a religion, the mystery of royal incarnation, that bizarre fiction which imagines the wisdom of a great people concentrated in an imbecile ... Royalty had to be dragged into the daylight, exposed before and behind, opened up, so that the inside of his worm-eaten idol could be clearly seen, full of insects and worms, giving the lie to his beautiful guilded head.

Perhaps too much on that ...

Now as for Copyright. It was invented in Anne Stuart's act in 1710, in a very light way, to protect authors. But the protection was very thin, and short in time (two periods of 14 years). This law was therefore present in the "American Colonies", and the US Congress passed it as a US law, in the Constitution on 17th September 1790.

This is more or less as I stated my understanding of it above, as well as in a more lengthy post on the subject that you might have missed.

The statute appears to have been occasioned, in part, by the Union of England and Scotland in 1707. I certainly do not believe that Anne Stuart cared a whit about copyright law. The Statute of Anne, as it's called, dealt with the question of how the printing trade was to be regulated in the new political situation.

I don't really disagree with your characterisation as to the `lightness' of the law or the thin nature of the protection for authors that resulted. In fact, I might go further and disagree that the main motive was to protect authors, though the text of the statute explicitly includes language stating in effect that the protection of authors' rights, that they be rewarded for their original efforts would be a public good, and it does so at the head of the text. Substantively authors are given copyright for 14 years, renewable for another 14 years by application to the Stationers' Company. Both the favourable language and the arrangement of the text cannot have been accidental, there would have been argument about it, and it follows that there were those in parliament who believed it the correct thing to do.

But, after that, the French Revolution "improved" it a lot. In 1777, Beaumarchais created the first association of authors, as a lobby to negociate prices of author's work for every use of it being done, not only in printing, but also for instance playing theatre (so not only pure copy right, but more widely author right). This paved the way for a law, much larger than the 1710 English one.

In 1789, Declaration of Human Rights recognizes implicitely Authors Rights (Articles 11 and 17), though not explicitely. The law was passed by the Assembly on 19th January 1791, and improved again in 1793.

Thanks very much for providing this account of the early history of copyright law from the French side. It was enlightening for me.

So, you would agree then that the French statute post-dates the US federal statute, though just by a hair?

So as a whole, absolutely nothing is clear in that. The principle was invented as a law, a thin one, in England in 1710, though the idea of it as always been known (Platon, the Greek philosopher, asks for it 4 centuries BC).

I agree. I also was tempted, upon being told that copyright law originated when the Emperor intervened on the artist's side in a contretemps between Albrecht Duerer and some Italian printers, to mention that Greek and Roman authors also raised the issue more than a thousand years earlier. But so far as I had been aware, there was never anything explicit in Roman law or any other written law before 1710. I remain open to hearing about a counterexample on this point, of course.

And the French Revolution, a few years later, improves it a lot.

Yes, but it was quite a few years later, if you meant a few years after Plato ;->

Do you mean a few years after the Statute of Anne? I think it was more than 80 years, using your dates. So we should have to consider subsequent developments in England and in America as well.

Considering Beaumarchais action, it's pretty clear that, at least in France, the aim was really to protect authors.

You make a good case that the aim of the law in France was to protect authors. But I can argue in an exactly similar way that significant improvements were made in the law on the American side of the Atlantic, and I think can do so perhaps more strongly, since 12 of the 13 states had passed Copyright Acts well before the final ratification of the constitution and the federal Copyright act of 1790. Essentially all of these acts included in their titles that they were intended to protect the rights of authors and innovators. And all of these statutes predate the French ones from the egalitarian period of the revolution of which you spoke.

However, this kind of discussion can very easily degenerate into a silly nationalistic argument. I have no interest in such, if that perhaps may not not clear to you.

I think that it is actually more rational to see the American and French Revolutions as part and parcel of the same basically anti-authoritarian movement. They are in fact inseparable from each other. Both were offshoots of intellectual developments in the Age of Enlightenment. But the American revolution occurred first and it is undeniable that the French Patriots took inspiration from it, as it is also undeniable that the Americans took material aid and inspiration from the French.

I think it really might make sense for people to consider the extensive cross-fertilization and exchange of ideas that occurred during this period between leaders of the French and American revolutionary movements, particularly in this context of copyright. At the very least it would be well to remember that the American Revolution was over before the French Revolution began.

Finally, there were also Englishmen who played a very significant part in both revolutions. Indirectly and directly, the fallout from the glorious revolution of 1688 made itself felt in America. Most notably there is Thomas Paine. You are certainly not unaware that he was both a father of the American revolution and a member of the Convention. He was one who voted against the execution of Louis XVI on principle. He was later imprisoned by Robespierre on this excuse, and while in prison wrote the `Age of Reason.'

Paine was a Quaker, a deist and a freethinker, in my opinion a humanist of the highest order and a truly great man. I can make no better compliment for him than to quote you John Adams insult on reading the Age of Reason:

I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity as you do [he wrote at an unmellowed seventy one to a friend], and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Buonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants and affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it the Age of Paine.

From `Paine,' David Freeman Hawke.

cheers!

.NET and Firewalls

[SteveX]

I don't understand his argument here:

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

Re:.NET and Firewalls

[wurp]

If you allow ANY data to go out over the firewall, then someone can transmit any data to which they have access. Any bit that you don't know exactly why they sent it (whitespace in html, noise in a picture, word order in a written document, etc) is a bit which could transmit private data.

If you give someone access to data, stopping them from sending it out is next to impossible. You can make it harder, but that boils down to searching them when they come in & leave and disallowing any communications for which they don't have a business reason. Even then, a determined person will still get the data out.

.NET is our friend

[AirLace]

I was reading along happily until I got to this part of Alan's response:

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.


This is FUD, plain and simple. The fact is, that the .NET CLR and C# specifications are right up there on the ECMA standards board for anyone to freely implement. Any non-standardised aspects of Free implementations of the .NET framework (for example Mono) are being develped without the use so-called 'Shared Source' code, only by observing the Microsoft environment. There are several examples of legal precendence for clean-room reverse engineering -- see here for a comprehensive exploration of this area of the law.


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 .NET object file. I think this is far more complicit with UNIX's component-based design than Java's 'rewrite everything in Java' mantra.

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 .NET comes a damn sight closer to the goal of language unification than Java (or any other cross-platform executable platform) ever did, and I bet you know that full well. So I don't understand why you're making these empty arguments.


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?


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, .NET is becoming a force to be reckoned with on Linux.

The Mono .NET framework implementation is more complete than many people realise, and in terms of efficiency, design, feature-completeness, and best of all, freedom, it beats the non-free Java implementations hands-down.

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.

Re:.NET is our friend

[mccalli]

Once again, the technology takes ideas from Perl (foreach, anyone

foreach is a shell construct. Perl took from the shell (I think Bourne), foreach is not Perl's idea.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:.NET is our friend

[iabervon]

Clean-room reverse-engineering is not possible against a patent, because everyone is presumed to have read patents. That's why the word is derived from the Latin for "well-known" or "open". The point is that you tell the world how something works in exchange for a temporary monopoly on implementing it.

.NET doesn't actually do any better than Java at being cross-language; as far as I know, no language (other than C#) has been fully implemented with .NET. You could, of course, restrict yourself to using the parts of your favorite language which are supported by the .NET implementation, but then you might as well use C#. .NET isn't cross-language; it is merely cross-syntax. On the other hand, Java (bytecode) isn't any more cross-language. But it's not supposed to be. A far better cross-platform, cross-language VM is actually x86 machine language, which is available on several platforms as a VM (including a cross-processor linux implementation), as well as several direct implementations and microcode implementations, and which permits effective implementation of essentially all programming languages.

Re:.NET is our friend

[Brainchild]

foreach is a shell construct. Perl took from the shell (I think Bourne)

Nope; foreach is not Bourne shell, but C shell. Bourne shell syntax is:

for variable in value [value...] ; do ... ; done

Don't know why Larry chose foreach. Oh well.

Re:.NET is our friend

[Unknown Lamer]

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 .NET object file. I think this is far more complicit with UNIX's component-based design than Java's 'rewrite everything in Java' mantra.

Um, stealing from Perl and Java? You know Lisp (or really functional programming languages in general) has had for-each for a lot longer than Perl has even existed. The CLOS (first ANSI certified OO system) also predates Java by years (not to mention that Java is just copying what C++ is using is just copying what Simula used). Property lists are also not original in VB--Lisp also has had those since the beggining (read "Recursive functions symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I" by John McCarthy Volume 3, Issue 4 (April 1960) of CACM). That would be a paper on the implementation of the original Lisp system! Seeing as Microsoft didn't even exist in 1960...also I do belive that there have been VMs for a longgggg time before Java.

Re:.NET is our friend

[iabervon]

.NET isn't much better-- in general, it won't be declared to be safe anyway.

In any case, sandboxing depends on dynamic checks of safety, with static checks as a set of optimizations. Static checks will substantially improve performance, when you can do then, but you can't avoid doing some dynamic checks (index out of bounds, e.g.). x86 will just require more.

And sandboxing isn't the only purpose of a VM; another is portability. Being cross-language sort of prevents you from doing all that much in the way of static checks, for that matter, because C permits arbitrarily complex pointer arithmatic, and guarentees that, provided you end up with valid address at the end, you can dereference it, regardless of whether what you did is generally safe.

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[jpl]

...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.

Slashdot munged my post

[AirLace]

Last paragraph should read:

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.

Re:Slashdot munged my post

[Alan Cox]

Eben says "the patent issue is unaffected by" - referring to the rotor source code license. Read - you didn't have any rights before, you don't have any now.

ECMA is not an immediate magical patent waiver system.

Re:Slashdot munged my post

[AirLace]

You think the .NET standard is legally less safe to implement than, say Sun's proprietary Java (you didn't sound so ambivolous towards Java). Or do you think we should be coding desktop applications in C and Perl?

The very idea of a standard that is not freely implementable is to be laughed at. If you don't want it to be implemented, you don't call it a standard -- you call it Intellectual Property or a trade secret. Microsoft has positioned the .NET as a cross-platform runtime environment and the Mono people are realising that vision.

I'm not one of those so-called "pragmatists" who argue for Free Software whilst using Microsoft Outlook and Word, but I do recognise a good, free technology when I see one. And this time, it's from Microsoft. Otherwise, how would you explain the existance of Linux, a clone of UNIX, or the IBM PC itself, with which you're so familiar? Again and again, we've seen examples of people implementing standards in clean-room environments -- it's part of the software industry, and trying to gun down projects like Mono for doing the exact same thing is simply unfair.

Idealism is something that's too often ignored these days, but your arguments against .NET represent the inverse situation; your attitude towards .NET illustrates what can go wrong when ideals are misapplied.

Re:Slashdot munged my post

[Tony-A]

You think the .NET standard is legally less safe to implement than, say Sun's proprietary Java

That's funny. I get my "Sun's proprietary Java" from IBM.
Regardless of non-binding statements by non-principals, I would prefer to trust a pair of 2-ton-whatevers to keep each other honest.

The very idea of a standard that is not freely implementable is to be laughed at.
Well, there's the standard meter. Lot's of luck freely implementing that.

Microsoft has positioned the .NET as a cross-platform runtime environment
Cross-platform? Wintel-to-Wintel?

Re:Slashdot munged my post

[karmawarrior]

Sun has not indicated it will enforce patents against implementors of Java. Microsoft has. They're on record of saying they will. THAT is the difference.

Re:Slashdot munged my post

[Cyno]

We should be coding our desktop applications in C and Perl.

Re:Ma[y]be true but, exag[g]erated

[phaedrus]

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.

Spider plants, eh!

[gnugnugnu]

> 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/ )

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Alan Cox]

If you are going to insult me look up your facts. If Microsoft paid typical US dividends they would have under 20% of their current slush fund. (under because at 80% dividends the investors not the corporation got the benefit of reinvestment of most of the interest)

If they choose to sit on that $40 billion they should be paying tax on it because I really doubt they can demonstrate its neccessary for operational overheads. In which case 39% of it belongs to the US people. Which on a quick back of the envelope calculation is a bit over $50 per US citizen

Nvidia vs ATI

[joneshenry]

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?

Re:Nvidia vs ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

As an ex ATI employee, it's sad to hear that people believe this stuff.

First of all, ATI has research centres in CA, MA and FL - that's where the drivers are written. And the people in those places are just as smart as those at nVidia, and are certainly not underpaid.

As far as helping competitors, ATI may well do this, since it is possible that the next Direct3D sample driver source will be Radeon based. The current one is a 3Dlabs driver, but that doesnt support programmable vertex or pixel shaders. That source will be available to anyone who has the DirectX DDK.

Re:Nvidia vs ATI

[Alan Cox]

There is an alternative for the nvidia 3d -
http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net has usable but far from complete XFree86 4.2 3d for Nvidia cards.

However its incomplete due to lack of info, its slow and it needs a few folks to bring utah-glx up to 4.2 - at that point lots of very old cards 3D also starts to work on Linux

Re:Nvidia vs ATI

[X-Guy]

These are Linux kernel issues. Linux just doesn't
support AGP in a way suitable for stable operation
on an AMD processor. Things should work just fine
if you don't enable AGP. And some people have
gotten things to work "mostly fine" by just disabling
the large page extensions (mem=nopentium option).
This is not a NVIDIA-specific problem.

Re:Nvidia vs ATI

[HeUnique]

Actually - it is. I'm sorry to say that.

My main machine: Pentium 4, Intel board, 512MB RAM, Geforce 2 and Nvidia drivers...

With the nvidia drivers - I get occasional panics specially when I try to play a lot with the Xv extensions (xawtv, xine, switching between them each time) - I get a nice kernel panic which doesn't even makes sense (error at address 0x00000000 doesn't look to me like a good info for kernel panic)..

Maybe NVidia could pass their kernel driver (under NDA) to Alan so he can make some remarks about it? (oh yeah, send him a card too - I don't think he got one) - I'm sure he can explain lots of things...

Re:Nvidia vs ATI

[MsGeek]

OK, so when will ATI put out a Linux driver for its DVD hardware decompression? Binary would be fine.

Re:nothing to discuss here

[jukal]

Ok, it is confirmed, Alan Cox has now officially gained the God status amongst the Slashdot readers. Why else would the parent be judged as "troll".

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

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[GregWebb]

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...

The tail, the dog, the wagging...

[RalphTWaP]

Well.... Damn, it's about time I heard this viewpoint.

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 /BLOCKQUOTE, with emphasis added):

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?

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

Re:The tail, the dog, the wagging...

[hyperturbopete]

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.

Theres a difference- the port 80 stuff has client programs running with user priviledges- limited damage there. you can firewall other stuff off.

.Net

[hackus]

The idea of creating and using a independant language based development facility to create software has no basis in reality.

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 .Net, it is a ludicrously expensive software API to develop on, and offers no real value in developing internet based applications as a result.

-Hack

Good answers in the face of naive questions

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[jpl]

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.

Dmitry did not make that possible!

[Ashurbanipal]

Dmitry... 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.

Clearly, no one person made this possible - but if you want to finger somebody, you should either be looking for the morons at Adobe who used ROT13 encryption (which even I can break) or for those guys at Intel and IBM who put the requisite power on the desktop.

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:

...this sort of gross exageration does not fool anyone and really does more harm than good.

Fool

[streetlawyer]

there comes a point where the management can be accused of failing in their fiduciary duty to maximize total return to the stockholders

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.

Re:Fool

[sphealey]

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 Alfred Sloan? Surely you realize that by 1970 GM will have a 100% market share in North America?

Anyway, we are talking about extreme cases (always difficult) of financial theory (which doesn't have a whole lot of theory behind it to a humble engineer) in situations that, as you imply, will probably never arise.

However, you may want to look at the MSFT price graph for the last 2 years, and keep in mind that they have a LOT of option grants coming up in the next 2. Trees don't grow to the sky and Microsoft is no exception. Problem is MSFT is valued as if they do.

sPh

You my friend are niave...

[ClarkEvans]

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.

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[mrsam]

They already paid tax on it. In the US of A, tax is levied on income, not assets. That's why it's called "Income Tax". Now, unless there was some funny monkey business going on with their profit/loss, and they didn't report all of their revenue to the IRS gestapo, that's 40 bil after tax.

As a side note, if that pile of cash gets distributed as dividends, the recipients will end up paying income tax on them, 'cause its income to them. So corporate profits are, essentially, double-taxes, but that's a different topic. In any case, MS does not owe any tax on their cash pile (except, perhaps, on the interest, since interest is considered to be income).

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[Software]

I didn't state the point clearly enough. The point is to make a political statement about the DMCA. It would make a nice edition to the DeCSS gallery. If people see that the US flag can be used as a copyright circumvention device (code + flag = cracked DVD), then perhaps they will realize the unfairness and unworkability of the DMCA.

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.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Ashurbanipal]

facist is the right word for when government makes industry a tool of the welfare state

You bag me up man! I'll bet $5000 you've never had to look far for a handout! Oh, you poor little college-educated rich boy! Bwahahahahahahaha!

Wrong! The law is clear on this

[AirLace]

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 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):

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)

Re:Wrong! The law is clear on this

[snkline]

Umm, what is your point? That deals with NDA's and trade secrets. Patents are totally different. In fact the whole POINT of patents is to get inventors to disclose their discoveries to the public, for temporary exclusive rights to it.

Re:Wrong! The law is clear on this

[NearlyHeadless]

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):

No, you're wrong. The link you gave is about trade secrets, not patents. Independent discovery does not mean you are safe from patent infringement.

Re:Wrong! The law is clear on this

[rhkramer]

Independent discovery works as a way to circumvent a trade secret, it does not work to circumvent a patent!

IANAL, but neither, I think, is the poster I'm responding to. Maybe a lawyer can comment?

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[GMontag]

Unfortunately Communists, Socialists and Facists just can not understand your points, nor do they understand that the above 3 groups are shades of the same cloth.

I have also noticed that they assume Capitalists, like me, automatically support state imposed death penalties, gun bans and recreational drug banning and keep trying to argue about how wrong these laws are, no matter how much anybody agrees that these laws are wrong too (except for the guns, they disagree there but what's the difference? they disagree for agreeing with them on other issues).

The best we can do is state our case(s) and let others judge the views, let the anti-freedom forces whither away like North Korea and Cuba.

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[sulli]

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.

Don't forget

[GMontag]

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.

Re:Don't forget

[10Ghz]

"Don't forget, the taxes were already paid on these funds when earned"

Negative. Microsoft hasn't paid any taxes in years.

Re:Don't forget

[ceswiedler]

I believe what you are referring to is state corporate taxes, which Microsoft is apparently exempt from. I'm rather certain that there are federal taxes which are being paid, plus taxes in other states.

Re:Don't forget

[AxelBoldt]

Microsoft does not pay federal corporate income taxes, because of employee stock option schemes.

patents?

[Ender Ryan]

You didn't address Alan's claim about the patents Microsoft holds on the "technology" that .NET is based on.

If what Alan said about the patents they hold is true, then nothing you said is very relevent.

Your logic, as Dad used to explain it

[Ashurbanipal]

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!

Userlan link is a bad example

[oliverthered]

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.

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[Second_Derivative]

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> ;)

No, You're Wrong!

[Royster]

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.

Re:Wrong! The law is clear on this! No Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Read again. You are talking about trade secrets which have nothing to do with patent law...

And the next step is...

[Second_Derivative]

Play the resultant VHS tape
Observe the pretty noise (Courtesy of Macrovision(R)(C)(TM)(SM))

Re:And the next step is...

[Tepic]

I remember recently reading about a signal booster in an electronics magazine (CPC in the UK) that had a little note next to the product description saying in effect it would circumvent Macrovision. I think the effect was unintentional. I have no idea of the resultant quality though.

Re:And the next step is...

[karmawarrior]

FWIW, most DVDs are not "protected" with Macrovision, not in my experience anyway. It took me six months before I had to buy an RF converter for mine, before that I hooked the DVD player up to the TV through the VCR.

Studios who use Macrovision have to pay for the privilege. This is why CSS is almost ubiquitous and Macrovision isn't. Interestingly, I'm finding a lot of recent releases of "old" (ie British-made Hitchcocks, etc) and horror movies are being released in budget form in regionless, CSS-less, DVD form.

DMCA only affects law abiding citizens.

[Quixadhal]

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?

Re:DMCA only affects law abiding citizens.

[FyRE666]

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.

Furthermore, if I managed to collect several hundred DVDs quite LEGALLY, then moved to another country, oh, say from the UK to the US my collection would become useless to me as the region encoding would prevent me from playing them on my shiny new US LEGALLY PURCHASED DVD player.

Yeah, that'll stop piracy...

Re:DMCA only affects law abiding citizens.

[Starcub]

Well you can't legislate morality, but I would argue that we do have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to minimize illegal activity as much as possible. For the cost of shipping and handling, the consumer should be able to request content in a different media format if desired. When tools are freely available to make illegal copies and mass distribution possible, a small number of miscreants can do serious damage to the content creators and distributors. This type of activity damages legitimate parties and provides incentive for publishing reduced quality content at a larger price. This isn't fair to those who do play by the rules.

Sure you can argue that it's not the tools that are bad, but rather the people who use them for illegal purposes. But what can reasonably be enforced? When people prove that they are unwilling to act responsibly, they forfeit certain conveniences. It appears to me that copy protection is necessary for the protection of legitimate buyers and sellers; personally I have no problem with it. In addition, I doubt anyone is going to "go after" someone who makes a backup copy of something strictly for personal use, that's not the intent of the DMCA, and it sounds like FUD to me. In any case content recovery should be a relatively simple matter -- a minor inconvenience.

I do agree, however, that region codes sound like an unnecessary restriction and I can't think of a good reason to justify it in light of the possible benefits given that the media is adequately copy protected.

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[Freija Crescent]

i'm working on this as we speak.. =)

basically you feed it a .jpeg of a flag, at any size, it will work.. =)

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

Alan is quite wrong here..

[Ogerman]

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.

Re:Alan is quite wrong here..

[Xylantiel]

His point is that the DRM people should stick to technology and leave the laws alone. He believes that without the laws to back them up, the market will do away with them for exactly the reasons you give.

Copyright is a negotiated agreement for material that is publically disseminated (the author gets a limited monopoly in exchange for not keeping his work under lock and key). Movie companies don't like this agreement, so they want to change the laws to extend their theatre into your home. i.e. they want to be able to publically distrubte material and keep it under lock and key also! Alan's point is to leave copyright alone and they should use their own hardware and possibly contractual measures to 'reach into the home'. Then just let the market do it's job and determine if this is a viable business model.

Re:Alan is quite wrong here..

[Daffy Duck]

I think you've missed the point, which is this:

Rather than let the MPAA dictate hardware changes to every piece of consumer electronics in existence and thereby eliminate the general-use computer from the face of the earth, let them make their own "protected" media-playing devices for their own protected content and leave the rest of the computer industry alone.

The reason they don't do this in the first place is that it takes money and effort to come up with your own technology, whereas it takes almost none to "borrow" it from the computer industry. Particularly if you take a sum of money that wouldn't pay for Keanu Reeves' lunch and throw it at Senator Hollings to *force* the computer industry to do the work for you.

Re:Alan is quite wrong here..

[Ogerman]

His point is that the DRM people should stick to technology and leave the laws alone. He believes that without the laws to back them up, the market will do away with them for exactly the reasons you give.

I see your point, but as long as DMCA exists, there will still be no way to fight forced-proprietary technology in the US. At what point would the public complain about hastles induced by DRM and not just use whatever crap is shoved in their face.

Re:Alan is quite wrong here..

[Alan Cox]

In terms of what rights people should have to the content I agree. One thing the USA and EU badly needs to figure out is what you can't be allowed to control. There are serious issues here. DRM doesn't just threaten personal rights it threatens the historical record and national security

How are you going to get a whistleblower or contact in a terrorist group to help you when the documents they leak contain watermarks the government has no infrastructure to remove and has banned research into circumventing ?

Re:Alan is quite wrong here..

[fognugen]

Your statements on fair use got me thinking about this concept from a different standpoint. Shouldn't the rules for fair use of content be determined by the author of said content?

Think about how the author of a piece of open source code gets to tell you what you can and/or can't do with the code via the license. If I compose a song, isn't it my right as the author to say what can be done with it?

If your answer is, "No, you can't restrict the freedoms of someone who acquires what you've produced through legitimate means" then why should I not be able to take a piece of GPL code, modify it, close the source, and sell it for profit without releasing my improvements?

Where can I find a DVD copier?

[Thing 1]

Please direct me to a commercialy available DVD->DVD copier, or a DVD->VHS unit?

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.

Cease & Desist

[Dr. Awktagon]

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

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[jpl]

I didn't state the point clearly enough. The point is to make a political statement about the DMCA.

I understood you. I just wanted to make sure people understood this would only be a political statement, nothing more.

If people see that the US flag can be used as a copyright circumvention device (code + flag = cracked DVD), then perhaps they will realize the unfairness and unworkability of the DMCA.

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.

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?

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.

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Brian Stretch]

Like most highly successful public companies, Microsoft does share buybacks instead of paying out dividends, because as another poster wrote dividends are taxed twice, once when Microsoft earned the money, again when the investor receives the dividends (dividends are taxed as regular income). Thus, dividends are grossly tax inefficient, and the dividend payout rates of stocks have plummeted accordingly. Dividend paying stocks are favored by retirees who need the regular income and for use in tax-sheltered voluntary retirement accounts.

REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are a special case, they get special tax treatment in exchange for paying out the bulk of their income in dividends.

Failed encryption TV in the Netherlands

[Rob Kaper]

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.

European DMCA

[NearlyHeadless]

While Alan Cox is all up in arms about the DMCA and the EUCD, it should be noted that Britain has banned copyright circumvention devices and publishing instructions on how to build circumvention devices since 1988, long before the U.S.

See Section 296 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[bluebomber]

Ok, let's look at the facts:

The dividend payout ratio for the S see [1], the rises coincide with recessions as companies try to keep dividend payments steady but profits dip). Also worth noting is that the tendency of US companies to pay high dividends has declined over time (see [2]). The only companies I can find that regularly pay out dividends of more than 50% are slow-growth businesses like electric utilities or car manufacturers, which are known for having high dividend yields. Can you point me to a list of companies with 25% long-term growth rates that pay out 80% dividends? Without running all the numbers, it looks like the DJIA would come out to about a 50% payout on average. Running the Nasdaq 100 would give a COMPLETELY different picture. MSFT is a very different company than Honeywell or General Motors.

- In FY97, MSFT purchased stock in the amount equivalent to a 37% dividend payout.
- In FY98 the payout was 21%.
- In FY99 the payout was 10%.
- In FY00 the payout was 23%.
- In FY01 the payout was 79%.

Remember, share repurchases have the same net effect as dividend payouts. Given that MSFT paid (small) dividends in FY97 through FY00, the respective payout numbers are (97-00): 38%, 22, 11, 23.

You talk about sitting on $40B in cash. Don't forget that they have nearly $12B in current liabilities -- these are suppliers and employees that need to be paid!

And why exactly should MSFT be penalized for sitting on cash? Plenty of US companies have lots of cash. They already all pay taxes on the interest they earn from this "unused" cash, as it becomes part of their net profit. You "doubt they can demonstrate its neccessary for operational overheads" [sic], but this is beside the point. In the US, a company can use corporate assets for any legal purpose. If you think that MSFT is doing something illegal with its cash, then say so. Otherwise, don't try to insinuate that the mere possession of capital is illegal or otherwise "wrong".

If you want a piece of that $40B, you might buy some shares of MSFT. Put a proposal stating that they should increase the dividend payout on their proxy form for the next annual meeting. See if the shareholders vote to approve. If they do, you can collect your $0.18 per share per quarter (an estimate of the dividend amount given 40% payout and the most recent share buyback amounts). But if you're investing for dividends, look at REITs -- they have a higher yield and they are tax advantaged.

MSFT does pay a substantial amount of taxes: $1.2B in the quarter ended Mar 02. That works out to a little over $4 for every man, woman and child living in the US (*not* just citizens) -- and that is just in the first three months of this year.

(Note: I am no fan of MSFT, I just dislike seeing "facts" misrepresented.)

[1] http://www.cpcug.org/user/invest/payout.gif, http://www.barra.com/research/fundamentals.asp

[2] http://www.lowrisk.com/dividends.htm

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Capt_Morgan]

Actually that is what SHOULD happen. Unfortunatley Microsoft has used loopholes in the tax law to avoid paying federal income tax for 2 years. www.billparish.com Read it. It's very disturbing

BWAHAHAHAHAHA mk. 2

[Ashurbanipal]

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.

NVidia Kernel Drivers

[Hieronymus Howard]

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)

Re:NVidia Kernel Drivers

[akmed]

The kernel drivers are open source, yes. But all they are is an interface between the kernel and the closed source unified binary driver that actually controls the hardware. And many people, myself included, have had trouble with it. But some seem to think that AC's the one to send reports to when they should go to Nvidia. Oh well

-Mike

Re:NVidia Kernel Drivers

[ianezz]

Could you explain this further? The source code for the Nvidia kernel drivers is available

Just a little portion is available, and not the meaningful one. If you look better at that "source", you'll see it is basically a set of wrappers for that big x86 object file you get in the .tar.gz.

People who laughed at Windows NT being instable due to (possibly) buggy video drivers running in kernel space should consider avoiding proprietary kernel modules as well (and proprietary XFree86 modules - remember that XFree86 runs as root and accesses hardware).

Power tools

[nolife]

I have found in me the urge to buy power tools

I am waiting for a cordless drill that is fully 802.11b compliant.

Murder, guns, hammers, ethics..

[Odinson]

I'm not sure what inspired these thoughts and this rant but I think it was Alan. Great interview BTW, thank you.

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.

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Xylantiel]

But you still have to pay capital gains on the money from the buyback right? Wouldn't this only be 'good' if you make more than a certain amount of money so that the capital gains rate is less than your income tax rate?

Metaphor overload...

[mttlg]

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.

At least he didn't start going on about Darmok at Tanagra...

Re:Metaphor overload...

[TheRevenant]

And I thought I was the only one who remembered that episode. :)

"Dy-mok at Tanagra" wanders through my head every time I shop at Dymocks Bookstore...

rights release and x86 port...

[emil]

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?

Power tools

[artg]

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).

This is a freedom of speach issue

[TheLastUser]

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?

Why Unix gurus grow beards...

[nortcele]

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.

Re:Why Unix gurus grow beards...

[felipeal]

They learn the art of efficiency. It is a complete waste of time to shave your beard if it just going to grow back.

Yeah, it sure is. It's also a waste of time to take a shower everyday, as you'll get dirty again the next day.

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.
Similarly, it would be much more efficient to just clean yourself with a wet towel everyday and take a full bath only every two weeks (like before a lug meeting or some other social event).

a good source for copyright/publishing history

[morgue-ann]

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).

Very nice interview .. but SOAP and Firewalls :-/

[angel'o'sphere]

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?


This is a part form the answer to the qestion:
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?


Hu hom ... I simply do not get that freaking panic about SOAP and firewalls.

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 .html request for a plain web site posting what I like to that side.

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

Myopia, or, when in Rome

[Macrobat]

When I'm at a restaurant, the conversation (with the waiter/waitress) is about the food.

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"?

Public Library

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Public Library

[Alan Cox]

That by the way is a peculiarly US institution. In most countries authors do get some returns from libraries

Re:Public Library

[DonalGraeme]

Because the library only has a finite amount of copies of the author's book. So if you REALLY want to read the book, and it's not in the library, you go and buy it yourself.

On the other hand, you can make many copies of an electronic book, and many people can read it all at once ... without returning it to the library either! Sure, you could do this with a normal book and a photocopier, but it'd be much harder than copying an e-book.

Re:Public Library

[tdye]

Ahh, but there's nothing in the copyright laws that speaks to the ease of reproducing the work. Whether you share a digital copy or employ 30 monks to inscribe it a la The Book of Kells , it's legally the exact same thing.

What your argument here is really based on is the idea that libraries only exist because they cannot physically impact profit, due to the finite number of book available.

You're probably right. I dunno how well it would go over if my library bought 200 electronic copies of the latest NYT Bestseller, and loaned them out via copying one to my reader.

Re:Maybe true but, exagerated

[Kindaian]

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...

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Asprin]

They already paid tax on it. In the US of A, tax is levied on income, not assets. That's why it's called "Income Tax". Now, unless there was some funny monkey business going on with their profit/loss, and they didn't report all of their revenue to the IRS gestapo, that's 40 bil after tax.

IANAA, but corps in the US don't pay 'income tax' either, they pay tax on capital gains (profit) and inventory. Of course this would accumulate over time into a cash balance, making your statement correct for essentially different reasons. (BTW, this taxing of profits is why companies with profit left over at end of the fiscal year will blow it on "unneccesary" stuff rather than let it sit in a savings account. "Inventory clearance" sales in the retail sector operate on the same principle - you don't have to pay tax on it if it isn't in your warehouse on inventory day.)

Shoot, isn't that one of the reasons why corps will pay dividends at EOY anyway? Perhaps the more interesting question to ask is why was MS's accountants willing to pay tax on the profit from CG rather than hide it? It must be nice to make money so fast you can't spend it all - at the very least, they could have dumped some of it on lobbyists and settled the antitrust suit the first time around, but I guess they were too busy making $$ to notice that it would be a problem.

Curious indeed.

Copyrighted

[scm]

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)

Executable JPEGS

[damas]

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..... :)

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry Alan.

Of course it is not FUD as you did not say that with the intension "to FUD" anyone, right?

But your saying IS WRONG.

Its not(only) a descission of the management to pay dividend or not, its a descission of the share holders.

OTOH it IS INTERESTING why the US department of finances does not ask for taxes ...

angel'o'sphere

It's a picture of the US flag

[damas]

OOO... no, it's a copyright circumvention device LOL.

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[bluebomber]

(Note that the first line in the second paragraph should read "S & P 500", not just "S". I thought slash would quote the ampersand for me...)

I didn't know about Tipper Gore...

[Ahaldra]

Walk into a random record shop and say "Tipper Gore" then, assuming you survive, count the percentage of people who don't know.

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.
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 ... well, your technical interests.
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

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[GregWebb]

(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...

Judge would hate that

[smiff]

Sure, the judge won't mind that you've encoded a criminal tool into the U.S. Flag.

Re:Maybe true but, exagerated

[mark_lybarger]

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.

.NET is not free

[smiff]

ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 are a small subset of the .NET architechture.

Furthermore, the ECMA-334 Standard does not specify:

• The mechanism by which C# programs are transformed for use by a data-processing system;
• The mechanism by which C# applications are invoked for use by a data-processing system;
• The mechanism by which input data are transformed for use by a C# application;
• The mechanism by which output data are transformed after being produced by a C# application;
• The size or complexity of a program and its data that will exceed the capacity of any specific data-processing system or the capacity of a particular processor;
• All minimal requirements of a data-processing system that is capable of supporting a conforming implementation.

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.

Re:what's up with the FUD?

[Brian Stretch]

But you still have to pay capital gains on the money from the buyback right? Wouldn't this only be 'good' if you make more than a certain amount of money so that the capital gains rate is less than your income tax rate?

The people who choose to sell the stock pay capital gains, but that may be the long-term capital gains tax (which is significantly lower). You'll pay the same tax on dividend-paying stock, but if you reinvested your dividends to buy more shares you'll have an accounting nightmare figuring out your tax.

Since your money is untaxed until you cash out, you'll wind up with much more money with a zero-dividend stock that averages 7% per year growth versus a stock paying 7% per year of dividends that get heavily taxed and no stock appreciation. Most stocks have lower dividends and some price appreciation, but you get the idea.

In order to be fair we should stop taxing dividends, either letting companies tax deduct dividend payments from their income or letting investors receive dividends tax-free (because the company paid tax when it earned the income). The latter would be simplest, one big tax payment at the source. Neither will get passed because investing is "for the rich".

Re:Use the flag to defeat a copy protection system

[s390]

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.

Describing Censorship

[The Monster]

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

Only if you don't know what the word 'censorship' means. When Wal-Mart chooses not to sell an
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.

Re:Describing Censorship

[TheRevenant]

"Censorship" isn't a black and white term with a clear dividing line.

Yes, it's censorship when measures are taken to prevent anyone from distributing the material. It's a lesser degree of censorship when measures are taken to restrict the distribution of the material.

The trouble with the 'free market' theory is that it assumes consumers are omniscient about choosing the right product (for them). Does the average Walmart shopper even _know_ that the Walmart version of a song is not the standard?

To some extent you can say it's the consumer's job to find out, but there are many, many fields to find out about, only so many hours in the day and quite often numerous experts touting contradictory opinions about products!

Censorship doesn't even necessarily require restricting access to a product - restricting access to _knowledge_ of that product does just as good a job.

Now your talking!

[Rhinobird]

Now your talking! You haven't smelt a Unix guru lately have you?

Re:Very nice interview .. but SOAP and Firewalls :

[psamuels]

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.

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.

Correcting Numbers

[Ahaldra]

... since Walmart alone makes about 20% of the US sales volume in records.

Ooops, I should 've checked my numbers: Walmart makes about 10% of the US sales volume in records.

Only if you don't know what the word 'censorship' means. When Wal-Mart chooses not to sell an album its management finds objectionable, that's exercising editorial discretion.

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.

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).

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.

Re:Correcting Numbers

[The Monster]

So what would happen if Walmart would own 90% of the market?

You have that backwards. what would have to happen so that Wal-Mart would own 90% of the market would require that 90% of the people buying music liked their prices, selection, service, or some combination thereof, better than everyone else. If they are holding back music that people want to hear, those people will buy it elsewhere. That's what competition is all about.

The uncensored version is simply not available in my country

There may not be an 'uncensored' version at all. Sounds to me like Sony made a business decision to only release one CD instead of two. Pity, because they could come out with an Exclusive Uncut Version and sell a second CD to hard-core fans.

Ultimately it's about compromise, between the Lander sisters' artistic vision, the suits at Sony, Wal-Mart, and the other distribution avenues, and fans like you. If you aren't willing to pay more for unfiltered cursing, then why should you expect any of them to deliver it? (True censorship doesn't allow all of you to bargain with each other -it decides that your tastes are irrelevant.)

OK, so...

[hey!]

encode DeCSS in the physical form of a handgun.

Re:Very nice interview .. but SOAP and Firewalls :

[angel'o'sphere]

Puh ...

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 ... or if I SSH.

The problem is indeed default enabled junk ... BTW: actual linux distributions are not better. Ever looked into /etc/inetd.conf?

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

Re:Very nice interview .. but SOAP and Firewalls :

[psamuels]

If I would run a SOAP service I would run it by convenience not via the standard HTTP port but over its own port.

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....

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.

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.)

So, I still lack a good crafted soluition how to use SOAP securely and what to avoid and whre teh in depth problems reside.

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.)

Re:Very nice interview .. but SOAP and Firewalls :

[angel'o'sphere]

SOAP alone is not particular interesting.

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 ... it opened far more questions then it closed).

angel'o'sphere

Re:BWAHAHAHAHAHA mk. 2

[Ashurbanipal]

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.

Re:BWAHAHAHAHAHA mk. 2

[Ashurbanipal]

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.