Slashback: DRM, Eldred, Aridity

Slashback's updates and corrections tonight include Declan McCullagh's photos from the Eldred / Lessig Supreme Court appearance, a denial from Microsoft that the company is planning to charge customers extra for security features, a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology, and more. Read on.

Looking sharp in their suits. Declan McCullagh writes: "Here are some photos from after the arguments, including activists who slept on the courthouse steps, an exhausted but optimistic Larry Lessig, and the Internet Archive bookmobile, which visited Washington DC for the event."

A new meaning for 'decimation.' Martin writes "Here is a good write-up on what happened with the whole sendmail hack a week or so back. Apparently every 10th copy of the source that was downloaded from sendmail.org received the trojan'd version. Nice to see a linux hack getting some attention for a change, instead of the usual MS bashing. Here is the write-up."

I won't be charging entrance fees to Shangri La, either. After a report posted the other day indicating that Microsoft was considering charging customers more for certain security features, Software writes "According to a little snippet from Yahoo News (look towards the bottom), Microsoft won't be charging for security updates after all. As Yahoo puts it, 'Microsoft, however, said Mundie was referring to an internal proposal to begin offering stand-alone security software in the future.' No confirmation of this on Microsoft's site for the press"

As denials go, that seems like a weak one.

Where is Deep Fritz's deep game? screenbert writes "In an exciting best-of-eight chess match-up, the human is leading the computer 2 1/2 to 1/2. I find the fractions of winning amusing, almost as amusing as seeing that the best-of-eight series will take at least nine games since one of those games was a draw. For a general overview there is a good review here(1) or here(2) or here(3). And to save the 38 mandatory karma whoring comments I'll say it: Imagine if Deep Fritz ran on a beowolf cluster."

So it's back to BYOB. gnarly writes "An earlier report of detection of water masers on extrasolar planets has been debunked."

Workaround: Get your congresspuppet hooked on Free software. Several readers wondered why (complained that) the post offering a link to the place where you can submit your comments on DRM technology to the Senate Judiciary Committee was posted section-only. So here's a reminder; if you live near D.C. (or get a chance to stop by a local office), perhaps you'll be able to stop to chat a bit about how you determine who gets your vote. (Maybe you should check out the sections, too.)

Comments

I hate school

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until I am done. I just want to read books all day, and practice karate in the woods.

hello again!

[Anonymous Coward]

I still love you!


--
SweetAndSourJesus

Every tenth download?

[Savatte]

I like those odds!

Re:Every tenth download?

[Ryvar]

"I like those odds! Thank God my ISP admins don't!"

Re:Every tenth download?

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

can I triple my money betting on email #9 ?

Re:Every tenth download?

[Anonymous Coward]

NHB Radio

Funny stuff

Re:Every tenth download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Score: 5 Funny? Moderators are on crack. More like -1 utterly boring. Slashbots are such lame comedians.

Why?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are there *still* no reports of ChrisD leaving?
Traitors get no airtime?!

What you say?!

DRM

[PhysicsGenius]

I've already told my rep what I think of DRM, though I don't suppose it would hurt to tell him again. I believe DRM is 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. We need to have some way of protecting innovation from those, like the inhabitants of Slashdot, that choose to steal rather than create. If this means that I lose a little convience in the pursuit of a larger good, well then so be it.

Re:DRM

[rowdent]

I'm very glad you believe each and every one of us is a thief. The fact is DRM will curtail a lot of fair-use applications for technology. In the 80s we were allowed to make copies of media for personal use, so why not now? Because the technology has improved and the Industries are losing their ability to peddle their overrated drivel to the masses at a bloated price. If anything DRM will oppress innovation as each new technological advancement that interferes with the profits of the Industries is proclaimed illegal. Instead of spending their money on lobbying for laws against piracy why not make a better, more reasonably priced product that people will buy to save the inconvenience of piracy. I know I'm more likely to buy many $10 CDs that any $20 CD.

Re:DRM

[pyrrho]

Newton should have copyrighted those laws!

Re:DRM

[Soko]

I've already told my rep what I think of DRM, though I don't suppose it would hurt to tell him again. I believe DRM is 21st century solution to a 21st century problem. We need to have some way of protecting innovation from those, like the inhabitants of Slashdot, that choose to steal rather than create. If this means that I lose a little convience in the pursuit of a larger good, well then so be it.

I whole heartedly agree. I will gladly give up a little convenience in order to help out artists - or Physicists that write important papers.

I will not, however, give up my personal freedoms in order to help out artists. This is a "larger good" than making sure artists get paid. There is a subtle but important difference, Mr. PhysicsGenius. DRM must accomodate what I want to do within the confines of the Law as well, or it is worthless.

I'm a computer guy, so my future is in (for lack of a better term) cyberspace. DRM must not package up the keys to the digital future solely for the use of those already in power. To just stand idly by and let my personal freedoms be trampled on just to ensure the status quo in a market segment would be an insult to all those who have fought for my freedom in the past will have done so for naught. If you feel that your right to money exceeds my right to freedom, so be it - we will have to agree to be at odds then.

Soko

P.S. - No, I'm not a hypocrite. I own the CD to every MP3 on my computers, paid for the licenses of the software that requires doing so and P2P networking is nowhere to be seen on my systems.

Re:DRM

[Elwood P Dowd]

You've been trolled. If PhysicsGenius ever says anything that seems innoffensive, it's because he's trying to get karma so he doesn't get banned when he trolls.

Don't worry about it.

Re:DRM

[Soko]

I knew that, long before I clicked the submit button.

I just had to respond, though. I get steamed when people even suggest that our freedoms are less important than a person's "right" to make a buck.

I'm not worried about it. It's nice to spell stuff like that out once in a while though, don't you think?

Soko

Re:DRM

[Black Copter Control]

Newton should have copyrighted those laws!

Somebody needs to patent gravity -- but it would (obviously) need to bed indirectly:

A method for reliably predicting the release of excess distance between free bodies

Goddamn Micro$oft

[chainrust]

All Micro$oft thinks of is profit margins. Charging extra for better security would be similar to Ford charging extra for an antifreeze container.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[WeaponOfChoice]

I think it's more like charging more for seatbelts and crumplezones myself.

And with this model sir, for only a little more, you and your family will enjoy a full 30% increase in their chances of survival in the event of a head on crash...

On the other hand you could look at it like brakes: they keep you alive and need regular fluids and servicing that doesn't come free...

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[umStefa]

Except that Ford does not have a virtual monopoly.

Micorsoft's controls the desktop OS market and hence, if they decided to charge for security features the majority of people would have no choice but to spend the money.

Of course people could always switch to Linux (like I did) but the associated frustrations with initial configuration would prevent most users from sucessfully making the switch.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[optikSmoke]

I think it's more like charging more for seatbelts and crumplezones myself.

Lackey: Sir, we've designed a new car that can survive a head-on collision and come away in perfect condition!

Manager: Good, but what about the passengers?

Lackey: Don't worry, sir. They won't feel a thing; the force of the collision will snap their necks instantly.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Yorrike]

On the other hand you could look at it like brakes: they keep you alive and need regular fluids and servicing that doesn't come free

That's the equivalent of keeping your apps up to date. The fact the brakes are there free of addition charge to the car's initial cost is the point. Maintenance of safety features != existance of safety features.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[s20451]

Did you read the article? The only secure machine is a machine that is properly configured and continuously updated with the latest patches. They were originally arguing that they should charge for providing security as a service, in lieu of on-site technicians. In fact, they mentioned that the alternative to guarantee security would be to force customers to sign restrictive license agreements which would prevent anyone except a qualified tech from ever adjusting the machine's settings. An interesting compromise, if you ask me. And an altogether predictable knee-jerk response from Slashdot.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[AvitarX]

Except saftey features are extra. Air bags were once an addon, then passenger airbags. Now side airbags are. ABS are not on all cars, and usally cost more. A sturdy safe car costs more then a cheap econo car. Run flat tires are an add on.

On autos lots of saftey features cost more. So your analogy doesn't work.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[WeaponOfChoice]

Maintenance of safety features != existance of safety features

Yes, apps often lack basic security features that many would consider as essential as brakes on a car.
I would have real objections (as it that makes any real difference) to 'paid for' security updates that address functional deficiencies in the product whilst also appreciating that keeping existing security features up to date costs money and time.
Determining which is which is something most people would find quite difficult though...

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Microsoft thinks of profit margins. They're a fucking BUSINESS, not a "let's be a hippie and give out flowers and software for free" commune. If there was ever any business that didn't care about profit margins, they would not be worth taking any note of.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Iamthefallen]

All Linux distributution makers think of is profit margins. Making the product hard to use and then charging extra for support is similar to MS charging for security when the product isn't secure to begin with. Hey look, it swings both ways, ain't that sumfin.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Mr. Firewall]

Oh, lighten up.

I just came home from a meeting of security professionals and as soon as someone brought this up the whole room just busted out laughing.

Then somebody mentioned that M$ is probably the only entity in the world that doesn't "get" this joke.

Think of the scenes in "Austin Powers" where Dr. Evil watched all those heads of state laughing at him through the teleconferencing monitor after he made some stupid demand. Well, that's about what's happening to M$ right now.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[chainrust]

LOL!
That's kind of funny. A whole bunch of security professionals bit a 14 year old's troll!

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[riflemann]

I think it's more like charging more for seatbelts and crumplezones myself.

And with this model sir, for only a little more, you and your family will enjoy a full 30% increase in their chances of survival in the event of a head on crash...

I still remember when cars ads mentioned "optional airbags"...so at least one industry has made money selling more safety features.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Raunch]

This is exactly how setbelts worked when they were first introduced.

Re:Goddamn Micro$oft

[Anonymous Coward]

Why then, are the freely available, if commercially supported(i.e: Also sold with support) Linuxes easier to use and configure(Redhat, Mandrake, ELX), for a new user, than those that are charged for, with an exception.
Hmm? Explain that one.
I haven't seen debian 3 yet, which may be much easier without hacking, but I have used Lindows 2.0, use Redhat 7.3, have used Mandrake 8.2, tried both Slackware and Debian 2.2(?)R6, use MS Windows 95, 98SE, ME, XP home and XP Pro(work and school combined, use all regularly because I daily use different computers at different times.)
Ease of use(based on time it takes me to learn something new, easiest first) Lindows, Mdk, w98, RH, wME, wXP, Deb, Slack
Security flips not, but scrambles at Slack, Deb, RH, Lindows, Mdk, Windows, given equal lack of attention to fixes(just safe computing practices)
Windows charges more and delivers less on both accounts. And there's quite the gap from Mdk-Win(Mandrake is lower on sec. because defaults have SO MANY network services going.)
It swings how many ways now?

I won't be charging entrance fees to Shangri La...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Linux sysadmin and if everyone released their code under the GPL (I release all my Visual Basic programs under the GPL) we could all live in a perfect communist utopia where money wouldn't be necessary at all. Customer support wouldn't be needed if eveyone was a Linux Kernal developer on an 802.11b pedal powered network.......

Sir Bard
popewax

Didn't focus on First Amendment

[powerbarr]

From what I've read about the hearing, it seems that Lessig's approach to go back to the copyright clause and not focus on the first amendment issues was not the right approach. However, IANAL, especially a scholarly constitutional one, so my opinion means squat.

This was an interesting analysis that summed this up.

Re:Didn't focus on First Amendment

[Loki_1929]

"Lessig's approach to go back to the copyright clause and not focus on the first amendment issues was not the right approach."

Considering the fact that the supremes basically dismissed the First Amendment approach immediately, I'd say focusing on it now would be a bit of a mistake. That being said, I think a well-developed argument against the insanely long extended copyrights based exclusively on the idea that they are detrimental to the free and open exchange of ideas (read: free speech), and that the costs outweigh whatever benefits are derived from the latest extension to copyrights would have at least as much of a chance in court as does the current arguement. I also think that someone needs to point out, in response to the justices' repeated questions about the ensuing copyright chaos that would follow a decision against the mouse act, that chaos already reigns supreme in the world of copyrights. Patents and trademarks are fairly well tracked, but copyrights are most certainly not. If they want to keep copyrights more simple, strike down every single extension and go back to the original 14 years. (I think it was 14, could be wrong - too lazy to double check) If the whole of Disney's entertainment empire rests squarely on its control over an imaginary rodent, then perhaps the investors should re-evaluate their portfolios.

Put simply, if your business sucks, no amount of legislation can keep you afloat forever, and shame on those elected officials who would help you at the expensive of those they (supposedly) represent.

Updated score : Kramnik 3 - Deep Fritz 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

Official 4th game result annoucement (However the final position graphic is currently wrong).

P.S. To our troll wannabe: Beowulf is spelled BeowUlf.

Re:Updated score : Kramnik 3 - Deep Fritz 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

I give up, I'll never be as cool as you are no matter how hard I try.

Come on editors...

[MalleusEBHC]

You think they would at least play another game and the score would be different before the chess match got mentioned again in another slashback.

security

[orangeaaron]

so you're saying microsoft is going to start paying attention to security now? seriously though, there may be some good in paying for something you *know* is secure. after all, you pay more for a good safe to put your money in than under the mattress... of course, do you trust microsoft when it proclaims something as "secure"?

Re:security

[dirvish]

It seems like a paid microsoft security program would be a huge target. I am sure there is nothing more some people would like than to throw mud in M$ face by hacking there extra secure pay thingy. I would find it humorous if a bunch of people paid microsoft money for extra secure software just to have it get hosed worse than anything else.

Re:security

[WeaponOfChoice]

Spurious comment I know but do you trust a company that claims the safe they're selling is 'secure'?
Computers get hacked and bank vaults get cracked but we still buy them...
In the end I like to think I maintain a general distrust of any company that claims benefits (security being just one) that I cannot objectively prove, at least to my own satisfaction. Microsoft is only one of those...

Re:security

[thomas.galvin]

And don't forget the standard EULA clause, "If this software doesn't work, it isn't our fault!"

Sometimes I really don't know why people even buy software anymore. Say you buy a car, and after 15 miles, the wheels fall off. If you knew that you would have no recourse, would you still invest thousands of dollars in a car?

Re:security

[crucini]

Spurious comment I know but do you trust a company that claims the safe they're selling is 'secure'

Since you ask, the security of a safe is assured by its UL label. Construction labels, typically B and C, simply specify certain thickness of steel. Performance labels, such as TL15, TL30 specify resistance to expert attack for a certain time period. A safe rated TXTL-60 will:

Successfully resist entry for a net assault time of 60 minutes when attacked with common hand tools, picking tools, mechanical or portable electric tools, grinders, drills, pressure devices, explosives and oxy-fuel gas cutting or welding torches.

(more here).

Karma Whorin'

[dknj]

Imagine if Deep Fritz ran on a beowolf cluster of Hyperthreaded machines!

-dk

Cupped hands

[DrMaurer]

I'm all for Eldred as opposed to Ashcroft, but did anyone look at the pictures of Lessig? I hope he has more gestures than the cupping hands one.

But seriously folks, that's what he's doing. Looks like he's cupping breasts.

Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nice to see a linux hack getting some attention for a change, instead of the usual MS bashing."

Is it not true that whenever there's a *nix vulnerability it gets posted on CERT? Is this really a "change?" Recall that there was a trojaned version of SSH going around that got plenty of attention. Maybe these "hacks" don't get as much press because there aren't so many of them. Just remember that many of the high-profile vulnerabilities have affected M$ products. If one affected a *nix product, I'm sure it'd get just as much attention, as such vulnerabilities cannot be ignored, especially by administrators.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[NanoGator]

"Recall that there was a trojaned version of SSH going around that got plenty of attention. Maybe these "hacks" don't get as much press because there aren't so many of them. "

Um, no. I can recall one week (3-4 weeks ago?) where the front page of Slashdot had a couple of anti-MS rantings. Go a level or two deep in Slashdot (not the main page), and there was a pretty nasty Linux worm or something floating around. Wish I had the details on me. I just remember somebody's post with a +5 moderation asking why it didn't make the front page like the similar MS stuff.

The fact is that /. finds MS stories juicy. The more the details are twisted and bent, the more contraversial the story is. This means more people commenting, and co-incidentally, more banner ads getting exposed.

It's gotten to the point that one cannot rely on the article summaries. Anybody remember the 'Microsoft kicks Sony out of Ce-Bit' article last... March or April I think? Microsoft didn't throw Sony out of a Tradeshow. Sony was breaking tradeshow rules and MS reported them. Compromises were offered, but instead Sony packed up all their PS2s and stormed out like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Despite that Sony broke the rules and refused to play because they weren't allowed to do things other trade show attendees couldn't do, MS is the one that got the bad press for it on Slashdot. Sony cheats, MS gets bad press out of it. Yeah, that's fair.

Sorry, but the Linux Community here on Slashdot has no right to complain about that comment. Stop dishing the shit out if you can't handle some of it getting thrown back.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, it should be pointed out that the original message was not about the /. community. It was about publicity in general. Perhaps what you are saying about /. is true, that anecdote is certainly not unbelievable, but that is all irrelevant. /. may have an anti-MS bias, best illustrated by the icon showing Bill Gates as a borg, but publicity about vulnerabilities in other OS' can appear elsewhere. /. is under no obligation to be perfectly unbiased. If you don't like that, start visiting sites that ARE under such an obligation.

Oh, and BTW, regarding that last remark about the Linux community here having no right to complain: That's assuming that every single member of the Linux community here has those attitudes. Not exactly a safe assumption to make. Second of all, it was a vulnerability in sendmail, not Linux, so I'd say Linux users have every right to complain about it.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[feed_me_cereal]

The fact is that /. finds MS stories juicy. The more the details are twisted and bent, the more contraversial the story is. This means more people commenting, and co-incidentally, more banner ads getting exposed.

Meanwhile, in the Slashdot Inc. CEO's office, Taco rolls arround on a huge pile of ad-revenue, smoking a cigar and laughing maniacally!

Gotta love this kind of "objective" bashing. Do you expect to find a microsoft-friendly atmosphere here? Of course they don't get the benefit of the doubt, after all the shit they've pulled do they honestly deserve it? As long as we're giving credit where credit is due, Slashdot is much fairer to MS than their PR zombies are to linux.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[qortra]

Sorry, but the Linux Community here on Slashdot has no right to complain about that comment.

Much of community here on Slashdot that engages in what Martin would call "MS Bashing" are actually MS OS users, so I would probably not use the term "Linux Community" to generalize them. In fact, these are often people who have been victimized by MS related viruses/worms, and so they actually do have the right to complain.

I'm sure that I can find for you plenty of trojaned win32 software that never made it to Slashdot. So your argument that one particular worm ("or something" as you so specifically point out) not being mentioned indicates the single-mindedness Slashdot is void.

Finally note that although sendmail is a program that was often used in GNU/Linux systems, this was not a "Linux hack" per say. In fact, I believe the ftp server that was compromised was actually running freeBSD.

More than that, MS flaws usually come about as a result of careless programming, whereas this problem was probably the fault of the web admin at Sendmail (a company with decidedly few resources). As long as MS has $40 billion sitting in the bank and their products are still insecure, I believe the computing community at large as the right to bash them just as much as they please.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Of course they don't get the benefit of the doubt, after all the shit they've pulled do they honestly deserve it? "

Who's to judge that? Dude pointed out that the articles are biased to begin with. If they're biased, how could they fairly 'punish' MS?

No dice.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

good point. in the same vain, i want to point out that we really have no right to criticize hitler and stalin. everyone has a biased opinion of these two (that they were bad people), therefore we cannot make any sort of judgement on them.

in addition, AIDS is not necessairly a bad thing. it may be, but we have no way to be sure, since everyone considers them to be bad, we have no unbiased source on them.

notice a pattern? if everyone is biased against microsoft, maybe there is a good reason.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[NanoGator]

So, to summarize your post: "I could use my anti-MS zealotry to find things wrong with them and their software."

Sorry, your post reinforces my point: Slashdot loves to find problems with anything that touches MS. Never mind that Linux is busy trying to make their usabability as good as Windows'.

Focus that kind of energy on Linux, and a bunch of bad stuff will appear there too.

"A new study shows that the average productive Linux user knows 63 poorly spelt commands. Of course, Windows users don't have to worry about this since the functionality is available and easy to find in the UI. The names even have vowels in them!"

"Redhat 8 is out, and KDE still is slow to redraw filewindows. Fortunately, Windows users don't have to worry about this because window updates are hardware accellerated."

"The new round of PDAs are out, and they still don't synch up well with Linux and the Office-style apps that run with it."

"Konqueror has funny ideas about how the clipboard should work, of course Windows users..."



All hypothetical, but should adequately describe my point. If you wanna play the 'I bet I can go find problems with whatever you prefer' game, you'll get singed in the process.

The Slashdot Community should consider something: MS didn't get big by making something that wasn't useful to people. Windows works. It's usable. It'll run on your machine. It's well supported. Heck, it's hard to buy a computer that doesn't come with it. Gee, there must be something there.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonvmous Coward]

"notice a pattern? if everyone is biased against microsoft, maybe there is a good reason."

I doubt he'd be arguing that point if he thought there was a good reason. It's 'cool to hate Microsoft'. "Look at me, I'm a masochistic Linux user. I don't need no stinking Windows."

So let me ask you this: If, by far, the vast majority of people are running Windows, then doesn't that mean there's something horribly deficient with Linux? I mean, it's free. You can go get it if you want it. Yet... well gee, Windows seems to be doing its job.

So using your own logic, wouldn't the much larger number of people using Microsoft have a good reason that the anti-MS zealots are too narrow-minded to see?

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[NanoGator]

"good point. in the same vain, i want to point out that we really have no right to criticize hitler and stalin. everyone has a biased opinion of these two (that they were bad people), therefore we cannot make any sort of judgement on them.

in addition, AIDS is not necessairly a bad thing. it may be, but we have no way to be sure, since everyone considers them to be bad, we have no unbiased source on them. "

I make the point that /. is biased against MS, and your rebuttal is an indirect comparison if Microsoft to AIDS, Hitler, and Stalin?

That was a bit of a self destructive point there, don'tcha think? That's kind of like saying "Yo mama's ugly. I know this because mine's even uglier!"

Hehe. Thanks for the laugh!

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from your over-reliance on emotion-packed metaphor, I'd say you had a pretty good idea how weak your point was.

Dumbshit.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Xavier Shirin]

Windows is used more for several reasons:
1)It comes preinstalled on a great majority of new machines, and most people couldn't install any OS, even if they wanted to.

2)M$ does marketing. Lots of it. More than all OSS put toghether. Kinda ridiculous if you think about it.

"So using your own logic, wouldn't the much larger number of people using Microsoft have a good reason that the anti-MS zealots are too narrow-minded to see?"

Yes, they are too technically ignorant to install a decent OS. Yes that is elitist, but it is totally correct. Not everyone knows enough to install any OS, only some. When *nix starts coming preinstalled on machines, I predict that it will quickly surpass Windows in popularity.

And yes, I know this is a troll.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I predict that it will quickly surpass Windows in popularity."

Linux has had 10 years to do that. It hasn't even made a scratch.

(Note: I'm only referring to desktops, servers are kicking Windows' butt thankfully.)

"Yes, they are too technically ignorant to install a decent OS."

A 'decent OS' does not matter. People buy computers to do stuff. If the computer does its job, then it is a reasonable decision.

Frankly, Linux makes it too hard to do stuff like surf the net and get your email. Some of that has to do with support of Windows due to it being the de-facto standard. Some of it has to do with the fact that Windows was designed to be useful on the net. Linux is being geared towards catching up with Windows.

So yeah. Fun debate. ::eyeroll::

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Xavier Shirin]

"Linux has had 10 years to do that. It hasn't even made a scratch."

It also hasn't come preinstalled on boxen. That makes a big difference.

"A 'decent OS' does not matter."

If given the choice, most people would like if their OS didn't crash every other day. Windows sucks. Most people agree. *nux has enough good software that most things that the average user needs are easy to do, especially if the environment is already set up for them.

*nix is quickly approaching Windows in terms of user interface. Windows started out on top, but I think that it will eventually turn into a *nix world.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonvmous Coward]

Windows doesn't crash every day, particularly Windows 2000 or XP.

You hate something you don't even know about.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, Linux makes it too hard to do stuff like surf the net and get your email. Some of that has to do with support of Windows due to it being the de-facto standard. Some of it has to do with the fact that Windows was designed to be useful on the net. Linux is being geared towards catching up with Windows.

I have to take issue, here. Surfing the net and getting email are pretty simple under Linux. Setting up the computer, using MS Word(c) or MS Excel(c) is where it's still working things out.

As for Windows' design... the recently deceased 9x series was still based on DOS, which was a single user system. They never got it to even resemble a real multiuser+networked system. The NT series was also designed shortly before MS had realized that they could make money on this "Internet" thing, so it wasn't built around it. I don't know how much of the original code XP uses, but I don't think they've changed the lower level philosophies.

OTOH, Unix and the Internet grew up together. They're like siblings. X uses TCP/IP to talk to programs. It doesn't really care what computer they're on. Neither does the command shell. So, to correct your minor misspelling: UNIX was designed to be useful on the net.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, it's hard to buy a computer that doesn't come with it. Gee, there must be something there.

Yeah, anti-competetive monopolistic practices. You surely can't have missed nearly a decade of court time, could you?

Most of the rest of your post was well made, but beware when you're trying to talk up Microsoft : They're a convicted monopolist, and that cannot be denied.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[swv3752]

I do windows support for a Large Computer company. In fact this thread might have mentioned them. Regardless, it doesn't really matter if I work for IBM, Sony, HP, Compaq, or Toshiba. Win2K and WinXP do crash, and when they do it is either recovery console or Reinstall time. And as most OEM boxes do not have actuall XP CDs, it means that the owner is using the Manufacturer's Recovery CDs.

How does it crash? Well, let's see: apply updates from Windows Update- Unmountable Boot Volume
install Service Pack 1- continous reboots
install some new driver- Blues screen with the message The following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system/xxxxx

Yeah, that is really stable, I say. It doesn't fall over as often, but when it does, it is an even worse sort of crash.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Zeinfeld]

install some new driver- Blues screen with the message The following file is missing or corrupt: windows/system/xxxxx

I have never seen that behavior. Would the driver be unsigned perchance? Only XP crashes I have ever had were caused by the Archos driver which will bring XP down if the device powers down while attached to the PC.

Linux will also crash every five minutes if you install a buggy driver.

The fact that your experience is so different from everyone else suggests to me that there is something different about your config.

Sounds to me as if you have installed something that overwrites a system DLL.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Fjord]

This is the link I think you are referring to.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

So at the risk of of sounding like an anti-ms loser

about cebit-
sony had done the same things in previous years (haveing ps2's setup to play with) and nobody had complained. It wasn't untill microsoft made a stink that anyone even realised they we're breaking any rules. also, microsoft, had attended that convention with sony in previous years, while they had ps2's on display, but never complained. Of corse, they didn't have a competeing console in previous years.

So yeah, sony didnt "cheat", they broke a rule nobody cared to enforce, until microsoft made a big stink about it.

anyway, i dont care about your opinion about the "linux community here on slashdot" but just try to keep your FUD facts straight

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[swv3752]

You misunderstand me, I do tech support and this is what I get calls on all day long. I personally will not use WinXP. My only experience with buggy drivers were

1 Rage128- It actually was not DRI but that my Hardware had a known bug that the drivers did not have a workaround yet. And like any 3D drivers for the consumer market have been bug free.

2 RTL8139- In the pre2.4 kernels (beta software), there was a bug that would casue the computer to reboot.

And I should have been more specific, the problems happen on a reboot. Go do a search on
windows\system\config\system32

That is the most common one and you will see that all sorts of things can cause this. Power users can easily fix these things, but Joe Average gets screwed.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Zeinfeld]

You misunderstand me, I do tech support and this is what I get calls on all day long. I personally will not use WinXP. My only experience with buggy drivers were

Ahh you do Windows tech support and hear lots of problems and by comparing that sample against your own experience with Linux draw conclusions.

So if you were a 911 call operator in Buffallo Ohio you would conclude from hearing of accidents burglaries, shootings etc that it was the traffic blackspot and crime capital of the country, rather than Washington DC, the Bronx or Aspen Collorado?

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[swv3752]

Oh, how cute. You make a trite remark to trivialize my findings. Besides, I am not comparing my calls with Linux. I am making a flat statment, Windows is buggy. Yes, I did remark about Linux, it is decidely more stable than Windows, or do you only trust MS reports? I have seen the center's call stats. Over 40% of the computer calls deal with buggy drivers. Second hand reports confirm that. This includes all the calls about service, and stupid questions.

and about your last question, No, but I might conclude that the crime rate was unjustifiably high. Especially if I look at some stats and see that Neighboring Rochester and Niagra Falls have half the crime rate.

Re:Press and Vulnerabilities in *nix

[Zeinfeld]

Oh, how cute. You make a trite remark to trivialize my findings

No I demonstrated that you had presented a biased sample and you had no counter argument. Your findings were not 'trivial' they were misleading.

You can try the politico-hack tactic of downplaying the counter-argument but from where I stand you have zero credibility at this point.

Woohoo look ma, no clue!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I find the fractions of winning amusing, almost as amusing as seeing that the best-of-eight series will take at least nine games since one of those games was a draw."

Why even report this if you are too stupid to understand? If you know absolutely nothing at all about tournament chess, why even open your "mouth"?

God damn.

Irony?

[SubtleNuance]

Nice to see a linux hack getting some attention for a change, instead of the usual MS bashing.

sendmail != GNU/Linux.

...and i hope the GNU/Linux bash -- subtle as it wanted to be -- wasnt missed by the slashdotters... Isnt a little strange do some bashing while complaining about the "usual bashing"?

Pot this is kettle; Kettle, Pot.

Re:Irony?

[Myco]

And, to be fair, IIS != Windows.

Re:Irony?

[daniel_isaacs]

But, IIS = Microsoft. ;)

Re:Irony?

[pnatural]

Really? IIS now runs on a platform other than windows?

I counter that "windows != IIS" and yet "IIS == windows". Windows can exist without IIS (even if it's installed and you don't know it), but IIS cannot exist without Windows.

To be sure, the majority of the flaws in IIS have done little more than reveal flaws in the OS upon which it runs.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it does come on the same install disk and is made by the same company. Not exactly a good comparison, huh?

Re:Irony?

[NanoGator]

"Isnt a little strange do some bashing while complaining about the "usual bashing"?"

No it's not unusual. If somebody takes a poke at MS, you're not going to care. But when somebody takes a painful poke at Linux, suddenly you understand what your pokes at MS feel like.

It's not hypocracy, it's illustration. A very effective one at that since it got a reaction out of you. A lot of the anti-MS shit that flies around Slashdot (and usually ends up as +1 Funny) is every bit as ill-founded as the Sendmail/Linux relationship. Yet, it still flies around and people pat themselves on the back. What reason would they have to tone it down if they don't know what it feels like?

You can dismiss his comment as hypocracy if you like. I wouldn't, though. You should see it as a reflection of what the GNU/Linux community puts out. If that kind of comment bothers you, you lose your right to complain once you start making Windows insecurity jokes.

Re:Irony?

[RobotRunAmok]

Yeah, but hasn't it been pretty well established here that all the silly dollar-sign-for-esses posts and virulent Anti-MS vitriol here is coming from the high school kids/L33t HAXX0rs? You're not gonna get that crowd to change merely by talking sense. For them, MS is like some comic-book super-villain.

As far as the whole quid-pro-pro thing goes, you gotta figure that there is probably very little you could do to some teen who gets so worked up over a computer operating system that their better-adjusted classmates haven't already done to them, in spades.

Re:Irony?

[NanoGator]

"I counter that "windows != IIS" and yet "IIS == windows". Windows can exist without IIS (even if it's installed and you don't know it), but IIS cannot exist without Windows."

Heh nice bending of word definitions to sugar- coat a point there.
IIS is a service. IIS is not Windows, it's not a feature of Windows, it's a service that runs on top of Windows in much the same way that Apache runs on top of whatever OS it's running on. MS could port it to other OS's if they wanted to. We all know they won't. And no, just because it's on the install CD doesn't mean that it's Windows.

Let's apply your logic (or lack of) to some other examples:

Gnome == Linux because it's installed with it.
KDE == Linux because it's installed with it.
Apache != Linux because it can be installed on Windows
Emacs == Linux because it's installed with it.

And so on...

Sorry, but your argument does little for me but show ya hate MS, but don't really know what you're talking about.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

How has it been "pretty well established"? You have NO FUCKING CLUE who is posting anything; you're just stereotyping and being an asshole.
It's people like you that caused things like Columbine.

Re:Irony?

[damiam]

KDE, emacs, and parts of GNOME can also be installed on Windows, so by that logic, they'd all be != Linux.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Half Pumpkin.
Half Dog.
All love.

Re:Irony?

[pnatural]

IIS is a service. IIS is not Windows,

Yes and yes.

it's not a feature of Windows,

I agree. It's not a feature. It's a liability.

it's a service that runs on top of Windows in much the same way that Apache runs on top of whatever OS it's running on.

Wrong. Apache is cleanly separated from the OS upon which it runs. IIS is not, nor can it be, separate from windows.

MS could port it to other OS's if they wanted to.

You can't prove this without the source. Do you have it? Uh-huh. I counter that it cannot be ported, and in the same vein, you can't prove that statement to be false.

Gnome == Linux because it's installed with it.

Not on my disto.

KDE == Linux because it's installed with it.

Ditto there.

Apache != Linux because it can be installed on Windows

Well, duh.

Emacs == Linux because it's installed with it

Again, not in my distro.

Sorry, but your argument does little for me but show ya hate MS, but don't really know what you're talking about.

I'd bet my house that I know more about windows (the NT-2k-XP strain) than you do. But for the record, yes, I hate MS as of late.

Re:Irony?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"You can't prove this without the source. Do you have it? Uh-huh. I counter that it cannot be ported, and in the same vein, you can't prove that statement to be false."

So, you negated your own rebuttal? Brilliant debate technique. Heh.

Re:Irony?

[blank_coil]

I think he was just proving the futility of your point.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to be the dumbest post I have ever seen. Where you masturbating when you wrote this? That might explain the lack of coherency.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously- let go of your penis before you start typing. You sound like a raving lunatic.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet my house that I know more about windows (the NT-2k-XP strain) than you do.

I bet your parents wouldnt be too happy if you lost their house.

Re:Irony?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I think he was just proving the futility of your point."

Using the strategy of "compare it to Nazis"?

Desperate at best.

Re:Irony?

[droid_rage]

you mean IIS == Microsoft...

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes- it is futile to argue with a blind linux fanboy, even on something as plainly retarded as whether IIS=windows...

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean droid_rage = loser that will never get a girl

Re:Irony?

[Xtifr]

KDE, emacs, and parts of GNOME can also be installed on Windows, so by that logic, they'd all be != Linux.

Exactly! None of those are Linux. Emacs, in particular, predates Linux by years. (In a loose sense, it predates Unix.) And GNOME is supported by Sun because they're making it part of Solaris.

As far as Sendmail goes, it's not even the default MTA on the (very popular) distro I use. However, it's been the default MTA on every commercial Unix I've used since long before Linux appeared. So, given that Sendmail is not (necessarily) the default MTA on Linux, but is on Sun, it would make more sense to call Sendmail bashing "Sun bashing" than "Linux bashing". (Although it's still just Sendmail bashing.)

Re:Irony?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I think you've been drinking the MS kool-aid, or at least somebody's kool-aid. I mean, what the heck is a hypocracy? Rule by under-acheivers? Government by the extremely mellow?

Would Spicoli be president if the US were a hypocracy? Would we be sending dubies to Iraq instead of bombs? Or, dude!, how about some of the poppies we got when we took over Afghanistan?

Re:Irony?

[Sn4xx0r]

Gnome == Linux because it's installed with it.

Gnome is in the kernel tar-ball now?

Re:Irony?

[droid_rage]

...Dude, you're on a geek site. At least you could come up with a more creative insult than that. Nobody on slashdot will ever have a woman... unless the slashdot reader is a woman.

Paying for Security?!?! How rediculous!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like the Red Hat Network's security upgrades for a fee.

Re:Paying for Security?!?! How rediculous!!

[Anonymous Coward]

don't tell anyone, I was able to get security updates from redhat for free... i did have to register... but they must have let me slip on the paying part... I just used up2date. wierd!

anonymous so RedHat won't find out I'm pirating their software.

you mean in pursuit of the corporate dollar

[waspleg]

not in pursuit of a "larger good"

tool? puppet? troll? some combination?

I bet you'll start caring once the Thought Police (spelled h-m-l-nd s-c-r-t-, previous example also includes DRM Gov't Approved removal of vowels as per the Free Thought Prevention Act of 2005 -- move along citizen) have your balls in a vice.

happy halloween

I think screenbert needs to play more chess

[parliboy]

Since they published his comment as is, I'll assume that this isn't as commonly understood as it should be. The match will end after eight games, period. If the remaining 5 games are drawn (which they won't) then the human wins, 5-3. There are no additional games to make up for draws. If it were to be 4-4 after eight games, the match would just end in a draw.

Re:I think screenbert needs to play more chess

[skyhawker]

It also seems that many folks don't understand why such matches have an even number of games -- in order to equalize the number of times each player plays as white or black. Also, it's theoretically possible for all games to be drawn, so there's never really a guarantee that any match will be decisive.

Re:I think screenbert needs to play more chess

[catfood]

And what's so funny about the fractional scores? In chess, a draw is a 1/2 win. That's just the way it is. At a sufficiently sophisticated level of plays, draws are incredibly common. You can't just write them off as "do-overs" or play overtime periods.

Elastic Clause

[rc27]

According to Law.com:

Olson gained ground when he invoked another clause of the Constitution, the "necessary and proper" clause, as a justification for the legislation as a matter of equity.

I am appalled that this guy invoked the necessary and proper clause on an issue that the Constitution already addresses. That is NOT what the clause was intended to do. I don't know why we even bother paying lip service to the Constitution anymore.

Re:Elastic Clause

[Anonymous Coward]

That is NOT what the clause was intended to do.

I disagree. That IS exactly what it was intended to do. Quoth the Constitution (Art I, Sec 8):

"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

The "foregoing powers" are the enumerated powers of Congress, one of which happens to be:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

So calling in the necessary and proper clause is perfectly acceptable. His claim is that the CTEA is necessary and proper to carry out the promotion of science and useful arts. I stress again that this is an acceptable argument.

HOWEVER, this is Eldred's point; the CTEA is NOT necessary, nor is it proper, in promoting science and art. Retroactive extensions do not promote.

This case is about whether the CTEA is necessary and proper, so I find his reference to the nec. and proper clause to be a bit daft. Yes, thank you for telling us that Congress is allowed to make good laws. If this wasn't a enumerated power then maybe there would be a purpose for calling attention to the clause. But in this case all he's done is say Congress can make laws about copyrights and patents. Duh. Nobody is challenging that Mr. Olson.

Re:Elastic Clause

[rc27]

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers

My issue is that Congress is not just 'carrying into execution' this particular foregoing power. They are extending it well beyond its original scope. Being a strict constructionist, when I read 'securing for limited times to authors and inventors' I interpret it as meaning that ONLY authors and inventors may enjoy the fruits of a copywright, not an estate, foundation, etc. that claims to be representing the author or inventor. There may be very good reasons for extending the life of a copywright beyond that of the original author, but if this is so, we need to amend the Constitution, not ignore it.

Chess scores

[emarkp]

Come on, the fractional scores make sense. You have to count the draws or the matches would never end.

It's 1 point for a win
0.5 points for a draw
0 points for a loss.

Some people think that a stalemate should count for something other than 0.5-0.5 (say, 0.75-0.25 favoring the player with the advantage when the stalemate happens), but I won't go into that.

Re:Chess scores

[WetCat]

Imho it's much better to count stalemate for 0.25-0.75 to mark that player who trick other monster with all figures that easily could have make a mate to stalemate

Re:Chess scores

[emarkp]

Imho it's much better to count stalemate for 0.25-0.75 to mark that player who trick other monster with all figures that easily could have make a mate to stalemate

Well, yes that's what the other camp argues. Of course, their arguments average out to 0.5-0.5 so...

gas giants not like ours

[nounderscores]

IIRC, jupiter and saturn both have trace water in their atmosphere. If these extrasolar planets (with masses similar to our gas giants) have no water, they must have something different going on. Is their star too young? not enough impacts from the right comets? Or is it just that if we were that far from jupiter the water content would be too small to detect?

Re:gas giants not like ours

[astroboscope]

Or is it just that if we were that far from jupiter the water content would be too small to detect?

Bingo. Detecting nearby water vapor is just a matter of using a spectroscope. Seeing it from parsecs away requires at least one of:

• much larger telescope
• a lot more water
• the water to be doing something to call attention to itself.

In this situation we're talking about the last option (masing). When a cloud mases, it becomes incredibly bright in the masing spectral line, but masing requires certain conditions. The announcement of the nondetection surmised that masing might happen in our solar system when a comet hits a planet, but that's a temporary and sporadic occurance. How often it happens depends on the age and numbers of comets and planets in the system, but the bottom line is that not detecting water masing in any given single observation does not mean that there's no water there.

OT: What's with all the OT trolls in this thread?

Fair Use

[PhysicsGenius]

Please note the first word. Making copies that bite into the profits of the RIAA isn't fair, it's stealing.

Re:Fair Use

[rowdent]

So I guess I'll have to buy 3 copies of an artist's work to satisfy the RIAA if I would like to have a copy on CD, one on MD, and one on my computer, hmmm... That doesn't seem right. I'd like to see a copying ring that would bite into the RIAA profits. The decline of profits for the RIAA is IMHO because the new acts suck.

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop feeding the troll. PhysicsGenius is not only horrible at Physics, but is also a troll, asshole and idiot to boot. Don't bother responding any further.

Re:Fair Use

[rowdent]

If he is indeed a troll, he is a coherent troll so I don't mind responding.

Fritz to 8?

[afidel]

In an exciting best-of-eight chess match-up, the human is leading the computer 2 1/2 to 1/2. I find the fractions of winning amusing, almost as amusing as seeing that the best-of-eight series will take at least nine games since one of those games was a draw.

Deep blue was much more powerfull then the computer running Fritz, and it was not just deep blue facing Kasperov, but some great chess players aided by a computer playing against Kasperovs style. Plus unless the rules are different then any way of playing best of 8 I can think of the match could end after 2 more games (4.5 to .5) or 5 more for a total of 8 games.

Re:Fritz to 8?

[murr]

Deep blue was much more powerfull then the computer running Fritz, and it was not just deep blue facing Kasperov, but some great chess players aided by a computer playing against Kasperovs style.

That's highly misleading. The Deep Blue team had some strong players help, but the games themselves were played without human intervention.

Plus unless the rules are different then any way of playing best of 8 I can think of the match could end after 2 more games (4.5 to .5) or 5 more for a total of 8 games.

From the official site of the event, it appears that the full 8 games are going to be played under all circumstances.

Stephen King dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Re:Stephen King dead at 54

[Lshmael]

Interesting. I could not find anything on Google News about this. I think you're lying.

Re:Stephen King dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

How old was he the first time he died?

Re:Stephen King dead at 54

[Anonymous Coward]

And I couldn't find anything related to it on cnn.com. This may be just as much as a joke as this. And it could be related to his retirement, which is mentioned in what I'm linking to.

Story is a troll?

[cdf12345]

And to save the 38 mandatory karma whoring comments I'll say it: Imagine if Deep Fritz ran on a beowolf cluster."

What will the karma whores do now that the submitter beat them to it?

Re:Story is a troll?

[bujoojoo]

Wow! Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of karma whores?

Ummm... I... Nevermind.

Re:Story is a troll?

[popeyethesailor]

Well he forgot the 39th one :)

Imagine if Drip Fritz would run on a Beowulf cluster !

Re:Story is a troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Expect to see future story submissions such as "Ask Slashdot: Is Author Steven King Really Dead at 54?", a Jon Katz feature entitled "'Frist Post' in the Post-9/11 Era", an interview with Natalie Portman whose highest-rated question is "So, do you like hot grits?", and a story about a page-widening MSIE bug.

There's no groupthink but whining about groupthink

[0xdeadbeef]

Nice to see a linux hack getting some attention for a change, instead of the usual MS bashing.

It's nice to see that now, since Linux has gone mainstream, all the cool kids have turned from criticising the straw man of mindless Linux promotion to the straw man of mindless Microsoft bashing in order to be the outsider rebels.

Say what you will about the Microsoft anathema, no Linux vendor has promoted the forced inclusion of DRM technology, or, before finding that religion, poo-pooed the importance of security. Through its entire history, Microsoft has given us plenty of justification for criticism. If you don't understand that, then you're as dim as the 'slashbots' to which you feel superior.

Why...

[Icefyre]

Is the prefix 'deep' assigned to computers designed to play chess? Deep blue, deep fritz... anyone have an idea? Is it just supposed to imply "deep thought"? Is it a coincidence?

Re:Why...

[timster]

well, the predecessor to Deep Blue was called Deep Thought. "Deep Thought" is the name of the computer in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series who concluded after many years of processing that the answer to life, the universe, and everything was 42.

Re:Why...

[lithiumcloud]

Because "Deep Thought" was the second most powerful computer in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy pentilogy, and the most powerful ("Earth") doesn't have the same ring (Planet Fritz???). Simple.

Re:Why...

[tang]

I always assumed the "Deep" was making a reference to the search tree of chess, which is...well, deep. Although, "deep thought" probably makes just as much sense.

Re:Why...

[i_am_nitrogen]

Wasn't it the cave man who came up with 42? The one question that the computer couldn't answer was six times seven wasn't it?

It's more than the artist

[PhysicsGenius]

Different formats go through different channels (== different employees) and the proceeds are earmarked differently. When you buy the CD but download the MP3, you are effectively stealing from the Digital Music Department at Big Recording Company, even though you paid for a different product from a different group.

If you think about it, you know it's true. You are getting for free something that honest people pay for. That's stealing in my book.

Re:It's more than the artist

[rowdent]

I bought the CD, and as far as the law extended before the DMCA I can make personal copies providing I do not distribute it. That is fair use. Whether I listen to it on CD or in digital format should not matter; I paid for the music, and I should be able to listen to it wherever I wish.

Re:It's more than the artist

[ealar dlanvuli]

Was that a troll? I noticed your on my friends, just wanted to make sure.

Chess

[Anonymous Coward]

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. - Raymond Chandler

Re:Chess

[Icefyre]

Yeah, Humans can find much more convenient ways to waste their intellegence. See MTV, the Sims, etc.

BEST. MODERATION. EVER.

[Anonymous Coward]

haha

sorry can't resist it

[nounderscores]

All your karma whore posts are belong to timothy!

Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch it with the name-calling!

Well, the real problem is . . .

[News For Turds]

Slashback: DRM, Eldred, Aridity
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @05:59PM
from the nip-in-the-air dept.
Slashback's updates and corrections tonight include Declan McCullagh's photos from the Eldred / Lessig Supreme Court appearance, a denial from Microsoft that the company is planning to charge customers extra for security features, a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology, and more. Read on.

( Read More... | 3935 bytes in body | 45 comments )

Organizers Plan Online Medical School
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @04:46PM
from the patient-died-you-must-reload-a-saved-game dept.
slashdot_commentator writes "Job has you down? Thinking of starting a second career? How about finally getting that medical degree you've been putting off? A group of more than 50 schools in 16 countries are working to create an online medical school, in part to combat the "brain drain" that occurs when medical students go abroad for their education but do not return later. ... Organizers said that because degrees would be granted by individual participating schools, all of which are accredited, students should not have to worry about accreditation problems."

( Read More... | 107 comments )

New SecuROM Ties Protection to Physical Structure
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 10, @03:35PM
from the warez-arms-race dept.
bernardos70 writes "I read a brief article describing how the new version of secuROM, which is already present in newer games, employs a new encryption method which 'tie[s] itself specifically to the physical structure and characteristics of each disk'. Apparently companies are even ordering specially designed media to implement this method. I think that all this will do is frustrate the average joe trying to make legit copies, as the various groups online distributing ISO's are sure to find a way to bypass yet this new technology."

( Read More... | 256 comments )

Ask Slashdot: Portable Scanner Solutions for Research?
Posted by Cliff on Thursday October 10, @02:31PM
from the I-am-now-officially-a-Mac-head dept.
Fished asks: "Lately, I'm finding that I need to do a lot of research in Libraries -- remember those? I'm tired of feeding dimes to the copiers, and would like to buy some kind of portable scanner to go with my Powerbook. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find one that will work. Back in the eighties, this were as common as dirt: they were small, four inch wide scanners that you could run over the page. Also, while I've found three portable scanners for PC's (from Antec and Pentax) even if I could somehow get them to work with Mac OS X, they are sheet-fed, which is useless for scanning pages out of books. Does anyone still make the old-fashioned Hand Scanners, and do they make them for Macs?"

( Read More... | 316 comments | Ask Slashdot )

Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected
Posted by chrisd on Thursday October 10, @01:38PM
from the flawed-methodologies-day dept.
Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."

( Read More... | 290 comments )

FCC Approves Digital Radio, Kills Satellite Merger
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @12:28PM
from the new-media-stream dept.
n8willis writes "...Just saw this AP article on Excite news: the FCC has just approved the first upgrade in broadcast radio technology in decades. It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed. The tech comes from some company called iBiquity, and unlike Sirius or XM satellite radio, there will be no charge for listening. Some radio buff want to tell us what they know about this concept?" And wiredog writes "The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics.

( Read More... | 309 comments )

EBay Letting Fraud Slide?
Posted by Hemos on Thursday October 10, @11:31AM
from the getting-the-beat-down dept.
joebagodonuts writes "MSNBC has an article charging that EBay's tough talk on fraud is just that. Talk." To a certain extent, I can understand the problem of having hundreds of thousands of auctions, and not being able to adequately police them - but ignoring fraud, when you have a policy stating otherwise is a Bad Thing.

( Read More... | 346 comments )

BSD: FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @10:48AM
from the now-with-improved-goodness dept.
Triumph The Insult C writes "FreeBSD 4.7 is out. Here is the announcement. New items include an option for IPFW2, a number of disk controller updates, security updates, and some changes to userland. Remember, please use a mirror." Among other things, the release announcement says: "FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." And here are the release notes.

( Read More... | 279 comments | BSD )

More on the KDE League
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:59AM
from the pushing-the-needle-too-far dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Butler published a nice clean-up on the misinformations that were published by dep on Linux and Main. Most of what that has been alleged by Linux and Main turns out to be wrong. Especially, the KDE League has no obligation to disclose financial information. On dot.kde.org, Mathias Kalle Dallheimer, KDE e.V. president, explains that the KDE e.V would authorize the KDE League to disclose its books to the KDE e.V members. However, the KDE e.V is not the only member of the KDE League. Other members would have to approve this."

( Read More... | 102 comments )

Generation Wrecked
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:06AM
from the born-with-a-plastic-spoon-in-our-mouths dept.
Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.' Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"

( Read More... | 1365 comments )

Book Reviews: Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @08:15AM
from the doing-the-numbers dept.
oxgoad writes "Need a closed-form algorithm to derive square roots? Stymied by strange and scary results from your favorite compiler's math library? Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming by Jack W. Crenshaw attempts to shed some numerical light. Read on for the goods." Oxgoad's review continues below.

( Read More... | 4999 bytes in body | 132 comments | Book Reviews )

Wartrapping?
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @07:32AM
from the arms-race-just-getting-silly-now dept.
netphilter writes "This article on ZDNet writes: "A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers." Although I'm sure that I've heard of this somewhere before, it appears that the latest twist is that this company is looking to sell them to corporations. Hmm...I wonder what the warchalking symbol for a honeypot really would look like?"

( Read More... | 249 comments )

Batteries Powered by Leftover Food
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:46AM
from the my-refrigerator-suddenly-becomes-very-valuable dept.
Lazyhound writes "Technologists at the University of the West of England in Bristol have come up with a cheap, organic battery that can run on household leftovers, and be manufactured for just £10." There's also a New Scientist article. The New Scientist would like to point out that they broke the story, and the BBC followed up.

( Read More... | 242 comments )

More on Microsoft vs. Lik Sang
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:01AM
from the crackdown dept.
Levendis47 writes "CNET's News.com is running an article on Microsoft's legal manuevers which have successfully shut down the Lik Sang ecomm store where they've been selling various game system mod chips including the OpenXBox Mod Chip. This leads me to two questions (and I'll admit my ignorance, faux or not, in order to get discussion on this topic): 1) When a customer purchases an XBox (or any game system for that matter) are you intrinsically "signing" an end-user agreement in the purchase that makes modding the device illegal? 2) Could a non-profit org setup an effort to have mod chips produced and "distributed" at the cost of production w/o legal repurcussions? (i.e. would not making a profit on XBox's hardware mods protect you from their wrath?) 3) I understand the whole DRM aspect of mod'ing for playing copied games, BUT, what about legit gray-hacks like the Mandrake Linux XBox project and such? It would seem to me that in the long haul, Microsoft would support such efforts because they could sell more devices (and potentially more software if they licensed an opensource validation library)... "

( Read More... | 520 comments )

OS X Conference DRM Panel Video Available Online
Posted by chrisd on Wednesday October 09, @11:18PM
from the dorm-panel dept.
gnat writes "Tucked away on the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference presentations page are links to Quicktime video and mp3 audio recordings of the Digital Rights Management panel featuring Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Cory Doctorow of the EFF, and others. (My apologies for the sometimes shaky video--three Cokes for breakfast is the anti-steadicam)"

( Read More... | 148 comments )
Older Stuff
Wednesday October 9

Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat (274)
GameToo Much...... And Die! (855)
Geoprofiling Moves Into The Limelight (282)
MS Backs Down On Encrypted Digital TV Recording (196)
Small-Scale Warrior Robot Truck (114)
Slate Predicts The End Of TiVo (678)
Eldred v. Ashcroft Oral Arguments (517)
What Would You Do With a New Form of Encryption? (855)
Digital ID World Conference (91)
Vint Cerf Talks About Internet Changes (183)
Radio-Controlled Microcar Review (190)
Come on Up (to the ISS) You're the Next Contestant (119)
The Python Cookbook (239)
Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges (75)
Fighting Telemarketers with Technology (556)

Older Articles
Yesterday's Edition

Slashdot Poll
Is Maisy a Sim?
What the heck is maisy?
No, but Charley Is
Well, duh, of course.
What the heck is a Sim?
Cyril is my CowboyNeal
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:299 | Votes:18006

BSD
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
OpenBSD 3.2 Pre-Release
Early Registration for European BSD Conference 2002
End Of OpenBSD 3.0-STABLE Branch - Upgrade To 3.2
DVD Playback In FreeBSD
Overview of the BSDs
Native Version Of Opera browser for FreeBSD
OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun
How To Get The Most Out Of Dummynet
Official FreeBSD nVidia Drivers

Your boss is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Reminder to all Non-Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off.

Thank you.

As the comic book guy would say...

[MalleusEBHC]

Worst moderation ever.

Well seeing as how this got modded up for being informative, I would like to karma whore and inform my fellow slashdotters that BSD is dying, Apple is the "gay" computer, and.... oh yeah, FP FP FP BWAHAHA I RULE.

*mutters something about how Taco needs to update the FAQ and just link to the parent as an explanation of why meta-moderation is needed*

Like I said originally

[Anonymous Coward]

Listening to a copy is a convenience, not a right. As I originally stated, I believe that paying for convenience is fair. In fact, since the record company makes the copy for me, ethically I should be paying for that service. If I circumvent their protection of this income, I am stealing just as surely as if I circumvent the protection a bank has in the body of it's vault.

Posted anonymously because of knee-jerk moderation.

Re:Like I said originally

[rowdent]

Do banks settle with low grade security in their vaults just because it's illegal to break in? No. Do banks lobby for the outlawing of guns just because they're used in many bank robberies? No, because there are many fair, if not distasteful, uses for guns other than holding up banks, much as there are many uses for copies of music that are not illegal. Take, for example, educational purposes. Many of my university lecture halls do not have CD drives on their desktop computers, but they have access to the internet, so if a professor ever wanted to play a piece of music stored somewhere on the internet for educational purposes (which I do believe is permissable) he or she would not be able to under a DRM system.

On DRM and Frtiz...

[carlmenezes]

DRM is wrong. Given the fact that it's a law that the person who buys the software has the right to make a backup copy, it's a perfect example of corporate America pushing the envelope on what they can get away with - as in, keep making it more difficult to make a backup. What DRM SHOULD be is a technology that allows the purchaser to make a backup, but not distribute that backup - something along the lines of authentication that the person installing the software from backup is who he says he is (using smart cards comes to mind here). In it's current form, we need to fight DRM as it is nothing but another monopoly tool.

On a different note, Fritz is going to get a thorough beating. Why? Because Kramnik is known for his defensive play and he even bested Karparov using the Berlin Defense. Now, what is needed is either a LOT more processing power to search for the right moves, or a little unpredictability (which I think would be better). GMs and IMs use programs like Fritz everyday for practice and hence know it's playing style. Though you can train Fritz depending on what game databases you feed it, it still plays like a computer. Contrast this with the fact that a program called Arasan beat Vishwanathan Anand (currently no. 2) in a best of three Blitz tournament, because it had trained on Anand's games, AND, the programming team drastically changed it's playing style before the match. It is easy for a computer to change it's playing style and still play well - not so for a human. I feel this is what they should be concentrating on - unpredictability.

Re:On DRM and Frtiz...

[GigsVT]

On DRM and Fritz...

Confusing post, I thought you were talking about the senator from Disney until your second paragraph.

Re:On DRM and Frtiz...

[murr]

On a different note, Fritz is going to get a thorough beating.

Yes. I found it rather embarassing how everybody involved in the match tried to talk up Deep Fritz as a serious competitor.

Now, what is needed is either a LOT more processing power to search for the right moves, or a little unpredictability (which I think would be better).

Unpredictability is not going to help much. And neither is a Beowulf cluster, BTW, because an alpha-beta search doesn't profit much from coarse grain parallelization. The reason Deep Blue was so strong was the special purpose hardware which allowed it to e.g. compute almost arbitrarily complex position evaluation functions at constant cost.

Though you can train Fritz depending on what game databases you feed it, it still plays like a computer. Contrast this with the fact that a program called Arasan beat Vishwanathan Anand (currently no. 2) in a best of three Blitz tournament, because it had trained on Anand's games, AND, the programming team drastically changed it's playing style before the match.

Computer programs tend to do much better against humans in blitz, because their strength doesn't drop nearly as much at faster speeds.

Every tenth download

[MavEtJu]

If the evidence confirms the theory, the hack would definitely be a strange way to compromise a downloadable file, said Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for security software firm eEye Digital Security.

"I'm not sure why they would want to do that," he said.

Come on guys, it's not rocket-science. It's all just to prevent alarms going off.

Scenario 1: I just downloaded an infected version of sendmail and verify the checksum: failed. Hmm... let's try again. Aha, it's okay this time.

Scenario 2: I just downloaded an infected version of sendmail, verified the checksum and informed the people at sendmail.org about it. They say: nothing wrong here, try again. I try again and it's okay this time.

Scenario 3: As 2, but the people at sendmail.org get too many complaints and start to get suspicious.

Scenario 4: I just downloaded an infected version of sendmail, verified the checksum and informed the people at sendmail.org about it. They say: nothing wrong here, try again. I try again and it's okay this time. I kept the broken version and find out what the difference is.

How often do the scenarios happen?

Scenario 1: 99% of the time.
Scenario 2: 0% of the time.
Scenario 3: 0% of the time (less than 2).
Scenario 4: 0% of the time (less than 2).

With the OpenSSH hack I tried to re-download the broken version twice too before I started to get suspicious. I wouldn't have been suspicious at all if it worked fine the second time.

Edwin.

Re:Every tenth download

[Erasmus Darwin]

"I just downloaded an infected version of sendmail and verify the checksum: failed. Hmm... let's try again. Aha, it's okay this time."

I believe your analysis is mostly dead-on. However, I do think there's one additional fact that would trigger a bit more suspicion (although probably not nearly enough): There are actually two checksums in play; the published one that you're verifying against, and the one used by the compression system (most likely gzip in this case).

So the official checksum would fail, indicating it's not the official release. However, the compression system's checksum would pass, indicating that what you downloaded is what someone delibrately placed on the server. While someone still might write it off as a race condition where they grabbed the new official checksum yet the previous version of sendmail, it might still raise a few more eyebrows. Probably not many more, but it's a start.

Re:Every tenth download

[dithi]

scenario 5:
sendmail downloads go from hundeds a day to zero.

As far as i understand it, the requests for the trojaned copies were routed to a different machine which means the sendmail ftp server was not sending bits. Now if the sendmail ftp server suddenly gets no traffic for 5 days straight someone will notice.

However no one will notice a 10% drop in requests.

So the evildoers were probably just trying to keep the sendmail admins from noticing.

When you consider that once it's been fixed

[hackwrench]

the odds are 0 of getting the trojan'd version, I don't like those odds at all!

I'm praying that Mickey Mouse is set free!

[newestbob]

I used to be a staunch defender of The Walt Disney Company--until just a few weeks ago they fired me, to replace me with a younger, cheaper worker (after YEARS of good reviews!).

I hope they get run out of business (or AOL/TW buys them--which is the same thing, isn't it?) Rumor about a merger is here

Someone should also do something about their pedophile infested dot-com division!

Re:I'm praying that Mickey Mouse is set free!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to tattoo mickey on my forehead regardless of the court decision.

Re:I'm praying that Mickey Mouse is set free!

[newestbob]

This is anything but offtopic! Read the "Slashback" and re-rate this.

[RANT] I'm sick and tired of stupid /, folks mis-rating posts {/RANT]

Re:I'm praying that Mickey Mouse is set free!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, why not just tattoo "Bumfight" instead, Rufus?

And another reason

[lithiumcloud]

And "Planet Fritz" sounds suspiciously like Palladium.

Re:Security Through Obscurity

[ninewands]

True that ... BUT IE == Windows. Just ask Microsoft.

Of course Microsoft can't charge extra re security

[Anonymous Coward]

...because then they'd actually have to warrant that their systems are at least slightly more secure!

History of Karate

[The Trolling Troller]

History of Karate

Karate history can be traced back some 1400 years, to Daruma, founder of Zen Buddhism in Western India. Daruma is said to have introduced Buddhism into China, incorporating spiritual and physical teaching methods that were so demanding that many of his disciples would drop in exhaustion. In order to give them greater strength and endurance, he developed a more progressive training system, which he recorded in a book, Ekkin-Kyo, which can be considered the first book on karate of all time.

The physical training, heavily imbued with Daruma's philosophical principles, was taught in the Shaolin Temple in the year 500 A.D. Shaolin (Shorin) kung- fu, from northern China, was characterized by very colorful, rapid, and dynamic movements; the Shokei school of southern China was known for more powerful and sober techniques. These two kinds of styles found their way to Okinawa, and had their influence on Okinawa's own original fighting method, called Okinawa-te (Okinawan hand) or simply te. A ban on weapons in Okinawa for two long periods in its history is also partly responsible for the high degree of development of unarmed fighting techniques on the island.

In summary, karate in Okinawa developed from the synthesis of two fighting techniques. The first one, used by the inhabitants of Okinawa, was very simple but terribly effective and, above all, very close to reality since it was used throughout many centuries in real combat. The second one, much more elaborate and impregnated with philosophical teachings, was a product of the ancient culture of China. These two origins explain the double character of Karate--extremely violent and efficient but at the same time a strict and austere discipline and philosophy with a nonviolent emphasis.

The Influence of Master Funakoshi

Master Gichin Funakoshi was the first expert to introduce karate-do to mainland Japan, in 1916. One of the few people to have been initiated into all the major Okinawan karate methods, Master Funakoshi taught a synthesis of the Okinawan styles, as a total discipline. This method became known as Shotokan (literally "House of Shoto," Funakoshi's pen name). Because of the great popularity of the style in Japan and, later, around the world, Funakoshi is widely considered to be the "father of modern karate-do."

The Influence of Tsutomu Ohshima

Tsutomu Ohshima was one of Master Funakoshi's last direct pupils (1948- 1953), studying under him while attending Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. In 1955 Mr. Ohshima came to the United States and was the first person to teach karate to the US public. By 1959 the Southern California Karate Association (SCKA) was formed, which has grown over the years to become a nationwide organization, Shotokan Karate of America, and Mr. Ohshima's influence on karate is felt around the world.

Despite the secluded nature of Mr. Ohshima's early US practices, knowledge of his teachings quickly spread and membership steadily increased. In August of 1957 Mr. Ohshima was asked to demonstrate Karate during the intermission of the annual Nisei Week Judo Tournament, held in Koyasan Hall in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. This was the first public demonstration of traditional Shotokan karate in the United States, and has since become an annual SKA activity. In 1958 a separate karate tournament was added as part of Nisei Week under the direction of Mr. Ohshima. The Nisei Week tournament is now the oldest annually held karate tournament in the United States, and is still presided over by Mr. Ohshima.

In addition to the formation of the SCKA, several other events of historical importance to Shotokan Karate of America occurred in 1959. In July the first US Special Training was held. In December Mr. Ohshima awarded six of his students the rank of shodan (first degree black belt), making them the first American-trained black belts in Shotokan karate. (These honored six were Caylor Adkins, George Murakami, Mas Norihiro, Jordan Roth, Roe Suzuki, and George Takahashi.)

In 1960, three years after the death of Master Funakoshi in Japan, Mr. Ohshima led the Waseda Karate Club black belts on a tour of Okinawa and its karate experts. This was the first official visit by students from the Japanese mainland since before the Second World War.

A key event in the history of US karate occurred in 1967 when Mr. Ohshima brought the first organized group of karateka (karate practitioners) from America to tour and demonstrate in Japan. During their two weeks in Japan, this group of 36 black, brown, and white belts (including two from Canada and two from Europe) left a strong impression of the high degree of development that karate had attained in the United States. This visit created much interest in American karate among Mr. Ohshima's seniors in Japan. In 1968 Mr. Ohshima invited Senior Isao Obata, the first Captain of the Keio University Karate Club, to the United States. During his stay Senior Obata personally observed and educated Mr. Ohshima's students.

In 1970 five SKA members (John Beltram, Don DePree, Jeff Klein, Ron Thom, and Henry Wilkerson) were honored by being selected to the United States team representing America in the first World Karate-do Championships held in Tokyo, Japan. Their outstanding performance enhanced the international reputation of Shotokan Karate of America.

Another visit of major importance from Japan occurred in 1973, when Mr. Ohshima and SKA invited Senior Shigeru Egami to the United States. SKA organized a massive demonstration for Senior Egami, and he honored us by lecturing and educating our members.

During 1975, because of SKA's committed involvement with the Amateur Athletic Union, the entire responsibility for the Third World Karate-do Championships was thrust upon us. Participants from 35 countries traveled to Long Beach, California, for the event. It was an enormous and difficult task, but it ultimately enhanced our goal of spreading the "way" of karate by increasing communication, heightening understanding of karate, and gaining constructive viable relationships with martial artists and leaders from all parts of the globe.

In 1975 SKA invited Senior Tadao Okuyama to visit the United States to observe our members. He also personally led Mr. Ohshima in daily practices.

To commemorate our 20th anniversary in 1976 SKA held a memorable celebration, including a public demonstration and tournament. High-ranking karate experts from all over the world came to honor the occasion. Various speeches and awards were made, including a presentation to Mr. Ohshima of a special plaque by Councilman Bob Farrell on behalf of the City of Los Angeles for his unselfish devotion to karate, his students, and the public for over twenty years. We were especially honored by the presence of Senior Kamata-Watanabe from Japan, who accepted our invitation to attend. Senior Kamata-Watanabe spoke to our members, emphasizing that all members of SKA should be proud of our association with Mr. Ohshima for his work over the last twenty years in developing the strongest and most traditional karate organization following the teachings of Master Funakoshi.

The highlight of the 20th anniversary took place at the special dan (black belt rank) promotion personally administered by Senior Kamata-Watanabe with Mr. Ohshima at the Melrose Dojo in Los Angeles. In the tense atmosphere of the dojo crowded with SKA black belt observers, three men (Caylor Adkins, Sadaharu Honda, and Daniel Chemla) became the first individuals outside of Japan to be awarded the rank of godan (fifth degree black belt), the highest that can be achieved. This event marked the coming of age of Shotokan Karate of America!

Talking to your Congresscritter

[Guppy06]

"... a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology"

Yes, it's coming up this November 5th. Here's how to get involved.

If you're going to write your Congresscritter about DRM, be sure to also write his/her/its opponents in the upcoming election.

Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe move to Nevada, I hear whoring is legal there

OH NO!

[scumdamn]

My Linux system is open to the world! What ever will I do???
Oh, wait, I'm running Qmail. I guess it's not something I need to worry about, huh?

Charge for updates?

[MoTec]

Microsoft won't charge for security updates or patches, that just seems a bit too audacious even for Mr. Gates.

However, there is a new niche for Microsoft.

Earlier today I was helping a buddy update and clean his Win2k box - And no, he wouldn't let me clean it with Gentoo... He thought he was infected by a virus (he wasn't) so he bought a 'subscription' to McAfee virus scanner. After we ran that, I downloaded AdAlert (free), to remove the spyware... Found lots of that. Then I downloaded ZoneAlarm (free) and set him up a personal firewall.

We've seen MS, in the past, include options like then in the OS... WinXP already includes a personal firewall but there are lots of 'extra' services that MS could add... And why bother including them for free in the OS - expecially when they get sued for it?

I'll bet we see a MS virus scanner/privacy guard/whatever utility sometime soon. With MS's advantage of having OS and Apps in house it could, at least in theory, be faster and better integrated than the competition... And the MS name would go a long way to having the masses buy it over Norton or McAfee... A product like that has to be what Mundie was referring to.

Can someone pls explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

who the fuck is Cowboy Neal?

Educational uses

[Anonymous Coward]

We pay for textbooks, why not for music that is intended for educational purposes?

Also, if your claim is that the terabytes of stolen MP3s on gnutella are all, or even mostly, or even significantly, used only for education, you are naught but a troll.

Re:Educational uses

[rowdent]

For educational purposes one is allowed to photocopy up to 10% of a given work, so copying music for educational purposes up to 10% of the given work would then be acceptable, but impossible under a DRM system.

And no, I don't believe the terabytes of MP3s are used for educational purposes, not by any stretch of the imagination. I do believe, however, that the general public should be trusted to do the right thing, whether they do or not. Allowing corporations to restrict the free will of the real people in society is irresponsible. Taking from Karl Marx's ideologies the ruling class will always be able to dictate policies in society unless the people get together and say no. Make no mistake, I believe in the rights of people to hold copyrights, but the DRM will ultimately benefit corporations at the expense of the real people in society. Corporations are not real people, but they get treated as people and have more resources to exercise their rights and crush the little guy.

Political Reality

[sterno]

Let me ask you this: are you more likely to vote a politician into office because of his position on DRM or his position on military action in Iraq?

The problem is that, in a time when there are really serious concerns, something relatively obscure like DRM is going to get pushed to the bottom of the priority list. The state of the economy is a whole lot more important than the state of DRM. Both issues concern me, but one has to weigh them very differently. Hard to seriously vote against somebody who's in the RIAA's pocket but is willing to make a stand against military action in Iraq (if you tend to lean that political direction).

Re:Political Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Gore lost my vote because I drew the dotted line between his involvement in mandating SCMS, his comments afterwards (about adjusting the copyright laws to make things easier for copy protection), and the Clinton/Gore Administration action with regards to the DMCA.

Does that answer your question?

doesn't look good...

[masterv]

I'd like to think that Eldred vs Ashcroft has a good chance of siding with the little guy, but key statistics indicate Eldred being beaten by a margin of at least 400,000!

Used CD's

[Jus ad Bellum]

I don't know if this is entirely related to DRM. But I was wondering if anyone had info on the legalities of buying used CD's, records, books, etc... (I'm interested in Canadian law in specific, but I would assume that it is the same as the States law)
I recall a few years back that some artists and the big record companies were upset at the idea of reselling their music without recieving the royalties (I remember that the dude with the Kentucky Waterfall that did 'Aceky Breaky Heart' was whining about royalties). I was wondering if there is still a push for this, or if it has been implimented. If it has then the companies and artists that fall under the Mickey Mouse law would still be able to recieve payments on used items sold until the products fall apart...

I don't troll

[MoTec]

I guess whoever modded this didn't bother reading it... I wonder why I'm not suprised.

It seems that any post about Microsoft that doesn't start with "Microsoft sucks, Linux rules" often gets modded down. My post wasn't even really 'pro' microsoft.

Oh, well. No big deal.

Copyright motivates creation of works after death?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the paper,

The court, [Olsen] said, should not say that 99 years is too long for a copyright to exist, noting that the works of Herman Melville and Franz Schubert ''weren't valued until many years after their deaths.''

Someone please explain to this taxpayer employee that the purpose of copyright is to encourage writers to contribute more work to the public. No amount of copyright extension, illegal or otherwise, would be sufficient to get Melville and Schubert to rise from their graves and start creating again.

How long will I be an M$ customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me count the days....

No choice?
Choice for regular folk
Choice for slightly geeky folk
Choice for geeky folk
Choice for folk that are too geeky to be seen on Slashdot :-)

The switch for most regular users (as I see it) would be painless to Mac. Most users, soccer moms, working fathers, and enterprising (got through level 3, now onto level 4) young folk would probably need to purchase a *few* new software titles so they are Mac compatible, but other than that, it should be painless. And personally, I think the pain I have in switching to the Mac far, *far* outweighs the pain (no need to mention Palladium) I might have by remaining a PC owner. By the way, I have used Linux and I like it, but it does not like me. Maybe I will need to try a PPC version after I satisfy the intelligence dependancy Linux requires of me unless OS X prooves Linux-y enough (I know it uses FreeBSD).

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT

[Anonymous Coward]

woof

woof

Re:There's no groupthink but whining about groupth

[Anonymous Coward]

"Say what you will about the Microsoft anathema, no Linux vendor has promoted the forced inclusion of DRM technology, or, before finding that religion, poo-pooed the importance of security."

Bah go look at per seat licensing on Unitied Linux and take it to the logical extention especially if DRM becomes platform agnostic (eg. Palladium) and mainstream. As for security Redmond Linux was running all user apps as root last I checked. Finally, I got my first piece of Open Source spam trying to sell me on a copy of a brazillian Linux distro.

Is this the end of Open Source and Linux. Nah but both platforms require user vigilance.

Specifics and generalities

[Anonymous Coward]

"...copying music for educational purposes up to 10% of the given work would then be acceptable, but impossible under a DRM system."

Not if teachers got special editions...just like they do for textbooks.

Allowing corporations to restrict the free will of the real people in society is irresponsible.

You mean like putting locks on their doors and selling safes? Yeah, totally irresponsible. Why don't they just trust the general public not to march in and steal all their physical goods as well?

Re:Specifics and generalities

[rowdent]

The 10% not only applies to teachers, but to students as well. The photocopies do not necessarily come out of the special edition, it's called "Fair Use", and it applies to ANY book.

You mean like putting locks on their doors and selling safes?

It would be more akin to a housing company selling houses with locked doors that the owner does not have keys to and threatening persecution if it's ever opened.

Re:Specifics and generalities

[djweis]

The water company in my area makes you buy a water meter that connects to your phone line. Do you think they would be happy if you start hacking on this box that you purchased and is attached to your house?

Re:security?!?! MS must be off their rocker!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did windows become any more secure during their month long "security fest?" I didn't see any fixes. In fact, that seemed like the slowest month for updates.

Seriously, I already throw more than enough money into the Redmond money pit. If they can't produce secure software (a word security hole? What looser can do that?) with the hundreds of billions of dollars they have now, what is another hundred million going to do?

I think that software companies need to be held more accountable for the flaws they introduce. I'm not saying that every little bug or security hole needs to be placed on their shoulders. After all, they are only human, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere. I have already applied more patches to my XP box than I can count on both hands and feet and I have only had my computer for about a month! How can you trust a company to produce secure systems for an extra $50 if they can't produce moderately secure systems now?

And why should security be a commodity and not a standard? I shouldn't have to PAY to have my personal thoughts, account ids, or literary works kept private. I shouldn't have to PAY to keep my computer from being erased by a "ghost." I shouldn't have to PAY to prevent others from using my computing resources without my consent. If I buy a Ford, the locks are included and I don't need to pay $25 a month so they continue to work. So if I pay $479 for office XP, they should include the "lock" and it should work for as long as I deem necessary. If I pay $250 for XP (or however much it is now) they should include the vault door and it should work for as long as I keep XP installed (not much longer for me! :-).

In response to your question, no, I don't believe M$ when they proclaim anything. The proclaim Palladium as the best security upgrade, but it is DRM. They say XP is the most secure Windows to date, but I think it is equally secure as Win98. They said XP was more stable, but I have not seen this as compared to Win98. Why should I believe them when they say a pay service will be more secure than windowsupdate (for what it's worth)? I would gladly pay more for something I *know*, 100%, without a doubt is secure, but not something touted as more secure, especially from M$ and especially with their track record.

my two cents from my XP box, version: swiss cheese

MS/Linux Bashing

[KagatoLNX]

Why does this crap bother everyone so much? For anyone who cares, try the following science experiment:

Hypothesis: Microsoft software is buggier and less secure than Linux software.

Experiment: Debian 3.0 and Internet Explorer 6 SP1 are recent releases (i.e. good examples of respective software packages). Test each one's security needs by updating each from their respective security archives. The one with the most fixes is the most buggy (this assumes bugs are the norm and fixes indicate their prevalence in the code, history bears this out).

Results: Debian has about 8 updates. IE6 SP1 has about 15 critical updates. The IE updates are five times the size of the Debian ones.

Analysis: IE should have the advantage here. It is only a web browser against an entire distribution. It also was released noticibly later, giving less time to discover bugs.

Conclusion: Hypothesis is supported.

Any other experiments?
How about a histogram of bugtraq notices? How about one weighted by severity?

Software is software. It all has bugs. The only way to combat it is good development practices--things like rigor, testing, attention to detail, lots of review, and careful design.

MS has shown (and still shows) that it puts these goals second to political maneuvering, time to market, and (sometimes underhanded) competition.

I damn well will bash a business that is only after my pocketbook (MS) every time they screw up. I also will vehemently defend people developing code for all to use (OSS). Even if they were equally buggy, I'll pick goodwill over greedy corporation any day.

Sorry, but Open Source and Microsoft (a.k.a. good versus evil :) is not Tommy Hilfigger versus Ralph Lauren. If you want to argue fashion go read Cosmo or Vogue. I care about nothing less or more than solving problems with computers in an open, useful, honest, secure way that doesn't make me a corporate whore.

I just wish that "Visual Basic" and the like hadn't convinced a bunch of second rate graphic artists that they were "programmers". There's nothing more disheartening than being surrounded and outnumbered by loud idiots desparate to cling to the greedy corporate teat that enabled them do something other than flip burgers.

Truth == Troll on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

You make me wanna wretch. . .
*passes out

The World Wide Web.

[pete-classic]

Hello, and welcome to the World Wide Web, or as we like to call it, the WWW.

The WWW is an assortment of web pages accessable over the Internet.

Web pages contain "links", called "hyper-links". The idea is that when a word or phrase naturally leads to another page you link it.

Here is a counter-example:

Here are some photos from after the arguments

where the text in italics is a link to some photos. See, THE WORD PHOTOS SHOULD BE THE FUCKING LINK.

Next time we will discuss why the word "here" shouldn't be linked, unless it is to here.

-Peter

Re:The World Wide Web.

[t]

My god if you're going to bitch, at least make it comprehensive. You didn't even mention the very next paragraph which starts out with "Here is a good write-up on on what happened with the whole sendmail hack..." where the link was to the old story. At the end of the paragraph was the same fscking phrase, "Here is the write-up." with the goddamn link to the new story.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[gilmae]

Olsen's point was that if copyright protection lasted, for example, twenty years and Melville's works only became popular twenty-one years after he wrote them, assuming he was still alive at that point (was he?) he would have no copyright protection and get no royalties from his works being published.

The point is still weak though. Copyright shouldn't be based on popularity.

Remember

[PaddyM]

Any rebroadcasts of the pro-DRM statements of the establishment are prohibited without the express written consent of the establishment.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[Samrobb]

So, make copyright extend for the lifetime of the human (not corporate) creator; but once it passes from the control of the creator, then they copyright period is N years, period.

With this, if N = 20, then Melville's works would be (C) H. Melville until his death. At that point, they copyright would be inherited by his heirs, and they would hold it for a maximum of 20 years. If at some point in his life Neville decided to sell the copyright for one of his works to some other individual or corporation, then the copyright on the work would last 20 years from the date of the sale.

All in all, far too sensible for a legislator to even think about.

Come to think of it, this could lead to some weird legal loopholes... for example, in many states, a husband and wife are considered to be a single person in some senses; someone doesn't "inherit" from their spouse when s/he dies, because they are considered to own property jointly. So you could see some bizzare marriages of convenience, for example, where an aging Walt Disney marries a much younger woman who coincidentally just happens to be a Disney corporation executive, with a prenuptial agreement that states if she ever remarries, it will be at age 60 to yet another young Disney executive... and so on, and so on, and...

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[Jebediah21]

So you could see some bizzare marriages of convenience, for example, where an aging Walt Disney marries a much younger woman who coincidentally just happens to be a Disney corporation executive, with a prenuptial agreement that states if she ever remarries, it will be at age 60 to yet another young Disney executive... and so on, and so on, and...

Talk about inbreeding!

Sendmail roulette...

[knightPhlight]

...is still better than Micro$oft odds.

Especially if all you have to do is verify a checksum. Shrink-wrapped, over-priced software comes out of the box "as is."

What's the checksum for IE + all 15 updates?

Re:Sendmail roulette...

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's the checksum for IE + all 15 updates?
It's digitally signed by Microsoft. The program won't run if it has been altered.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[aeddan23]

So, make copyright extend for the lifetime of the human (not corporate) creator; but once it passes from the control of the creator, then they copyright period is N years, period.

With this, if N = 20, then Melville's works would be (C) H. Melville until his death. At that point, they copyright would be inherited by his heirs, and they would hold it for a maximum of 20 years. If at some point in his life Neville decided to sell the copyright for one of his works to some other individual or corporation, then the copyright on the work would last 20 years from the date of the sale.

Nope: make it 20 (or whatever) years full-stop. If the copyright period gets reset everytime it gets sold, we end up back in the same position we are in now - all you would have to do is have two companies continually selling stuff back and forth and the copyright would never expire.

I like the 'life of author' limit as long as they retain the copyright, but I would add that if the author held the copyright at the time of death, it enters the public domain if it has existed for >20 years, or goes to whoever they willed it to if <20 years.

Something like that, anyway.

Re:There's no groupthink but whining about groupth

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, seems everyone using recent WMP has DRM enabled. I'm also prety sure it's not able to be "checked off".

Microsoft to replace the Zone Alarm

[gregm]

I've been waiting on this one for awhile. It has to drive them nuts to have a firewall like the zone alarm reporting all the behind the scenes discussions the print spooler subsystem etc are. having with someone on the net. They'll probably include some lite version of their zone alarm for free and a pro version for money... think defrag... Of course neither version will tell us anything about any of their covert communications with our computers.

And think of all the money they're losing out on to McAfee and Norton for antivirus software. If I were a conspiracy theorist...oh wait... I am, I might think they've purposely not cleaned up outlook just to create a market that they can swoop in and take over like they're known to do. bastards

Re:Microsoft to replace the Zone Alarm

[Anonynnous Coward]

I think the way to go here is to set up your computer without TCP/IP (use IPX/SPX or Netbeui for your internal network), then do all the internet interaction inside a VMware VM. Thus, the core operating system, where you do your personal and private stuff (e.g. Quicken), doesn't get to call home. Inconvenient, yes, but a little more secure.

"at least nine games"

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

With a draw in the planned eight games, you are less likely to need a ninth game. In best-of-eight, a 4-4 tie is possible, but at this point, unless there is another draw, a ninth game definitely won't be needed, as the closest the match can be without another draw is 4.5-3.5

If you're hoping for a ninth game tie-break, you still might not be out of luck, since with two very high-rated opponents, mistakes are more rare, and draws become more likely.

Roulette versions

[Quila]

Sendmail was roulette with a 10-shooter revolver with one round loaded.

MS is roulette with a semi-automatic pistol with one round loaded.

Sir

[Anonymous Coward]

Please hand in your geek badge at the door, and pick up HHGTTG on your way out.

Deep Thought came up with the answer (42). Arthur came up with a question on prehistoric Earth, just after the Goglefrinchen B Ark crashed. Sadly, the question made no sense, as the Goglefrinchens had corrupted the "program" that Earth was running....

No way

[Aapje]

That being said, I think a well-developed argument against the insanely long extended copyrights based exclusively on the idea that they are detrimental to the free and open exchange of ideas (read: free speech), and that the costs outweigh whatever benefits are derived from the latest extension to copyrights would have at least as much of a chance in court as does the current arguement.

The problem with that kind of argument is that it's not very objective. It's about weighing the available evidence/research/etc and deciding what the rights of various groups (with different interests) should be. That seems to be about identical to the job description of congress members. I don't see how the supreme court could make such a decision instead.

Lessig's argument makes a lot more sense IMHO. First of all, it's much more difficult to argue that retrospectively extended copyright will have even a mildly reasonable influence on promoting arts. In fact, if one sees the public domain as promoting arts, it's highly questionable whether congress should be allowed to destroy all kinds of interests and business models that are based on the public domain (see the publisher that wanted to publish an out of print, about to expire book). Those people had reasonable expectations that the works they were after wouldn't suddenly be locked up for another x years. An artist/publisher sh/wouldn't expect the copyright term to be extended for works that were created in the past (especially since the constitution uses the words 'limited term' which conflicts (in theory) with a gratuitous extension).

Furthermore, a copyrighted work is never guaranteed to be added to the public domain if its copyright term can be extended again and again. I don't think it's far-fetched to say that this breaks the 'limited duration' as specified by the constitution. If only prospective extensions are allowed, you will at least have a guarantee that the copyrighted work will expire into the public domain at a known date. It might take 1 billion years, but I'm afraid that the only way Americans can prevent that is by voting differently (in theory*).

*See [Two party system] & [bribes]

Re:No way

[WEFUNK]

While I agree that the free speech argument seemed to have less resonance with the supreme court and is probably the weaker argument in general, note well the broad wording of the second question under consideration:

"2. Is a law that extends the term of existing and future copyrights "categorically immune from challenge[] under the First Amendment"?"

Even just one example of a possible exception to categorical immunity (no matter how contrived, farfetched, or unlikely) would have made the answer to this question "No" and could have opened further challenges to copyright, although probably on a case by case basis. From what I've read, no such example was offered during court. Even if it made sense to focus on the first question, was this a missed opportunity?

Re:No way

[Aapje]

The most far-fetched example is of course a copyright term of infinity minus one. Suppose that such an extension would have been in effect when Keynes wrote his books and that the publishing rights would have been sold by his heirs to Marx Publishing Inc. Marx Publishing has a competing set of books and so they lock up Keynes' works forever (minus one year). This extremely important part of our culture is thus (in essence) destroyed.

I'm not very knowledgable on the subject of the first amendment, but this at the very least sounds extremely scary.

Duh...

[captnkurt]

"An earlier report of detection of water masers on extrasolar planets has been debunked."

Of course there aren't any. That's because Maisers are Sims. The /. poll said so.

You can't charge for what you can't offer...

[croftj]

I would hope that MS could only charge for better security if they could ofer it. By my calendar, they still have 4 more years before they will finaly figure out that they need to remove gaping holes such as the ability to run executables from EVERY application.

Tell me again, why email should be able to execute attached programs?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Old meaning, actuallly

[Anonymous Coward]

A new meaning for 'decimation'

Actually that was the original meaning.
Decimation -- killing one out of every ten soldiers -- was the favorite method of punishing mutinous legions in the ancient Roman army.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[gilmae]

So, make copyright extend for the lifetime of the human (not corporate) creator; but once it passes from the control of the creator, then they copyright period is N years, period.

Corporates shouldn't get copyright control, period. I think the courts made a mistake when they allowed corporations to be allowed the smae rights as citizens. They just aren't citizens.

Here's the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyrights are supposed to ENCOURAGE development of works by giving the authors an ability to exclusive use/profit from them. So of course retroactive application of the exentions is silly.

There are a LOT of works out there that the copyrights are still legally in force, but no one is around who wants them... but the off chance that there COULD be a massive penalty for infringement, no one will risk republishing that long out-of-date stuff. For example, some short stories, articles, illustrations from long defunct magazines from the 50's.

Requiring copyright holders to renew the copyrights every 20 years will allow authors who are actively still publishing and profiting from a work, or who still want to control its publication, to do so. But this will allow a lot of minor works, and works from defunct publishers, to flow into the public's hands... and possibly get rediscovered by new generations.

So... 1) no retroactive changes... copyright law at the time of creation of the work controls the work forever.... and 2) require renewal every 20 years.

Re:Here's the solution

[Aapje]

Copyrights are supposed to ENCOURAGE development of works by giving the authors an ability to exclusive use/profit from them. So of course retroactive application of the exentions is silly.

In theory I could benefit from that extension and use that as a justification for creating more works. Of course, it's quite unlikely that the original artists has any benefit after 50 years, so an extension to 70 won't promote anything. However, if the copyright term were fairly short, a retroactive extension could actually encourage new creations. I wonder if that's what Lessig meant when he confused the courts by saying that he would support retrospective extensions that do promote the arts.

There are a LOT of works out there that the copyrights are still legally in force, but no one is around who wants them... but the off chance that there COULD be a massive penalty for infringement, no one will risk republishing that long out-of-date stuff. For example, some short stories, articles, illustrations from long defunct magazines from the 50's.

And so the promotion of arts is hampered. An effect of copyright extensions that congress does not seem to understand.

Requiring copyright holders to renew the copyrights every 20 years will allow authors who are actively still publishing and profiting from a work, or who still want to control its publication, to do so.

I don't think a company should be allowed to lock up a once published book/film/etc for a lifetime. Controlling the publication of a work should not be possible for 70 years. You might require copyrighted works to be available before you can renew, but publishers already lie about books that supposedly are still in their inventory (although they won't sell them to you), so I don't see how renewal can change that. No, I think we should reduce the copyright term to much more reasonable terms (different for some items, like software). Those terms should optimally be the time in which most publishers expect to make the majority of their profits. For instance, hardly any software is still sold in it's original form after 20 years, so software should be copyrighted for less than 20 years.

A way in which renewal might work would be a renewal fee that keeps rising. Once the publisher stops paying the work automatically moves into the public domain. That way you still can lock up a certain work or keep it in print for a very long time, but you will have to pay for the privilege.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[teamhasnoi]

I disagree. This post won't become popular until the year 2525. I would like to see copyright extended until then, so I can make some Benjamins.

Thanks.

Re:There's no groupthink but whining about groupth

[FurryFeet]

...yet.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[japhmi]

Make it 20 years from the first sale. So if one company owns it for 19 years and sells it to another company, it will still only have 1 year left.

Re:Copyright motivates creation of works after dea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all rather amusing to me, since I was taught in elementary school(private, no less!) that copyright for an individual is unlimited. Nothing specific was mentioned to me about its transferral or creation by businesses causing it to expire, except that it would, eventually, after a very long time, at which point it would be forgotten or replaced.
I know, and in a sense knew then, that this way is wrong, but I'm starting to understand a possible reason for being paid to teach me such nonsense.
Unfortunately for that, the institution caused a great deal of dissent in me, so the opposite result came to.

Can you imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if Deep Fritz ran on a Beowulf cluster of patent-infringing Itaniums and Itanium2s?

Last Post!

[alpg]

Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain
sex to a virgin.
-- Robert Heinlein

(Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.)

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