Oh please. Besides the obvious infringement != theft, it's not a good idea for an academic institution to run a restricted network. Of all places where the Internet should be free and wide-open, I'd say that higher learning is right up there. There's 65535 ports available, and every one of them is going to be used by some system for some reason, most likely not P2P file sharing. Not to mention the number of legitimate things you might be downloading for educational purposes via BitTorrent (Ubuntu ISO, anyone?). Anything more restrictive than blocking ports at the firewall (which is pretty pointless anyway. uTorrent allows you to change the port being used) is detrimental to an academic institution's learning environment.
They certainly don't have to. But if Microsoft insists on keeping their code secret at all costs, there will come a point when there is GPL code available to compete with absolutely everything that Microsoft produces. Heck, we're almost there already: OS, Office suite, Web browser, Mail client, development environment, games (for those that don't need the latest FPS from Megacorp, anyway).
That is the future that Microsoft wants to avoid at all costs; it will make the price of software as a commodity become $0. At some point, Microsoft will need to sell their software at $0 just to compete, which means that the IT industry becomes a service industry rather than manufacturing. That's a good thing for everyone (well, OK, maybe just me). Losses due to piracy become non-existant, since piracy is no longer a useful concept. Talented people will be paid to implement solutions, Microsoft or otherwise.
The best thing Microsoft can do is what Sun Microsystems already did: experiment with Community Source Licensing. No, we won't be able to do whatever we want with Windows source code, but we'll be able to mess around with it in our labs/basements/whatever and understand Windows better. They don't even have to accept changes from the community if they don't want, and they can keep the distribution rights to themselves.
Ultimately, it's a show of faith on Microsoft's part. They may believe they don't need to start playing nice with FSF supporters anytime soon, but I certainly don't think they have quite that luxury. FSF always had and will always have the potential of producing a whole bunch of software that's truly Free and in doing so take those "innovations" away from Microsoft. Microsoft needs to interoperate. The fastest way to do so is to show us their source code.
Well, maybe not guaranteed, but for some security requirements, point-to-point physical security is important. In those cases, business class DSL can't make such a claim, since there are many points along the way where it goes through a CO or somesuch thing. That's what the up-front cost is for: to run a wire from your network location to the main trunk without going through anything else. Admittedly, they don't need to charge so much for the actual network service once the line is run. I don't think that there's really much additional work to support the T1 line once the connection to the trunk is made; it's straight TCP/IP from there on out.
I needed "remedial" calculus in my first year of university. The IB program pushes all of the math requirements into your first two years of school (at least in the program I took) so there was an entire year where I did no particularly complicated math (only solving physics equations). I forgot nearly everything I'd learned the day after the IB final, leaving only what was necessary to get a good grade on the departmental final (50% of high school final grade).
I no longer use math beyond what I learned in ninth grade, except maybe for the odd algorithmic complexity analysis. I'm much better at writing code than solving hard math problems, but I certainly recognize that there's a requirement to be able to do both in some fields of engineering.
If there's enough qualified people coming from the math-heavy disciplines, then I don't think there's really anything to worry about. Math is overrated, IMHO. Now if every student also needed remedial science classes, that might be a problem...
If a foreign power had damaged US productivity and parasitically drained off as much capital from US businesses as Microsoft has, it would be construed as an act of war Which is why FSF people tend to be so zealous. They haven't technically declared war in the strictest sense, but their stance against Microsoft's parasitic tactics is uncompromising. In every other sense, it really is war. Both sides have combatants who fight extraordinarily passionately, and many are willing to fight to the death over it (speaking for myself here, but I'm sure there's others). Of course, without an actual declaration of war I can't enter the Microsoft campus with a gym bag full of automatic weapons, but I dream about it often.
...find the on/off switch for your brain. Turn it on only when you are actually doing IT work. Make sure that your lips attach to the nearest PHB's ass when your brain is off.
Sorry, but my ego just doesn't fit in the tiny vial that you seem to have managed to fit yours into. Hubris is, after all, one of the traits of the best programmers. What a strange dilemma.
Will we ever surpass it? Doubtful, unless we see a new hardware player burst onto the scene. AMD made quite a splash, but they certainly didn't have any potential, nor do they today, to outpace Moore's Law. Intel still drives the hardware market.
As an artist who has been completely ripped off, I'm glad to see someone with the opportunity to expose the fraud. There's absolutely nothing to fear from Mr. Goldman if their citing of the 2001 web comic is correct. In fact, I'd hire a particularly expensive lawyer just to make sure the legal fees being sent to Mr. Goldman's office are as high as they can possibly be. I don't think there's a more dispicable trait in this world than to claim someone else's work as your own. You simultaneously prevent the real creator from benefiting himself through his work while creating a false image of your brilliance.
I'm sure there's probably enough laws if people were interested in applying existing laws in the context of the Internet. The main problem is more one of enforcement: if I see undesirable network traffic (spam, phishing, malformed packets, etc.), I have no idea who it is. It takes considerable resources and a subpoena to bring even the lowliest spammer or phisher to justice. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to divulge people's personal information without their knowledge or permission in most circumstances; we don't need additional laws to tell us that. We need to start catching and punishing those that do. I'm not really sure how we can do that.
The best place to start is probably at the domain registry level -- current regulations seem to allow for anonymous owners of Internet domains. We also need to make sure that people are responsible for their Internet connection. Most of the forensics I do lead back to a known network with a known owner. Let's make sure that those records aren't a joke. I've seen far too many netblock owners who don't respond to abuse complaints at all, or who list unreachable contacts for abuse reports. Finally, there's the odd irresponsible ISP who can't be bothered or don't care about accurate record-keeping. If those records' accuracy were enforced, and the owners legally responsible for all activity (hacker, cracker or otherwise) coming from their network, I think we'd get a long way. No one gets their domains revoked for malicious/undesirable activity on the 'net. Time to start pulling some plugs. After that, we'll worry about the rolling heads.
This is only, what, the 100th article since Vista was released that's completely devoid of content? Who here hasn't posted some kind of opinion about Vista?
As far as just "getting over it," or developing a "thick skin" from it, as someone mentioned, I'll say this: My skin might be thicker for the experience, but it's scar tissue. Thanks for your experience. Bullying affects people for the rest of their life, but so many people turn the other way and wait for their chance to blame the victim. Usually this takes the form of suicide or jail time many years later. Children should not be born into such humilating roles, let alone forced to accept them.
If he WAS causing actual harm, then I would limit his financial obligation to paying the victim for actual damages. Good. He was causing me harm by invading my privacy. I will now send a nasty lawyer letter threatening to sue for mental anguish or whatever other crap a litigious society can come up with. It's amazing how much better lawyers can make "harm" out to be than the actual victim. Civil law isn't.
In the case of open APs, you are wrong. The fact that it is open simply does not have anything to do with the consent of the owner until the general public is technically capable of managing their own wireless network. Since we're not going to take wireless away from people who have no clue how it works, then we can't assume that access == consent.
Fine, then I'll challenge your morality. Please keep in mind that for this argument I speak as a person who just bought an AP from the store and does not have the technical know-how to protect themselves from your intrusion. Sure, you're only on my network to check your e-mail, but you've violated my privacy to do so. In addition to checking e-mail, you could also be spying on me. It's why you can't simply enter my house, sit there without taking anything and still be breaking the law. I didn't post a notice saying "Come on in" and you've assumed that my open AP is due to my being neighbourly and not a sign of incompetence on my part.
Unfortunately, we have to assume incompetence now. There's no requirements to get an AP except that you can afford one. I'd love nothing more than for there to be an Internet license, because then I'd have one and most people wouldn't. The harder the requirements the better, too. But, that's not the case, so as a society we continue to assume incompetence. I suppose if you have no moral problem from taking candy from a baby, then what you're suggesting is totally moral behaviour. I, however, would never stoop to such lows.
Cleverly hiding behind badly thought out analogies makes me question your motivation, intelligence and work habits.
Sure, I'll bite. My motivation is simple: since we have determined as a society to protect those who don't know technology from their elbow from screwing themselves up online, then the logical conclusion is that WEP is just as bad as an open network. Certainly such imbeciles didn't intend to share their network with the world at large. We can't have it both ways; either there's a required level of training to run an wi-fi AP, or we have to protect those that don't know how to use one. It's not an unreasonable idea to clearly post a sign when an accessible AP is actually open to the public. At least until the general public can be expected to secure their own router in a non-trivial way. My ulterior motive is to try and bring some semblance of civility back to a society who determines valid behaviour by whether or not it is legal as opposed to gentile.
I'm not stupid enough to answer your questions about my intelligence, and I fail to see what my work habits have to do with anything.
Usually you won't get anything from the ISP. I start with ARIN and move to RIPE, APIC as the search suggests. I run into one of two scenarios:
1) There is a properly listed contact for abuse reports to whom I send the complete relevant log entries in text format. I usually don't hear from them again, but I also don't see any further network abuse from that netblock owner.
2) The owner of the IP block is a complete and utter joke. Examples: they don't correctly configure their reverse DNS, so they will claim that you have the wrong IP address, they list an abuse contact that doesn't speak English, they send spam in reply to your abuse complaint (that actually made me laugh for a moment). In this case, you also won't hear anything, but you should probably go to the effort of banning such an irresponsible network at your firewall.
Generally you won't hear anything. You won't know if someone has seen or acted on your complaint. Just think of how many network abuse complaints a large, responsible network would have to deal with daily. There's also dozens of fly-by-nights that make it clear that they won't make their network behave no matter how much you complain.
Surprisingly, I've found that larger netblock owners are quite responsible. A threat to block their entire netblock at your firewall is an effective one, easy to carry out and perfectly justified. Just be sure to remove the block if they show that they have fixed your complaint.
I don't think it's a crime to have an open network, though it might go against the TOS. You are correct. It is against the ToS of any ISP here where I live to offer the network service outside of the registered residence. So I can share my wireless AP with my upstairs roommates, but not my next door neighbour. That seems like a reasonable clause and gives the ISP something to fall back on if someone ends up being invoiced for traffic that "wasn't theirs". It's in your best interest as a person with a wireless AP to ensure that you can say "I took appropriate precautions to secure the router, so please be nice and don't charge me for the 20+gig of traffic that I've used in the last 5 days".
Cool. I have a computer program which solves those darned WEP riddles it keeps throwing at me. My computer reads the traffic from the router, determines the solution to the riddle and answers it correctly. After I answer the riddle, the router provides me with network information. I say it's a riddle because it doesn't take long for my computer to solve it. 'Cracking' takes much longer, I hear. I've done nothing but use the IEEE specification for radio frequency in that range. My computer has the appropriate FCC (or appropriate overseeing body) licenses to send and receive signals in that range, so I haven't done anything wrong. If the router didn't want me to talk to it, it shouldn't communicate with my legally licensed device. Or maybe the riddle should be more obviously a "KEEP OUT" sign.
Using your neighbour's Wi-Fi, by accident or otherwise, is not neighbourly behaviour. "I do it because I can" is a pathetic justification by control freaks who relish the idea of using their neighbour's stuff without their knowledge. It's one thing if you're just too poor to buy your own router and your neighbour's is ridiculously convenient. However, etiquette says you should still ask first. Most people who piggyback wi-fi do it with malicious intent, though, either to blame someone else for their online activities, or to monitor the network for private information. Cleverly hiding behind the "but the network gave me permission" excuse leads me to wonder what your motivation for using your neighbour's wi-fi is.
The black-hats rely on the fact that no one can see what they are doing to succeed. In many cases, they are still capable of keeping their illegal activities underground. But a guy sitting next to a building with a laptop is kind of obvious. Kudos to the cops for challenging his existence there. I'll even put up with some nosy cops myself to see guys like the one they got go away. Now if only there were an electronic cop that would bring those cowardly, anonymous, SSH phishers and spammers to the surface...
But they have decided that there are enough corporate Firefox deployments that they can't afford to lose those potential WMV viewers. Any other pressure just slides right past Microsoft; they don't pay, so they don't matter.
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Oh please. Besides the obvious infringement != theft, it's not a good idea for an academic institution to run a restricted network. Of all places where the Internet should be free and wide-open, I'd say that higher learning is right up there. There's 65535 ports available, and every one of them is going to be used by some system for some reason, most likely not P2P file sharing. Not to mention the number of legitimate things you might be downloading for educational purposes via BitTorrent (Ubuntu ISO, anyone?). Anything more restrictive than blocking ports at the firewall (which is pretty pointless anyway. uTorrent allows you to change the port being used) is detrimental to an academic institution's learning environment.
They certainly don't have to. But if Microsoft insists on keeping their code secret at all costs, there will come a point when there is GPL code available to compete with absolutely everything that Microsoft produces. Heck, we're almost there already: OS, Office suite, Web browser, Mail client, development environment, games (for those that don't need the latest FPS from Megacorp, anyway).
That is the future that Microsoft wants to avoid at all costs; it will make the price of software as a commodity become $0. At some point, Microsoft will need to sell their software at $0 just to compete, which means that the IT industry becomes a service industry rather than manufacturing. That's a good thing for everyone (well, OK, maybe just me). Losses due to piracy become non-existant, since piracy is no longer a useful concept. Talented people will be paid to implement solutions, Microsoft or otherwise.
The best thing Microsoft can do is what Sun Microsystems already did: experiment with Community Source Licensing. No, we won't be able to do whatever we want with Windows source code, but we'll be able to mess around with it in our labs/basements/whatever and understand Windows better. They don't even have to accept changes from the community if they don't want, and they can keep the distribution rights to themselves.
Ultimately, it's a show of faith on Microsoft's part. They may believe they don't need to start playing nice with FSF supporters anytime soon, but I certainly don't think they have quite that luxury. FSF always had and will always have the potential of producing a whole bunch of software that's truly Free and in doing so take those "innovations" away from Microsoft. Microsoft needs to interoperate. The fastest way to do so is to show us their source code.
Well, maybe not guaranteed, but for some security requirements, point-to-point physical security is important. In those cases, business class DSL can't make such a claim, since there are many points along the way where it goes through a CO or somesuch thing. That's what the up-front cost is for: to run a wire from your network location to the main trunk without going through anything else. Admittedly, they don't need to charge so much for the actual network service once the line is run. I don't think that there's really much additional work to support the T1 line once the connection to the trunk is made; it's straight TCP/IP from there on out.
I needed "remedial" calculus in my first year of university. The IB program pushes all of the math requirements into your first two years of school (at least in the program I took) so there was an entire year where I did no particularly complicated math (only solving physics equations). I forgot nearly everything I'd learned the day after the IB final, leaving only what was necessary to get a good grade on the departmental final (50% of high school final grade).
I no longer use math beyond what I learned in ninth grade, except maybe for the odd algorithmic complexity analysis. I'm much better at writing code than solving hard math problems, but I certainly recognize that there's a requirement to be able to do both in some fields of engineering.
If there's enough qualified people coming from the math-heavy disciplines, then I don't think there's really anything to worry about. Math is overrated, IMHO. Now if every student also needed remedial science classes, that might be a problem...
That's a pretty dim view you have. Do you just think blogging is stupid, or that being a qualified geek is a requirement for such?
...find the on/off switch for your brain. Turn it on only when you are actually doing IT work. Make sure that your lips attach to the nearest PHB's ass when your brain is off.
Sorry, but my ego just doesn't fit in the tiny vial that you seem to have managed to fit yours into. Hubris is, after all, one of the traits of the best programmers. What a strange dilemma.
So many people in the big leagues steal ideas.
That's why I support GPL to the death.
As an artist who has been completely ripped off, I'm glad to see someone with the opportunity to expose the fraud. There's absolutely nothing to fear from Mr. Goldman if their citing of the 2001 web comic is correct. In fact, I'd hire a particularly expensive lawyer just to make sure the legal fees being sent to Mr. Goldman's office are as high as they can possibly be. I don't think there's a more dispicable trait in this world than to claim someone else's work as your own. You simultaneously prevent the real creator from benefiting himself through his work while creating a false image of your brilliance.
I'm sure there's probably enough laws if people were interested in applying existing laws in the context of the Internet. The main problem is more one of enforcement: if I see undesirable network traffic (spam, phishing, malformed packets, etc.), I have no idea who it is. It takes considerable resources and a subpoena to bring even the lowliest spammer or phisher to justice. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to divulge people's personal information without their knowledge or permission in most circumstances; we don't need additional laws to tell us that. We need to start catching and punishing those that do. I'm not really sure how we can do that.
The best place to start is probably at the domain registry level -- current regulations seem to allow for anonymous owners of Internet domains. We also need to make sure that people are responsible for their Internet connection. Most of the forensics I do lead back to a known network with a known owner. Let's make sure that those records aren't a joke. I've seen far too many netblock owners who don't respond to abuse complaints at all, or who list unreachable contacts for abuse reports. Finally, there's the odd irresponsible ISP who can't be bothered or don't care about accurate record-keeping. If those records' accuracy were enforced, and the owners legally responsible for all activity (hacker, cracker or otherwise) coming from their network, I think we'd get a long way. No one gets their domains revoked for malicious/undesirable activity on the 'net. Time to start pulling some plugs. After that, we'll worry about the rolling heads.
This is only, what, the 100th article since Vista was released that's completely devoid of content? Who here hasn't posted some kind of opinion about Vista?
I'm thinking there was a time when such a website would be considered humourous. The very name of it offends me. Time to go clean my rifle.
In the case of open APs, you are wrong. The fact that it is open simply does not have anything to do with the consent of the owner until the general public is technically capable of managing their own wireless network. Since we're not going to take wireless away from people who have no clue how it works, then we can't assume that access == consent.
Fine, then I'll challenge your morality. Please keep in mind that for this argument I speak as a person who just bought an AP from the store and does not have the technical know-how to protect themselves from your intrusion. Sure, you're only on my network to check your e-mail, but you've violated my privacy to do so. In addition to checking e-mail, you could also be spying on me. It's why you can't simply enter my house, sit there without taking anything and still be breaking the law. I didn't post a notice saying "Come on in" and you've assumed that my open AP is due to my being neighbourly and not a sign of incompetence on my part.
Unfortunately, we have to assume incompetence now. There's no requirements to get an AP except that you can afford one. I'd love nothing more than for there to be an Internet license, because then I'd have one and most people wouldn't. The harder the requirements the better, too. But, that's not the case, so as a society we continue to assume incompetence. I suppose if you have no moral problem from taking candy from a baby, then what you're suggesting is totally moral behaviour. I, however, would never stoop to such lows.
I'm not stupid enough to answer your questions about my intelligence, and I fail to see what my work habits have to do with anything.
Usually you won't get anything from the ISP. I start with ARIN and move to RIPE, APIC as the search suggests. I run into one of two scenarios:
1) There is a properly listed contact for abuse reports to whom I send the complete relevant log entries in text format. I usually don't hear from them again, but I also don't see any further network abuse from that netblock owner.
2) The owner of the IP block is a complete and utter joke. Examples: they don't correctly configure their reverse DNS, so they will claim that you have the wrong IP address, they list an abuse contact that doesn't speak English, they send spam in reply to your abuse complaint (that actually made me laugh for a moment). In this case, you also won't hear anything, but you should probably go to the effort of banning such an irresponsible network at your firewall.
Generally you won't hear anything. You won't know if someone has seen or acted on your complaint. Just think of how many network abuse complaints a large, responsible network would have to deal with daily. There's also dozens of fly-by-nights that make it clear that they won't make their network behave no matter how much you complain.
Surprisingly, I've found that larger netblock owners are quite responsible. A threat to block their entire netblock at your firewall is an effective one, easy to carry out and perfectly justified. Just be sure to remove the block if they show that they have fixed your complaint.
Jesus had something to say about rich people publicly giving away wealth. While I don't often quote him, I think it's particularly relevant here.
Cool. I have a computer program which solves those darned WEP riddles it keeps throwing at me. My computer reads the traffic from the router, determines the solution to the riddle and answers it correctly. After I answer the riddle, the router provides me with network information. I say it's a riddle because it doesn't take long for my computer to solve it. 'Cracking' takes much longer, I hear. I've done nothing but use the IEEE specification for radio frequency in that range. My computer has the appropriate FCC (or appropriate overseeing body) licenses to send and receive signals in that range, so I haven't done anything wrong. If the router didn't want me to talk to it, it shouldn't communicate with my legally licensed device. Or maybe the riddle should be more obviously a "KEEP OUT" sign.
Using your neighbour's Wi-Fi, by accident or otherwise, is not neighbourly behaviour. "I do it because I can" is a pathetic justification by control freaks who relish the idea of using their neighbour's stuff without their knowledge. It's one thing if you're just too poor to buy your own router and your neighbour's is ridiculously convenient. However, etiquette says you should still ask first. Most people who piggyback wi-fi do it with malicious intent, though, either to blame someone else for their online activities, or to monitor the network for private information. Cleverly hiding behind the "but the network gave me permission" excuse leads me to wonder what your motivation for using your neighbour's wi-fi is.
The black-hats rely on the fact that no one can see what they are doing to succeed. In many cases, they are still capable of keeping their illegal activities underground. But a guy sitting next to a building with a laptop is kind of obvious. Kudos to the cops for challenging his existence there. I'll even put up with some nosy cops myself to see guys like the one they got go away. Now if only there were an electronic cop that would bring those cowardly, anonymous, SSH phishers and spammers to the surface...
No need to make anything up. The litany of Bill Gates' sins could take up an entire year if read out loud. Then we move on to Ballmer...
When you're on top of the world, people always try to pull you down. In most cases, the people are justified.
Microsoft desperate? I wish.
But they have decided that there are enough corporate Firefox deployments that they can't afford to lose those potential WMV viewers. Any other pressure just slides right past Microsoft; they don't pay, so they don't matter.
"IIS ain't done until Java (and now Flash) won't run"?