I'm sure an apology or explanation is forthcoming. It's obviously an assinine statement, so I'm going to give RedHat the benefit of the doubt here.
The credit really should go to the countless programmers who have donated source code to the public since the invention of digital computers.
I mean, before there was commercial software, there was open source, pretty much.
(yeah ok, that's probably simplifying things, but I just mean that software was more free before it was more closed, secret government projects to win WWII notwithstanding)
Black Box B ("Carnovore 2.0") once they get so-called approval?
The shitty thing is that in a few years-- if not stopped now-- it'll all be taken for granted that Carnivore, the DMCA, etc. are ok. -------------------
I wish that I had never learned out that my best friend was a 6th grade junkie, that my 4th grade
girlfriend's father was a wife beater and a child mollester. I wish I hadn't learned that drunk driving would kill a classmate of mine in 8th grade
and I wish that I learned my uncle hadn't committed suicide when I was a freshman in highschool.
You're not asking for censorship. You're asking for a different reality. This isn't a matter of hiding a web page from you as a child, it's a matter of having had a fucked-up childhood in general.
Well, my faith in the technical competency of the FBI just went down a few notches, seeing as how they fell for the same trick that the New York Times did a few months back.
If they even can't get a PDF secure, how can we trust them with Carnivore?
W -------------------
"All non-relevant data is purged. Opponents of the system fear Carnivore does not discard private or irrelevant information, leading to potential abuses."
That is such bullshit.
Opponents of Carnivore (A) feel the ENTIRE SYSTEM is unconstitutional and (B) oppose the entirely SECRET NATURE of the system.
The FBI's attempt to isolate the point of controversy to a single point in the system is an obvious attempt to reframe the argument.
People are opposed to the entire thing, not just a part of it. People think abuse can happen at any point in carnivore's operation, not only after filtering is done. (The filtering criteria can be corrupt for example.)
Your suggestion that they build the browser part first and then add the other stuff sounds like a good idea, but one of the reasons they didn't do this is to make sure that they modular and xp facets of the architecture would actually work and support different types of apps.
By writing the email, address book, etc. they were breaking/fixing the modularity of the whole system. The bugs in design were exposed as other systems tried to use it. (This goes for some of the third party applications such as MozillaIRC and MLTerm).
Ie, the other applications were in part a debugging exercise to test the overall Mozilla engine.
If this wasn't such a close race I'd consider it. But there's still a scary chance that Bush may win (it's still neck-and-neck)... Gore is only edging Bush, and the perception that Gore will win may cause people to vote for Nader or worse, stay at home.
I don't want to throw a vote at Nader and have Bush be president. That would be insane.
READ *MY* LIPS: NO NEW BUSHES.
W -------------------
It's truly amazing when you think about it. Back in the 1960s the first mouse was the size of a small boat. It took a team of seven scientists to roll it around.
We really have come a long way. -------------------
Controlling the language often means controlling the argument. If this was called something oblique, half the people wouldn't have cared.
So for the benefit of the justice department, here are, some suggestions for nicer sounding names and of course names that obfuscate the intended purpose of the device.
* The Datastream Tickler
* Electro-Bad Guy Nabberometer
* The Anti-Evil Communication Filtration Device
* The eBloodhound safety system
* The TCP/IP En-Route Packet-Routing Intermediatary Device Monitor Analyzer System
* The Justice Box
* The Nothing-To-Worry-About System
* The Fluffy Bunny Machine
* The Enigma Trapped In A Riddle Machine
* The J. Edger Hoover Memorial Email Sniffer
It would also help if they painted the box red white and blue and put silver stars on it too. Then I'd be less likely to be concerned about potential abuses.
the DMCA sucks, we all agree. Is there anyone who can suggest a way it might be repealed or overturned? Can we in the slashdot community create and lobby for a bill which will undo the stuff that sucks in the DMCA?
Maybe we should be proposing a peice of legislation that the entire/. community (in the US) can rally behind and pressure lawmakers to pass.
Come on. As if people use Napster to download copies of songs they bought!
The author of the article totally "gets it"-- there's an inherent flaw in the idea that just because it's easy to steal means you should do it.
I think info wants to be free ultimately means that the information age makes it more and more tempting for info (songs, movies, etc.) to be transmitted, and at the same time, stolen. Eventually the capacity to steal information makes it all to easy to do so-- and maybe at that point the idea of proprietary information becomes outdated.
But I guess it's like water. You can get it for free pretty much anywhere (go find a public water fountain) but if you want the proprietary version (evian) you gotta pay. You can't just walk into a grocery store and take the bottled water cuz tap water is so easily obtained.
(I just posted this to Mozillazine. Note that most of this has to do with the Netscape repackaging of Mozilla, not with the Mozilla browser/platform itself)
Well I guess I'm the first one to review this for the Mac.
HOLY CRAP. We're in trouble.
All I can do is hope to holy hell that Netscape buries this release and no one in the general public ever downloads/installs PR2, ever.
Oh, and by the way, let me say in advance to whoever will argue the usual "this is pre-beta
software, blah blah blah blah" let me remind you that THIS IS THE FIRST EXPOSURE MANY
PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE WITH NETSCAPE 6. Their opinions will be formed largely
on their earliest experiences. The fact that netscape has released this is.. oh jesus....sweet jesus help
us.
I'm sorry, I'm still just totally stunned.
Let's start off with the download/install. I loaded the installer (very small, admittedly, though it
was located in a directory labeled for Mac OS 8.5. I use Mac OS 9, but after downloading the
readme confirmed it worked on 8.5 OR ABOVE) and took a look inside the folder. There's a
README file with astonishingly dry, boring installation instructions, and there's a License
Agreement file. No personality whatsoever. Nothing discussing this as an open source project,
nothing about what this release is for, no notes about reporting bugs, and no reminder that what
you're about to see is a work in progress and you can expect that it's going to be fixed and check
out a nightly of mozilla and if you want to help build it, here's what you do and....on and on.
What a totally missed opportunity to introduce the project.
Anyway, so I ran the very unappealing installer which asked me which components I wanted to
load (I have no need for German, wanted to try a mail/news free install, etc.)
1. It then installed everything, totally ignoring the components I selected.
2. It took about 50x
longer to download than the Mozilla nightlys. Why can I get the whole of Mozilla's.sit in less
than a minute on my DSL, unstuff and just run, but to get Netscape I had to go through a whole
rigamarole of downloading each peice, then processing them all which took over 10 minutes?!
(don't tell me the bigger size is the reason either. The "extras" might account for a little more
time, but not this astounding install-a-thon)
3. It then ran a profile manager thing and then, at my
foolish request, converted my Netscape 4.x profile to Netscape 6. This took, on my Powerbook
G3 about 5 drive-churning minutes.
4. Finally it finished. It then asked me to enter all kinds of
bizarro Netcenter-related stuff. I THINK I have a netcenter account (that's my.netscape.com,
right?) so I entered some info, which it took without asking for a password or anything. All I
have to ask is-- what the hell was it going on about? I just wanted to try the browser, not apply
for an East German exit visa.
5. FINALLY after more whirring churning, gurgling and spinning, I finally got something that looked like a browser, albeit wearing the CRAPPY "modern" skin.
6. Displayed on the screen was a totally ugly page with some kind of layered animation that was
moving so slowly I could see the redraws. The computer felt like it had ground to a halt.
I should mention that the above process took about 15 minutes. A typical Mozilla install for me
is, oh, maybe 3 minutes from download to running it. During the install, there was no caveat
about (1) how the zillions of files were temporary and that (2) I can expect vast improvements in
future versions and that (3) gosh, you can help with this fun internet experiment, and here's how.
In short, the installation experience just plain sucked.
I should also mention that PR2 starting up for the first time on my Mac feels about 1/3 the speed
of Mozilla's recent builds. The AIM client in the sidebar made me laugh out loud it was so slow
and awkward. After getting no response from double-clicking a buddy's name a few times to
send an AIM too, I suddenly locked up as about 9 IM windows slowly tiled themselves on the
screen. I stopped laughing and my jaw just hit the floor.
I must also add that during the install, the fake non-native widgets looked totally half-baked. I was
having flashbacks to Mac's infamous Word 6 port. I swear to god Java's Swing looks about 5x
classier than this awkward mess. Netscape, can you at least use "Classic" for the installer part so I
can see some normal looking buttons?
When i finally switched to the classic theme (the preferences wouldn't open at first, and then after
I selected it, I couldn't hit the OK button, I had to Cancel) things looked MUCH better, but it's
still abominably slow.
WHY OH WHY doesn't this default to classic?
Anyway, I honestly don't know what Netscape is thinking. I'm have a feeling this will be one of
the kinder reviews by a Mac user in the next few days. (I *LOVE* the Mozilla project you
guys...)
To anyone who may have come here who is not really familiar with Mozilla, please do NOT
judge Mozilla on the Netscape PR2 release. It doesn't have to be like this...
Wait for PR3, or go grab one of the M18 nightly builds: (LINK) -- it's a lot better.
W
PS - I hope that they've got better bug report handling than they did for PR1 cuz I have a feeling
they'll be overwhelmed.
PPS - Sorry for anyone I've offended. I'm still a believer in this project, and if I made any errors
I'm sure they'll be corrected quickly.
PPPS - Stupid new menu items of the day: "Print Plus" (?!!!!)
I wonder if a "unification effort" between staroffice's wp and abiword could bring the best of both together so that we don't get into a duplication-of-efforts type situation. I know competition is good for any community, but I'd rather see open souce advocates competing with their commercial counterparts than with each other.
I've used the nick "Waldo ?" since 1984 when I was a freshman in high school and that that oh-so-great "Hot For Teacher" video came out. (you know the one with "Sitttdowwwn wallldo." Riding the bus was hell.)
Back then the nick was used mostly on BBS's. The "?" (last name) was added because most bbs's required a First and Last name.
I've seen a ton of "Waldo"s since then. Just go on efnet (IRC) and try changing your nick to Waldo.
o The Web already provides a way to "ban" or restrict access to users. It's called password protection.
o If ebay can block a single user, can any webmaster place de facto bans on individuals or groups of individuals? Can I create a "for whites" only web page? Can I say this page is for athiests only, all others are forbidden to load it? Can I appeal to the government to have only beautiful women load my pages by my decree?
o Under what authority is any government able to force a "ban" on a particular user from accessing an online service? What prior examples of this are there?
o I've read some posts that suggest visiting a site when told explicitly not to is akin to hacking. (or cracking, for the extremely anal.) I don't think so. I can see that this is an unwanted computer connection or whatever. And while it's disruptive maybe, it's not a violation of security (and I'm sure computer crime has a clear legal definition). A company like ebay should realize that they are fostering an entire community. While they have every right to enforce their own communal laws, they don't to appeal to the government-at-large, which follows its own rules.
o Sometimes analogies are helpful when considering Internet issues, but in this case...are the web sites like stores at a mall? Are they like houses in a neighborhood? Is it like people who set up booths at a public park? I'm not sure it's so clear.
Slashdot Mirror
Correlation doesn't prove causality, but it certainly suggests it.
-------------------
I'm sure an apology or explanation is forthcoming. It's obviously an assinine statement, so I'm going to give RedHat the benefit of the doubt here.
The credit really should go to the countless programmers who have donated source code to the public since the invention of digital computers.
I mean, before there was commercial software, there was open source, pretty much.
(yeah ok, that's probably simplifying things, but I just mean that software was more free before it was more closed, secret government projects to win WWII notwithstanding)
W
-------------------
What's to stop the FBI from offering
Black Box A
for review, but using
Black Box B ("Carnovore 2.0") once they get so-called approval?
The shitty thing is that in a few years-- if not stopped now-- it'll all be taken for granted that Carnivore, the DMCA, etc. are ok.
-------------------
You're not asking for censorship. You're asking for a different reality. This isn't a matter of hiding a web page from you as a child, it's a matter of having had a fucked-up childhood in general.
W
-------------------
Once all the obvious fuckups are gone, all that will be left are the subtle ones, the ones that aren't so in-your-face humiliating for the censors.
At that point they'll say "it works" and the less high-profile but just as improperly-filtered sites will be lost behind the filters.
The point is that ANY attempt to censor like this is ultimately immoral and futile. Well, hopefully futile anyway.
Here's my question: With people claiming to be doing this for the children, who here wishes they had been censored MORE as a child?
Not me.
W
-------------------
After all, they circumvented technology designed to restrict access to information in the file.
W
-------------------
Well, my faith in the technical competency of the FBI just went down a few notches, seeing as how they fell for the same trick that the New York Times did a few months back.
If they even can't get a PDF secure, how can we trust them with Carnivore?
W
-------------------
I'm just a little confused. Is DivX software a pirated and hacked version of M$ software?
Or is it a pirated/hacked version of the MPEG group's softare? Or what?
ie, how "open" is it? How legal is it? (I mean the format/codec, etc. not the content that may be encoded)
W
-------------------
after carnivore filters the "suspect's data"
it says
"All non-relevant data is purged. Opponents of the system fear Carnivore does not discard private or irrelevant information, leading to potential abuses."
That is such bullshit.
Opponents of Carnivore (A) feel the ENTIRE SYSTEM is unconstitutional and (B) oppose the entirely SECRET NATURE of the system.
The FBI's attempt to isolate the point of controversy to a single point in the system is an obvious attempt to reframe the argument.
People are opposed to the entire thing, not just a part of it. People think abuse can happen at any point in carnivore's operation, not only after filtering is done. (The filtering criteria can be corrupt for example.)
This is so lame.
W
-------------------
Either this article is ancient or that's a typo.
W
-------------------
Your suggestion that they build the browser part first and then add the other stuff sounds like a good idea, but one of the reasons they didn't do this is to make sure that they modular and xp facets of the architecture would actually work and support different types of apps.
By writing the email, address book, etc. they were breaking/fixing the modularity of the whole system. The bugs in design were exposed as other systems tried to use it. (This goes for some of the third party applications such as MozillaIRC and MLTerm).
Ie, the other applications were in part a debugging exercise to test the overall Mozilla engine.
W
-------------------
If this wasn't such a close race I'd consider it. But there's still a scary chance that Bush may win (it's still neck-and-neck)... Gore is only edging Bush, and the perception that Gore will win may cause people to vote for Nader or worse, stay at home.
I don't want to throw a vote at Nader and have Bush be president. That would be insane.
READ *MY* LIPS: NO NEW BUSHES.
W
-------------------
to strip out the "protected" flag from the signal (see the watermark story from earlier today)...
Sigh. Must be some way to get the DMCA repealed, no?
-------------------
At about 57 seconds into the mouse video he says:
"I don't know why we call it a mouse. Sometimes I apologize- It started that way and we never did change it."
W
-------------------
It's truly amazing when you think about it. Back in the 1960s the first mouse was the size of a small boat. It took a team of seven scientists to roll it around.
We really have come a long way.
-------------------
Controlling the language often means controlling the argument. If this was called something oblique, half the people wouldn't have cared.
So for the benefit of the justice department, here are, some suggestions for nicer sounding names and of course names that obfuscate the intended purpose of the device.
* The Datastream Tickler
* Electro-Bad Guy Nabberometer
* The Anti-Evil Communication Filtration Device
* The eBloodhound safety system
* The TCP/IP En-Route Packet-Routing Intermediatary Device Monitor Analyzer System
* The Justice Box
* The Nothing-To-Worry-About System
* The Fluffy Bunny Machine
* The Enigma Trapped In A Riddle Machine
* The J. Edger Hoover Memorial Email Sniffer
It would also help if they painted the box red white and blue and put silver stars on it too. Then I'd be less likely to be concerned about potential abuses.
Thanks
W
-------------------
the DMCA sucks, we all agree. Is there anyone who can suggest a way it might be repealed or overturned? Can we in the slashdot community create and lobby for a bill which will undo the stuff that sucks in the DMCA?
/. community (in the US) can rally behind and pressure lawmakers to pass.
Maybe we should be proposing a peice of legislation that the entire
Just a thought
W
-------------------
Come on. As if people use Napster to download copies of songs they bought!
The author of the article totally "gets it"-- there's an inherent flaw in the idea that just because it's easy to steal means you should do it.
I think info wants to be free ultimately means that the information age makes it more and more tempting for info (songs, movies, etc.) to be transmitted, and at the same time, stolen. Eventually the capacity to steal information makes it all to easy to do so-- and maybe at that point the idea of proprietary information becomes outdated.
But I guess it's like water. You can get it for free pretty much anywhere (go find a public water fountain) but if you want the proprietary version (evian) you gotta pay. You can't just walk into a grocery store and take the bottled water cuz tap water is so easily obtained.
That's my analogy for the day. Enjoy
W
-------------------
(I just posted this to Mozillazine. Note that most of this has to do with the Netscape repackaging of Mozilla, not with the Mozilla browser/platform itself)
.sit in less
Well I guess I'm the first one to review this for the Mac.
HOLY CRAP. We're in trouble.
All I can do is hope to holy hell that Netscape buries this release and no one in the general public ever downloads/installs PR2, ever.
Oh, and by the way, let me say in advance to whoever will argue the usual "this is pre-beta
software, blah blah blah blah" let me remind you that THIS IS THE FIRST EXPOSURE MANY
PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE WITH NETSCAPE 6. Their opinions will be formed largely
on their earliest experiences. The fact that netscape has released this is.. oh jesus....sweet jesus help
us.
I'm sorry, I'm still just totally stunned.
Let's start off with the download/install. I loaded the installer (very small, admittedly, though it
was located in a directory labeled for Mac OS 8.5. I use Mac OS 9, but after downloading the
readme confirmed it worked on 8.5 OR ABOVE) and took a look inside the folder. There's a
README file with astonishingly dry, boring installation instructions, and there's a License
Agreement file. No personality whatsoever. Nothing discussing this as an open source project,
nothing about what this release is for, no notes about reporting bugs, and no reminder that what
you're about to see is a work in progress and you can expect that it's going to be fixed and check
out a nightly of mozilla and if you want to help build it, here's what you do and....on and on.
What a totally missed opportunity to introduce the project.
Anyway, so I ran the very unappealing installer which asked me which components I wanted to
load (I have no need for German, wanted to try a mail/news free install, etc.)
1. It then installed everything, totally ignoring the components I selected.
2. It took about 50x
longer to download than the Mozilla nightlys. Why can I get the whole of Mozilla's
than a minute on my DSL, unstuff and just run, but to get Netscape I had to go through a whole
rigamarole of downloading each peice, then processing them all which took over 10 minutes?!
(don't tell me the bigger size is the reason either. The "extras" might account for a little more
time, but not this astounding install-a-thon)
3. It then ran a profile manager thing and then, at my
foolish request, converted my Netscape 4.x profile to Netscape 6. This took, on my Powerbook
G3 about 5 drive-churning minutes.
4. Finally it finished. It then asked me to enter all kinds of
bizarro Netcenter-related stuff. I THINK I have a netcenter account (that's my.netscape.com,
right?) so I entered some info, which it took without asking for a password or anything. All I
have to ask is-- what the hell was it going on about? I just wanted to try the browser, not apply
for an East German exit visa.
5. FINALLY after more whirring churning, gurgling and spinning, I finally got something that looked like a browser, albeit wearing the CRAPPY "modern" skin.
6. Displayed on the screen was a totally ugly page with some kind of layered animation that was
moving so slowly I could see the redraws. The computer felt like it had ground to a halt.
I should mention that the above process took about 15 minutes. A typical Mozilla install for me
is, oh, maybe 3 minutes from download to running it. During the install, there was no caveat
about (1) how the zillions of files were temporary and that (2) I can expect vast improvements in
future versions and that (3) gosh, you can help with this fun internet experiment, and here's how.
In short, the installation experience just plain sucked.
I should also mention that PR2 starting up for the first time on my Mac feels about 1/3 the speed
of Mozilla's recent builds. The AIM client in the sidebar made me laugh out loud it was so slow
and awkward. After getting no response from double-clicking a buddy's name a few times to
send an AIM too, I suddenly locked up as about 9 IM windows slowly tiled themselves on the
screen. I stopped laughing and my jaw just hit the floor.
I must also add that during the install, the fake non-native widgets looked totally half-baked. I was
having flashbacks to Mac's infamous Word 6 port. I swear to god Java's Swing looks about 5x
classier than this awkward mess. Netscape, can you at least use "Classic" for the installer part so I
can see some normal looking buttons?
When i finally switched to the classic theme (the preferences wouldn't open at first, and then after
I selected it, I couldn't hit the OK button, I had to Cancel) things looked MUCH better, but it's
still abominably slow.
WHY OH WHY doesn't this default to classic?
Anyway, I honestly don't know what Netscape is thinking. I'm have a feeling this will be one of
the kinder reviews by a Mac user in the next few days. (I *LOVE* the Mozilla project you
guys...)
To anyone who may have come here who is not really familiar with Mozilla, please do NOT
judge Mozilla on the Netscape PR2 release. It doesn't have to be like this...
Wait for PR3, or go grab one of the M18 nightly builds: (LINK) -- it's a lot better.
W
PS - I hope that they've got better bug report handling than they did for PR1 cuz I have a feeling
they'll be overwhelmed.
PPS - Sorry for anyone I've offended. I'm still a believer in this project, and if I made any errors
I'm sure they'll be corrected quickly.
PPPS - Stupid new menu items of the day: "Print Plus" (?!!!!)
-------------------
or freenet...
or any of the others.
-------------------
The RIAA will look at the results of a boycott (fewer sales) and use it as an argument that mp3s are hurting their market.
-------------------
I wonder if a "unification effort" between staroffice's wp and abiword could bring the best of both together so that we don't get into a duplication-of-efforts type situation. I know competition is good for any community, but I'd rather see open souce advocates competing with their commercial counterparts than with each other.
W
-------------------
I've used the nick "Waldo ?" since 1984 when I was a freshman in high school and that that oh-so-great "Hot For Teacher" video came out. (you know the one with "Sitttdowwwn wallldo." Riding the bus was hell.)
Back then the nick was used mostly on BBS's. The "?" (last name) was added because most bbs's required a First and Last name.
I've seen a ton of "Waldo"s since then. Just go on efnet (IRC) and try changing your nick to Waldo.
W
-------------------
o The Web already provides a way to "ban" or restrict access to users. It's called password protection.
o If ebay can block a single user, can any webmaster place de facto bans on individuals or groups of individuals? Can I create a "for whites" only web page? Can I say this page is for athiests only, all others are forbidden to load it? Can I appeal to the government to have only beautiful women load my pages by my decree?
o Under what authority is any government able to force a "ban" on a particular user from accessing an online service? What prior examples of this are there?
o I've read some posts that suggest visiting a site when told explicitly not to is akin to hacking. (or cracking, for the extremely anal.) I don't think so. I can see that this is an unwanted computer connection or whatever. And while it's disruptive maybe, it's not a violation of security (and I'm sure computer crime has a clear legal definition). A company like ebay should realize that they are fostering an entire community. While they have every right to enforce their own communal laws, they don't to appeal to the government-at-large, which follows its own rules.
o Sometimes analogies are helpful when considering Internet issues, but in this case...are the web sites like stores at a mall? Are they like houses in a neighborhood? Is it like people who set up booths at a public park? I'm not sure it's so clear.
W
-------------------
I'm so sick of this hacker/cracker bs.
W
-------------------