If this guy had simply incorporated himself and listed himself as the CEO, he'd be exempt from criminal copyright infringement. Instead, his company would get sued by Nintendo, probably lose, get placed in receivership, and he'd be free to repeat the scheme ad nauseum.
Kind of interesting how companies like Viacom can commit copyright infringement (the use of a person's Youtube video) and get away with it, while this guy gets jail time.
Consider the Sony case - they planted a virus on a user's PC, and no one went to jail.
Just goes to show that to have rights in America, you need to be incorporated.
I have to disagree with your statement wrt to CAD software. Yes, it is awfully expensive, but then, so is an engineer's time. It makes economic sense to pay for CAD software, because the increase in efficiency in the hands of a professional saves the company a lot of time in the long run.
CAD is a hard market; it has relatively small number of users (compared to games, or operating systems), is quite complex, subject to ever changing requirements, and expected to work flawlessly. Its price reflects the effort put in to it.
Piracy for games and operating systems is different than that of professional development tools. Companies that pirate CAD software often make millions of dollars from their designs; why can't they pay the CAD vendor? It's simple greed on their part. Contrast this with Microsoft, which did leverage its monopoly position to gouge consumers - if you didn't pay Microsoft, you couldn't even boot that several thousand dollar machine you just bought. Just because one player in the software game is greedy and immoral doesn't mean all players are that way.
I am planning their destruction, a VM that runs on Intel hardware but responds just like a mainframe,
Good luck.
I used to work in a mainframe shop, and while the latest Intel hardware can run circles around one of the processors on a mainframe, it can't beat all 16 of them by any standard:
In the first place, the mainframe has 255 escon channels for IO; the PC architecture is limited to just 16 interrupts; sure, you can daisy chain more devices to a PC, but you have to share the bandwidth. (That is, assuming you could even fit them in the server case).
A mainframe has 16 redundant processors, with each processor's twin checking the results of the other (that's 32 total "cores"). If any processor goes flaky, its twin restarts the instruction and the OS calls home to IBM. A few hours later, IBM reps show up to swap out the processor while the machine is running. IOW, that 24 hour payroll run will still get done, even if the processor on which it is running catches fire in the process. When was the last time an Intel server had its processor swapped out without powering down the machine and losing all of the threads in the process?
Mainframes have the option of integrated cryptographic processors to which they can offload encryption tasks; can you even get crypto hardware on a PC? Even if you could, is it standardized and well-supported?
A small mainframe system is 4000 modules. To port these to a PC, using a different language, would probably take the average IS department several years. That is, assuming they have the source code for all of them, and the staff understands how they function and interact. Yes, it's doable, but for what benefit? So you and future programmers don't have to be bothered to learn COBOL, or mainframe assembler?
Most of all, mainframes routinely run for years without a reboot. The average scheduled downtime for a mainframe is less than 5 minutes a year; the unscheduled downtime is practically non-existent. Considering the average PC hardware experiences a hardware failure on average once every three years, it's likely your mainframe killer PC will die before they can migrate all of the applications off the mainframe. That is, assuming they even let you take the risk...
I'm not really a big mainframe fan, but they do have their place in the business world. Businesses don't care about MIPS or running the latest games; they want a system that works reliably with a predictable cost structure. IBM mainframes provide that.
I know it sounds innocent and all, but how long before that photoshopped wedding picture becomes evidence in a legal case? Considering that people at the wedding claim to remember seeing him there, this could be really problematic in a court of law.
Suppose, for example, that someone affiliated with the relative in question was murdered not far from the reception on the same day. After a few years of dead-end leads, the police finally start to investigate the wedding party, and ask those in the photo about their whereabouts on that fateful day. I imagine the exchange would go something like this:
Officer friendly: And where were you on the wedding day - how did you get to the reception?
Innocent relative: I was out of town that weekend.
Officer friendly: Why don't you just tell us the truth? We know you were at the wedding because your relatives saw you there. We've even got this picture here which proves it.
(later, in court) Prosecutor: And the accused stated that he was out of town, when this photo clearly shows him at the wedding and several guests remember seeing him there.
If it could be useful for invading someone's privacy, law enforcement will expect to have access to it. Consider, for example, that the RIAA lawsuits were enabled by the fact that ISPs logged (and kept the logs) of the IP addresses and to whom they were assigned.
Consider how an attacker could use the logs as a means of figuring out how your software functions, and how to defeat it. "Buffer overflow on line __LINE__" - while well-intentioned - would be a bad message to log. If you must log defects, sanitize the output so that it doesn't reveal more information than is necessary for the reader to know.
In general, don't log normal operation beyond the startup and initialization messages. Users have this uncanny habit of looking to the logs for ways to blame the software for their own ineptitude. A verbose tirade of log messages will often provide them with ample ammunition for blame deflection and result in unnecessary service calls and potential misunderstanding. Especially if the log messages are cryptic and could be misconstrued to indicate that there is a bug with your software.
With respect to the above point, make sure that any errors which could be caused by misconfiguration or user error clearly indicate that the problem lies with the user or configuration.
When you do have to log a bug, include only the technical information necessary for the person doing the debugging. The point is to make it sufficiently technical that you have a starting point for debugging without giving the end user something with which they can hang you. Reporting a seg fault won't do you any good if you don't have the means to determine where and why it happened.
But it doesn't make it a scientific theory, either.
I like ID, but it's not science. If you could get scientists to stick to the parts of evolution supported by the evidence, maybe fewer ID proponents would be calling their position scientific.
Philosophy is great, science is great, but you're just asking for trouble if you present one as the other. I think it would be better to teach children to recognize the difference between philosophy and science, and present both ID and evolution as respective examples.
Though ID does have some flaws, so did the early theories of evolution. I like ID because it presents a philosophical explanation of life's origins which is based on scientific evidence. That is, it demonstrates how one can use philosophical analysis of scientific evidence to understand phenomena which may fall outside the grasp of scientific study.
I would like to see children (and the population in general) learn that science is not some omniscient deity; that it has limitations on the kind of problems it can address; and that in spite of its limitations, can be useful to the ordinary person. The whole global warming debate has been more about whether or not someone trusts science (and the degree to which they do) than an argument based on the merits of the climate models themselves. If we could get people to understand science, and its inherent limitations, we'd have more thoughtful discourse on topics like GW than, "Scientists say this... so it must be true".
The police used to hate CBers because avoiding speed traps used to be as simple as listening to your CB. When a CBer passes a speedtrap, he broadcasts his location to anyone within listening distance.
Now, there are internet sites which track speed traps. Information is power, webcams are cheap. We might as well turn our own cameras toward the street.
I'm not quite sure why everyone is so up in arms about this, when the police have been able to track you - and even bug your conversations - with your own cellphone. Sure, you can take out the battery, but then what's the point of carrying a cell in the first place?
Chances are, the next car you buy will include the ability for the police to track you with the vehicle's own GPS. If you get the bluetooth option, they'll be able to bug your car, too. That is, if you're one of the few people left on the planet without a cell phone.
For the truly paranoid, I'm sure there are some relatively easy ways to detect if you've been bugged:
Park your car in view of your security camera. You do have a security camera, right?
Take pictures of your engine compartment and underbody. From time to time, compare your car to the pictures.
The real problem I see in all of this is not the surveillance per se, but rather, the attitude of suspicion and outright hostility the police have toward the general public, and the exercise of our God-given freedoms. The surveillance society would be a moot point if our justice system actually acquitted the innocent reliably. Now, it seems as if law enforcement is purely arbitrary and capricious, and that, combined with effortless surveillance and the availability of lethal force is a recipe for disaster.
Killing someone - whether up close and personal - or from halfway around the world, should make someone feel uncomfortable. When war becomes little more than a video game, without a view of the human cost, tyranny becomes inevitable. Just witness what happened with "smart weapons" and the U.S. -> high tech weaponry and minimal collateral damage made it all the more easily to justify invading a country under the guise of liberating them.
In a very elegant manner, precisely why I've switched all of my home boxen to Linux. The end user's experience does not matter to the AV companies; it matters only tangentially to Microsoft. What matters most, is money. That is, their profitability, not mine.
If I paid for antivirus software, I would expect it to protect me from all viruses, not merely the ones trying to rip off major corporations. You need to understand the perspective of the typical Windows user:
In the first place, the box is already slow because its running Windows. The typical user is either lacks the sufficient skill/time/money to switch their OS, or their corporate policy prevents them from doing so.
Now, we have to run AV software, which slows the machine down even more.
And worse, it doesn't completely protect us, it just stops the major attacks. My company's tech support still have to do virus cleanup from time to time, though the incidents are fewer and farther between.
And worst of all, the users machine is slowed down to the point where it actually affects their ability to get work done, and it is your fault. I'm running a 3.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM XP machine, and I can still watch it draw the windows and menus. My 1997 Pentium 120MHz system with 16 MB of RAM running Windows 95 could draw the windows faster than I could see them, but for some reason, in this brave new world of XP and AV, I'm getting a user experience that is strangely reminiscent of the 80's.
A few years ago, I worked as a Linux developer. Since then, I've switched jobs and am now using a Windows box. Two things occur to me:
When I used Linux, I never noticed how "fast" the system was because generally speaking, it just worked. Now, I can time things like restoring a program from the taskbar with a stopwatch. Using the minute hand. I've got apps that take 90 seconds to start working again. Firefox can load./ in the time it takes Windows to draw a single menu.
I shipped around a hundred times more lines of code when I was using Linux. Yes, you read that right: I'm about a hundred times more productive on Linux compared to Windows. (Yes, the issue of productivity is complicated, but as much as my professional pride would like to think otherwise, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the sluggishness of my workstation does affect my productivity. Sometimes, a poor workman's tools really are to blame...)
So, when I have the choice, and my time is important - that is, when it means money - I use Linux. Apparently my time isn't considered important to the AV companies. They think I can just sit on my hands and do nothing while a file is scanned. What happens is that these little annoyances add up, and I end up working overtime because some AV company is all about profit, not productivity.
Never underestimate the power of the investigative reporter.
Reporters earn their living finding secrets that powerful people don't want exposed. If any one of the reporters at CNN has a technical background, they stand a better than even chance of finding out who perpetrated the attacks.
The real problem comes in bring action against someone who is likely outside the US. Then again, CNN probably has offices in every country, so this might not be as difficult for them as it would for a purely US corporation.
To buy an Asus EEE PC. Not that IBM has a bad reputation with respect to being Linux compatible, but it was nice to have it come installed and just work out of the box.
The problem with your argument is that you just stated an opinion contrary to what most of/. believes.
An aggressive prosecutor could now charge you with a felony for violating/.'s ToS:
No user shall transmit Content or otherwise conduct or participate in any activities on SourceForge Sites that, in the judgment of SourceForge, is likely to be prohibited by law in any applicable jurisdiction, including laws governing the encryption of software, the export of technology, the transmission of obscenity, or the permissible uses of intellectual property
So if one of those libertarian types at SourceForge considers your comment obscene, or merely likely to be considered so, you can be charged with a federal felony for violating/.'s terms of service...
This case isn't about Lori Drew's bullying - though it should be. Rather, the prosecutor is trying to make the argument that violating a website's ToS is a crime, and a felony at that.
Almost every website has in their ToS a clause that prohibits, "Otherwise objectionable content..." Therefore, if you post or email something that anyone would consider objectionable, you can be charged with a felony. Make no mistake, this case is about eroding free speech freedoms, not the consequences that may come from something someone says. It makes the following discussions illegal and subject to potential prosecution:
All political posts - a republican may find something a democrat says "objectionable" and vice-versa.
Any post about medical conditions, most notably, but not limited to, questions about sex.
Any post discussing disabilities.
Any post by a homosexual, (because fundamentalist Christians might object...)
Any post by a Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc... because an atheist might consider it objectionable.
Any post by an atheist (because a Christian might object...)
etc...
Almost any opinion that someone could hold is objectionable or offensive to someone else. If this prosecution is successful, the first ammendment will have been killed by fiat.
Attempted murder charges against Lori Drew would be more appropriate.
It's interesting the passage you quote was often directed toward those who had to deal with their Roman occupiers, who, interestingly, treated their Jewish subjects much like the US government treats its own people. With a government like this, who needs terrorists?
I wonder if a Roman citizen would tolerate the indignities that American citizens tolerate on a regular basis. When the apostle Paul (a Roman citizen) was falsely accused, he made the town authorites escort him out (thus embarrasing them for their maltreatment of him) rather than allowing them to put him away quietly.
It does have its limitations. It's more of a share and share alike license than a path to public domain software.
If I, as an open source author, want to give my code back to the community, with no strings attached, public domain is the only way to go. That way, anyone can use the code for any purpose they see fit. It is truly a gift.
But GPL'ed code is not a gift, it is a license. It seeks to enforce - through copyright law - the notion of free software. That is, you can't take my free program and add in proprietary changes, and add restrictions to the use of the code.
It's a good license. It does bring balance to the big picture.
But it doesn't address one of the fundamental problems of open source: it's difficult to make a living writing open source code. Sure, you can make a living supporting open source code, but it is very difficult for the average programmer to make a living on what open source pays (usually nothing).
Without the proprietary model, I would have to make a living doing something other than writing code. Which would mean, that because I would truly be an amateur programmer, my code would not be as good as it would otherwise. I'm able to make a meaningful contribution to open source code in part because I write code for a living.
The consequence of being employed to write code is that I can't contribute code which would interfere with my employer's business interests. So while I'm able to use my general programming skills to benefit open source, I cannot produce open-source software in my area of expertise. Which, to me, is a real problem. But the GPL doesn't solve the ethical dilemna of an employee undermining his employer's business model. A large portion of us rely on the revenues generated by the pay-per-license proprietary model; without it, our customers would have to pay inordinately large sums of money up front for software, and we couldn't introduce new and innovative features because the budget wouldn't support it.
I am a good programmer, and I do produce something of value when I write code. I have no problem with people sharing the code that I write, but we as a society need to understand that programmers need to be paid for their work. That is, if we are to have any reasonable expectation of software quality. Without the experience that comes from writing code professionally, the quality of software would be absolutely abysmal.
And open source does have the proprietary model to thank for its quality - typically, the code written for open source projects is written the way a programmer knows it should be written, rather than taking shortcuts because of scheduling and marketing issues.
I like open source, but I realize that I, and other programmers, need to be able to make a living writing code if we're going to contribute meaningful software to the world. Unfortunately, the GPL doesn't address this problem in an economically viable way. Even Stallman admits that in a free software world, programmers wouldn't make nothing, they'd simply make less. Problem is, I have a family to feed, and don't have the option of making any less money; if the whole world went open source, I'd have to go into management just to feed my family. I don't think it's very ethical to ask my children to starve so you can have your software free of charge.
The GPL is good, and needed, but there needs to be a balance. I can contribute to free software because my employer's proprietary model allows me to make a living writing code.
Even a modest artillery battery, on a bad day, with the hot, dusty wind in their face and half their crew asleep, can manage to put 18 rounds downrange, per minute. With a 30 second flight time (hey, it varies with range), you've got less than two seconds per projectile if you're going to destroy them all. And the laser takes several seconds per round to destroy it. And that's without the coating.
So here's what you do: you fire a 'smurf' round - that is, a hollow steel round as your first projectile. Because it doesn't have any explosive, the laser will track it and burn it until it hits the ground, paving the way for the remaining rounds to come through without any problem.
Granted, I think lasers are cool and all, but we already have anti-rocket systems like the Navy's phalanx which seem to be much more effective. The problem is that something like a 3000 rpm chain gun can put more energy on the target than most tactical lasers. Even more embarassing, a.50 cal round can pierce 2 inches of solid steel at ranges greater than 3 kilometers. A single.50 cal round impacting nose of an artillery shell would detonate it instantly. Why not use those precision servos to direct a weapon with real takedown power? Ballistic flight trajectories aren't that hard to calculate.
And unlike the laser, artillery can hit things beyond visual range, in places obstructed from direct line of sight. Put yourself in a valley, and your laser defense system might not even track the round until its already too late. I think it's a step in the right direction, but they clearly need much more powerful lasers to be practical.
I was thinking of this more along the lines of what TPM has been marketed for - i.e., a way for third party vendors to verify that your OS has the proper DRM installed. And the security of this scheme is defeated if the TPM chip will release the keys to the disk if the kernel and bootloader are signed by me. A virus which compromised the kernel after boot could simply pull the keys out of memory, store them to disk, patch the kernel on disk, program the TPM chip with the patched kernel's checksum, and be up and running after a reboot. Given that Vista has more security holes than swiss cheese, it's a virtual certainty that this is going to happen. A particularly nasty variant would simply program the TPM chip with a random checksum, thus turning your computer into a brick - you'd lose all of your data on your encrypted hard drive.
But Microsoft seemed to market this as a way to get studios to buy into Windows Media DRM. I imagine the thinking went something like this:
Big Media Vendor: I'd like to sell you this DRM'ed media. But first, let me have your kernel checksum...
Vista PC (owned by John Smith): Hey! TPM chip, what's my kernel checksum?
TPM chip: 0xDEADCODE
Vista PC: Send 0xDEADCODE over the network to BMV.
Network Sniffing Hacker: Hey, check out what I found sniffing the wire...
BMV: Okay, your PC checks out, let me send you the keys to your DRM'ed media. Be sure to store these only in your TPM chip! (debits John Smith's account)
Vista PC: Okay, I'm only going to store these keys in my TPM chip.
Vista PC: TPM chip, store these keys...
Network Sniffing Hacker: Hey, guess what I found floating across the wire: DRM'ed songs with the keys...
Network Sniffing Hacker: Hey, Big Media, give me your songs.
Big Media Vendor: Okay, but first give me your kernel checksum...
Hacker: Okay, um, here it is: 0xDEADCODE
BMV: Okay, your PC checks out, let me send you the keys to your DRM'ed media. Be sure to store these only in your TPM chip! (debits John Smith's account)
Hacker: Ok, I promise I'll put them in my *ahem* TPM chip (writes them to disk).
Is that the whole security premise of "trusted bootchain" is wrong.
Granted, that's one way of infecting a machine. But we haven't seen BIOS bootsector-type viruses since the 80's. Why would you write a bootsector virus when you can just crack the host OS?
Vista is huge, and having a secure bootchain won't change the fact that it's probably riddled with security holes anyway. Someone able to reverse engineer the checksumming code can simply modify the checksummer so that the bootchain always passes validation. What is to stop virus running with administrative user priveledges from modifying this key system binary (probably a DLL, at that!) under the auspices of a "system update"?
So what you get is an OS which can be modified to report that it is secure, when in fact it is not. This is the whole problem with the "trusted computing" initiative - others - presumably media companies - are trusting your machine to tell them that it is secure. It's a broken security model from the outset - who's to say you aren't running Windows in a virtual machine? - and only inconveniences the users.
FTA: Only a single case in four years, Capitol v. Thomas,11 has ever gone to trial, and that one only because the judge denied the defendant's attorney's motion for leave to withdraw.
The possible reasons behind this interest me:
The defendants knew they were guilty and just decided to settle, or:
The defendants realized that, guilty or innocent, it's just cheaper to settle, and possibly:
Those with the resources to stand up to the RIAA find that - with the exception of the above case - they're all bark and no bite.
Which means that while you might not be able to avoid being sued by the RIAA, it isn't likely that you'll actually get to trial. Which futher implies that:
The RIAA is using the courts to run an extortion racket.
It seems that only the most unconscionable, reckless, and irresponsible corporate officers would authorize settling a debt for pennies on the dollar, yet this is exactly what the likes of Vivendi, Sony, etc... propose with their settlement offers. For this to be a legitimate debt, the CEOs of said corporations are breaching their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.
I'm wondering if I could buy stock in Sony and sue the CEO for devaluing the company's assets. After all, if downloading really does cost several hundred thousand dollars per infringer, why are they settling for a few thousand?
Statistically, I'm as likely to be struck by lightning as I am to be killed by a terrorist...
...and just as statistically likely to be the subject of an illegal wiretap. The fact of the matter is that the Executive branch doesn't have the resources to keep tabs on even ten percent of the population, and, unless you're a political activist/terrorist, they don't care what you're doing anyway. You and I aren't changing anyone's mind about political issues...
If statistical insignificance was the measure of safety, then neither terrorism nor illegal wiretapping would be anything to worry about. People right now are dying of starvation and we're whining about wiretapping?
Rather, it's the principle of the thing. You've got two sides, both sticking to their principles, to the extreme. And (sadly), neither side is offering arguments which would compel an otherwise indifferent bystander to action. Granted, I can understand how a government acting outside the law is problematic, but you need to show actual harm to the guy on the street before he's going to buy your argument.
Apple will actually take note of these questions, and instruct the genius bars to simply pass out a flyer with the company line to anyone who asks, and then take the next customer in line.
Some zealot will probably spend a half hour or more in traffic on the way to their appointment, burning 12 gallons of gas in their 1975 Pontiac (because they refuse to buy a newer car because it has proprietary software), only to be dismissed in 30 seconds by an Apple employee...
A: The Church. The community of faith saw to it that the Gospels were written down, and before that, the Jews saw to it that Scripture was recorded. These groups recognized these books as the word of God.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible is the "correct" one. When it comes to matters of interpretation, the Magisterium (that is, Catholic Tradition) can often be illuminating. It shouldn't surprise anyone if the two are in accord. You would expect a witness and his written testimony to agree; or a professor and his thesis to agree; why would the Bible be any different?
This is no secret - its a matter of historical fact. From time to time, some group will try to split away from the Church based on their own, unique, interpretation of the Bible. Often times, such interpretations are really heretical, because they deny things which, while they may be ambiguous in the Bible, were not at all ambiguous to early Christians. You know, things like the divinity of Jesus, and such.
So when a Catholic has a question of a matter of the faith, he is in the right to ask the Church. Because they know. In two thousand years, most of the questions of faith the common person experiences have already be asked and answered and written down. You just have to look.
Personally, I would like to see children protected -- but not from porn.
I take your statement to infer that you'd rather that children be psychologically damaged to the extent that they can't enjoy sex by the time they're old enough to engage in it? Hopefully not, but I've noticed that there seems to be some misunderstandings about the reasons legislators pass laws against porn. It isn't about forcing some Puritan morality on the public at large. It really is about protecting the children - not your children - theirs.
Most girls don't look like models. Most guys don't have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size/12 inches [NSFW] to satisfy their potential mate. What happens when little girls and boys look at porn is that they form unrealistic expectations of sex:
Boys start to believe that they're somehow inadequate if they don't have a huge penis.
Girls start to believe that boys won't like them if they don't look like a model, or if they're too fat, to small on top, etc...
Boys start to believe a woman's sole purpose is to satisfy his carnal desires. They start to believe that all women are simply there for their sexual gratification, it doesn't take much of a stretch to see how this leads to men overlooking, if not condoning, rape.
Girls start to believe that the only thing a man wants is sex, and without a good body, they stand no chance of finding a husband.
The complications and anxieties that such beliefs can form is left as an exercise for the reader. But I myself on more than one occasion have had to deal with the fallout from the porn industry, and am well aware that it does damage people. Perhaps not in the immediately recognizable, medical, or clinical sense, but it definitely affects people in a mental and spiritual way.
And honestly, why would you want to take anything away from a person's future enjoyment of sex? So you can maintain your own fantasies about what sex would be like if you could get it?
This law isn't about denying porn to those who will make an effort to get it, but rather, about protecting children from inadvertently stumbling upon it. As a parent, I don't want my child's Google search for "hot fire truck" to serve up porn. Until I'm convinced that an innocent phrase won't turn up porn, my kid isn't going to use the internet. So what a law like this really does is allow children to be exposed to the internet, because without such controls, parents such as myself just won't let our children use the internet.
When I was growing up, I was allowed unfettered access to a computer. Sadly, because of the widespread availability of porn (among other things...), I'm not sure if I'll be able to extend that same privilege to my children. And that's quite sad, that in a mere 20 years, the environment of learning and discovery with which I grew up has been co-opted from an intellectual playground into merely just another content distribution mechanism for the masses.
Just the harbinger of the wider economic collapse
on
IT Jobs To Drop In 2009
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This doesn't surprise me too much. There's been a bad recession on the horizon for quite some time now, and it looks like it's coming home to roost.
For the first time since I graduated college, I'm not getting called for interviews, even for positions which I'm eminently qualified. It's getting tougher for people to find jobs, regardless of what they do. I've heard Republicans say that we're going to be in the worst recession since the Great Depression - which means that we're probably in quite a bit of trouble.
Perhaps I'm speculating a little too much here, but I'll bet the money that would have gone for IT salaries, etc... is now going into the coffers of the oil companies. Because our economy is so dependent upon oil for everything we do from growing crops to power generation to transportion, any rise in the price of oil is going to have a ripple effect.
Perhaps GW and Co saw peak oil coming and thought if we could just take Iraq, that we'd have enough oil. Perhaps they didn't understand that the loss of Iraq's oil on the world market would drive up prices - or maybe they did...
Slashdot Mirror
If this guy had simply incorporated himself and listed himself as the CEO, he'd be exempt from criminal copyright infringement. Instead, his company would get sued by Nintendo, probably lose, get placed in receivership, and he'd be free to repeat the scheme ad nauseum.
Kind of interesting how companies like Viacom can commit copyright infringement (the use of a person's Youtube video) and get away with it, while this guy gets jail time.
Consider the Sony case - they planted a virus on a user's PC, and no one went to jail.
Just goes to show that to have rights in America, you need to be incorporated.
I have to disagree with your statement wrt to CAD software. Yes, it is awfully expensive, but then, so is an engineer's time. It makes economic sense to pay for CAD software, because the increase in efficiency in the hands of a professional saves the company a lot of time in the long run.
CAD is a hard market; it has relatively small number of users (compared to games, or operating systems), is quite complex, subject to ever changing requirements, and expected to work flawlessly. Its price reflects the effort put in to it.
Piracy for games and operating systems is different than that of professional development tools. Companies that pirate CAD software often make millions of dollars from their designs; why can't they pay the CAD vendor? It's simple greed on their part. Contrast this with Microsoft, which did leverage its monopoly position to gouge consumers - if you didn't pay Microsoft, you couldn't even boot that several thousand dollar machine you just bought. Just because one player in the software game is greedy and immoral doesn't mean all players are that way.
I am planning their destruction, a VM that runs on Intel hardware but responds just like a mainframe,
Good luck.
I used to work in a mainframe shop, and while the latest Intel hardware can run circles around one of the processors on a mainframe, it can't beat all 16 of them by any standard:
I'm not really a big mainframe fan, but they do have their place in the business world. Businesses don't care about MIPS or running the latest games; they want a system that works reliably with a predictable cost structure. IBM mainframes provide that.
I know it sounds innocent and all, but how long before that photoshopped wedding picture becomes evidence in a legal case? Considering that people at the wedding claim to remember seeing him there, this could be really problematic in a court of law.
Suppose, for example, that someone affiliated with the relative in question was murdered not far from the reception on the same day. After a few years of dead-end leads, the police finally start to investigate the wedding party, and ask those in the photo about their whereabouts on that fateful day. I imagine the exchange would go something like this:
Officer friendly: And where were you on the wedding day - how did you get to the reception?
Innocent relative: I was out of town that weekend.
Officer friendly: Why don't you just tell us the truth? We know you were at the wedding because your relatives saw you there. We've even got this picture here which proves it.
(later, in court) Prosecutor: And the accused stated that he was out of town, when this photo clearly shows him at the wedding and several guests remember seeing him there.
It might come back to haunt you later.
But it doesn't make it a scientific theory, either.
I like ID, but it's not science. If you could get scientists to stick to the parts of evolution supported by the evidence, maybe fewer ID proponents would be calling their position scientific.
Philosophy is great, science is great, but you're just asking for trouble if you present one as the other. I think it would be better to teach children to recognize the difference between philosophy and science, and present both ID and evolution as respective examples.
Truckers. Via CB radio.
The police used to hate CBers because avoiding speed traps used to be as simple as listening to your CB. When a CBer passes a speedtrap, he broadcasts his location to anyone within listening distance.
Now, there are internet sites which track speed traps. Information is power, webcams are cheap. We might as well turn our own cameras toward the street.
I'm not quite sure why everyone is so up in arms about this, when the police have been able to track you - and even bug your conversations - with your own cellphone. Sure, you can take out the battery, but then what's the point of carrying a cell in the first place?
Chances are, the next car you buy will include the ability for the police to track you with the vehicle's own GPS. If you get the bluetooth option, they'll be able to bug your car, too. That is, if you're one of the few people left on the planet without a cell phone.
For the truly paranoid, I'm sure there are some relatively easy ways to detect if you've been bugged:
The real problem I see in all of this is not the surveillance per se, but rather, the attitude of suspicion and outright hostility the police have toward the general public, and the exercise of our God-given freedoms. The surveillance society would be a moot point if our justice system actually acquitted the innocent reliably. Now, it seems as if law enforcement is purely arbitrary and capricious, and that, combined with effortless surveillance and the availability of lethal force is a recipe for disaster.
Killing someone - whether up close and personal - or from halfway around the world, should make someone feel uncomfortable. When war becomes little more than a video game, without a view of the human cost, tyranny becomes inevitable. Just witness what happened with "smart weapons" and the U.S. -> high tech weaponry and minimal collateral damage made it all the more easily to justify invading a country under the guise of liberating them.
In a very elegant manner, precisely why I've switched all of my home boxen to Linux. The end user's experience does not matter to the AV companies; it matters only tangentially to Microsoft. What matters most, is money. That is, their profitability, not mine.
If I paid for antivirus software, I would expect it to protect me from all viruses, not merely the ones trying to rip off major corporations. You need to understand the perspective of the typical Windows user:
A few years ago, I worked as a Linux developer. Since then, I've switched jobs and am now using a Windows box. Two things occur to me:
So, when I have the choice, and my time is important - that is, when it means money - I use Linux. Apparently my time isn't considered important to the AV companies. They think I can just sit on my hands and do nothing while a file is scanned. What happens is that these little annoyances add up, and I end up working overtime because some AV company is all about profit, not productivity.
Never underestimate the power of the investigative reporter.
Reporters earn their living finding secrets that powerful people don't want exposed. If any one of the reporters at CNN has a technical background, they stand a better than even chance of finding out who perpetrated the attacks.
The real problem comes in bring action against someone who is likely outside the US. Then again, CNN probably has offices in every country, so this might not be as difficult for them as it would for a purely US corporation.
To buy an Asus EEE PC. Not that IBM has a bad reputation with respect to being Linux compatible, but it was nice to have it come installed and just work out of the box.
The problem with your argument is that you just stated an opinion contrary to what most of /. believes.
An aggressive prosecutor could now charge you with a felony for violating /.'s ToS:
No user shall transmit Content or otherwise conduct or participate in any activities on SourceForge Sites that, in the judgment of SourceForge, is likely to be prohibited by law in any applicable jurisdiction, including laws governing the encryption of software, the export of technology, the transmission of obscenity, or the permissible uses of intellectual property
So if one of those libertarian types at SourceForge considers your comment obscene, or merely likely to be considered so, you can be charged with a federal felony for violating /.'s terms of service...
This case isn't about Lori Drew's bullying - though it should be. Rather, the prosecutor is trying to make the argument that violating a website's ToS is a crime, and a felony at that.
Almost every website has in their ToS a clause that prohibits, "Otherwise objectionable content..." Therefore, if you post or email something that anyone would consider objectionable, you can be charged with a felony. Make no mistake, this case is about eroding free speech freedoms, not the consequences that may come from something someone says. It makes the following discussions illegal and subject to potential prosecution:
Almost any opinion that someone could hold is objectionable or offensive to someone else. If this prosecution is successful, the first ammendment will have been killed by fiat.
Attempted murder charges against Lori Drew would be more appropriate.
But don't forget to pray for them as you do...
It's interesting the passage you quote was often directed toward those who had to deal with their Roman occupiers, who, interestingly, treated their Jewish subjects much like the US government treats its own people. With a government like this, who needs terrorists?
I wonder if a Roman citizen would tolerate the indignities that American citizens tolerate on a regular basis. When the apostle Paul (a Roman citizen) was falsely accused, he made the town authorites escort him out (thus embarrasing them for their maltreatment of him) rather than allowing them to put him away quietly.
An interesting way to do amateur steganography... (Think teens on MySpace posting messages in pictures...)
It does have its limitations. It's more of a share and share alike license than a path to public domain software.
If I, as an open source author, want to give my code back to the community, with no strings attached, public domain is the only way to go. That way, anyone can use the code for any purpose they see fit. It is truly a gift.
But GPL'ed code is not a gift, it is a license. It seeks to enforce - through copyright law - the notion of free software. That is, you can't take my free program and add in proprietary changes, and add restrictions to the use of the code.
It's a good license. It does bring balance to the big picture.
But it doesn't address one of the fundamental problems of open source: it's difficult to make a living writing open source code. Sure, you can make a living supporting open source code, but it is very difficult for the average programmer to make a living on what open source pays (usually nothing).
Without the proprietary model, I would have to make a living doing something other than writing code. Which would mean, that because I would truly be an amateur programmer, my code would not be as good as it would otherwise. I'm able to make a meaningful contribution to open source code in part because I write code for a living.
The consequence of being employed to write code is that I can't contribute code which would interfere with my employer's business interests. So while I'm able to use my general programming skills to benefit open source, I cannot produce open-source software in my area of expertise. Which, to me, is a real problem. But the GPL doesn't solve the ethical dilemna of an employee undermining his employer's business model. A large portion of us rely on the revenues generated by the pay-per-license proprietary model; without it, our customers would have to pay inordinately large sums of money up front for software, and we couldn't introduce new and innovative features because the budget wouldn't support it.
I am a good programmer, and I do produce something of value when I write code. I have no problem with people sharing the code that I write, but we as a society need to understand that programmers need to be paid for their work. That is, if we are to have any reasonable expectation of software quality. Without the experience that comes from writing code professionally, the quality of software would be absolutely abysmal.
And open source does have the proprietary model to thank for its quality - typically, the code written for open source projects is written the way a programmer knows it should be written, rather than taking shortcuts because of scheduling and marketing issues.
I like open source, but I realize that I, and other programmers, need to be able to make a living writing code if we're going to contribute meaningful software to the world. Unfortunately, the GPL doesn't address this problem in an economically viable way. Even Stallman admits that in a free software world, programmers wouldn't make nothing, they'd simply make less. Problem is, I have a family to feed, and don't have the option of making any less money; if the whole world went open source, I'd have to go into management just to feed my family. I don't think it's very ethical to ask my children to starve so you can have your software free of charge.
The GPL is good, and needed, but there needs to be a balance. I can contribute to free software because my employer's proprietary model allows me to make a living writing code.
I say, good luck!.
Even a modest artillery battery, on a bad day, with the hot, dusty wind in their face and half their crew asleep, can manage to put 18 rounds downrange, per minute. With a 30 second flight time (hey, it varies with range), you've got less than two seconds per projectile if you're going to destroy them all. And the laser takes several seconds per round to destroy it. And that's without the coating.
So here's what you do: you fire a 'smurf' round - that is, a hollow steel round as your first projectile. Because it doesn't have any explosive, the laser will track it and burn it until it hits the ground, paving the way for the remaining rounds to come through without any problem.
Granted, I think lasers are cool and all, but we already have anti-rocket systems like the Navy's phalanx which seem to be much more effective. The problem is that something like a 3000 rpm chain gun can put more energy on the target than most tactical lasers. Even more embarassing, a .50 cal round can pierce 2 inches of solid steel at ranges greater than 3 kilometers. A single .50 cal round impacting nose of an artillery shell would detonate it instantly. Why not use those precision servos to direct a weapon with real takedown power? Ballistic flight trajectories aren't that hard to calculate.
And unlike the laser, artillery can hit things beyond visual range, in places obstructed from direct line of sight. Put yourself in a valley, and your laser defense system might not even track the round until its already too late. I think it's a step in the right direction, but they clearly need much more powerful lasers to be practical.
I was thinking of this more along the lines of what TPM has been marketed for - i.e., a way for third party vendors to verify that your OS has the proper DRM installed. And the security of this scheme is defeated if the TPM chip will release the keys to the disk if the kernel and bootloader are signed by me. A virus which compromised the kernel after boot could simply pull the keys out of memory, store them to disk, patch the kernel on disk, program the TPM chip with the patched kernel's checksum, and be up and running after a reboot. Given that Vista has more security holes than swiss cheese, it's a virtual certainty that this is going to happen. A particularly nasty variant would simply program the TPM chip with a random checksum, thus turning your computer into a brick - you'd lose all of your data on your encrypted hard drive.
But Microsoft seemed to market this as a way to get studios to buy into Windows Media DRM. I imagine the thinking went something like this:
Is that the whole security premise of "trusted bootchain" is wrong.
Granted, that's one way of infecting a machine. But we haven't seen BIOS bootsector-type viruses since the 80's. Why would you write a bootsector virus when you can just crack the host OS?
Vista is huge, and having a secure bootchain won't change the fact that it's probably riddled with security holes anyway. Someone able to reverse engineer the checksumming code can simply modify the checksummer so that the bootchain always passes validation. What is to stop virus running with administrative user priveledges from modifying this key system binary (probably a DLL, at that!) under the auspices of a "system update"?
So what you get is an OS which can be modified to report that it is secure, when in fact it is not. This is the whole problem with the "trusted computing" initiative - others - presumably media companies - are trusting your machine to tell them that it is secure. It's a broken security model from the outset - who's to say you aren't running Windows in a virtual machine? - and only inconveniences the users.
FTA: Only a single case in four years, Capitol v. Thomas,11 has ever gone to trial, and that one only because the judge denied the defendant's attorney's motion for leave to withdraw.
The possible reasons behind this interest me:
It seems that only the most unconscionable, reckless, and irresponsible corporate officers would authorize settling a debt for pennies on the dollar, yet this is exactly what the likes of Vivendi, Sony, etc... propose with their settlement offers. For this to be a legitimate debt, the CEOs of said corporations are breaching their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.
I'm wondering if I could buy stock in Sony and sue the CEO for devaluing the company's assets. After all, if downloading really does cost several hundred thousand dollars per infringer, why are they settling for a few thousand?
I'm waiting for them to get sued under RICO.
Statistically, I'm as likely to be struck by lightning as I am to be killed by a terrorist...
If statistical insignificance was the measure of safety, then neither terrorism nor illegal wiretapping would be anything to worry about. People right now are dying of starvation and we're whining about wiretapping?
Rather, it's the principle of the thing. You've got two sides, both sticking to their principles, to the extreme. And (sadly), neither side is offering arguments which would compel an otherwise indifferent bystander to action. Granted, I can understand how a government acting outside the law is problematic, but you need to show actual harm to the guy on the street before he's going to buy your argument.
Apple will actually take note of these questions, and instruct the genius bars to simply pass out a flyer with the company line to anyone who asks, and then take the next customer in line.
Some zealot will probably spend a half hour or more in traffic on the way to their appointment, burning 12 gallons of gas in their 1975 Pontiac (because they refuse to buy a newer car because it has proprietary software), only to be dismissed in 30 seconds by an Apple employee...
What a complete waste...
Except that I stopped after installing Ubuntu. Suddenly, my laptop with a "mere" 512MB of RAM is responsive again.
Oh, and I don't have to worry about viruses, either.
Q: From where did we get the Bible?
A: The Church. The community of faith saw to it that the Gospels were written down, and before that, the Jews saw to it that Scripture was recorded. These groups recognized these books as the word of God.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible is the "correct" one. When it comes to matters of interpretation, the Magisterium (that is, Catholic Tradition) can often be illuminating. It shouldn't surprise anyone if the two are in accord. You would expect a witness and his written testimony to agree; or a professor and his thesis to agree; why would the Bible be any different?
This is no secret - its a matter of historical fact. From time to time, some group will try to split away from the Church based on their own, unique, interpretation of the Bible. Often times, such interpretations are really heretical, because they deny things which, while they may be ambiguous in the Bible, were not at all ambiguous to early Christians. You know, things like the divinity of Jesus, and such.
So when a Catholic has a question of a matter of the faith, he is in the right to ask the Church. Because they know. In two thousand years, most of the questions of faith the common person experiences have already be asked and answered and written down. You just have to look.
Personally, I would like to see children protected -- but not from porn.
I take your statement to infer that you'd rather that children be psychologically damaged to the extent that they can't enjoy sex by the time they're old enough to engage in it? Hopefully not, but I've noticed that there seems to be some misunderstandings about the reasons legislators pass laws against porn. It isn't about forcing some Puritan morality on the public at large. It really is about protecting the children - not your children - theirs.
Most girls don't look like models. Most guys don't have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size/12 inches [NSFW] to satisfy their potential mate. What happens when little girls and boys look at porn is that they form unrealistic expectations of sex:
The complications and anxieties that such beliefs can form is left as an exercise for the reader. But I myself on more than one occasion have had to deal with the fallout from the porn industry, and am well aware that it does damage people. Perhaps not in the immediately recognizable, medical, or clinical sense, but it definitely affects people in a mental and spiritual way.
And honestly, why would you want to take anything away from a person's future enjoyment of sex? So you can maintain your own fantasies about what sex would be like if you could get it?
This law isn't about denying porn to those who will make an effort to get it, but rather, about protecting children from inadvertently stumbling upon it. As a parent, I don't want my child's Google search for "hot fire truck" to serve up porn. Until I'm convinced that an innocent phrase won't turn up porn, my kid isn't going to use the internet. So what a law like this really does is allow children to be exposed to the internet, because without such controls, parents such as myself just won't let our children use the internet.
When I was growing up, I was allowed unfettered access to a computer. Sadly, because of the widespread availability of porn (among other things...), I'm not sure if I'll be able to extend that same privilege to my children. And that's quite sad, that in a mere 20 years, the environment of learning and discovery with which I grew up has been co-opted from an intellectual playground into merely just another content distribution mechanism for the masses.
This doesn't surprise me too much. There's been a bad recession on the horizon for quite some time now, and it looks like it's coming home to roost.
For the first time since I graduated college, I'm not getting called for interviews, even for positions which I'm eminently qualified. It's getting tougher for people to find jobs, regardless of what they do. I've heard Republicans say that we're going to be in the worst recession since the Great Depression - which means that we're probably in quite a bit of trouble.
Perhaps I'm speculating a little too much here, but I'll bet the money that would have gone for IT salaries, etc... is now going into the coffers of the oil companies. Because our economy is so dependent upon oil for everything we do from growing crops to power generation to transportion, any rise in the price of oil is going to have a ripple effect.
Perhaps GW and Co saw peak oil coming and thought if we could just take Iraq, that we'd have enough oil. Perhaps they didn't understand that the loss of Iraq's oil on the world market would drive up prices - or maybe they did...