User: The Dodger

Possible Solution: The British Way of Doing Things

On: Cracking the Verisign Monopoly

The .uk domain is administrated by Nominet, a not-for-profit organisation, whose membership is open to "any person or organisation with an interest in the Internet". Effectively, it's a kind of co-op and the most active (and, therefore, the most influential) members of this particular co-op are it's biggest customers - the ISPs who register *.uk domains.

Nominet is a monopoly, in that it has exclusive control over the .uk TLD, but few complain about this, because it is largely run by and for the benefit of it's customers.

Furthermore, the oversight inherent in an organisation with open membership and the competition between those ISPs in the marketplace ensure that Nominet's actions benefit all UK Internet users.

This is how all TLDs should be administrated - for the common good, instead of for the profit of the company who won the contract.

And, incidentally, this is how ICANN should be run, too.

D.

Re:Damned Brits

On: Robot Wars Coming Stateside

Can someone tell me how in the world the networks can edit the show and actually make it more appealing to "Americans"?

Well, I guess they'll leave out the techy bits, because Americans probably wouldn't understand them and, in any case, the American audience will get bored if more than ten seconds go by without and explosion, and switch over.

They'll also have to weaken the house robots, because otherwise the American entries would just get wasted and the obstacle-course-type rounds will have to be made easier, of course. Then there's the whole problem of Americans not getting most of the humour...

It's not easy dumbing down British programs for you Yanks, you know...

D.

Re:"Viral" Marketing

On: Can I See Your License for those Plants, Sir?

They should be. Monsanto has the technology to make the crops of genetically-engineered seeds sterile. So, that means that, in this case, one of two things happened. Either the seeds which blew onto the farmer's land were ones which his neighbour had just planted, or Monsanto isn't including it's "Terminator" genes in the seeds it's marketing to farmers.

Welcome to the New World Order, where Capitalism and Profit rule and where individuals' rights and the environment come a distant second.

D.

God Bless America!

On: Multilingual DNS Patent Roadblock For IETF

Fortunately, the United States of America, as well as allowing it's citizens to patent stuff they shouldn't, also allows it's citizens to carry weapons.

Now, I would be the last to suggest that someone should find out who the majority shareholder in this 'Walid' company is, go up to him whilst he's walking down a dark alleyway, put a gun to his head and explain to him that he should really drop the whole patenting-DNS thing.

That would be illegal. Tut tut...

Having said that, of course, one could question the validity of laws which stifle the development of technologies such as the Internet and encryption, and, instead, line the pockets of corporations and lawyers.

As Cicero said "Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto" - The Good of the People is the Highest Law.

But, of course, you Yanks went and elected a President who cares more about the US economy than combatting global warming. God forbid that American companies' profits should be threatened by refusing to allow them to continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

George "Dubya" Bush. You know why he pronounces it "Dubya"? Because he can't say "doubleubleiminable"....

Y'know, our motto used to be "Information wants to be free!"

We might have to change it to say "Innovation and Ideas want to be free!"

D.
..is for Don't fight the Chaos!

A Lurker Speaks

On: Is The Net Revolution Breaking Faith?

Re:Soloist...

On: Jedi == Religion In NZ

I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.

Just because you don't believe in me doesn't mean that I don't exist. ;-)

D.

Jedaism

On: Jedi == Religion In NZ

Well, it all depends how you define religion. A quick search on dictionary.com reveals several definitions from different sources. Here are two:

religion (r-ljn)
1. a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, a principle, or an activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

Or...

religion n 1: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny;

I don't think it's correct to compare a Jedi to a priest or rabbi. "Jedaism" (for want of a better word, and please note that no slur or insult is intended to Jews) isn't a hierarchical, Supreme Being/Creator-centric religion in the same way as Christianity or Judaism are, because, to my knowledge at any rate, there is no Jedi god.

However, because Jedaism provides a cosmological explanation for Good and Evil, there is no reason why it should be rejected as a religion, especially as it provides an alternative to what we regard as traditional religions such as Christianity and Judaism. In place of the normal religious hierarchical structure (e.g. in Roman-Catholicism, the ranking is God, Pope, Cardinals, Arch-Bishops, etc.) in which power is delegated from the Supreme Being, Jedaism has a meritocratic (and, possibly, democratic) hierarchy based upon the natural ability, experience, wisdom and skills of the Jedi.

I admire that sort of structure.

D.

I know i shouldn't feed the monkeys, but...

On: Fair Compensation For Non-Compete Clauses?

At the end of the day, you most certianly are being forced to sign the contract.

What the fuck are you talking about?!

If you're being offered a job, on condition that you sign a non-compete agreement, then you Just Say No, I'm not signing that contract, you can take your job and shove it up you ass, thankyouverymuch.

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

D.

Reality Check

On: Fair Compensation For Non-Compete Clauses?

If you are stupid enough to sign an employment contract which contains a non-competition clause, then you've got noone to blame but yourself.

Thinking that you can sign a legally-binding contract when it suits you, and then decide that it's not "fair" when it doesn't suit you is juvenile.

At the end of the day, you're not being forced to sign the contract (and even if you were, signing a contract under duress invalidates the contract, in many jurisdictions). It's your decision to go work for the company.

I have signed an employment contracts with a non-compete clause, when I went to work for a specialist company which targeted a particular niche. The clause effectively said that, for six months, I would not be able to go work for another company which competed directly with my employers in a certain subsector.

I was fine with that, because it was all quite narrowly defined, and it made sense.

However, when I was working for an ISP which had been taken over by a telco, and they wanted me to sign an employment agreement which would have prohibited me from working from another telco/ISP for two years, I very politely told them to fuck off.

However, if I had signed that contract, and subsequently left that telco to work for another, and found myself the target of my old employers' lawyers, I would have had noone to blame but myself.

You have to take responsibility for your own actions. Read what you're signing. If you don't like it, then refuse to sign it. If they try and whitewash you, then speak to a lawyer - and get them to pay. Don't let them make you feel guilty by insinuating that you would only refuse to sign the contract if you were planning to rip them off.

There are other ways of making sure that an ex-employee doesn't clean your clocks - non-disclosure clauses, anti-recruitment clauses, and clauses which prohibit you from providing similar services to existing customers of the company.

Anyone who is stupid enough to sign a non-compete agreement which forces them to take a break from their career doesn't deserve compensation.

D.

Re:I think we'd have more important problems

On: Rebooting The World?

But could you fend off the dirty unwashed masses who percieved you as the cause of their inability to download porn?

You've obviously never run a firewall or a proxy with filtration software running on it. ;-)

D.

Local-area complement to RFCs 1149 & 2549?

On: Ethernet For Model Trains?

This could be really useful for implementing a local-area complement to the wide-area datagram transmission protocols described in RFC1149 and RFC2549.

Avian carriers are perfect for transmitting datagrams between different locations and model train networks could be leveraged to deliver the datagrams within the office/building...

D.

A True American...

On: Spying and Technology: Robert Philip Hanssen

I think they should give this guy a medal for his strict adherence to that prime American value - Capitalism!

By selling the Russkies information they'd already gotten from Ames, he was weakening the Sovient Union, by forcing them to divert funds from their war machine into his bank account!

Gawdammit, give that man a promotion!

D.

Re:Help me understand...!

On: Open Source Banking

We developed this stuff after deploying a middleware product entensiveley throughout our organisation.

Which middleware product, just out of interest?

..think of it as the plumbing between the apps/databases and the middleware. ..there is lots of reduncancy of effort... example: dev teams can pull data out of their database, filter it, transform it and publish it onto middleware. All this can be done by configuring standard building blocks and no code.

Aaahh right, this is beginning to make a bit more sense. Would I be right in thinking, then, that this thing manifests itself as a coupla jar's that you stick in the CLASSPATH, and some configuration files or DTDs?

D.
..is for "Don't ever become a developer, Dodger. I'm not sure the planet would survive."

Jeezuzzz - You are an Idiot.

On: Open Source Banking

To describe something as "middleware" is much the same as describing something as a "vehicle" - you're not telling me whether it's a car, a van, a bus, a lorry, a boat, ship, plane, &c.

To quote from RFC2768:

Application environment users and programmers see everything below the API as middleware. Networking gurus see anything above IP as middleware. Those working on applications, tools, and mechanisms between these two extremes see it as somewhere between TCP and the API, with some even further classifying middleware into application-specific upper middleware, generic middle middleware, and resource-specific lower middleware.

Lots of things (e.g. Domain Name Service, PKI, Tibco/RendezVous, IBM MQSeries) can be described as "middleware", but DNS is nothing like TIB/RV.

So... Why don't you shut the fuck up, take the nearest heavy object (e.g. your computer monitor), and bludgeon yourself to death with it. That way, the world will be better off and, more importantly, I won't have to read your inane crap on Slashdot anymore.

And I'm in a good mood today... :-)

D.

Idiot.

On: Open Source Banking

Some moron...

You are wrong.

D.

Help me understand...!

On: Open Source Banking

Can you give us a "for instance"? Admittedly, I'm not a developer, so this is probably a very naive question, but don't the necessary tools already exist to be able to tie into Sybase, Oracle, Tibco/RV, &c. from Java, using XML?

D.

Idiot.

On: Open Source Banking

Excel has nothing to do with banking.

You are wrong.

D.

Re:No, Mod it Down!

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

any relation to Marx? Not to say that linux isn't better than windows, or nt rules, what have you.... but that line could have been part of a communist geek manifesto.

You think so? I thought it was quite right-wing and elitist myself. 'Let them eat cake'-type of thing... Anyway, Marx wasn't a Communist. He was a Socialist. Subtle, but important difference.

and i'm SURE your homepage is REALLY 2600.com.... sure it is.

Ah, confirmation of Stupidity.

D.

Re:No, Mod it Down!

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

Remember, those cluless people get elected to congress

Yeah, by YOU!

D.

No, Mod it Down!

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

Look, if some loser managers won't accept Free Software, that's their problem. I'm sitting in the offices of one of the world's Top 5 investment banks right now. These guys' preferred webserver is Apache and they use Tomcat for running servlets and JSPs. Instead of NT fileservers, they use Samba, and I've just been helping someone get GNU plotutils installed for use on a mission-critical system.

The only reason they're not installing Linux servers is because Sun hardware is better than PC.

I don't care about the clueless people. Let them run Windows. The important parts of the world already accept Free Software.

D.

Re:Markoff

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

You're right, in that Markoff is not well-regarded in hacker circles.

The specific gripe with him is that he stepped over the line from being a pure reporter. He demonised Mitnick to a massive extent, raising his profile and indirectly leading to the Feds/Govt. deciding to make an example out of him.

In the wider scheme of things, he's simply part of the whole set-up that ended up with a guy spending four years behind bars without bail and without trial. At the end of the day, that's just plain wrong. I'm not even going to bother going into the dirty details of the rules that were broken during the actual investigation and arrest, nor the figures for damages that various companies quoted, which were straightforward lies.

Basically, there are a hundred Kevin Mitnicks out there who never got caught and thrown in jail without bail or trial simply because they never had the exposure he did.

There's a large element of "There but for the grace of God go I...", I reckon.

For an alternative to Markoff's Takedown, try reading Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game.

D.

Re:Cryptonomicon

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

I mean, it was definitely a reference to Draper, and it sure seemed like foreshadowing, but it was never mentioned again

So you were expecting it to be mentioned again...

That's one of the things I like about Neal Stephenson - he doesn't pander to the pathetic "spoon-feed me the plot in bite-size chunks 'cause I'm too fucking stupid to understand it otherwise" wishy washy dumbfuck audience. He throws pointless shit into his stories for no apparent reason.

Anyone who watched the film Ronin and expected Sean Bean's character to return later in the film on the side of the bad guys will know exactly what I mean.

D.

MOD DOWN THIS TROLL!

On: New Boxes For Captain Crunch

A problem (Score:2, Interesting)

Perfect example of why the Slashdot moderation system sucks.

D.

How this story affected me...

On: The Challenger

On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, destroying the vehicle, its crew, and the U.S. space program.

Yeah, I know...

D.

Blockquoting as a defensive measure

On: DirecTV's Secret War On Hackers

I <blockquote> in order to maintain a de-militarized zone between my comments and the rest of Slashdot. I'm terrified by the prospect of getting infected by the Stupidity virus (also known as the Troll Syndrome) that seems so prevalent amongst Slashdot posters.

D.