Where's the report on this hole which actually affects most of the readers of this site? Are Microsoft bugs more important to Slashdot readers than bugs in Linux?
Yes, for a couple of reasons:
1) Bugs in "Linux" (which this is not; it's a tool distributed with Linux, not the kernel itself) tend to get fixed more rapidly than bugs in Microsoft's products. I would point out that the security advisory in question tells you where to get the patched version of the utility; It takes you this long to find someone at Mircosoft to tell you have to wait a couple of weeks (or download a "service pack" or whatever). The article says that the hole was been known about since September. How long do you think the hole in usermode has been known about?
2) As a site that is more-or-less an open source/Linux advocacy site, I like that stories come along that give people who are trying to justify a jump to Linux (or FreeBSD or whatever) more ammunition. If you're looking for "more even-handed treatment" for Microsoft, you need to find another site. At the same time, I would like to see a "Security" section on Slashdot to collate security notifications and the like; it brings Slashdot more towards a one-stop shopping site...:)
In my opinion, the problem isn't documentation for newbies, its documentation for intermediate users.
[...]
Also, most documentation breaks down when the user wants to do anything 'adventuresome' -- more than just word processing, emailing, and surfing the Net. Its assumed that a "Linux for Dummies" (please don't sue me IDG) book is for Dummies, and that these Dummies are unwilling to learn anything that don't need to, that reading makes their brains hurt. But what about the people that do want to learn? Where is the documentation for them? I'm not talking about the "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide", "Beowulf HOWTO", or other high-end specialty topics. I'm talking about wannabe geeks that want to read clear, concise, complete documentation about everything they can get their hands on. Sure, they could learn everything by experimentation, or asking questions, but wouldn't some decent docs save alot of time and anguish?
Thank you for pretty much summing up where I'm at when it comes to Linux.
I want to learn as much as I can about why Linux is set up the way it is; what the directories are for, and why some executables are is/usr/bin instead of/bin.
The man pages can be confusing at times, and to me most of the "Newbie-ized Help Files" at Linuxnewbie.org read as if the person using them has never touched a computer before.
The real problem with getting people to write documentation is that its not 'sexy' enough. People would much rather be playing Quake, or coding some killer app then spending their time trying to write interesting documentation on something most see as a boring topic.
I'd even help write it if I can find someone who has the information I want.
I really don't think that documentation (or its authors!) get the attention is deserves. So here I'm going to give a great big THANK YOU to all of the worlds Linux and Open Source documentation writers and the FAQ and HOWTO maintainers. You guys provide an invaluable service. Keep up the good work.
Amen. Even though I haven't found what I'm looking for yet, I have used some of the stuff that people out there have put together.
Don't say "rip it bit-by-bit". That's a hax0r term for "steal, pilfer, rip-off, pirate". It makes us look bad. Try "copy" or "back-up" instead.
Point taken; however, the thought I was trying to articulate was "if pirates want to illegally copy DVDs, they can make a bit-for-bit copy and burn a bunch of knock-off discs with no loss in image quality". So it kinda fits.
It's about the freedom to use the material that I purchased myself in any way I see fit, according to the "fair use" principles of copyright law.
It's about allowing third parties the freedom to create superior-yet-compatible products. (Since this code is freely available, and hopefully will remain so, what is to stop someone from creating a quality DVD player that doesn't implement Macrovision or region codes or any other unreasonable nonsense?)
The DVD consortium, at the behest of the movie companies whose bottom lines are hardly suffering because of rampant piracy, is attempting to deprive me of freedoms that I would have with any other media.
The reason it never occured to me was because I am an honest person; I tend to buy commercial copies because I like the better quality. I mean, I have every episode of Babylon 5 on tape (taped off of TNT; we're talking about almost 60 videotapes) yet I'm buying them again on VHS, and I'll probably buy them yet again when/if they release them on DVD!
The real criminals are the ones who want to be able to charge extortionate prices for their "intellectual property" -- an ironic name, when you consider it being applied to such things as BASEketball and The "Da Da Da Da" song featured in Volkswagen commercials -- and continually lobby the government to keep their so-called "property" from its rightful place in the public domain.
This is the letter I sent. And yeah, after I wrote it I realized it was a Reuters wire story, but maybe they'll keep it in mind regardless.
The article is long on the viewpoint of the DVD industry, but makes little attempt to cover the side of the defendants in this case and paints the authors of "DeCSS" as criminals knowingly attempting to "destroy the market for DVD-based products". And, considering the quotes from some of the intellectual-property lawyers in your article, I'm wondering how much some of your sources actually know about the facts of the case.
----- "Their unchecked illegal activities will chill future technological innovation in the motion picture, consumer electronics and computer industries and discourage other industries from making their content available to the public in new formats," the [filing for an injunction]said. -----
The DVD CCA's complaint is rather ironic, considering that similar technology breakthroughs in the past have not "chill[ed] future technological innovation in the motion picture [and] consumer electronics [...] industries". How much has the motion picture industry been harmed by the relatively easy ability to copy VHS videocassettes? (A technology, incidentally, that was similarly attacked in the past as allowing for widespread pirating of movies. Judging from record sales of the movie "Titanic" on videocassette, I have to wonder just how many pirated movies the average American has on his video shelf?)
----- "There's a lot of issues that go into something like this, like freedom of speech and all that, but those freedoms are limited when you know what you are doing is wrong and you're hurting people," said Ronald Coolley [...] -----
Why does Mr. Coolley believe the authors have intentionally harmed the DVD industry? The authors never stated that their intent to facilitate pirating; the "DecSS" program was written to allow computers running the Linux operating system to be able to play DVD movie discs.
The ability to reverse-engineer technology (analyze or disassemble technology to determine how it works) is not illegal in the U.S., if the reverse engineering is being done to insure product compatibility. This ability is even protected in recently-passed Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
----- "They have to make a statement," said Claude Stern, an intellectual property attorney with Fenwick & West. "All those companies that have major amounts of content can't afford to have some moron hacker post something because he thinks it's cool." -----
Assuming that Mr. Stern is using the term "hacker" to describe someone who breaks into computer systems (a term many computer professionals and enthusiasts have replaced with the term "cracker") potentially to steal confidential information, then he also misunderstands the situation -- although he unintentionally got the term right for what the authors actually did do.
The authors did not steal any proprietary information from Xing Technologies or anyone else; they analyzed and attacked the encryption on the disk itself. Even if Xing Technologies had not erroneously left their key unencrypted, the weak encryption used meant that it was only a matter of time before the authors found a valid key by brute-force checking every possible combination. (The authors stated that, once they found a valid key, they had enough information to find several dozen others.)
It is my hope that your reporters will, in the future, make a better effort to discover and accurately report the facts.
c) real security comes not from obscurity but from minimum disclosure.
While amusing from a sentence-parsing standpoint, I think the point is:
Real security comes not from concealing information about your security algorithms or methods, but from presenting the fewest possible points of attack.
The article is entitled 'Gold Diggers' which I've always thought of as a rather pejorative phrase suggesting that they're only after the money without actually having earned it
Maybe it's me, but whenever I hear the phrase "Gold Diggers" I think of these guys...
For a site that is supposedly pro free speech, the arguments it presents are pretty one sided.We never hear from pro-censorship advocates. And whenever someone says something contrary to the/. opinion that post is immediatly moderated down.
Well, consdering that a sizable portion of Slashdot reader's do the moderating, and we all come from different backgrounds and have different opinions about stuff, by your logic than 90% of the comments on/. should be moderated down for going against "the Slashot opinion". You have the GNOME vs. KDE advocates, the Linux vs. *BSD advocates, the GPL vs. BSD vs. MPL vs. SCSL advocates, ad nauseum.
Also, what's preventing you from adjusting your threshhold? They're only invisible if you choose not to look at them. If all else fails, start meta-moderating and turn the tide back against the "unfair" moderation. (Unlike moderation, I think there's no limit to the amount of meta-moderation that can be done.)
It'd be nice if some other opinons could actually be heard for once.
Again, no one's opinions are being "silenced". Set your threshhold to -1 and you see every comment -- from the "First Posts" and "hot grits down my pants" to all of the opinions that "go against the will of Slashdot".
Perhaps if Microsoft bought slashdot we could finally hear some fair and unbiased news about windows...
Perhaps if you want "fair and unbiased news about Windows" you need to look elsewhere than Slashdot. There's only a giga-buttload of pro-Microsoft and pro-Windows sites out there (many of them ostensibly "unbiased media").
This Christmas story is the first appearance of Boba Fett (in an animated segment) and introduces Chewbacca's family, several of whom appear in the Star Wars novels.
Jay (= (Waiting for "Star Wars Holiday Special, Special Edition"... let's see how much CGI it takes to fix that turkey)
There is on feature I want in a browser and still haven't seen anywhere. I want a button that goes to the main page of the website.
e.g. when I'm browsing http://www.foobar.org/foo/bar.html and I press this button the browser has to go to http://www.foobar.org/
does anyone know if there is feature like this in Mozilla?
I would love it if someone implements a "standard links" toolbar similar to the one in iCab that uses the properties set in the LINK tag -- there's a "home" button that takes you to the link defined as "home" by the LINK tag, a "next" button for the "next" link, etc.
It's not quite the same thing as what you describe, but it'd be a lot more useful (assuming everyone starts using the LINK tags). For example, what would be the "main page" of the photo gallery at my home page at http://members.xoom.com/trentc/pictures.html? Would it be:
http://members.xoom.com/ or http://members.xoom.com/trentc/?
I suppose somebody can argue against me here, but isn't this why we have the BSD/GPL/Etc all in the first place?
Part of Corel's problem is they're (unintentionally or not) running up against exactly what the GPL prevents them from doing.
They can't prohibit destribtution of the "Developer Preview" Linux distribtion outside of their developer pool; the GPL forbids it. (Well, more precisely, they can prohibit the distribution of any non-free parts, but not anything covered by the GPL.)
They can't prohibit "minors" from downloading their Linux distribution (with the exception noted above); the GPL forbids it.
I am beginning to think that all these issues will be extremely destructive to the concept of linux by linux users themselves.
The problem is, you don't get exemptions from the GPL. If you're writing your own software and want to do something akin to the Mozilla Public License or Apple's Open Source(r) license, that's fine. But if you use software licensed by the GPL, you have to abide by the GPL's provisions. Period, end of story.
Corel is apparently trying to figure how to build business based on a proprietary-software model using open-source software, and it's not working.
I know that this certainly dropped my respect for Bruce Perens quite a bit. Good luck to Corel's overtaxed legal team as they try to find a way around this.
You must have posted this during the period between Bruce's apology and the update on the main story; he didn't mean for his comment to be taken so seriously.
Why not? They've created an entire generation that believes:
The stuff that comes with the computer is good enough; there's little need to go looking elsewhere. (It worked for AOL, too!)
It's okay for a computer -- even mission-critical machines -- to crash every so often or not work quite right. (Something that will probably help Linux gain acceptance as hardware support matures...)
You HAVE to buy a new computer every couple of years to "keep up with the times". (Something that doubtlessly doesn't hurt Apple's bottom-line either; gotta move those 3rd-generation iMacs and G4s, after all...)
Acquiring technology from third parties and combining it with your own is "innovation".
And in the process, they've taught a whole slew of people to rigorously defend their right to use crappy software. (Well, they do have the right to use crappy software; it's just funny that they want others to do so as well.)
Linus, on of the top 10 hackers of all time? I'm sure my emailbox is going to get crammed for saying this, but Linux is only Unix, which was already invented, cheapened with free source.
Yes, it's a great OS. Yeah, it's pretty cool that it made source code widely available to people. But he didn't really create anything... Even the development model was already established before he did what he did.
Okay, so he may not be a great hacker in a programming sense, but I think he's nailed it in the social engineering sense.
Sure, OSS software development and Unix may have existed before the Linux kernel, but Linus -- unintentionally or not -- brought the two together in such a way that its effect on modern computing has yet to be calculated. How many people will end up running Linux on their desktops in the next 5 years? 10? How many servers will be chugging away, either on Linux or one of the *BSDs?
As the article said, "Man! I wish I'd thought of that..."
Final notes - Any refinery, factory, etc, that has their real world device controls accessible to the internet should be immediately be dissolved on the basis of congenital idiocy and criminal negligence leading to the endangerment of lots of lives.
What if after breaking into a site on the internet, they compromise the intranet and gain access to these machines? Granted the two networks should never be connected in the first place...
Read his answer again.
If the real-world controls are accessible via the internet (regardless of whether or not they have to "compromise the intranet" first) then someone, somewhere, screwed up horribly and need to be flogged.
And yet, this integrated functionality is EXACTLY what MS did with IE4 and 5. Yet all the Linux zealots cried foul because this gave an unfair advantage to the IE browser. But I guess as long as it is done in the holy name of Open Source its alright.
Yep, because I can (and do) use GNOME and Enlightenment. Or GNOME and WindowMaker. Or fvwm. Or bash...
Heck, as far as I know, I'll still be able to use KDE without Konqueror. If I can't figure out how to pull the two apart, then someone else will -- because the source is available.
Some of the comments made by TRUSTe about the RealNetworks incident (not to mention the Microsoft GUID) were to the effect of "well, it doesn't involve their web site, so it's outside our jurisdiction".
But that's not necessarily true.
From Schedule A of the TRUSTe license agreement, rev 5.0 (I wonder what the history of changes are):
"1. TRUSTe Program. The TRUSTe Program (the "Program") is intended to promote fair information practices with regard to the collection of Personally Identifiable Information and Third Party Personally Identifiable Information at Web sites in order to promote the Internet as a trustworthy environment for conducting business, education, communication and entertainment activities. [emphasis mine] Without detracting from the foregoing, the Program may be made applicable to online facilities and services that are similar to an Internet Web site."
Now, one could make an argument that this may not apply to MS Word's GUID (although it's internet-enabled, the GUID is not necessarily a byproduct of that functionality) it would, in my opinion, most definitely apply to RealPlayer.
TRUSTe appears to reserve for itself a broader mandate than "just verifying web sites". But apparently it chooses not to pursue it.
Seriously, if TrustE is not going to be biting the hands that feed them, then why are we listening to them? Because they spent much of their money building "brand recognition" on the web (making them the "most visible symbol on the internet"?)
What we need is a real consumer-privacy watchdog. Not one that says "we make sure that if companies violate you privacy, they tell you first", but one that conducts active research -- if I can catch violations of a privacy statement by using a Hotmail account created solely for online registrations, so can an advocacy group.
I'm talking about the online-privacy equivalent of the Web Standards Project. They publish a credo of "thou shalt nots" and rate everything an "internet business" does.
For example:
If they have a website that requires registration, what do they do with that information?
If they produce "internet-enabled" products, what exactly does the product transmit over the network? How is that information used? (Yet another good reason reverse engineering needs to remain legal, and not just for "interoperability".)
In the case of GUIDs, do their products create any kind of identifier that can trace a created file or document back to the originating product?
If any kind of authentication is used to allow users access to the product (like a personal-finances program), how easy is it to circumvent the authentication? Is the information accessible without authentication?
This group should also put some work into informing people as to what their rights should be online, and helping them fight for it. ("If you use RealNetworks products, write to them at this address and tell them how you feel about the GUID issue"...)
Jay (= (The question is, who pays the bills for a group like this?)
Even if the book wasn't copyrighted in the U.S., supposedly the Sonny Bono-named copyright extension was "to bring us in line with European convention" which is life plus 70 years, right?
Jay (= (As the Boston Globe article says, copyright extensions do more than protect "Steamboat Willie"...)
I, for one, would not use it if it did not have mail and news. Those are fundamental parts of any browser, IMO.
That's your opinion. Me, I get along fine using Netscape Navigator (sans mail and news). I have a good mail program, and I don't read news anyway. I don't want Netscape/AOL locking me into which mail program or newsreader I use any more than I want Microsoft to do so.
Worse, I'm worried that those of us who want "Netscape Navigator 5.0" are going to have to either wait until Communicator 5.0 is done for them to do the "lite" version, or have to hope that someone uses NGLayout in their own standalone product to be released around the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Where's the report on this hole which actually affects most of the readers of this site? Are Microsoft bugs more important to Slashdot readers than bugs in Linux?
:)
Yes, for a couple of reasons:
1) Bugs in "Linux" (which this is not; it's a tool distributed with Linux, not the kernel itself) tend to get fixed more rapidly than bugs in Microsoft's products. I would point out that the security advisory in question tells you where to get the patched version of the utility; It takes you this long to find someone at Mircosoft to tell you have to wait a couple of weeks (or download a "service pack" or whatever). The article says that the hole was been known about since September. How long do you think the hole in usermode has been known about?
2) As a site that is more-or-less an open source/Linux advocacy site, I like that stories come along that give people who are trying to justify a jump to Linux (or FreeBSD or whatever) more ammunition. If you're looking for "more even-handed treatment" for Microsoft, you need to find another site. At the same time, I would like to see a "Security" section on Slashdot to collate security notifications and the like; it brings Slashdot more towards a one-stop shopping site...
Jay (=
Geez, whatever...
In my opinion, the problem isn't documentation for newbies, its documentation for intermediate users.
/usr/bin instead of /bin.
[...]
Also, most documentation breaks down when the user wants to do anything 'adventuresome' -- more than just word processing, emailing, and surfing the Net. Its assumed that a "Linux for Dummies" (please don't sue me IDG) book is for Dummies, and that these Dummies are unwilling to learn anything that don't need to, that reading makes their brains hurt. But what about the people that do want to learn? Where is the documentation for them? I'm not talking about the "The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide", "Beowulf HOWTO", or other high-end specialty topics. I'm talking about wannabe geeks that want to read clear, concise, complete documentation about everything they can get their hands on. Sure, they could learn everything by experimentation, or asking questions, but wouldn't some decent docs save alot of time and anguish?
Thank you for pretty much summing up where I'm at when it comes to Linux.
I want to learn as much as I can about why Linux is set up the way it is; what the directories are for, and why some executables are is
The man pages can be confusing at times, and to me most of the "Newbie-ized Help Files" at Linuxnewbie.org read as if the person using them has never touched a computer before.
The real problem with getting people to write documentation is that its not 'sexy' enough. People would much rather be playing Quake, or coding some killer app then spending their time trying to write interesting documentation on something most see as a boring topic.
I'd even help write it if I can find someone who has the information I want.
I really don't think that documentation (or its authors!) get the attention is deserves. So here I'm going to give a great big THANK YOU to all of the worlds Linux and Open Source documentation writers and the FAQ and HOWTO maintainers. You guys provide an invaluable service. Keep up the good work.
Amen. Even though I haven't found what I'm looking for yet, I have used some of the stuff that people out there have put together.
Jay (=
Don't say "rip it bit-by-bit". That's a hax0r term for "steal, pilfer, rip-off, pirate". It makes us look bad. Try "copy" or "back-up" instead.
Point taken; however, the thought I was trying to articulate was "if pirates want to illegally copy DVDs, they can make a bit-for-bit copy and burn a bunch of knock-off discs with no loss in image quality". So it kinda fits.
Jay (=
What does freedom have to do with anything?
It has everything to do with it.
It's about the freedom to use the material that I purchased myself in any way I see fit, according to the "fair use" principles of copyright law.
It's about allowing third parties the freedom to create superior-yet-compatible products. (Since this code is freely available, and hopefully will remain so, what is to stop someone from creating a quality DVD player that doesn't implement Macrovision or region codes or any other unreasonable nonsense?)
The DVD consortium, at the behest of the movie companies whose bottom lines are hardly suffering because of rampant piracy, is attempting to deprive me of freedoms that I would have with any other media.
To be honest, until the original Slashdot article announcing that DVD encryption had been broken, I didn't even know they'd bothered to encrypt it! I figured that people would eventually be able to rip the DVD bit-for-bit anyways, so it was an exercise in futility.
The reason it never occured to me was because I am an honest person; I tend to buy commercial copies because I like the better quality. I mean, I have every episode of Babylon 5 on tape (taped off of TNT; we're talking about almost 60 videotapes) yet I'm buying them again on VHS, and I'll probably buy them yet again when/if they release them on DVD!
The real criminals are the ones who want to be able to charge extortionate prices for their "intellectual property" -- an ironic name, when you consider it being applied to such things as BASEketball and The "Da Da Da Da" song featured in Volkswagen commercials -- and continually lobby the government to keep their so-called "property" from its rightful place in the public domain.
Jay (=
This is the letter I sent. And yeah, after I wrote it I realized it was a Reuters wire story, but maybe they'll keep it in mind regardless.
The article is long on the viewpoint of the DVD industry, but makes little attempt to cover the side of the defendants in this case and paints the authors of "DeCSS" as criminals knowingly attempting to "destroy the market for DVD-based products". And, considering the quotes from some of the intellectual-property lawyers in your article, I'm wondering how much some of your sources actually know about the facts of the case.
-----
"Their unchecked illegal activities will chill future technological innovation in the motion picture, consumer electronics and computer industries and discourage other industries from making their content available to the public in new formats," the [filing for an injunction]said.
-----
The DVD CCA's complaint is rather ironic, considering that similar technology breakthroughs in the past have not "chill[ed] future technological innovation in the motion picture [and] consumer electronics [...] industries". How much has the motion picture industry been harmed by the relatively easy ability to copy VHS videocassettes? (A technology, incidentally, that was similarly attacked in the past as allowing for widespread pirating of movies. Judging from record sales of the movie "Titanic" on videocassette, I have to wonder just how many pirated movies the average American has on his video shelf?)
-----
"There's a lot of issues that go into something like this, like freedom of speech and all that, but those freedoms are limited when you know what you are doing is wrong and you're hurting people," said Ronald Coolley [...]
-----
Why does Mr. Coolley believe the authors have intentionally harmed the DVD industry? The authors never stated that their intent to facilitate pirating; the "DecSS" program was written to allow computers running the Linux operating system to be able to play DVD movie discs.
The ability to reverse-engineer technology (analyze or disassemble technology to determine how it works) is not illegal in the U.S., if the reverse engineering is being done to insure product compatibility. This ability is even protected in recently-passed Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
-----
"They have to make a statement," said Claude Stern, an intellectual property attorney with Fenwick & West. "All those companies that have major amounts of content can't afford to have some moron hacker post something because he thinks it's cool."
-----
Assuming that Mr. Stern is using the term "hacker" to describe someone who breaks into computer systems (a term many computer professionals and enthusiasts have replaced with the term "cracker") potentially to steal confidential information, then he also misunderstands the situation -- although he unintentionally got the term right for what the authors actually did do.
The authors did not steal any proprietary information from Xing Technologies or anyone else; they analyzed and attacked the encryption on the disk itself. Even if Xing Technologies had not erroneously left their key unencrypted, the weak encryption used meant that it was only a matter of time before the authors found a valid key by brute-force checking every possible combination. (The authors stated that, once they found a valid key, they had enough information to find several dozen others.)
It is my hope that your reporters will, in the future, make a better effort to discover and accurately report the facts.
Jay (=
Has anyone used Debian/m68k on, say, an old 68K-based Mac?
I have a Centris 650 with about 64 MB of RAM (tiny HD though) and I was wondering if I could get some more use out of it.
Jay (=
c) real security comes not from obscurity but from minimum disclosure.
While amusing from a sentence-parsing standpoint, I think the point is:
Real security comes not from concealing information about your security algorithms or methods, but from presenting the fewest possible points of attack.
Jay (=
The article is entitled 'Gold Diggers' which I've always thought of as a rather pejorative phrase suggesting that they're only after the money without actually having earned it
Maybe it's me, but whenever I hear the phrase "Gold Diggers" I think of these guys...
Jay (=
For a site that is supposedly pro free speech, the arguments it presents are pretty one sided.We never hear from pro-censorship advocates. And whenever someone says something contrary to the /. opinion that post is immediatly moderated down.
/. should be moderated down for going against "the Slashot opinion". You have the GNOME vs. KDE advocates, the Linux vs. *BSD advocates, the GPL vs. BSD vs. MPL vs. SCSL advocates, ad nauseum.
Well, consdering that a sizable portion of Slashdot reader's do the moderating, and we all come from different backgrounds and have different opinions about stuff, by your logic than 90% of the comments on
Also, what's preventing you from adjusting your threshhold? They're only invisible if you choose not to look at them. If all else fails, start meta-moderating and turn the tide back against the "unfair" moderation. (Unlike moderation, I think there's no limit to the amount of meta-moderation that can be done.)
It'd be nice if some other opinons could actually be heard for once.
Again, no one's opinions are being "silenced". Set your threshhold to -1 and you see every comment -- from the "First Posts" and "hot grits down my pants" to all of the opinions that "go against the will of Slashdot".
Perhaps if Microsoft bought slashdot we could finally hear some fair and unbiased news about windows...
Perhaps if you want "fair and unbiased news about Windows" you need to look elsewhere than Slashdot. There's only a giga-buttload of pro-Microsoft and pro-Windows sites out there (many of them ostensibly "unbiased media").
Jay (=
This Christmas story is the first appearance of Boba Fett (in an animated segment) and introduces Chewbacca's family, several of whom appear in the Star Wars novels.
Jay (=
(Waiting for "Star Wars Holiday Special, Special Edition"... let's see how much CGI it takes to fix that turkey)
There is on feature I want in a browser and still haven't seen anywhere. I want a button that goes to the main page of the website.
e.g. when I'm browsing http://www.foobar.org/foo/bar.html and I press this button the browser has to go to http://www.foobar.org/
does anyone know if there is feature like this in Mozilla?
I would love it if someone implements a "standard links" toolbar similar to the one in iCab that uses the properties set in the LINK tag -- there's a "home" button that takes you to the link defined as "home" by the LINK tag, a "next" button for the "next" link, etc.
It's not quite the same thing as what you describe, but it'd be a lot more useful (assuming everyone starts using the LINK tags). For example, what would be the "main page" of the photo gallery at my home page at http://members.xoom.com/trentc/pictures.html? Would it be:
http://members.xoom.com/
or
http://members.xoom.com/trentc/?
Jay (=
This sounds like a modern day recasting of the old urban legend--fancy new prototype.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be the legendary "fast and stable Windows NT" from the Rare Glitch Project?
Jay (=
I suppose somebody can argue against me here, but isn't this why we have the BSD/GPL/Etc all in the first place?
Part of Corel's problem is they're (unintentionally or not) running up against exactly what the GPL prevents them from doing.
They can't prohibit destribtution of the "Developer Preview" Linux distribtion outside of their developer pool; the GPL forbids it. (Well, more precisely, they can prohibit the distribution of any non-free parts, but not anything covered by the GPL.)
They can't prohibit "minors" from downloading their Linux distribution (with the exception noted above); the GPL forbids it.
I am beginning to think that all these issues will be extremely destructive to the concept of linux by linux users themselves.
The problem is, you don't get exemptions from the GPL. If you're writing your own software and want to do something akin to the Mozilla Public License or Apple's Open Source(r) license, that's fine. But if you use software licensed by the GPL, you have to abide by the GPL's provisions. Period, end of story.
Corel is apparently trying to figure how to build business based on a proprietary-software model using open-source software, and it's not working.
I know that this certainly dropped my respect for Bruce Perens quite a bit. Good luck to Corel's overtaxed legal team as they try to find a way around this.
You must have posted this during the period between Bruce's apology and the update on the main story; he didn't mean for his comment to be taken so seriously.
Jay (=
Well then, hey, why don't we put Bill Gates on the list of greatest hackers? :)
Actually, I suggested Microsoft for social engineering in another reply.
Jay (=
Why not? They've created an entire generation that believes:
And in the process, they've taught a whole slew of people to rigorously defend their right to use crappy software. (Well, they do have the right to use crappy software; it's just funny that they want others to do so as well.)
So come on, give credit where credit is due.
Jay (=
Linus, on of the top 10 hackers of all time? I'm sure my emailbox is going to get crammed for saying this, but Linux is only Unix, which was already invented, cheapened with free source.
Yes, it's a great OS. Yeah, it's pretty cool that it made source code widely available to people. But he didn't really create anything... Even the development model was already established before he did what he did.
Okay, so he may not be a great hacker in a programming sense, but I think he's nailed it in the social engineering sense.
Sure, OSS software development and Unix may have existed before the Linux kernel, but Linus -- unintentionally or not -- brought the two together in such a way that its effect on modern computing has yet to be calculated. How many people will end up running Linux on their desktops in the next 5 years? 10? How many servers will be chugging away, either on Linux or one of the *BSDs?
As the article said, "Man! I wish I'd thought of that..."
Jay (=
Final notes -
Any refinery, factory, etc, that has their real world device controls accessible to the internet should be immediately be dissolved on the basis of congenital idiocy and criminal negligence leading to the endangerment of lots of lives.
What if after breaking into a site on the internet, they compromise the intranet and gain access to these machines? Granted the two networks should never be connected in the first place...
Read his answer again.
If the real-world controls are accessible via the internet (regardless of whether or not they have to "compromise the intranet" first) then someone, somewhere, screwed up horribly and need to be flogged.
Jay (=
But I think people are overreacting to the presence of these apps... why not have one program as an internet suite?
Because I never used any of that stuff in Netscape Communicator? Because I have a mail client and can get a newsreader if I want one?
Considering that Mozilla is only a 5 Meg download right now (including all the debugging tools), I would hardly call it bloated.
Considering that statements about Gecko at its introduction put its size at around 1.4MB, yes, I think adding over twice the code (granted, counting the debugging stuff) could be considered bloated.
Jay (=
And yet, this integrated functionality is EXACTLY what MS did with IE4 and 5. Yet all the Linux zealots cried foul because this gave an unfair advantage to the IE browser. But I guess as long as it is done in the holy name of Open Source its alright.
Yep, because I can (and do) use GNOME and Enlightenment. Or GNOME and WindowMaker. Or fvwm. Or bash...
Heck, as far as I know, I'll still be able to use KDE without Konqueror. If I can't figure out how to pull the two apart, then someone else will -- because the source is available.
Open Source means choice, trollboy.
Jay (=
Some of the comments made by TRUSTe about the RealNetworks incident (not to mention the Microsoft GUID) were to the effect of "well, it doesn't involve their web site, so it's outside our jurisdiction".
But that's not necessarily true.
From Schedule A of the TRUSTe license agreement, rev 5.0 (I wonder what the history of changes are):
"1. TRUSTe Program. The TRUSTe Program (the "Program") is intended to promote fair information practices with regard to the collection of Personally Identifiable Information and Third Party Personally Identifiable Information at Web sites in order to promote the Internet as a trustworthy environment for conducting business, education, communication and entertainment activities. [emphasis mine] Without detracting from the foregoing, the Program may be made applicable to online facilities and services that are similar to an Internet Web site. "
Now, one could make an argument that this may not apply to MS Word's GUID (although it's internet-enabled, the GUID is not necessarily a byproduct of that functionality) it would, in my opinion, most definitely apply to RealPlayer.
TRUSTe appears to reserve for itself a broader mandate than "just verifying web sites". But apparently it chooses not to pursue it.
Jay (=
Seriously, if TrustE is not going to be biting the hands that feed them, then why are we listening to them? Because they spent much of their money building "brand recognition" on the web (making them the "most visible symbol on the internet"?)
What we need is a real consumer-privacy watchdog. Not one that says "we make sure that if companies violate you privacy, they tell you first", but one that conducts active research -- if I can catch violations of a privacy statement by using a Hotmail account created solely for online registrations, so can an advocacy group.
I'm talking about the online-privacy equivalent of the Web Standards Project. They publish a credo of "thou shalt nots" and rate everything an "internet business" does.
For example:
If they have a website that requires registration, what do they do with that information?
If they produce "internet-enabled" products, what exactly does the product transmit over the network? How is that information used? (Yet another good reason reverse engineering needs to remain legal, and not just for "interoperability".)
In the case of GUIDs, do their products create any kind of identifier that can trace a created file or document back to the originating product?
If any kind of authentication is used to allow users access to the product (like a personal-finances program), how easy is it to circumvent the authentication? Is the information accessible without authentication?
This group should also put some work into informing people as to what their rights should be online, and helping them fight for it. ("If you use RealNetworks products, write to them at this address and tell them how you feel about the GUID issue"...)
Jay (=
(The question is, who pays the bills for a group like this?)
Would reprinting this book be considered copyright violation?
Even if the book wasn't copyrighted in the U.S., supposedly the Sonny Bono-named copyright extension was "to bring us in line with European convention" which is life plus 70 years, right?
Jay (=
(As the Boston Globe article says, copyright extensions do more than protect "Steamboat Willie"...)
Instead of bitching, go download the nightly release and do some bughunting/verifying.
I'd love to. I'm using Linux/PPC and I cannot get Mozilla to build on my system.
Are there any known workarounds that I should be aware of when compiling? Failing that, are there any precompiled binaries available?
Jay (=
I, for one, would not use it if it did not have mail and news. Those are fundamental parts of any browser, IMO.
That's your opinion. Me, I get along fine using Netscape Navigator (sans mail and news). I have a good mail program, and I don't read news anyway. I don't want Netscape/AOL locking me into which mail program or newsreader I use any more than I want Microsoft to do so.
Worse, I'm worried that those of us who want "Netscape Navigator 5.0" are going to have to either wait until Communicator 5.0 is done for them to do the "lite" version, or have to hope that someone uses NGLayout in their own standalone product to be released around the same time.
Jay (=