Re:Woody Woodpecker says, Use Tor + SSL!
on
Hiding From Google
·
· Score: 1
Um. Yes. Posts that validate the Greater Internet Dickwad theory are not great arguments for why people should be allowed to remain anonymous on the Internet. Not saying it's an argument against privacy. Just saying it doesn't help your case.
Sensors next to heat sources are not a scandal, because it is the temperature variation over a multi-annual period we are interested in. The data was not thrown out mysteriously, it was explained very clearly in a peer-reviewed journal. Your 50% claim is unsourced nonsense. I challenge you to provide a source for it. Similarly, your grand conspiracy theory appears to be vast distortion of what provably occurred. You're making it up out of whole cloth.
Oh by the way, RealClimate doesn't do original research itself, you'll notice. It's not actually a primary source, but more of an aggregator of primary sources. So, you don't have to trust or believe RealClimate itself; indeed you shouldn't. You should go to the source.
Seeing as I don't know you from Adam, I'd prefer a well reasoned argument from the data, to "your opinion". I don't have to do better than that, as it would be immense hubris for me to imagine I do could better than the people whose speciality this is. Tell me, who do you consider to be a reliable source?
Millions of pounds divided by hundreds of scientists is...er...not very much, in the grand scheme of things. Look, if you have evidence that the scientists are benefitting to some egregious extent from AGW (y'know, other than wages and such), then you should present it.
Yours is the only answer I agree with wholeheartedly. The other answers seem to be predicated on the assumption that "artists work, so they deserve to be paid", which seems backwards to me. If no-one asked them to produce an artwork, they surely can't deserve to be paid purely for producing it. Now, legally, they can charge you a fee to view it, because copyright law gives them that right, but I feel the ethical grounding of copyright law is very shaky.
I view copyright as a pragmatic measure aimed at social good, not an inherently ethical one. You could argue that the social good that results makes it into an ethical measure, but I'm not convinced that people would stop producing works without its protections.
Just so you know where I'm arguing from here, I have a (single) short story which is freely available online, or which can be purchased as part of a collection, so I am to some degree putting my money where my mouth is;)
Well, I'd like to ask a counter question. I freely acknowledge that there is no legal excuse for pirating something. But what is the ethical reason one should expect to be paid for, say, a movie?
A larger proportion of the population in New Zealand own 4x4s than in the UK. Admittedly, more of them use them for their intended purpose, not ferrying the kids to and from school.
Of course, the population is a lot smaller...
The very second he goes to court, Google will stop indexing News Corp's sites. In fact, further to that, all News Corp. sites will disappear from Google entirely. They will do this to limit potential damages, and also because they would probably regard such a move as extortion.
The only way for such action to succeed is to form a cartel (which would, of course, be illegal). If just one news provider broke ranks, they would have a commanding market advantage. They would be the only provider of news in the search results.
Of course, the copyright argument is spurious and weak. Google is distributing neither the original content nor a derived work, such as a Youtube video (the only derived work here that I can see is the index). They distribute an excerpt, which they are fully allowed to do under copyright law. They provide full attribution. Mr. Murdoch is confusing (deliberately) what the law says about copyright and the way he would like his business model to work. He is not entitled to ask for legal protection for his business model. He must negotiate that with Google.
You've confused copyright with patents. A patent must be filed (published) in order to receive protection.
The right of first publication inheres on creation of a work. This is a common law right pre-dating the Statute of Anne, as well as a statutory right (I can't quote chapter and verse but I believe it was in most cases covered by state statutes until 1976, when it was brought into federal law, but I may be misremembering here).
Well, he writes copyright transfer contracts for a living, so I think he knows how copyright is granted. I don't think you need to lecture him on that. I think you're reading things that he isn't writing. This is what he said:
Well, that's half anyway; really the basis of copyright is encouraging authors to create and publish the most, in exchange for the least copyright, so as to maximize the net public benefit.
...and this is what the Constitution says:
The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries...
That looks pretty much the same to me.
Examples of market failure and the legal fiction of the "rational actor" are hot stuff in legal theory right now. Your cold utilitarianism suggests to me that if you didn't graduate from Chicago, you would nevertheless have fit right in.
It's okay for you to believe that, but the Constitution says otherwise. Monopolies are not granted lightly, so the Constitution seems to say precisely that innovators should be treated well merely for innovating.
No, it doesn't. I encourage you to re-read the text. It says that creators are to be granted exclusive rights for a limited period. You could interpret that as an intention that creators be treated equitably, but it's a stretch to say it says they should treated well. "Well', to me, implies treatment more favourable to the creator than merely "equitable".
Nice try, but no dice. The author was incentivized to create the work, but the incentives are both backward- and forward-reaching. If people with good ideas see too many other people with good ideas getting screwed, it potentially discourages future innovation.
Potentially. However, frankly speaking, creators have been getting screwed over by publishers since year dot, and as yet we have no shortage of creators, so I think you're making an Appeal to Fear. It appears that at least some creators are wise enough to read and negotiate their contracts appropriately.
At this point I feel I should emphasize that, speaking broadly, I don't disagree with the principle you're espousing, namely, freedom of contract (and the associated responsibility of adhering to said contract). But you have written your response as though 17 USC 203 were the only exception to that principle you've ever seen. But if this were the case, you could teach contract law to anyone in about three minutes. Most of contract law has grown up around the numerous exceptions to the "agreement plus consideration equals binding commitment" formula.
It is, however, the point of contract law at issue. One problem at a time, please.
True, but if you haven't recouped your expenses plus a significant profit after 35 years, you also probably do not have a property that anyone is going to try and reclaim.
So do you also believe that copyright itself should be limited to 35 years, regardless of the lifespan of the author? That is after all, by
Yeah, I'll give you that. But none of the steps he described in the article will actually protect you from that kind of jerk. He's going to do it to you regardless. Be smart enough to realise it, and get out before he does.
The only way to protect yourself from a jerk that is to be a jerk. I made the decision to not be a jerk, and it hasn't got me fired yet;)
The first thing that struck me about that article was that I had (blissfully) forgotten how horrible, corrupt and incompetent a lot of companies out there are. I agree with the overall thrust of his article, although I'd phrase it as "Be good at what you do, be proud of what you achieve, and act accordingly". That said, I just want to take a few points from the article. This guy has been working in some toxic environments, and it's done bad things to his world view.
Why wouldn't you see this one coming? Well, you might be thinking the missed deadlines are not your fault. Your excuses may include "the design was bad" or "the deadlines are not realistic" or "they are making me code in Java and I am a.NET expert."
Guess what? Excuses don't matter. Results matter.
If the design was bad, well, I'm the Lead, so I had approval on the design, and I had to sell it to the stakeholders, and convince myself that it was possible with the available resources. If it wasn't, that was my fault, and I shouldn't be trying to blame them for it.
In a project with a scheduled deadline and fixed scope (i.e., non-agile), if you don't have historical information to work from, the only sensible way to estimate the effort is to ask the developers who are going to implement it. If I didn't ask them, and set deadlines willy-nilly, and then they couldn't meet them because I missed a whole chunk of complexity out, then that was my fault, and I shouldn't be trying to blame them for it. (The corollary being that, if I did ask them and they didn't meet their own estimates, you bet they've got some talking to do, because I'm about to have a very painful meeting...)
I wouldn't ask a French translator to translate Italian for me and bitch about it if they were slow ("Hey, they both have Latin roots..."). Similarly, if I ask you to do something that I know you've got a learning curve on, and I don't make space for that in the project, and don't give you the assistance you need to learn it, guess what...yep, that's my fault. It's only your fault if you didn't get off your ass and learn it (although I do expect you to be able to learn quickly—you're supposed to be a professional developer, after all.)
The job of the manager is to make sure that you're doing your best possible work, and to make sure that all impediments to that are removed. It is not to make ludicrous promises and then blame you when they can't be delivered. If you find yourself working under such a waste of space, move as soon as is practical. If you are such a manager, please consider growing some stones and taking the responsibility you're being paid to take.
You have to promote your work. Yes, I mean brag.
That might work in the U.S.A. Good luck with that in, say, New Zealand.
If you are doing good work, then you'll receive kudos when the software is implemented. And if the implementation is not a success? This is tricky because you don't want to play the blame game in public.
The "in public" is very telling. You don't want to play the blame game at all.
Seriously, people. If you're a good developer, for pity's sake don't work in companies like this. They're rotting your mind.
Single-stage challenge-response over SSL is only suitable for client-server communication. In that scenario, if I want to communicate with a web server that in turn communicates with a database, there's no credential propagation. The web server probably has a single user that it uses to perform all transactions, which therefore has the right to access any user's account. My security policy must then be implemented twice, which of course increases the chance that it will get out of sync or be implemented incorrectly.
Of course, there is a technology that handles this. It's called Kerberos. Guess which operating system includes it as standard, and recommends its use?
If you're in a pure Windows 2000 or greater environment, you can turn off NTLM and LM altogether. This reduces you to sniffing Kerberos packets, which are substantially harder to crack - you're talking hours for a single weak password. And you've still got to be on the same network segment.
As for getting the hashes off the domain controller, by what magic do you intend to obtain sufficient remote access to a properly-secured DC? That's the equivalent of saying that if you don't use shadow passwords it's really easy to crack UN*X. Well, duh.
Why yes, now you come to mention it...
GTA:VC is a work of art, a beautiful evocation of a place and a time (and mindless violence). Sometimes my friend and I would just drive a boat out into the ocean at night, and watch the sharks swimming under the hull. And sometimes...sometimes we'd try get Tommy standing on the top of the tallest buildings in the city. And then throw him off. It turns out there's only a couple of buildings that are tall enough to kill him.
...he subscribes to the Everybody's Like Me fallacy. That is, he believes every computer user is enough of a hacker to compile and run all the software they will ever need.
Why did you quote this, and then not say anything that in any way rebuts or challenges his point?
My dog lacks the skills to survive in the wild, and so she happily submits to all of the restrictions that I impose on her life.
Sometimes the hardest part about freeing the oppressed is convincing them that they are indeed oppressed.
Dogs care about eating and peeing. They don't care that they have to be licensed, or that they can only be treated by licensed veterinarians. They don't care that, if their dog house breaks, the parts have to be shipped from one company in Korea, because they own a world-wide patent. Actually, you know that's a pretty good analogy, because most people don't care either. You can't be oppressed if you don't give a damn.
If all they know is life as it is and always has been, they'd rather just live that life -- where things are predictable and their habits get them by -- than to face the shock of having to reinvent themselves.
That's offensive. They could be reinventing themselves and challenging dogma every day for all you know. Just because these people have priorities in their lives other than Free Software does not automatically make them sheep.
What RMS is saying is this: You don't have to put up with this crap. There are alternatives. But he shouldn't stop saying it just because only a small percentage of people find it at all relevant to their day-to-day existence.
Slashdot Mirror
Um. Yes. Posts that validate the Greater Internet Dickwad theory are not great arguments for why people should be allowed to remain anonymous on the Internet. Not saying it's an argument against privacy. Just saying it doesn't help your case.
The vast majority of musicians make absolutely no money from record sales. The only money they make comes from live performances and merchandising.
Estoppel. Seriously. It would really help the tone of this endlessly recurring argument if people would just look this one up.
Sensors next to heat sources are not a scandal, because it is the temperature variation over a multi-annual period we are interested in. The data was not thrown out mysteriously, it was explained very clearly in a peer-reviewed journal. Your 50% claim is unsourced nonsense. I challenge you to provide a source for it. Similarly, your grand conspiracy theory appears to be vast distortion of what provably occurred. You're making it up out of whole cloth.
Oh by the way, RealClimate doesn't do original research itself, you'll notice. It's not actually a primary source, but more of an aggregator of primary sources. So, you don't have to trust or believe RealClimate itself; indeed you shouldn't. You should go to the source.
Please provide an alternative source/analysis that you trust more.
And here's their response, pointing out his misuse of statistics.. This is fun, isn't it?
Seeing as I don't know you from Adam, I'd prefer a well reasoned argument from the data, to "your opinion". I don't have to do better than that, as it would be immense hubris for me to imagine I do could better than the people whose speciality this is. Tell me, who do you consider to be a reliable source?
Citation needed. Attack the science, not the scientist. Honestly, you're not even trying.
Lie.
Citation needed.
Millions of pounds divided by hundreds of scientists is...er...not very much, in the grand scheme of things. Look, if you have evidence that the scientists are benefitting to some egregious extent from AGW (y'know, other than wages and such), then you should present it.
Sorry, delayed response...
Yours is the only answer I agree with wholeheartedly. The other answers seem to be predicated on the assumption that "artists work, so they deserve to be paid", which seems backwards to me. If no-one asked them to produce an artwork, they surely can't deserve to be paid purely for producing it. Now, legally, they can charge you a fee to view it, because copyright law gives them that right, but I feel the ethical grounding of copyright law is very shaky.
I view copyright as a pragmatic measure aimed at social good, not an inherently ethical one. You could argue that the social good that results makes it into an ethical measure, but I'm not convinced that people would stop producing works without its protections.
Just so you know where I'm arguing from here, I have a (single) short story which is freely available online, or which can be purchased as part of a collection, so I am to some degree putting my money where my mouth is ;)
Well, I'd like to ask a counter question. I freely acknowledge that there is no legal excuse for pirating something. But what is the ethical reason one should expect to be paid for, say, a movie?
A larger proportion of the population in New Zealand own 4x4s than in the UK. Admittedly, more of them use them for their intended purpose, not ferrying the kids to and from school. Of course, the population is a lot smaller...
The very second he goes to court, Google will stop indexing News Corp's sites. In fact, further to that, all News Corp. sites will disappear from Google entirely. They will do this to limit potential damages, and also because they would probably regard such a move as extortion.
The only way for such action to succeed is to form a cartel (which would, of course, be illegal). If just one news provider broke ranks, they would have a commanding market advantage. They would be the only provider of news in the search results.
Of course, the copyright argument is spurious and weak. Google is distributing neither the original content nor a derived work, such as a Youtube video (the only derived work here that I can see is the index). They distribute an excerpt, which they are fully allowed to do under copyright law. They provide full attribution. Mr. Murdoch is confusing (deliberately) what the law says about copyright and the way he would like his business model to work. He is not entitled to ask for legal protection for his business model. He must negotiate that with Google.
You've confused copyright with patents. A patent must be filed (published) in order to receive protection.
The right of first publication inheres on creation of a work. This is a common law right pre-dating the Statute of Anne, as well as a statutory right (I can't quote chapter and verse but I believe it was in most cases covered by state statutes until 1976, when it was brought into federal law, but I may be misremembering here).
Well, he writes copyright transfer contracts for a living, so I think he knows how copyright is granted. I don't think you need to lecture him on that. I think you're reading things that he isn't writing. This is what he said:
...and this is what the Constitution says:
That looks pretty much the same to me.
Examples of market failure and the legal fiction of the "rational actor" are hot stuff in legal theory right now. Your cold utilitarianism suggests to me that if you didn't graduate from Chicago, you would nevertheless have fit right in.
What's with the ad-hominem attacks? And Poisoning the Well, to boot.
It's okay for you to believe that, but the Constitution says otherwise. Monopolies are not granted lightly, so the Constitution seems to say precisely that innovators should be treated well merely for innovating.
No, it doesn't. I encourage you to re-read the text. It says that creators are to be granted exclusive rights for a limited period. You could interpret that as an intention that creators be treated equitably, but it's a stretch to say it says they should treated well. "Well', to me, implies treatment more favourable to the creator than merely "equitable".
Nice try, but no dice. The author was incentivized to create the work, but the incentives are both backward- and forward-reaching. If people with good ideas see too many other people with good ideas getting screwed, it potentially discourages future innovation.
Potentially. However, frankly speaking, creators have been getting screwed over by publishers since year dot, and as yet we have no shortage of creators, so I think you're making an Appeal to Fear. It appears that at least some creators are wise enough to read and negotiate their contracts appropriately.
At this point I feel I should emphasize that, speaking broadly, I don't disagree with the principle you're espousing, namely, freedom of contract (and the associated responsibility of adhering to said contract). But you have written your response as though 17 USC 203 were the only exception to that principle you've ever seen. But if this were the case, you could teach contract law to anyone in about three minutes. Most of contract law has grown up around the numerous exceptions to the "agreement plus consideration equals binding commitment" formula.
It is, however, the point of contract law at issue. One problem at a time, please.
True, but if you haven't recouped your expenses plus a significant profit after 35 years, you also probably do not have a property that anyone is going to try and reclaim.
So do you also believe that copyright itself should be limited to 35 years, regardless of the lifespan of the author? That is after all, by
sigh. "from a jerk like that". I feel this is appropriate at this moment.
Yeah, I'll give you that. But none of the steps he described in the article will actually protect you from that kind of jerk. He's going to do it to you regardless. Be smart enough to realise it, and get out before he does.
The only way to protect yourself from a jerk that is to be a jerk. I made the decision to not be a jerk, and it hasn't got me fired yet ;)
Disclaimer: I am a lead dev/team leader.
The first thing that struck me about that article was that I had (blissfully) forgotten how horrible, corrupt and incompetent a lot of companies out there are. I agree with the overall thrust of his article, although I'd phrase it as "Be good at what you do, be proud of what you achieve, and act accordingly". That said, I just want to take a few points from the article. This guy has been working in some toxic environments, and it's done bad things to his world view.
Why wouldn't you see this one coming? Well, you might be thinking the missed deadlines are not your fault. Your excuses may include "the design was bad" or "the deadlines are not realistic" or "they are making me code in Java and I am a .NET expert."
Guess what? Excuses don't matter. Results matter.
The job of the manager is to make sure that you're doing your best possible work, and to make sure that all impediments to that are removed. It is not to make ludicrous promises and then blame you when they can't be delivered. If you find yourself working under such a waste of space, move as soon as is practical. If you are such a manager, please consider growing some stones and taking the responsibility you're being paid to take.
You have to promote your work. Yes, I mean brag.
That might work in the U.S.A. Good luck with that in, say, New Zealand.
If you are doing good work, then you'll receive kudos when the software is implemented. And if the implementation is not a success? This is tricky because you don't want to play the blame game in public.
The "in public" is very telling. You don't want to play the blame game at all.
Seriously, people. If you're a good developer, for pity's sake don't work in companies like this. They're rotting your mind.
Single-stage challenge-response over SSL is only suitable for client-server communication. In that scenario, if I want to communicate with a web server that in turn communicates with a database, there's no credential propagation. The web server probably has a single user that it uses to perform all transactions, which therefore has the right to access any user's account. My security policy must then be implemented twice, which of course increases the chance that it will get out of sync or be implemented incorrectly.
Of course, there is a technology that handles this. It's called Kerberos. Guess which operating system includes it as standard, and recommends its use?
Oh, come on.
If you're in a pure Windows 2000 or greater environment, you can turn off NTLM and LM altogether. This reduces you to sniffing Kerberos packets, which are substantially harder to crack - you're talking hours for a single weak password. And you've still got to be on the same network segment.
As for getting the hashes off the domain controller, by what magic do you intend to obtain sufficient remote access to a properly-secured DC? That's the equivalent of saying that if you don't use shadow passwords it's really easy to crack UN*X. Well, duh.
Why yes, now you come to mention it... GTA:VC is a work of art, a beautiful evocation of a place and a time (and mindless violence). Sometimes my friend and I would just drive a boat out into the ocean at night, and watch the sharks swimming under the hull. And sometimes...sometimes we'd try get Tommy standing on the top of the tallest buildings in the city. And then throw him off. It turns out there's only a couple of buildings that are tall enough to kill him.
That doesn't make any sense. One has nothing to do with the other:
See? Different things.
...he subscribes to the Everybody's Like Me fallacy. That is, he believes every computer user is enough of a hacker to compile and run all the software they will ever need.
Why did you quote this, and then not say anything that in any way rebuts or challenges his point?
My dog lacks the skills to survive in the wild, and so she happily submits to all of the restrictions that I impose on her life.
Sometimes the hardest part about freeing the oppressed is convincing them that they are indeed oppressed.
Dogs care about eating and peeing. They don't care that they have to be licensed, or that they can only be treated by licensed veterinarians. They don't care that, if their dog house breaks, the parts have to be shipped from one company in Korea, because they own a world-wide patent. Actually, you know that's a pretty good analogy, because most people don't care either. You can't be oppressed if you don't give a damn.
If all they know is life as it is and always has been, they'd rather just live that life -- where things are predictable and their habits get them by -- than to face the shock of having to reinvent themselves.
That's offensive. They could be reinventing themselves and challenging dogma every day for all you know. Just because these people have priorities in their lives other than Free Software does not automatically make them sheep.
What RMS is saying is this: You don't have to put up with this crap. There are alternatives. But he shouldn't stop saying it just because only a small percentage of people find it at all relevant to their day-to-day existence.
There, fixed that for you.