I agree that a common document format is desireable. I just get tired of seeing the slashdot crowd blame Microsoft for all their woes. To quote the topic paragraph: "and will never forgive Microsoft for their abuse of me and my kind." Microsoft is not guilty of anything here. Almost every word processor on the market saves their data in a proprietary format. The PDF/FrameMaker files that he wanted to give them are just as proprietary, but I don't see him bashing Adobe for the same sin.
No, I am the one seeing things clearly here. The slashdot crowd has long had problems seeing things objectively as it relates to Microsoft. Further evidenced by my original post (which was not a troll) being marked down to a -1 score by the moderator. In fact, I have found that any defense of Microsoft is always left at 0/1 or even moderated down. The whole process on this message board gives me the feeling that it's just a bunch of linux lovers trying to make each other feel good about the fact that they can't run 90% of the applications on the market effectively under 'their' operating system.
Technical considerations aside, all you need it the ability for a service operator to specify whether their service allows anonymous access or not. If I mark my service as not allowing anonymous access, then the upstream network will only route non-anonymous data to me. All you need to do is have two versions of the IP protocol, one that contains authenticated tracking information, and one that does not.
The browser can then give the user a choice as to whether to use a particular service or not. This will give service-providers (web sites) the ability to avoid all the bad things that anonymity offers and at the same time, allow sites such as abuse-sites to let their users remain anonymous.
On a side note, anonimity in abuse sites is a non-issue. I can go onto an abuse site right now without using an anonymizer and for all practical purposes be anonymous. Granted that the site operator could track me potentially, but other users of the system couldn't. I will simply pick a chat-group that is administered by somebody I trust not to give a damn.
If you think about it, there is really only one person right now that can practically breech your anonimity, and that is the site you are connecting to. The government can only breech your anonimity by forcing the site to reveal your information.
So, we don't even need a technical solution, a simple legal solution will do just fine. We simply make it illegal for the government to force a site to reveal user information. If a site wishes to cooperate with the government to aid in finding somebody who has hacked them, they are free to do so. Some sites will declare that they have a strictly anonymous policy, others will declare that they will cooperate with the government to track illegal activities.
(Spare me the lectures on wire-tapping, if the government puts a sting operation of that nature on you, they are going to find out who you are eventually anyhow)
They aren't sueing under patent infringement; that is not the issue. They are sueing to prevent the 'device' from being distributed. The judge made it clear that source-code that could compile into the 'device' is the same as the device, but that the programmers comments and descriptions of they were doing is protected free speech. So, just enhance the comments to be EXTREMELY detailed in their nature such that they could be used by a programmer to produce the device down the road.
I read the transcript of the ruling cover to cover and while the judge is certainly predisposed against the defendants, the defendants lawyers did a very poor job of presenting their case. They are relying on some pretty subtle nuiances of the law as their defense. To the layman reading the law, the decss program does indeed seem to be in obvious violation, and let's face it, contrary to his statement that he is not a moron, the judge clearly knows nothing about the internet. He did not even understand the distinction between linking and posting. Furthermore, he clearly did not want to spend the time to become educated on these issues.
That said, I did find a big loophole that the judge left wide open. He made it VERY clear that the programmer's notes (in this case source-code comments) we clearly protected speech. I have reviewed the DeCSS source code and it is a fairly simple short piece of code. I would think that some programmer out there could write 'enhanced' comments that described everything the code was doing to the point that it would allow somebody reading said comments to reproduce the program.
The 'code comments' could then be posted prominently on any website without fear of being sued. I have not quite figured out how the keys could be described without it looking like code.
That said, all it will do is preserve the knowledge, ultimately we will need the right to distribute the executable for our goals to be practically met.
I have my own moral system and don't rely on the law/government to tell me what is right and wrong. Just because you can get away with something or the goverment says it's legal doesn't make it right. There are countless things that are legal that I personally find morally reprehensible.
You really have to ask yourself why bother being moral at all? I mean, if nobody is going to punish you for doing something, then why have reservations about doing it? I can go knock-up a half dozen chicks and walk away from it and the law won't do anything about it, that doesn't mean it's right.
I don't do that because I have self-respect and respect for others. Not robbing a bank doesn't constitute being a moral person. Turning in a wallet full of cash you found in a parking lot does. Who you really are is best defined by what you do when nobody is looking.
We all judge people by their actions. I try to avoid doing things that would cause others to judge me harshly. No matter how you slice it, if you take advantage of something like this, you will lose credibility in my eyes.
If I spill hot coffee in my lap, I don't sue McDonalds just because I can. Why? Because it's below me, I think it is wrong. It doesn't matter if everybody else thinks it is ok...I have to answer to myself. I have little respect for those who feel it's morally right to take advantage of Microsoft and I wouldn't be bragging about it when you come to my company looking for a job.
Giving PC's or Unix credit for the internet is silly. Why don't we just give electricity credit for it, after all, without electricity there would be no internet. The point is, that the what the internet has become is far more than the sum of it's hardware. It would be like giving the television-tube credit for Jerry Seinfeld episodes.
Unix didn't make the internet, neither did the PC. To answer the question, you really have to define what the internet is. If you count that comparitively pitiful little network they had even 10 years ago as the internet, then yes, the PC probably had little to do with it and unix deserves more credit. If you think of the internet as what it has become -- a information revolution of sorts for society as a whole, then the PC deserves more of the credit, as it allowed the masses onto the network.
But I say neither deserves the credit. The bulk of the credit for making this thing happen was the decision to deregulate it and let anybody onto it. The political decision to let the average joe end-user onto the network is what really made it take off and become what it is.
I haven't played chess in 15 years and was never more than a casual player (the computer still beats me on level 1 most of the time); but, depending on how you look at the problem, I may have a solution. I am not convinced that you have to count the starting white move in your 5 moves. The problem seems to imply you have 5 moves from the stated starting position.
Other solutions I have noticed below have required that both sides take the 6th move in order to solve it. It would seem to me that if only white takes the 6th move, it could possibly be a solution since white will have only taken 5 moves from the stated starting position of the board. It all depends on whether that first white move that you have no control over counts or not. Anyways, here is my solution (forgive the notation, I am an amateur and it's the only notation I can figure out):
As you can see, if white doesn't have to count the mandatory move, the problem is solved. Given that an amateur like me figured it out this far, I suspect the problem requires that you count that first move, but perhaps somebody else can figure out a way to shorten what I have shown here by a half-move...
Doesn't anybody find it odd that GreatDomains.com and Register.com appear to be the same company or at least affiliated? When I went to the register.com site, they had a banner-ad running that said 'The First Step on the Web' with both the Register.com and GreatDomains.com logo's on the one banner-ad.
Is it any wonder register.com won't give the name back? Their own sister company is the one who stole it. I can see it now, everytime a domain expires or is released to the pool in any way, register.com/greatdomains.com decide if they want it and within minutes have it stolen. They probably have people who sit there monitoring newly available names 24/7.
It seems to me that the relationship between GreatDomains.com and register.com is totally inappropriate. It's like letting the fox guard the chickens.
Quite frankly, I think selling domain names should fall under the same laws as scalping tickets. You sell them for face-value (cost of registration) or you don't sell them at all. I just did a little experiment and just starting making up names of domains that might be nice to have and checking them. At least 1/3 of the names I tried took me to web-sites offering said name for sale.
If I remember right, trademark law requires that you have a product or service associated with a trademark, can't we have a similar law for domains?
I hope they do embargo the PIII, that will mess up the supply/demand curve enough to make them cheaper so I can buy them:)
When are governments going to learn that embargoing other countries only hurts their own consumers. Additionally, the EU is nowhere near powerful enough to embargo a major US company like Intel. Just tell the Germans we will embargo their BMW's and they will wet their pants trying to lift the intel embargo fast enough...
I'll happily sell you my complete medical records for $10:P. You would find out I had my tonsils out and a broke my arm 3 times. I am 30 now and have only been to the doctor once since I was 12 (for a pre-marriage checkup).
Even if I had serious health problems, who cares? While I would not want the information publicly traded per se, I can think of little to no harm that can come from somebody hacking into this information. The few cases where the information might be useful to somebody also happen to be cases where I would either 1) volunteer the information or 2) they are reputable and would never hack into a system for somebodies medical records.
So, protect my bank account or my medical records...hmm, like I said, $10 going once, going twice...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that a common document format is desireable. I just get tired of seeing the slashdot crowd blame Microsoft for all their woes. To quote the topic paragraph: "and will never forgive Microsoft for their abuse of me and my kind." Microsoft is not guilty of anything here. Almost every word processor on the market saves their data in a proprietary format. The PDF/FrameMaker files that he wanted to give them are just as proprietary, but I don't see him bashing Adobe for the same sin.
No, I am the one seeing things clearly here. The slashdot crowd has long had problems seeing things objectively as it relates to Microsoft. Further evidenced by my original post (which was not a troll) being marked down to a -1 score by the moderator. In fact, I have found that any defense of Microsoft is always left at 0/1 or even moderated down. The whole process on this message board gives me the feeling that it's just a bunch of linux lovers trying to make each other feel good about the fact that they can't run 90% of the applications on the market effectively under 'their' operating system.
Technical considerations aside, all you need it the ability for a service operator to specify whether their service allows anonymous access or not. If I mark my service as not allowing anonymous access, then the upstream network will only route non-anonymous data to me. All you need to do is have two versions of the IP protocol, one that contains authenticated tracking information, and one that does not.
The browser can then give the user a choice as to whether to use a particular service or not. This will give service-providers (web sites) the ability to avoid all the bad things that anonymity offers and at the same time, allow sites such as abuse-sites to let their users remain anonymous.
On a side note, anonimity in abuse sites is a non-issue. I can go onto an abuse site right now without using an anonymizer and for all practical purposes be anonymous. Granted that the site operator could track me potentially, but other users of the system couldn't. I will simply pick a chat-group that is administered by somebody I trust not to give a damn.
If you think about it, there is really only one person right now that can practically breech your anonimity, and that is the site you are connecting to. The government can only breech your anonimity by forcing the site to reveal your information.
So, we don't even need a technical solution, a simple legal solution will do just fine. We simply make it illegal for the government to force a site to reveal user information. If a site wishes to cooperate with the government to aid in finding somebody who has hacked them, they are free to do so. Some sites will declare that they have a strictly anonymous policy, others will declare that they will cooperate with the government to track illegal activities.
(Spare me the lectures on wire-tapping, if the government puts a sting operation of that nature on you, they are going to find out who you are eventually anyhow)
They aren't sueing under patent infringement; that is not the issue. They are sueing to prevent the 'device' from being distributed. The judge made it clear that source-code that could compile into the 'device' is the same as the device, but that the programmers comments and descriptions of they were doing is protected free speech. So, just enhance the comments to be EXTREMELY detailed in their nature such that they could be used by a programmer to produce the device down the road.
I read the transcript of the ruling cover to cover and while the judge is certainly predisposed against the defendants, the defendants lawyers did a very poor job of presenting their case. They are relying on some pretty subtle nuiances of the law as their defense. To the layman reading the law, the decss program does indeed seem to be in obvious violation, and let's face it, contrary to his statement that he is not a moron, the judge clearly knows nothing about the internet. He did not even understand the distinction between linking and posting. Furthermore, he clearly did not want to spend the time to become educated on these issues.
That said, I did find a big loophole that the judge left wide open. He made it VERY clear that the programmer's notes (in this case source-code comments) we clearly protected speech. I have reviewed the DeCSS source code and it is a fairly simple short piece of code. I would think that some programmer out there could write 'enhanced' comments that described everything the code was doing to the point that it would allow somebody reading said comments to reproduce the program.
The 'code comments' could then be posted prominently on any website without fear of being sued. I have not quite figured out how the keys could be described without it looking like code.
That said, all it will do is preserve the knowledge, ultimately we will need the right to distribute the executable for our goals to be practically met.
I have my own moral system and don't rely on the law/government to tell me what is right and wrong. Just because you can get away with something or the goverment says it's legal doesn't make it right. There are countless things that are legal that I personally find morally reprehensible.
You really have to ask yourself why bother being moral at all? I mean, if nobody is going to punish you for doing something, then why have reservations about doing it? I can go knock-up a half dozen chicks and walk away from it and the law won't do anything about it, that doesn't mean it's right.
I don't do that because I have self-respect and respect for others. Not robbing a bank doesn't constitute being a moral person. Turning in a wallet full of cash you found in a parking lot does. Who you really are is best defined by what you do when nobody is looking.
We all judge people by their actions. I try to avoid doing things that would cause others to judge me harshly. No matter how you slice it, if you take advantage of something like this, you will lose credibility in my eyes.
If I spill hot coffee in my lap, I don't sue McDonalds just because I can. Why? Because it's below me, I think it is wrong. It doesn't matter if everybody else thinks it is ok...I have to answer to myself. I have little respect for those who feel it's morally right to take advantage of Microsoft and I wouldn't be bragging about it when you come to my company looking for a job.
Giving PC's or Unix credit for the internet is silly. Why don't we just give electricity credit for it, after all, without electricity there would be no internet. The point is, that the what the internet has become is far more than the sum of it's hardware. It would be like giving the television-tube credit for Jerry Seinfeld episodes.
Unix didn't make the internet, neither did the PC. To answer the question, you really have to define what the internet is. If you count that comparitively pitiful little network they had even 10 years ago as the internet, then yes, the PC probably had little to do with it and unix deserves more credit. If you think of the internet as what it has become -- a information revolution of sorts for society as a whole, then the PC deserves more of the credit, as it allowed the masses onto the network.
But I say neither deserves the credit. The bulk of the credit for making this thing happen was the decision to deregulate it and let anybody onto it. The political decision to let the average joe end-user onto the network is what really made it take off and become what it is.
I haven't played chess in 15 years and was never more than a casual player (the computer still beats me on level 1 most of the time); but, depending on how you look at the problem, I may have a solution. I am not convinced that you have to count the starting white move in your 5 moves. The problem seems to imply you have 5 moves from the stated starting position.
Other solutions I have noticed below have required that both sides take the 6th move in order to solve it. It would seem to me that if only white takes the 6th move, it could possibly be a solution since white will have only taken 5 moves from the stated starting position of the board. It all depends on whether that first white move that you have no control over counts or not. Anyways, here is my solution (forgive the notation, I am an amateur and it's the only notation I can figure out):
1w. e2-e4 (don't count this???)
1b. e7-e6 (black kings pawn forward one)
2w. e4-e5 (white pawn forward one)
2b. e8-e7 (black king forward one)
3w. b1-c3 (white knight)
3b. g8-f6 (black knight)
4w. c3-e4 (white knight)
4b. f6-e8 (black knight)
5w. e4-f6 (white knight)
5b. h8-g8 (black rook left one)
6w. f6-g8 (white knight takes rook, checkmate)
As you can see, if white doesn't have to count the mandatory move, the problem is solved. Given that an amateur like me figured it out this far, I suspect the problem requires that you count that first move, but perhaps somebody else can figure out a way to shorten what I have shown here by a half-move...
Doesn't anybody find it odd that GreatDomains.com and Register.com appear to be the same company or at least affiliated? When I went to the register.com site, they had a banner-ad running that said 'The First Step on the Web' with both the Register.com and GreatDomains.com logo's on the one banner-ad.
Is it any wonder register.com won't give the name back? Their own sister company is the one who stole it. I can see it now, everytime a domain expires or is released to the pool in any way, register.com/greatdomains.com decide if they want it and within minutes have it stolen. They probably have people who sit there monitoring newly available names 24/7.
It seems to me that the relationship between GreatDomains.com and register.com is totally inappropriate. It's like letting the fox guard the chickens.
Quite frankly, I think selling domain names should fall under the same laws as scalping tickets. You sell them for face-value (cost of registration) or you don't sell them at all. I just did a little experiment and just starting making up names of domains that might be nice to have and checking them. At least 1/3 of the names I tried took me to web-sites offering said name for sale.
If I remember right, trademark law requires that you have a product or service associated with a trademark, can't we have a similar law for domains?
I hope they do embargo the PIII, that will mess up the supply/demand curve enough to make them cheaper so I can buy them :)
When are governments going to learn that embargoing other countries only hurts their own consumers. Additionally, the EU is nowhere near powerful enough to embargo a major US company like Intel. Just tell the Germans we will embargo their BMW's and they will wet their pants trying to lift the intel embargo fast enough...
I'll happily sell you my complete medical records for $10 :P. You would find out I had my tonsils out and a broke my arm 3 times. I am 30 now and have only been to the doctor once since I was 12 (for a pre-marriage checkup).
Even if I had serious health problems, who cares? While I would not want the information publicly traded per se, I can think of little to no harm that can come from somebody hacking into this information. The few cases where the information might be useful to somebody also happen to be cases where I would either 1) volunteer the information or 2) they are reputable and would never hack into a system for somebodies medical records.
So, protect my bank account or my medical records...hmm, like I said, $10 going once, going twice...