Probably 90% of the websites I surf render just fine without it.
That means 1 in 10 don't render fine. Would you buy a car if it didn't start 1 in 10 times?
Having "toggle JavaScript On and Off" as your only option isn't an option. Deciding what Javascript can/cannot do is better. In Mozilla, you can tell it, specifically, no unsolicited pop-up windows. Yes, it even differentiates between click-generated pop-ups and automatic pop-ups.
we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights
I think that is the crux of the issue. Modifying the code doesn't modify the license; and, according to section 2, all you really need to do is copy the modified code to trigger it:
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
Who doesn't make copies of their code?
So, actually, it looks like Microsoft and ADTI have it right in a sense:
Premise: Original work licensed under the GPL. Premise: Company obtains a copy through GPL and makes modifications. Premise: Company makes copies of modified code for internal use. Premise: GPL, under section 7, doesn't allow additional restrictions on distribution. So, company cannot restrict distribution. Conclusion: Anyone with access to modified source can distribute under the GPL or company cannot use GPL'd work.
Hmmmm.... Not exactly the mindset I've been working under. How did we start this conversation? Oh yeah, we we're looking for proof Microsoft and ADTI were wrong. Oops.
With people such as Microsoft and ADTI suggesting incorrectly that if you use GPL software in house (without distributing it to third parties) you must make your code publicly available
Can some GPL guru do us all a favor and provide an argument for why Microsoft and ADTI are incorrect here? It is my understanding that they're wrong, but I cannot back it up with a reasoned argument. I would think a reasoned argument would as important as examples: Otherwise, the examples would be of people violating the license, right?
This is a common mistake made by site visitors and regulars alike. Here's the reality:
Stories posted to Slashdot come in one of three varieties:
Stories submitted by readers and approved by editors
Stories found by editors
Stories written by editors
Do not expect the Slashdot editors to fact check the first two . Although the Slashdot staff have given themselves the title editor, they do not play the traditional role of editor. Be glad for that: News is biased enough when written by trained journalists/editors. I, for one, am happy to have the links to news items and access to the collective opinions of other readers. Whatever the submitters and editors wrap around the link is just one person's opinion.
Try to think of Slashdot as a club and the editors as activity coordinators. They post/approve stories they believe club members will be interested in. Often, they add their insights to the paragraph linking to the stories, as do the submitters. These insights should always be taken with a grain (or lump) of salt; if the insights were subject to moderation, probably half would score "-1, Troll."
To appreciate the service provided by Slashdot, learn to ignore the words around the links provided. Read the links you find interesting and participate in the associated discussion.
It is worth noting, as long as we're speaking of allegory, that the Boy Who Cries Wolf eventually had his flock consumed by a real canine.
Yes, that is true. The lesson of course being that if you tell enough lies, no one will believe you when you speak truth.
As others have noted, there are almost no technological or physical limitations to making copies. The MPAA and RIAA might actually be facing a real crisis this time.
It will serve them right if the wolves are really at the door this time, but I don't think that's the case. While there is no limit to the ability to copy digital media, there is a limited market for pirated copies. Also, many of the people who will pirate would never purchase anyway. In fact, I would suggest that the set of people who pirate, but would purchase if they could, is very small indeed; and, those people are probably easily out numbered by people who purchase after being exposed to a pirated copy.
Legislating against copyright infringement is really just another example of legislating morality. For any given immoral act, there are three types of people that relate to it: Most people won't do it whether it's legal or not; some people would do it, unless it's illegal as well; and a small number will do it no matter what. We've established that copyright infringement is a crime; so, the only people the SSSCA and DMCA are targeting are the people who don't care that it's a crime. Since you cannot make piracy technically impossible, why bother at all?
Looks like the MPAA has turned into the boy who cried wolf. With any luck, a pattern of resisting technological innovation will ultimately serve to discredit them in the eyes of law makers.
Both the MPAA and RIAA have resisted new technologies, like analog tape. In the past they were ultimately told to shut up and deal with it. Once they embraced the new technology, they found new markets.
Now the battleground is digital movies. I'm confident that the industry will eventually be put in their place, and then we'll see what innovations follow. Maybe in a decade, movies will be released straight to home theatre. Perhaps we'll see an immersion style of theatre where you can watch the movie from within it, or even participate.
I wish the industry would learn from their past and maybe try to be the ones innovating instead of the ones whining. They'd make more money dragging us into the future than the other way around.
Ever have/dev/null deleted by accident? Interesting things happen, and it's not easy to track down.
Actually, yes. While running an ISP back in 1996, I had a support tech who managed to overwrite/dev/null on a UnixWare box without root access.
All I can say is thank God he realized he did it. I can't even begin to guess how long it would have taken me to find it.
We never did figure out how he managed to do that and could not duplicate the problem after we fixed it. I think we gave him a raise.
The incident even inspired us to start a contest for our support techs. We offered a cash prize to the first one who could root our shell server. The only restriction was that they weren't allowed to access console or sniff packets. Sadly, no one collected the prize, although one managed a nearly perfect forgery of an email from root (an actual email from root was their goal.)
Regarding the stolen plates, for the most part I agree. Although, you can beat having to say so under oath by reporting them stolen to the police. Then you've got a copy of the police report on your side.
That intersection you've diagrammed seems annoying. I guess it depends on how the cameras are placed. I would think that if you entered an intersection at even 5 mph while the light was green, you'd be well past the middle before it was red. If that camera is taking pictures of the front of the car it would need to be down the street, I would think, to see your plates. If there's a signalled cross-walk there, you might want to glance to see if says walk or don't walk. Usually they'll start flashing 'don't walk' something like 15 sec's before the light starts to change.
Hypothetically speaking, if you were stopped at a green light and began to move through an intersection while it was still green, you should be through before the light changes fully to red. If not, they may have short-changed you on the yellow light. The yellow light should be good for 4-5 seconds. Given a second of green, that's 5-6 seconds to cross.
In regards to remembering which intersection, I would think the citation would identify it. Might be a good idea to go time the yellow there before court. Bring a video camera. You're not expected to lock up your brakes in order to stop for the light. If a yellow light only lasts 2 seconds on a 30 mph street, anyone going the speed limit can't be more than three car lengths from the intersection and expect to get through without running the red. At three car lengths from the intersection, you'll lock your brakes into a skid try to stop before it.
The sample photos I've seen showed the plate and the driver. Admittedly, these photos aren't taken from the best angle/lighting and photos at night are probably useless.
I don't know if your premise has been tested in court. Certainly, if you cannot see the driver you can create some doubt. However, citations can be issued to the owner of a car for other reasons. If your car is illegally parked, the ticket's yours (having the car stolen is probably an affirmative defense, I'm sure.) Perhaps these camera tickets are treated like parking tickets under the law.
As to getting stuck in the intersection when the light changes, don't do that. You shouldn't enter an intersection that you cannot leave before the light is red. If traffic gets backed up through an intersection, wait on the other side. It is illegal to stop in an intersection (even one without a light.)
As to the issue of stolen plates, well DMV knows your car's make and model. Take the picture, the police report and your registration to court and viola: instant dismissal.
The problem with this and all automated law enforcement schemes, be they traffic cameras or facial recognition, is that they create a substantial assumption of guilt that is almost impossible to refute. "The computer says you're guilty, so you must be"
Of course this means that it could be bypassing a persons presumption of innocence. I wonder if this could be constitutional grounds from throwing such evidence out?
Well, to answer your question, let's dispense with the premise above. The only thing these automated things can do is substantiate Probable Cause, which is the standard used by law enforcement to make arrests, request search warrants, etc. In some circumstances, for example, traffic violations, Probable Cause almost inevitably translates into guilt. If a cop clocks you going 80mph and hands you a citation for it. There's a very good chance you'll be found guilty by a judge, if you let it get that far. However, that doesn't mean Probable Cause equals guilt. The evidence in a traffic violation is usually enough to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt: The officer testifies he was tracking your vehicle, the officer testifies that the radar gun said 80mph; the officer testifies that radar gun was in good working order; and based on license surrendered to the officer at the scene, you were driving the car. Not a lot of room for reasonable doubt there.
Using a computer to analyze facts and come to a conclusion of Probable Cause is perfectly fine. The only thing that can then be used in court is the facts from which it drew the conclusion. If you're mailed a ticket from a traffic camera, the facts are a) the light was red, and b) there's a picture of you running the light. The software correlates these facts and sends a citation based on Probable Cause.
Probable Cause does not equate to guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a decision for humans to make; and since none of us have computers for peers, that's how it will stay.
Not that she won't have enough to read already, but send her a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Part sex education, part woman education. All women should read this book. Heck, all men should read this book.
If you want subversive, this is it, by the way. Women get the short end of the stick in both sex ed and medical attention. This book fills in the gaps. Think of it as an owners manual for womanhood.
Actually, now that I look, the seperate files total 47.8MB and zipped were 46.3MB; So, there was some compression. However, it would still be more handy as a.zip than seperate files even if the "compression" made the sum greater than its parts.
The real point of my post though was that large files have no business being sent via email. P2P solutions are faster and friendlier; And, although not typically used for this, AIM is probably the most common.
"Both these examples are considered 'fair use' under case law but are being made illegal under the SSSCA. Hardware manufacturers will be forced to make copying for any purpose impossible without expressed permission."
If he doesn't agree, ask him to explain his reasoning.
> I don't agree, and I wonder if you'd care to explain yours.
Under the SSSCA, hardware manufacturers will have to incorporate copy protection into the hardware. How this protection works will ultimately depend on industry standards, but the obvious intention is to prevent all copying. So, if you buy a game for your computer and want to make a copy, the hardware will prevent you, by law. This would occur even though "fair use" would allow you to make copies. That's one reason why the SSSCA goes too far.
I've been joking for years about getting two shell accounts on opposite sides of the planet and setting each up with procmail to bounce all my mail between the two (always rewriting the header so as to avoid a loop.) I figure at any given time, my mail would be in both places and neither simultaneously.
If I want to read some, I'd just chmod.procmailrc for a few seconds and change it back. Plenty of mail storage without chewing-up precious file-system quota.
But if unicode can be used to spoof the location bar then it will rope in even cautious users
Ewww.....
I wonder if unicode is even supposed to be allowed in domain names. If not, maybe this will prompt Microsoft, Mozilla, and the like to error when the host/domain contains unicode.
Until then, I guess I'll retype the host/domain of any site I intend to log into before doing so. What a pain.
If unicode is valid, heaven help us. With registrars charging as little as $8 for a domain, you know they aren't checking these things.
Given an example of a real-life action that is illegal under the DMCA or SSSCA and ask whether it should be illegal. Then ask him if he's aware of the offending Act's prohibition. For example:
"If I buy a music CD, should I be allowed to copy it to tape so that I can play it in my car stereo? Or, If I buy an expensive game for my computer, should I be allowed to make a personal copy for every day use to prevent wearing out the original?"
When he agrees that you should be able, point this out:
"Both these examples are considered 'fair use' under case law but are being made illegal under the SSSCA. Hardware manufacturers will be forced to make copying for any purpose impossible without expressed permission."
If he doesn't agree, ask him to explain his reasoning.
Here's an article by a leading expert, Irving Biederman, describing current thinking.
He starts by describing basic object recognition; and he theorizes on how face recognition both builds on the basics, and yet, differs from, seemingly, all types of objects.
Check out this article from 1977. Bacteria, with a little help, will eat oil/blacktop.
Bacteria is now used to clean up oil spills.
Now for the correction. The Observer article simply says 'bugs'. Given the above info, they almost certainly mean bacteria, not a virus, as the story submitter assumes.
Slashdot Mirror
We are pentium of borg, you will be approximated.
Probably 90% of the websites I surf render just fine without it.
That means 1 in 10 don't render fine. Would you buy a car if it didn't start 1 in 10 times?
Having "toggle JavaScript On and Off" as your only option isn't an option. Deciding what Javascript can/cannot do is better. In Mozilla, you can tell it, specifically, no unsolicited pop-up windows. Yes, it even differentiates between click-generated pop-ups and automatic pop-ups.
I think that is the crux of the issue. Modifying the code doesn't modify the license; and, according to section 2, all you really need to do is copy the modified code to trigger it:
Who doesn't make copies of their code?
So, actually, it looks like Microsoft and ADTI have it right in a sense:
Premise: Original work licensed under the GPL.
Premise: Company obtains a copy through GPL and makes modifications.
Premise: Company makes copies of modified code for internal use.
Premise: GPL, under section 7, doesn't allow additional restrictions on distribution. So, company cannot restrict distribution.
Conclusion: Anyone with access to modified source can distribute under the GPL or company cannot use GPL'd work.
Hmmmm.... Not exactly the mindset I've been working under. How did we start this conversation? Oh yeah, we we're looking for proof Microsoft and ADTI were wrong. Oops.
With people such as Microsoft and ADTI suggesting incorrectly that if you use GPL software in house (without distributing it to third parties) you must make your code publicly available
Can some GPL guru do us all a favor and provide an argument for why Microsoft and ADTI are incorrect here? It is my understanding that they're wrong, but I cannot back it up with a reasoned argument. I would think a reasoned argument would as important as examples: Otherwise, the examples would be of people violating the license, right?
While on the subject of money for information here is some weird inforation in money.
I don't believe in a conspiracy here, but that's a pretty strange coincedence. A friend refers to it as evidence of a higher power.
"/."
There's two really expensive bytes. Just consider all the lost productivity. Oh the humanity...
--
Hint for moderators: laugh or don't laugh. not a troll.
This is a common mistake made by site visitors and regulars alike. Here's the reality:
Stories posted to Slashdot come in one of three varieties:
Do not expect the Slashdot editors to fact check the first two . Although the Slashdot staff have given themselves the title editor, they do not play the traditional role of editor. Be glad for that: News is biased enough when written by trained journalists/editors. I, for one, am happy to have the links to news items and access to the collective opinions of other readers. Whatever the submitters and editors wrap around the link is just one person's opinion.
Try to think of Slashdot as a club and the editors as activity coordinators. They post/approve stories they believe club members will be interested in. Often, they add their insights to the paragraph linking to the stories, as do the submitters. These insights should always be taken with a grain (or lump) of salt; if the insights were subject to moderation, probably half would score "-1, Troll."
To appreciate the service provided by Slashdot, learn to ignore the words around the links provided. Read the links you find interesting and participate in the associated discussion.
It is worth noting, as long as we're speaking of allegory, that the Boy Who Cries Wolf eventually had his flock consumed by a real canine.
Yes, that is true. The lesson of course being that if you tell enough lies, no one will believe you when you speak truth.
As others have noted, there are almost no technological or physical limitations to making copies. The MPAA and RIAA might actually be facing a real crisis this time.
It will serve them right if the wolves are really at the door this time, but I don't think that's the case. While there is no limit to the ability to copy digital media, there is a limited market for pirated copies. Also, many of the people who will pirate would never purchase anyway. In fact, I would suggest that the set of people who pirate, but would purchase if they could, is very small indeed; and, those people are probably easily out numbered by people who purchase after being exposed to a pirated copy.
Legislating against copyright infringement is really just another example of legislating morality. For any given immoral act, there are three types of people that relate to it: Most people won't do it whether it's legal or not; some people would do it, unless it's illegal as well; and a small number will do it no matter what. We've established that copyright infringement is a crime; so, the only people the SSSCA and DMCA are targeting are the people who don't care that it's a crime. Since you cannot make piracy technically impossible, why bother at all?
I wonder if his testimony was recorded on video. I'd love to send him a tape. He's got to have a VCR, right?
Looks like the MPAA has turned into the boy who cried wolf. With any luck, a pattern of resisting technological innovation will ultimately serve to discredit them in the eyes of law makers.
Both the MPAA and RIAA have resisted new technologies, like analog tape. In the past they were ultimately told to shut up and deal with it. Once they embraced the new technology, they found new markets.
Now the battleground is digital movies. I'm confident that the industry will eventually be put in their place, and then we'll see what innovations follow. Maybe in a decade, movies will be released straight to home theatre. Perhaps we'll see an immersion style of theatre where you can watch the movie from within it, or even participate.
I wish the industry would learn from their past and maybe try to be the ones innovating instead of the ones whining. They'd make more money dragging us into the future than the other way around.
Ever have /dev/null deleted by accident? Interesting things happen, and it's not easy to track down.
/dev/null on a UnixWare box without root access.
Actually, yes. While running an ISP back in 1996, I had a support tech who managed to overwrite
All I can say is thank God he realized he did it. I can't even begin to guess how long it would have taken me to find it.
We never did figure out how he managed to do that and could not duplicate the problem after we fixed it. I think we gave him a raise.
The incident even inspired us to start a contest for our support techs. We offered a cash prize to the first one who could root our shell server. The only restriction was that they weren't allowed to access console or sniff packets. Sadly, no one collected the prize, although one managed a nearly perfect forgery of an email from root (an actual email from root was their goal.)
Hey, nice diagram :)
Regarding the stolen plates, for the most part I agree. Although, you can beat having to say so under oath by reporting them stolen to the police. Then you've got a copy of the police report on your side.
That intersection you've diagrammed seems annoying. I guess it depends on how the cameras are placed. I would think that if you entered an intersection at even 5 mph while the light was green, you'd be well past the middle before it was red. If that camera is taking pictures of the front of the car it would need to be down the street, I would think, to see your plates. If there's a signalled cross-walk there, you might want to glance to see if says walk or don't walk. Usually they'll start flashing 'don't walk' something like 15 sec's before the light starts to change.
Hypothetically speaking, if you were stopped at a green light and began to move through an intersection while it was still green, you should be through before the light changes fully to red. If not, they may have short-changed you on the yellow light. The yellow light should be good for 4-5 seconds. Given a second of green, that's 5-6 seconds to cross.
In regards to remembering which intersection, I would think the citation would identify it. Might be a good idea to go time the yellow there before court. Bring a video camera. You're not expected to lock up your brakes in order to stop for the light. If a yellow light only lasts 2 seconds on a 30 mph street, anyone going the speed limit can't be more than three car lengths from the intersection and expect to get through without running the red. At three car lengths from the intersection, you'll lock your brakes into a skid try to stop before it.
It is not a picture of "you running the light",
The sample photos I've seen showed the plate and the driver. Admittedly, these photos aren't taken from the best angle/lighting and photos at night are probably useless.
I don't know if your premise has been tested in court. Certainly, if you cannot see the driver you can create some doubt. However, citations can be issued to the owner of a car for other reasons. If your car is illegally parked, the ticket's yours (having the car stolen is probably an affirmative defense, I'm sure.) Perhaps these camera tickets are treated like parking tickets under the law.
As to getting stuck in the intersection when the light changes, don't do that. You shouldn't enter an intersection that you cannot leave before the light is red. If traffic gets backed up through an intersection, wait on the other side. It is illegal to stop in an intersection (even one without a light.)
As to the issue of stolen plates, well DMV knows your car's make and model. Take the picture, the police report and your registration to court and viola: instant dismissal.
The problem with this and all automated law enforcement schemes, be they traffic cameras or facial recognition, is that they create a substantial assumption of guilt that is almost impossible to refute. "The computer says you're guilty, so you must be"
Of course this means that it could be bypassing a persons presumption of innocence. I wonder if this could be constitutional grounds from throwing such evidence out?
Well, to answer your question, let's dispense with the premise above. The only thing these automated things can do is substantiate Probable Cause, which is the standard used by law enforcement to make arrests, request search warrants, etc. In some circumstances, for example, traffic violations, Probable Cause almost inevitably translates into guilt. If a cop clocks you going 80mph and hands you a citation for it. There's a very good chance you'll be found guilty by a judge, if you let it get that far. However, that doesn't mean Probable Cause equals guilt. The evidence in a traffic violation is usually enough to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt: The officer testifies he was tracking your vehicle, the officer testifies that the radar gun said 80mph; the officer testifies that radar gun was in good working order; and based on license surrendered to the officer at the scene, you were driving the car. Not a lot of room for reasonable doubt there.
Using a computer to analyze facts and come to a conclusion of Probable Cause is perfectly fine. The only thing that can then be used in court is the facts from which it drew the conclusion. If you're mailed a ticket from a traffic camera, the facts are a) the light was red, and b) there's a picture of you running the light. The software correlates these facts and sends a citation based on Probable Cause.
Probable Cause does not equate to guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a decision for humans to make; and since none of us have computers for peers, that's how it will stay.
Actually, I think you patent something *after* it has been invented ;-)
... The current USPTO is perfectly happy to patent unproven and/or obvious ideas where software is concerned. Been reading Slashdot long? :)
Oh, no
Not that she won't have enough to read already, but send her a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves . Part sex education, part woman education. All women should read this book. Heck, all men should read this book.
If you want subversive, this is it, by the way. Women get the short end of the stick in both sex ed and medical attention. This book fills in the gaps. Think of it as an owners manual for womanhood.
Actually, now that I look, the seperate files total 47.8MB and zipped were 46.3MB; So, there was some compression. However, it would still be more handy as a .zip than seperate files even if the "compression" made the sum greater than its parts.
The real point of my post though was that large files have no business being sent via email. P2P solutions are faster and friendlier; And, although not typically used for this, AIM is probably the most common.
Peace.
"Both these examples are considered 'fair use' under case law but are being made illegal under the SSSCA. Hardware manufacturers will be forced to make copying for any purpose impossible without expressed permission."
If he doesn't agree, ask him to explain his reasoning.
> I don't agree, and I wonder if you'd care to explain yours.
Here's an explaination of fair use.
Under the SSSCA, hardware manufacturers will have to incorporate copy protection into the hardware. How this protection works will ultimately depend on industry standards, but the obvious intention is to prevent all copying. So, if you buy a game for your computer and want to make a copy, the hardware will prevent you, by law. This would occur even though "fair use" would allow you to make copies. That's one reason why the SSSCA goes too far.
We have users who want to send 30 MB messages. Damn artists.
In all seriousness, get these lunatics to use some kind of P2P solution. Heck, even AIM is better than hosing your mail server.
A friend sent me 42MB worth of zipped MP3's over AIM with no trouble. Took about 5 minutes, or so. (me=cable, him=~T1)
I've been joking for years about getting two shell accounts on opposite sides of the planet and setting each up with procmail to bounce all my mail between the two (always rewriting the header so as to avoid a loop.) I figure at any given time, my mail would be in both places and neither simultaneously.
.procmailrc for a few seconds and change it back. Plenty of mail storage without chewing-up precious file-system quota.
If I want to read some, I'd just chmod
But if unicode can be used to spoof the location bar then it will rope in even cautious users
Ewww.....
I wonder if unicode is even supposed to be allowed in domain names. If not, maybe this will prompt Microsoft, Mozilla, and the like to error when the host/domain contains unicode.
Until then, I guess I'll retype the host/domain of any site I intend to log into before doing so. What a pain.
If unicode is valid, heaven help us. With registrars charging as little as $8 for a domain, you know they aren't checking these things.
You're my hero, AC.
Given an example of a real-life action that is illegal under the DMCA or SSSCA and ask whether it should be illegal. Then ask him if he's aware of the offending Act's prohibition. For example:
"If I buy a music CD, should I be allowed to copy it to tape so that I can play it in my car stereo? Or, If I buy an expensive game for my computer, should I be allowed to make a personal copy for every day use to prevent wearing out the original?"
When he agrees that you should be able, point this out:
"Both these examples are considered 'fair use' under case law but are being made illegal under the SSSCA. Hardware manufacturers will be forced to make copying for any purpose impossible without expressed permission."
If he doesn't agree, ask him to explain his reasoning.
Here's an article by a leading expert, Irving Biederman, describing current thinking.
He starts by describing basic object recognition; and he theorizes on how face recognition both builds on the basics, and yet, differs from, seemingly, all types of objects.
Check out this article from 1977. Bacteria, with a little help, will eat oil/blacktop.
Bacteria is now used to clean up oil spills.
Now for the correction. The Observer article simply says 'bugs'. Given the above info, they almost certainly mean bacteria, not a virus, as the story submitter assumes.
There's a load of difference between monitoring bandwidth usage and monitoring content.
You're absolutely right, but they're singling out "audio or video files." That information is content.