I'm sure all of those people were under NDA, and they leaked the info anyway. Seems pretty open and shut; they made the choice to violate their contract and now they'll have to pay the piper. This of course assumes that Apple can actually pin it on the few people/person who did it, which will probably be very tough. They'll probably lose if they just go after "everyone who knew."
That's kind of a loaded statement. Sure, people probably don't die if this particular database goes down, but I'm assuming there are going to be aspects of the business depending on it (otherwise what's the point). The customer may say it doesn't have to be mission critical, but rebuilding a 30GB database is not a trivial or quick task. How mad will the customer be when faced with 24-48 hours of downtime? This means you have to have reliable hardware and good system administration practices anyway. Basically, you have to treat it as pretty mission critical.
So of course, the answer (I think is), if you haven't done it before, and no one in your group/business has, and no one's sure if you can or not...you probably shouldn't. Or more accurately hire a consultant to do it; although there's a good chance that when you tell him/her that you want a 30GB, reliable database with good performance that they're going to tell you to go buy an E4500 with 4-8 CPU's and Oracle.
I completely agree. It amazes me that not a single browser has a way to "save" a particular certificate and associate it with a web page. That way you'd only have to check once for a valid cert, and then your browser would alert you if it changed upon subsequent visits. In this case, that would at least protect established paypal users. New users would have to demonstrate a small amount of care and not blindly give out their CC number to anyone who asked. I realize that's probably too much to ask for.
Or if you don't feel like aiming for the small arrow in IE, you can right click the back button to see the same list. You're right; very simple. Too bad no one bothered to actually _read_ the referenced article, let alone read this far down into the comments to find the simple fix.
So Metallica hired a company to sit down and monitor Napster, finding 300,000 people who supposedly downloaded or made available copyrighted material. What if the person who downloaded the song owns that CD legally? Doesn't that strike anyone as fair use? Of course in the CD Now case the court decided that didn't constitute fair use. Seems fishy to me. I can certainly make MP3's for my personal use. I can trade them with a friend, providing he/she owns the same CD. I suppose Napster could get in trouble for not policing the actual possession of the CD, but this would be a non-infringing use of Napster to download Metallica songs. Except that the courts already ruled incorrectly in the CD-now case, setting a bad precedent. I suppose the problem comes in the distriubtion..."This material is not licensed for public broadcast..." Can you call making the material available for download (using the honor system so only people who own the CD's can get it) public broadcast? Regardless, the "300,000" users are bunk, since I'd bet they're almost all Metallica fans who own a license to the songs they were downloading.
I agree...any MP3 I've heard of is pretty much sutible only for background listening material. Works okay if you're not paying attention to the music, but gets horribly objectionable to just sit around and listen to. Even as background music they get fatiguing. Certainly not any incentive at all to keep me from buying the CD if the music is something I want to listen to.
The defintion of B2B is business to business. It's somewhat of a buzzword defining companies that offer services to other businesses, rather to end consumers. I had to ramble here so Slashdot would actually accept my post. It's lovely when filtering software actually stops people from posting useful information (although I suppose the usefulness of the definition of b2b could be debated...)
One of my former employees suffered a DOS attack with spoofed source IP's. My thought was that if you went to the router they were coming from, you could then figure out the next router in the chain (via hardware address). Then from that router, you could get the next hop, and so on, until you finally traced it back to the source. Now we didn't have the size or the clout to go to UUnet or Sprint and ask them to do this on their core segments, but the feds or yahoo certainly does. And granted with a distributed attack, it just traces you back to some system in a university somewhere, but that system probably got hacked at some point, and that's some extra evidence.
Oh really. Like Mr. Mitnick needs access to a computer to hack or DOS a site. While he was in prison, he worked on hacking systems by sheer force of will. He could have escaped long ago, but chose not to, as that would reveal his secret. Now he is free to attack systems at will using his incredible stockpile of mental energy, all while escaping suspiscion because he "doesn't have access to a phone." He's using the DOS attacks as an experiment. He's perfecting his new style of hacking, "Jeet Kune DOS", loosely translated as "Way of the Intercepting Packet". He's fled persecution, and now he's going to open schools and teach others this way, much to the chagrin of the hacker elders... then he's going to go on to make the first really good hacker movies in hollywood. Wait...mabye that's someone else's life story...sorry.
"...support for IPSEC and IPv6, allowing an almost infinite number of Internet addresses." Almost infinite? Did I just hear a professional journalist use the equivalent of "infinity minus one?" Grrr...innumeracy at it's finest. I mean, it's not like they said practically infinite - which may or may not be true, but is at least open to interpertation. "Almost infinite" - I mean, 3.4x10^38 is a truly huge number - but instead of just making up crap - why not try to inform the user. It didn't really drive towards the point of the whole article - so why even bother. Sigh...I mean the number "1" is pretty much just as close to "almost infinite." When are computer journalists going to get a clue?
_sarcasm mode on_ Yeah - that's right. NASA's Mars guys must be stupid. Because designing budget priced hunks of steel and silicon that must be launched into orbit on tons of explosive fuel, then flung hundreds of thousands of miles through space, and finally come to land on a rocky planet with no atmosphere is easy. _sarcasm mode off_ Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't - all NASA can do is make the best engineering effort they can to increase the probability of success.
Yeah - I like this one. Perhaps Dynamic DNS doesn't work right with other DNS implementations - that's probably microsoft's fault. But come on...usually when a program crashes on bad input, we call that a bug. At least when it's microsoft's product that's crashing...:-)
Now it seems to me that the Crusoe processors that are coming first are mobile just because the intial ideas of Transmeta lend themselves well to that application. Has anyone else read the whitepaper and seeing what I think I'm seeing? It looks like they've just taken the back end instruction unit of a more traditional CPU to start. But rather then add microcode and transistor based software to control getting software instructions to it, they've moved those functions in normal software. This allows the actual CPU's to be cheaper, smaller, and simpler (hence the lower power requirements, in addition to their clever management scheme). But is it just me, or does this also provide a fascinating layer of abstraction? Couldn't the code morphing software just as easily be programmed to dispatch instructions to multiple VLIW cores? Not to mention all the advantages of being able to write more complicated software that can make better choices about how to optimize and keep the core processor running. Very interesting idea I think - lots of possiblities. It seems like it's essentially turning the x86 instruction set into an API, so bigger and badder advances on the silicon side of things can be taken advantage of without having to go crazy optimizing existing applications. Abstraction is one of the most powerful tools we have, and this is a fascinating use of it. Of course, they don't mention much about the extra RAM that translation cache and code morphing software is going to require - I wonder what type of cost this abstraction comes at.
Is this this a good place to start for decently experienced C programmers? I'm interested in OS programming, and examining and possibly contributing to linux seems like a good place to start. I've done quite a bit in C/C++, but I've never really worked on a large size project before, and I'm just not sure where to start digging in. Might this book help?
The operating system is only one (small!) part of what makes a reliable system. Staff, procedures, and methodology are all more important. The most reliable OS in world will still crash if in the process of rushing a system into production, someone decided to run the power cord across the floor and someone trips over it (don't laugh - this happened to one of the places I worked before). Don't get me wrong, it's cute and fun to compare uptimes (my NT PDC and BDC have been up for 169 and 183 days respectively), just don't expect those numbers to correllate into the real-world when it actually comes to getting work done. If you plan, test, and implement properly and consistiently, any modern server OS will perform adequately. Always remember - the right tool for the right job.
Well, at least there's a way to find registered domains without having to check every single registrar's whois server. So who runs the registry? Still network solutions?
It's crazy what they'll grant a patent on. Does anyone remember the patent Compton's multimedia had? The one something like "Information stored and indexed on a CD-ROM"? They actually had that patented, but kept it pretty underground until CD-ROM encylopedias really took off, then announced it as some sort of trump card and implied they were going to start charging royalties to every CD-ROM manufacturer. Seems there's a whole bunch of really silly, generic patents these days. I wonder if I, as an individual can patent some fun ideas. Like "sneaking out the backdoor using yardwork as an excuse to avoid your mother-in-law." Or maybe "accessing informational databases over a computer network." Wouldn't that be wonderful?
The real fix is for the US to stop issuing these crazy patents, however as I recall the courts have done some good when it comes to sanity checking. I think Compton never tried anything because their lawyers decided no judge would let it fly in court. It makes for a nice second line of defense.
Who cares? We all might care soon if Corel is right. Let me quote from the original comment:
"Can a minor consent to release code under the GPL when they may not be legally able to establish contracts?
The fact that we might like the answer to be yes does not necessarily make it so... "
That's an excellent point. What if a minor contributed to a major part of an open source project and submitted it. If they can't enter a legal contract, then the code they submit is not legally under the GPL. Which would _maybe_ mean that a big mean company could come along and use it without releasing the source. Granted, this would be difficult since it's tough to tell who's a minor and who's not, and exactly what their conrtibution would have been, but it's something to think about. Doesn't the FSF require releases for developers, and don't those releases have to be signed by someone over 18 or their legal gaurdian?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure all of those people were under NDA, and they leaked the info anyway. Seems pretty open and shut; they made the choice to violate their contract and now they'll have to pay the piper. This of course assumes that Apple can actually pin it on the few people/person who did it, which will probably be very tough. They'll probably lose if they just go after "everyone who knew."
So of course, the answer (I think is), if you haven't done it before, and no one in your group/business has, and no one's sure if you can or not...you probably shouldn't. Or more accurately hire a consultant to do it; although there's a good chance that when you tell him/her that you want a 30GB, reliable database with good performance that they're going to tell you to go buy an E4500 with 4-8 CPU's and Oracle.
I completely agree. It amazes me that not a single browser has a way to "save" a particular certificate and associate it with a web page. That way you'd only have to check once for a valid cert, and then your browser would alert you if it changed upon subsequent visits. In this case, that would at least protect established paypal users. New users would have to demonstrate a small amount of care and not blindly give out their CC number to anyone who asked. I realize that's probably too much to ask for.
Or if you don't feel like aiming for the small arrow in IE, you can right click the back button to see the same list. You're right; very simple. Too bad no one bothered to actually _read_ the referenced article, let alone read this far down into the comments to find the simple fix.
So Metallica hired a company to sit down and monitor Napster, finding 300,000 people who supposedly downloaded or made available copyrighted material. What if the person who downloaded the song owns that CD legally? Doesn't that strike anyone as fair use? Of course in the CD Now case the court decided that didn't constitute fair use. Seems fishy to me. I can certainly make MP3's for my personal use. I can trade them with a friend, providing he/she owns the same CD. I suppose Napster could get in trouble for not policing the actual possession of the CD, but this would be a non-infringing use of Napster to download Metallica songs. Except that the courts already ruled incorrectly in the CD-now case, setting a bad precedent. I suppose the problem comes in the distriubtion..."This material is not licensed for public broadcast..." Can you call making the material available for download (using the honor system so only people who own the CD's can get it) public broadcast? Regardless, the "300,000" users are bunk, since I'd bet they're almost all Metallica fans who own a license to the songs they were downloading.
I agree...any MP3 I've heard of is pretty much sutible only for background listening material. Works okay if you're not paying attention to the music, but gets horribly objectionable to just sit around and listen to. Even as background music they get fatiguing. Certainly not any incentive at all to keep me from buying the CD if the music is something I want to listen to.
The defintion of B2B is business to business. It's somewhat of a buzzword defining companies that offer services to other businesses, rather to end consumers. I had to ramble here so Slashdot would actually accept my post. It's lovely when filtering software actually stops people from posting useful information (although I suppose the usefulness of the definition of b2b could be debated...)
Heheheh. Hopefully your Ethernet ID is unique...:-)
One of my former employees suffered a DOS attack with spoofed source IP's. My thought was that if you went to the router they were coming from, you could then figure out the next router in the chain (via hardware address). Then from that router, you could get the next hop, and so on, until you finally traced it back to the source. Now we didn't have the size or the clout to go to UUnet or Sprint and ask them to do this on their core segments, but the feds or yahoo certainly does. And granted with a distributed attack, it just traces you back to some system in a university somewhere, but that system probably got hacked at some point, and that's some extra evidence.
Oh really. Like Mr. Mitnick needs access to a computer to hack or DOS a site. While he was in prison, he worked on hacking systems by sheer force of will. He could have escaped long ago, but chose not to, as that would reveal his secret. Now he is free to attack systems at will using his incredible stockpile of mental energy, all while escaping suspiscion because he "doesn't have access to a phone." He's using the DOS attacks as an experiment. He's perfecting his new style of hacking, "Jeet Kune DOS", loosely translated as "Way of the Intercepting Packet". He's fled persecution, and now he's going to open schools and teach others this way, much to the chagrin of the hacker elders... then he's going to go on to make the first really good hacker movies in hollywood. Wait...mabye that's someone else's life story...sorry.
"...support for IPSEC and IPv6, allowing an almost infinite number of Internet addresses." Almost infinite? Did I just hear a professional journalist use the equivalent of "infinity minus one?" Grrr...innumeracy at it's finest. I mean, it's not like they said practically infinite - which may or may not be true, but is at least open to interpertation. "Almost infinite" - I mean, 3.4x10^38 is a truly huge number - but instead of just making up crap - why not try to inform the user. It didn't really drive towards the point of the whole article - so why even bother. Sigh...I mean the number "1" is pretty much just as close to "almost infinite." When are computer journalists going to get a clue?
_sarcasm mode on_
Yeah - that's right. NASA's Mars guys must be stupid. Because designing budget priced hunks of steel and silicon that must be launched into orbit on tons of explosive fuel, then flung hundreds of thousands of miles through space, and finally come to land on a rocky planet with no atmosphere is easy.
_sarcasm mode off_
Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't - all NASA can do is make the best engineering effort they can to increase the probability of success.
Doh!
Yeah - I like this one. Perhaps Dynamic DNS doesn't work right with other DNS implementations - that's probably microsoft's fault. But come on...usually when a program crashes on bad input, we call that a bug. At least when it's microsoft's product that's crashing...:-)
Now it seems to me that the Crusoe processors that are coming first are mobile just because the intial ideas of Transmeta lend themselves well to that application. Has anyone else read the whitepaper and seeing what I think I'm seeing? It looks like they've just taken the back end instruction unit of a more traditional CPU to start. But rather then add microcode and transistor based software to control getting software instructions to it, they've moved those functions in normal software. This allows the actual CPU's to be cheaper, smaller, and simpler (hence the lower power requirements, in addition to their clever management scheme). But is it just me, or does this also provide a fascinating layer of abstraction? Couldn't the code morphing software just as easily be programmed to dispatch instructions to multiple VLIW cores? Not to mention all the advantages of being able to write more complicated software that can make better choices about how to optimize and keep the core processor running. Very interesting idea I think - lots of possiblities. It seems like it's essentially turning the x86 instruction set into an API, so bigger and badder advances on the silicon side of things can be taken advantage of without having to go crazy optimizing existing applications. Abstraction is one of the most powerful tools we have, and this is a fascinating use of it. Of course, they don't mention much about the extra RAM that translation cache and code morphing software is going to require - I wonder what type of cost this abstraction comes at.
Is this this a good place to start for decently experienced C programmers? I'm interested in OS programming, and examining and possibly contributing to linux seems like a good place to start. I've done quite a bit in C/C++, but I've never really worked on a large size project before, and I'm just not sure where to start digging in. Might this book help?
The operating system is only one (small!) part of what makes a reliable system. Staff, procedures, and methodology are all more important. The most reliable OS in world will still crash if in the process of rushing a system into production, someone decided to run the power cord across the floor and someone trips over it (don't laugh - this happened to one of the places I worked before). Don't get me wrong, it's cute and fun to compare uptimes (my NT PDC and BDC have been up for 169 and 183 days respectively), just don't expect those numbers to correllate into the real-world when it actually comes to getting work done. If you plan, test, and implement properly and consistiently, any modern server OS will perform adequately. Always remember - the right tool for the right job.
Well, at least there's a way to find registered domains without having to check every single registrar's whois server. So who runs the registry? Still network solutions?
It's crazy what they'll grant a patent on. Does anyone remember the patent Compton's multimedia had? The one something like "Information stored and indexed on a CD-ROM"? They actually had that patented, but kept it pretty underground until CD-ROM encylopedias really took off, then announced it as some sort of trump card and implied they were going to start charging royalties to every CD-ROM manufacturer. Seems there's a whole bunch of really silly, generic patents these days. I wonder if I, as an individual can patent some fun ideas. Like "sneaking out the backdoor using yardwork as an excuse to avoid your mother-in-law." Or maybe "accessing informational databases over a computer network." Wouldn't that be wonderful?
The real fix is for the US to stop issuing these crazy patents, however as I recall the courts have done some good when it comes to sanity checking. I think Compton never tried anything because their lawyers decided no judge would let it fly in court. It makes for a nice second line of defense.
Who cares? We all might care soon if Corel is right. Let me quote from the original comment:
"Can a minor consent to release code under the GPL when they may not be legally able to establish contracts?
The fact that we might like the answer to be yes does not necessarily make it so...
"
That's an excellent point. What if a minor contributed to a major part of an open source project and submitted it. If they can't enter a legal contract, then the code they submit is not legally under the GPL. Which would _maybe_ mean that a big mean company could come along and use it without releasing the source. Granted, this would be difficult since it's tough to tell who's a minor and who's not, and exactly what their conrtibution would have been, but it's something to think about. Doesn't the FSF require releases for developers, and don't those releases have to be signed by someone over 18 or their legal gaurdian?