Let's think about this for one minute. Science is never cheap, in fact, most of the scientists prior to the Industrial Revolution were either the sons of extremely wealthy individuals, who had no need for more money, or were being financed by a King, who expected some tangable return in the form of "practical" research.
The scientists themselves often either had everything they could possibly want anyway, or were so poor that they'd have no chance of ever selling anything practical, since the first thug (back then, it was a punch-and-grab thug, now it would be a cut-and-paste thug) that came along would just easily take their stuff... there goes business.
Until food wants to be free, why should we care what information wants?
"Having multiple vendors competing to offer us the best product at the lowest price is worse than having one vendor who can sell the product to us at monopoly prices."
And the relevance is... what? That's not what code forking is. By definition, a fork will lead to differences (some good, some bad), which means the better analogy is "Having multiple vendors offering incompatable products for a (hopefully) low price is worse than having one vendor offer a unified and consistant standarized program at a slightly higher price." And yes, sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's bad... depends on the situation. After all, when Micro$oft changes a standard slightly, we yell, scream, and complain, but when different *nix vendows offer slightly incompatable versions, it's good.
Yes, I'm aware there's a difference between the RPM/DEB/Tarball "fork" and a completely broken implentation of a standard. I have to question, however, how people are supposed to all make a living if they sell the exact same product... oh wait... software wants to be free. Well, until food wants to be free, stop telling programmers to live on charity.
Score:
(-1 True)
(-1 Challenging the mob)
(+1 Writing micro$oft with a $)
(+1 Natalie Portman (yes, this is the only reference)
(+1 Goatse.cx (see above))
Total: +1
MailAndNews.com is also great. Free POP3, IMAP4, and web access... plus (for now, at least), 60 minutes of email over the phone (great for travelling). I've had accounts with them since '97 (although this account is from '99). They had server problems about 3 weeks ago... first downtime I've seen in 4 years (RAID problems). Other than that... highly recommended. I personally have 6 accounts with them... it's an awesome service.
I think I'm missing something. Perhaps I don't understand copyright law very well, or maybe I'm just not anti-establishment enough for the/. crowd, but let me review my understanding of the facts.
1. A user, without any support from slashdot, posted (illegally) copyright text. This did NOT appear, IMHO, to fall under "fair-use", but IANAL.
2. Slashdot did nothing wrong by automatically (computer) posting the comment... since they are just a forum.
3. This "Church" (which I am not a fan of, although I am a practicing member of a religous movement) had it's copyright violated
4. They got upset.
5. They wanted it removed.
6. Slashdot was (now) knowingly supporting copyright infringement.
7. They removed it.
What's the problem? It's true that slashdot does not have to monitor everything for criminal acts... but once they find out about it, how can they continue?
One more point. WTF is Taco's problem? Although I commend him for encouraging us to contact our legislators, he only presents one argument against this complaint: Many other people do it, too. The fact that google lists tons of other criminals doesn't make it right. Duh. "If you can't dazzle them with briliance, blind them with bull," and that's what we have here... a bunch of ad hominem attacks on the Church, and other links designed to make the story look impressive.
Now, as with every anti-slashdot comment, here's what to do:
1. Mod me up to about 3 or so... so a bunch of people see me.
2. Write a response
3. Mod that up to 5
4. Mod be back down to -1
Got it?;)
Many people have been saying (both in response to this and the last interview responses) comments to the extent of "Don't these people know what slashdot is?!?!?" and complaining that the candidates are answering the questions the way they believe is right, rather than echoing the slashdot party line.
Well, duh.
First, I'd be wary of saying all slashdotters think ____... some of us, in fact (or maybe it's just me, but at least one!) think that music piracy such as the kind that goes on via napster and gnutella (and IRC, and web sites) is BAD. Not all of us are libertarians... please don't force your views on me, and I won't force mine on you.
But about our topic... isn't the main complaint people have with today's candidates the fact that they are fickle, saying whatever a given audience wants to hear? So what happens? Here, candidates answer the questions in a way that will probably make them unpopular, and we fault them for that! I don't care if you hate Bush... wouldn't you rather know what he thinks, and then disagree, rather than have him pretend to agree with you? I think Harry Browne, for example, would be an awful president, but I truly enjoyed seeing his responses.
Of course, the major candidates do tend to view questions as springboards for rants, but that's a different story... of course, so do we:)
Wait a minute. This is slashdot... where's the ob "But does it run Linux?" post? Or was I really the first out of 110 some odd people to ask this... wow
Excellent analogy. I think we all agree that serious security is only possible with some form of full disclosure. Here's my question: how do we eliminate that two day period when every script kiddie can start taking down machines at random before a patch comes out. Wait... here's an idea (I'm only half kidding about this one). No disclosures after 12:00 noon (pacific), 3:00pm eastern (screw the rest of the world ). Also, no disclosures except from Monday - Wednesday! Yes! I can finally enjoy my vacation without having to call in and check to make sure no new vulnerabilities came out... oh... wait. That's not a plan... I have no life to enjoy:). Oh well.
Except for one small thing. DVD-R is NOT AROUND now. CD-R's are, and if you trade movies on RW's with your friends (not that I'm accusing you... I know you don't even have a DVD), then it's free. That's a big plus on many college campuses, or other places where people have fast connections and lots of time. I know that having an unencrypted.VOB allows for unlimited playback... so why didn't our friends just make a player? Or some kind of modular code... I don't know how exactly it work. My point was just that the vehicle in which they released their code strongly suggests it's intended for illegal usage. We both know it... the question is whether that should still be a crime. But to say that it's both ethically ok and legit... no way.
Wow... he's almost right. Let's look at his final statement carefully:
"If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best."
True. IF. Obviously, if you accept that criteria, he's right. He correctly notes earlier that NetBSD has just over one tenth the number of bugs as Windows. But, for whatever reason, it has a much smaller market share.
If you are a home user-- he may be right. Let's analyze a case: You are a home linux user. A vulnerability is reported Friday afternoon. Being a non-nerd computer geek, you spend your friday night at a bar. Saturday morning, you have a hangover. Saturday afternoon, you log on, and voila, a patch has been released! (Wow: an fast vendor response). But something else has happened. A lamer with no life rooted your box while you were out partying. Compare that to the following: You're a home NT user. Same scenario, only the bug wasn't reported. One super criminal has it... and maybe the Fortune 500 company is now screwed (which is why they need 24/7 sysadmins on a patchable OS), but there are no script kiddies around to attack you.
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops. Obviously, in a high security case, this is absurd, and therefore for any serious target, they need an OS like *BSD (or Linux). But for the home user-- is full disclosure really the best choice?
It also alarms me that people get this issue confused with the DeCSS issue... DeCSS is demonstrably not used for pirating (and isn't necessary). DeCSS is about control, and using your own property as you wish. Napster is about making money for themselves and their stock holders, not freedom.
DeCSS is not about piracy?! Cracking the decryption code was a legitamate (if technically illegal) action. And if they had released a DVD player for Linux (or another unsupported OS)... great. But a Windows tool?! What's up with that? No, this tool does not help Linux users (directly... I know you can the convert the.VOB to a linuxable format). No, it does not do anything directly useful. Yes, it does keep the file in it's Windows-only state. And yes, it does make piracy (especially re-encoding into MPEG4 or something and putting it on a CD) easier. If it quacks like a duck...
This sort of hypocritical attitude is nothing new to the Open Source crowd. For years we have yelled and screamed about the evils of copyrights and intellectual property laws-- but DON'T TOUCH MY GPL! Yes, as someone earlier pointed out, there's a difference between trademark and copyrights. But we all can see that there's no fundamental difference between napster and microsoft... it's just a matter of where to draw the line. For the hardcore freedom seekers... it's time for a new poster child. Surely there's someone out there who really believes in this whole "information should be free" thing. But they're clearly not a corporation, and they clearly won't last long.
Without turning this into a CPM/JP vs. attrition rant (like the post right before this-- the one who was too embarassed to sign his real name), if you actually _read_ Penenberg's writing's, you'll see that yes, he does have a personal animosity towards Ms. Meinel. Whether or not that position is justified is a different question, one that has been beaten to death years ago. The bottom line is that (to the best of my knowledge), the Shield Law should protect Mr. Penenberg, although I must confess, I don't think I could ever be a reporter, and be able to sleep at night, knowing I'm giving up my job to help an unremorseful criminal who probabaly doesn't give a !#^! about me. But maybe I'm just too good of a person.
Has anyone ever thought of / heard of viruses that do physical damage? I'm talking about anything from the wasteful (printing 1 character per page on a printer, and then formfeeding it), to a virus that might cause actual permament harm to a computer. They say (and I assume it's true) that if you tamper with the refresh rates of your monitor, and set them too high, it can hurt the machine. What if (and PLEASE don't try this) a virus tampered with these settings? Maybe billions in damages is possible after all...
You write that he has much better things to do... why? He's not in the business for the money. As I recall, he's teaching computers in a school... here is a real hacker, someone who cares about teaching people... and that's exactly why he deserves to be honored.
Yeah, without Jobs the Apple's would never had been what they are today. But so what? We're not honoring businessmen... it's about innovators, and (hopefully) true devotees to technology... long live the Woz!
Slashdot Mirror
Be careful what you wish for, you just might... oh. Too late.
(Score: -1 Flamebait)
(Score: -1 True)
(Score: -1 Very True)
The scientists themselves often either had everything they could possibly want anyway, or were so poor that they'd have no chance of ever selling anything practical, since the first thug (back then, it was a punch-and-grab thug, now it would be a cut-and-paste thug) that came along would just easily take their stuff... there goes business.
Until food wants to be free, why should we care what information wants?
And the relevance is... what? That's not what code forking is. By definition, a fork will lead to differences (some good, some bad), which means the better analogy is "Having multiple vendors offering incompatable products for a (hopefully) low price is worse than having one vendor offer a unified and consistant standarized program at a slightly higher price." And yes, sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's bad... depends on the situation. After all, when Micro$oft changes a standard slightly, we yell, scream, and complain, but when different *nix vendows offer slightly incompatable versions, it's good.
Yes, I'm aware there's a difference between the RPM/DEB/Tarball "fork" and a completely broken implentation of a standard. I have to question, however, how people are supposed to all make a living if they sell the exact same product... oh wait... software wants to be free. Well, until food wants to be free, stop telling programmers to live on charity.
Score:
(-1 True)
(-1 Challenging the mob)
(+1 Writing micro$oft with a $)
(+1 Natalie Portman (yes, this is the only reference)
(+1 Goatse.cx (see above))
Total: +1
MailAndNews.com is also great. Free POP3, IMAP4, and web access... plus (for now, at least), 60 minutes of email over the phone (great for travelling). I've had accounts with them since '97 (although this account is from '99). They had server problems about 3 weeks ago... first downtime I've seen in 4 years (RAID problems). Other than that... highly recommended. I personally have 6 accounts with them... it's an awesome service.
Ok... who's forgetting how to spell? Or leaving off words? ;)
I think I'm missing something. Perhaps I don't understand copyright law very well, or maybe I'm just not anti-establishment enough for the /. crowd, but let me review my understanding of the facts.
1. A user, without any support from slashdot, posted (illegally) copyright text. This did NOT appear, IMHO, to fall under "fair-use", but IANAL.
2. Slashdot did nothing wrong by automatically (computer) posting the comment... since they are just a forum.
3. This "Church" (which I am not a fan of, although I am a practicing member of a religous movement) had it's copyright violated
4. They got upset.
5. They wanted it removed.
6. Slashdot was (now) knowingly supporting copyright infringement.
7. They removed it.
What's the problem? It's true that slashdot does not have to monitor everything for criminal acts... but once they find out about it, how can they continue?
One more point. WTF is Taco's problem? Although I commend him for encouraging us to contact our legislators, he only presents one argument against this complaint: Many other people do it, too. The fact that google lists tons of other criminals doesn't make it right. Duh. "If you can't dazzle them with briliance, blind them with bull," and that's what we have here... a bunch of ad hominem attacks on the Church, and other links designed to make the story look impressive.
Now, as with every anti-slashdot comment, here's what to do:
1. Mod me up to about 3 or so... so a bunch of people see me.
2. Write a response
3. Mod that up to 5
4. Mod be back down to -1
Got it? ;)
make world shouldn't take very long at all... make World might take a wee bit longer...
Many people have been saying (both in response to this and the last interview responses) comments to the extent of "Don't these people know what slashdot is?!?!?" and complaining that the candidates are answering the questions the way they believe is right, rather than echoing the slashdot party line.
:)
Well, duh.
First, I'd be wary of saying all slashdotters think ____... some of us, in fact (or maybe it's just me, but at least one!) think that music piracy such as the kind that goes on via napster and gnutella (and IRC, and web sites) is BAD. Not all of us are libertarians... please don't force your views on me, and I won't force mine on you.
But about our topic... isn't the main complaint people have with today's candidates the fact that they are fickle, saying whatever a given audience wants to hear? So what happens? Here, candidates answer the questions in a way that will probably make them unpopular, and we fault them for that! I don't care if you hate Bush... wouldn't you rather know what he thinks, and then disagree, rather than have him pretend to agree with you? I think Harry Browne, for example, would be an awful president, but I truly enjoyed seeing his responses.
Of course, the major candidates do tend to view questions as springboards for rants, but that's a different story... of course, so do we
Wait a minute. This is slashdot... where's the ob "But does it run Linux?" post? Or was I really the first out of 110 some odd people to ask this... wow
Does anyone know... will this affect the developement of Debian's distro of HURD?
Excellent analogy. I think we all agree that serious security is only possible with some form of full disclosure. Here's my question: how do we eliminate that two day period when every script kiddie can start taking down machines at random before a patch comes out. Wait... here's an idea (I'm only half kidding about this one). No disclosures after 12:00 noon (pacific), 3:00pm eastern (screw the rest of the world ). Also, no disclosures except from Monday - Wednesday! Yes! I can finally enjoy my vacation without having to call in and check to make sure no new vulnerabilities came out... oh... wait. That's not a plan... I have no life to enjoy :). Oh well.
Except for one small thing. DVD-R is NOT AROUND now. CD-R's are, and if you trade movies on RW's with your friends (not that I'm accusing you... I know you don't even have a DVD), then it's free. That's a big plus on many college campuses, or other places where people have fast connections and lots of time. I know that having an unencrypted .VOB allows for unlimited playback... so why didn't our friends just make a player? Or some kind of modular code... I don't know how exactly it work. My point was just that the vehicle in which they released their code strongly suggests it's intended for illegal usage. We both know it... the question is whether that should still be a crime. But to say that it's both ethically ok and legit... no way.
"If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best."
True. IF. Obviously, if you accept that criteria, he's right. He correctly notes earlier that NetBSD has just over one tenth the number of bugs as Windows. But, for whatever reason, it has a much smaller market share.
If you are a home user-- he may be right. Let's analyze a case: You are a home linux user. A vulnerability is reported Friday afternoon. Being a non-nerd computer geek, you spend your friday night at a bar. Saturday morning, you have a hangover. Saturday afternoon, you log on, and voila, a patch has been released! (Wow: an fast vendor response). But something else has happened. A lamer with no life rooted your box while you were out partying. Compare that to the following: You're a home NT user. Same scenario, only the bug wasn't reported. One super criminal has it... and maybe the Fortune 500 company is now screwed (which is why they need 24/7 sysadmins on a patchable OS), but there are no script kiddies around to attack you.
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops. Obviously, in a high security case, this is absurd, and therefore for any serious target, they need an OS like *BSD (or Linux). But for the home user-- is full disclosure really the best choice?
DeCSS is not about piracy?! Cracking the decryption code was a legitamate (if technically illegal) action. And if they had released a DVD player for Linux (or another unsupported OS)... great. But a Windows tool?! What's up with that? No, this tool does not help Linux users (directly... I know you can the convert the .VOB to a linuxable format). No, it does not do anything directly useful. Yes, it does keep the file in it's Windows-only state. And yes, it does make piracy (especially re-encoding into MPEG4 or something and putting it on a CD) easier. If it quacks like a duck...
This sort of hypocritical attitude is nothing new to the Open Source crowd. For years we have yelled and screamed about the evils of copyrights and intellectual property laws-- but DON'T TOUCH MY GPL! Yes, as someone earlier pointed out, there's a difference between trademark and copyrights. But we all can see that there's no fundamental difference between napster and microsoft... it's just a matter of where to draw the line. For the hardcore freedom seekers... it's time for a new poster child. Surely there's someone out there who really believes in this whole "information should be free" thing. But they're clearly not a corporation, and they clearly won't last long.
Without turning this into a CPM/JP vs. attrition rant (like the post right before this-- the one who was too embarassed to sign his real name), if you actually _read_ Penenberg's writing's, you'll see that yes, he does have a personal animosity towards Ms. Meinel. Whether or not that position is justified is a different question, one that has been beaten to death years ago. The bottom line is that (to the best of my knowledge), the Shield Law should protect Mr. Penenberg, although I must confess, I don't think I could ever be a reporter, and be able to sleep at night, knowing I'm giving up my job to help an unremorseful criminal who probabaly doesn't give a !#^! about me. But maybe I'm just too good of a person.
Has anyone ever thought of / heard of viruses that do physical damage? I'm talking about anything from the wasteful (printing 1 character per page on a printer, and then formfeeding it), to a virus that might cause actual permament harm to a computer. They say (and I assume it's true) that if you tamper with the refresh rates of your monitor, and set them too high, it can hurt the machine. What if (and PLEASE don't try this) a virus tampered with these settings? Maybe billions in damages is possible after all...
You write that he has much better things to do... why? He's not in the business for the money. As I recall, he's teaching computers in a school... here is a real hacker, someone who cares about teaching people... and that's exactly why he deserves to be honored.
Yeah, without Jobs the Apple's would never had been what they are today. But so what? We're not honoring businessmen... it's about innovators, and (hopefully) true devotees to technology... long live the Woz!