I actually like X. It's stable, it's networkable, it's customizable, some fine implementations of it are free software, and it's one of the few things that is actually standard across UNIX platforms. It gets the job done in a big way.
Over on the Windows side of the world there are companies charging an arm and a leg to put networking functionality into the GUI that X has had for many years.
Yes, X has some shortcomings with regard to lack of support for antialiased fonts, lack of support for transparency, and lack of a "gaming" API that bypasses all the userland graphic abstractions that every other application needs, but I can't see why these are impossible obstacles. There's got to be a way to add new features to our beloved warhorse, the X windowing system!
One thing the Net has taught us: peer review and "egoboo" are powerful forces. (Yes, I read about egoboo in Wired, so sue me.)
I personally think it would be most effective to put these psuedo-intellectual, wanna-be pundit, newspeak words such as "weblog" "egoboo" and "meme" in a protest.mp3 rather than a cuckoo sound. They're a lot more annoying. *grin*
When I'm not protected by some other means like peer-to-peer VPN, and can't use scp or ftp tunneled over SSL, I've used SSH's port forwarding to forward localhost port 8021 to port 21 and then used FTP in passive mode. This at least protects your authentication channel, I think.
The only time (that I know of) where my server was cracked was caused by a legitimate user logging in from an ivy league university via telnet.
The person's password was sniffed on the university side, and the cracker was able to log into my machine user the user's account. About 18 hours later (too long, I know) I noticed the intrusion because the time of the cracker's logins didn't match up with the user's usual pattern which I luckily happened to know.
After calling the real user up and confirming that there was a problem, we found some kind of nohup daemon running called "bash" in the.elm directory. Running strings on it revealed a bunch of german words. It appeared to be a netcat-like port redirector to avoid the packet filter and service logs. There was also, luckily, a bunch of evidence in.bash_history because the person typo'd the command to shut history off. The.bash_history file revealed the work of someone who was highly efficient and didn't waste time. They tried a bunch of stack-smashing attacks and common-vulnerability exploits to gain root, but luckily I was all patched up.
After cleaning up the system, changing passwords, and mandating the use of SSH (especially with RSA authentication) I didn't have any more problems. A few weeks later the affected user received an email-advertisement for sniffit from an anonymous source at her university email box.
Much later, I received an email from a german university saying that someone had broken into their servers from a variety of sites, one of them was mine. The date they claimed matched up with the date of the intrusion. They said that the cracker had installed a modified IRC eggdrop bot with root priviledges at a certain port, and that these bots were also apparently still running on most of the systems that the cracker had logged in from. Sure enough, the ivy league university was on the list.
I tried sending them mail on a few different occasions, but never got a response. I guess the point of this rant is that universities have terrible security and that banning inherently insecure protocols when secure alternatives exist is a good idea for EVERYONE, not just the people at the university. Sure it was a pain converting my userbase from ftp and telnet to ssh and ftp-over-ssh / scp / full VPN but it was well worth it and was a one-shot issue.
Honestly, aside from the engineers no one in our company needs the performance of even the lowest end of Dell's CPU offerings (500mhz).
We habitually buy the cheapest CPU's we can get, a little extra RAM than usual, a moderately sized HD, and the vast majority of our userbase is happy. No one's office software comes close to maxing out their CPU, and even the lowest end systems now have respectable 2D video performance well capable of marketing presentations. I wish we had the option of buying even slower-CPU systems for a reasonable discount but alas, chips only get so cheap...
Unless you're a designer/engineer/scientist/gamer, you're not scratching the capability of the CPU, and if you are you need to kill winamp, your software dvd player, SETI, and l0pthcrack and get back to work:P
Before you flame me keep in mind I'm talking about normal corporate users, not enthusiasts.
I think you're wrong on this.. Hackers are defined in the Jargon file (also well known amoungst the more tech-savvy) as the following:
hacker n.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.
"Hacking" the TIVO would appear to fit 1,3,and 7 at least. One other thing to keep in mind is the collosally important tradition of reverse-engineering that is at the heart and soul of all curious, intelligent people who don't care to (or can't afford to) accept without scrutiny an object/news story/law that is packaged up by some other group of people with their own motivations.
I'm getting a little carried away, but I think that being able to dissect something to see how it works is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy, which is why laws like the DCMA are so dangerous. Certain companies and certain governments would love it if their citizens were unable to make informed decisions. Careful analysis, whether it is on hardware,software,media,etc. is a basic check against manipulation.
So, whether people are hacking the TIVO for an intellectual challenge, to see if they can make more effective use of their money, or to reassure themselves that the device isn't doing anything more than they expect, the act itself is an excercise in analysis that should always be considered "a good thing".
Simply because some choose to do evil things with information does not make the pursuit of information evil. -OT
"The school had no control over what the stuent would say, and could therefore not even be held to tacitly endorsing the student's viewpoint."
According to the CNN article I read, the students were not free to talk about anything they wanted- they had to get the school administration's approval for their speech ahead of time.
So, there was an event organized by the local government, where the local government was both implicitely and explicitely excercising editorial control. When viewed in this way it is more understandable why the Court did not think it was appropriate to allow religious practice (ie, leading public prayer).
Not to be a troll, but why do you recommend qmail or postfix over sendmail? It is true that in the past sendmail has had a ton of security problems, but so have most daemons that existed at the dawn of the internet.
Since then it appears to me (perhaps naively) that sendmail has been patched appropriately and is probably the most battle-tested MTA out there.
Maybe you could argue that sendmail is harder to configure than qmail or postfix, and thus more susceptible to security-compromising misconfigurations, but is there more to it than that?
TRUSTe's goal of making sure that companies stick to their privacy policy is an important but small first step.
By failing to take a public hard line against gross violators, however, TRUSTe has lost whatever small claim it had to legitimacy.
What is needed to avoid government regulation of online privacy is an activist, consumer-oriented watchdog group and not a corporate-oriented organization whose implemention is tantamount to having the fox guard the henhouse.
The underlying privacy goals need to be expanded as well, so that consumers can *at a glance* see how a company will use their personal data (now, and potentially in the future) without reading legalese.
This may be a naive question, but I'm wondering if it is valid to license a java application under the GPL if it uses Sun's libraries, which are licensed under SCSL. Looking on the GNU web site, they have java packages available under the GPL but I believe these use the Kaffe libraries, not Sun's. Kaffe does not include that many Java2 features yet, however.
I'm asking because I develop free software(tm) for the java2 platform and would like to release under the GPL, but have so far stuck with the LGPL.
Since it's next to impossible to find a free (never mind open source) X-server for windows, I jumped at the chance to try WierdX! Although you can make blandishments about java being slow, it's quite comparable to Xvnc, and I find it more elegent overall. I think it's a great use of Java.
As someone who deals with NSI regularly, I can say that they are indeed evil! Do you want some first hand examples? C'mon, you can try these yourself!
1. Try and make a domain name change via an email template. Did it work? Did you have to wait a couple days to see if the change went live? Now try making the same change with almost every other register via an https form. Notice the simplicity, and instant feedback. What kind of company (other than an evil one) would put you through such email template hell when cheaper, more customer-oriented alternatives exist?
2. Try and resolve a change request failure with NSI via email. Notice that aside from the automated response, you never receive a reply.
3. Try and find NSI's customer service number on their web page. How long did it take you? When you call the number, is it constantly busy so that you don't even get the pleasure of being put on hold for 30 minutes? When you have to call the number a month later on a different issue, is it still busy? how about 1 year? Bonus points if you can say exactly why NSI can't increase their phone support capability despite knowing that it is woefully inadequate for years.
4. How much did you pay for your domain name for NSI? Was it marked up 200% from what competing registrars charge?
Here's my favourite bit of NSI hell.. Although you may not be able to replicate it as readily as the others. One of the domains in good standing that I administered at the time (mprint.com) was suddenly, without warning, transfered to a different owner. That owner then pointed their name servers to match our original ones, presumably so we would not notice the change of ownership. They screwed up a bit, however, and we found out. Imagine my surpise when we finally tracked down a network problem to the domain name registration information being wrong! When pressed for information network solutions said that they had a "golden agreement" with the ISP that took our domain name away, and that they make changes for that ISP without proven authorization. Luckily the domain name was given back to us because the ISP claimed it had been taken "in error". The whole situation was really fishy, however.
So, who *wouldn't* want to transfer their domain name away from this greedy, kafka-esque bureaucracy that has not concept whatsoever of customer service?
"One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that."
I think the role of parents is to prepare their children to succeed against the hard realities of adult life, so that they may hopefully realize their dreams and potential.
"Play" and imagination are preparation. Innocence may have a certain romantic or whimsical allure (as in, "Innocence is Bliss") but I don't think it is truly desirable.
As a parent, your instinct is to "protect" your children, but you also have to understand that the best way to protect them is to gradually teach them to face harder and harder decisions on their own.
One of the tough situations that one must face as an adult, just as difficult as avoiding drugs or unplanned pregnancy, is to realize the value of the first amendment in the face of adversity, and resist the urge to permanently mutilate it for some short term warm fuzzies.
One of the changes in M15 that I am happy to see, is the ability to block images from arbitrary sites directly from the browser.
All you have to do is right-click on an image, select "Block Image from Loading" (which apparently should read 'Block all images from the site this image came from') and reload. It works great for for blocking banner ads from adforce, doubleclick, etc!
You can edit the list of blocked sites in preferences:advanced:cookies and images. Hopefully there will be a way to automatically import a bunch of junkbuster-like rules in future versions.
One off-topic criticism- Checkboxes on Mozilla look (in their unchecked state) like they are depressed buttons, which is confusing.
I can't believe someone modded the above message up as "insightful". Even if the thought behind it is sound, the presentation is full of invective and needless derogatory remarks.
It is possible (and more effective) to criticize without the personal attacks.
I've read the comments so far and I haven't read one which echoes what I felt toward this article.
Maybe I just don't "get it" but it seems to me like the author had an agenda, and portrayed the whole conference in a framework that is ill-fitting and contrived. I think she reads a bit too far into the meaning of events with regard to privacy-rights activists shifting from "libertarian ideals" to "socialist" ideals.
It looks like what's going on is simply that the "enemy" has changed forms. I'm defining enemy as an entity that wants to limit the public practice of knowledge and/or burden the public with suspect invasions of privacy.
When this entity is the government (Echelon, Clipper Chip, DCMA) you're going to see the technological-aware speak out against the government. When this entity is corporations (specific patent abuses, abuse of monopolist power, draconian employee conduct policies, etc) you're going to see the tech-aware come down against corporations.
Of course, the two are linked. In the USA corporations derive their powers from the government, and this power with respect to intellectual property has steadily increased in recent years.
As the battleground changes, it's not surprising to me that tactics change. The goal remains the same, I think: personal freedom to share information, and personal privacy. People will disagree with the specifics of how far this should go of course, but it seems that for most of us the answer is closer to "quite far" than "not very far".
It's not surprising that this article has drawn criticism. It seems to me to be almost flamebait, confusing the issues with ready preconceptions.
-Outland Traveller
"It's a dirty song but someone's got to sing it" - Faith no More
Just a question, but if a statute of limitations has run out and you can no longer be prosecuted, does that necessarily mean that the government can't recover stolen property?
Can the museum use legal recourse to get the machine back, even if they can't prosecute the thieves?
I'm guessing that even if a statute of limitations did run out (does England even have a statute of limitations?) there would be a strong social pressure for the item to be returned, similar to the situation we see today with Nazi loot. Of course, the British museum is full of loot that they haven't returned...
This open letter is well worded and contains a number of fine points. However, these nice words do not address the meat of the matter:
Amazon has been granted a patent for using cookie-based authentication. This is not original! Amazon has abused this patent and improperly stifled innovation on the internet by aggressively suing their competition who also use cookies for authentication.
Jeff goes on and on about saying how the patent system should be changed, but he ignores his own company's role in the patent abuse. Jeff says that he is forced to do this because of an obligation to his shareholders.
I will continue to boycott Amazon.com and urge others to do so until Amazon stops their patent abuse. Maybe if enough people know that actions count, not words, the "shareholders" will weigh the bad press against the benefits of suing B&N, and back off.
It's that simple. Don't make a nice speech- drop the suit.
I dislike the implication that Bezos is merely a spokesman for the shareholders and can't effectively lead amazon's patent policies. Does one become a "Man of the Year" for being an executive servant?
As the other posters have said, I wouldn't worry about those CPU temperatures. I have a BP6 and have similar temperatures for my CPUs and it's rock solid in linux.
The one thing that looks odd to me if your temperature for the motherboard. I think that in my case the CPUs were always higher than the SYS temperature. Does your case have adequate ventilation and cooling? (ie, more fans than just the one in the power supply, which is half covered by ribbon cables)
Good luck, -OT
Someone mark this up as funny
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
> AND DON'T MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE YOUR 14 YEARS > OLD.
By your grammar and spelling I'd say you're doing a lot better job in that department than the DeCSS supporters.
Why don't we all just buy DVDs at whatever price they are offered. After all, who are we to complain? The MPAA is just protecting us from viewing their content in a way they didn't prescribe. Fair Use is just a loophole for pirates, after all. And damn these people suing the Tobacco companies- Don't they know they are driving up the price of cigarettes?
Re:Everyone should mirror it...
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Mirrored, with a little preamble:) It's good to find a catchy way to show support.
I think the last thing Linux needs is for AOL to try and force their proprietary network drivers into the OS via kernel modules, to the detriment of other ISPs and TCP/IP applications.
There are a lot of friendly ISPs out there people. AOL isn't the only game in town- they are just the biggest producer of landfill-bound CDroms.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually like X. It's stable, it's networkable, it's customizable, some fine implementations of it are free software, and it's one of the few things that is actually standard across UNIX platforms. It gets the job done in a big way.
Over on the Windows side of the world there are companies charging an arm and a leg to put networking functionality into the GUI that X has had for many years.
Yes, X has some shortcomings with regard to lack of support for antialiased fonts, lack of support for transparency, and lack of a "gaming" API that bypasses all the userland graphic abstractions that every other application needs, but I can't see why these are impossible obstacles. There's got to be a way to add new features to our beloved warhorse, the X windowing system!
*grin*
-OT
I personally think it would be most effective to put these psuedo-intellectual, wanna-be pundit, newspeak words such as "weblog" "egoboo" and "meme" in a protest.mp3 rather than a cuckoo sound. They're a lot more annoying. *grin*
-OTWhen I'm not protected by some other means like peer-to-peer VPN, and can't use scp or ftp tunneled over SSL, I've used SSH's port forwarding to forward localhost port 8021 to port 21 and then used FTP in passive mode. This at least protects your authentication channel, I think.
Someone please correct me if this is wrong.
-OT
MindTerm is a java SSH client that is quiet usable, and is what I use on my G3 Powerbook over Niftytelnet.
-OT
The only time (that I know of) where my server was cracked was caused by a legitimate user logging in from an ivy league university via telnet.
.elm directory. Running strings on it revealed a bunch of german words. It appeared to be a netcat-like port redirector to avoid the packet filter and service logs. There was also, luckily, a bunch of evidence in .bash_history because the person typo'd the command to shut history off. The .bash_history file revealed the work of someone who was highly efficient and didn't waste time. They tried a bunch of stack-smashing attacks and common-vulnerability exploits to gain root, but luckily I was all patched up.
The person's password was sniffed on the university side, and the cracker was able to log into my machine user the user's account. About 18 hours later (too long, I know) I noticed the intrusion because the time of the cracker's logins didn't match up with the user's usual pattern which I luckily happened to know.
After calling the real user up and confirming that there was a problem, we found some kind of nohup daemon running called "bash" in the
After cleaning up the system, changing passwords, and mandating the use of SSH (especially with RSA authentication) I didn't have any more problems. A few weeks later the affected user received an email-advertisement for sniffit from an anonymous source at her university email box.
Much later, I received an email from a german university saying that someone had broken into their servers from a variety of sites, one of them was mine. The date they claimed matched up with the date of the intrusion. They said that the cracker had installed a modified IRC eggdrop bot with root priviledges at a certain port, and that these bots were also apparently still running on most of the systems that the cracker had logged in from. Sure enough, the ivy league university was on the list.
I tried sending them mail on a few different occasions, but never got a response. I guess the point of this rant is that universities have terrible security and that banning inherently insecure protocols when secure alternatives exist is a good idea for EVERYONE, not just the people at the university. Sure it was a pain converting my userbase from ftp and telnet to ssh and ftp-over-ssh / scp / full VPN but it was well worth it and was a one-shot issue.
-OT
Honestly, aside from the engineers no one in our company needs the performance of even the lowest end of Dell's CPU offerings (500mhz).
:P
We habitually buy the cheapest CPU's we can get, a little extra RAM than usual, a moderately sized HD, and the vast majority of our userbase is happy. No one's office software comes close to maxing out their CPU, and even the lowest end systems now have respectable 2D video performance well capable of marketing presentations. I wish we had the option of buying even slower-CPU systems for a reasonable discount but alas, chips only get so cheap...
Unless you're a designer/engineer/scientist/gamer, you're not scratching the capability of the CPU, and if you are you need to kill winamp, your software dvd player, SETI, and l0pthcrack and get back to work
Before you flame me keep in mind I'm talking about normal corporate users, not enthusiasts.
-OT
I think you're wrong on this.. Hackers are defined in the Jargon file (also well known amoungst the more tech-savvy) as the following:
"Hacking" the TIVO would appear to fit 1,3,and 7 at least. One other thing to keep in mind is the collosally important tradition of reverse-engineering that is at the heart and soul of all curious, intelligent people who don't care to (or can't afford to) accept without scrutiny an object/news story/law that is packaged up by some other group of people with their own motivations.
I'm getting a little carried away, but I think that being able to dissect something to see how it works is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy, which is why laws like the DCMA are so dangerous. Certain companies and certain governments would love it if their citizens were unable to make informed decisions. Careful analysis, whether it is on hardware,software,media,etc. is a basic check against manipulation.
So, whether people are hacking the TIVO for an intellectual challenge, to see if they can make more effective use of their money, or to reassure themselves that the device isn't doing anything more than they expect, the act itself is an excercise in analysis that should always be considered "a good thing".
Simply because some choose to do evil things with information does not make the pursuit of information evil. -OT
According to the CNN article I read, the students were not free to talk about anything they wanted- they had to get the school administration's approval for their speech ahead of time.
So, there was an event organized by the local government, where the local government was both implicitely and explicitely excercising editorial control. When viewed in this way it is more understandable why the Court did not think it was appropriate to allow religious practice (ie, leading public prayer).
Not to be a troll, but why do you recommend qmail or postfix over sendmail? It is true that in the past sendmail has had a ton of security problems, but so have most daemons that existed at the dawn of the internet.
Since then it appears to me (perhaps naively) that sendmail has been patched appropriately and is probably the most battle-tested MTA out there.
Maybe you could argue that sendmail is harder to configure than qmail or postfix, and thus more susceptible to security-compromising misconfigurations, but is there more to it than that?
TRUSTe's goal of making sure that companies stick to their privacy policy is an important but small first step.
By failing to take a public hard line against gross violators, however, TRUSTe has lost whatever small claim it had to legitimacy.
What is needed to avoid government regulation of online privacy is an activist, consumer-oriented watchdog group and not a corporate-oriented organization whose implemention is tantamount to having the fox guard the henhouse.
The underlying privacy goals need to be expanded as well, so that consumers can *at a glance* see how a company will use their personal data (now, and potentially in the future) without reading legalese.
This may be a naive question, but I'm wondering if it is valid to license a java application under the GPL if it uses Sun's libraries, which are licensed under SCSL. Looking on the GNU web site, they have java packages available under the GPL but I believe these use the Kaffe libraries, not Sun's. Kaffe does not include that many Java2 features yet, however.
I'm asking because I develop free software(tm) for the java2 platform and would like to release under the GPL, but have so far stuck with the LGPL.
-OT
Since it's next to impossible to find a free (never mind open source) X-server for windows, I jumped at the chance to try WierdX! Although you can make blandishments about java being slow, it's quite comparable to Xvnc, and I find it more elegent overall. I think it's a great use of Java.
Cheers,
-OT
As someone who deals with NSI regularly, I can say that they are indeed evil! Do you want some first hand examples? C'mon, you can try these yourself!
1. Try and make a domain name change via an email template. Did it work? Did you have to wait a couple days to see if the change went live? Now try making the same change with almost every other register via an https form. Notice the simplicity, and instant feedback. What kind of company (other than an evil one) would put you through such email template hell when cheaper, more customer-oriented alternatives exist?
2. Try and resolve a change request failure with NSI via email. Notice that aside from the automated response, you never receive a reply.
3. Try and find NSI's customer service number on their web page. How long did it take you? When you call the number, is it constantly busy so that you don't even get the pleasure of being put on hold for 30 minutes? When you have to call the number a month later on a different issue, is it still busy? how about 1 year? Bonus points if you can say exactly why NSI can't increase their phone support capability despite knowing that it is woefully inadequate for years.
4. How much did you pay for your domain name for NSI? Was it marked up 200% from what competing registrars charge?
Here's my favourite bit of NSI hell.. Although you may not be able to replicate it as readily as the others. One of the domains in good standing that I administered at the time (mprint.com) was suddenly, without warning, transfered to a different owner. That owner then pointed their name servers to match our original ones, presumably so we would not notice the change of ownership. They screwed up a bit, however, and we found out. Imagine my surpise when we finally tracked down a network problem to the domain name registration information being wrong! When pressed for information network solutions said that they had a "golden agreement" with the ISP that took our domain name away, and that they make changes for that ISP without proven authorization. Luckily the domain name was given back to us because the ISP claimed it had been taken "in error". The whole situation was really fishy, however.
So, who *wouldn't* want to transfer their domain name away from this greedy, kafka-esque bureaucracy that has not concept whatsoever of customer service?
-OT
I got a little kick out of this section which seems to have escaped proof-reading.
:)
"... There is a great demand for companies that have no idea how to add the power of Linux to their complex computing environments."
I think LinuxOne has already wrapped up this market
-OT
I'm not sure if I agree with your statement:
"One of the greatest gifts we can give to our children is the ability for them to actually *be* children. Innocence is and must be part of that."
I think the role of parents is to prepare their children to succeed against the hard realities of adult life, so that they may hopefully realize their dreams and potential.
"Play" and imagination are preparation. Innocence may have a certain romantic or whimsical allure (as in, "Innocence is Bliss") but I don't think it is truly desirable.
As a parent, your instinct is to "protect" your children, but you also have to understand that the best way to protect them is to gradually teach them to face harder and harder decisions on their own.
One of the tough situations that one must face as an adult, just as difficult as avoiding drugs or unplanned pregnancy, is to realize the value of the first amendment in the face of adversity, and resist the urge to permanently mutilate it for some short term warm fuzzies.
-Outland Traveller
One of the changes in M15 that I am happy to see, is the ability to block images from arbitrary sites directly from the browser.
All you have to do is right-click on an image, select "Block Image from Loading" (which apparently should read 'Block all images from the site this image came from') and reload. It works great for for blocking banner ads from adforce, doubleclick, etc!
You can edit the list of blocked sites in preferences:advanced:cookies and images. Hopefully there will be a way to automatically import a bunch of junkbuster-like rules in future versions.
One off-topic criticism- Checkboxes on Mozilla look (in their unchecked state) like they are depressed buttons, which is confusing.
Be Well,
-OT
I can't believe someone modded the above message up as "insightful". Even if the thought behind it is sound, the presentation is full of invective and needless derogatory remarks.
It is possible (and more effective) to criticize without the personal attacks.
I've read the comments so far and I haven't read one which echoes what I felt toward this article.
Maybe I just don't "get it" but it seems to me like the author had an agenda, and portrayed the whole conference in a framework that is ill-fitting and contrived. I think she reads a bit too far into the meaning of events with regard to privacy-rights activists shifting from "libertarian ideals" to "socialist" ideals.
It looks like what's going on is simply that the "enemy" has changed forms. I'm defining enemy as an entity that wants to limit the public practice of knowledge and/or burden the public with suspect invasions of privacy.
When this entity is the government (Echelon, Clipper Chip, DCMA) you're going to see the technological-aware speak out against the government. When this entity is corporations (specific patent abuses, abuse of monopolist power, draconian employee conduct policies, etc) you're going to see the tech-aware come down against corporations.
Of course, the two are linked. In the USA corporations derive their powers from the government, and this power with respect to intellectual property has steadily increased in recent years.
As the battleground changes, it's not surprising to me that tactics change. The goal remains the same, I think: personal freedom to share information, and personal privacy. People will disagree with the specifics of how far this should go of course, but it seems that for most of us the answer is closer to "quite far" than "not very far".
It's not surprising that this article has drawn criticism. It seems to me to be almost flamebait, confusing the issues with ready preconceptions.
-Outland Traveller
"It's a dirty song but someone's got to sing it" - Faith no More
Just a question, but if a statute of limitations has run out and you can no longer be prosecuted, does that necessarily mean that the government can't recover stolen property?
Can the museum use legal recourse to get the machine back, even if they can't prosecute the thieves?
I'm guessing that even if a statute of limitations did run out (does England even have a statute of limitations?) there would be a strong social pressure for the item to be returned, similar to the situation we see today with Nazi loot. Of course, the British museum is full of loot that they haven't returned...
-OT
This open letter is well worded and contains a number of fine points. However, these nice words do not address the meat of the matter:
Amazon has been granted a patent for using cookie-based authentication. This is not original! Amazon has abused this patent and improperly stifled innovation on the internet by aggressively suing their competition who also use cookies for authentication.
Jeff goes on and on about saying how the patent system should be changed, but he ignores his own company's role in the patent abuse. Jeff says that he is forced to do this because of an obligation to his shareholders.
I will continue to boycott Amazon.com and urge others to do so until Amazon stops their patent abuse. Maybe if enough people know that actions count, not words, the "shareholders" will weigh the bad press against the benefits of suing B&N, and back off.
It's that simple. Don't make a nice speech- drop the suit.
I dislike the implication that Bezos is merely a spokesman for the shareholders and can't effectively lead amazon's patent policies. Does one become a "Man of the Year" for being an executive servant?
As the other posters have said, I wouldn't worry about those CPU temperatures. I have a BP6 and have similar temperatures for my CPUs and it's rock solid in linux.
The one thing that looks odd to me if your temperature for the motherboard. I think that in my case the CPUs were always higher than the SYS temperature. Does your case have adequate ventilation and cooling? (ie, more fans than just the one in the power supply, which is half covered by ribbon cables)
Good luck,
-OT
> AND DON'T MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE YOUR 14 YEARS
> OLD.
By your grammar and spelling I'd say you're doing a lot better job in that department than the DeCSS supporters.
Why don't we all just buy DVDs at whatever price they are offered. After all, who are we to complain? The MPAA is just protecting us from viewing their content in a way they didn't prescribe. Fair Use is just a loophole for pirates, after all. And damn these people suing the Tobacco companies- Don't they know they are driving up the price of cigarettes?
Mirrored, with a little preamble :)
It's good to find a catchy way to show support.
My latest contribution
I think the last thing Linux needs is for AOL to try and force their proprietary network drivers into the OS via kernel modules, to the detriment of other ISPs and TCP/IP applications.
There are a lot of friendly ISPs out there people. AOL isn't the only game in town- they are just the biggest producer of landfill-bound CDroms.
-OT
I would disagree. Linux.com's site is too busy text-wise for my taste, and too rectangular.
Slashdot's style is now classic- there are imitators everywhere, and I personally find it easy to read.