This could actually be useful to the general Linux-using public. Imagine, if you will, that AOL puts pressure to get cheap Linux/AOL boxes out there. Notice that if they do that, that means that those cheap boxes are already Linux-friendly.
If Linux/BSD/etc. users can hack systems that weren't made for our OS's to support Linux (BSD, whatever), imagine the utility of a box that was *made* with Linux in mind. The possibilities are positively staggerring (especially when you consider that AOL could make small Linux computers an economy of scale).
It seems that although this could prove to be a good place to try out some of the "new technologies" that will be needed for a Mars mission, they will have to do a whole lot more before they show that a mission is feasible. Of course, that all comes later.
What I'm wondering is whether they're going to have some of the problems that the various "biosphere" projects had in the past (judging from some quite old Popular Science magazines I had a while back). A big problem with any Mars mission would seem to be the time from landing to liftoff at Mars.
Unlike a short-term near-earth mission, if there is any problem, even small, it has a lot more time to add up. In other words, an "Apollo 13"-style rescue operation would likely have much less chance of succeeding, and what would happen to the space program if we landed humans on Mars and then had to watch them slowly die of exposure.
That's my greatest concern. All previous space disasters involving human lives were quick. While they devastated the emotions of the whole country/world, we moved on. If the public had to watch a Mars team die slowly over the course of weeks, maybe more, it could set the space program back tremendously.
On the other hand, it could end up being a rallying point. The casulties of space could end up strengthening the will of the world to make it off this planet and back, but that's not something I think anyone wants to test.
Anyway, good luck to the Mars Society, and I hope I live to see humans set foot on another world. (Actually, I hope I live to do that myself, but that might take a while.)
Okay, at this rate, I'm guessing that Cobalt is going to sue Paramount and Microsoft. Paramount owns Star Trek, which has cube-shaped servers (Borg). Microsoft, of course, is commonly referred to as being Borg, and so, by virtue of their association, they are guilty of contributory patent infringement.
This is wonderful news. Having worked a year at my current job, I can definitely say that anything that replaces Outlook/Exchange with something better is welcome here.
I just want to be sure of one thing: Evolution can show me the full mail headers easily, right? (The main reason, other than server problems, that I don't like Outlook; some versions I can't find the full headers, and other versions make me jump through hoops to get to them.)
Somebody is going to correct this; it may as well be me (a passive non-flaming geek).
I remember when Linus Torvalds himself first posted his announcement about Linux to Slashdot, in 1991. We were all very excited, reading Slashdot in Netscape on our Minix systems, to hear about the Linux project, and the GNU project which was founded shortly thereafter to build a set of userspace utilities around the Linux kernel.
Actually, I think somebody should document this little suggestion. Seeing how things have the tendency to develop in our line of work, it's entirely possible that "BEEP" might end up being the accepted pronounciation.
I'd enjoy it more than "bee-eks-eks-pee" -- "aych-tee-tee-pee" is hard enough to say four times fast.
Of course, we all know geeks would _never_ go with "inside jokes", right?
Trade Wars 2002 owner and programmer John Pritchett has said that he'd release a Linux version when Delphi for Linux comes out... and now it's on its way!
Okay, it was unethical for a spammer to send spam allegedly from IBM. Yes, AOL users are people too, and shouldn't have to receive the stuff. But there's something missing in the logic here:
The open relay shouldn't get by unscathed.
Assuming that there really was an open mail relay used to send the spam to AOL, in no case should Market Vision, the company through which the spam was sent, be able to sue. This is as ludicrous as the shrinkwrap licenses that we all loathe so much.
If a company is irresponsible enough to have an open mail relay (whether intentionally or through casual ineptitude), they should not be able to take their case to the corner drugstore, much less to court. To absolve the company with the open relay of all guilt is to invite stupidity to the Net, and stupidity is the most damaging thing the Net can take.
If you leave the top down on your convertible and park it in the darkest underpass of the inner city, and you leave the doors unlocked and the engine running, I believe it is still a crime to steal the car. However, if you then sue the thieves because they stole the car, you probably stand a very slim chance of getting any money (or you should stand little chance, that is).
Ignorance may be bliss, but it should not be rewarded.
Okay, back in World War 2, they had this problem of having to compute trajectories of artillery. They ended up creating the first electronic computers. Now, years later, we have electronic computers doing almost anything imaginable, and the cutting edge:
Computing trajectories.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know it's only one of the cutting edges, and yes, I know gravitational interactions aren't strictly the same as trajectories, but the irony remains, okay?)
Well, at least this is a fringe benefit of living in a technologically challenged state (my state just made 47 in the top 50 states ranked by application of new technology).
Housing is cheap; cost of living is low. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to find a good $30K job in the tech sector, much less anything more. My current job description is "*" for a small ISP/system integrator/etc; system administrator for $20K a year?
As some of the locals might say, "That dog don't hunt."
I suppose they could build in a little technology to actually check the page. On the other hand, anything you do can be circumvented.
I suppose this is the classic downside to the entire Internet "thing". You can't enforce absolute control in a medium specifically designed against it. Of course, there are a few things you could do to help the situation.
With a Gnutella-style model for distributed searches, any host that is consistently returning false positives could be cut off by the adjacent node(s), right? If you have tons of traffic coming through your node from a spam site, couldn't you just stop forwarding requests to them.
Of course, this wouldn't stop all spamming on the index, but it should allow any one node to cut off a spam node "below" itself. On the other hand, since not everyone will be eternally vigilant, this much freedom could be damaging.
You could always have something like the MAPS RBL for search nodes. Just have someone paying attention that can keep a database of hosts to ignore requests from. If anybody can create a blackhole list, it wouldn't necessarily be centralized, so it wouldn't impinge on freedom of the search. It may still have an "open relay" problem, like SMTP does now, but that doesn't necessarily make it not worthwhile.
First, let me make a note to all those who rushed to post "Andover's influence" posts. You are not simply mistaken; you are sorely mistaken. This little challenge is by "JIPW", which is, of course (as stated on the top of the page), "Joel's Improved Personal Website". The fact that Joel apparently thought that a $25 gift certificate to thinkgeek would be nice is beside the point (I'd imagine he'd spring for copyleft.net is you were offended by thinkgeek).
Slashdot's posting of the token prize is irrelevant. $25 will not make or break Andover. They obviously thought it was a neat little challenge to anyone who is interested in such mind games, and having a prize is nice but unnecessary. Okay, now that's done. Real post follows:
It seems to me that the point "Joel" is trying to get across is that even today in the age of high encryption, and old fashioned handwritten code can be quite useful. Remember the "code-talkers" of World War II. The risk of the Allies having their codes broken was too great. Their were encryption schemes (Enigma, anyone, even though it was the enemy's), but since the fate of much of the world was at stake, an ingenious plan was created. They used members of the Navaho tribe to develop a secret, unbreakable code.
This step away from the technological methods of the day proved to be not only as secure as existing technologies, but it was never broken. The technological way may currently be the easiest, but their is always room for ingenuity.
One last example: have you ever been talking to a friend and understood each other perfectly, but nobody around had any idea what it all meant? All the script kiddies in all the world might not figure that one out (but you might want to mix technology and old-fashioned ingenuity, considering you might have the NSA, corporations, script kiddies, your old girlfriend, three lawyers, and Metallica after your communications).
If this post is redundant by the time it shows up, you have my apologies. I just figured I'd think first and post later. No offense, anyone, okay?
Okay, here's my take on the security thing. As of now, they are implementing TCP/IP over their satellite signals. I assume that they do not have the ground-based receiver connected to the public Internet, so there's not a whole lot of risk. Of course, then we get to the fun part.
At some point in time, it is likely that researchers using the Internet proper will be able to communcate with a satellite. At that point, yes, there is a possibility of malicious individuals (or groups) getting into your sattellite. At least one barrier to entry would be the ground station-to-satellite link. If you kept this secure (using open and tested protocols and such), a malicious entity would require both a ground station of their own and strong knowledge of the ground-satellite signal specifications and protocols.
If you set the satellite to only act on signals coming from known-good ground stations (based on geophysical location), then a ground station would have to be compromised in order to take over a satellite. This would add another layer of security.
If you, say, hard code those coordinates and the verification routines (and make sure you don't pull a Hubble), you could be fairly certain that your satellite can't be controlled by anyone else, except through your links. If, then, you use secure connections through said link (which means keeping the stuff current, of course), you should be fine.
All in all, it should be no easier to maliciously control a 'Net sat than it is to use an existing attack against the current generation. (Disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist, although I did take a class covering the basics.)
I've been wanting to get a GPS receiver for my mountain biking (a.k.a. Louisiana swamp biking) adventures. Without Selective Availability (the degredation mentioned), a GPS receiver will be a lot more useful. To quote from Garmin's "About GPS" page, "Under SA, GPS accuracy can be degraded to a maximum of 100 meters (328 feet). Of course, they don't typically degrade GPS accuracy to that level, but errors of 30 meters or more are not unusual."
Obviously, having an error of about 3 meters will make finding a trail a lot easier (30 meters, being about a third of an american football field, is quite a lot of ground to cover in thick underbrush with a bike on your back while you hunt for a trail).
I can hardly wait to save up enough money to pick up my very own GPS receiver. (I am a very happy camper now.)
My best friend is in the process of writing quite a long fanfic (almost a novel) set in the DBZ universe. I do not consider her to be a felon or white-collar thief. On the contrary!
I had not seen any DBZ (or other, deeper anime) before I started reading her manuscripts. Now I'm one of those people who goes around looking for good anime (my parents think I'm wierd for watching dubbed or subtitled Japanese cartoons, but they're old school).
I see this as a very similar situation to the Fan Nazis (or is this now Sienfeld fanfic?) from Paramount. If you can't live with your fans, you sure as h-e-double-hockey-sticks can't live without them. JMS of B5 fame explained this to his suits at WB, and as a result, there has been a tremndous level of grassroots support for all things B5. I mean, how many spinoff games can you name that people have created a game studio themselves to try to save from oblivion? Probably just one (if you have heard the latest on B5: Into the Fire).
(Incidentally, JMS stayed/stays? in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated to keep away from any fanfic in the non-moderated newsgroup; that way their could be no question that he did not pull from fanfic stories. It seemed to be a good plan, and I dare say it worked wonderfully.)
Sure, there will be abuses, and if something gets out of hand, a company may sue, but by no means should a company take the Paramount-style "kill all supporters" route. I find it difficult to believe that someone is going to read a bad Voyager fanfic and stop watching the show because of it (some would say that if that were the case, the show would have alienated its entire viewership already, and without fan intervention).
Basically, we're stuck with yet another instance of the same dilemma -- plagiarism versus fair use -- where do you draw that line? Open source/free software people tend to side strongly to fair use, usually with the stipulation of giving credit; closed source people tend toward considering fair use nonexistent (lumping it all with plagiarism and theft). Somewhere a balance exists (the LGPL and BSD licenses being evidence of the fact that a balance likely does exist); with luck we may find it before the closed people start burning O'Reilly books.
Perhaps it is more like a cracker to crack the QNX crypt function... but let me take the counterpoint.
If this one person was able to crack the QNX crypt function, publicizing the information is unfortunately probably the right thing to do. It would only be honorable to alert the QNX people before releasing the information, but if one person cracked it, who's to say it hasn't been cracked yet.
Humans have a tendency to ignore things they don't want to deal with, companies much more so; it sometimes takes a bit of unpleasant shock to wake us up to our faults. I suppose I consider these things somewhat like chemotherapy: sure it's very, very bad for you, but the alternative (leaving the bad code alone) could cause significantly more damage.
So, in my humble opinion, I personally believe that these exploits should be announced, but with the stipulation that common courtesy requires you to tell the company and let them fix the bug and announce the bad news themselves before you release it independantly.
Actually, it was cancelled by Sierra last September. About a month ago, a potential deal with Codemasters fell through due to their restructuring into an online gaming company (many lost jobs, too).
As of now, there is a group of people (who have just had their first meeting) who are going to be raising capital, buying all the IP and licensing rights, and making the game (which will then be distributed through an as-of-yet undecided third party).
News of its cancellation have been greatly exaggerated... again.
The funny thing about all the copycat stuff that seems to always come up is that B5 people said DS9 was copying them, and DS9 people said the same thing, and book people said they were all copying someone like Jules Verne or whoever.
Of course, now we're all free software / open source / whatever people, and we copy stuff freely (of course, we give credit where credit is due). Now there's an idea, next time there are twelve asteroid movies or sixteen "hacker" (ahem) movies or whatever, just let them just cite each other in the credits and come up with one good movie! (And give me a warp engine that works in hyperspace while you're at it.)
That was what I liked about the original Star Trek as well, but to be perfectly honest, I find that Babylon 5 not only has integrity, courage, and human nature, but it has them in spades.
I vividly remember the first time I saw all the episodes of B5, and those factors were what made it so good. It was a terribly realistic portrayal of a lot of what it means to be human.
There were wars that had no meaning that went on simply because they always had. What about when Londo Mollari, the Centauri ambassador to B5, decided to give up his future, his freedom, even his very life, in order to save his people -- and right when he was finally where he wanted to be.
Or how about Kosh being afraid of dying -- a "superior" being who had all the frailties inherent in every human being. Or G'Kar, a flat, one-dimensional character who wanted nothing more or less than to see the Centauri exterminated, who by the end of the series not only had forged a lasting peace between their two races but had also grown strong enough to turn down the chance to be ruler of his entire world.
I could continue, but my point is that not only did all this happen and more, but all these stories were told and woven together in a way that made them all believable and made them your own. That was Babylon 5
Okay, this is just slightly off topic, but I think it's close enough (flame me if I'm wrong and I'll apologize personally).
Babylon 5: Into the Fire was/is a sim based on the StarFury fighter in B5. If you haven't heard about it, it hasn't made it to life yet. It has now been dropped around twice or so, and a last-ditch effort to save it is continuing.
If anyone cares, you can see the current status at FirstOnes.com. If you liked the show, and might like the true inertial space flight sim (you can spin around in mid flight just like in space and the show), support B5:ITF now and we might even be able to convince them to port it to Linux once it's actually revived... again.
(Just thought it would be informative for those who really liked the show and would like to fly a 'Fury. If you don't like this post, please just flame me and let me apologize in person; don't moderate it down.)
"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" also does, but it covers a million years and does tie in the fifth season, the Rangers, ISN, and everything else.
And although it does not stand alone, the one episode that stands out more than any other is of course, "Grey 17 Is Missing", since even JMS was embarassed by how the Zarg came out. ("As for the Zarg, that's also one of those things that didn't come off visually as I'd wanted.")
Of course, last time I checked, having two or three episodes out of five years that can pretty much stand on their own is a feat worth mentioning, which is why I am a Babylon 5 fan.
"The Geometry of Shadows" was the episode with the technomages. (Talk about hackers... they're everything hackers -- physics, computers, space flight,...)
Slashdot Mirror
This could actually be useful to the general Linux-using public. Imagine, if you will, that AOL puts pressure to get cheap Linux/AOL boxes out there. Notice that if they do that, that means that those cheap boxes are already Linux-friendly.
If Linux/BSD/etc. users can hack systems that weren't made for our OS's to support Linux (BSD, whatever), imagine the utility of a box that was *made* with Linux in mind. The possibilities are positively staggerring (especially when you consider that AOL could make small Linux computers an economy of scale).
It seems that although this could prove to be a good place to try out some of the "new technologies" that will be needed for a Mars mission, they will have to do a whole lot more before they show that a mission is feasible. Of course, that all comes later.
What I'm wondering is whether they're going to have some of the problems that the various "biosphere" projects had in the past (judging from some quite old Popular Science magazines I had a while back). A big problem with any Mars mission would seem to be the time from landing to liftoff at Mars.
Unlike a short-term near-earth mission, if there is any problem, even small, it has a lot more time to add up. In other words, an "Apollo 13"-style rescue operation would likely have much less chance of succeeding, and what would happen to the space program if we landed humans on Mars and then had to watch them slowly die of exposure.
That's my greatest concern. All previous space disasters involving human lives were quick. While they devastated the emotions of the whole country/world, we moved on. If the public had to watch a Mars team die slowly over the course of weeks, maybe more, it could set the space program back tremendously.
On the other hand, it could end up being a rallying point. The casulties of space could end up strengthening the will of the world to make it off this planet and back, but that's not something I think anyone wants to test.
Anyway, good luck to the Mars Society, and I hope I live to see humans set foot on another world. (Actually, I hope I live to do that myself, but that might take a while.)
Okay, at this rate, I'm guessing that Cobalt is going to sue Paramount and Microsoft. Paramount owns Star Trek, which has cube-shaped servers (Borg). Microsoft, of course, is commonly referred to as being Borg, and so, by virtue of their association, they are guilty of contributory patent infringement.
This is wonderful news. Having worked a year at my current job, I can definitely say that anything that replaces Outlook/Exchange with something better is welcome here.
I just want to be sure of one thing: Evolution can show me the full mail headers easily, right? (The main reason, other than server problems, that I don't like Outlook; some versions I can't find the full headers, and other versions make me jump through hoops to get to them.)
"Sometimes Barney Starts Playing Peekaboo on His Own"
Oh, no! He's posessed by the evil paperclip!!!
Quoting from the list of 211 providers viewed by the 67 participants:
:)
.
.
.
Showbizwire
Skinema
Sonic Net
South Bend Tribune
.
.
.
No Slashdot? Aww, come on people. We've got to infiltrate these studies if we want to count.
Actually, I think somebody should document this little suggestion. Seeing how things have the tendency to develop in our line of work, it's entirely possible that "BEEP" might end up being the accepted pronounciation.
I'd enjoy it more than "bee-eks-eks-pee" -- "aych-tee-tee-pee" is hard enough to say four times fast.
Of course, we all know geeks would _never_ go with "inside jokes", right?
Trade Wars 2002 owner and programmer John Pritchett has said that he'd release a Linux version when Delphi for Linux comes out... and now it's on its way!
Yipee!!!
Trade Wars 2002 official forum
Okay, it was unethical for a spammer to send spam allegedly from IBM. Yes, AOL users are people too, and shouldn't have to receive the stuff. But there's something missing in the logic here:
The open relay shouldn't get by unscathed.
Assuming that there really was an open mail relay used to send the spam to AOL, in no case should Market Vision, the company through which the spam was sent, be able to sue. This is as ludicrous as the shrinkwrap licenses that we all loathe so much.
If a company is irresponsible enough to have an open mail relay (whether intentionally or through casual ineptitude), they should not be able to take their case to the corner drugstore, much less to court. To absolve the company with the open relay of all guilt is to invite stupidity to the Net, and stupidity is the most damaging thing the Net can take.
If you leave the top down on your convertible and park it in the darkest underpass of the inner city, and you leave the doors unlocked and the engine running, I believe it is still a crime to steal the car. However, if you then sue the thieves because they stole the car, you probably stand a very slim chance of getting any money (or you should stand little chance, that is).
Ignorance may be bliss, but it should not be rewarded.
Okay, back in World War 2, they had this problem of having to compute trajectories of artillery. They ended up creating the first electronic computers. Now, years later, we have electronic computers doing almost anything imaginable, and the cutting edge:
Computing trajectories.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know it's only one of the cutting edges, and yes, I know gravitational interactions aren't strictly the same as trajectories, but the irony remains, okay?)
Well, at least this is a fringe benefit of living in a technologically challenged state (my state just made 47 in the top 50 states ranked by application of new technology).
Housing is cheap; cost of living is low. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to find a good $30K job in the tech sector, much less anything more. My current job description is "*" for a small ISP/system integrator/etc; system administrator for $20K a year?
As some of the locals might say, "That dog don't hunt."
What's to stop people from spamming the index?
I suppose they could build in a little technology to actually check the page. On the other hand, anything you do can be circumvented.
I suppose this is the classic downside to the entire Internet "thing". You can't enforce absolute control in a medium specifically designed against it. Of course, there are a few things you could do to help the situation.
With a Gnutella-style model for distributed searches, any host that is consistently returning false positives could be cut off by the adjacent node(s), right? If you have tons of traffic coming through your node from a spam site, couldn't you just stop forwarding requests to them.
Of course, this wouldn't stop all spamming on the index, but it should allow any one node to cut off a spam node "below" itself. On the other hand, since not everyone will be eternally vigilant, this much freedom could be damaging.
You could always have something like the MAPS RBL for search nodes. Just have someone paying attention that can keep a database of hosts to ignore requests from. If anybody can create a blackhole list, it wouldn't necessarily be centralized, so it wouldn't impinge on freedom of the search. It may still have an "open relay" problem, like SMTP does now, but that doesn't necessarily make it not worthwhile.
I may be an optimist, but I think thay would obviously have.
(My use of Linux being another side effect of hideous optimism.)
First, let me make a note to all those who rushed to post "Andover's influence" posts. You are not simply mistaken; you are sorely mistaken. This little challenge is by "JIPW", which is, of course (as stated on the top of the page), "Joel's Improved Personal Website". The fact that Joel apparently thought that a $25 gift certificate to thinkgeek would be nice is beside the point (I'd imagine he'd spring for copyleft.net is you were offended by thinkgeek).
Slashdot's posting of the token prize is irrelevant. $25 will not make or break Andover. They obviously thought it was a neat little challenge to anyone who is interested in such mind games, and having a prize is nice but unnecessary. Okay, now that's done. Real post follows:
It seems to me that the point "Joel" is trying to get across is that even today in the age of high encryption, and old fashioned handwritten code can be quite useful. Remember the "code-talkers" of World War II. The risk of the Allies having their codes broken was too great. Their were encryption schemes (Enigma, anyone, even though it was the enemy's), but since the fate of much of the world was at stake, an ingenious plan was created. They used members of the Navaho tribe to develop a secret, unbreakable code.
This step away from the technological methods of the day proved to be not only as secure as existing technologies, but it was never broken. The technological way may currently be the easiest, but their is always room for ingenuity.
One last example: have you ever been talking to a friend and understood each other perfectly, but nobody around had any idea what it all meant? All the script kiddies in all the world might not figure that one out (but you might want to mix technology and old-fashioned ingenuity, considering you might have the NSA, corporations, script kiddies, your old girlfriend, three lawyers, and Metallica after your communications).
If this post is redundant by the time it shows up, you have my apologies. I just figured I'd think first and post later. No offense, anyone, okay?
Okay, here's my take on the security thing. As of now, they are implementing TCP/IP over their satellite signals. I assume that they do not have the ground-based receiver connected to the public Internet, so there's not a whole lot of risk. Of course, then we get to the fun part.
At some point in time, it is likely that researchers using the Internet proper will be able to communcate with a satellite. At that point, yes, there is a possibility of malicious individuals (or groups) getting into your sattellite. At least one barrier to entry would be the ground station-to-satellite link. If you kept this secure (using open and tested protocols and such), a malicious entity would require both a ground station of their own and strong knowledge of the ground-satellite signal specifications and protocols.
If you set the satellite to only act on signals coming from known-good ground stations (based on geophysical location), then a ground station would have to be compromised in order to take over a satellite. This would add another layer of security.
If you, say, hard code those coordinates and the verification routines (and make sure you don't pull a Hubble), you could be fairly certain that your satellite can't be controlled by anyone else, except through your links. If, then, you use secure connections through said link (which means keeping the stuff current, of course), you should be fine.
All in all, it should be no easier to maliciously control a 'Net sat than it is to use an existing attack against the current generation. (Disclaimer: I am not a rocket scientist, although I did take a class covering the basics.)
I've been wanting to get a GPS receiver for my mountain biking (a.k.a. Louisiana swamp biking) adventures. Without Selective Availability (the degredation mentioned), a GPS receiver will be a lot more useful. To quote from Garmin's "About GPS" page, "Under SA, GPS accuracy can be degraded to a maximum of 100 meters (328 feet). Of course, they don't typically degrade GPS accuracy to that level, but errors of 30 meters or more are not unusual."
Obviously, having an error of about 3 meters will make finding a trail a lot easier (30 meters, being about a third of an american football field, is quite a lot of ground to cover in thick underbrush with a bike on your back while you hunt for a trail).
I can hardly wait to save up enough money to pick up my very own GPS receiver. (I am a very happy camper now.)
My best friend is in the process of writing quite a long fanfic (almost a novel) set in the DBZ universe. I do not consider her to be a felon or white-collar thief. On the contrary!
I had not seen any DBZ (or other, deeper anime) before I started reading her manuscripts. Now I'm one of those people who goes around looking for good anime (my parents think I'm wierd for watching dubbed or subtitled Japanese cartoons, but they're old school).
I see this as a very similar situation to the Fan Nazis (or is this now Sienfeld fanfic?) from Paramount. If you can't live with your fans, you sure as h-e-double-hockey-sticks can't live without them. JMS of B5 fame explained this to his suits at WB, and as a result, there has been a tremndous level of grassroots support for all things B5. I mean, how many spinoff games can you name that people have created a game studio themselves to try to save from oblivion? Probably just one (if you have heard the latest on B5: Into the Fire).
(Incidentally, JMS stayed/stays? in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated to keep away from any fanfic in the non-moderated newsgroup; that way their could be no question that he did not pull from fanfic stories. It seemed to be a good plan, and I dare say it worked wonderfully.)
Sure, there will be abuses, and if something gets out of hand, a company may sue, but by no means should a company take the Paramount-style "kill all supporters" route. I find it difficult to believe that someone is going to read a bad Voyager fanfic and stop watching the show because of it (some would say that if that were the case, the show would have alienated its entire viewership already, and without fan intervention).
Basically, we're stuck with yet another instance of the same dilemma -- plagiarism versus fair use -- where do you draw that line? Open source/free software people tend to side strongly to fair use, usually with the stipulation of giving credit; closed source people tend toward considering fair use nonexistent (lumping it all with plagiarism and theft). Somewhere a balance exists (the LGPL and BSD licenses being evidence of the fact that a balance likely does exist); with luck we may find it before the closed people start burning O'Reilly books.
Perhaps it is more like a cracker to crack the QNX crypt function... but let me take the counterpoint.
If this one person was able to crack the QNX crypt function, publicizing the information is unfortunately probably the right thing to do. It would only be honorable to alert the QNX people before releasing the information, but if one person cracked it, who's to say it hasn't been cracked yet.
Humans have a tendency to ignore things they don't want to deal with, companies much more so; it sometimes takes a bit of unpleasant shock to wake us up to our faults. I suppose I consider these things somewhat like chemotherapy: sure it's very, very bad for you, but the alternative (leaving the bad code alone) could cause significantly more damage.
So, in my humble opinion, I personally believe that these exploits should be announced, but with the stipulation that common courtesy requires you to tell the company and let them fix the bug and announce the bad news themselves before you release it independantly.
Actually, it was cancelled by Sierra last September. About a month ago, a potential deal with Codemasters fell through due to their restructuring into an online gaming company (many lost jobs, too).
As of now, there is a group of people (who have just had their first meeting) who are going to be raising capital, buying all the IP and licensing rights, and making the game (which will then be distributed through an as-of-yet undecided third party).
News of its cancellation have been greatly exaggerated... again.
The funny thing about all the copycat stuff that seems to always come up is that B5 people said DS9 was copying them, and DS9 people said the same thing, and book people said they were all copying someone like Jules Verne or whoever.
Of course, now we're all free software / open source / whatever people, and we copy stuff freely (of course, we give credit where credit is due). Now there's an idea, next time there are twelve asteroid movies or sixteen "hacker" (ahem) movies or whatever, just let them just cite each other in the credits and come up with one good movie! (And give me a warp engine that works in hyperspace while you're at it.)
That was what I liked about the original Star Trek as well, but to be perfectly honest, I find that Babylon 5 not only has integrity, courage, and human nature, but it has them in spades.
I vividly remember the first time I saw all the episodes of B5, and those factors were what made it so good. It was a terribly realistic portrayal of a lot of what it means to be human.
There were wars that had no meaning that went on simply because they always had. What about when Londo Mollari, the Centauri ambassador to B5, decided to give up his future, his freedom, even his very life, in order to save his people -- and right when he was finally where he wanted to be.
Or how about Kosh being afraid of dying -- a "superior" being who had all the frailties inherent in every human being. Or G'Kar, a flat, one-dimensional character who wanted nothing more or less than to see the Centauri exterminated, who by the end of the series not only had forged a lasting peace between their two races but had also grown strong enough to turn down the chance to be ruler of his entire world.
I could continue, but my point is that not only did all this happen and more, but all these stories were told and woven together in a way that made them all believable and made them your own. That was Babylon 5
Okay, this is just slightly off topic, but I think it's close enough (flame me if I'm wrong and I'll apologize personally).
Babylon 5: Into the Fire was/is a sim based on the StarFury fighter in B5. If you haven't heard about it, it hasn't made it to life yet. It has now been dropped around twice or so, and a last-ditch effort to save it is continuing.
If anyone cares, you can see the current status at FirstOnes.com. If you liked the show, and might like the true inertial space flight sim (you can spin around in mid flight just like in space and the show), support B5:ITF now and we might even be able to convince them to port it to Linux once it's actually revived... again.
(Just thought it would be informative for those who really liked the show and would like to fly a 'Fury. If you don't like this post, please just flame me and let me apologize in person; don't moderate it down.)
Okay, since I very much like B5, I'll take this one.
"TKO" pretty much stands alone.
"The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" also does, but it covers a million years and does tie in the fifth season, the Rangers, ISN, and everything else.
And although it does not stand alone, the one episode that stands out more than any other is of course, "Grey 17 Is Missing", since even JMS was embarassed by how the Zarg came out. ("As for the Zarg, that's also one of those things that didn't come off visually as I'd wanted.")
Of course, last time I checked, having two or three episodes out of five years that can pretty much stand on their own is a feat worth mentioning, which is why I am a Babylon 5 fan.
"The Geometry of Shadows" was the episode with the technomages. (Talk about hackers... they're everything hackers -- physics, computers, space flight,...)