If this passes, we can all kiss Linux goodbye. I have already written all my Reps in Congress, the Senate and Fritz Hollings who is the writer of this bill, expressing my displeasure at this new assault on my Fair Use Rights. I don't think it will do any good, considering the Justice Dept now catagorizes Hackers as a Terrorist Threat.
Because we are a community of individualists and therefore very difficult to organize. Also, as a community we are more interested in the latest wireless technology or the soft core porn scenes in Star Trek: Enterprise, then we are in taxes, social security or the public education system. Oh here on/. we talk the talk, but when it comes time to do the walk, we stumble and often fall down. This is one of the many reasons why there will never be a major Union for Tech Workers, even though it is obvious we need one worse than the auto industry. This is why the EFF will never do anything but sputter along impotently and the ACLU has never take on a one of our causes.
and probably would have been really screwed had Janet Reno not "mysteriously" ordered prosecution of the case abandoned.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Microsoft probably would have been really screwed had President GW Bush not "mysteriously" ordered prosecution of the case abandoned.
I believe we are seeing the first steps towards the Dysotopian Worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other writers of the dark future/cyberpunk genre. I think I heard it here on Slashdot, someone said, if you want to see how your grandchildren will be living, take a good hard look at how the Palestinians are living right now. In two or three generations there will be 3 classes of people, the non-working poor, working poor and the super rich. The Bill Gates and Michael Dells of the future will be the real world leaders, while the governments become thier lap dogs. Declaring War on unspecified enemies, to jumpstart the Military-Industrial Complex, removing all pretense to a constitutional society and making computer crime a capital offence are just the beginning.
(btw, I've got a bone to pick with anyone who says W98 is more stable than W95, it BSOD's as often at work as it does on my 2 year old laptop)
It always amazes me how when a new MS product comes out, all the beta testers swear on thier mothers grave it is better than the last version and we are finally rid of the BSOD. But then it hit the real users. Low and Behold, nothing has changed, WinME is worse than Win98SE and even Win2K sucks and needs rebooting every once in awhile. I have seen no indication it is going to be any different with XP. I will definitly not be falling for the Upgrade hype this time around, I have informed my Wife she will have to stick with Win2K, Office2K and VB6 on her main machine and Win98, Office97 and VB5 on her laptop. There will be no upgrade this year. As for me, I guess I will go download the 2.4.10 kernel and ruin my 127 day uptime.
Besides most reporters don't know very much. Everyone knows how well the general media reports on technology matters. Why should the military be any different?
Huge difference here, with technology the reporters have these socially retarded geeks trying to explain these magical things to them using real big words. On military matters they get this tall good looking guy in a pressed uniform and shiny medals explaining things to them in sound bites. To the media, content is meaningless, style is everything. The Military learned this lesson well under Ronald Reagan.
After nearly 6 months without a paycheque things are looking up again
Buddy you need to quit that job NOW. You are working for free, McDonalds pays better than that. If you believe you are ever going to be compensated, you are wrong. If you ever recieve another paycheck it will be for muchless than what you are suppose to be making and your chances of getting backpay are nearly zero. Don't listen to your manager when he tells you, new funding is just right around the corner, because it isn't.
Better and cheaper idea, do it yourself. Instead of buying 10 dual proccessor systems at $2000+ each, goto Fryes and get 30 Emachines or whatever they are selling for $299, add a couple hundred dollars for 30 decent network cards, one monitor for the control node (barrow a couple more to do the installs) a few hours to install and configure RedHat 7.1, which comes with the clustering software and you'd be done by morning. You will probably get better performance at half to two thirds the cost. This is what clustering is all about, turning cheap off the shelf systems into a super computer.
Not a word about employees who actually used the new software afterwords. What was the cost in lost productivity getting used to a new system suite? What about training costs?
Training cost is $0, you might loose a little productivity for a day or two while everyone adapts. Anyone who can use MS Office can use StarOffice. Anyone who is either too set in thier ways or is too stupid to make the jump, probably needs to be put on the list for the next round of layoffs anyway.
You are thinking too small. Consider this, over a 6 month period, a dozen people, send 10 messages each, everyday. At five words for each message, that is over 100,000 words. Is that enough to plan a Terrorist attack ?
I think we can safely say this new war, "The War on Terrorism" is going to be fought just like the old war, "The War on Drugs". It is going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, strip us of freedoms and accomplish nothing. If anything it will make it worse.
Digital correspondence can always be buried in noise.
It was mentioned in an earlier article that it is very easy to pass messages through public message boards like Slashdot. For instance posting a meaningless troll which will be moderated down, garrenteeing it will not be read by 80% of the people here. Of course the real message is in the writers sig. Two or more people could easily carry on a conversation using quotes from TV, Movies, Books, Comic Books, poetry, whatever. As long as the context was known, they would not even need a secret decoder ring. The point is if people want to or need to communicate in secret, there will always be a way.
a. tax evaders are _BREAKING THE LAW_ if this helps catch them, great.
So as long as I don't have anything to hide I have nothing to worry about ? Is that what you are saying ? There are alot of things which are not illegal, but you also would not want the Government to know about just simply because it is none of anyone elses business.
b. if jerry fallwell becomes president, i'll eat my computer.
This is not as far fetched as you think, GW is only about a minute left of Fallwell.
c. if jerry fallwell (or any of his ilk) becomes president, it's not like he's all of a sudden the great dictator of the united states. you forget
congress. the supreme court. separation of powers. 8th grade govenment class anyone?
By reducing privacy and freedom of speech, GW and Congress will have already laid all the ground work.
d. doing what you describe (looking for non-Christians, gays, etc) with the internet would itself be illegal because it is discriminatory. and if the presidnet or anyone else was caught doing that, they'd be out of office faster than you can say impeachment.
Looking for people who are Moslum and have opposing political views is somehow NOT discriminatory ?
I don't care if the FBI wants to read through my love poetry
You may not care now, but what about in 5 years when they are still doing it. Instead of Terrorists, what if the are looking for Tax Evaders, would you care then ? The problem with giving up freedom is we will never get it back and just because the current administration CLAIM they will not abuse the power, how about the next one ? What if the next President after Bush is Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, they will be scanning our email to find out who wasn't Christian and who might be Gay, would that be okay with you ?
The Austin TX economy is heavily tied to tech as well, I advise anyone looking for work there to move back home or to settle for Taco Bell until things get better, and if you are thinking of moving to Austin, don't waste your time.
The one in Killeen TX, is really good, they have fair prices on new and used parts, okay, maybe they are on the slightly high side. I keep going back because I get excellent service that not even Dell or any of the big OEMs could match.
pick one up once I don't have to sacrifice my first born child
I agree, by next summer they will be $299 (media will be around $2 per disc), by Xmas 2002 the price will be $199 (disc wil be under $1) and there will be Linux support for the drive. Until then my Sony 8x burner will do very nicely.
Thanks to DMCA and rabid lawyers, we're creating an "underground internet" that generally ignores the law.
This may not be completely true now, but I can see it coming. Look how easily the loose network of home based BBS systems sprouted up in the 80's. At its hieght I think there were 30,000 BBS operating in the US alone. Today of course a network of single line, modem based BBS's sounds silly, but what about the wireless networks people are setting up in some of the larger cities and giving free access to anyone passing by. Is it possible using 802.* to relay from network to network ? If it is possible I can see an underground internet developing, free from government control and commercial exploitation.
Here is the problem, the EFF and the community at large have been fighting a defensive war, one in which we have no hope of winning, because our opponent hold all the cards. They get to say who get is sued/arrested and where the trial takes place, usually California, so they can miximize thier chances of getting a Judge they have already bought off.
What we need to do is take the fight to them. Bring a class action law suit against the MPAA, the DvD-CSA and the US Government for attempting to deny us our Contitutional Rights to Free Speech, Freedom of the Press and Fair Use. We can even use this new ruling against them and bring the law suit in any jurisdiction we want, say Moose Breath Montana, where they don't take kindly to big business or big government and they understand that the DMCA abridges the Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and guts Fair Use.
AFAIK, you can't patent software in Australia, where Samba is developped. So, even if there were such a (US) patent, it would not stop Samba.
Once the Samba Team did the work and built a port of the new protocol, they would never be able to visit the US, or they would be arrested by the Microsoft Division of the FBI.
In fact, conservatives interpret (rightly IMHO) the constitution literally, as it was written, and in accordance with the writings of the founding fathers.
Liberals reinterpret the constitution to fit the situation.
So what YOU are saying is the the Constitution should never have been reinterpreted to include Blacks or Women ?
By delaying it, even if only for a few days, emotions will cool
This is very likely Adobe's tactic, get everyone to back off for a couple of days to cool off and on monday have a meaningless meeting with the EFF which accomplishes nothing. When the EFF tries to get another protest going, instead of hundreds showing up, maybe only 10 or 20. Probably not enough to get local coverage, let alone national new to pick it up.
This secret release is their way of making sure that the CDs aren't returned simply because people know about the copy protection.
Perhaps we should organize a class action law suit to force the record companies to label all CD which are copy protected, with a label on the front of the package in a 1/4' font. The justification is so we do not waste our time and money purchasing CD's we can not use. While we are at it lets sue for all the time we spent at the store trying to get our money back on these CD's.
Slashdot Mirror
Burlington Coat Factory runs Red Hat Linux on 1,250 Dell OptiPlex systems. If you do a search on Dells website or Google, you will find it.
If this passes, we can all kiss Linux goodbye. I have already written all my Reps in Congress, the Senate and Fritz Hollings who is the writer of this bill, expressing my displeasure at this new assault on my Fair Use Rights. I don't think it will do any good, considering the Justice Dept now catagorizes Hackers as a Terrorist Threat.
why not slashdot the government similarly?
Because we are a community of individualists and therefore very difficult to organize. Also, as a community we are more interested in the latest wireless technology or the soft core porn scenes in Star Trek: Enterprise, then we are in taxes, social security or the public education system. Oh here on
and probably would have been really screwed had Janet Reno not "mysteriously" ordered prosecution of the case abandoned.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Microsoft probably would have been really screwed had President GW Bush not "mysteriously" ordered prosecution of the case abandoned.
I believe we are seeing the first steps towards the Dysotopian Worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other writers of the dark future/cyberpunk genre. I think I heard it here on Slashdot, someone said, if you want to see how your grandchildren will be living, take a good hard look at how the Palestinians are living right now. In two or three generations there will be 3 classes of people, the non-working poor, working poor and the super rich. The Bill Gates and Michael Dells of the future will be the real world leaders, while the governments become thier lap dogs. Declaring War on unspecified enemies, to jumpstart the Military-Industrial Complex, removing all pretense to a constitutional society and making computer crime a capital offence are just the beginning.
(btw, I've got a bone to pick with anyone who says W98 is more stable than W95, it BSOD's as often at work as it does on my 2 year old laptop)
It always amazes me how when a new MS product comes out, all the beta testers swear on thier mothers grave it is better than the last version and we are finally rid of the BSOD. But then it hit the real users. Low and Behold, nothing has changed, WinME is worse than Win98SE and even Win2K sucks and needs rebooting every once in awhile. I have seen no indication it is going to be any different with XP. I will definitly not be falling for the Upgrade hype this time around, I have informed my Wife she will have to stick with Win2K, Office2K and VB6 on her main machine and Win98, Office97 and VB5 on her laptop. There will be no upgrade this year. As for me, I guess I will go download the 2.4.10 kernel and ruin my 127 day uptime.
Besides most reporters don't know very much. Everyone knows how well the general media reports on technology matters. Why should the military be any different?
Huge difference here, with technology the reporters have these socially retarded geeks trying to explain these magical things to them using real big words. On military matters they get this tall good looking guy in a pressed uniform and shiny medals explaining things to them in sound bites. To the media, content is meaningless, style is everything. The Military learned this lesson well under Ronald Reagan.
After nearly 6 months without a paycheque things are looking up again
Buddy you need to quit that job NOW. You are working for free, McDonalds pays better than that. If you believe you are ever going to be compensated, you are wrong. If you ever recieve another paycheck it will be for muchless than what you are suppose to be making and your chances of getting backpay are nearly zero. Don't listen to your manager when he tells you, new funding is just right around the corner, because it isn't.
Better and cheaper idea, do it yourself. Instead of buying 10 dual proccessor systems at $2000+ each, goto Fryes and get 30 Emachines or whatever they are selling for $299, add a couple hundred dollars for 30 decent network cards, one monitor for the control node (barrow a couple more to do the installs) a few hours to install and configure RedHat 7.1, which comes with the clustering software and you'd be done by morning. You will probably get better performance at half to two thirds the cost. This is what clustering is all about, turning cheap off the shelf systems into a super computer.
Not a word about employees who actually used the new software afterwords. What was the cost in lost productivity getting used to a new system suite? What about training costs?
Training cost is $0, you might loose a little productivity for a day or two while everyone adapts. Anyone who can use MS Office can use StarOffice. Anyone who is either too set in thier ways or is too stupid to make the jump, probably needs to be put on the list for the next round of layoffs anyway.
You are thinking too small. Consider this, over a 6 month period, a dozen people, send 10 messages each, everyday. At five words for each message, that is over 100,000 words. Is that enough to plan a Terrorist attack ?
I think we can safely say this new war, "The War on Terrorism" is going to be fought just like the old war, "The War on Drugs". It is going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 20 years, strip us of freedoms and accomplish nothing. If anything it will make it worse.
Digital correspondence can always be buried in noise.
It was mentioned in an earlier article that it is very easy to pass messages through public message boards like Slashdot. For instance posting a meaningless troll which will be moderated down, garrenteeing it will not be read by 80% of the people here. Of course the real message is in the writers sig. Two or more people could easily carry on a conversation using quotes from TV, Movies, Books, Comic Books, poetry, whatever. As long as the context was known, they would not even need a secret decoder ring. The point is if people want to or need to communicate in secret, there will always be a way.
a. tax evaders are _BREAKING THE LAW_ if this helps catch them, great.
So as long as I don't have anything to hide I have nothing to worry about ? Is that what you are saying ? There are alot of things which are not illegal, but you also would not want the Government to know about just simply because it is none of anyone elses business.
b. if jerry fallwell becomes president, i'll eat my computer.
This is not as far fetched as you think, GW is only about a minute left of Fallwell.
c. if jerry fallwell (or any of his ilk) becomes president, it's not like he's all of a sudden the great dictator of the united states. you forget
congress. the supreme court. separation of powers. 8th grade govenment class anyone?
By reducing privacy and freedom of speech, GW and Congress will have already laid all the ground work.
d. doing what you describe (looking for non-Christians, gays, etc) with the internet would itself be illegal because it is discriminatory. and if the presidnet or anyone else was caught doing that, they'd be out of office faster than you can say impeachment.
Looking for people who are Moslum and have opposing political views is somehow NOT discriminatory ?
I don't care if the FBI wants to read through my love poetry
You may not care now, but what about in 5 years when they are still doing it. Instead of Terrorists, what if the are looking for Tax Evaders, would you care then ? The problem with giving up freedom is we will never get it back and just because the current administration CLAIM they will not abuse the power, how about the next one ? What if the next President after Bush is Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, they will be scanning our email to find out who wasn't Christian and who might be Gay, would that be okay with you ?
The Austin TX economy is heavily tied to tech as well, I advise anyone looking for work there to move back home or to settle for Taco Bell until things get better, and if you are thinking of moving to Austin, don't waste your time.
The one in Killeen TX, is really good, they have fair prices on new and used parts, okay, maybe they are on the slightly high side. I keep going back because I get excellent service that not even Dell or any of the big OEMs could match.
pick one up once I don't have to sacrifice my first born child
I agree, by next summer they will be $299 (media will be around $2 per disc), by Xmas 2002 the price will be $199 (disc wil be under $1) and there will be Linux support for the drive. Until then my Sony 8x burner will do very nicely.
Thanks to DMCA and rabid lawyers, we're creating an "underground internet" that generally ignores the law.
This may not be completely true now, but I can see it coming. Look how easily the loose network of home based BBS systems sprouted up in the 80's. At its hieght I think there were 30,000 BBS operating in the US alone. Today of course a network of single line, modem based BBS's sounds silly, but what about the wireless networks people are setting up in some of the larger cities and giving free access to anyone passing by. Is it possible using 802.* to relay from network to network ? If it is possible I can see an underground internet developing, free from government control and commercial exploitation.
Here is the problem, the EFF and the community at large have been fighting a defensive war, one in which we have no hope of winning, because our opponent hold all the cards. They get to say who get is sued/arrested and where the trial takes place, usually California, so they can miximize thier chances of getting a Judge they have already bought off.
What we need to do is take the fight to them. Bring a class action law suit against the MPAA, the DvD-CSA and the US Government for attempting to deny us our Contitutional Rights to Free Speech, Freedom of the Press and Fair Use. We can even use this new ruling against them and bring the law suit in any jurisdiction we want, say Moose Breath Montana, where they don't take kindly to big business or big government and they understand that the DMCA abridges the Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and guts Fair Use.
AFAIK, you can't patent software in Australia, where Samba is developped. So, even if there were such a (US) patent, it would not stop Samba.
Once the Samba Team did the work and built a port of the new protocol, they would never be able to visit the US, or they would be arrested by the Microsoft Division of the FBI.
Hey, just be happy it missed you
Are you kidding, how else am I suppose to get super powers. I mean the irradiated spider thing just doesn't work.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
In fact, conservatives interpret (rightly IMHO) the constitution literally, as it was written, and in accordance with the writings of the founding fathers.
Liberals reinterpret the constitution to fit the situation.
So what YOU are saying is the the Constitution should never have been reinterpreted to include Blacks or Women ?
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
By delaying it, even if only for a few days, emotions will cool
This is very likely Adobe's tactic, get everyone to back off for a couple of days to cool off and on monday have a meaningless meeting with the EFF which accomplishes nothing. When the EFF tries to get another protest going, instead of hundreds showing up, maybe only 10 or 20. Probably not enough to get local coverage, let alone national new to pick it up.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
This secret release is their way of making sure that the CDs aren't returned simply because people know about the copy protection.
Perhaps we should organize a class action law suit to force the record companies to label all CD which are copy protected, with a label on the front of the package in a 1/4' font. The justification is so we do not waste our time and money purchasing CD's we can not use. While we are at it lets sue for all the time we spent at the store trying to get our money back on these CD's.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.