He said that businesses had more information about us than the government did -- implying, to me, some surprise that the government doesn't have as good a set of data on its citizens as biz does, and that that obviously, in the light of the new day, this should be rectified.
After I graduated from college I moved 3 times in the span of 6 months. My credit card company put my cards on hold, for suspicious activities. Just recently I started commuting 600 miles a week for 2 months. My credit card company again put my cards on hold, because I had put an above average number of gas charges on my credit card.
I wonder what the government reaction to these incidents would be. Moving around? Must be running away from something. Hoarding gasoline? Must be making explosives.
On one hand it's a scary thought, but I have to believe that even if the government does have this information, it's not going to use it in blatently controlling ways (a la 1984). For one thing, the government doesn't want you to know just how much it knows. For another, I have to believe that a government which got out of control in such a way would be fought against by the people.
I'm not defending these anti-privacy laws, but really I think there is little that we can do to stop them. What needs to happen is that systems have to be put into place to protect us from them. Something like freenet, but perhaps less heavyweight would be a nice start. Let's start by creating a freenet system which protects the identities of the viewers of information, and work on protecting the identities of the publishers later. I just wish I could think of a way to get it popular without resorting to warez, illegal mp3s, or porn.
No doubt the goverment would rather focus on Skylov, since they have a stronger case. The Feldon case has much more popular sympathy, since its a professor of a well known school. It's hard trying to convince the public of Dmitry's innocence, since all they see is a Russian hacker who broke the law.
Not to mention the fact that Sklyarov actually broke the law, whereas Felton did not. Arguing against the DMCA by using the Felton case is a classic example of a strawman argument.
The "could be subjected to" language is what the RIAA used in its letter. "could be subjected to" the DMCA is a threat, just as much as "could be subjected to a bombing" is.
The big difference is that bombing is illegal, whereas prosecuting someone under the DMCA when you have a good faith belief that they have committed a crime, is not. Whether or not Felton committed a crime is quite arguable (though personally I think this is clearly not prosecutable under the DMCA).
b) put a moderation system in place that allows the best 5% of any discussion to float to the top.
I agree with you, except that I'd say that the moderation system only works some of the time. I've seen far too often a post full of utter nonsense with comments at 4 and 5 which simply repeated the nonsense (and obviously didn't even read the article). Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is too much to do to fix this problem (though an open moderation system would be a good start). I think Slashdot's moderation system is the best out there right now, but it is by no means perfect and doesn't even beat the screening system that most news agencys have in place. What it is is (mostly) uncensored, so if someone makes an important and accurate point, chances are it will rise to the top (along with the good and misinformed points).
It seemed to me that, unlike any previous big story, the Net had become the place where people were going for more accurate information -- including all kinds of content unavailable in most traditional media.
Who would ever have thought that George W. Bush would do his primary fund-raising appeal before Congress and the public by announcing a url: libertyunite.org?
So much for internet accuracy. The url that Bush announced was libertyunites.org. I mean, c'mon, give me a break, the internet does not excel in the accuracy department. Especially Slashdot. Especially Jon Katz. But what it does excel at is the uncensored spread of information, and as it turns out, combined with what I'll call information darwinism, that turns out to be more important than accuracy.
If you can't find it on the internet, chances are it's not true. If you do find it on the internet, it may or may not be true.
I doupt that the people who awnsered Jedi when asked aout their religion actually meant that they believe in an invisible force created by life that can be used to do magic.
I doubt that most of the people who answered Chritstian actually meant that they believe in a sometimes visible force created by God (for those Catholics and other trinity-believers, is God), that can be used to do "magic", i.e., the holy spirit.
AOL cracks have been in existence for over 10 years now (way before AOL was even on the internet, or called AOL). As it turns out, AOL started with a lot of security through obscurity (they used to trust the client for a lot), and as a result, there were holes galore. One crack a couple years ago realized that you got internet access before you actually logged in, and for a while people were getting free internet access without signing up again every 30 (now 45) days (like those of us with a little more fear of jail time do).
In any case, yes, releasing the protocol might uncover some additional security through obscurity holes, but in the end they can always be plugged up, just as they have in the past.
Instead of forking and changing the license why not just contribute to one of the projects?
I offered years ago. No one took me up on the offer. Tell me what you need done, and I'll gladly spend a few hours a week working on it. I'm not going to bust my ass begging people to let me help them, however.
Oh wait, you would rather talk about it than fucking do any work.
Yes, and frankly I believe that presenting people with reasons to stop wasting their time on a dying operating system is more productive than writing code for a dying operating system.
Embedded developers, for example, can educate you on that one.
You mean like Tivo?
You obviously missed the KSE import by Julian Elischer and Peter Wemm. Futhermore, there has been an increase in people working on the CURRENT sourcecode.
Oh well, have fun spending your time working on a useless operating, I guess.
Why would you change the license on FreeBSD from the very very open more free than the GPL BSD license it's currently under to one that has less freedoms.
Simple question. Why not? Philosophically, there's a huge difference, but what would be the practical difference for FreeBSD?
Perhaps instead dual license FreeBSD? I guess you can't do that once you incorporate GPLed code into FreeBSD.
I whole-heartedly agree with you that FreeBSD kicked ass in 1995. I agree also that they are still a great server OS. But FreeBSD on the desktop? Frankly, I don't think that's ever going to happen.
And GPLing is not at all necessary.
Well, the only reason I think it might be is to get driver support. That's 50% of the ongoing work for a server OS right there.
Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?
This I didn't realize, but with the other replys combined with yours, I guess you're right. I find it difficult to understand. I agree that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, I think that's pretty much a given fact. But a system based completely on altruism simply isn't going to work without a ton of money to fund it (or at least an idealistic founder working for it). I really don't see much practical benefit from having a BSD licensed OS vs. a GPLed one. It seems easy to separate the parts you want to remain proprietary into drivers, kernel modules, or applications, all of which I believe are compliant with the linux license. Perhaps it would be possible to maintain two separate distributions, one with GPLed drivers, and another without, and keep the BSD license for those not using BSD drivers. Then again, maybe this is possible already, I still don't really know all the specifics of the licensing issues with Linux and FreeBSD.
This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.
Times have been hard before, but you had Jordan Hubbard pretty much full time then. You can't discount that, and the fact that Apple has not yet stepped up to take over the development of FreeBSD seems to indicate to me that they are not going to ever do that. I'm sure the offer was made already.
Finally, I hope that the developers working on 5.0-CURRENT don't take
this as an excuse to down tools and take a few months off since that
will only ensure that we slip again. We've taken on some truly
significant challenges with 5.0 and it will take everyone working as
hard as they can to both meet this new deadline and release something
that lives up to everyone's expectations.
That was Jordan Hubbard, on August 30. Do you really think you're going to get everyone working as hard as possible at this point? Or was that all just pep-talk bullshit from JH? Personally, I think it was pep-talk bullshit, but it was also an accurate assessment.
This makes little sense to me. The whole beauty of FreeBSD vs. Linux (to me) was the simplicity. I didn't want distros and rpms and a gui install and all the other crap that came with Linux when I was installing a server. How hard would it be to just maintain the current tree and work only on the really important server features, bug fixes, and essential drivers?
I suggest the FreeBSD community forks FreeBSD, GPLs it (possibly with a modified GPL to support the advertising clause, where necessary), and then continues to maintain FreeBSD by porting new Linux drivers, fixing bugs, and if there's enough manpower, adding server-only features/performance enhancements. Yahoo used to run a lot of FreeBSD machines. I assume they still do. Yahoo combining efforts with the FreeBSD community (utilizing the GPL to try to coax a little more sharing) could do it.
I'm going to look into how realistic this (forking and GPLing) would be right after I finish hitting submit.
100 or so unix gurus laid of at HP labs in NJ. X developers laid off from Wind River Systems. FreeBSD is dead and/or dying, HP/UX is dying, what is going to happen of the rest? Are these new employees skilled in unix-like OS programming going to move to other unix-likes? Windows? Mac (I guess technically a unix now)? Or will the the tumble merely continue, taking Solaris and linux, leaving Windows and the toy (Macintosh) standing?
while (death_and_taxes) {
again:
Try to find tower();
if towerfound {
set level=1;
while (stillconnected) {
mainloop();
}
} else {
for (i=1; i<=10; i++) {
trytofindpeeratlevel(i);
if (peerfound) {
set level=i+1;
while (stillconnected) {
mainloop();
}
goto again;
}
}
}
}
Hmm, that's an interesting viewpoint. Do you care to elaborate on what Bush has proposed which you see as 1984-esqe and totalitarian? Isn't freedom "the condition of being free from restraints"? Wouldn't these privacy laws put more restraints on people who happen to be running businesses? Privacy and freedom are two completely different concepts. Bush never called terrorist actions "attacks on privacy". Again, what freedom is Bush proposing to take away? The freedom to shave on an airplane? That's a freedom I'll gladly live without.
So does anyone know of any providers that actually have a cool phone/Palm/data network worth needing extra battery life--that don't charge by the minute?
Nextel has free incoming calls. I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to hook up a system at home which calls your cell modem and establishes a connection. Alternatively, Verizon has 3000 night and weekend minutes, and mobile office is completely free (only uses up your minutes). I've been thinking about getting nextel after my current contract with verizon runs out. $70/month is a little high, though, and that's besides the cost of the phone line (I don't have one right now), and DSL/Cablemodem (which I do currently have).
However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a.RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!
Unless the maintainers decide to come visit the U.S. to participate in a Def Con convention.
Slashdot Mirror
He said that businesses had more information about us than the government did -- implying, to me, some surprise that the government doesn't have as good a set of data on its citizens as biz does, and that that obviously, in the light of the new day, this should be rectified.
After I graduated from college I moved 3 times in the span of 6 months. My credit card company put my cards on hold, for suspicious activities. Just recently I started commuting 600 miles a week for 2 months. My credit card company again put my cards on hold, because I had put an above average number of gas charges on my credit card.
I wonder what the government reaction to these incidents would be. Moving around? Must be running away from something. Hoarding gasoline? Must be making explosives.
On one hand it's a scary thought, but I have to believe that even if the government does have this information, it's not going to use it in blatently controlling ways (a la 1984). For one thing, the government doesn't want you to know just how much it knows. For another, I have to believe that a government which got out of control in such a way would be fought against by the people.
I'm not defending these anti-privacy laws, but really I think there is little that we can do to stop them. What needs to happen is that systems have to be put into place to protect us from them. Something like freenet, but perhaps less heavyweight would be a nice start. Let's start by creating a freenet system which protects the identities of the viewers of information, and work on protecting the identities of the publishers later. I just wish I could think of a way to get it popular without resorting to warez, illegal mp3s, or porn.
Since Sklyarov was in Russia when he did his research, I'd say he didn't break the law.
Since bin Laden was in Afghanistan when he planned the World Trade Center bombing, would you say that he didn't break the law either?
She declared flatly, "We're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country."
Don't you agree? I don't see how this is handing a blank check to Congress at all.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Think about it for a second.
No doubt the goverment would rather focus on Skylov, since they have a stronger case. The Feldon case has much more popular sympathy, since its a professor of a well known school. It's hard trying to convince the public of Dmitry's innocence, since all they see is a Russian hacker who broke the law.
Not to mention the fact that Sklyarov actually broke the law, whereas Felton did not. Arguing against the DMCA by using the Felton case is a classic example of a strawman argument.
The "could be subjected to" language is what the RIAA used in its letter. "could be subjected to" the DMCA is a threat, just as much as "could be subjected to a bombing" is.
The big difference is that bombing is illegal, whereas prosecuting someone under the DMCA when you have a good faith belief that they have committed a crime, is not. Whether or not Felton committed a crime is quite arguable (though personally I think this is clearly not prosecutable under the DMCA).
b) put a moderation system in place that allows the best 5% of any discussion to float to the top.
I agree with you, except that I'd say that the moderation system only works some of the time. I've seen far too often a post full of utter nonsense with comments at 4 and 5 which simply repeated the nonsense (and obviously didn't even read the article). Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is too much to do to fix this problem (though an open moderation system would be a good start). I think Slashdot's moderation system is the best out there right now, but it is by no means perfect and doesn't even beat the screening system that most news agencys have in place. What it is is (mostly) uncensored, so if someone makes an important and accurate point, chances are it will rise to the top (along with the good and misinformed points).
It seemed to me that, unlike any previous big story, the Net had become the place where people were going for more accurate information -- including all kinds of content unavailable in most traditional media.
Who would ever have thought that George W. Bush would do his primary fund-raising appeal before Congress and the public by announcing a url: libertyunite.org?
So much for internet accuracy. The url that Bush announced was libertyunites.org. I mean, c'mon, give me a break, the internet does not excel in the accuracy department. Especially Slashdot. Especially Jon Katz. But what it does excel at is the uncensored spread of information, and as it turns out, combined with what I'll call information darwinism, that turns out to be more important than accuracy.
If you can't find it on the internet, chances are it's not true. If you do find it on the internet, it may or may not be true.
I doupt that the people who awnsered Jedi when asked aout their religion actually meant that they believe in an invisible force created by life that can be used to do magic.
I doubt that most of the people who answered Chritstian actually meant that they believe in a sometimes visible force created by God (for those Catholics and other trinity-believers, is God), that can be used to do "magic", i.e., the holy spirit.
AOL cracks have been in existence for over 10 years now (way before AOL was even on the internet, or called AOL). As it turns out, AOL started with a lot of security through obscurity (they used to trust the client for a lot), and as a result, there were holes galore. One crack a couple years ago realized that you got internet access before you actually logged in, and for a while people were getting free internet access without signing up again every 30 (now 45) days (like those of us with a little more fear of jail time do).
In any case, yes, releasing the protocol might uncover some additional security through obscurity holes, but in the end they can always be plugged up, just as they have in the past.
Instead of forking and changing the license why not just contribute to one of the projects?
I offered years ago. No one took me up on the offer. Tell me what you need done, and I'll gladly spend a few hours a week working on it. I'm not going to bust my ass begging people to let me help them, however.
Oh wait, you would rather talk about it than fucking do any work.
Yes, and frankly I believe that presenting people with reasons to stop wasting their time on a dying operating system is more productive than writing code for a dying operating system.
Embedded developers, for example, can educate you on that one.
You mean like Tivo?
You obviously missed the KSE import by Julian Elischer and Peter Wemm. Futhermore, there has been an increase in people working on the CURRENT sourcecode.
Oh well, have fun spending your time working on a useless operating, I guess.
Why would you change the license on FreeBSD from the very very open more free than the GPL BSD license it's currently under to one that has less freedoms.
Simple question. Why not? Philosophically, there's a huge difference, but what would be the practical difference for FreeBSD?
Perhaps instead dual license FreeBSD? I guess you can't do that once you incorporate GPLed code into FreeBSD.
I whole-heartedly agree with you that FreeBSD kicked ass in 1995. I agree also that they are still a great server OS. But FreeBSD on the desktop? Frankly, I don't think that's ever going to happen.
And GPLing is not at all necessary.
Well, the only reason I think it might be is to get driver support. That's 50% of the ongoing work for a server OS right there.
Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?
This I didn't realize, but with the other replys combined with yours, I guess you're right. I find it difficult to understand. I agree that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, I think that's pretty much a given fact. But a system based completely on altruism simply isn't going to work without a ton of money to fund it (or at least an idealistic founder working for it). I really don't see much practical benefit from having a BSD licensed OS vs. a GPLed one. It seems easy to separate the parts you want to remain proprietary into drivers, kernel modules, or applications, all of which I believe are compliant with the linux license. Perhaps it would be possible to maintain two separate distributions, one with GPLed drivers, and another without, and keep the BSD license for those not using BSD drivers. Then again, maybe this is possible already, I still don't really know all the specifics of the licensing issues with Linux and FreeBSD.
This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.
Times have been hard before, but you had Jordan Hubbard pretty much full time then. You can't discount that, and the fact that Apple has not yet stepped up to take over the development of FreeBSD seems to indicate to me that they are not going to ever do that. I'm sure the offer was made already.
That was Jordan Hubbard, on August 30. Do you really think you're going to get everyone working as hard as possible at this point? Or was that all just pep-talk bullshit from JH? Personally, I think it was pep-talk bullshit, but it was also an accurate assessment.
This makes little sense to me. The whole beauty of FreeBSD vs. Linux (to me) was the simplicity. I didn't want distros and rpms and a gui install and all the other crap that came with Linux when I was installing a server. How hard would it be to just maintain the current tree and work only on the really important server features, bug fixes, and essential drivers?
I suggest the FreeBSD community forks FreeBSD, GPLs it (possibly with a modified GPL to support the advertising clause, where necessary), and then continues to maintain FreeBSD by porting new Linux drivers, fixing bugs, and if there's enough manpower, adding server-only features/performance enhancements. Yahoo used to run a lot of FreeBSD machines. I assume they still do. Yahoo combining efforts with the FreeBSD community (utilizing the GPL to try to coax a little more sharing) could do it.
I'm going to look into how realistic this (forking and GPLing) would be right after I finish hitting submit.
100 or so unix gurus laid of at HP labs in NJ. X developers laid off from Wind River Systems. FreeBSD is dead and/or dying, HP/UX is dying, what is going to happen of the rest? Are these new employees skilled in unix-like OS programming going to move to other unix-likes? Windows? Mac (I guess technically a unix now)? Or will the the tumble merely continue, taking Solaris and linux, leaving Windows and the toy (Macintosh) standing?
As an unemployed unix C programmer, I'm worried.
Copyright runs out, but trademarks last forever (at least theoretically).
Rationale - "Fundamental reasons; the basis."
What exactly was wrong with my use of that word?
#define death_and_taxes 1
while (death_and_taxes) {
again:
Try to find tower();
if towerfound {
set level=1;
while (stillconnected) {
mainloop();
}
} else {
for (i=1; i<=10; i++) {
trytofindpeeratlevel(i);
if (peerfound) {
set level=i+1;
while (stillconnected) {
mainloop();
}
goto again;
}
}
}
}
You don't prosecute someone from another country doing things that are legal there and not legal here.
So by that rationale we shouldn't prosecute bin Laden for conspiracy to commit murder unless terrorism is illegal in Afghanistan?
FTC Abandons Call for Stronger Privacy Laws
I always thought a military state had more laws, not fewer...
Hmm, that's an interesting viewpoint. Do you care to elaborate on what Bush has proposed which you see as 1984-esqe and totalitarian? Isn't freedom "the condition of being free from restraints"? Wouldn't these privacy laws put more restraints on people who happen to be running businesses? Privacy and freedom are two completely different concepts. Bush never called terrorist actions "attacks on privacy". Again, what freedom is Bush proposing to take away? The freedom to shave on an airplane? That's a freedom I'll gladly live without.
So does anyone know of any providers that actually have a cool phone/Palm/data network worth needing extra battery life--that don't charge by the minute?
Nextel has free incoming calls. I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to hook up a system at home which calls your cell modem and establishes a connection. Alternatively, Verizon has 3000 night and weekend minutes, and mobile office is completely free (only uses up your minutes). I've been thinking about getting nextel after my current contract with verizon runs out. $70/month is a little high, though, and that's besides the cost of the phone line (I don't have one right now), and DSL/Cablemodem (which I do currently have).
However, since it appears as though the site truly IS hosted in Russia (rather than having a North American-based site with a .RU address), it just might stick around for a while after all!
Unless the maintainers decide to come visit the U.S. to participate in a Def Con convention.
*You* will be held responsible for whatever they do on the net.
I guess the trick is to combine Freenets with Freenet. Firewall them out and then provide access only through that.