No, as that would make you no better than the hackers over there who do that same sort of thing to American software which is "merely" forced on us by the vagaries of market and culture.
Also, which targets would you knock down? If you attack their commercial or financial infrastructure, you're hurting American companies and citizens as nearly all our electronics and value (aka cheap) goods are made over there. The only useful target would be to attack government sites and somehow blame it on their native hackers. Might actually get them to finally crack down on those bastards.
Actually, this sort of behavior is normal for all competitive species. Each individual tries to claw their way to the top (i.e. get the best hunting territory, have the most ho's, etc.), and stay there for as long as possible.
That's the pattern for every revolution: the disestablishment types do anything and everything to remove the current regime from power. Then once they're in power they try to keep people from using the same tactics/tricks that the revolutionaries used. We see this in business so much because business is a neverending revolution.
hmm, I think you misunderstood the sentence there. The author was suggesting that the general user population be polled for their opinion, NOT the accused. Who really cares what an accused person thinks about the crime (or circumstances thereof) they're accused of?
Secondly, your example is wildly unrealistic as it ignores the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. I know canada's a bit different than here (as redelmd pointed out), but I'm pretty sure they subscribe to THIS judicial standard.
Don't forget the patent system. When any new idea is already covered by some ridiculously-broad "process" (patent-talk for "we can't do it, and anybody that tries has to pay us") patent, innovation is just something new to get sued for.
To be fair, if you're living on a budget that tight, network TV is probably the only sort of entertainment you can afford. So, losing that is a major blow.
Also, griping about the changeover to digital broadcast is far easier than finding (and getting) a better paying job, especially with the economy the way it is.
This is actually a well known tendency for ALL people. It's just that some people work harder to resist it than others.
That's why cults and fundamentalists will never go away. People will follow whomever tells them it's okay and even "right" to do what they already want to do.
This type of advertising is nothing new. Just do a search on 'scumware', and you'll that this sort of cr*p has been around for a while. It's just that until now it's been delivered via worms and other malicious software. (*cough* bonzi buddy *cough*)
This makes even less sense than popup ads for anti-popup software, and spam.
Actually, this would work, if only a hanful of the major providers used it.
From what I read the standard would work something like this: you receive an e-mail claiming to be from notaspammer@yahoo.com. Included in the headers is the ip address that the e-mail server received this message from. Your e-mail client then queries yahoo.com nameserver for the ip address of thier outgoing e-mail server. It then compares this against the ip address that this message was received from. If they match, the message did indeed originate at yahoo.com. If they don't, then sender is lying to you, and hence a spammer. (of course, this is all theoretical at this point).
The people who investigate spam do something very similar. Except we can only see who owns an ip address, and, if we're lucky, what the full name of that system is.
Especially at a university, which should be the last place internet access should be limited in any way.
Actually, that's the FIRST place it should be limited. Where is internet access most likely to be abused by people who aren't paying for it? Public universities, colleges, schools, etc. . If you want to know why, just take a look at the largest demographic at public universities: technically adept men and women in their mid twenties with limited finances and a large amount of free time. Coincidentally, that's also the largest demographic for cr/hackers.
History has shown time and time and time and...again that public resources WILL be abused unless steps are taken to ensure they are shared fairly. That nice high speed connection wasn't put there to foster communication, the free exchange of ideas, discoveries, and other meaningful info, p2p file sharing (as it's most commonly used) is none of these.
This is one of those age old arguments that inevitably ends the same way: if you want to control a resource, you have to be the one providing it.
actually, that's a standard security practice: only allow those ports have a legitimate, current, and neccesary purpose.
As for viruses specifically; that's probably because they're more worried about a virus spreading all over the campus than they are about any given system becoming infected from the internet.
You would also be "involved in spam activities" IF you failed to take reasonable measures to prevent a spammer from abusing your domain and/or other resources to send spam (which is only legal for Hormel (tm)).
I know I'm going to get flamed to h*** and back for this, but here goes anyways:
If you go to a PUBLIC store and buy a case of beer and pay the cashier, all where anybody could observe and make note of this, nothing about that whole transaction is private, (except maybe the name, number and exp date on the piece of plastic you use to pay.
You couldn't complain if a person observed this transaction, made note of it, and later used that info for marketing, so how is it that doing all of this electronically is suddenly an "invasion of privacy"????
Unless you have good reason to believe that no person or thing can see/hear/smell/etc. what you're doing, it's not private.
obviously, I'm not the only one who's noticed the flaws in this idea. That said, I think I've already seen the perfect solution.
It was a few years ago here on slashdot, and somebody came up with the idea of making e-mail more expensive. For every recipient of every e-mail sent, the server has to perform some calcuation sent by the receiving server. For normal e-mail, and even legitimate commercial e-mail, this small calculation isn't a problem.
For spammers on the other hand, those 500 e-mails now take 5 hours to send because of all the calculations the server has to perform. This would make profiting from spam nearly impossible, given it's ridiculously low response rate.
OF course the only problem with this solution is getting it implemented. Would require a major modification to the existing e-mail infrastructure, and probably didn't look worthwhile back when spam wasn't as pervasive as it is today.
This is a bad thing?!?!?! Nintendo's been a bit of a loser in the gaming industry for a while now. One less gaming platform means that you're more likely to find the game you like/want on the system/s you do own. No more having to own 2 or 3 systems to play all the best games. No more lame, annoying commercials for nintendo.
There was an article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development. I see this as a positive development.
ALL HAIL NATURAL SELECTION
A little bit of insight on this whole mess from your local, amateur psychologist.
There is a war on between industry, who wants to encrypt and control information as much as they can, usually to further their profit margins; and the public, who want to get the most they can, for the least they can, and want to know "all the juicy secrets".
So far, it seems that the public has the lead, with technology being their main weapon, and free-speech laws a somewhat effective shield against the corporate counter-attacks.
The ONLY weapon the corporations have left is legal action. They can't stop you from breaking their encryption schemes, they can't stop us from publishing the results, and they can't stop us from distributing information they want kept secret. So, all they have left is to bring legal action against those few who dare to openly and publicly present this information, to make these people suffer for opposing the corporations.
There's a war on folks, and this is just another battle in that war. We'll see LOTS of casualties before it's over, but in the end, I think we can win this one. Any speculation on what the final costs might be, when corporations realize they can't win this war???
Am I the only one that noticed the slightly skewed nature of this article?? Throughout there's a slightly mocking tone to it, as if to say. "Ha ha you screwed up, IBM!!".
Most obvious example is the section where they mention that this supposedly soluble/bio-degradble check had survived a night that it rained. Ask any northwest native, and we'll tell you, there's all kinds of rains. saying "it rained" could desribe anything from a few moments of light drizzle to a night long downpour with hail. Wonder which it is??? *goes off to check the weather channel's website
You know, my local library has an absolutely brilliant solution to this problem of filtered internet access on public computers.
The first page you see when you open a web browser is the library home page, with 2 big links right in the middle "unfiltered internet access" and "filtered internet access" Yes, that's right, the USER chooses whether or not they want filtered net access. So worried parents, just get their kids started on filtered net access, and they're fine.
Of couse, if kid is technically proficient, this is fairly easy to get around by going back to the page and selecting unfiltered. But if they can figure that out, I'd consider them intelligent enough to respond to any "objectionable materai" appropriately.
A few ideas, and things to remember. 1. When writing to the corporations, government offices, etc remember to keep your letters and complaints relative, impersonal, and constructive. If you don't like something, offer an alternative. If you think a policy is foolish, a lawsuit frivolous, point out why. 2. Support your statements. IF the truth of a statement isn't obvious to the AVERAGE person, then support it, take them through the proof of it. 3. Understand the other guys point of view. Corporations exist for the sole purpose of generating profit. To suggest that they should be otherwise is pure idioicy. It's a fact of human nature that everybody's out for themselves, and only partially for the good of others. Don't complain about them trying to make a profit, complain about the unethical means they're using to achieve it. Everybody always wants free everything, but it's a fact of life that nothing's free. Everythign is paid for by somebody. Companies will give out samples and demos, and cheap garbage hoping to get you interested intheir more expensive items. It's ALL about $$$$$$. Don't complain about corporations choosing profit over responsibility. How many times have you forgone income, or paid more for an item in the name of global/social/personal responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, y'all can stop worrying now. It appears the Protect IP bill won't even be making it to the senate floor, thanks to Senator Ron Wyden (Ore). Check out the story over on Ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/sen-ron-wyden-to-place-a-hold-on-the-protect-ip-act.ars
No, as that would make you no better than the hackers over there who do that same sort of thing to American software which is "merely" forced on us by the vagaries of market and culture.
Also, which targets would you knock down? If you attack their commercial or financial infrastructure, you're hurting American companies and citizens as nearly all our electronics and value (aka cheap) goods are made over there. The only useful target would be to attack government sites and somehow blame it on their native hackers. Might actually get them to finally crack down on those bastards.
Actually, this sort of behavior is normal for all competitive species. Each individual tries to claw their way to the top (i.e. get the best hunting territory, have the most ho's, etc.), and stay there for as long as possible.
That's the pattern for every revolution: the disestablishment types do anything and everything to remove the current regime from power. Then once they're in power they try to keep people from using the same tactics/tricks that the revolutionaries used. We see this in business so much because business is a neverending revolution.
In other words, it's just offline trolling.
Since the first child was born, people have been saying and doing stupid sh*t solely for the attention they get. This is just more of the same.
hmm, I think you misunderstood the sentence there. The author was suggesting that the general user population be polled for their opinion, NOT the accused. Who really cares what an accused person thinks about the crime (or circumstances thereof) they're accused of?
Secondly, your example is wildly unrealistic as it ignores the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. I know canada's a bit different than here (as redelmd pointed out), but I'm pretty sure they subscribe to THIS judicial standard.
Seriously, who the hell takes the time to read these things every time they're presented with one?
Ah, such innocence. You must have a lot of faith in the developers if you don't think they'll try to screw you over with the eula and ToS.
Don't you ever read the news? Did you somehow miss the recent controversy over google's privacy policies?
Don't forget the patent system. When any new idea is already covered by some ridiculously-broad "process" (patent-talk for "we can't do it, and anybody that tries has to pay us") patent, innovation is just something new to get sued for.
To be fair, if you're living on a budget that tight, network TV is probably the only sort of entertainment you can afford. So, losing that is a major blow.
Also, griping about the changeover to digital broadcast is far easier than finding (and getting) a better paying job, especially with the economy the way it is.
This is actually a well known tendency for ALL people. It's just that some people work harder to resist it than others.
That's why cults and fundamentalists will never go away. People will follow whomever tells them it's okay and even "right" to do what they already want to do.
This type of advertising is nothing new. Just do a search on 'scumware', and you'll that this sort of cr*p has been around for a while. It's just that until now it's been delivered via worms and other malicious software. (*cough* bonzi buddy *cough*)
This makes even less sense than popup ads for anti-popup software, and spam.
Actually, this would work, if only a hanful of the major providers used it.
From what I read the standard would work something like this: you receive an e-mail claiming to be from notaspammer@yahoo.com. Included in the headers is the ip address that the e-mail server received this message from. Your e-mail client then queries yahoo.com nameserver for the ip address of thier outgoing e-mail server. It then compares this against the ip address that this message was received from. If they match, the message did indeed originate at yahoo.com. If they don't, then sender is lying to you, and hence a spammer. (of course, this is all theoretical at this point).
The people who investigate spam do something very similar. Except we can only see who owns an ip address, and, if we're lucky, what the full name of that system is.
Especially at a university, which should be the last place internet access should be limited in any way. Actually, that's the FIRST place it should be limited. Where is internet access most likely to be abused by people who aren't paying for it? Public universities, colleges, schools, etc. . If you want to know why, just take a look at the largest demographic at public universities: technically adept men and women in their mid twenties with limited finances and a large amount of free time. Coincidentally, that's also the largest demographic for cr/hackers. History has shown time and time and time and ...again that public resources WILL be abused unless steps are taken to ensure they are shared fairly. That nice high speed connection wasn't put there to foster communication, the free exchange of ideas, discoveries, and other meaningful info, p2p file sharing (as it's most commonly used) is none of these.
This is one of those age old arguments that inevitably ends the same way: if you want to control a resource, you have to be the one providing it.
actually, that's a standard security practice: only allow those ports have a legitimate, current, and neccesary purpose.
As for viruses specifically; that's probably because they're more worried about a virus spreading all over the campus than they are about any given system becoming infected from the internet.
The number of ways a person could be prosecuted for downloading copyright materials are too numerous to mention, but here's a few to start with:
Theft: acquisition of anothers property without the owners consent (in this case, the owner is the copyright holder)
accessory to violate copyright law: you are participating in an act that violates the law, even if you did not initiate the act
posession of stolen goods: if you're lucky, you'll get charged with this, rather than theft.
Violation of the DMCA: if you have to bypass copy protection to use what you download
can anybody else think of some more?
You would also be "involved in spam activities" IF you failed to take reasonable measures to prevent a spammer from abusing your domain and/or other resources to send spam (which is only legal for Hormel (tm)).
I know I'm going to get flamed to h*** and back for this, but here goes anyways:
If you go to a PUBLIC store and buy a case of beer and pay the cashier, all where anybody could observe and make note of this, nothing about that whole transaction is private, (except maybe the name, number and exp date on the piece of plastic you use to pay.
You couldn't complain if a person observed this transaction, made note of it, and later used that info for marketing, so how is it that doing all of this electronically is suddenly an "invasion of privacy"????
Unless you have good reason to believe that no person or thing can see/hear/smell/etc. what you're doing, it's not private.
obviously, I'm not the only one who's noticed the flaws in this idea. That said, I think I've already seen the perfect solution.
It was a few years ago here on slashdot, and somebody came up with the idea of making e-mail more expensive. For every recipient of every e-mail sent, the server has to perform some calcuation sent by the receiving server. For normal e-mail, and even legitimate commercial e-mail, this small calculation isn't a problem.
For spammers on the other hand, those 500 e-mails now take 5 hours to send because of all the calculations the server has to perform. This would make profiting from spam nearly impossible, given it's ridiculously low response rate.
OF course the only problem with this solution is getting it implemented. Would require a major modification to the existing e-mail infrastructure, and probably didn't look worthwhile back when spam wasn't as pervasive as it is today.
This is a bad thing?!?!?! Nintendo's been a bit of a loser in the gaming industry for a while now. One less gaming platform means that you're more likely to find the game you like/want on the system/s you do own. No more having to own 2 or 3 systems to play all the best games. No more lame, annoying commercials for nintendo. There was an article published a while back about how a large diversity of gaming systems tends to slow/squash game development, and from there, slows down system development. I see this as a positive development. ALL HAIL NATURAL SELECTION
A little bit of insight on this whole mess from your local, amateur psychologist. There is a war on between industry, who wants to encrypt and control information as much as they can, usually to further their profit margins; and the public, who want to get the most they can, for the least they can, and want to know "all the juicy secrets". So far, it seems that the public has the lead, with technology being their main weapon, and free-speech laws a somewhat effective shield against the corporate counter-attacks. The ONLY weapon the corporations have left is legal action. They can't stop you from breaking their encryption schemes, they can't stop us from publishing the results, and they can't stop us from distributing information they want kept secret. So, all they have left is to bring legal action against those few who dare to openly and publicly present this information, to make these people suffer for opposing the corporations. There's a war on folks, and this is just another battle in that war. We'll see LOTS of casualties before it's over, but in the end, I think we can win this one. Any speculation on what the final costs might be, when corporations realize they can't win this war???
Am I the only one that noticed the slightly skewed nature of this article?? Throughout there's a slightly mocking tone to it, as if to say. "Ha ha you screwed up, IBM!!". Most obvious example is the section where they mention that this supposedly soluble/bio-degradble check had survived a night that it rained. Ask any northwest native, and we'll tell you, there's all kinds of rains. saying "it rained" could desribe anything from a few moments of light drizzle to a night long downpour with hail. Wonder which it is??? *goes off to check the weather channel's website
You know, my local library has an absolutely brilliant solution to this problem of filtered internet access on public computers. The first page you see when you open a web browser is the library home page, with 2 big links right in the middle "unfiltered internet access" and "filtered internet access" Yes, that's right, the USER chooses whether or not they want filtered net access. So worried parents, just get their kids started on filtered net access, and they're fine. Of couse, if kid is technically proficient, this is fairly easy to get around by going back to the page and selecting unfiltered. But if they can figure that out, I'd consider them intelligent enough to respond to any "objectionable materai" appropriately.
has anybody followed the link to this article lately??? Was removed for "flagrant inaccuracies" . Score one for the linux team!!!!
A few ideas, and things to remember. 1. When writing to the corporations, government offices, etc remember to keep your letters and complaints relative, impersonal, and constructive. If you don't like something, offer an alternative. If you think a policy is foolish, a lawsuit frivolous, point out why. 2. Support your statements. IF the truth of a statement isn't obvious to the AVERAGE person, then support it, take them through the proof of it. 3. Understand the other guys point of view. Corporations exist for the sole purpose of generating profit. To suggest that they should be otherwise is pure idioicy. It's a fact of human nature that everybody's out for themselves, and only partially for the good of others. Don't complain about them trying to make a profit, complain about the unethical means they're using to achieve it. Everybody always wants free everything, but it's a fact of life that nothing's free. Everythign is paid for by somebody. Companies will give out samples and demos, and cheap garbage hoping to get you interested intheir more expensive items. It's ALL about $$$$$$. Don't complain about corporations choosing profit over responsibility. How many times have you forgone income, or paid more for an item in the name of global/social/personal responsibility.