My brother loaned me his copy of BG1, which I played. Robin, by girlfriend later decided to give BG1 a try and we purchased a copy, since I had returned it already.
I purchased BG2 and played most of it, again on 'doze.
Well, I don't play so many games now, and I don't even have a native 'doze installed anymore (got a vmware based 'doze for a single program... and yes, that's a legit vmware I paid for too).
So at least for me, it's a decision between PAYING for a linux version of a game, or not even bothering to play. Windows is not an option. You can have my money, but only if it works entirely in Linux. I'm just not going to install windows to play a damn game. I'd rather just not waste my time on it if it requires the headache of installing 'doze, installing drivers, rebooting endlessly in the process.
I know a lot of people still dual boot, but I've kicked that habbit.
A good conceptual model is that of a small territory, given independence with the condition that an interim gov't establish an conventional democracy by holding elections.
That is what ICANN was supposed to do, but it's a simple fact that they elected only 5 board members instead of 9 as originally agreed. They have subsequently disbanded elections and put in place a "nomination" process which concentrates power in the hands of the original rules.
Similar to the common stories of democracy failing to establish itself in small countries, the original rulers have made some abuses of power. They've played favorites, made arbitrary spending decisions (even blocked inquires from an elected board member for spending records), and they've shown a lack of principle regarding the rights of citizens to whom they should be accountable (witness the unfair domain name dispute policy).
Comments that "the USA does not own the internet" will abound... but ICANN, like a former territory, was given its authority by the US, with a very clear charter that clearly called for a transition to democratically elected officials to make the decisions. Had they followed their charter, had they ernestly held elections, had the original board members stepped down as they had originally agreed, there would be much more tolerance for some bad decisions.
But that's not the case here. Unelected interim officials held on to their power and disbanded elections. Abuses have been made by unelected ICANN board members who do not deserve the power they have improperly siezed for themselves. That's a much different situation that poor decisions on the part of elected officials who should have felt accountable to their constituants who will re-elect them.
Like a developing nation where the interim rulers siezed power and refused to establish democracy as originally chartered, someone needs to step in. The US was both the country that originally granted ICANN its authority, and the US has the clout to demand ICANN's restructing.
This abuse of power and refusal to transistion to democracy are inexcusable. The US would never tolerate it in a former territory (where there's an economic impact on the US at least), and there's no reason that ICANN should be treated any differently.
I don't care what I can do tomorrow in theory,
I want to know what I can do today in reality
to make a living by writing Open Source Software.
For YOU, TODAY, who knows? Seems unlikely.
For Keith
Whitwell TODAY, yes. Tungsten Graphics is employing him to write ATI Radeon 8500 drivers for Xfree86 4.x (DRI), with funding from the Weather Channel. Emphasis on TODAY.
He's certainly not alone, but at this early stage it appears to be an exception and not the norm. But then, it's still the norm for commercial companies to avoid releasing source code. Maybe that will remain the case forever, but it certainly appears that for many types of "generic" software, it can make good economic sense for companies to use free software (saves real dollars), pay someone on staff to make improvements and customizations (for a large corp, much less expensive than licensing closed sources, if the app is "almost there"), and when they do have someone on staff make improvements, it's usually a no-brainer to contribute those improvements back into the publically maintained code base (rather than incurring the expense of maintaining a private fork of the code).
But TODAY, open source is still a "fringe". It's a small percentage. Finding (paid) work won't be easy... similar to finding work on specific Macintosh applications or some other area where only a small number of jobs exist.
On top of that, you'd be competing with a good number of the world's most motivated and talented programmers who _really_ like the free software philosophy. Tough market, at least today.
With your attitude, you'd probably do much better sticking to the mainstream. TODAY, in reality, SOME PEOPLE can make a living writing open sources. YOU probably can not, at least TODAY.
if an open source programmer toils day and night "for fun", is it fair that someone takes all that work and sells it as if it were his own...
That would be very unfair, and also against the term of the GPL, MPL and BSD licenses... to remove the original author's name and represent that it had been created by someone else.
like any Linux distro?
Fortunately, the distros DO NOT do that. They tend to follow the license terms to the letter.
The vast majority of all free software is under the GNU GPL license, which requires others to share (if they distribute original or modified copies). It is the specific requirement that all derivative works include or make available the source code when they are distributed that makes it "fair" in the hearts and minds of most "open source" programmers (where 'most' reffers to the majority who choose to apply the GPL to their original works or contribute to GPL'd projects).
How do the open source programmers feed their families ?
Leading questions like this are founded on the Microsoft vision that all software is created by "software vendors", where it is "manufactured", and sold to "end users" in shrink-wrapped boxes, with no user servicable parts inside.
John Carroll, a.NET developer who specializes in "distributed systems" ought to know this. The whole article reads as if it was written by Microsoft's PR dept (despite the lack of the word "ecosystem"). It's classic FUD... open source is great, so it begins, but there's that big "if" (5th paragraph). You wouldn't want to risk your gov't operations on such a "if'ey" economic model, that John Carroll believes is somehow destined to failure (despite it's amazing success in recent years)
Anyway, to answer the specific question, there are several widely believed theories... the one I like best is that there will always be companies that hire programmers to customize software. This happens today, even when the level of customization possible is limited by closed-source. It will usually be in a companies economic self interest to contribe improvements back to the public pool of code, assuming the application is "generic" and not something that gives the company an advantage over their competitors. That way they reap the benefits of everyone else's contributions and their patches are "maintained" by the community (of which they are a tiny part) rather than maintaining a fork of the code themselves.
But even then, there will always be plenty of programming to be done that is central to a company's mission and the code can not be shared with competitors under any circumstances. There will always be plenty of these jobs for programmers.
How many times will investors hear, and believe, "just another $10 million and Cyc will be [insert favorite milestone here], and then the commercial possibilities will be limitless. Get in on the ground floor of this exciting opportunity now!"
I ask myself a similar question every day...
How many more suckers could there possibly be who will believe they can:
lose wait while sleep without excersize/diet
find secret info about anyone on a single cdrom
instantly wipe away all their bad credit history
increase their penis or breast size
... and my personal favorite: obtain a cdrom with 10e6 "opt-in only" email addresses
I guess some people just really want to believe. Maybe a new sucker really is born every minute?
Now I'd like to see Craig and the other four win... even though I don't watch TV, but it's not too hard to envision the broadcast side. Well, maybe it is, (or perhaps the few pro-broadcast "devil's advocate" posts are mod'd to -1??) Well, at the risk of a minor karma loss, here goes.
... but what EXACT copyright is bein violated and how?
The television broadcast, shows and commercials are certainly copyrighted. Since the early 90s, all works of authorship are automatically copyrighted unless the author declares the work to be in the public domain. The aggreate of the show with commercials inserted is also probably a subject of copyright. That is exactly what is copyright might be violated (wether it is a voilation of not is up to the courts, not mere mortals like you and me, regardless of how strong our opinions may be, expressed here on slashdot or elsewhere).
#1, the exclusive right to prepare derivative works is quite a gray area. The Replay4000 apparantly has the ability to automatically detect commercials and prevent them from being recorded. Personally, I think that's a great feature (which I would certain use, except that I don't watch TV).
In the case of a VCR, the broadcast is recorded to the videotape without any modification. Commercial skipping happens during playback, but the copy (which was fair use) is an exact copy of the original. But if the recorder analyzes the picture in real time and automatically alters it, maybe that's enough to be considered a "derivative work".
#2, the exclusive right to distribute copies of the work is also a point of contention. The Replay4000 has a file sharing feature, where copies of the broadcast (presumably originals OR modified copies that might be derivitive works) can be transfered to 15 other Replay4000 owners via broadband internet connections. This file sharing certainly is distributing copies, so the only hope for it to be legal is if it's a fair use
purpose and character of use (educational, non-profit, commercial)
nature of the copyrighted material (artisitic vs informational)
amount of the work copied
effect on value and potential market for the author
In terms of the fair use criteria, #1 and #4 are a mixed blessing for Replay4000 users. Sharing is almost always non-profit, but usually for entertainment rather than eductional purposes (yeah, some shows are eductional, but to really be for educational purposes you'd be talking about copies for students at a school). #4 is also middle ground... a small number of copies to friends has a small impact on the market (though the studios will argue that the derivitive works worsens the market for royalties) and the broadcasters will claim the market for "premium" channels is dimished if users distribute certain key shows to their friends who don't susscribe to those channels.
#2 and #3 really work against the Replay4000. The material is "artisitic" (neglecting the overall lack of substance and quality of TV... at least when my girlfriend made me sit through a "survivor" episode a couple months ago). The copies are the whole thing (#3).
One final thing to keep in mind, which seems to be easy to forget while reading all these "ought to be" slashdot comments, is that fair use is decided on a case-by-case basis by courts. The
famous
Sony vs Universal case (VCR is fair-use) was decided by a 5/4 vote. Very close, and the VCR of the mid 80's required the user to press FF to "skip" a commercial, instead of making a modified recoding (derivative work) automatically. That 80's VCR allowed "swapping", but by physically transporting tapes instead of just pressing a couple buttons (think "subjective opinion of a judge on the impact for the market for or upon the value of the copyrighted work).
I personally hope the Replay4000 and similar devices are ruled to a legal fair use. But saying "it's exactly like a VCR" is a stretch... and the VCR case from the 80's was a 5/4 split of the high court!
what, exactly, has the US contributed positively to the net?
The development of BSD unix (in California, of course) and it's widespread distribution to other universities and research centers that ultimately made IP and TCP the "standard". Microsoft's TCP/IP code was originally based on the free BSD Unix code, as was Sun's (both have re-written most or all of their TCP/IP code since, but they did both ship BSD-derived code for years).
Similarily, while the HTTP protocol, a text-only viewer and original server were developed at CERN, it was NCSA (University of Illinois) that developed the Mosaic web browser and NCSA web server. Both Netscape and Microsoft's IE were based on the Mosaic code (recent versions of IE, like 5.5 which I just tested, still credit the University of Illinois in their Help->About Internet Explorer menu). In all likelyhood, you're using IE to view this message, so if you are just click on that menu to see a credit for a quick reality check that code you're using to access the net originated in Illinois. Since you're reading this one slashdot, the server that sent it to you was Apache, which was also originally based on the web server from Illinois (named apache due to a large number of patched to NCSA's server, "A Patchy" server).
There's just two little examples. Of course, if the question was really what has Korea contributed to the internet's infrastructure... well, that's a good question?
If you look around the world of free software (or open source, or whatever you want to call it), you'll see that there are a LOT of projects that aren't included in distributions.
One good example, and a project that I've made some small contributions into, is SDCC - Small Device C Compiler. Like many projects, there's a CVS server, nightly snapshots (source tarballs), and even nightly binary builds for linux and win32.
Do the linux builts work on Redhat 7.2? Yes, I have Redhat 7.2 on my system, and so do other active developers.
Do the win32 builds work on Windows 98SE and 2000? Yes. None of the developers uses windows, but many users regularily download the win32 builds on these 'doze systems. When bugs have turned up one these systems, the developer mail list and bug tracker have filled with bug reports.
Do those win32 builds also work on windows XP and windows 95? Good Question. A number of non-developers have probably tried it on XP by now, but are any users really still running it on '95? Who knows.
Long ago, the code could compile with Borland C. Developers using linux-based systems started cross compiling and building under Borland was broken for a very long time until someone reported it. Borland support has never been restored (no active developers care, and mingw as a cross compiler can be fully automated by the nightly builds)
Does the code compile and run on PPC? Yes, one of the developers has a PPC box, so this definately works. Which distro works for PCC... better ask Michael.
Does it work on Debian? Yep, several active developers use Debian... and there was recently an announcement that it's available with apt-get. Debian and RedHat 7.x are the only two distros that are really gaurenteed to work.
Does it build on MacOS-X? Nope, but a couple of OS-X users have joined the developer mail list and it's probably a matter of time until the OS-X issues are worked out, but at least it is know that there is a problem on OS-X (I think someone submitted a patch but it hasn't found its way into CVS).
Will it work on UnitedLinux?? Who knows? Nobody involved with this project has UnitedLinux, and it doesn't look like anyone will. RedHat 7.2 works great for me, and since these "business oriented" linux vendors aren't going to provide me with a cheap/free cdrom or network install, why would I bother. They're focused on serving the "business server market", so there won't be anything interesting about UnitedLinux to make it worthwhile for me to bother installing (not to mention paying for). I'm certainly not going to waste my time to compile an entire linux distribution. I'd much rather spend the time getting to understand the register allocator code better and make more significant contributions to SDCC. I'd be very suprised if any other developers lifted a finger to test UnitedLinux.
So the subject, "big friggen deal" couldn't be more appropriate. As a developer (primarily firmware, using tools like SDCC), I'd say "big friggen deal" about UnitedLinux. Caldera, TurboLinux, et all probably say "big friggen deal" with respect to SDCC, since their customers aren't developers, and they certainly aren't developing firmware for low-end 8-bit microcontrollers.
So if with want something "business oriented", supposedly with "world class support" from the likes of Caldera (or you just want to pay them a lot for something that's roughly equivilant to Redhat), then maybe UnitedLinux is for you.
But, if instead, you're interested in using the linux distribution with the most "third party" software that's tested and known to work, your best best is going to be with RedHat or Debian. (FWIW, you might pause to wonder why Windows is so popular).
By not building "mind share" among software developers, how can they ever expect third party software to be tested with their distrbution?
Does this mean I can hack into.. and upload a patch to display... characters as completely nude, full-figured women?
No, but it does mean you can fabricate a little circuit board and solder it to tiny wires on the xbox, connect that to a FPGA and custom-program the FPGA to implement data collecting hardware (including a lot of hand-layout effort to make the FPGA able to collect at 200 MHz). It means you can implement a little state machine also in the FPGA to begin collecting at the right time, ignore a false reset pulse, and tag all collected data with sequence numbers of how many clock cycles elapsed between each data transfer and the CPU reset.
It also means you can spend a lot of time to do statistical analysis on the data and compare to patterns from the flash rom (which you presumably already extracted and read with your EPROM programmer). It means that once you've at least figured out which wires were which bits, you can begin wading through millions of data transfers and try to reconstruct an image of the code the CPU executed.
It means you can disassemble that code (remember, found from analyzing millions of bus transfers) and recognize that it implements RC-4 decryption. It means you can write a "brute force" attack to guess all possible 16-byte patters from the image you extracted and see if any of them decrypts the flash rom data to something other than white noise.
It means that, after all that, you have the algorithm and key used to decrypt the bootloader in the flash rom... and then you can write your own bootloader (by extracting the flash rom chip and changing its contents with an EPROM programmer) and make the xbox run your own code.
The author did mention that Microsoft put test points on the board to access the flash rom, so instead of physically removing the flash rom, you could build a "bed-of-nails" test fixture that you'd just place the xbox circuit board into to reprogram the flash rom (don't forget to design your own EPROM programmer in this process).
But as others have pointed out, the author has been in contact with Microsoft and they are aware of the problem, and they intend to fix it in future revisions to the xbox hardware.
So if you wanna pop up nudie pictures in the middle of someone's game, you'd better get started soldering now. Even after you do all this, you'd barely have your foot in the door. You'll need to do a massive reverse engineering job on the bootloader, and then the rest of the flash rom (which is presumably part of the win2k closed-source kernel). Somewhere along the way, you'll learn about the xbox hardware and MAYBE find a game-independent way to overlay some graphics on the screen. Maybe you'll even find some exploits in the kernel itself, maybe?
But to start, you MUST pull the flash rom chip and reprogram it with your own code. Better hurry before Microsoft changes the secret bootloader or even the hardware itself, now that they know of the weakness.
Since that $99 buys 400 Gbyte/month of bandwidth at RackShack, distributing 100 GB would not only not cost "many times more"... it would cost exactly the same $99 as 10 GB.
Of course, there is the minor issue of their AUP prohibiting distribution that infringes copyright... but if it were 10 or 100 GB of something you has the right to distribute, 10, 100 and even 400 GB would cost exactly the same, if you used RackShack!
Just to give one more example, stepping up from the bargain basement to Verio's Dedicated Hosting (which happens to be how amy own website is hosted), you'd pay $395 per month which includes 50 Gbytes of bandwidth. Verio sells bandwidth in $150 GB allocations for $150, so 10 GB would cost you $395 and 100 GB would cost $545. That happens to be a 38% increase, which is hardly "many times more".
FWIW, I got a great deal at Verio in the dot-com bust and they sold me an older dedicated server at approx 1/2 of the normal rate, so in my case going to 10 GB to 100 GB would approximately double my bill. (my site uses about 15 Gbyte/month, and it's slowly and steadily growing as the site expands and more people find it)
There are thousands of other companies on the net offering hosting for larger and higher bandwidth sites.... but here's at least two solid examples that flatly disprove the absurd notion that 100 GB costs a lot more that 10 GB.
Do we really care precisely how Anakin Skywalker got pissed off and turned to the Dark Side? Or would we... be happy to see Yoda flashing his light-saber around and doing his Jackie Chan imitation?
Yes, we do care, as a matter of fact. AotC was a huge success. Obviously a lot of people did care (enough to pay for expensive tickets)
At a basketball game it does matter who wins by just one point. The "loser" who played nearly as well is still the "loser". Likewise for most sporting events, which are artifical contests. Fortunately, that fiction doesn't apply to most real world success (despite the flare it might add to otherwise boring journalism and reporting)
AotC taking in slightly less revenue that Spidey doesn't somehow mean that AotC is a "loser" and Spidey is a "winner". They're both an amazing success. In fact, they're so close that fans endlessly argue about the number of opening screens and other factors (much like watching those cameras to see if the ref made a fair call... over just one point to decide the game!)
Of course, if you really, really want to believe in something... say that Lucas is evil for hype/merchandizing, far-flung storytelling, and whatnot, then it's a battle with a winner and a loser. No matter how close the contest, no matter how well AotC did, if it's just a bit below your favorite then Lucas "lost" and "should learn his lesson".
This latest installment of Katz babble reminds me of when I was very young and the Apple ][ was clearly superior to the C-64. Then again, Apple's still in business today, so maybe it was. Kinda makes me wonder how many Spidey sequals they will make and if Lucas will change his mind and create Episodes 7, 8 and 9 ??
...plus they serve them from images.slashdot.org so that people can't block it on their hosts file.
Privoxy (formerly JunkBuster Internet Proxy) does a great job of blocking the slashdot ads, and ads from most other sites on the internet. Even if you have a fast internet connection, time invested to install it is greatly paid back in not waiting and being annoyed by ads!
Privoxy is once again under active development... which is a true success story of the GPL, where a group of interested individuals picked it up after JunkBuster's decided to abandon further development (partly over concern for liability in creating derivitive works of web pages by suppressing the ads)
No, i'm sorry but i don't see the crime here. Sure the guy is a complete f*cking asshole, but thats still legal
As a matter of fact, it IS A CRIME. Laws have been passed with very specifically make it illegal to do register domain names in bad faith and deceive users for commercial gain.
This particular criminal lost other cases and appeals and there was slashdot coverage (well, linking to real news sites, who themselves just rehash the AP wire). If you search, you'll find those articles and the linkage to the appeal court's findings of the specific law that was broken. (If I cared more about slash moderation, I'd go to the trouble to find the old article and links, but you can easily do this yourself)
The point is that there is a law against this specific actitivity. He broken it. It IS as crime. It's about time the FTC finally got around to persuing criminal charges (he's lost dozens of civil cases and knew very well he was breaking the law).
How come our laws are structured so that the guy who cures cancer has to make back his entire investment in 14 years, but RIAA and MPAA get to sponge for 90 years plus the life of the creator?
The reason why is a matter of lobbying history...
But consider that Copyright affords much less "protection" than Patent law.
Like almost everyone here, I too hope that the extension is struck down, and more importantly a clear precident is set for future extensions,
But the real evil of today's system, as some of the briefs pointed out, is that 100% of "written" works automatically receive copyright protection for the entire possible term. The previous system, where an application must be submitted and extensions must be granted was much more sensible, as many works immediately entered the public domain if the author did not feel the need for copyright (they couldn't later demand royalties when someone else makes a derivitive work from something they never intended to be profitable). Extensions also worked well to cause copyrighted works that were no longer "exploited" to enter the public domain, yet valuable works could remain protected. On of the briefs cites a study that only 15% of copyrights were extended. Today these simple and sensible proceedures have been lost.
Well, they'll almost always complain that your code "isn't commented enough", when they are forced to read through it and learn enough to make some changes.
One of the best examples from my personal experience is a fairly large 8-bit assembly language project I did (for an embedded
PIC16C76-based
product). The project has
approx 25000 lines of assembly code distributed
in about two dozen files (which built about a dozen different flavors of the product, though virtually no code was duplicated due to common code being used by includes... it really was about 25k lines of assembly!)
The first time another programmer worked on it, he of course complained that it wasn't commented very well and lacked documentation.
In fact, a quick grep ';' *.src | wc compared to a wc of all the files revealed that 34% of the lines had a comment (the vast majority the whole line was a comment, as I tend to write blocks of prose above sections to explain what they do, rather than a comment for each register move).
But if 8500 lines of comments wasn't enough, there was an 11-page document I wrote about the design of this firmware... about half of it was a "roadmap" that described the "larger picture" of the firmware and how it was arranged into the various files. The other half documented specific tricks (like a 6-instruction sequence including a skip-past-a-skip that achieves a 16 bit add/subtract in that PIC part which lacks carry input). There was also a lengthy discussion of the overall strategy for managing the various bank-swapped memory of that processor and some other stuff about the real-time performance (that was a hard real time application).
Learning is painful for most people, and learning someone elses code seems to be absolute agony for many engineers & programmers. They always complain that you didn't document/comment the code enough, even in an extreem case like this!
At the risk of repeating myself (and wishing I'd just gone to bed instead of re-reading slashdot)...
the point isn't what they actually do with the content but what they MIGHT do
Yes, and it is indeed quite unlikely that Yahoo's lapse in privacy handling (which they were good enough to admit to all subscribers) will somehow lead to you getting arrested for falling in love and committing a "sexcrime" in what you thought was an unmonitored secluded location.
Sure, a lot of things might happen as a result of Yahoo collecting and sharing some personal information, but the images of Orwell's 1984 just aren't among the set of might happen scenarios.
Even more absurd is likening the "danger" of some
personally identifying information collected by Yahoo to the hazard of a hobbist storing a 65 megaton nuclear bomb in his basement (presumably in a populated area). Sorry, it may come as a shock to you, but the "danger" of Yahoo's slight transgressions of handling people's personally identifying information just isn't on the same scale as a bomb that could instantly kill millions of people, injure many millions more, and destroy most of city.
This is why the quote... from a founding father "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" is so appropriate.
Perhaps it is appropriate. Perhaps yahoo is guilty of some crime, or at least committing a moral "wrong" that deserves some public backlash (though the point of this article is that 95% of people didn't think it was a big deal).
But by initialing a fallacy, often termed "slippery slope" (where you imply some action will set off a chain of event leading to an improbable outcome), and then by responding with an absurd analogy (the transgressions of internet privacy are as dangerous a unregulated nuclear weapons capable of instantly killing millions of people), you come off as a kook. Making irrational arguements, while it may be entertaining, just isn't very effective. It only "works" when preaching to the converted, and even then it often fails when the logic is as absurd as these two message.
I don't personally know what "eternal vigilance" is supposed to entail, but it probably does not mean spouting off with absurd rhetoric that isn't going to be convincing to anybody (who hasn't already made up their mind on the issue).
Your arguement, bm_luethke, is absurd. Yahoo's misbehavior isn't going to lead to a Orwell's vision, just as certainly as it won't kill and injure millions of people in an atomic blast.
If you really believe in "eternal vigilance", a good place to start would be in learning to make some effective argments that will actually have some chance of convincing people "in the middle" that they should care. There are many good ways to do this... one simple way is real-life factual horror stories (grandma gets harrassed by cheap-labor convict who knew her personal info, etc). The "it's gotta stop before we're in Orwell's 1984" and "it needs to be regulated just like dangerous nuclear bombs" just doesn't cut it.
I hope this message has been 100% clear. I thought my first one was... but apparantly not.
(moderators: posted at only +1, to match the comment I'm responding to... damn, I must have a pathetic life tonight....)
... and more authoritative in obliterating privacy, if crap like this isnt stopped now, it will never be, we will all be living the 1984 life, and have the additional agony of being bombarded by constant spam from all mediums, and directions.
There's a long way from clicking delete on a dozen obnoxious emails (which may even be promoting something you're really interested in, since they knew something about you) to being hauled off by the Thought Police, brutally tortured for days, and ultimately grug into room 101 where starved rats will eat at your face (or whatever your worst fear happens to be, since they've been monitoring you 24/7 and know everything about you).
In my day, we didn't have no fancy computers. All we had was ink and quills, and we liked it, we loved it that way. Fancy computers! Fibble-dee Foo, Gobble-dee Gook. You'd write spill the ink on your hands and poke yourself until the paper was a black and bloody mess, and you liked it... you loved it that way. Fancy computers, Humphh!
Amazing that this stuff get's mod'd up. Maybe 99% of slash moderators are also so fed up with spam they're willing to "throw the baby out with the bathwater".
Get this: name me 10 subject that would get 99% approval among the population?.... but SPAM? come on... if it's not 99% it's going to be 99.9%.
It all depends on how you ask your questions. Maybe if you ask "should something be done?" you _might_ get 99%. If you include a phrase such as "potentially risking free speech rights for some" or "potentially hindering legitimate commercial email", I doubt you'll get 99% !
Of course, the age-old debate of opt-in vs opt-out comes up somewhere in this whole debate. 99% agreement would be nice, but it just ain't gonna happen. Of course, what percentage of reasonable thinkers do you suppose would agree with this next quoted section (note the boldface phrase):
Why so much tolerance? why not blocking every higher class where the biggest spam machines comes from? the hell with the valid users; if they are cutted out, they will do something other than reading about it and sitting there, switch ISP or if it's another country with only one wire well they will do pressure to the higher instances to get their connection back. My way might be drastic, but I am FED UP with it, I've been waiting for 3 years for this problem to get solved and it's just getting worse.
Amazing.
Despite your lack of reasonable perspective, spam really is becoming a problem and there's already been a number of state laws passed, and some failed attempts at (US) nationwide law. When it comes to making public policy, it's not a simple matter, and fortunately lawmakers don't live in such a simple ("hell with the valid users") world.
But there is something that can be done about the problem right now. Use the SpamAssassin Filter. I do. It works really well, and you can adjust the settings and set your threshold as high or low as you like. I personally enable the RBL and Rozor tests and set my threshold fairly high, so there's virtually no chance of losing any valid emails, yet almost all spam is filtered to a separate inbox (via procmail in my setup). Maybe you'll choose a really low threshold... the hell with the valid users.
Full free speech protection for one side and strict liability for the other will hardly promote vigorous and meaningful debate.
If I were engaged in a "public debate" and deliberately spread lies about Nike (or any other major corp), saying they operated sweatshops, dumped toxic chemicals, or any number of other accusations that I knew were false (or that I had just made up and didn't actually have any evidence), and I managed to find someone who'd actually publish the message far and wide...
Nike would sue me for libel or slander in no time at all.
But if the dissenting judges get their way, Nike et all will remain above the law when it comes to making deliberately false statements about themselves!
Individuals and activist orgs (plaintifs) have got to tell the truth, but major corps (defendants) are allowed to lie when speaking to the public. Yeah, right, that'll "promote vigorous and meaningful debate". I'm glad only a minor of the judges bought (or maybe they were "bought" $$$) into this bullshit!
How often do you click a LINK to Amazon? Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of links to Amazon, but I would guess most of them NEVER get clicked. Why? Because there are too many of them.
The vast majority are book recommendations, via the affiliate program, usually related to the material of the linking site.
So, basically, there is an upper limit to the number of links before they essentially become useless.
The search engines currently evalute quality of a page based on the number of links, and the quality of the linking pages (and maybe some other calcs to check for fraud). Hardly what many people would call "useless". It's also a really good way to find tiny needles of valuable information among the giant haystack of approx 2e9 mostly mediocre web pages.
This is Google's essential flaw... Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
In the vast majority of cases, Google's strategy works well. It's hard to argue with success, though it seems to come effortlessly in this post. Were you smoking something?
There are a lot of "howto" and FAQ style documents on the 'net, often times many copies of the same document, some older than others. Google really does have the magic of finding the short list of these documents that are the most up-to-date and relevant. How do you suppose that works??
Really, time is the only key. Oh, and having something useful or funny.
Now even if "time is the only key" (whatever that means), it follows from the rest of the message about as well as the typical ramblings of Jon Katz.
Well, that's enough inflamatory remarks for one day. I don't know what compelled me to reply to this silly message mod'd to "+4 Insightful" (yeah, right!)
Slashdot Mirror
My brother loaned me his copy of BG1, which I played. Robin, by girlfriend later decided to give BG1 a try and we purchased a copy, since I had returned it already.
I purchased BG2 and played most of it, again on 'doze.
Well, I don't play so many games now, and I don't even have a native 'doze installed anymore (got a vmware based 'doze for a single program... and yes, that's a legit vmware I paid for too).
So at least for me, it's a decision between PAYING for a linux version of a game, or not even bothering to play. Windows is not an option. You can have my money, but only if it works entirely in Linux. I'm just not going to install windows to play a damn game. I'd rather just not waste my time on it if it requires the headache of installing 'doze, installing drivers, rebooting endlessly in the process.
I know a lot of people still dual boot, but I've kicked that habbit.
Microsoft comes pre-installed on new computers, and is so widely used, that someone in a given setting is bound to have experience with it.
The pretty package probably has no real impact. Even the quality and ease-of-use are secondary to locking up all new PC sales with 'doze preinstalled.
That is what ICANN was supposed to do, but it's a simple fact that they elected only 5 board members instead of 9 as originally agreed. They have subsequently disbanded elections and put in place a "nomination" process which concentrates power in the hands of the original rules.
Similar to the common stories of democracy failing to establish itself in small countries, the original rulers have made some abuses of power. They've played favorites, made arbitrary spending decisions (even blocked inquires from an elected board member for spending records), and they've shown a lack of principle regarding the rights of citizens to whom they should be accountable (witness the unfair domain name dispute policy).
Comments that "the USA does not own the internet" will abound... but ICANN, like a former territory, was given its authority by the US, with a very clear charter that clearly called for a transition to democratically elected officials to make the decisions. Had they followed their charter, had they ernestly held elections, had the original board members stepped down as they had originally agreed, there would be much more tolerance for some bad decisions.
But that's not the case here. Unelected interim officials held on to their power and disbanded elections. Abuses have been made by unelected ICANN board members who do not deserve the power they have improperly siezed for themselves. That's a much different situation that poor decisions on the part of elected officials who should have felt accountable to their constituants who will re-elect them.
Like a developing nation where the interim rulers siezed power and refused to establish democracy as originally chartered, someone needs to step in. The US was both the country that originally granted ICANN its authority, and the US has the clout to demand ICANN's restructing.
This abuse of power and refusal to transistion to democracy are inexcusable. The US would never tolerate it in a former territory (where there's an economic impact on the US at least), and there's no reason that ICANN should be treated any differently.
The GPL is one of the most uniquely restrictive product agreements in the technology industry.
And, Yes, they have clicked ok to proprietary licenses much more restrictive than the GPL. These lines appear within their PDF file:
This simple fact can be easily verified with a command such as "stringsold_opensource_whitepaper.pdf| grep^/"
For YOU, TODAY, who knows? Seems unlikely.
For Keith Whitwell TODAY, yes. Tungsten Graphics is employing him to write ATI Radeon 8500 drivers for Xfree86 4.x (DRI), with funding from the Weather Channel. Emphasis on TODAY.
He's certainly not alone, but at this early stage it appears to be an exception and not the norm. But then, it's still the norm for commercial companies to avoid releasing source code. Maybe that will remain the case forever, but it certainly appears that for many types of "generic" software, it can make good economic sense for companies to use free software (saves real dollars), pay someone on staff to make improvements and customizations (for a large corp, much less expensive than licensing closed sources, if the app is "almost there"), and when they do have someone on staff make improvements, it's usually a no-brainer to contribute those improvements back into the publically maintained code base (rather than incurring the expense of maintaining a private fork of the code).
But TODAY, open source is still a "fringe". It's a small percentage. Finding (paid) work won't be easy... similar to finding work on specific Macintosh applications or some other area where only a small number of jobs exist.
On top of that, you'd be competing with a good number of the world's most motivated and talented programmers who _really_ like the free software philosophy. Tough market, at least today.
With your attitude, you'd probably do much better sticking to the mainstream. TODAY, in reality, SOME PEOPLE can make a living writing open sources. YOU probably can not, at least TODAY.
That would be very unfair, and also against the term of the GPL, MPL and BSD licenses... to remove the original author's name and represent that it had been created by someone else.
like any Linux distro?
Fortunately, the distros DO NOT do that. They tend to follow the license terms to the letter.
The vast majority of all free software is under the GNU GPL license, which requires others to share (if they distribute original or modified copies). It is the specific requirement that all derivative works include or make available the source code when they are distributed that makes it "fair" in the hearts and minds of most "open source" programmers (where 'most' reffers to the majority who choose to apply the GPL to their original works or contribute to GPL'd projects).
Leading questions like this are founded on the Microsoft vision that all software is created by "software vendors", where it is "manufactured", and sold to "end users" in shrink-wrapped boxes, with no user servicable parts inside.
John Carroll, a .NET developer who specializes in "distributed systems" ought to know this. The whole article reads as if it was written by Microsoft's PR dept (despite the lack of the word "ecosystem"). It's classic FUD... open source is great, so it begins, but there's that big "if" (5th paragraph). You wouldn't want to risk your gov't operations on such a "if'ey" economic model, that John Carroll believes is somehow destined to failure (despite it's amazing success in recent years)
Anyway, to answer the specific question, there are several widely believed theories... the one I like best is that there will always be companies that hire programmers to customize software. This happens today, even when the level of customization possible is limited by closed-source. It will usually be in a companies economic self interest to contribe improvements back to the public pool of code, assuming the application is "generic" and not something that gives the company an advantage over their competitors. That way they reap the benefits of everyone else's contributions and their patches are "maintained" by the community (of which they are a tiny part) rather than maintaining a fork of the code themselves.
But even then, there will always be plenty of programming to be done that is central to a company's mission and the code can not be shared with competitors under any circumstances. There will always be plenty of these jobs for programmers.
I ask myself a similar question every day...
How many more suckers could there possibly be who will believe they can:
I guess some people just really want to believe. Maybe a new sucker really is born every minute?
The television broadcast, shows and commercials are certainly copyrighted. Since the early 90s, all works of authorship are automatically copyrighted unless the author declares the work to be in the public domain. The aggreate of the show with commercials inserted is also probably a subject of copyright. That is exactly what is copyright might be violated (wether it is a voilation of not is up to the courts, not mere mortals like you and me, regardless of how strong our opinions may be, expressed here on slashdot or elsewhere).
According to copyright law, the copyright holder has several exclusive rights. The ones that might be violated here are:
#1, the exclusive right to prepare derivative works is quite a gray area. The Replay4000 apparantly has the ability to automatically detect commercials and prevent them from being recorded. Personally, I think that's a great feature (which I would certain use, except that I don't watch TV).
In the case of a VCR, the broadcast is recorded to the videotape without any modification. Commercial skipping happens during playback, but the copy (which was fair use) is an exact copy of the original. But if the recorder analyzes the picture in real time and automatically alters it, maybe that's enough to be considered a "derivative work".
#2, the exclusive right to distribute copies of the work is also a point of contention. The Replay4000 has a file sharing feature, where copies of the broadcast (presumably originals OR modified copies that might be derivitive works) can be transfered to 15 other Replay4000 owners via broadband internet connections. This file sharing certainly is distributing copies, so the only hope for it to be legal is if it's a fair use
There are four factors for fair-use (decided on a case by case basis by courts):
In terms of the fair use criteria, #1 and #4 are a mixed blessing for Replay4000 users. Sharing is almost always non-profit, but usually for entertainment rather than eductional purposes (yeah, some shows are eductional, but to really be for educational purposes you'd be talking about copies for students at a school). #4 is also middle ground... a small number of copies to friends has a small impact on the market (though the studios will argue that the derivitive works worsens the market for royalties) and the broadcasters will claim the market for "premium" channels is dimished if users distribute certain key shows to their friends who don't susscribe to those channels.
#2 and #3 really work against the Replay4000. The material is "artisitic" (neglecting the overall lack of substance and quality of TV... at least when my girlfriend made me sit through a "survivor" episode a couple months ago). The copies are the whole thing (#3).
One final thing to keep in mind, which seems to be easy to forget while reading all these "ought to be" slashdot comments, is that fair use is decided on a case-by-case basis by courts. The famous Sony vs Universal case (VCR is fair-use) was decided by a 5/4 vote. Very close, and the VCR of the mid 80's required the user to press FF to "skip" a commercial, instead of making a modified recoding (derivative work) automatically. That 80's VCR allowed "swapping", but by physically transporting tapes instead of just pressing a couple buttons (think "subjective opinion of a judge on the impact for the market for or upon the value of the copyrighted work).
I personally hope the Replay4000 and similar devices are ruled to a legal fair use. But saying "it's exactly like a VCR" is a stretch... and the VCR case from the 80's was a 5/4 split of the high court!
The development of BSD unix (in California, of course) and it's widespread distribution to other universities and research centers that ultimately made IP and TCP the "standard". Microsoft's TCP/IP code was originally based on the free BSD Unix code, as was Sun's (both have re-written most or all of their TCP/IP code since, but they did both ship BSD-derived code for years).
Similarily, while the HTTP protocol, a text-only viewer and original server were developed at CERN, it was NCSA (University of Illinois) that developed the Mosaic web browser and NCSA web server. Both Netscape and Microsoft's IE were based on the Mosaic code (recent versions of IE, like 5.5 which I just tested, still credit the University of Illinois in their Help->About Internet Explorer menu). In all likelyhood, you're using IE to view this message, so if you are just click on that menu to see a credit for a quick reality check that code you're using to access the net originated in Illinois. Since you're reading this one slashdot, the server that sent it to you was Apache, which was also originally based on the web server from Illinois (named apache due to a large number of patched to NCSA's server, "A Patchy" server).
There's just two little examples. Of course, if the question was really what has Korea contributed to the internet's infrastructure... well, that's a good question?
One good example, and a project that I've made some small contributions into, is SDCC - Small Device C Compiler. Like many projects, there's a CVS server, nightly snapshots (source tarballs), and even nightly binary builds for linux and win32.
Do the linux builts work on Redhat 7.2? Yes, I have Redhat 7.2 on my system, and so do other active developers.
Do the win32 builds work on Windows 98SE and 2000? Yes. None of the developers uses windows, but many users regularily download the win32 builds on these 'doze systems. When bugs have turned up one these systems, the developer mail list and bug tracker have filled with bug reports.
Do those win32 builds also work on windows XP and windows 95? Good Question. A number of non-developers have probably tried it on XP by now, but are any users really still running it on '95? Who knows.
Long ago, the code could compile with Borland C. Developers using linux-based systems started cross compiling and building under Borland was broken for a very long time until someone reported it. Borland support has never been restored (no active developers care, and mingw as a cross compiler can be fully automated by the nightly builds)
Does the code compile and run on PPC? Yes, one of the developers has a PPC box, so this definately works. Which distro works for PCC... better ask Michael.
Does it work on Debian? Yep, several active developers use Debian... and there was recently an announcement that it's available with apt-get. Debian and RedHat 7.x are the only two distros that are really gaurenteed to work.
Does it build on MacOS-X? Nope, but a couple of OS-X users have joined the developer mail list and it's probably a matter of time until the OS-X issues are worked out, but at least it is know that there is a problem on OS-X (I think someone submitted a patch but it hasn't found its way into CVS).
Will it work on UnitedLinux?? Who knows? Nobody involved with this project has UnitedLinux, and it doesn't look like anyone will. RedHat 7.2 works great for me, and since these "business oriented" linux vendors aren't going to provide me with a cheap/free cdrom or network install, why would I bother. They're focused on serving the "business server market", so there won't be anything interesting about UnitedLinux to make it worthwhile for me to bother installing (not to mention paying for). I'm certainly not going to waste my time to compile an entire linux distribution. I'd much rather spend the time getting to understand the register allocator code better and make more significant contributions to SDCC. I'd be very suprised if any other developers lifted a finger to test UnitedLinux.
So the subject, "big friggen deal" couldn't be more appropriate. As a developer (primarily firmware, using tools like SDCC), I'd say "big friggen deal" about UnitedLinux. Caldera, TurboLinux, et all probably say "big friggen deal" with respect to SDCC, since their customers aren't developers, and they certainly aren't developing firmware for low-end 8-bit microcontrollers.
So if with want something "business oriented", supposedly with "world class support" from the likes of Caldera (or you just want to pay them a lot for something that's roughly equivilant to Redhat), then maybe UnitedLinux is for you.
But, if instead, you're interested in using the linux distribution with the most "third party" software that's tested and known to work, your best best is going to be with RedHat or Debian. (FWIW, you might pause to wonder why Windows is so popular).
By not building "mind share" among software developers, how can they ever expect third party software to be tested with their distrbution?
Does this mean I can hack into .. and upload a patch to display ... characters as completely nude, full-figured women?
No, but it does mean you can fabricate a little circuit board and solder it to tiny wires on the xbox, connect that to a FPGA and custom-program the FPGA to implement data collecting hardware (including a lot of hand-layout effort to make the FPGA able to collect at 200 MHz). It means you can implement a little state machine also in the FPGA to begin collecting at the right time, ignore a false reset pulse, and tag all collected data with sequence numbers of how many clock cycles elapsed between each data transfer and the CPU reset.
It also means you can spend a lot of time to do statistical analysis on the data and compare to patterns from the flash rom (which you presumably already extracted and read with your EPROM programmer). It means that once you've at least figured out which wires were which bits, you can begin wading through millions of data transfers and try to reconstruct an image of the code the CPU executed.
It means you can disassemble that code (remember, found from analyzing millions of bus transfers) and recognize that it implements RC-4 decryption. It means you can write a "brute force" attack to guess all possible 16-byte patters from the image you extracted and see if any of them decrypts the flash rom data to something other than white noise.
It means that, after all that, you have the algorithm and key used to decrypt the bootloader in the flash rom... and then you can write your own bootloader (by extracting the flash rom chip and changing its contents with an EPROM programmer) and make the xbox run your own code.
The author did mention that Microsoft put test points on the board to access the flash rom, so instead of physically removing the flash rom, you could build a "bed-of-nails" test fixture that you'd just place the xbox circuit board into to reprogram the flash rom (don't forget to design your own EPROM programmer in this process).
But as others have pointed out, the author has been in contact with Microsoft and they are aware of the problem, and they intend to fix it in future revisions to the xbox hardware.
So if you wanna pop up nudie pictures in the middle of someone's game, you'd better get started soldering now. Even after you do all this, you'd barely have your foot in the door. You'll need to do a massive reverse engineering job on the bootloader, and then the rest of the flash rom (which is presumably part of the win2k closed-source kernel). Somewhere along the way, you'll learn about the xbox hardware and MAYBE find a game-independent way to overlay some graphics on the screen. Maybe you'll even find some exploits in the kernel itself, maybe?
But to start, you MUST pull the flash rom chip and reprogram it with your own code. Better hurry before Microsoft changes the secret bootloader or even the hardware itself, now that they know of the weakness.
It you were to pay for a Dedicated Server at RackShack, it's cost you $99 (plus a one-time setup of approx $200).
Since that $99 buys 400 Gbyte/month of bandwidth at RackShack, distributing 100 GB would not only not cost "many times more"... it would cost exactly the same $99 as 10 GB.
Of course, there is the minor issue of their AUP prohibiting distribution that infringes copyright... but if it were 10 or 100 GB of something you has the right to distribute, 10, 100 and even 400 GB would cost exactly the same, if you used RackShack!
Just to give one more example, stepping up from the bargain basement to Verio's Dedicated Hosting (which happens to be how amy own website is hosted), you'd pay $395 per month which includes 50 Gbytes of bandwidth. Verio sells bandwidth in $150 GB allocations for $150, so 10 GB would cost you $395 and 100 GB would cost $545. That happens to be a 38% increase, which is hardly "many times more".
FWIW, I got a great deal at Verio in the dot-com bust and they sold me an older dedicated server at approx 1/2 of the normal rate, so in my case going to 10 GB to 100 GB would approximately double my bill. (my site uses about 15 Gbyte/month, and it's slowly and steadily growing as the site expands and more people find it)
There are thousands of other companies on the net offering hosting for larger and higher bandwidth sites.... but here's at least two solid examples that flatly disprove the absurd notion that 100 GB costs a lot more that 10 GB.
Yes, we do care, as a matter of fact. AotC was a huge success. Obviously a lot of people did care (enough to pay for expensive tickets)
At a basketball game it does matter who wins by just one point. The "loser" who played nearly as well is still the "loser". Likewise for most sporting events, which are artifical contests. Fortunately, that fiction doesn't apply to most real world success (despite the flare it might add to otherwise boring journalism and reporting)
AotC taking in slightly less revenue that Spidey doesn't somehow mean that AotC is a "loser" and Spidey is a "winner". They're both an amazing success. In fact, they're so close that fans endlessly argue about the number of opening screens and other factors (much like watching those cameras to see if the ref made a fair call... over just one point to decide the game!)
Of course, if you really, really want to believe in something... say that Lucas is evil for hype/merchandizing, far-flung storytelling, and whatnot, then it's a battle with a winner and a loser. No matter how close the contest, no matter how well AotC did, if it's just a bit below your favorite then Lucas "lost" and "should learn his lesson".
This latest installment of Katz babble reminds me of when I was very young and the Apple ][ was clearly superior to the C-64. Then again, Apple's still in business today, so maybe it was. Kinda makes me wonder how many Spidey sequals they will make and if Lucas will change his mind and create Episodes 7, 8 and 9 ??
Privoxy (formerly JunkBuster Internet Proxy) does a great job of blocking the slashdot ads, and ads from most other sites on the internet. Even if you have a fast internet connection, time invested to install it is greatly paid back in not waiting and being annoyed by ads!
Privoxy is once again under active development... which is a true success story of the GPL, where a group of interested individuals picked it up after JunkBuster's decided to abandon further development (partly over concern for liability in creating derivitive works of web pages by suppressing the ads)
As a matter of fact, it IS A CRIME. Laws have been passed with very specifically make it illegal to do register domain names in bad faith and deceive users for commercial gain.
This particular criminal lost other cases and appeals and there was slashdot coverage (well, linking to real news sites, who themselves just rehash the AP wire). If you search, you'll find those articles and the linkage to the appeal court's findings of the specific law that was broken. (If I cared more about slash moderation, I'd go to the trouble to find the old article and links, but you can easily do this yourself)
The point is that there is a law against this specific actitivity. He broken it. It IS as crime. It's about time the FTC finally got around to persuing criminal charges (he's lost dozens of civil cases and knew very well he was breaking the law).
double blind scientifically conducted and statistically valid listening tests with quality encoding software (not Xing!) have said otherwise.
The reason why is a matter of lobbying history...
But consider that Copyright affords much less "protection" than Patent law.
Like almost everyone here, I too hope that the extension is struck down, and more importantly a clear precident is set for future extensions,
But the real evil of today's system, as some of the briefs pointed out, is that 100% of "written" works automatically receive copyright protection for the entire possible term. The previous system, where an application must be submitted and extensions must be granted was much more sensible, as many works immediately entered the public domain if the author did not feel the need for copyright (they couldn't later demand royalties when someone else makes a derivitive work from something they never intended to be profitable). Extensions also worked well to cause copyrighted works that were no longer "exploited" to enter the public domain, yet valuable works could remain protected. On of the briefs cites a study that only 15% of copyrights were extended. Today these simple and sensible proceedures have been lost.
One of the best examples from my personal experience is a fairly large 8-bit assembly language project I did (for an embedded PIC16C76-based product). The project has approx 25000 lines of assembly code distributed in about two dozen files (which built about a dozen different flavors of the product, though virtually no code was duplicated due to common code being used by includes... it really was about 25k lines of assembly!)
The first time another programmer worked on it, he of course complained that it wasn't commented very well and lacked documentation.
In fact, a quick grep ';' *.src | wc compared to a wc of all the files revealed that 34% of the lines had a comment (the vast majority the whole line was a comment, as I tend to write blocks of prose above sections to explain what they do, rather than a comment for each register move).
But if 8500 lines of comments wasn't enough, there was an 11-page document I wrote about the design of this firmware... about half of it was a "roadmap" that described the "larger picture" of the firmware and how it was arranged into the various files. The other half documented specific tricks (like a 6-instruction sequence including a skip-past-a-skip that achieves a 16 bit add/subtract in that PIC part which lacks carry input). There was also a lengthy discussion of the overall strategy for managing the various bank-swapped memory of that processor and some other stuff about the real-time performance (that was a hard real time application).
Learning is painful for most people, and learning someone elses code seems to be absolute agony for many engineers & programmers. They always complain that you didn't document/comment the code enough, even in an extreem case like this!
the point isn't what they actually do with the content but what they MIGHT do
Yes, and it is indeed quite unlikely that Yahoo's lapse in privacy handling (which they were good enough to admit to all subscribers) will somehow lead to you getting arrested for falling in love and committing a "sexcrime" in what you thought was an unmonitored secluded location.
Sure, a lot of things might happen as a result of Yahoo collecting and sharing some personal information, but the images of Orwell's 1984 just aren't among the set of might happen scenarios.
Even more absurd is likening the "danger" of some personally identifying information collected by Yahoo to the hazard of a hobbist storing a 65 megaton nuclear bomb in his basement (presumably in a populated area). Sorry, it may come as a shock to you, but the "danger" of Yahoo's slight transgressions of handling people's personally identifying information just isn't on the same scale as a bomb that could instantly kill millions of people, injure many millions more, and destroy most of city.
This is why the quote ... from a founding father "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" is so appropriate.
Perhaps it is appropriate. Perhaps yahoo is guilty of some crime, or at least committing a moral "wrong" that deserves some public backlash (though the point of this article is that 95% of people didn't think it was a big deal).
But by initialing a fallacy, often termed "slippery slope" (where you imply some action will set off a chain of event leading to an improbable outcome), and then by responding with an absurd analogy (the transgressions of internet privacy are as dangerous a unregulated nuclear weapons capable of instantly killing millions of people), you come off as a kook. Making irrational arguements, while it may be entertaining, just isn't very effective. It only "works" when preaching to the converted, and even then it often fails when the logic is as absurd as these two message.
I don't personally know what "eternal vigilance" is supposed to entail, but it probably does not mean spouting off with absurd rhetoric that isn't going to be convincing to anybody (who hasn't already made up their mind on the issue).
Your arguement, bm_luethke, is absurd. Yahoo's misbehavior isn't going to lead to a Orwell's vision, just as certainly as it won't kill and injure millions of people in an atomic blast.
If you really believe in "eternal vigilance", a good place to start would be in learning to make some effective argments that will actually have some chance of convincing people "in the middle" that they should care. There are many good ways to do this... one simple way is real-life factual horror stories (grandma gets harrassed by cheap-labor convict who knew her personal info, etc). The "it's gotta stop before we're in Orwell's 1984" and "it needs to be regulated just like dangerous nuclear bombs" just doesn't cut it.
I hope this message has been 100% clear. I thought my first one was... but apparantly not.
(moderators: posted at only +1, to match the comment I'm responding to... damn, I must have a pathetic life tonight....)
There's a long way from clicking delete on a dozen obnoxious emails (which may even be promoting something you're really interested in, since they knew something about you) to being hauled off by the Thought Police, brutally tortured for days, and ultimately grug into room 101 where starved rats will eat at your face (or whatever your worst fear happens to be, since they've been monitoring you 24/7 and know everything about you).
In my day, we didn't have no fancy computers. All we had was ink and quills, and we liked it, we loved it that way. Fancy computers! Fibble-dee Foo, Gobble-dee Gook. You'd write spill the ink on your hands and poke yourself until the paper was a black and bloody mess, and you liked it... you loved it that way. Fancy computers, Humphh!
It all depends on how you ask your questions. Maybe if you ask "should something be done?" you _might_ get 99%. If you include a phrase such as "potentially risking free speech rights for some" or "potentially hindering legitimate commercial email", I doubt you'll get 99% !
Of course, the age-old debate of opt-in vs opt-out comes up somewhere in this whole debate. 99% agreement would be nice, but it just ain't gonna happen. Of course, what percentage of reasonable thinkers do you suppose would agree with this next quoted section (note the boldface phrase):
Amazing.
Despite your lack of reasonable perspective, spam really is becoming a problem and there's already been a number of state laws passed, and some failed attempts at (US) nationwide law. When it comes to making public policy, it's not a simple matter, and fortunately lawmakers don't live in such a simple ("hell with the valid users") world.
But there is something that can be done about the problem right now. Use the SpamAssassin Filter. I do. It works really well, and you can adjust the settings and set your threshold as high or low as you like. I personally enable the RBL and Rozor tests and set my threshold fairly high, so there's virtually no chance of losing any valid emails, yet almost all spam is filtered to a separate inbox (via procmail in my setup). Maybe you'll choose a really low threshold... the hell with the valid users.
If I were engaged in a "public debate" and deliberately spread lies about Nike (or any other major corp), saying they operated sweatshops, dumped toxic chemicals, or any number of other accusations that I knew were false (or that I had just made up and didn't actually have any evidence), and I managed to find someone who'd actually publish the message far and wide...
Nike would sue me for libel or slander in no time at all.
But if the dissenting judges get their way, Nike et all will remain above the law when it comes to making deliberately false statements about themselves!
Individuals and activist orgs (plaintifs) have got to tell the truth, but major corps (defendants) are allowed to lie when speaking to the public. Yeah, right, that'll "promote vigorous and meaningful debate". I'm glad only a minor of the judges bought (or maybe they were "bought" $$$) into this bullshit!
How often do you click a LINK to Amazon? Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of links to Amazon, but I would guess most of them NEVER get clicked. Why? Because there are too many of them.
The vast majority are book recommendations, via the affiliate program, usually related to the material of the linking site.
So, basically, there is an upper limit to the number of links before they essentially become useless.
The search engines currently evalute quality of a page based on the number of links, and the quality of the linking pages (and maybe some other calcs to check for fraud). Hardly what many people would call "useless". It's also a really good way to find tiny needles of valuable information among the giant haystack of approx 2e9 mostly mediocre web pages.
This is Google's essential flaw ... Google should instead group searches around a bell curve distribution, where the sites with the medium number of links have the highest relevance, with underlinked and overlinked sites falling off the ends.
In the vast majority of cases, Google's strategy works well. It's hard to argue with success, though it seems to come effortlessly in this post. Were you smoking something?
There are a lot of "howto" and FAQ style documents on the 'net, often times many copies of the same document, some older than others. Google really does have the magic of finding the short list of these documents that are the most up-to-date and relevant. How do you suppose that works??
Really, time is the only key. Oh, and having something useful or funny.
Now even if "time is the only key" (whatever that means), it follows from the rest of the message about as well as the typical ramblings of Jon Katz.
Well, that's enough inflamatory remarks for one day. I don't know what compelled me to reply to this silly message mod'd to "+4 Insightful" (yeah, right!)