I take your point, and I make it mine. Breaking a captcha isn't illegal. It's circumventing the wishes of a resource operator to provide a service. Personally, I find that as offensive as breaking a law. Here's the resource operator. He wants to offer a valuable service, but within limits. Here's the hacker. He wants service in excess of those limits.
Who's the good guy, whose the bad guy?
If I have an open http proxy, is that license to use it to hack into other systems without leaving a log on those systems? Not to my mind, but I've absolutely no doubt someone will do exactly that. (And just because it's open doesn't mean it isn't logged... and not on the server doing the open proxy. It just might be a packet logging system you can't see - and on my allocation, I'll flat tell you that's the case. And logs are ALWAYS handed over upon request of the allocation holder.)
What I have to say is very simple, very basic, and not at all very comfortable. In the past, we've seen that "doing your own thing" on the internet as an expression of individualizem. Of being "smarter, quicker, more intelligent". And that's true to an extent. However, now this expression is being turned to real harm, real loss. We are no longer talking about Captin Crunch and free toll calls. We're talking billions of real dollars being stolen. We're talking real people going broke. We're talking meat space consequences to cyberspace actions, and they are hurting people.
So, again, I have to ask the question: At what basic point to we start drawing lines, and what should they look like, what are the consequences, and how and who enforces them? These are all basic questions. Normally, we'd start with governments, but in this case, I don't think governments are able to understand and utilize the tech at the moment. What else is there?
The problem is that no one is in absolute control of the Internet. (Thank $GHU!). So the basic beginning is "where do we start, what do we allow, what is always acceptable, what is always unacceptable, and what are the grey areas, and how do we come to agree on things?"
Yahoo!'s captcha has been hacked, perhaps not as well, in the past. I've seen open http proxies pounding away at Yahoo to the tune of 100,000 per hour and more. Hotmail's is broken, so are others. The real shame is that the Storm Worm controllers are being protected by a national government and law enforecement system.
So what's the answer?
I'm sure I don't know. I do know that the wild west theory of accepting any kind of behaviour isn't acceptable. I know that some minimum standard of what's allowed and what isn't is going to have to take place. Where these limits are placed is a thing for a global conversation, and there will be differances of opinion.
Is cracking a captcha acceptalbe? Is phishing and identity theft acceptable? Is fraud and uncontrolled spam acceptable? What limits, and on what actions?
I'm just not that smart. But I think we can agree on a few things. Let's start to find out what those things are... and acting in concert with other network operators to enforce those standards. Fail to meet them, and your network routing gets dropped...
Something that's pretty strange, and while I'm not licenced to practice law in any state of the Unided States, I don't see where it's illegal to OBTAIN unlicenced intellectual property, only to PROVIDE it. On the other hand, receiving stolen goods IS a crime.
How I see it is that RIAA and MPAA are failing to provide their content in a way that is easy, free of silly encumbrances, and are guilty of product tying. In other words, their bleetings are a product of their outmoded and protectionist practices, not because they actually add any value.
Put another way, if RIAA and MPAA are allowed to seek injunctions against receiving their products in a way they don't approve, I'd like to seek injunctions against every power company that provides electricity because it cuts into my profits in selling whale oil and whale oil lamps. Out moded business models should die because of market pressure, not thrive due to political contributions, rigged laws, or "The Disney Copyright Protection Act".
That said, Intellictual property is property, and depriving those that own it of legitimate compensation is theft. There are many inequities in movies, even more in music. But one cannot legitimately usurp agreed contracts of the creators of that IP, no matter how unfair it is to the creators. They agreed to it, after all.
I do not have any.ogg (a better MP3) songs that I do not own the CD. I've never downloaded anything that I did not purchase an origianal licenced copy of if it is covered under triditional copyright. That that create a work I apprecite deserve to be conpensated for their effort under the terms they make their work available.
If you don't like the people or the circumstances the work is made available under, the simple solution is to avoid the work. Don't buy it. Don't download it. Don't view it, and don't support them in any way. This is why I've not see a Sony move, bought a Sony CD, or purchsed a PC with Sony chips that I could avoid. (Not always possible, but you can TRY.)
For the same reason, I do not own Blue-Ray. I have HD-DVD. I may have to go to Blue-Ray as it displaces HD-DVD, but I'll only go there once HD-DVD is a thing of the past.
Our AD policy (since most computers are Windows) forces a powerdown at 7pm (our offices all close at 4:45pm, except for a few.) The user can abort the shutdown by clicking on a button, or can simply reboot. AD policy also exempts the systems we know shouldn't be shutdown (24 hour serivce points.) At this point, we estimate we save about $30,000USD per year in power costs for the 1/3 that have this impliments. (It's a big network.)
Interestingly, our network guys are having trouble routing wake on lan packets accross subnets, so we are looking at a T104 form factor linux appliences with multiple nics to send out WOL commands. Not sure this isn't a brain fart on the part of the network guys, or simply a limitation on how WOL works. Since we have other reasons for wanting a boxen on each network, it's a good excuse.
My own gaming experice is almost exactly like Peter Molyneux's, except that I mowed lawns to earn the geatus to buy Pong, and once disected, it did rise from the ashes to work again. (Thanks Dad, for teaching me well!)
Looking back, I'm not sure why there would be a problem taking the game apart, unless you tried to open up the pots too... As I recall, (and I could be wrong!), the game was rather robustly made and it would take a real effort to screw it up, or total ignorance of how circuits work. Then again, it's been many, many years ago, and I could be thinking of something else. If I'm not, then it would take a very ham handed sort to break the circuit board to keep it from working...
I'm not sure if I used a soldering iron to weaken the plastic seals, or if that was something else. I do seem to remember that just taking out the screws didn't open it up. One had to get past some epoxy too.
I'm sorry, I'm just an old fart now. I really can't remember clearly how I opened it up. Perhaps if the Web was around then, I'd have written it up.... 8)
Sorry, your entire thesis is just wrong.
The choice between open and closed source should be driven by the needs of the project, not the desires of the people that want to flog one solution or the other. While I happen to think that most projects would be better served with open source software, it doesn't blind me to the advantanges some closed source has.
Sure, mod me into the dirt because I dare to say that sometimes open source doesn't hold a candle to closed source software. I hope that in two, five or ten years, this will be true as a spinal reflex, but for today, not all software needs are best met with open source. CAD is one field, and complex accounting (with a General Ledger using 56 digit GL codes) is another. (I grant that using a GL code that large is just nuts, but face it, many government sub. do).
I support FOSS, I'd rather use FOSS. However, FOSS isn't the end all be all, solving the real problem is.
At $DAYJOB, we insert fake data in two ways: First, fake data that is in the database with known markers, second, more fake data generated each time a user logs in and present only during that log in for that user. In this way, we know if the data theift occured via authintication (and by whom, from where, and when), or via some hole in the app.
The way to make this more effective requres a huge amount of work: Longer CC numbers and SSNs. It's the same problem IT has had with users FOREVER. Users expect the moon, stars, and all the oort cloud between, yet do not want to provide the least effort. There's no "buy in" from Soc Sec and the CC companies. As long as they get to pass along the cost to someone else, then the current system is "good enough". No need to expend any of THEIR effort to find, track, and plug up problems.
But make THEM accountable in a tangable way, and I think we'll start to see effective measures to stop this nonsense. And no few RSG and 419'ers in jail to boot.
This has been done. Search the web for "honeypot."
And see exactly what? That someone is running honeypots? I don't need to look to know that, I run honeypots myself. I've more than two dozen sytems running multiple VM honeypot software from home grown to open source to closed source IDS'es. Let me be clear: I currently run $many to $shitpots of honeypot systems, with Sun boxen, AIX boxen, and WinTel platforms. Mostly these are "spares" to use when a production system goes down. It's a way to keep them "warm" and tested to be sure they run correctly.
And malware authors work around it by probing. If they suspect that an address in a network is used for a honeypot to blacklist any IP that touches it, then they do a simple binary search to find out which addresses are used, then they stop hitting those addresses.
One or two MIGHT. I, however, find that those running bot hearders are not sensitive to time constrants over fifteen minutes or so. Sure, there are a bunch of spammers that react to a reject on the second spam; however, there are far fewer that react to a block that takes place after the 500th. (and 2-500 are not delivered nor bounced, but held for later review.)
And this ignores the vast majority of hardend spammers that tend not to send more than one spam per IP to identifiable IP space. In my case, I have several allocations that do not obviously tie back to me, consequently, I see this more than perhaps others do.
Of course, that's only for searching out vulnerabilities with a worm that automatically propagates. How would you get the same statistical results, only when the attack vector is spam containing a link to a trojan? Read up on Storm Worm before you answer, as it works around the obvious solutions.
And just by the way, I assume you know that a TCP-RESET can be forged from elsewhere, right? And that an effective way to prevent packet exchange is with a TCP-RESET, right? I'll leave even more esoteric spoofing and devious deeds for another conversation.
You are attempting to teach grandpaw how to suck eggs. (And why would anyone want to suck an egg? Burr!) You can assume any level of incompentence and disregard to details you'd like. One thing, however, stands out. I STILL havn't heard how this most Holy IP with attendant patents will serve to protect my networks. I DO see a lot of finding of fault where my methoids are not known, assumptions of ignorance or lack of expertise, and no more hard data on what I'm doing wrong.
At this point, my sole critizism has been a lack of information. My sole observation is that a lot of vendors promise the moon and the stars, and I fail to see how this vendor distinguishes themselves from the pack of lies, smoke dancers, and vaporware peddlers out there. I'm not saying they are such scum, I'm saying I don't see anything to lead me to believe their claims from a non-biased standpoint.
I'd be wild with joy if even half of what is claimed can be proven. However, I see a lot of claims, but I don't see a lot of proof, evidence, or independant review. So while I can continue to hope for the results of the technology, don't expect me to get behind it by writing a check for it until I have some evidence I'm not buying a pig in a poke.
I alread have lots of pokes, and lots of pigs. And case after case of lipstick for the pigs. Pardon me for being a bit gunshy.
You should definitely get those four patents on picking your teeth. I think Darl McBride might buy them off you if you tell him they're Linux related.
.
Well, Darl is a bit short of cash right now, seeing how he's busy transfering a patent to cattleback and all. And, oh, My, we forgot to pay anything for that transfer! Ooops! OUR BAD! Please let us make it right and do it now we've filed for bankrupcy! We'll just move anything of value out of SCOX and leave it with nothing but the bills while we move anything of value out to other subsideries.
About as obvious a a cat trying to cover up "business" on a tile floor. Problem is that the cat's business is far more honest than SCOX's "business", and about as transparent. The problem with stupid people is that they think we are dumber than they are.
It's always such a shock to them when they find out others are more intelligent than they are. Why, they are simply INDIGNIGANT and DEMAND we dumb ourselves down to their level. I'd oblige, but I don't have that nifty little MP3 player on my hip with the endless loop of "Ok, now INHALE......OK, now EXHALE.......INHALE........EXHALE......"
Sadly, this estimation of common IQ really isn't all that far wrong. As evidence, I submit the 2004 "elections".
Gee. Lookit this big bad threat. Boo! Botnet! Boo! Bad Botnet! Bad! Bad! Bad!
We can save you! We have Patented Technology! All Hail our most Holy Precious Intellictual Property! Hail IP! Hail! Botnet! Boo!
OK, can some one 'splain to me Lucy why this obvious and fact lacking bit of pre-IPO spin made it to SlashDot? Is there anyone that can tell me excactly how technology that allows for 99.9 percent accuracy with zero false positives actually works? Remember, we're talking millions of infected botnet systems with ZERO false positives. Make millions of ANYTHING and you're going to have a few errors here and there.
This is great if it's true, however, I'm highly skeptical without more hard facts that this is anything other than vaporware and high hopes for an early buyout. Gee! FOUR patents!
I'll bet I could get four patents on a process to pick my teeth with a toothpick. Not that I think it honest, you understand...
mcgrew (sm62704) writes with news that the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Microsoft and a unit of Best Buy to dismiss a lawsuit alleging violation of racketeering laws. This means the class-action complaint can go to trial. The case was filed in civil court and the companies, with the US Chamber of Commerce behind them, wanted the Supreme Court to put the brakes on the expanding use of RICO laws in civil filings. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was designed to fight organized crime, but in recent years more than 100 times as many civil as federal RICO cases have been filed.
.
If you don't think that Microsoft isn't doing all it can, roping in anyone it can force, jigger, or bribe to join them in their little dance in hell, they should read http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/index.html The Halloween Documents with an open mind.
It's quite evident what MicroSoft wants. What isn't so clear is what the rest of us get out of it.
As much as I hate spam (I sometimes have a million reasons per hour to hate it), murdering a spammer simply isn't just. Oh, I could make jokes about suffering, and how a bullet to the brain doesn't make the spammer suffer enough, and other cheap shots. The fact is, monitary damages and annoyance to millions isn't enough reason to take a life. That said, I'd have no hesitation whatever in placing a spammer in jail for the rest of their natural life, with no access to the internet.
I'd do it in an internet second.
The fact is, rather than ticking off someone in the Russian mob with spam, I suspect that the root cause of this murder is due more to the spammer cheating the mob than to general pissoff with spam. Criminals don't get that excited about having their email box stuffed full of quack pills that don't work, they do get very excitable when they don't get their cut of the action, real or perceived.
It may turn out that some mobster got sucked into the scam, tried the pillz, found they didn't work, and Alexey tried to use the fact the goomba bought the pills to embarass and influance the wiseguy. Said wiseguy, rather than knuckle under, simply whacked Alexey rather than be rousted. Face in the mob is everything. Lose it and you are nothing.
But the real situation is that right now, there isn't any real information made public for anyone to draw any intelligent conclusion from. Wild speculation is always cheap tender on the internet, but effective solutions to spam are more rooted in fact and evidence than in wild speculation. I'll sit back, wait for more real evidence and information before I draw any conclusions.
I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO was going to lose. Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered. Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true.
.
Daniel Lyons admits he was wrong. In my book, that puts him square with the mistake he made. Now, we (tinw) as open source supporters, have to step back, take a deep breath, and prepare to admit that one can make a mistake without having been paid off to do it. That, or else admit that truth, evidence, and honest intent have no weight in our view if it impeaches open source in any way. For myself, I'm not prepared to take that step. Because honesty does mean something to me.
Not to say that I trust Forbes. Seems they get almost everything wrong, in the long run. But that isn't the fault of Daniel Lyons. That's the fault of the editors of Forbes. Daniel can make his own assessment of what kind of news outlet he chooses to associate with, and under what terms.
SCOX had seven people in the accounting department. 3 were terminated or resigned. SCOx's problems are obvious enough not to blow this all out of reason and make it sound like a thundering cavalcade ran for the door. The truth about SCOx and Darl is quite bad enough without inflating the facts. That's a SCOx tactic, and one we need not indulge in since SCOx does it so well.
Not that I am a SCOx supporter. Far from it. I think Novel should go after Darl in his own natural person to recover court costs. And if Darl dies while I'm still able to get around, count on it that I'll fly to his grave site to relieve myself on it. Twice. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
A more damming metric would be to quote how many engineers SCO had on staff, vs. how many SCOx retained. Answer: Not many! SCOx has allowed their product to lag behind hardware to the point that the OS is irrelevant on modern hardware. It simply doesn't work on the new stuff, and doesn't support many current technologies. That's a death knell for any OS.
SCOx concentrated on a niche market, and they didn't pick it any too carefully. That SCOx finds themselves bypassed and disfavored is a mark of just how badly they chose to grow. It's never pretty when a technology company chooses to become a litigation company, it's even worse when they choose the wrong technology to litigate against.
Which is why, three years or more ago, I quit being a DirecTV subscriber and switched to Dish. . And got better
customer service and a lower bill in the bargan. .
When a company does something silly, stupid, AND against my interests, I stop doing business with them.
That's also why I've never bought a single ticket to a Sony movie, a Sony DVD, or Sony brand for 15 years now. I can't avoid Sony chips every time, but when I can, I do. One 3,500 unit lap top deployment was switched from one vender to another vendor simply because the first used Sony chips, but the second did't. Also saved about USD45 per unit, with comperable performance and features. The first had 4 1.0USB ports, the second had 2 2.0 USB ports. We only needed one.
A no brainer, AND I didn't feed the Sony Patent troll.
I personally love the idea, but I feel the need for due diligence, so I put the question to the Slashdot community: How does one reasonably quantify admin productivity?"
.
One dosen't. Many do. One person cannot show how their efforts in a cooperative environment contribute to overall improvement in up time and productivity in any meaningful way. System uptime is a colbrative effort of many people from network admins, to technicians, to system admins, to the users themselves. Requiring a personal identifying moment where everything would fail without you is both easy and hard.
The best response in this case is to update your resume and put it on line for other employers. You are locked in a death march, and only delay keeps you employed. You are not being appreciated for the various contributions you make, you are being subjected to review from people that cannot possibally have any iota of understanding of your talant. It's time to kiss your current employer goodbye and find somewhere else where your skill and efforts will be, if not appreciated, at least assumed.
Any company that puts a bean counter in charge of employment decisions for management or technical fields is simply looking for a way to remove payroll debits. Leave, and leave as quickly as possible. Your talant, skill, and dedication are not at issue. Only how much you cost the company to employ is. It doesn't matter what you contribute, only your cost is seen. Your contributions to the company are at best assumed, most commonly disregarded or ignored. At this point, however unwilling the company is to see it, they need you far more than you need a paycheck from them. Find someplace that will value your contribution to the corporate effort rather than regard you as a cost center without benifit.
"Is it OK to send unsolicited e-mail to users in China, Iran, and other censored countries, telling them about new proxy sites for getting around Internet censorship?
.
Not only is it not ethical (spam is unsolicited bulk email. It's not abount conTENT, it's about conSENT), it could arguendo, cause the people that receive the spam to come under closer scrutney of the authorities. Perhaps even being arrested and prosecuited for illegal acts that they themselves did not actively commit, but were the passive and unwilling participants in.
If you want to turn on a firehose, be sure it's pointed at a fire. Or at least at something that benifits from a lot of water all at once.
It's one thing to send an email to someone that wants it and is willing to accept the risks associated with that, but quite another to expose people you don't know and never met to accept the risk of police questioning for something they never asked to receive. Remember, no matter how misguided you and I may view communism, there are many that truely beleive in it, accept it, and support it. To them, a proxy list just proves how bad and perverted free markets and democracy is.
Is it just me, or does it seem that SCOX (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft) have milked this for all it's worth for the last five years? I have to say, five years of FUD for this result seems a net win for MS and SCOX. What needs to happen is for the major players in this should be made to feel a bit of pain. Like five years in the pokey for constant lies, constant evasions, and stock price manipulation.
I've looked over the filings for this suit since it began. I simply can't color a situation where someone of average intelligence, with access to the documents, could conclude that SCOX or Calderia had a leg to stand on. This means that this whole situation was began on the premise of facts not in evidence, conveayances not documented as required by law, and assumptions that could never be made given the facts.
In other words, not only is there no "there" there, there never was, and it is completely documented and no other reasonable conclusion could be drawn by any sane individual. This was a smoke screen from beginning to end, it was known that the instant suit was brought for reasons other than equity, and that the plaintif always knew no other reasonable conclusion could be found. Or, if you prefer, this was a "Hail Mary" lawsuit, brough not on the merits, but because it was dimly possible that a favorable jury would find for the plaintif despite the preponderance of facts known to both parties that such would be an unjust finding.
More bluntly still, SCOX hoped to use Jeddi Mind Magic and cause a jury to conclude that "these are not the bots you are looking for". Boise et al went along for the ride and the 34 million dollars in upfront legal fees.
At the least, Boise should lose their fee in this case. If justace were to be served, Kevin McBride (Darl's brother) and Boise should be disbarred. Perverted justice and shyster actions should bring strong retribution to those that engage in them. The law isn't for those that would seek to twist it to perverted ends. It is for honest people, with honest disagreements, honestly brought to the bar for resolution. SCOX, the McBrides, and Boise don't seem to have played honestly in this case, and Boise in particular seems to like to "game" the system.
Justice isn't a game. And those that try to twist it should be punished in a way that leaves scars. And a strong aversion to ever trying to do it again.
Well, we know how this will be answered. I mean, after all, the VP isn't an execuitive branch office, you know.
NSA: What NSA. There is no such office or department.
If there were, it's actions would be of the highest national security secret. Highly sensitive. Even admitting there were such a department would subject New York or Washington to a dirty bomb attack. So there is no such agency.
Even if there were such an agency, I mean, after all, it's only charged with tracking terrorist. No true citizen worthy of the protections of the constitution is involved. After all, only CITIZENS are afforded the rights granted by the state. And only those we designate are citizens. We can't have just any old Tom, Dick, Harry, Iven, Shamus, Pedro, or Jamal covered by the same rights as some one that "belongs" here is granted. If you aren't white, Anglo-saxson, prodistant, you aren't shit, right? Why the hell do you expect to enjoy "one justice for all"?
You know what? I think America is strong enough to grant the same rights to evey person that is under our control the same rights of a citizen, except the right to vote and hold office. The prisoners at Gitmo and other sites not known should be affored the same rights and protections as someone whose grandparents were born here.
We are all illegal immigrants, unless we have native american blood. Just ask Chief Ten Bears. Oh, wait, we killed him.
The advantanges of MythTV aren't in the guide. The advantages are in the freedom from corporate interests, corporate profits, and corporate bullying. Sure, the guide is important, sure it's an annoyance to lose it, but I frequently send/receive programs I've recorded with MythTV to friends also running MythTV. Some limited function for that is also in other DVRs, but limits are placed, track the path, and result in all kinds of ads.
What will kill MythTv isn't the guide situation, it's the erosion of the Home Recording Act freedoms that Rupert Murdoc, RIAA, MPAA and other main stream media outlets are wetting their pants over.
The other day, someone was telling me that they pay out over USD2,000 per year for cable service. Does it strike you as strange to pay that much to watch a one hour program for 40 minutes of content versus 20 minutes of ads?
The problem is profit. Too much greed ruins anything.
To answer another post about buying a MythTV dvr, and not being able to find one, visit G-DING.TV and download MythDora. Load it on to that old computer you've shoved in the corner because the old windows box has too much spyware and malware on it, and fixing it is more expensive than buying a new computer. Go to Circuit City and buy a USD80.00 Hauppage PVR-150.
If you have half way standard old hardware, it's likely you have a working DVR in about an hour. WARNING: IT DOES ERASE THE DISK.
No offense, but it's Cheyne-Stokes. Too much ER/House/Gray's, my friend.
Love and Kisses,
A medical professional.
.
Thanks for the correction. I actually knew better, but went with speel chechque. I guess my Spell Checker was out on a date with a Wiccan. 8)
Don't make me admit where my mind went! (Two brain cells to my name, one out looking for the other, and BOTH of them too small to be out in the big wide world.)
The plans raise many troubling legal issues including privacy concerns, false positive filtering, and liability for failure to filter..
.
(delicate sniff of the air) Yep. I detect a faint aroma of burnt hair here. Well, Aladan, put your scalp out, take a deep breath, and relax.
Well, the real issue is delivery of service. Too many people think that AT&T/SBC/whatever fails to provide a valuable service, then a shift to another ISP would be in order.
That leaves out the possibility of simple encryption schemes to hide the stream, or of using the client as a proxy to hide the target/destination. There's so many ways around this issue it's simply hilarious that AT&T engineers would waste their time on it. This has PHB fingerprints all over it. No understanding of tech, no understanding of the issues, little contact with the real world.
Yep. PHB is written all over it. As useful as CSS encoding on DVDs to prevent copying.
I guess MPAA/RIAA still Doesn't Get It. There is a faint rattle of Chain-Stokes breathing in this press release. Now, no one get me wrong here. I respect IP rights, and I respect the money, talent, effort, and risk involved in creating a new work. However, I insist they respect MY rights to media shift, time shift, record for personal use, and replay a work whenever I wish after having first obtained a legitimate right to do so.
So far, MPAA/RIAA has failed their part of the copyright bargan. Pardon my big, fat, crocodile tears for their (wildy inaccurate, mostly wet dream, pulled out of the ass inaccurate) "losses". As if it isn't enough they ignore and trample my rights to legitimately obtained IP works, they have to insult my intelligence as well.
The SINGLE largest reason I will not buy HD equipment is that MPAA/RIAA has the ability to shut off my equipment with device key revocation. I refuse to invest $THOUSANDS of USD in equipment that someone in a corner office somewhere in the world decides is a threat to their income. What about my investment in that equipment? Are you going to buy me a new HD TV because what I have has been cracked? How about my HD-DVD/BLOWRAY player? (And don't even talk to me about BLOWRAY DVD. Any single corp that control the release of content is a Bad Idea. A REALLY Bad Idea.) I don't see that in the sales contract. I don't see it on your web site. I don't see it in the press.
Pardon me, but I find books at less than the cost of your DVDs or CD's to entertain, it's on printed media that you cannot touch once I own it, and I can enjoy it time and time again without paying you another cent. AND I don't have to watch "content" you decide I can't skip.
Adapt or die. That is true in evolution as it is in business. MPAA/RIAA just doesn't want to seem to adapt. I guess it's the second option for them...
As are most of the "facts" reported by this administraton. Cherrypicking "facts" isn't anything new. Clinton did it to a small extent, Carter did it infrequently, Bush 41 did it to a moderate extent, Reagan did it so much that he manufactured "fact" from whole cloth (but not as much as Dubbya), And Ford did to a small extent.
What I find troublesome is that Dubbya's troopies (I call 'em "The Disney Land on the Potomic bunch") actually beleive their own lies.
There's nothing more dangerious than a fanatic that beleives his own PR.
I find that Brent Toderash's comments tend toward a faint aroma of FUD, while Tina Gasperson didn't exactly hit a hole in one with two of her five comments. Brent's comments seem to be more of "It's open source, it's not open source", certification of training issues, and in general only one half assed comment about the technology itself, which even he doesn't pretend to offer supporting evidence for.
Tina is dead bang on with the TCO commnet; We pay more for Oracle support than we pay two Certified DBA's.
Brent's comment about "ignorance" of workers not knowing a company has a site license for propertiery systems is not a technology fault, but a management fault. That cannot be properly consider a fault of the technology.
Seems to me to be a send up. A trial ballon to support a future brochure slick about why paying $$$ for an RDBMS makes sense and why something "Free" isn't. We all know that using open source isn't free unless you have unlimited staff time and don't count system administration costs against a particular project. Open Source CAN cost a lot more than a closed source system, but it's not something I've seen. I'm sure there are examples, I just don't know of any.
There are also times when open source doesn't make sense. Like in situations of unlimited libility in case of failure. Take a nuke reactor. Say you use open source products to control that reactor, and it melts down because a pump failed to start, a valve was incorrectly closed, and humans didn't follow proceedures. Automatically, it's the fault of the open source product, obviously, because you were too cheap to go buy "good" software.
Until the human race as a whole can value a gift freely given by a stranger, it won't grow much past it's current point.
The internet is a cooperating network of networks.
The several networks cooperate by using a defined standard of communication "rules", called "RFCs",
by providing selected services such as web servers, email servers, DNS systems, and other systems
to the general public, and some provide more services to their customers/users.
Slashdot Mirror
I take your point, and I make it mine. Breaking a captcha isn't illegal. It's circumventing the wishes of a resource operator to provide a service. Personally, I find that as offensive as breaking a law. Here's the resource operator. He wants to offer a valuable service, but within limits. Here's the hacker. He wants service in excess of those limits.
Who's the good guy, whose the bad guy?
If I have an open http proxy, is that license to use it to hack into other systems without leaving a log on those systems? Not to my mind, but I've absolutely no doubt someone will do exactly that. (And just because it's open doesn't mean it isn't logged... and not on the server doing the open proxy. It just might be a packet logging system you can't see - and on my allocation, I'll flat tell you that's the case. And logs are ALWAYS handed over upon request of the allocation holder.)
What I have to say is very simple, very basic, and not at all very comfortable. In the past, we've seen that "doing your own thing" on the internet as an expression of individualizem. Of being "smarter, quicker, more intelligent". And that's true to an extent. However, now this expression is being turned to real harm, real loss. We are no longer talking about Captin Crunch and free toll calls. We're talking billions of real dollars being stolen. We're talking real people going broke. We're talking meat space consequences to cyberspace actions, and they are hurting people.
So, again, I have to ask the question: At what basic point to we start drawing lines, and what should they look like, what are the consequences, and how and who enforces them? These are all basic questions. Normally, we'd start with governments, but in this case, I don't think governments are able to understand and utilize the tech at the moment. What else is there?
The problem is that no one is in absolute control of the Internet. (Thank $GHU!). So the basic beginning is "where do we start, what do we allow, what is always acceptable, what is always unacceptable, and what are the grey areas, and how do we come to agree on things?"
Yahoo!'s captcha has been hacked, perhaps not as well, in the past. I've seen open http proxies pounding away at Yahoo to the tune of 100,000 per hour and more. Hotmail's is broken, so are others. The real shame is that the Storm Worm controllers are being protected by a national government and law enforecement system.
So what's the answer?
I'm sure I don't know. I do know that the wild west theory of accepting any kind of behaviour isn't acceptable. I know that some minimum standard of what's allowed and what isn't is going to have to take place. Where these limits are placed is a thing for a global conversation, and there will be differances of opinion.
Is cracking a captcha acceptalbe? Is phishing and identity theft acceptable? Is fraud and uncontrolled spam acceptable? What limits, and on what actions?
I'm just not that smart. But I think we can agree on a few things. Let's start to find out what those things are... and acting in concert with other network operators to enforce those standards. Fail to meet them, and your network routing gets dropped...
Something that's pretty strange, and while I'm not licenced to practice law in any state of the Unided States, I don't see where it's illegal to OBTAIN unlicenced intellectual property, only to PROVIDE it. On the other hand, receiving stolen goods IS a crime.
.ogg (a better MP3) songs that I do not own the CD. I've never downloaded anything that I did not purchase an origianal licenced copy of if it is covered under triditional copyright. That that create a work I apprecite deserve to be conpensated for their effort under the terms they make their work available.
How I see it is that RIAA and MPAA are failing to provide their content in a way that is easy, free of silly encumbrances, and are guilty of product tying. In other words, their bleetings are a product of their outmoded and protectionist practices, not because they actually add any value.
Put another way, if RIAA and MPAA are allowed to seek injunctions against receiving their products in a way they don't approve, I'd like to seek injunctions against every power company that provides electricity because it cuts into my profits in selling whale oil and whale oil lamps. Out moded business models should die because of market pressure, not thrive due to political contributions, rigged laws, or "The Disney Copyright Protection Act".
That said, Intellictual property is property, and depriving those that own it of legitimate compensation is theft. There are many inequities in movies, even more in music. But one cannot legitimately usurp agreed contracts of the creators of that IP, no matter how unfair it is to the creators. They agreed to it, after all.
I do not have any
If you don't like the people or the circumstances the work is made available under, the simple solution is to avoid the work. Don't buy it. Don't download it. Don't view it, and don't support them in any way. This is why I've not see a Sony move, bought a Sony CD, or purchsed a PC with Sony chips that I could avoid. (Not always possible, but you can TRY.)
For the same reason, I do not own Blue-Ray. I have HD-DVD. I may have to go to Blue-Ray as it displaces HD-DVD, but I'll only go there once HD-DVD is a thing of the past.
Our AD policy (since most computers are Windows) forces a powerdown at 7pm (our offices all close at 4:45pm, except for a few.) The user can abort the shutdown by clicking on a button, or can simply reboot. AD policy also exempts the systems we know shouldn't be shutdown (24 hour serivce points.) At this point, we estimate we save about $30,000USD per year in power costs for the 1/3 that have this impliments. (It's a big network.)
Interestingly, our network guys are having trouble routing wake on lan packets accross subnets, so we are looking at a T104 form factor linux appliences with multiple nics to send out WOL commands. Not sure this isn't a brain fart on the part of the network guys, or simply a limitation on how WOL works. Since we have other reasons for wanting a boxen on each network, it's a good excuse.
My own gaming experice is almost exactly like Peter Molyneux's, except that I mowed lawns to earn the geatus to buy Pong, and once disected, it did rise from the ashes to work again. (Thanks Dad, for teaching me well!)
Looking back, I'm not sure why there would be a problem taking the game apart, unless you tried to open up the pots too... As I recall, (and I could be wrong!), the game was rather robustly made and it would take a real effort to screw it up, or total ignorance of how circuits work. Then again, it's been many, many years ago, and I could be thinking of something else. If I'm not, then it would take a very ham handed sort to break the circuit board to keep it from working...
I'm not sure if I used a soldering iron to weaken the plastic seals, or if that was something else. I do seem to remember that just taking out the screws didn't open it up. One had to get past some epoxy too.
I'm sorry, I'm just an old fart now. I really can't remember clearly how I opened it up. Perhaps if the Web was around then, I'd have written it up.... 8)
Sorry, your entire thesis is just wrong. The choice between open and closed source should be driven by the needs of the project, not the desires of the people that want to flog one solution or the other. While I happen to think that most projects would be better served with open source software, it doesn't blind me to the advantanges some closed source has. Sure, mod me into the dirt because I dare to say that sometimes open source doesn't hold a candle to closed source software. I hope that in two, five or ten years, this will be true as a spinal reflex, but for today, not all software needs are best met with open source. CAD is one field, and complex accounting (with a General Ledger using 56 digit GL codes) is another. (I grant that using a GL code that large is just nuts, but face it, many government sub. do). I support FOSS, I'd rather use FOSS. However, FOSS isn't the end all be all, solving the real problem is.
At $DAYJOB, we insert fake data in two ways: First, fake data that is in the database with known markers, second, more fake data generated each time a user logs in and present only during that log in for that user. In this way, we know if the data theift occured via authintication (and by whom, from where, and when), or via some hole in the app.
The way to make this more effective requres a huge amount of work: Longer CC numbers and SSNs. It's the same problem IT has had with users FOREVER. Users expect the moon, stars, and all the oort cloud between, yet do not want to provide the least effort. There's no "buy in" from Soc Sec and the CC companies. As long as they get to pass along the cost to someone else, then the current system is "good enough". No need to expend any of THEIR effort to find, track, and plug up problems.
But make THEM accountable in a tangable way, and I think we'll start to see effective measures to stop this nonsense. And no few RSG and 419'ers in jail to boot.
And see exactly what? That someone is running honeypots? I don't need to look to know that, I run honeypots myself. I've more than two dozen sytems running multiple VM honeypot software from home grown to open source to closed source IDS'es. Let me be clear: I currently run $many to $shitpots of honeypot systems, with Sun boxen, AIX boxen, and WinTel platforms. Mostly these are "spares" to use when a production system goes down. It's a way to keep them "warm" and tested to be sure they run correctly.
And malware authors work around it by probing. If they suspect that an address in a network is used for a honeypot to blacklist any IP that touches it, then they do a simple binary search to find out which addresses are used, then they stop hitting those addresses.
One or two MIGHT. I, however, find that those running bot hearders are not sensitive to time constrants over fifteen minutes or so. Sure, there are a bunch of spammers that react to a reject on the second spam; however, there are far fewer that react to a block that takes place after the 500th. (and 2-500 are not delivered nor bounced, but held for later review.) And this ignores the vast majority of hardend spammers that tend not to send more than one spam per IP to identifiable IP space. In my case, I have several allocations that do not obviously tie back to me, consequently, I see this more than perhaps others do.
Of course, that's only for searching out vulnerabilities with a worm that automatically propagates. How would you get the same statistical results, only when the attack vector is spam containing a link to a trojan? Read up on Storm Worm before you answer, as it works around the obvious solutions.
And just by the way, I assume you know that a TCP-RESET can be forged from elsewhere, right? And that an effective way to prevent packet exchange is with a TCP-RESET, right? I'll leave even more esoteric spoofing and devious deeds for another conversation.
You are attempting to teach grandpaw how to suck eggs. (And why would anyone want to suck an egg? Burr!) You can assume any level of incompentence and disregard to details you'd like. One thing, however, stands out. I STILL havn't heard how this most Holy IP with attendant patents will serve to protect my networks. I DO see a lot of finding of fault where my methoids are not known, assumptions of ignorance or lack of expertise, and no more hard data on what I'm doing wrong.
At this point, my sole critizism has been a lack of information. My sole observation is that a lot of vendors promise the moon and the stars, and I fail to see how this vendor distinguishes themselves from the pack of lies, smoke dancers, and vaporware peddlers out there. I'm not saying they are such scum, I'm saying I don't see anything to lead me to believe their claims from a non-biased standpoint.
I'd be wild with joy if even half of what is claimed can be proven. However, I see a lot of claims, but I don't see a lot of proof, evidence, or independant review. So while I can continue to hope for the results of the technology, don't expect me to get behind it by writing a check for it until I have some evidence I'm not buying a pig in a poke.
I alread have lots of pokes, and lots of pigs. And case after case of lipstick for the pigs. Pardon me for being a bit gunshy.
.
Well, Darl is a bit short of cash right now, seeing how he's busy transfering a patent to cattleback and all. And, oh, My, we forgot to pay anything for that transfer! Ooops! OUR BAD! Please let us make it right and do it now we've filed for bankrupcy! We'll just move anything of value out of SCOX and leave it with nothing but the bills while we move anything of value out to other subsideries.
About as obvious a a cat trying to cover up "business" on a tile floor. Problem is that the cat's business is far more honest than SCOX's "business", and about as transparent. The problem with stupid people is that they think we are dumber than they are.
It's always such a shock to them when they find out others are more intelligent than they are. Why, they are simply INDIGNIGANT and DEMAND we dumb ourselves down to their level. I'd oblige, but I don't have that nifty little MP3 player on my hip with the endless loop of "Ok, now INHALE......OK, now EXHALE.......INHALE........EXHALE......"
Sadly, this estimation of common IQ really isn't all that far wrong. As evidence, I submit the 2004 "elections".
Gee. Lookit this big bad threat.
Boo! Botnet! Boo!
Bad Botnet! Bad! Bad! Bad!
We can save you! We have Patented Technology!
All Hail our most Holy Precious Intellictual Property!
Hail IP! Hail! Botnet! Boo!
OK, can some one 'splain to me Lucy why this obvious and fact lacking
bit of pre-IPO spin made it to SlashDot? Is there anyone that can tell me
excactly how technology that allows for 99.9 percent accuracy with zero false
positives actually works? Remember, we're talking millions of infected botnet
systems with ZERO false positives. Make millions of ANYTHING and you're going
to have a few errors here and there.
This is great if it's true, however, I'm highly skeptical without more hard
facts that this is anything other than vaporware and high hopes for an early
buyout. Gee! FOUR patents!
I'll bet I could get four patents on a process to pick my teeth with a toothpick.
Not that I think it honest, you understand...
.
If you don't think that Microsoft isn't doing all it can, roping in anyone it can force, jigger, or bribe to join them in their little dance in hell, they should read http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/index.html The Halloween Documents with an open mind.
It's quite evident what MicroSoft wants. What isn't so clear is what the rest of us get out of it.
I'd do it in an internet second.
The fact is, rather than ticking off someone in the Russian mob with spam, I suspect that the root cause of this murder is due more to the spammer cheating the mob than to general pissoff with spam. Criminals don't get that excited about having their email box stuffed full of quack pills that don't work, they do get very excitable when they don't get their cut of the action, real or perceived.
It may turn out that some mobster got sucked into the scam, tried the pillz, found they didn't work, and Alexey tried to use the fact the goomba bought the pills to embarass and influance the wiseguy. Said wiseguy, rather than knuckle under, simply whacked Alexey rather than be rousted. Face in the mob is everything. Lose it and you are nothing.
But the real situation is that right now, there isn't any real information made public for anyone to draw any intelligent conclusion from. Wild speculation is always cheap tender on the internet, but effective solutions to spam are more rooted in fact and evidence than in wild speculation. I'll sit back, wait for more real evidence and information before I draw any conclusions.
.
Daniel Lyons admits he was wrong. In my book, that puts him square with the mistake he made. Now, we (tinw) as open source supporters, have to step back, take a deep breath, and prepare to admit that one can make a mistake without having been paid off to do it. That, or else admit that truth, evidence, and honest intent have no weight in our view if it impeaches open source in any way. For myself, I'm not prepared to take that step. Because honesty does mean something to me.
Not to say that I trust Forbes. Seems they get almost everything wrong, in the long run. But that isn't the fault of Daniel Lyons. That's the fault of the editors of Forbes. Daniel can make his own assessment of what kind of news outlet he chooses to associate with, and under what terms.
SCOX had seven people in the accounting department. 3 were terminated or resigned. SCOx's problems are obvious enough not to blow this all out of reason and make it sound like a thundering cavalcade ran for the door. The truth about SCOx and Darl is quite bad enough without inflating the facts. That's a SCOx tactic, and one we need not indulge in since SCOx does it so well.
Not that I am a SCOx supporter. Far from it. I think Novel should go after Darl in his own natural person to recover court costs. And if Darl dies while I'm still able to get around, count on it that I'll fly to his grave site to relieve myself on it. Twice. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
A more damming metric would be to quote how many engineers SCO had on staff, vs. how many SCOx retained. Answer: Not many! SCOx has allowed their product to lag behind hardware to the point that the OS is irrelevant on modern hardware. It simply doesn't work on the new stuff, and doesn't support many current technologies. That's a death knell for any OS.
SCOx concentrated on a niche market, and they didn't pick it any too carefully. That SCOx finds themselves bypassed and disfavored is a mark of just how badly they chose to grow. It's never pretty when a technology company chooses to become a litigation company, it's even worse when they choose the wrong technology to litigate against.
.
And got better customer service and a lower bill in the bargan.
.
When a company does something silly, stupid, AND against my interests, I stop doing business with them.
That's also why I've never bought a single ticket to a Sony movie, a Sony DVD, or Sony brand for 15 years now. I can't avoid Sony chips every time, but when I can, I do. One 3,500 unit lap top deployment was switched from one vender to another vendor simply because the first used Sony chips, but the second did't. Also saved about USD45 per unit, with comperable performance and features. The first had 4 1.0USB ports, the second had 2 2.0 USB ports. We only needed one.
A no brainer, AND I didn't feed the Sony Patent troll.
.
One dosen't. Many do. One person cannot show how their efforts in a cooperative environment contribute to overall improvement in up time and productivity in any meaningful way. System uptime is a colbrative effort of many people from network admins, to technicians, to system admins, to the users themselves. Requiring a personal identifying moment where everything would fail without you is both easy and hard.
The best response in this case is to update your resume and put it on line for other employers. You are locked in a death march, and only delay keeps you employed. You are not being appreciated for the various contributions you make, you are being subjected to review from people that cannot possibally have any iota of understanding of your talant. It's time to kiss your current employer goodbye and find somewhere else where your skill and efforts will be, if not appreciated, at least assumed.
Any company that puts a bean counter in charge of employment decisions for management or technical fields is simply looking for a way to remove payroll debits. Leave, and leave as quickly as possible. Your talant, skill, and dedication are not at issue. Only how much you cost the company to employ is. It doesn't matter what you contribute, only your cost is seen. Your contributions to the company are at best assumed, most commonly disregarded or ignored. At this point, however unwilling the company is to see it, they need you far more than you need a paycheck from them. Find someplace that will value your contribution to the corporate effort rather than regard you as a cost center without benifit.
.
Not only is it not ethical (spam is unsolicited bulk email. It's not abount conTENT, it's about conSENT), it could arguendo, cause the people that receive the spam to come under closer scrutney of the authorities. Perhaps even being arrested and prosecuited for illegal acts that they themselves did not actively commit, but were the passive and unwilling participants in.
If you want to turn on a firehose, be sure it's pointed at a fire. Or at least at something that benifits from a lot of water all at once.
It's one thing to send an email to someone that wants it and is willing to accept the risks associated with that, but quite another to expose people you don't know and never met to accept the risk of police questioning for something they never asked to receive. Remember, no matter how misguided you and I may view communism, there are many that truely beleive in it, accept it, and support it. To them, a proxy list just proves how bad and perverted free markets and democracy is.
Embodied in US law is the principal that We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right, under the Constitution or otherwise, to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even "good" ideas on an unwilling recipient.
Chief Justice Burger has, from where I stand, the right idea here.
I've looked over the filings for this suit since it began. I simply can't color a situation where someone of average intelligence, with access to the documents, could conclude that SCOX or Calderia had a leg to stand on. This means that this whole situation was began on the premise of facts not in evidence, conveayances not documented as required by law, and assumptions that could never be made given the facts.
In other words, not only is there no "there" there, there never was, and it is completely documented and no other reasonable conclusion could be drawn by any sane individual. This was a smoke screen from beginning to end, it was known that the instant suit was brought for reasons other than equity, and that the plaintif always knew no other reasonable conclusion could be found. Or, if you prefer, this was a "Hail Mary" lawsuit, brough not on the merits, but because it was dimly possible that a favorable jury would find for the plaintif despite the preponderance of facts known to both parties that such would be an unjust finding.
More bluntly still, SCOX hoped to use Jeddi Mind Magic and cause a jury to conclude that "these are not the bots you are looking for". Boise et al went along for the ride and the 34 million dollars in upfront legal fees.
At the least, Boise should lose their fee in this case. If justace were to be served, Kevin McBride (Darl's brother) and Boise should be disbarred. Perverted justice and shyster actions should bring strong retribution to those that engage in them. The law isn't for those that would seek to twist it to perverted ends. It is for honest people, with honest disagreements, honestly brought to the bar for resolution. SCOX, the McBrides, and Boise don't seem to have played honestly in this case, and Boise in particular seems to like to "game" the system.
Justice isn't a game. And those that try to twist it should be punished in a way that leaves scars. And a strong aversion to ever trying to do it again.
NSA: What NSA. There is no such office or department.
If there were, it's actions would be of the highest national security secret. Highly sensitive. Even admitting there were such a department would subject New York or Washington to a dirty bomb attack. So there is no such agency. Even if there were such an agency, I mean, after all, it's only charged with tracking terrorist. No true citizen worthy of the protections of the constitution is involved. After all, only CITIZENS are afforded the rights granted by the state. And only those we designate are citizens. We can't have just any old Tom, Dick, Harry, Iven, Shamus, Pedro, or Jamal covered by the same rights as some one that "belongs" here is granted. If you aren't white, Anglo-saxson, prodistant, you aren't shit, right? Why the hell do you expect to enjoy "one justice for all"?
You know what? I think America is strong enough to grant the same rights to evey person that is under our control the same rights of a citizen, except the right to vote and hold office. The prisoners at Gitmo and other sites not known should be affored the same rights and protections as someone whose grandparents were born here.
We are all illegal immigrants, unless we have native american blood. Just ask Chief Ten Bears. Oh, wait, we killed him.
.
The advantanges of MythTV aren't in the guide. The advantages are in the freedom from corporate interests, corporate profits, and corporate bullying. Sure, the guide is important, sure it's an annoyance to lose it, but I frequently send/receive programs I've recorded with MythTV to friends also running MythTV. Some limited function for that is also in other DVRs, but limits are placed, track the path, and result in all kinds of ads.
What will kill MythTv isn't the guide situation, it's the erosion of the Home Recording Act freedoms that Rupert Murdoc, RIAA, MPAA and other main stream media outlets are wetting their pants over.
The other day, someone was telling me that they pay out over USD2,000 per year for cable service. Does it strike you as strange to pay that much to watch a one hour program for 40 minutes of content versus 20 minutes of ads?
The problem is profit. Too much greed ruins anything.
To answer another post about buying a MythTV dvr, and not being able to find one, visit G-DING.TV and download MythDora. Load it on to that old computer you've shoved in the corner because the old windows box has too much spyware and malware on it, and fixing it is more expensive than buying a new computer. Go to Circuit City and buy a USD80.00 Hauppage PVR-150. If you have half way standard old hardware, it's likely you have a working DVR in about an hour. WARNING: IT DOES ERASE THE DISK.
.
Thanks for the correction. I actually knew better, but went with speel chechque. I guess my Spell Checker was out on a date with a Wiccan. 8)
Don't make me admit where my mind went! (Two brain cells to my name, one out looking for the other, and BOTH of them too small to be out in the big wide world.)
.
(delicate sniff of the air) Yep. I detect a faint aroma of burnt hair here. Well, Aladan, put your scalp out, take a deep breath, and relax.
Well, the real issue is delivery of service. Too many people think that AT&T/SBC/whatever fails to provide a valuable service, then a shift to another ISP would be in order.
That leaves out the possibility of simple encryption schemes to hide the stream, or of using the client as a proxy to hide the target/destination. There's so many ways around this issue it's simply hilarious that AT&T engineers would waste their time on it. This has PHB fingerprints all over it. No understanding of tech, no understanding of the issues, little contact with the real world.
Yep. PHB is written all over it. As useful as CSS encoding on DVDs to prevent copying.
I guess MPAA/RIAA still Doesn't Get It. There is a faint rattle of Chain-Stokes breathing in this press release. Now, no one get me wrong here. I respect IP rights, and I respect the money, talent, effort, and risk involved in creating a new work. However, I insist they respect MY rights to media shift, time shift, record for personal use, and replay a work whenever I wish after having first obtained a legitimate right to do so.
So far, MPAA/RIAA has failed their part of the copyright bargan. Pardon my big, fat, crocodile tears for their (wildy inaccurate, mostly wet dream, pulled out of the ass inaccurate) "losses". As if it isn't enough they ignore and trample my rights to legitimately obtained IP works, they have to insult my intelligence as well.
The SINGLE largest reason I will not buy HD equipment is that MPAA/RIAA has the ability to shut off my equipment with device key revocation. I refuse to invest $THOUSANDS of USD in equipment that someone in a corner office somewhere in the world decides is a threat to their income. What about my investment in that equipment? Are you going to buy me a new HD TV because what I have has been cracked? How about my HD-DVD/BLOWRAY player? (And don't even talk to me about BLOWRAY DVD. Any single corp that control the release of content is a Bad Idea. A REALLY Bad Idea.) I don't see that in the sales contract. I don't see it on your web site. I don't see it in the press.
Pardon me, but I find books at less than the cost of your DVDs or CD's to entertain, it's on printed media that you cannot touch once I own it, and I can enjoy it time and time again without paying you another cent. AND I don't have to watch "content" you decide I can't skip.
Adapt or die. That is true in evolution as it is in business. MPAA/RIAA just doesn't want to seem to adapt. I guess it's the second option for them...
.
As are most of the "facts" reported by this administraton. Cherrypicking "facts" isn't anything new. Clinton did it to a small extent, Carter did it infrequently, Bush 41 did it to a moderate extent, Reagan did it so much that he manufactured "fact" from whole cloth (but not as much as Dubbya), And Ford did to a small extent.
What I find troublesome is that Dubbya's troopies (I call 'em "The Disney Land on the Potomic bunch") actually beleive their own lies.
There's nothing more dangerious than a fanatic that beleives his own PR.
Tina is dead bang on with the TCO commnet; We pay more for Oracle support than we pay two Certified DBA's.
Brent's comment about "ignorance" of workers not knowing a company has a site license for propertiery systems is not a technology fault, but a management fault. That cannot be properly consider a fault of the technology.
Seems to me to be a send up. A trial ballon to support a future brochure slick about why paying $$$ for an RDBMS makes sense and why something "Free" isn't. We all know that using open source isn't free unless you have unlimited staff time and don't count system administration costs against a particular project. Open Source CAN cost a lot more than a closed source system, but it's not something I've seen. I'm sure there are examples, I just don't know of any.
There are also times when open source doesn't make sense. Like in situations of unlimited libility in case of failure. Take a nuke reactor. Say you use open source products to control that reactor, and it melts down because a pump failed to start, a valve was incorrectly closed, and humans didn't follow proceedures. Automatically, it's the fault of the open source product, obviously, because you were too cheap to go buy "good" software.
Until the human race as a whole can value a gift freely given by a stranger, it won't grow much past it's current point.
The several networks cooperate by using a defined standard of communication "rules", called "RFCs", by providing selected services such as web servers, email servers, DNS systems, and other systems to the general public, and some provide more services to their customers/users.
There's the 10,000 foot over view.