"A society that will trade a little freedom for a little security will lose both and deserves neither." --Thomas Jefferson
Due Process violation as possible legal strategy?
on
Copyright as Cudgel
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· Score: 2
Could any of the lawyers, or law secretaries, or law students, or frequent viewers of Law & Order comment on this as a legal strategy?
Claiming ones due process rights have been violated after dealing with the after-effects of a DMCA notice? Would it be considered extortion upon the ISP to force them to do something that the normally would not do merely as a result of an accusation (ie, not a motion in court)? Especially since we're dealing with free speech issues?
Umm, I do believe that's exactly what Al Queda is trying to do...
In wartime, some civil liberties are suspended. Not saying that that's right, but that's simply what happens. Quite frankly, I'm willing to err on the side of caution now that we're dealing with an environment where a city can be detonated completely w/o warning and without handy-dandy flags painted on the airplanes to let us know who did it.
Such a trick may only work for so long. Eventually bugs and pests will evolve a tolerance to it. Being that bugs reproduce pretty quickly, it may only take a few years before it is ineffective I would guess.
That's the joy of a software solution -- it can keep up with evolution.
Download Bug Repellant 2004 - now combats Roach 1.1 and Ant 2.0
(FWIW, products like these have been out for some time and still seem to work effectivly. They're *repellants*, not killers. The only place a large-than normal tolerance would develop and grow/multiply is among roaches that decided to live within the range of the repellant.)
It's interesting that people talk about how much cheaper Linux PCs are compared to SGI machines (say), but truly both machines have almost the same cost (zero) compared to the cost of the animator who is using the machine. The choice of workstation should be entirely based on what makes the artist most productive.
Remember, folks: The point of the Computer is to allow the User to get his/her work done faster.
Unless you're a computer programmer, a computer is a tool. If you're a computer programmer, a computer is a meta-tool, but it's still a tool (think about your dev environment, even if it's home-made).
This is what (I think) Apple gets and Random Linux Distro X doesn't.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but VNC is a screen-sharing or remote-control system, ne? On a small device where memory, processing time, and complexity is at a premium, why would you waste effort rasterizing a screen image so that VNC can ship it over.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to have a tiny HTTP server which sends out an HTML file and processes the results? This seems akin to someone scanning in a print-out of their email as an attachment instead of sending an email directly... =/
As much as I dislike HP (and risk losing mod points), I have to say that I understand their position.
Our legal system is so screwed up that there's a distinct possibility that **AA might be able to find HP liable in some way for Perens' actions. Even if they don't, it's worth it to the **AA to try.
HP, understandably, would prefer not to have to spend untold millions of dollars defending itself against this.
While I, too, wish HP was willing to risk the liability for the chance to stand up for what's Right, I understand their position. And I understand that Perens understands their position. And so I understand why Perens is backing out. I don't blame him, and I full believe that he intended to go through with it. But there's no reason/point/honor in exposing your employer to multi=-million dollar liability (or multi-million dollar legal bills) unless the entire company is will to stand behind his actions.
This is simply more slimy marketing tactics from companies with bombing market shares.
Actually, Comodo's market share has been increasing dramatically, considering how small they started at. We use them at and they're great. Very responsive and sell a great product.
In fact, I'm surprised more Slashdot-ians aren't ENCOURAGING Comodo. These are guys who are selling basic 128-bit certs for only $49! A FAR more reasonable price than either VeriSign (evil) or Thawte are charging...
What would you all recommend that attendees of the speech do if, for example, the feds come up on stage in the middle of it and attempt to publically arrest him?
With the proper notification of local media, having a large number of people get up on stage and surroung him (peacefully) to try to block the arrest would be very good publicitiy for the cause. The last thing the mainstream media would expect to see is a Berkeley or abortion clinic style incident and a technology convention, performed by a bunch of nerds.
"Near-riot Occurs at Programmer Convention"
Re:CIA sponsored software - prior to 9/11...
on
Triangle Boy Lives
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· Score: 2
Well, this could VERY LEGITIMATELY be used to further their mission as well. For example, a US spy in China can report back to a website or perform some other "trigger action" like posting a code word to a public forum, without the Great (Fire)Wall of China knowing about it.
It can help dissidents in (insert country threating to blow us up here) maintain communication links.
And also.. this is OPEN SOURCE. If you're so paranoid about the CIA putting a back door in, check the source yourself!
(Frankly, putting a back door in would be a pretty stupid thing to do.. it could easily be found in an open source project -- and then who would trust the CIA again?)
One of the (many) cool things that differentiate Macs from PC's is the way the report POST failures.
Depending on if the video driver was sane or not yet, you'd get an infamous "San Mac" display, followed by a few codes in hex describing what was wrong. If not, you'd get POST-coded beeps.
What was really cool were the "chimes of death". Each Mac model family had a specific sound that played when the POST test failed. These ranged from the opening to the Twilight Zone theme, to a drum crash, to the sound of glass breaking, to a full-on car crash. (You get get some of them here, but I KNOW there's a more comprehensive list with samples out there somewhere.):/
One of the cool things about Cobalt RaQ servers is the LCD on the front panel. There's a simple driver control program that can be used to spit out the text (or bit-graphics, apparently).
We have about 120 of these in our data center and we tech occasionally play practical jokes on or leave messages for one another on them. =)
If you follow the link, you'll see that he implimented it for the PC speaker as well. (You can set this as an option.) Of course, that depends on the speaker driver being in a decent state during the panic.
Okay, I may be wrong in this (too lazy to check the article which I read yesterday), but I think the original article merely talks about moving away from Motorola.
The implication, of course, is a move to OS X, but I think it's much more likely that Apple will turn to IBM's PPC chips instead. IBM (the other part of the AIM triumverate) has been a supplier of Apple's chips for a while, and they're poised to release the processor's Apple needs well before Motorola (which can't seem to get their act together.
To all the libertarian and Ayn Rand-obsessed morons who think that corporations are the end-all and be-all to the worlds problems and exist to keep the government in check, please go away.
Quite frankly, the government IS accountable to the people and DOES have to pay the penalty when they do something Bad. When MS does something bad, 94% of the computer-using public just has to bend over and take it. (The rest use a Mac.)
Although it smacks of scary conspiracy theories and trojan horse monitoring programs, the government CAN'T do something like that. The US Government is not Kazaa. It will not install Gator on your PC. This is not a hidden backdoor to allow Carnivore to track your every move. Do you think something like that could remain hidden for ANY length of time with the amount of scrutiny this program will receive? No.
And if it turns out *to* have a monitoring program in it, stand up for your rights (if you're a US citizen) and VOTE. Call your congressmen and senators. Bang on their doors until they explain themselves and do something about it.
Quite frankly, I'd install this over the next version of Windows Media Player any day. Who knows what random shit MS will try to do with that...
What I meant to say was, yeah, that was a completely pointless site to go to. Along the theme of it though, if you're (seriously) looking for a *nix laptop of some type, you really, really need to take a look at Apple's Powerbooks.
Feel free to mark me -1, Redundant, but Apple's laptops are probably the best in the industry hardware/design wise, run cooler than most x86 boxes, have faster chips that most PC laptops, and run a full-fledged *nix operating system, with a big giant company and a growing user base to support it.
If you're willing to open your mind (and your pocketbook a little - but come on, you're buying a laptop!) it's hard to go wrong with one of those.
I think it's interesting how people are calling Jaguar just a "bug fix release" or "service pack" even though there are a TON of new features and archetecural improvements running behind the scenes.
Apple is one of the few non-Unix companies that still cares about a semi-consistant versioning scheme:
v A.B.C A=Major release number, new paradigms, etc... B=Minor release number, incremental improvements C=Bug fix release
In the past, Apple has bumped the minor release to x.5 when some sort of major incompatability occurred (ie, OS 8.5 was the first to require a PowerPC Mac). They didn't do that here, but I wonder people would be as bent out of shape about it if Apple *had* called this Mac OS X 10.5. Or maybe Mac OS X 2002? Compare the product on a feature-level, not a numeric level.
Apple usually isn't willing to inflate a version jump for marketing purposes:
- Mac OS 6 to 7 was a giant jump in terms of structure.
- Mac OS 7.1.1 to 7.5 wasn't quite as big, but did greatly expand the "experience" with new technologies (and doubled the distribution size).
- Mac OS 7.6.1 to 8.0 had a major UI overhaul, mutli-threaded Finder, and major architectural re-writes.
- Mac OS 8.5 began life as 8.2 until it hit beta and it was decided that it would be PowerPC only. (Even though it was 8.6 that deserved the monkier thanks to the new microkernel.)
- Mac OS 9 was Mac OS 8.7 until a beta as well, although that was probably to help maintain a clear separation between OS 9 (designed to work with X) and 8 (not).
- Even though OS X is in roman numerals, it's still numerically just OS 10.x.
Compare this to Microsoft (and, by following MS's example, a majority of the Windows software out there) which gets away with murder by renaming a bug patch according to the current year and can charge an arm and a leg for it. Even MS realized that Windows 98 was just Windows 4.1 (and Office 98 contains Word 7.0).
Could someone please tell me where the hell Windows Media Player 8 went though?
Strangely enough, yes. Mac OS 8.6 was BULLETPROOF. I remember running an ALPHA version of ASIP 6.0 on 8.6 for several months without a reboot. I've also had production machines that have gone well over a year 8.6 w/o anything bad happening to them.
Compared to the bloat and (early) instability of OS 9, OS 8.6 made them lean, mean, classic Mac OS machines. Really the only reason not to use that as a reference release would be if you were short on RAM.
Much like they half-assed the ports of IE to other systems.
Although that definitely used to be the case (IE 4.5 for Mac - let along Office 4.2.1 (!) ), the Mac versions of MS programs are now all written by a specific sub-unit of MS, the Macintosh Business Unit, and are generally considered best-of-breed. In other words, they are not direct ports, but are (re-)written specifically with the Mac in mind.
The Mac versions of Office and IE are considered by many to be better and more standards compliant that the Windows versions.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the quote is:
"A society that will trade a little freedom for a little security will lose both and deserves neither." --Thomas Jefferson
Could any of the lawyers, or law secretaries, or law students, or frequent viewers of Law & Order comment on this as a legal strategy?
Claiming ones due process rights have been violated after dealing with the after-effects of a DMCA notice? Would it be considered extortion upon the ISP to force them to do something that the normally would not do merely as a result of an accusation (ie, not a motion in court)? Especially since we're dealing with free speech issues?
C:\ Format Washington_D_C:
Umm, I do believe that's exactly what Al Queda is trying to do...
In wartime, some civil liberties are suspended. Not saying that that's right, but that's simply what happens. Quite frankly, I'm willing to err on the side of caution now that we're dealing with an environment where a city can be detonated completely w/o warning and without handy-dandy flags painted on the airplanes to let us know who did it.
Why would a US politician care if I (a Canadian) complained about something?
Umm.. they wouldn't. And no offense, but they shouldn't. They're supposed to represent *us*. (Me being an American.)
Not that you can't help, but you'll need to find another way. Launching/assisting with a pettition drive, organizing communication, etc...
Such a trick may only work for so long. Eventually bugs and pests will evolve a tolerance to it. Being that bugs reproduce pretty quickly, it may only take a few years before it is ineffective I would guess.
That's the joy of a software solution -- it can keep up with evolution.
Download Bug Repellant 2004 - now combats Roach 1.1 and Ant 2.0
(FWIW, products like these have been out for some time and still seem to work effectivly. They're *repellants*, not killers. The only place a large-than normal tolerance would develop and grow/multiply is among roaches that decided to live within the range of the repellant.)
It's interesting that people talk about how much cheaper Linux PCs are compared to SGI machines (say), but truly both machines have almost the same cost (zero) compared to the cost of the animator who is using the machine. The choice of workstation should be entirely based on what makes the artist most productive.
Remember, folks: The point of the Computer is to allow the User to get his/her work done faster.
Unless you're a computer programmer, a computer is a tool. If you're a computer programmer, a computer is a meta-tool, but it's still a tool (think about your dev environment, even if it's home-made).
This is what (I think) Apple gets and Random Linux Distro X doesn't.
As someone else already mentioned.... an XML interface to a native app on the client would probably be best.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but VNC is a screen-sharing or remote-control system, ne? On a small device where memory, processing time, and complexity is at a premium, why would you waste effort rasterizing a screen image so that VNC can ship it over.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to have a tiny HTTP server which sends out an HTML file and processes the results? This seems akin to someone scanning in a print-out of their email as an attachment instead of sending an email directly... =/
As much as I dislike HP (and risk losing mod points), I have to say that I understand their position.
Our legal system is so screwed up that there's a distinct possibility that **AA might be able to find HP liable in some way for Perens' actions. Even if they don't, it's worth it to the **AA to try.
HP, understandably, would prefer not to have to spend untold millions of dollars defending itself against this.
While I, too, wish HP was willing to risk the liability for the chance to stand up for what's Right, I understand their position. And I understand that Perens understands their position. And so I understand why Perens is backing out. I don't blame him, and I full believe that he intended to go through with it. But there's no reason/point/honor in exposing your employer to multi=-million dollar liability (or multi-million dollar legal bills) unless the entire company is will to stand behind his actions.
Maybe next time..
Names4Ever is another pretty good registrar. Decent config options and no spam.
Being located in the same city as I helps too... I believe they were the first Registrar in CA...
This is simply more slimy marketing tactics from companies with bombing market shares.
Actually, Comodo's market share has been increasing dramatically, considering how small they started at. We use them at and they're great. Very responsive and sell a great product.
In fact, I'm surprised more Slashdot-ians aren't ENCOURAGING Comodo. These are guys who are selling basic 128-bit certs for only $49! A FAR more reasonable price than either VeriSign (evil) or Thawte are charging...
BTW, Tbps can also stand for tablespoon, an English/Conventional unit of measure equal to about 16 mL
Actually, I think you mean Tbsp =)
What would you all recommend that attendees of the speech do if, for example, the feds come up on stage in the middle of it and attempt to publically arrest him?
With the proper notification of local media, having a large number of people get up on stage and surroung him (peacefully) to try to block the arrest would be very good publicitiy for the cause. The last thing the mainstream media would expect to see is a Berkeley or abortion clinic style incident and a technology convention, performed by a bunch of nerds.
"Near-riot Occurs at Programmer Convention"
Well, this could VERY LEGITIMATELY be used to further their mission as well. For example, a US spy in China can report back to a website or perform some other "trigger action" like posting a code word to a public forum, without the Great (Fire)Wall of China knowing about it.
It can help dissidents in (insert country threating to blow us up here) maintain communication links.
And also.. this is OPEN SOURCE. If you're so paranoid about the CIA putting a back door in, check the source yourself!
(Frankly, putting a back door in would be a pretty stupid thing to do.. it could easily be found in an open source project -- and then who would trust the CIA again?)
((HA))
One of the (many) cool things that differentiate Macs from PC's is the way the report POST failures.
Depending on if the video driver was sane or not yet, you'd get an infamous "San Mac" display, followed by a few codes in hex describing what was wrong. If not, you'd get POST-coded beeps.
What was really cool were the "chimes of death". Each Mac model family had a specific sound that played when the POST test failed. These ranged from the opening to the Twilight Zone theme, to a drum crash, to the sound of glass breaking, to a full-on car crash. (You get get some of them here, but I KNOW there's a more comprehensive list with samples out there somewhere.)
Ahh, memories...
One of the cool things about Cobalt RaQ servers is the LCD on the front panel. There's a simple driver control program that can be used to spit out the text (or bit-graphics, apparently).
We have about 120 of these in our data center and we tech occasionally play practical jokes on or leave messages for one another on them. =)
If you follow the link, you'll see that he implimented it for the PC speaker as well. (You can set this as an option.) Of course, that depends on the speaker driver being in a decent state during the panic.
Okay, I may be wrong in this (too lazy to check the article which I read yesterday), but I think the original article merely talks about moving away from Motorola.
The implication, of course, is a move to OS X, but I think it's much more likely that Apple will turn to IBM's PPC chips instead. IBM (the other part of the AIM triumverate) has been a supplier of Apple's chips for a while, and they're poised to release the processor's Apple needs well before Motorola (which can't seem to get their act together.
Try http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1357 or the Thursday, 7/11 update here.
To all the libertarian and Ayn Rand-obsessed morons who think that corporations are the end-all and be-all to the worlds problems and exist to keep the government in check, please go away.
Quite frankly, the government IS accountable to the people and DOES have to pay the penalty when they do something Bad. When MS does something bad, 94% of the computer-using public just has to bend over and take it. (The rest use a Mac.)
Although it smacks of scary conspiracy theories and trojan horse monitoring programs, the government CAN'T do something like that. The US Government is not Kazaa. It will not install Gator on your PC. This is not a hidden backdoor to allow Carnivore to track your every move. Do you think something like that could remain hidden for ANY length of time with the amount of scrutiny this program will receive? No.
And if it turns out *to* have a monitoring program in it, stand up for your rights (if you're a US citizen) and VOTE. Call your congressmen and senators. Bang on their doors until they explain themselves and do something about it.
Quite frankly, I'd install this over the next version of Windows Media Player any day. Who knows what random shit MS will try to do with that...
D'oh... little hasty on the "Enter" key there
What I meant to say was, yeah, that was a completely pointless site to go to. Along the theme of it though, if you're (seriously) looking for a *nix laptop of some type, you really, really need to take a look at Apple's Powerbooks.
Feel free to mark me -1, Redundant, but Apple's laptops are probably the best in the industry hardware/design wise, run cooler than most x86 boxes, have faster chips that most PC laptops, and run a full-fledged *nix operating system, with a big giant company and a growing user base to support it.
If you're willing to open your mind (and your pocketbook a little - but come on, you're buying a laptop!) it's hard to go wrong with one of those.
I think it's interesting how people are calling Jaguar just a "bug fix release" or "service pack" even though there are a TON of new features and archetecural improvements running behind the scenes.
Apple is one of the few non-Unix companies that still cares about a semi-consistant versioning scheme:
v A.B.C
A=Major release number, new paradigms, etc...
B=Minor release number, incremental improvements
C=Bug fix release
In the past, Apple has bumped the minor release to x.5 when some sort of major incompatability occurred (ie, OS 8.5 was the first to require a PowerPC Mac). They didn't do that here, but I wonder people would be as bent out of shape about it if Apple *had* called this Mac OS X 10.5. Or maybe Mac OS X 2002? Compare the product on a feature-level, not a numeric level.
Apple usually isn't willing to inflate a version jump for marketing purposes:
- Mac OS 6 to 7 was a giant jump in terms of structure.
- Mac OS 7.1.1 to 7.5 wasn't quite as big, but did greatly expand the "experience" with new technologies (and doubled the distribution size).
- Mac OS 7.6.1 to 8.0 had a major UI overhaul, mutli-threaded Finder, and major architectural re-writes.
- Mac OS 8.5 began life as 8.2 until it hit beta and it was decided that it would be PowerPC only. (Even though it was 8.6 that deserved the monkier thanks to the new microkernel.)
- Mac OS 9 was Mac OS 8.7 until a beta as well, although that was probably to help maintain a clear separation between OS 9 (designed to work with X) and 8 (not).
- Even though OS X is in roman numerals, it's still numerically just OS 10.x.
Compare this to Microsoft (and, by following MS's example, a majority of the Windows software out there) which gets away with murder by renaming a bug patch according to the current year and can charge an arm and a leg for it. Even MS realized that Windows 98 was just Windows 4.1 (and Office 98 contains Word 7.0).
Could someone please tell me where the hell Windows Media Player 8 went though?
I have been tv free since they screwed up discovery channel (about two years ago)
What did they do to the Discovery Channel?
MACE 3:1
MACE 6:1
Wow, I remember reading about MACE back in Inside Macintosh, Vol IV. Back when the System 7 sound manager was the coolest thing since sliced bread...
Strangely enough, yes. Mac OS 8.6 was BULLETPROOF. I remember running an ALPHA version of ASIP 6.0 on 8.6 for several months without a reboot. I've also had production machines that have gone well over a year 8.6 w/o anything bad happening to them.
Compared to the bloat and (early) instability of OS 9, OS 8.6 made them lean, mean, classic Mac OS machines. Really the only reason not to use that as a reference release would be if you were short on RAM.
Much like they half-assed the ports of IE to other systems.
Although that definitely used to be the case (IE 4.5 for Mac - let along Office 4.2.1 (!) ), the Mac versions of MS programs are now all written by a specific sub-unit of MS, the Macintosh Business Unit, and are generally considered best-of-breed. In other words, they are not direct ports, but are (re-)written specifically with the Mac in mind.
The Mac versions of Office and IE are considered by many to be better and more standards compliant that the Windows versions.