Actually it is not inconceivable. The original browsers were university projects, and all the current browsers are derived from them. At some point in their life GPL code or even BSD code is not only possible, but likely, to have been inserted and used.
They said "you can get source from gnu." However, the problem with that is threefold. The most important part is taht gnu necessarily does not have Microsoft's changes. Also the GPL says you must distribute source with binaries. It says nothing about having to use an ftp site to do that.
The other problem is that their agreement specifically states at which urls you can get source, and source is not provided there. IANAL, but I would say that constitutes breaking the agreement on Microsoft's part, since it basically says that they agree to provide source at those locations.
I am not a lawyer. The only legal advice I have is that if you need any you had better get one.
After all, how long is it since you have seen any acknowlegements to the origins of their *bsd-derived tcp software? Was it ever displayed prominently?
The only reason that microsoft got caught here is that they finally violated gpl rather than bsd, and got caught. Since gpl requires a source release, the violation is more obvious. BSD license does not require source release, just acknowlegement, and as such violations are harder to prove. (IIRC someone was able to find hidden bsd copyright strings in some of MS's tcp software at one point. Hidden, mind...)
It's very funny that microsoft can say you agreed to something you are bound to by opening the box to your computer, even if you turn it on and immediately boot to a linux cd therefore never seeing the agreement, but they are not bound by that agreement themselves (which says you can get a refund). You can also be bound by an agreement that only shows up if you use a certain procedure in windows to open a file, rather than using a cross-platform method. But microsoft is never ever bound by anything. In that they have always been consistent. When they ignored the agreements they made with the Justice department around 1995, when they violated their agreements with apple and almost every other company they have ever "partnered" with, they were just being consistent.
Microsoft has always been and will always be an outlaw company who takes advantage fo the fact that here in the US we are used to allowing wealthy corporations to be above the law.
Normally the saying is "beating swords into ploughshares." However in this case they are converting efforts from the government in the form of Nasa, to efforts in technology in the form of multimedia companies. Therefore beating ploughshares into ploughshares... get it?
Erm.. just being nitpicky but, if no one makes a binary for linux, and the source does not exist, how do you get it to run on a linux box without Vmware?
I wasn't fooled.. the id gave it away. Plus it was pretty unbelievable that taco would get rid of one of the features that makes slashdot what it is.
It was scary how many people fell for it, and even more scary how many said they would go for it. True maybe some were just brownnosing or karma whoring, but still scary.
Oh I most definately agree with you. And I would stand by that challenge to anyone trying to get at someone going through such extreme methods as have been described.
I guess all I was saying is if you are joe bloe, probably you will be fine even with a few anonymous measures. But if you become Emmanuel Goldstein (1984 more than 2600) paranoia might be healthy.
Metallica must no longer consider themselves in that following-building phase
They may think that, but it is wrong. Every time a band comes out with a new album, they need to get people to justify buying it. So it gets broadcast on MTV and the radio. Why these numbskulls at the RIAA hate broadcasts over the internet so much is anybody's guess.
Certainly it would be very hard to track someone doing all that, but hard is not impossible. The best one can do is obfuscate oneself. Relentless determination could catch a person.
Remember they caught the unabomber based only on the analysis of what was written in the manifesto. That was enough. Just like your english teacher could tell whether you wrote a paper or not, a "voice" is one way to identify your writing.
Since cracking is illegal, this is not a good plan no matter the justification. Besides, as was pointed out in the article, you would most likely be attacking an innocent victim. That victim might be trying to figure out how they got hacked, and the signs will end up pointing to you.
The self-defense argument is spurious at best. First, retaliation to an illegal act with another illegal act has AFAIK been considered by the courts a seperate punishable illegal act. The motive is irrelevant except that its existence would actually help you get convicted.
Retaliatory acts of self-defense are generally only allowed after other defensive methods have been exhausted (like running and hiding). Even then only such defense as is necessary to end the attack is allowed under the law. Hacking back when you could shut down and harden a router is not allowed I would think.
I am not a lawyer. The only legal advice I can give is that if you need any you had better get one.
Microsoft already has offices in Vancouver, BC. They just have to expand them and make that their headquarters. Vancouver is not really that far from seattle, either IIRC.
doesn't have to be phones
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Iridium Saved?
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· Score: 1
There are lots of other uses for a global network of geosynchronous communications sattelites.
It is not a porn link
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DeCSS Update
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You are thinking of goatse.cx, which is a very nasty link often thrown out by trolls like you.
It sounds to me like the MPAA is not liking the bad publicity they are getting. If a savvy politician clued in to the rising sentiment against the MPAA, due to their censorship and monopolistic practices, it might be very bad news for them indeed.
I agree that in general anonymity can be both a pixelized face and manipulated voice of a protected witness, and the ski mask of a burglar. However w/r/t the net I am willing to take a chance because net crimes are, in general, much less harmful. Even in extreme cases, like crackers stealing passwords and IP, the govt has been hard-pressed to prove any damage at all. Certainly the common person has little to fear from these miscreants.
They problem with the internet, is that it is almost pure thought. The line between speech and action are blurred. In the early days of MOOs and MUDs, there was a famous cyber-rape. That provoked a big discussion on this subject, mostly stemming from teh debate over whetehr you can rape someone by typing words on a computer.
More in the context, ones actions and speech become melded when your action is to start an email chain, or a website. What if CommanderTaco never revealed his name? Could he be sued? What if you wanted to start a website that displayed accounts of torture at the hands of US-trained troops in south american countries, or the excesses of corporations, as its main content?
What if you were afraid that what has happened to so many others (being shut down, harrassed, arrested, blackballed) will happen to you? I would further posit that the lack of anonymity on the internet today is a major reason these sorts of things are not covered more on websites.
Actually, corporations would be more interested in the marketing than persecution. Governement are another issue.
Usually, but that is why they want to sue people who say disparaging thngs about their corporation, even if they are proven facts. Corporations are able to wave a big stick with lawyers on it at big media houses and scare them off, but they can't do that on the net, and that makes them scared.
SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
You seem to be qualifying your statement. Are you, or did you mean TOTAL anonimity.
I meant some means of making oneself anonymous when making such statements.
Actually this was clarified in the writings of our founding fathers, and was even more extreme than what the NRA tends to advocate. Thomas Jefferson specifically mentioned revolution as a reason.
Instead of speculating from a modern perspective, why not take the authors at their word? Quit spreading FUD.
Doesn't Freenet work over IP? Isn't it easy to determine what ISP (network) someone is using once you know their IP address? Isn't there a little thing call IPv6 that is already designed to make your IP address include your MAC address, which isolates exactly who you are (machine-wise) within that network?
And if the government is involved, they can get anonymizers records, or call your ISP and request that they get exactly what user/person is logged on right now?
As for broadband, well, when I got my cable modem they wrote down the MAC address of my machine (IIRC). True I am using a different one, now, but...
Besides, once you have an IP address if you crack the box there is plenty of indication via files of who the person is. Even before cracking the box there are indicators, especially if you are using Windows or a MAC (computer name broadcast on local network).
Basically, if I walk into a library and write something on a board like/. it is as easy as figuring out who wrote "Freeh can bite me" on the bathroom wall. But if you are surfing and doing stuff for any decent amount of time, and someone is watching you, they can find you.
That's basically what he said.. you have to have no registration anywhere. In other words when you are at home or work at a normal ISP connection you are not anonymous. Things like anonymizer and freenet, etc help obfuscate your position, but if someone is determined enough they could find you.
Actually as I understand Karen Silkwood was killed under similar circumstances.
Re:The Internet may end governments and taxes.
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Privacy vs. Anonymity
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· Score: 1
Especially now that billions and soon trillions of dollars will be spent on developing high-tech weapons of destruction that will be in the hands of robots and remotely controlled.
Imagine what would happen if even the military were eliminated except for R&D and the politicians got to put their finger on the trigger... "I need a higher approval rating... If I press this button a small country will get wiped off the map and I can say I did it to 'protect American interests!' God, I love technology!"
So, who was Deep Throat? Why is it every time someone speaks out against the government or the big corps from inside they speak on the condition of anonymity? I don't see the mainstream press being forced not to take anonymous sources.
Kiddie porn and warez, even "terrorism," (which is fine when the government perpetuates it but not fine when ordinary citizens engage in anything that could remotely be construed as it, including going into hiding from said government) are nothing but big boogiemen.
The killing of anonymity is something that big governments and corporations want so that they can more easily persecute people for their viewpoints. After all, once you know who is leaking inflammatory memos your CEO writes saying that your product should be made to destroy other companies (for example), you can fire them for something else, or otherwise make things very difficult, even if you don't just fire them for, say, leaking proprietary information?
The spectre of a world in which people are not allowed to think and share ideas is much worse than any of these other threats.
The whole reason that the internet is so empowering is that it allows theordinary person equal footing. On the internet, no one knows that you are a dog. Your writing will be judged by what it is, not on the fact that you are actually Joe the Plumber. The fact that your company is based in your living room and run by you and your wife does not prevent people from buying your products if they are good.
Most importantly, you can speak your mind on the net and then go to work the next day and have a job. Something that might not happen if you say the wrong thing and it is attributed to you as a real-life person.
There is no fine line between anonymity and privacy. In today's world, where a prosecutor can subpoaena your reading habits from barnes and noble, your eating habits from the grocery store (and why did you buy all that vaseline?), your email is read on a regular basis and kept forever, SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it is not inconceivable. The original browsers were university projects, and all the current browsers are derived from them. At some point in their life GPL code or even BSD code is not only possible, but likely, to have been inserted and used.
They said "you can get source from gnu." However, the problem with that is threefold. The most important part is taht gnu necessarily does not have Microsoft's changes. Also the GPL says you must distribute source with binaries. It says nothing about having to use an ftp site to do that.
The other problem is that their agreement specifically states at which urls you can get source, and source is not provided there. IANAL, but I would say that constitutes breaking the agreement on Microsoft's part, since it basically says that they agree to provide source at those locations.
I am not a lawyer. The only legal advice I have is that if you need any you had better get one.
After all, how long is it since you have seen any acknowlegements to the origins of their *bsd-derived tcp software? Was it ever displayed prominently?
The only reason that microsoft got caught here is that they finally violated gpl rather than bsd, and got caught. Since gpl requires a source release, the violation is more obvious. BSD license does not require source release, just acknowlegement, and as such violations are harder to prove. (IIRC someone was able to find hidden bsd copyright strings in some of MS's tcp software at one point. Hidden, mind...)
It's very funny that microsoft can say you agreed to something you are bound to by opening the box to your computer, even if you turn it on and immediately boot to a linux cd therefore never seeing the agreement, but they are not bound by that agreement themselves (which says you can get a refund). You can also be bound by an agreement that only shows up if you use a certain procedure in windows to open a file, rather than using a cross-platform method. But microsoft is never ever bound by anything. In that they have always been consistent. When they ignored the agreements they made with the Justice department around 1995, when they violated their agreements with apple and almost every other company they have ever "partnered" with, they were just being consistent.
Microsoft has always been and will always be an outlaw company who takes advantage fo the fact that here in the US we are used to allowing wealthy corporations to be above the law.
Normally the saying is "beating swords into ploughshares." However in this case they are converting efforts from the government in the form of Nasa, to efforts in technology in the form of multimedia companies. Therefore beating ploughshares into ploughshares... get it?
drivers yes. player, no.
Erm.. just being nitpicky but, if no one makes a binary for linux, and the source does not exist, how do you get it to run on a linux box without Vmware?
I think that was the point...
I wasn't fooled.. the id gave it away. Plus it was pretty unbelievable that taco would get rid of one of the features that makes slashdot what it is.
It was scary how many people fell for it, and even more scary how many said they would go for it. True maybe some were just brownnosing or karma whoring, but still scary.
looks like it is him after all then
That troll has just gotten so good at copying him that it has become hard to distinguish.
Someone had a page that had the sigs of famous people, but I lost the link...
Oh I most definately agree with you. And I would stand by that challenge to anyone trying to get at someone going through such extreme methods as have been described.
I guess all I was saying is if you are joe bloe, probably you will be fine even with a few anonymous measures. But if you become Emmanuel Goldstein (1984 more than 2600) paranoia might be healthy.
Metallica must no longer consider themselves in that following-building phase
They may think that, but it is wrong. Every time a band comes out with a new album, they need to get people to justify buying it. So it gets broadcast on MTV and the radio. Why these numbskulls at the RIAA hate broadcasts over the internet so much is anybody's guess.
Certainly it would be very hard to track someone doing all that, but hard is not impossible. The best one can do is obfuscate oneself. Relentless determination could catch a person.
Remember they caught the unabomber based only on the analysis of what was written in the manifesto. That was enough. Just like your english teacher could tell whether you wrote a paper or not, a "voice" is one way to identify your writing.
You are so funny, but why do you even try? most people know who you are.
Since cracking is illegal, this is not a good plan no matter the justification. Besides, as was pointed out in the article, you would most likely be attacking an innocent victim. That victim might be trying to figure out how they got hacked, and the signs will end up pointing to you.
The self-defense argument is spurious at best. First, retaliation to an illegal act with another illegal act has AFAIK been considered by the courts a seperate punishable illegal act. The motive is irrelevant except that its existence would actually help you get convicted.
Retaliatory acts of self-defense are generally only allowed after other defensive methods have been exhausted (like running and hiding). Even then only such defense as is necessary to end the attack is allowed under the law. Hacking back when you could shut down and harden a router is not allowed I would think.
I am not a lawyer. The only legal advice I can give is that if you need any you had better get one.
Microsoft already has offices in Vancouver, BC. They just have to expand them and make that their headquarters. Vancouver is not really that far from seattle, either IIRC.
There are lots of other uses for a global network of geosynchronous communications sattelites.
You are thinking of goatse.cx, which is a very nasty link often thrown out by trolls like you.
The link given was perfectly fine.
It sounds to me like the MPAA is not liking the bad publicity they are getting. If a savvy politician clued in to the rising sentiment against the MPAA, due to their censorship and monopolistic practices, it might be very bad news for them indeed.
I agree that in general anonymity can be both a pixelized face and manipulated voice of a protected witness, and the ski mask of a burglar. However w/r/t the net I am willing to take a chance because net crimes are, in general, much less harmful. Even in extreme cases, like crackers stealing passwords and IP, the govt has been hard-pressed to prove any damage at all. Certainly the common person has little to fear from these miscreants.
They problem with the internet, is that it is almost pure thought. The line between speech and action are blurred. In the early days of MOOs and MUDs, there was a famous cyber-rape. That provoked a big discussion on this subject, mostly stemming from teh debate over whetehr you can rape someone by typing words on a computer.
More in the context, ones actions and speech become melded when your action is to start an email chain, or a website. What if CommanderTaco never revealed his name? Could he be sued? What if you wanted to start a website that displayed accounts of torture at the hands of US-trained troops in south american countries, or the excesses of corporations, as its main content?
What if you were afraid that what has happened to so many others (being shut down, harrassed, arrested, blackballed) will happen to you? I would further posit that the lack of anonymity on the internet today is a major reason these sorts of things are not covered more on websites.
Actually, corporations would be more interested in the marketing than persecution. Governement are another issue.
Usually, but that is why they want to sue people who say disparaging thngs about their corporation, even if they are proven facts. Corporations are able to wave a big stick with lawyers on it at big media houses and scare them off, but they can't do that on the net, and that makes them scared.
SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.
You seem to be qualifying your statement. Are you, or did you mean TOTAL anonimity.
I meant some means of making oneself anonymous when making such statements.
Actually this was clarified in the writings of our founding fathers, and was even more extreme than what the NRA tends to advocate. Thomas Jefferson specifically mentioned revolution as a reason.
Instead of speculating from a modern perspective, why not take the authors at their word? Quit spreading FUD.
Doesn't Freenet work over IP? Isn't it easy to determine what ISP (network) someone is using once you know their IP address? Isn't there a little thing call IPv6 that is already designed to make your IP address include your MAC address, which isolates exactly who you are (machine-wise) within that network?
And if the government is involved, they can get anonymizers records, or call your ISP and request that they get exactly what user/person is logged on right now?
As for broadband, well, when I got my cable modem they wrote down the MAC address of my machine (IIRC). True I am using a different one, now, but...
Besides, once you have an IP address if you crack the box there is plenty of indication via files of who the person is. Even before cracking the box there are indicators, especially if you are using Windows or a MAC (computer name broadcast on local network).
Basically, if I walk into a library and write something on a board like /. it is as easy as figuring out who wrote "Freeh can bite me" on the bathroom wall. But if you are surfing and doing stuff for any decent amount of time, and someone is watching you, they can find you.
That's basically what he said.. you have to have no registration anywhere. In other words when you are at home or work at a normal ISP connection you are not anonymous. Things like anonymizer and freenet, etc help obfuscate your position, but if someone is determined enough they could find you.
Actually as I understand Karen Silkwood was killed under similar circumstances.
Especially now that billions and soon trillions of dollars will be spent on developing high-tech weapons of destruction that will be in the hands of robots and remotely controlled.
Imagine what would happen if even the military were eliminated except for R&D and the politicians got to put their finger on the trigger... "I need a higher approval rating... If I press this button a small country will get wiped off the map and I can say I did it to 'protect American interests!' God, I love technology!"
So, who was Deep Throat? Why is it every time someone speaks out against the government or the big corps from inside they speak on the condition of anonymity? I don't see the mainstream press being forced not to take anonymous sources.
Kiddie porn and warez, even "terrorism," (which is fine when the government perpetuates it but not fine when ordinary citizens engage in anything that could remotely be construed as it, including going into hiding from said government) are nothing but big boogiemen.
The killing of anonymity is something that big governments and corporations want so that they can more easily persecute people for their viewpoints. After all, once you know who is leaking inflammatory memos your CEO writes saying that your product should be made to destroy other companies (for example), you can fire them for something else, or otherwise make things very difficult, even if you don't just fire them for, say, leaking proprietary information?
The spectre of a world in which people are not allowed to think and share ideas is much worse than any of these other threats.
The whole reason that the internet is so empowering is that it allows theordinary person equal footing. On the internet, no one knows that you are a dog. Your writing will be judged by what it is, not on the fact that you are actually Joe the Plumber. The fact that your company is based in your living room and run by you and your wife does not prevent people from buying your products if they are good.
Most importantly, you can speak your mind on the net and then go to work the next day and have a job. Something that might not happen if you say the wrong thing and it is attributed to you as a real-life person.
There is no fine line between anonymity and privacy. In today's world, where a prosecutor can subpoaena your reading habits from barnes and noble, your eating habits from the grocery store (and why did you buy all that vaseline?), your email is read on a regular basis and kept forever, SOME FORM OF ANONYMITY is the only way you can express something and have it be private.