Via Rob's grumpy and cryptic e-mail, I've figured out the role he sees for me -- to try to put things in a non-technological context, to try and bring a fresh, non-technical perspective to the things you all are doing here. "Write what it means," he tells me all the time.
While I don't like Katz's work, I think it would be valuable to have someone outside the high-tech world contribute to slashdot and offer a fresh perspective on "what it means".
A question for the crowd: what non-geek commentator(s) would you like to see on slashdot? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
During the discovery phase of US vs. Microsoft, Microsoft's lawyers demanded the archives of "bad-attitude", an internal Netscape newsgroup for people to vent on, and "really-bad-attitude", a private mailing list that Jamie Zawinski had set up.
Read the details here. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
This sounds like the Street Performer Protocol that John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier have written about. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
RMS wrote an essay back in 1992, "The Right Way to Tax DAT", advocating a very similar approach for digital audio tape recording machines.
(Thanks to record-industry lobbying, DAT machines for consumers can't make a second-generation copy of a prerecorded digital audio tape. And how many consumers these days buy DAT machines? Hmmm....) -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Can anyone suggest why VA is accounting for this as a purchase? I heard that many de facto buy-outs are accounted for as a "pooling of assets", because then it doesn't go on the books as an expense for the purchaser. Have the rules for this kind of thing been tightened recently, or does VA have some advantage in accounting for this as a purchase? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
if any state passes the ammendment to the Unform Commerce Code a software vendor can still force that the licence be interpreted under that state's law even though the user's state has not passed the ammendment unless the state had passed legislation to forbid that
What about state consumer-protection laws? If I buy a program in Massachusetts, and the shrink-wrap contract says it has to be interpreted under California law, are there any circumstances where the Massachusetts consumer-protection laws may apply? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
In the Lego test, groups of eight to 10 students are given a box full of Lego pieces and told that they have 10 minutes to build a robot exactly like one sitting on a table in the next room.
Each group member is allowed to look at the robot, one at a time without taking notes. Evaluators then watch the group as they snap together their version of the robot, giving each student a score between zero and four....
Lego® bricks, paper, and computers are just tools. You can't judge the quality of a test by the tools used for taking the test.
Furthermore, the woman who designed the test will be keeping track of college students who took it, to see how well their success on the test correlates with their grades and so forth. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Johansen is a teenager. What are the implications of that fact?
In the US, if you're under legal age, you can't be bound by a contract. If the same is true in Norway, even if the no-reverse-engineering license is legal, Johansen could have just voided his end of the deal without penalty.
Even if Norwegian law doesn't save him, the plaintiffs in California could argue as follows:
In order to protect your legal rights to a trade secret, you have to show a certain amount of diligence in protecting it. DVD players are being sold over the counter as consumer products to anyone who can cough up the money, including minors who can't be bound by contracts, and the licensor isn't even keeping track of who has consented to the license.
What company with a truly valuable trade secret is so lax about protecting it? Imagine the Coca-Cola Company having a room with Coke's secret formula inside, and a sign on the door saying "By entering this room, you consent to the following license..." and not even having a security guard watching who enters the room!
Does the EFF have some email address for "silly legal ideas from amateurs that might prove useful"? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
The geeks, after the first filing, should have pre-emptively filed in EVERY federal jurisdiction.
Filed what? What legal claim do "the geeks" have against the DVD CCA and the MPAA? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Amazon can turn a profit any time they want... all they have to do is turn off the marketing machine and stop spending so much on infrastructure.
And if they do that, how long will they make a profit, before a competitor with more aggressive marketing and infrastructure takes over their market share?
"I can pay off my credit cards any time I want. All I have to do is sell my car and hitchhike to work instead...." -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
On the other hand, James Suroweiki, in this column and this one, points out that not all Net-related stock values have enjoyed fantastic growth, and some have even gone down. (Including the price of Lucent, my employer, in which I have stock options. Not that I'm bitter or anything.) He thinks this proves that the Internet boom is not a bubble, since if it were a true bubble, investors wouldn't discriminate at all.
Back on the first hand, I recall seeing a paper by some academics in a finance department (sorry I don't have a link), demonstrating that companies could increase their stock value simply by adding ".com" to their names. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Judging from the legal papers I've seen regarding this case, the strongest arguments on both sides of this case depend on one question:
Did the person who reverse-engineered CSS violate a legally binding license?
If Johansen is convicted of violating the Xing license, then the DVD CCA has a very strong trade-secret-violation case against anyone with DeCSS. On the other hand, if Johansen is acquitted, the EFF can argue that everyone with DeCSS got it legitimately, so the DVD CCA is SOL.
So, my questions for those who know more about the relevent laws:
If Johansen is acquitted, what "backup arguments" can the DVD CCA and the MPAA use to win their case?
If Johansen is convicted, what would be the strongest arguments remaining on the defendants' side?
-- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
The whole point of filing this kind of motion is to ask the judge to prejudge. The plaintiffs are saying, "The defendants are doing so much irreparable damage to us that if we wait for the end of the trial to collect damages, it will be too late. So please make the defendants stop doing This Bad Thing temporarily, and then we can spend the rest of the trial proving our case in more detail."
Obviously, sleazy plaintiffs can abuse this technique, but if it weren't available, then it would be easier for sleazy defendants to commit other kinds of abuse.
(I'm not defending the MPAA, just defending this particular aspect of legal procedure.) -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Based on my experiences this week, I have a couple of modest requests:
When I use "Add/Remove Programs" to uninstall Microsoft Office from my C: drive, and then reinstall it on my E: drive, it should actually remove the "Microsoft Office" folder from my C: drive. At the very least, if I do this and then delete the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office" folder myself, running the Word program that's on my E: drive shouldn't give me an "Unable to locate DLL" error.
When my colleagues have compiled a class library with version N of Microsoft's C++ compiler, and all I have is version N+1, I should be able to compile a program with my compiler that links to their class libraries.
ObSecurity: if they can't release software that handles these simple interactions with other software from the same company, how can they write an OS that protects users from malicious code written by outsiders?... -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Imagine a degradable-DVD vending machine, filled with the most recent big hits. The machine could sell the disks for cash. The owners just need to maintain the machine, restock it, and collect the money. They don't need to sink capital into "priced for rental" DVDs, and they don't need to spend money chasing down people who don't return movies on time. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
As a non-geek who usually (for a variety of work reasons) writes in Microsoft Word, some members of this community have been trying to drive me off the site ever since I arrived. Often, their attacks have little to do with what I think or write, mostly to do with the fact that I'm different, an outsider, a non-programmer who made different technology choices.
I haven't been tallying the reasons why various other slashdotters don't like Katz's articles; I can only speak for myself.
My main objection is this: In most Katz articles, the primary topic is Katz himself. Sometimes there's a secondary topic, but once you strip out all the self-congratulation, Katz says very little of substance about that topic. As Rogers Cadenhead said in this March 1999 essay:
Katz, like most journalists of any stature, considers himself a central element of every story he writes. Count the number of personal pronouns he uses in a typical Katzdot piece and the number of times he makes himself the subject of a sentence. If they were a trigger in a drinking game, you'd have a guaranteed recipe for morning-after hangovers.
So now, since Katz has been flamed, he's writing a three-part series about flaming. There have been other Slashdot discussions of this topic, e.g., Thoughts from the Furnace. What does Katz have to say on this topic that's both "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters"? -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
In the standard Unix security model, once an attacker is logged in as root, or gets his/her program to run as root, or exploits a weakness in a program that runs as root... "game over, man, game over".
According to this summary of Sidewinder's system, the only way you can get this level of access is by booting the "administrative kernel", and when the administrative kernel is running, all network connections are disabled. While running the normal "operational kernel", every process can be restricted to handling certain file types and system calls. This way, for example, your netnews server and FTP server can have administrators who can't access one another files or processes. If, say, a Belgian spy compromises your netnews administrator's account, the spy still couldn't send out anything over FTP. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
The latest draft of the US cryptography-export regulations let you post open-source crypto software without any government review or license; all you need to do is send the government the URL where it can be downloaded. These regulations are scheduled to go into effect tomorrow.
As Michael H. Warfield points out in this linux-kernel message, it's a golden opportunity to get IPSEC into the 2.4 kernel, and US-based Linux distributors can now bundle PGP, SSH, etc., with their next versions.
Maybe the spooks (or at least, the spook-meisters) are doing a 180 turn on how to deal with cryptography distribution, from "don't let anyone else have it" to "if everyone else has it, we want it, too". -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
the problem has nothing to do with the merger
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 2
Even before merging with AOL, Time-Warner's cable companies could sign contracts giving preferential treatment to ISPs and content providers with deep pockets, putting independents or competitors at a disadvantage. So now we know that one ISP has a really sweet deal. But there's plenty more bandwidth available on AOL-TW's networks... and other global media companies can lease chunks of it at a deep discount, while the independents still get shafted. From an independent's point of view, what has changed?
If cable companies with broadband networks were bound by "open access" rules, in the same way that phone companies with long-distance lines are bound, then AOL-TW's efforts to sell both Net access and content wouldn't matter.
(If you think that "open access" regulations are a bad thing because cable companies should have the right to do whatever they dang please with their cables, then I suspect you don't have any objections to the AOL-TW merger, either.) -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
In the 1970s, Soviet programmers had enough skill with Forth and Lisp to build useful applications on primitive Soviet computers. This productivity threatened to wipe out the American advantage in computer hardware. To solve this "software gap", the Pentagon created the "Ada Project". The secret goal of the project: to lure the Soviet PHPBs (pointy-haired party bosses) into forcing a bloated and inefficient language on their programmers, thus soaking up scarce Soviet computer resources.
So Uncle Sam now getting behind Linux. Do they realize the same trick won't work a second time? Do they underestimate the skill of Chinese programmers? Or... I can't bear to contemplate the third possibility.... -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
MacWEEK reports that in Aqua, the new Apple GUI, windows will have red, green and yellow buttons in the top left for closing, maximizing, and minimizing the window, respectively. [Screenshot]
This replicates one of the most annoying features of the Windows interface -- putting the "close" and "minimize" buttons side by side, instead of at opposite corners of the frame. You can't say Apple is changing its design to make life more comfortable for people used to Windows, since Windows uses a different corner. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
If a law is worded ambiguously enough, two legislators who have to satisfy opposing interest groups can each go to their constituents and say, "I voted for a law that supports your interests". The dirty work of telling an interest group "sorry, you lose" gets deferred -- first to the regulators in the executive branch who implement the law, and then to the courts. Furthermore, interest groups that didn't have enough lobbying power in the legislature can try again in the executive or in the courts.
Furthermore, if the legislature lets people sort out important public problems through the courts, they don't have to allocate tax money for solving the problems. Case in point: silly computer-related patents. The Patent Office doesn't have enough examiners who know computer science, so applications for patents on computer-related technology don't get the scrutiny they deserve before the patent is filed. Instead, overworked examiners err or the side of granting patents.
(Disclaimer: IANAL.) -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Well, some of the folks out there with computer skills are intelligent, but I'm not sure that alone qualifies them as members of "the intelligentsia".
I've seen nerds pontificate about public affairs on the Net for the past ten years, since I was a political-science undergraduate reading netnews. Then, as now, there were a few people with good insights and convincing arguments, and a lot of flamers.
Note to wannabe members of the Internet intelligentsia: You may be a very smart person, and you may think you have some penetrating and valuable ideas about how the world should work. Keep in mind that many other smart people have preceded you. Some of them may have contemplated ideas similar to yours -- perhaps arguing for them, perhaps arguing against them -- hundreds of years ago. So if you haven't done so already, take advantage of their hard work, take some time off from the Net, and read some books, dammit. -- "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Slashdot Mirror
A question for the crowd: what non-geek commentator(s) would you like to see on slashdot?
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Read the details here.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
This sounds like the Street Performer Protocol that John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier have written about.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
(Thanks to record-industry lobbying, DAT machines for consumers can't make a second-generation copy of a prerecorded digital audio tape. And how many consumers these days buy DAT machines? Hmmm....)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Can anyone suggest why VA is accounting for this as a purchase? I heard that many de facto buy-outs are accounted for as a "pooling of assets", because then it doesn't go on the books as an expense for the purchaser. Have the rules for this kind of thing been tightened recently, or does VA have some advantage in accounting for this as a purchase?
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Lego® bricks, paper, and computers are just tools. You can't judge the quality of a test by the tools used for taking the test.
Furthermore, the woman who designed the test will be keeping track of college students who took it, to see how well their success on the test correlates with their grades and so forth.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
In the US, if you're under legal age, you can't be bound by a contract. If the same is true in Norway, even if the no-reverse-engineering license is legal, Johansen could have just voided his end of the deal without penalty.
Even if Norwegian law doesn't save him, the plaintiffs in California could argue as follows:
Does the EFF have some email address for "silly legal ideas from amateurs that might prove useful"?--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
"I can pay off my credit cards any time I want. All I have to do is sell my car and hitchhike to work instead...."
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Back on the first hand, I recall seeing a paper by some academics in a finance department (sorry I don't have a link), demonstrating that companies could increase their stock value simply by adding ".com" to their names.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
So, my questions for those who know more about the relevent laws:
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Obviously, sleazy plaintiffs can abuse this technique, but if it weren't available, then it would be easier for sleazy defendants to commit other kinds of abuse.
(I'm not defending the MPAA, just defending this particular aspect of legal procedure.)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
- When I use "Add/Remove Programs" to uninstall Microsoft Office from my C: drive, and then reinstall it on my E: drive, it should actually remove the "Microsoft Office" folder from my C: drive. At the very least, if I do this and then delete the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office" folder myself, running the Word program that's on my E: drive shouldn't give me an "Unable to locate DLL" error.
- When my colleagues have compiled a class library with version N of Microsoft's C++ compiler, and all I have is version N+1, I should be able to compile a program with my compiler that links to their class libraries.
ObSecurity: if they can't release software that handles these simple interactions with other software from the same company, how can they write an OS that protects users from malicious code written by outsiders?...--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Imagine a degradable-DVD vending machine, filled with the most recent big hits. The machine could sell the disks for cash. The owners just need to maintain the machine, restock it, and collect the money. They don't need to sink capital into "priced for rental" DVDs, and they don't need to spend money chasing down people who don't return movies on time.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
My main objection is this: In most Katz articles, the primary topic is Katz himself. Sometimes there's a secondary topic, but once you strip out all the self-congratulation, Katz says very little of substance about that topic. As Rogers Cadenhead said in this March 1999 essay:
So now, since Katz has been flamed, he's writing a three-part series about flaming. There have been other Slashdot discussions of this topic, e.g., Thoughts from the Furnace. What does Katz have to say on this topic that's both "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters"?--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
According to this summary of Sidewinder's system, the only way you can get this level of access is by booting the "administrative kernel", and when the administrative kernel is running, all network connections are disabled. While running the normal "operational kernel", every process can be restricted to handling certain file types and system calls. This way, for example, your netnews server and FTP server can have administrators who can't access one another files or processes. If, say, a Belgian spy compromises your netnews administrator's account, the spy still couldn't send out anything over FTP.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
As Michael H. Warfield points out in this linux-kernel message, it's a golden opportunity to get IPSEC into the 2.4 kernel, and US-based Linux distributors can now bundle PGP, SSH, etc., with their next versions.
Maybe the spooks (or at least, the spook-meisters) are doing a 180 turn on how to deal with cryptography distribution, from "don't let anyone else have it" to "if everyone else has it, we want it, too".
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
If cable companies with broadband networks were bound by "open access" rules, in the same way that phone companies with long-distance lines are bound, then AOL-TW's efforts to sell both Net access and content wouldn't matter.
(If you think that "open access" regulations are a bad thing because cable companies should have the right to do whatever they dang please with their cables, then I suspect you don't have any objections to the AOL-TW merger, either.)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
I was planning to ask the same question. Moderators take note....
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Hey, Henry Baker said it, and he's, like, famous, or at least prolific, so he must be right!
So Uncle Sam now getting behind Linux. Do they realize the same trick won't work a second time? Do they underestimate the skill of Chinese programmers? Or ... I can't bear to contemplate the third possibility....
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
This replicates one of the most annoying features of the Windows interface -- putting the "close" and "minimize" buttons side by side, instead of at opposite corners of the frame. You can't say Apple is changing its design to make life more comfortable for people used to Windows, since Windows uses a different corner.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Furthermore, if the legislature lets people sort out important public problems through the courts, they don't have to allocate tax money for solving the problems. Case in point: silly computer-related patents. The Patent Office doesn't have enough examiners who know computer science, so applications for patents on computer-related technology don't get the scrutiny they deserve before the patent is filed. Instead, overworked examiners err or the side of granting patents.
(Disclaimer: IANAL.)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
I've seen nerds pontificate about public affairs on the Net for the past ten years, since I was a political-science undergraduate reading netnews. Then, as now, there were a few people with good insights and convincing arguments, and a lot of flamers.
Note to wannabe members of the Internet intelligentsia: You may be a very smart person, and you may think you have some penetrating and valuable ideas about how the world should work. Keep in mind that many other smart people have preceded you. Some of them may have contemplated ideas similar to yours -- perhaps arguing for them, perhaps arguing against them -- hundreds of years ago. So if you haven't done so already, take advantage of their hard work, take some time off from the Net, and read some books, dammit.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."