"
Utilities such as: Gas, Electric, Water, Internet Access, should be GOVERNMENT regulated and provided. "
"
YES!! more socialism! while we're at it cars, computers, televisions, steak tar tar and beer should also be provided by the government.
"
I think the argument is infrastructure should be built and maintained by the government, otherwise you'd need multiple gas supplies to your house for competition. The idea is only one set of power lines needs to be built to your house, rather than one per electricity company.
However, several applications fail to work unless run as local administrator under Win NT. Under NT you can't type su and then become an adminstrator to install a new piece of software - no - it's log off - log on - log off - log on time.
Anyway, there is a ridiculous number of user-privledge escaltion bugs under NT anyway, this converts any 'Adminstrator Access' bug into a 'Remote Administrator Access' bug.
"
Any program can use gtkhtml to render HTML in a window.
"
gtkhtml doesn't run as an OS service and by default isn't allowed to overwrite your kernel, disk partitions etc. etc. etc.
If an execute arbitrary code bug was found in gtkhtml it would compromise user security - not system security. Whilst this is bad it's not a remote root exploit like the IE bug is.
Piracy is committed in tidal waters and is one of the few offences still punishable by death in the UK [along with high treason].
I happen to know because my elder brother is a police officer who was called to arrest someone who'd stolen a dingy at the beach. He arrested the guy for piracy and informed him it was punishable by death. He then let him off but the look on the guys face was priceless.
"
It does not matter to them if CDs are copy protected -- they weren't going to be even thinking of copying a CD anyway.
"
It does if the CD doesn't play in
their CDROM drive
their new spangly DVD player
their expensive high end CD player
their mp3 player
their in car CD player
their discman
which is what these non redbook CD's are proposing to do.
We must also remember that mp3 is now mainstream throughout the music buying public. CD writers are also quite common - a reasonable percentage of the music buying public now have one.
"
We have very far to go indeed before Joe Average and his sister are even remotely concerned about what the {RI|MP}AA are doing to our rights.
"
Joe Average, this CD won't play in your car, on your walkman, on your computer or in your DVD drive.
Do you feel your rights have been infringed?
What we have to do to educate Joe Average is to explain that because he *might* distribute this CD over Napster the record companies have forbidden him from playing.
In addition, while courts have upheld statutes which state that you cannot knowingly advertise incorrect prices, they have also stated that an advertisement is a solicitment and not an offer.
"
But a confirmation seals the agreement.
The confirmation email says
Amazon.com agree to sell to you one memory stick for $9.99 + shipping. We have accepted the order and will be delivering as soon as possible.
You can also go for misleading advertising - this is only likely to work if it is displayed as a special offer though - I once did this in a supermarket with beer - it had a misprinted special offer notice above it, £1.99 for 24 cans - not £11.99, and I quibbled at the till over the price. I think they would have chucked me out were it not for every other customer in the shop refusing to pay for anything until they honoured it [really].
"
But what happens if you stick it in one of those new stereos that has a CD burner built in? I know Philips has released several models like this, and other companies probably have, too.
"
Thats a good point, duplicate to music CDR with a music CD writer, place in CDROM, rip, distribute.
Introduce a further million people to peer to peer sharing since they can't make their own mp3 copy and must download someone elses.
This could infect users on linux systems but shouldn't affect the system itself.
I share my home directory across the network to my windows machine, which would allow my windows machine to infect my user account on the linux box. However, it wouldn't affect other users of the system unless I had write access to their files.
"
Fair use of a music CD is to be able to play the thing whereever you like, and generally do whatever you like with it (such as making a copy for the car) as long as it's for your own use and not giving copies away to others who hav't paid for it.
"
"
However, Fair use DOES not by any stretch of the imagination mean you should be guaranteed to be able to copy directly to CD rather than tape
"
So what happens if you only have a CD player in the car?
What happens if you have a personal mp3 player?
What happens if you want to play it in a CDROM drive?
What happens if you have a CD player that can't read the disc?
The new format seems to prevent all of these.
Surely fair use means I can copy it to match whatever form of playback device I choose?
"
Lets also assume cdparanoia (for an example of a beautiful piece of software) releases a patch to defeat the copy protection. Aren't they violating the DCMA, as referenced in the interview with Rep Boucher? What recourse does that leave?
"
If cdparanoia is not illegal then patching cdparanoia to read faulty discs is not illegal either.
These discs are faulty. They are not copy protected, they are faulty, they have been delibrately manufactured incorrectly.
"
If the RIAA comes out with CD protection that sucks and removes value from music, then we won't buy it.
"
If artist X makes his music protected there is no way you can buy an unprotected copy of that music, you can only buy different music.
I think the best thing to do is buy it, send it back for a replacement, send that back too. Make the broken-standard discs *cost* the RIAA a large amount of money in returns, demands for compensation etc. Write to the artist in question complaining that you can't buy his latest CD because the record company have made it incorrectly. Get elderly ladies to take copies back and let the sales assistants explain to them that it doesn't play in their cd player because the might send copies of it over the internet. We need to make the non-standard cd's *expensive* for the music industry.
We also need to use the correct terminology.
These are not copy protected cds. These are broken cds. These cds do not play because they do not adhere to the standard.
They have a reasonable list of technical data sheets on their site including a helpful "how to wire up odd cables for dodgy pieces of kit" sheet. As someone who runs a small venue we link to their website as a technical resource and we have printouts of their pages in the cupboard to aid people in wiring.
We've now started buying their kit too because we know it's made by competent people.
"
I don't understand why everybody keeps slagging on MS. I'm currently running Windows 2000 Server as my webserver in the corner of my room; it runs Apache, an FTPdaemon, and ActivePerl, and has had an uptime of almost 3 months, completely error free.
"
Perhaps it's because you chose a free webserver instead of the one you've paid for [indirectly] IIS? Or you're using a free language instead of VBScript?
However, you could now move to Linux / BSD and save yourself a copy of Win2K advanced server - $1200 for a 10CAL version.
"
I'm getting really tired of people just blindly assuming that Microsoft is going to turn out a poor piece of software.
"
I suspect this is slightly due to unfair sampling, most linux users I know are regarded as 'my mate who knows about computers' and only usually see windows boxes after a clueless friend has trashed it and they are left with the job of attempting to fix it.
We have the data protection act which states that for £10 you are allowed access to all digital data owned by a company about you. This includes CCTV footage [e.g. you can request tapes that you know you are on].
With protected storage you could probably demand the data from the protected drive under the Data Protection Act - £10 fee every time you want an decrypted backup of your data, all done remotely by someone else.
I've never gone back to Word since writing an important report on it with embedded graphs from Excel.
In Word [97] you could view the graphs, you could edit them via Excel. It was great.
Until you hit print, then they came out as tables.
Several hours later, an export to text and a re-embedding experience of every single graph / picture / footnote later I had a document that worked.
Then I decided to take up my housemates advice and find out what LaTeX was. Yes it took longer to get started than word but it doesn't randomly break just before the end of the project.
"
They should have been more careful when they gave out the certificates. the person who now got the certificates could also have used 'Sun' or 'Red Hat' or any other company. Would that company then be 'the faulty'? NO.
"
But, if RedHat or Sun wrote code that didn't check for revocations of certificates then they would be at fault, even if the certificate was in Novells name.
Explain to me please, how I install Win2K on my laptop that does not have a CDROM drive.
I don't have a CDROM drive in my laptop becuase I don't want to carry it around, I don't want it eating battery life and I don't want to pay for it either.
To install Linux I made a floppy boot disk that recognised the PCMCIA ethernet card, and pulled redhat 6.2 over the network.
Slashdot Mirror
"
BIND? Remote execution of code? A self spreading trojan so simple an 8 year old could use it?
"
BIND is an application used by serious network administrators and should only be used by technically competent people.
IE is part of the underlying operating system and is present on all windows machines - even on those where it's not wanted.
True,
but the source modification is printed so you can simply apply it yourself if you want to and not upgrade.
"
Utilities such as: Gas, Electric, Water, Internet Access, should be GOVERNMENT regulated and provided. "
"
YES!! more socialism! while we're at it cars, computers, televisions, steak tar tar and beer should also be provided by the government.
"
I think the argument is infrastructure should be built and maintained by the government, otherwise you'd need multiple gas supplies to your house for competition. The idea is only one set of power lines needs to be built to your house, rather than one per electricity company.
However, several applications fail to work unless run as local administrator under Win NT. Under NT you can't type su and then become an adminstrator to install a new piece of software - no - it's log off - log on - log off - log on time.
Anyway, there is a ridiculous number of user-privledge escaltion bugs under NT anyway, this converts any 'Adminstrator Access' bug into a 'Remote Administrator Access' bug.
"
Any program can use gtkhtml to render HTML in a window.
"
gtkhtml doesn't run as an OS service and by default isn't allowed to overwrite your kernel, disk partitions etc. etc. etc.
If an execute arbitrary code bug was found in gtkhtml it would compromise user security - not system security. Whilst this is bad it's not a remote root exploit like the IE bug is.
"
Napster isn't stealing. It's piracy.
"
Napster is unauthorised copyright infringement.
Piracy is committed in tidal waters and is one of the few offences still punishable by death in the UK [along with high treason].
I happen to know because my elder brother is a police officer who was called to arrest someone who'd stolen a dingy at the beach. He arrested the guy for piracy and informed him it was punishable by death. He then let him off but the look on the guys face was priceless.
With a 32bit hash that would mean 4*file size of hash codes.
Surely 4 * 24k = 96k isn't an infeasable amount?
"
It does not matter to them if CDs are copy protected -- they weren't going to be even thinking of copying a CD anyway.
"
It does if the CD doesn't play in
their CDROM drive
their new spangly DVD player
their expensive high end CD player
their mp3 player
their in car CD player
their discman
which is what these non redbook CD's are proposing to do.
We must also remember that mp3 is now mainstream throughout the music buying public. CD writers are also quite common - a reasonable percentage of the music buying public now have one.
"
We have very far to go indeed before Joe Average and his sister are even remotely concerned about what the {RI|MP}AA are doing to our rights.
"
Joe Average, this CD won't play in your car, on your walkman, on your computer or in your DVD drive.
Do you feel your rights have been infringed?
What we have to do to educate Joe Average is to explain that because he *might* distribute this CD over Napster the record companies have forbidden him from playing.
"
In addition, while courts have upheld statutes which state that you cannot knowingly advertise incorrect prices, they have also stated that an advertisement is a solicitment and not an offer.
"
But a confirmation seals the agreement.
The confirmation email says
Amazon.com agree to sell to you one memory stick for $9.99 + shipping. We have accepted the order and will be delivering as soon as possible.
You can also go for misleading advertising - this is only likely to work if it is displayed as a special offer though - I once did this in a supermarket with beer - it had a misprinted special offer notice above it, £1.99 for 24 cans - not £11.99, and I quibbled at the till over the price. I think they would have chucked me out were it not for every other customer in the shop refusing to pay for anything until they honoured it [really].
"
But what happens if you stick it in one of those new stereos that has a CD burner built in? I know Philips has released several models like this, and other companies probably have, too.
"
Thats a good point, duplicate to music CDR with a music CD writer, place in CDROM, rip, distribute.
Introduce a further million people to peer to peer sharing since they can't make their own mp3 copy and must download someone elses.
There is a published standard for audio CDs. It's called the redbook standard.
This CD does not meet the standard.
Therefore it is broken.
Could we force them to remove the CD label from the disc because it doesn't meet the standard?
This could infect users on linux systems but shouldn't affect the system itself.
I share my home directory across the network to my windows machine, which would allow my windows machine to infect my user account on the linux box. However, it wouldn't affect other users of the system unless I had write access to their files.
"
Fair use of a music CD is to be able to play the thing whereever you like, and generally do whatever you like with it (such as making a copy for the car) as long as it's for your own use and not giving copies away to others who hav't paid for it.
"
"
However, Fair use DOES not by any stretch of the imagination mean you should be guaranteed to be able to copy directly to CD rather than tape
"
So what happens if you only have a CD player in the car?
What happens if you have a personal mp3 player?
What happens if you want to play it in a CDROM drive?
What happens if you have a CD player that can't read the disc?
The new format seems to prevent all of these.
Surely fair use means I can copy it to match whatever form of playback device I choose?
"
Lets also assume cdparanoia (for an example of a beautiful piece of software) releases a patch to defeat the copy protection. Aren't they violating the DCMA, as referenced in the interview with Rep Boucher? What recourse does that leave?
"
If cdparanoia is not illegal then patching cdparanoia to read faulty discs is not illegal either.
These discs are faulty. They are not copy protected, they are faulty, they have been delibrately manufactured incorrectly.
"
If the RIAA comes out with CD protection that sucks and removes value from music, then we won't buy it.
"
If artist X makes his music protected there is no way you can buy an unprotected copy of that music, you can only buy different music.
I think the best thing to do is buy it, send it back for a replacement, send that back too. Make the broken-standard discs *cost* the RIAA a large amount of money in returns, demands for compensation etc. Write to the artist in question complaining that you can't buy his latest CD because the record company have made it incorrectly. Get elderly ladies to take copies back and let the sales assistants explain to them that it doesn't play in their cd player because the might send copies of it over the internet. We need to make the non-standard cd's *expensive* for the music industry.
We also need to use the correct terminology.
These are not copy protected cds. These are broken cds. These cds do not play because they do not adhere to the standard.
"
Advertising, if one applies the proper transformations, is actually product information dispersal online.
"
A good example of this is ,
Rane Audio : www.rane.com
They have a reasonable list of technical data sheets on their site including a helpful "how to wire up odd cables for dodgy pieces of kit" sheet. As someone who runs a small venue we link to their website as a technical resource and we have printouts of their pages in the cupboard to aid people in wiring.
We've now started buying their kit too because we know it's made by competent people.
"
I don't understand why everybody keeps slagging on MS. I'm currently running Windows 2000 Server as my webserver in the corner of my room; it runs Apache, an FTPdaemon, and ActivePerl, and has had an uptime of almost 3 months, completely error free.
"
Perhaps it's because you chose a free webserver instead of the one you've paid for [indirectly] IIS? Or you're using a free language instead of VBScript?
However, you could now move to Linux / BSD and save yourself a copy of Win2K advanced server - $1200 for a 10CAL version.
"
I'm getting really tired of people just blindly assuming that Microsoft is going to turn out a poor piece of software.
"
I suspect this is slightly due to unfair sampling, most linux users I know are regarded as 'my mate who knows about computers' and only usually see windows boxes after a clueless friend has trashed it and they are left with the job of attempting to fix it.
"
Well, 128meg is kind of ridiculous, but... it only costs like $50 these days for 128meg of PC133...
"
Which will work wonderfully in my laptop....
For a laptop user think 'whole new machine'
I wonder how this will work in the UK.
We have the data protection act which states that for £10 you are allowed access to all digital data owned by a company about you. This includes CCTV footage [e.g. you can request tapes that you know you are on].
With protected storage you could probably demand the data from the protected drive under the Data Protection Act - £10 fee every time you want an decrypted backup of your data, all done remotely by someone else.
"
Gone forever are the days of having to continuously remember (and tell each game) that your SBPro was installed on IRQ 7, I/O address 220, DMA 1.
"
I have two soundcards in my machine [SB 16 - default, SB Live - not default]
I am fed up of having to switch the connectors in the back of the machine to make the sound come out of the right set of speakers.
Why do DX games ignore the default and go for the more expensive card instead? My DOS games can get it right.
"
What overwhelming compeling reason is there for an average user to switch to linux as their main home OS?
"
For someone who's about to throw away a 486/pentium class PC and replace it,
$500 for the cost of windows + office
the ability to use their old computer as a network terminal and effectively have two new computers
crash proof
free tech support from their friends who no longer use windows because it's too crap
I've never gone back to Word since writing an important report on it with embedded graphs from Excel.
In Word [97] you could view the graphs, you could edit them via Excel. It was great.
Until you hit print, then they came out as tables.
Several hours later, an export to text and a re-embedding experience of every single graph / picture / footnote later I had a document that worked.
Then I decided to take up my housemates advice and find out what LaTeX was. Yes it took longer to get started than word but it doesn't randomly break just before the end of the project.
"
They should have been more careful when they gave out the certificates. the person who now got the certificates could also have used 'Sun' or 'Red Hat' or any other company. Would that company then be 'the faulty'? NO.
"
But, if RedHat or Sun wrote code that didn't check for revocations of certificates then they would be at fault, even if the certificate was in Novells name.
"It should be configured automatically in *every* distro enthusiast or not.
"
Even Linux From Source ?
[/me ducks]
Explain to me please, how I install Win2K on my laptop that does not have a CDROM drive.
I don't have a CDROM drive in my laptop becuase I don't want to carry it around, I don't want it eating battery life and I don't want to pay for it either.
To install Linux I made a floppy boot disk that recognised the PCMCIA ethernet card, and pulled redhat 6.2 over the network.