I've seen code to trap the spiders the spammers use and fill up their databases with crap. What I haven't seen is a honeypot designed just for spammers - a box that *looks* like an open relay, but not only doesn't forward the spam messages, it logs and possibly automagically retailiates against the originator. The anti-spam groups have had good luck attracting spam with email addresses set aside for that purpose, but we need to take it to the next level and have some anti-spam servers. Maybe just a simple bot to start listening on port 25 and responding like known weak versions of sendmail when accessed would do. Any of the mighty code ghods here at/. want to see what they can come up with?
Are you on crack? The US would have to put some serious effort into just cracking the top 3 in modern times - the Germans (WW2), Russians (Stalin), and Chinese (still going strong) have dwarfed the amount of carnage the Americans have put out. The sanctions on Iraq are UN sanctions, not US, and if the Iraqi government decided to spend money on their citizens instead of on more shiny palaces for their fearless leader, no-one would be going hungry. Same with North Korea, vital resources are going weapons programs while the people starve by the hundreds of thousands. It's not the US or UN killing these people, its their own leaders. Your mindless anti-US babbling won't change that, nor will your revisionist history.
And two other really odd points - when the hell did the US *ever* intervene militarily in any way in South Africa? And America is an importer, not exporter of drugs, alas. Unless you count aspirin.
I think that the reason that IBM is devoting so many resources to Open Source is that they already had a huge programmer budget for their proprietary big iron operating systems and apps that just weren't going anywhere and weren't big selling points anyway - they were selling the hardware it ran on and applications that are still proprietary and run on Linux anyway (like DB2). Moving to open source let them spend the same or less money on development while getting for free the work of others around the world, and they got to look like good guys doing it. IBM is just spending money they were already going to spend, replacing proprietary software that was not a big part of their sales efforts.
Sun, on the other hand, is hugely invested in their software sales. They see Solaris as a big selling point when pushing their offerings, and they really *really* want to make as much money as possible off of Java. Going Open Source, no matter how much the geeks at Sun like the idea, will be a huge blow to the bottom line. IBM is replacing one set of software that was largely free (as in beer) with another set of offerings that they don't charge for, so it doesn't hurt them. Sun would be giving up revenue from software that is bringing in a lot of money. They just can't (or think they can't) afford to go completely Open Source. Opening up Java to the extent they have, while maintaining control, allows Sun to still charge for some offerings (like the compatibility tests) and have a head start over competitors in future development efforts, since only they control where Java goes. Going completely Open causes them to lose both the cash and the control, and that they'll fight to the end.
If you think IBM is really comitted to Open Source out of altruism and a philosophical agreement with the movement, try getting them to give away DB2.
You forgot to mention that it is a major component of acid rain, can be lethal if inhaled, and that studies have shown that more than 95% of all cancer victims have ingested significant quantities of it before being diagnosed. Clearly, something needs to be done.;)
Note for the folks that don't get what dihydrogen monoxide (the silent killer!) is - in the words of the immoral Foghorn Leghorn "That's a joke, son."
...to save Linux from the deadly Word Perfect virus. Everything that Word Perfect has touched since MS first brought out Office has died a horrible pathetic death. The original corporation died quickly, and sold the product to Novell. They were a monster, kicking serious MS butt in the network. All but irrelevant now, alas, they've pretty much disappeared since buying the Cursed Code. Now Corel is the latest victim, going from a strong company making great products to a confused drifter with decent ideas but a total failure of execution. If we're lucky, Corel broke it's ties to Linux before the WP curse could spread to it. Otherwise, Linux would be doomed to bloat, lack of direction, costly failed attempts to expand presence on users desks...oh, damn, too late. Maybe there's still time to fix it, though.
Come to think of it, everything that the original Office competed with died messily, with huge collateral damage to everything close to it. 123 didn't go alone, even Lotus is now just a division of IBM. God help us all if Bill G can find the phone number of the sorcerer he hired for that job again. Yikes.
As far as I can tell, the user still needs to contact the MS server and go through the validation process. At the very least a key that has already been used will be rejected. At worst, MS will log all attempts and check that the key came from the correct geographical region that the boxed product was shipped to, and disable copies that don't match even if the key hasn't been used before. It's a huge hole in the security, but the end users are still going to be bothered. The worst of all possible worlds.
All of the folks looking for a free copy are better off finding a copy of the corporate edition, which doesn't phone home.
Metamods help me out here - I post a fairly rational bit which leads to a long thread with lots of good stuff, and I get modded down twice, with one bastard marking it down as "overrated" - how the hell was it overrated? If no-one wants to mod me up, well and good, sobeit. And I expected a kneejerk "flamebait" since I mentioned the GPL in less than fawning terms, no matter that I actually am in favor of the GPL I forgot to genuflect so that tag was inevitable. But fricking "overrated"?
By deciding that a license wasn't a license, the judge has made an astonishingly large and sweeping precedent, which automatically means that this will be in appeals for many many years. Simply invalidating a license (or any clauses of it) for a software package has huge impacts - f'rinstance, if the precedent holds that a license isn't binding without a more formal agreement than just the "if you click/open the seal/download/&etc. you are bound" bits we're used to seeing, what about the GPL? If a download is equal to sale transaction, then someone could just use whatever bits they liked and forget about making future source free - hey, it's mine, the license isn't worth anything, I can resell/reuse at will.
As much as one would like to see the worst offenders in the idiot EULA game get smacked, I don't think that just deciding that the resale/reuse portions of what had been considered a valid contract are null is automatically a Good Thing. Try to remember that Open Source is protected by a license, too.
Bloody hell, is there any way to filter out all posts with the phrase "beowulf cluster of these"? I'd even give up my Jon Katz filter if I could turn off these mindless attempts at humor. "All your base" died months ago, why the hell is this still popular?
Taco, Hemos, anyone, is there some way to stop seeing these damn things?
Sure its a total bastard of an idea from a privacy standpoint, but just think of the fun hackers can have with this once the stores go automated. Just pick off the signal for a product, and rebroadcast using a stronger signal whenever folks go through the scanner. If every single person leaving the store on a given day gets charged for 5 boxes of extra-small condoms and a snickers bar, I'd imagine they'll just go back to barcodes. Or maybe a small personal jammer, so that you can walk through with your heaping cart of geekfuel, and only get charged for a small jar of peanut butter. A cheap 5-cent tag just can't incorporate many security features, and any wireless system is an open invitation to hackers.
The folks who are really concerned about this as a privacy issue need to go visit and abuse all of the test sites they can identify. Drop the confidence level far enough, and the tech won't be adopted.
If they could have taken the investment capital, stuck it in a plain vanilla passbook savings account, and made more money than they did with normal business operations...then yes, they are losing money. They lost the difference between what they'd have made with the savings account (a risk free investment) versus the tiny profit they actually made.
Something along the lines of "I need more information before I can comment" is fine, and a typical response to a question one doesn't know enough about to answer. "We would like him to come to the free software community and explain himself to us about it" is pretty damned pompous. You need more data, you go and ask. You don't use the royal "We" and demand that someone come to you, particularly in front of a public forum. See the difference? Doesn't mean RMS was wrong, just clumsy. Thus the need for some professional assistance. He's a bright guy, he'll figure it out quickly enough, he just needs to accept the fact that he needs a bit of help on public appearances.
The guy demanded a response, as if De Icaza was somehow obligated to jump when RMS said frog. He might, just might, try asking for more information and then taking time to frame a rational response instead of treating somebody else as a lackey who needed to come explain himself to the master. Stallman's good ideas and tireless campaigning for what he believes to be right get ignored because he comes across too often as a freak and a prick.
Some of the donations and grants the FSF brings in need to go to a good *publicist*, instead of more coders and lawyers. Like it or not, RMS is a poster child for the Open Source and Free Software movements, but he needs some serious help with his image before all those shiny folks in suits who make IT purchasing decisions will even pay attention to him, or anyone associated with him. A good souless weasel PR guy will keep RMS from making kneejerk responses that piss off folks who might otherwise go along with him, and it will free Stallman's time up for more of the things he does do well. Everyone wins - the pointy haired bosses can interact with the brighty colored and non-threatening Stallman Interface, and the real geeks can get work done with the Command Line RMS.
Damn, I was hoping to see pics of an LCDectomy. Actually, what I'd really like to see is a mod of the new lamp-like iMacs with the arm being robotic and software controlled. Have the monitor follow you as you move around the room...
Bzzt! Thanks for playing. As someone who suffers from a mental illness and a learning disability, I get plenty of grief already, thanks. For that matter, try being a Catholic in the south - its the last socially permitted prejudice out there. Local groups took out full page ads in the paper attacking my beliefs, great for the self-esteem of a young person. And since my labels aren't visible, computer databases are particularly a problem for me. And I still believe that on the whole, it serves a useful purpose for the country. Personal nuisance doesn't automatically invalidate my point. I frankly am more likely than folks without my difficulties to have certain problems, and a profile is likely to show that. And I really *shouldn't* be extended credit, but folks who don't know better still send me offers in the mail. Heh.
And if we're going to get into the whole "who is a bigger victim" whine, how about a quick pop-quiz: what country was conquered by a European nation centuries ago, had a distinct language that was forbidden by law to be taught all the way until the 1960's, is still ruled by that nation without local government, and a racial slur equating everyone in the group to thieves is still common and even permitted on TV? Do those folks count as victims? The country is Wales. Every time you hear someone talk about welshing on a bet, remember that they're pretty much calling me nigger. Hope you remember to be offended for me.
Please note the word "usually". Sometimes a homogenous nation arises naturally, or even as a result of a group splitting off from a more mixed country. Often, though, this is because persons who don't fit in are marginalized or threatened until they move out or are simply killed. The Serbs aren't the only ones who do this, even such civilized folks as the Japanese discriminate against their own native ethnic minorities,and don't let immigrants become citizens.
And lets all admit that not everyone in Mexico is a Latino Christian. There are lots of folks living there whose ancestry has little to no European blood, and who may well not be Christian either. The lot of some of those natives is so bad that they have risen in armed rebellion. And for that matter, the Mexican government, fearing the power of the Catholic church, still has some fairly discriminatory laws on the books regarding religion as well. That government would love to pretend that these problems don't exist. Don't you do it, too. Mexico is a far better example of my claim than yours.
It's not necessarily racist. With so many countries being mostly or all of one ethnic and/or religious group (which usually indicates that the country has its own racist and exclusionary practices or else they'd have a more visible minority), its easy for singling out persons from one country to be perceived as, or actually be, racist, but it isn't necessarily so. It often is racist, but it doesn't have to be. Are the many groups around the world who hate Americans racist? If so, what race are they against?
Besides, most of the anti-profiling arguments just piss me off. Most of the profiles are based on dry, boring math, just probabilities churned out by a computer somewhere. The best way for communities to not be harassed by profiling isn't to complain and demand that profiling not be used, its to demand that the members of their community stop the offensive behavior so that the profile is no longer accurate. If some agency only has the resources to check one of two people, one is an Arab man in his mid-twenties with a one way ticket and the other is an elderly black women on the return leg of a round trip, it's just good sense to check the young man. If they had the time and resources they could and should check both, but with limited options you go with the probabilities. No eldery black women have blown up anything big recently, sorry. Want to avoid that profiling? Make it so that young Arab men haven't blown up anything recently, either.
Frankly, I'll get upset about the unfair treatment right after I get back from my trip to Mecca. Oh, that's right, I'm not allowed to go there, I'm not a member of the right group.
You're making the same mistake that the US media tends to make when reporting on this issue: tying two unrelated problems together. The government keeping and correlating more information about an individual, and requirements to show ID more often, are entirely separate topics despite how the press - and the civil liberties lobby, sadly - portray them. Every single place that takes a credit card could demand to see a driver's license starting today, without any new laws or any need for the government to gather more data. Or, the gov't could gather more data, without ever having a national ID or requiring anyone to identify themselves at any point. Two entirely distinct issues.
As an example, France. The French do have national ID papers, but as with most European nations, they strongly limit data gathering by statute. (Of course, given what an amazingly high percentage of the French population works for the gov't in one form or another, any belief that they don't actually go ahead and collect that data anyway is charmingly innocent, but that's another matter.)
Treating these issues as a unit weakens the arguments against them, to me at least. Most folks in the US don't mind the idea of a national ID card, or even a national driver's license. They'd be annoyed if they had to show it all the time, but the simple combination of the ID's into one system doesn't bother them. Most folks who move between states would be strongly in favor of not having to go through the grief of changing their DL to the new locale. And, sadly, most of the folks in the US are sheep as regards protecting their personal data, so that argument doesn't do much either. I know that the civil liberties folks hope to tie in the idea of gov't lackeys demanding ID checks in hopes of getting the public to get angry with the other issues, too, but I think it's working the other way. Since everyone sees all of these topics tied together, their favor or apathy for some of the issues is becoming favor or apathy for the whole set. Lets keep separate issues separate, and clearly show why each is separately a bad idea. Didn't we all favor suing M$ to get *them* to stop bundling?
...just buy Doubleclick's database? Those bastards already have most everyone's data. If the gov't is going to collect data like that, they can at least have the decency to do it on the cheap and not add insult to injury by spending huge amounts of my tax money on it.
What I'd like is some 'Personal Privacy License' to be drawn up. It would lay out in extremely explicit and legally binding terms the permitted usages of a given person's data. When I go to a website using the license, it is formally acknowledged that I'm not *giving* the site my data, I am instead *licensing* them to use my data under strict limits which may not be changed without my formal permission in advance. It would say so right on the page where I fill in the blanks. My data remains mine, forever.
If a site that got my data under the license gives it out to someone else, it isn't a regrettable incident that might possibly get a brief mention on Wired or C:net, it's a legally actionable event under the same draconian IP laws that all those media companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying for. Selling a database won't just get you a bunch of angry emails from/. regulars, it would be the basis for a class action with thousands of easily identified persons in the class. (Just look them up from the database.) And as a capper, if your data was ever sold, you could use that fact as the basis for discovery motions to every other bastard in the personal data trade, demanding to know exactly who gave them their data and under what circumstances, to make sure none of them had any of the *tainted* data. Think the EFF and the ACLU would be willing to help out? Yeah, me too.
Oh, and for the folks that would want to stick a "Gnu" in the name of the license - sorry. The whole point is that my data remains proprietary, with myself as the owner. Not all data wants to be free, my personal info likes its dark little box just fine, thank you.
While MS makes a convenient whipping boy, the fact that a privacy case is made against them alone - when they are by far not the only folks who sell user data - indicates that this current effort is merely a political sideshow to get media exposure. Of course the state attorney generals will bite, they all want to be governor someday, and want all the media coverage they can get. Actual law isn't the point, and won't be addressed, by posing AGs looking to raise their media profile. Sadly, this important topic is just being whored out as a fundraiser. Hope Oracle, Sun, and AOL paid some big checks to EPIC for this shameless pandering - if you're going to sell out, don't go cheap.
Shocking! ESR is in favor of *proprietary* transport! All travel is centrally controlled, using the cars provided by your helpful government, and while you can only go to the places that have been officially added to the destination list, that should be good enough for most every user.
Hmm, sounds like the Microsoft plan for software. I'll keep my not-as-efficient car, thanks, so I can go where I want, when I want. If there were a decent mass transit system near me, I might use it if it were convenient for a given trip, but I refuse to be locked in to a system where I have no alternatives. I'll take my automotive Bazaar over your public transit Cathedral, thank you.
Yah, and how many companies are making money or even breaking even doing this? Zero. How long are they likely to be around to pay Linux programmers? Bet you'll be more likely to use a stopwatch than a calendar for that calculation. Services can't pay for programmers, as another almost identical company without them can charge the same or less as the company with coders. Basic economics. Don't any of you zealots want to actually be able to get paid to work with Linux? Where do you expect the money to come from? I like free software too, but I also like to be able to pay my rent.
Yeah, if I was a sneaky gov't type, I'd log into the site to figure out where to put the well-concealed cameras to pick up all the folks who feel it necessary to avoid cameras. Sure I'll get a lot of pseudo-civil-libertarians who think that walking their little fluffy dog one block over to avoid known cameras makes a political statement, but I'll also get the biggest bang for my surveillance buck in picking up the legitimate baddies. Very convenient.
Hell, if I was a *really* sneaky government type, I'd set up the site myself, control both the lists of cameras and the site access logs - who needs to grovel before pesky judges when it's your own site? I could even get shifty folks to walk around areas with holes in the coverage just by *telling* people there is a camera. Great! And I could pay for it all with a research grant, I just have to change the data weekly and track which rats move through the maze differently. Providing not only fun science data, but over time helping to track the very most concerned and possibly even correlating travelers with site access.
Of course, here in the lawsuit friendly US of A, it'll just take one lawbreaker who claims that he picked the spot he committed his crime based on info about camera coverage from the site, and they'll be sued into oblivion. Better mirror the data quick, I give it a month, tops. Though it might get used as a plot device on "Law and Order" and achieve a kind of immortality in reruns.
The answer to privacy damaging databases isn't to avoid getting data in it, but to deliberately put in bad data. Don't avoid the cameras, get a bunch of folks together to wear the exact same outfit while travelling down the same route. Good luck to the Feds to track a given person wearing a beige trenchcoat, Yankees hat, and Michael Jackson breathmask for more than a block when there are hundreds of them on the street.
That's just blackmail. "Come to a lower price, or we'll just ignore our international treaty obligations on intellectual property and *really* rip you off." Where is the upside in that? The pharma company either buckles, validates the actions of Brazil, and sets up a precendent for every other country with an "end justifies the means" attack on medical patents -or- they merely get screwed.
If you don't respect patents, then folks will either stop doing the research, or they will just keep the processes secret. That's right, they go from documented but protected to completely closed. Patents do two important things - they protect the property, but they also describe how the item works. If the pharma companies are already getting ripped off despite the supposed legal protections, they'll just stop filing the patents. Anyone who wants to make their own version will have to do their own research and come up with their own manufacturing process, and do separate studies on the impact of _their_ version of the drug. It's not just a simple case of duplicating the chemical structure, like making a copy of a binary file. It requires a manufacturing process that can get useful yields of precisely the right chemical, with all of the bonds having the right orientation. Having a double bond go the wrong way can make a cure into a poison, and everyone making the pill just from an analysis of an original pill they bought somewhere will have to figure it out on their own. Universities and research labs will have to reinvent the wheel to do the in depth studies they want and need to do. Yep, that'll be a *big* help in the fights against disease.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen code to trap the spiders the spammers use and fill up their databases with crap. What I haven't seen is a honeypot designed just for spammers - a box that *looks* like an open relay, but not only doesn't forward the spam messages, it logs and possibly automagically retailiates against the originator. The anti-spam groups have had good luck attracting spam with email addresses set aside for that purpose, but we need to take it to the next level and have some anti-spam servers. Maybe just a simple bot to start listening on port 25 and responding like known weak versions of sendmail when accessed would do. Any of the mighty code ghods here at /. want to see what they can come up with?
Are you on crack? The US would have to put some serious effort into just cracking the top 3 in modern times - the Germans (WW2), Russians (Stalin), and Chinese (still going strong) have dwarfed the amount of carnage the Americans have put out. The sanctions on Iraq are UN sanctions, not US, and if the Iraqi government decided to spend money on their citizens instead of on more shiny palaces for their fearless leader, no-one would be going hungry. Same with North Korea, vital resources are going weapons programs while the people starve by the hundreds of thousands. It's not the US or UN killing these people, its their own leaders. Your mindless anti-US babbling won't change that, nor will your revisionist history.
And two other really odd points - when the hell did the US *ever* intervene militarily in any way in South Africa? And America is an importer, not exporter of drugs, alas. Unless you count aspirin.
I think that the reason that IBM is devoting so many resources to Open Source is that they already had a huge programmer budget for their proprietary big iron operating systems and apps that just weren't going anywhere and weren't big selling points anyway - they were selling the hardware it ran on and applications that are still proprietary and run on Linux anyway (like DB2). Moving to open source let them spend the same or less money on development while getting for free the work of others around the world, and they got to look like good guys doing it. IBM is just spending money they were already going to spend, replacing proprietary software that was not a big part of their sales efforts.
Sun, on the other hand, is hugely invested in their software sales. They see Solaris as a big selling point when pushing their offerings, and they really *really* want to make as much money as possible off of Java. Going Open Source, no matter how much the geeks at Sun like the idea, will be a huge blow to the bottom line. IBM is replacing one set of software that was largely free (as in beer) with another set of offerings that they don't charge for, so it doesn't hurt them. Sun would be giving up revenue from software that is bringing in a lot of money. They just can't (or think they can't) afford to go completely Open Source. Opening up Java to the extent they have, while maintaining control, allows Sun to still charge for some offerings (like the compatibility tests) and have a head start over competitors in future development efforts, since only they control where Java goes. Going completely Open causes them to lose both the cash and the control, and that they'll fight to the end.
If you think IBM is really comitted to Open Source out of altruism and a philosophical agreement with the movement, try getting them to give away DB2.
You forgot to mention that it is a major component of acid rain, can be lethal if inhaled, and that studies have shown that more than 95% of all cancer victims have ingested significant quantities of it before being diagnosed. Clearly, something needs to be done. ;)
Note for the folks that don't get what dihydrogen monoxide (the silent killer!) is - in the words of the immoral Foghorn Leghorn "That's a joke, son."
...to save Linux from the deadly Word Perfect virus. Everything that Word Perfect has touched since MS first brought out Office has died a horrible pathetic death. The original corporation died quickly, and sold the product to Novell. They were a monster, kicking serious MS butt in the network. All but irrelevant now, alas, they've pretty much disappeared since buying the Cursed Code. Now Corel is the latest victim, going from a strong company making great products to a confused drifter with decent ideas but a total failure of execution. If we're lucky, Corel broke it's ties to Linux before the WP curse could spread to it. Otherwise, Linux would be doomed to bloat, lack of direction, costly failed attempts to expand presence on users desks...oh, damn, too late. Maybe there's still time to fix it, though.
Come to think of it, everything that the original Office competed with died messily, with huge collateral damage to everything close to it. 123 didn't go alone, even Lotus is now just a division of IBM. God help us all if Bill G can find the phone number of the sorcerer he hired for that job again. Yikes.
As far as I can tell, the user still needs to contact the MS server and go through the validation process. At the very least a key that has already been used will be rejected. At worst, MS will log all attempts and check that the key came from the correct geographical region that the boxed product was shipped to, and disable copies that don't match even if the key hasn't been used before. It's a huge hole in the security, but the end users are still going to be bothered. The worst of all possible worlds.
All of the folks looking for a free copy are better off finding a copy of the corporate edition, which doesn't phone home.
Metamods help me out here - I post a fairly rational bit which leads to a long thread with lots of good stuff, and I get modded down twice, with one bastard marking it down as "overrated" - how the hell was it overrated? If no-one wants to mod me up, well and good, sobeit. And I expected a kneejerk "flamebait" since I mentioned the GPL in less than fawning terms, no matter that I actually am in favor of the GPL I forgot to genuflect so that tag was inevitable. But fricking "overrated"?
By deciding that a license wasn't a license, the judge has made an astonishingly large and sweeping precedent, which automatically means that this will be in appeals for many many years. Simply invalidating a license (or any clauses of it) for a software package has huge impacts - f'rinstance, if the precedent holds that a license isn't binding without a more formal agreement than just the "if you click/open the seal/download/&etc. you are bound" bits we're used to seeing, what about the GPL? If a download is equal to sale transaction, then someone could just use whatever bits they liked and forget about making future source free - hey, it's mine, the license isn't worth anything, I can resell/reuse at will.
As much as one would like to see the worst offenders in the idiot EULA game get smacked, I don't think that just deciding that the resale/reuse portions of what had been considered a valid contract are null is automatically a Good Thing. Try to remember that Open Source is protected by a license, too.
-reemul
Bloody hell, is there any way to filter out all posts with the phrase "beowulf cluster of these"? I'd even give up my Jon Katz filter if I could turn off these mindless attempts at humor. "All your base" died months ago, why the hell is this still popular?
Taco, Hemos, anyone, is there some way to stop seeing these damn things?
Sure its a total bastard of an idea from a privacy standpoint, but just think of the fun hackers can have with this once the stores go automated. Just pick off the signal for a product, and rebroadcast using a stronger signal whenever folks go through the scanner. If every single person leaving the store on a given day gets charged for 5 boxes of extra-small condoms and a snickers bar, I'd imagine they'll just go back to barcodes. Or maybe a small personal jammer, so that you can walk through with your heaping cart of geekfuel, and only get charged for a small jar of peanut butter. A cheap 5-cent tag just can't incorporate many security features, and any wireless system is an open invitation to hackers.
The folks who are really concerned about this as a privacy issue need to go visit and abuse all of the test sites they can identify. Drop the confidence level far enough, and the tech won't be adopted.
-reemul
If they could have taken the investment capital, stuck it in a plain vanilla passbook savings account, and made more money than they did with normal business operations...then yes, they are losing money. They lost the difference between what they'd have made with the savings account (a risk free investment) versus the tiny profit they actually made.
Something along the lines of "I need more information before I can comment" is fine, and a typical response to a question one doesn't know enough about to answer. "We would like him to come to the free software community and explain himself to us about it" is pretty damned pompous. You need more data, you go and ask. You don't use the royal "We" and demand that someone come to you, particularly in front of a public forum. See the difference? Doesn't mean RMS was wrong, just clumsy. Thus the need for some professional assistance. He's a bright guy, he'll figure it out quickly enough, he just needs to accept the fact that he needs a bit of help on public appearances.
The guy demanded a response, as if De Icaza was somehow obligated to jump when RMS said frog. He might, just might, try asking for more information and then taking time to frame a rational response instead of treating somebody else as a lackey who needed to come explain himself to the master. Stallman's good ideas and tireless campaigning for what he believes to be right get ignored because he comes across too often as a freak and a prick.
Some of the donations and grants the FSF brings in need to go to a good *publicist*, instead of more coders and lawyers. Like it or not, RMS is a poster child for the Open Source and Free Software movements, but he needs some serious help with his image before all those shiny folks in suits who make IT purchasing decisions will even pay attention to him, or anyone associated with him. A good souless weasel PR guy will keep RMS from making kneejerk responses that piss off folks who might otherwise go along with him, and it will free Stallman's time up for more of the things he does do well. Everyone wins - the pointy haired bosses can interact with the brighty colored and non-threatening Stallman Interface, and the real geeks can get work done with the Command Line RMS.
-reemul
Damn, I was hoping to see pics of an LCDectomy. Actually, what I'd really like to see is a mod of the new lamp-like iMacs with the arm being robotic and software controlled. Have the monitor follow you as you move around the room...
-reemul
Bzzt! Thanks for playing. As someone who suffers from a mental illness and a learning disability, I get plenty of grief already, thanks. For that matter, try being a Catholic in the south - its the last socially permitted prejudice out there. Local groups took out full page ads in the paper attacking my beliefs, great for the self-esteem of a young person. And since my labels aren't visible, computer databases are particularly a problem for me. And I still believe that on the whole, it serves a useful purpose for the country. Personal nuisance doesn't automatically invalidate my point. I frankly am more likely than folks without my difficulties to have certain problems, and a profile is likely to show that. And I really *shouldn't* be extended credit, but folks who don't know better still send me offers in the mail. Heh.
And if we're going to get into the whole "who is a bigger victim" whine, how about a quick pop-quiz: what country was conquered by a European nation centuries ago, had a distinct language that was forbidden by law to be taught all the way until the 1960's, is still ruled by that nation without local government, and a racial slur equating everyone in the group to thieves is still common and even permitted on TV? Do those folks count as victims? The country is Wales. Every time you hear someone talk about welshing on a bet, remember that they're pretty much calling me nigger. Hope you remember to be offended for me.
Please note the word "usually". Sometimes a homogenous nation arises naturally, or even as a result of a group splitting off from a more mixed country. Often, though, this is because persons who don't fit in are marginalized or threatened until they move out or are simply killed. The Serbs aren't the only ones who do this, even such civilized folks as the Japanese discriminate against their own native ethnic minorities,and don't let immigrants become citizens.
And lets all admit that not everyone in Mexico is a Latino Christian. There are lots of folks living there whose ancestry has little to no European blood, and who may well not be Christian either. The lot of some of those natives is so bad that they have risen in armed rebellion. And for that matter, the Mexican government, fearing the power of the Catholic church, still has some fairly discriminatory laws on the books regarding religion as well. That government would love to pretend that these problems don't exist. Don't you do it, too. Mexico is a far better example of my claim than yours.
-reemul
It's not necessarily racist. With so many countries being mostly or all of one ethnic and/or religious group (which usually indicates that the country has its own racist and exclusionary practices or else they'd have a more visible minority), its easy for singling out persons from one country to be perceived as, or actually be, racist, but it isn't necessarily so. It often is racist, but it doesn't have to be. Are the many groups around the world who hate Americans racist? If so, what race are they against?
Besides, most of the anti-profiling arguments just piss me off. Most of the profiles are based on dry, boring math, just probabilities churned out by a computer somewhere. The best way for communities to not be harassed by profiling isn't to complain and demand that profiling not be used, its to demand that the members of their community stop the offensive behavior so that the profile is no longer accurate. If some agency only has the resources to check one of two people, one is an Arab man in his mid-twenties with a one way ticket and the other is an elderly black women on the return leg of a round trip, it's just good sense to check the young man. If they had the time and resources they could and should check both, but with limited options you go with the probabilities. No eldery black women have blown up anything big recently, sorry. Want to avoid that profiling? Make it so that young Arab men haven't blown up anything recently, either.
Frankly, I'll get upset about the unfair treatment right after I get back from my trip to Mecca. Oh, that's right, I'm not allowed to go there, I'm not a member of the right group.
-reemul
You're making the same mistake that the US media tends to make when reporting on this issue: tying two unrelated problems together. The government keeping and correlating more information about an individual, and requirements to show ID more often, are entirely separate topics despite how the press - and the civil liberties lobby, sadly - portray them. Every single place that takes a credit card could demand to see a driver's license starting today, without any new laws or any need for the government to gather more data. Or, the gov't could gather more data, without ever having a national ID or requiring anyone to identify themselves at any point. Two entirely distinct issues.
As an example, France. The French do have national ID papers, but as with most European nations, they strongly limit data gathering by statute. (Of course, given what an amazingly high percentage of the French population works for the gov't in one form or another, any belief that they don't actually go ahead and collect that data anyway is charmingly innocent, but that's another matter.)
Treating these issues as a unit weakens the arguments against them, to me at least. Most folks in the US don't mind the idea of a national ID card, or even a national driver's license. They'd be annoyed if they had to show it all the time, but the simple combination of the ID's into one system doesn't bother them. Most folks who move between states would be strongly in favor of not having to go through the grief of changing their DL to the new locale. And, sadly, most of the folks in the US are sheep as regards protecting their personal data, so that argument doesn't do much either. I know that the civil liberties folks hope to tie in the idea of gov't lackeys demanding ID checks in hopes of getting the public to get angry with the other issues, too, but I think it's working the other way. Since everyone sees all of these topics tied together, their favor or apathy for some of the issues is becoming favor or apathy for the whole set. Lets keep separate issues separate, and clearly show why each is separately a bad idea. Didn't we all favor suing M$ to get *them* to stop bundling?
-reemul
...just buy Doubleclick's database? Those bastards already have most everyone's data. If the gov't is going to collect data like that, they can at least have the decency to do it on the cheap and not add insult to injury by spending huge amounts of my tax money on it.
-reemul
What I'd like is some 'Personal Privacy License' to be drawn up. It would lay out in extremely explicit and legally binding terms the permitted usages of a given person's data. When I go to a website using the license, it is formally acknowledged that I'm not *giving* the site my data, I am instead *licensing* them to use my data under strict limits which may not be changed without my formal permission in advance. It would say so right on the page where I fill in the blanks. My data remains mine, forever.
/. regulars, it would be the basis for a class action with thousands of easily identified persons in the class. (Just look them up from the database.) And as a capper, if your data was ever sold, you could use that fact as the basis for discovery motions to every other bastard in the personal data trade, demanding to know exactly who gave them their data and under what circumstances, to make sure none of them had any of the *tainted* data. Think the EFF and the ACLU would be willing to help out? Yeah, me too.
If a site that got my data under the license gives it out to someone else, it isn't a regrettable incident that might possibly get a brief mention on Wired or C:net, it's a legally actionable event under the same draconian IP laws that all those media companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying for. Selling a database won't just get you a bunch of angry emails from
Oh, and for the folks that would want to stick a "Gnu" in the name of the license - sorry. The whole point is that my data remains proprietary, with myself as the owner. Not all data wants to be free, my personal info likes its dark little box just fine, thank you.
-reemul
While MS makes a convenient whipping boy, the fact that a privacy case is made against them alone - when they are by far not the only folks who sell user data - indicates that this current effort is merely a political sideshow to get media exposure. Of course the state attorney generals will bite, they all want to be governor someday, and want all the media coverage they can get. Actual law isn't the point, and won't be addressed, by posing AGs looking to raise their media profile. Sadly, this important topic is just being whored out as a fundraiser. Hope Oracle, Sun, and AOL paid some big checks to EPIC for this shameless pandering - if you're going to sell out, don't go cheap.
-reemul
Shocking! ESR is in favor of *proprietary* transport! All travel is centrally controlled, using the cars provided by your helpful government, and while you can only go to the places that have been officially added to the destination list, that should be good enough for most every user.
Hmm, sounds like the Microsoft plan for software. I'll keep my not-as-efficient car, thanks, so I can go where I want, when I want. If there were a decent mass transit system near me, I might use it if it were convenient for a given trip, but I refuse to be locked in to a system where I have no alternatives. I'll take my automotive Bazaar over your public transit Cathedral, thank you.
-reemul
Yah, and how many companies are making money or even breaking even doing this? Zero. How long are they likely to be around to pay Linux programmers? Bet you'll be more likely to use a stopwatch than a calendar for that calculation. Services can't pay for programmers, as another almost identical company without them can charge the same or less as the company with coders. Basic economics. Don't any of you zealots want to actually be able to get paid to work with Linux? Where do you expect the money to come from? I like free software too, but I also like to be able to pay my rent.
-reemul
Yeah, if I was a sneaky gov't type, I'd log into the site to figure out where to put the well-concealed cameras to pick up all the folks who feel it necessary to avoid cameras. Sure I'll get a lot of pseudo-civil-libertarians who think that walking their little fluffy dog one block over to avoid known cameras makes a political statement, but I'll also get the biggest bang for my surveillance buck in picking up the legitimate baddies. Very convenient.
Hell, if I was a *really* sneaky government type, I'd set up the site myself, control both the lists of cameras and the site access logs - who needs to grovel before pesky judges when it's your own site? I could even get shifty folks to walk around areas with holes in the coverage just by *telling* people there is a camera. Great! And I could pay for it all with a research grant, I just have to change the data weekly and track which rats move through the maze differently. Providing not only fun science data, but over time helping to track the very most concerned and possibly even correlating travelers with site access.
Of course, here in the lawsuit friendly US of A, it'll just take one lawbreaker who claims that he picked the spot he committed his crime based on info about camera coverage from the site, and they'll be sued into oblivion. Better mirror the data quick, I give it a month, tops. Though it might get used as a plot device on "Law and Order" and achieve a kind of immortality in reruns.
The answer to privacy damaging databases isn't to avoid getting data in it, but to deliberately put in bad data. Don't avoid the cameras, get a bunch of folks together to wear the exact same outfit while travelling down the same route. Good luck to the Feds to track a given person wearing a beige trenchcoat, Yankees hat, and Michael Jackson breathmask for more than a block when there are hundreds of them on the street.
-reemul
That's just blackmail. "Come to a lower price, or we'll just ignore our international treaty obligations on intellectual property and *really* rip you off." Where is the upside in that? The pharma company either buckles, validates the actions of Brazil, and sets up a precendent for every other country with an "end justifies the means" attack on medical patents -or- they merely get screwed.
If you don't respect patents, then folks will either stop doing the research, or they will just keep the processes secret. That's right, they go from documented but protected to completely closed. Patents do two important things - they protect the property, but they also describe how the item works. If the pharma companies are already getting ripped off despite the supposed legal protections, they'll just stop filing the patents. Anyone who wants to make their own version will have to do their own research and come up with their own manufacturing process, and do separate studies on the impact of _their_ version of the drug. It's not just a simple case of duplicating the chemical structure, like making a copy of a binary file. It requires a manufacturing process that can get useful yields of precisely the right chemical, with all of the bonds having the right orientation. Having a double bond go the wrong way can make a cure into a poison, and everyone making the pill just from an analysis of an original pill they bought somewhere will have to figure it out on their own. Universities and research labs will have to reinvent the wheel to do the in depth studies they want and need to do. Yep, that'll be a *big* help in the fights against disease.