You forgot to add that the streets would be paved with gold, babies would never cry, and we'd all have attendants to rub our feet while we worked at our happy-joy-joy Linux workstations.
Good point. I'm not sure about the babies, though. That sounds a bit far-fetched.
Yep, the slow adoption of Linux is holding back all progress of Western Civilisation.
Absolutely. Well said. If Microsoft would stop trying to push their ill-concieved and poorly-implemented schlock on the unsuspecting polulace and went open-source, the world would be a much better place. Babies might even cry less.
I'd like to start out by saying that I'm not a programmer, support tech, student, teacher, etc. I test computers after they get built to make sure that they work before the customers get them.
The reason I use Linux is simple. It doesn't crash every two hours. Windows did. No, I'm not exagerating. I've been running Linux for about two months now, and I've only had it crash once. I've had *programs* (Netscape) crash a lot, but the system itself has been brought down only once.
Note to self: don't run Netscape and xlock at the same time. They don't seem to like each other.:)
I lost a lot when I moved to Linux. My games don't work any more. My scanner doesn't work. My printer doesn't work (bad Hewlet Packard!). Everquest doesn't work (sob!).
Even so, I refuse to give up my Linux installation. You can't make me! One of these days I might even learn enough about it to use it without relying on my brother (who is a Unix programmer).
The more I learn about Windows, the more I think that everyone at Microsoft ought to be beaten senseless with a wet noodle. My hatred of Microsoft products comes from hard, painful experience.
On the other hand, the more I learn about Linux the more I like it.
Yep, America has an idiotic fear of alcohol, marijuana, sex, and just about anything else that looks like it might be (gasp!) fun. Chalk it up to the Puritans. The Europeans had the right idea when they shipped the religious fanatics to the New World, but now *I* have to live with the results. That really sucks.
Note: I don't have anything against religion, per se, I just get really irritated by religious fanatics who try to force everyone else to conform to their particular strict interpretations of their holy scriptures.
Don't forget... "estimated the cost of issuing new user IDs and passwords at approximately $12,500" WTF? Are they paying their network admin $1250 per minute? It couldn't possibly take that long to send an e-mail asking people to pick a new password.
When a situation like that comes up, you don't just ask people to change their passwords. You run a program that changes it for them. Then you expire their passwords so that they have to change it the next time the log on. Then you put their new, expired passwords (which, ideally, should be a totally random collection of numbers and letters) down on paper, and snail mail it to them. In the meantime, they can't access their computers. If you're really paranoid, you change their userids as well, which brings up a whole load of new problems.
In fact, if there were non-military uses of atomic bomb, possession of it should be legal.
Ever heard of orion engines? It's a type of space drive. Basically, you have a big-ass steel plate welded to the back of your space ship. You explode atomic bombs behind the plate, and it propells your ship.
On an even sillier note, there was a project proposed at the University of Alaska to dredge out a certain Alaskan harbor (forget which one; it's somewhere on the west coast) with atomic bombs. No, I'm not making this up. Apparently they didn't realize that it would make irritatingly radioactive glass-lined crater instead of a useful harbor.
"These crimes were the high-tech equivalent of physically breaking into a business and stealing valuable documents from a locked file cabinet..."
People need to learn that the two simply don't equate. Stealing means that a victim does no longer have what was once theirs.
Exactly. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that I broke into FooBar.com's computers, copied their customer list, and posted it to Slashdot.
Let's further suppose that the list was worth $100,000.
Well, after I post it, the list is worthless. I haven't taken the list away from them; they still have it. What I've taken away from them is the value of the list.
Regardless of whether a person steals a gold watch or valuable information, it's still theft, and should be treated as such.
If I use a stick of dynamite to put out a fire by choking it... (fires are put out this way sometimes) am I a criminal?
It would depend on where the fire was. For instance, if it was on your farm out in the country, probably not. If the fire was in a hotel room fireplace, I think that putting it out with dynamite could get you in trouble.:)
Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer, so I could be wrong.
Ok, so I cannot access my employers information using a computer, but it is legal for my employer to look at my private e-mail if I sent it using the company computer?
Yep. It really pays to read those employment contracts.:) Basically, if you don't want your boss reading your email, don't use your work account, use your home account. (To add a little more paranoia to the situation, consider this: even using web-based email from work could conceivably be dangerous, since your employer could cache all data coming from certain well-known free-email sites. Not that they would ever do that...)
On the other tentacle, if your employer used its power to break into your computer at home, you would have cause for complaint. (And probably a pretty darned hefty out-of-court settlement, too.)
US products are subject to US laws. 128-bit encryption, supercomputers, ICBMs, you name it, are not subject to US laws IF THEY'RE NOT DEVELOPED IN THE USofA!
Not entirely true. US law does not deal with where the so-called "munitions" (encryption, etc.) was developed. It deals with the fact the the "munitions" are within the borders of the USA, and they'll be damned if you're going to export it out of the US without jumping through lots of flaming hoops, and probably not even then.
Yep, taking a floppy w/ the PERL RSA program onto US soil, and then off of US soil is a crime. If, for instance, someone in Elbonia sends me an email with the PERL RSA program, and I send it back to him, that's a crime. I could spend a lot of time cooling my heels in a Federal prison for that.
Hey, no one said that Jackbooted Federal Thuggery made sense.
Please don't confuse the attitude of the American government with the attitude of the American citizens. Believe me, the arrogant, heavy-handed way that the US government deals with the rest of the world irritates the hell out of a lot of Americans.
You can buy a pc anywhere right? You can get the code anywhere right? You can install it anywhere right? You can service it anywhere from anywhere right? What's the problem?
True. But... if the US government can place legal restrictions on the export of strong cryptography, they can place legal restrictions on the export of beowulf clustering software.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they can effectively enforce their pathetic restrictions...
Re:Yet Another Wrong Jon Katz Article
on
Middle Media
·
· Score: 2
Yes, old *news media* is dead, and good riddance.
Huh? You mean like newspapers? I have fast internet access at home, and reasonably fast access at work, and I still buy newspapers and magazines. Then there's the 75% or so of the population that doesn't have reliable internet access.
Here's a prediction for you: The internet will kill traditional news media in the same way that television killed books and VCRs killed movie theaters.
Hell yes we boycott them! Amazon can take their fscking patents, fold them until they're all sharp corners, and stick them where the sun don't shine (and I don't mean Barrow, Alaska in January). Who needs the barstids, anyway, when we've got Barnes and Noble?
The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:
1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."
1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."
1812: "The equation of time... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."
1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."
1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."
1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."
The phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people's arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... That would probably work for any great idea. Patent the idea, then open-source the patent. :)
GPL'd hardware. I like it!
Good point. I'm not sure about the babies, though. That sounds a bit far-fetched.
Yep, the slow adoption of Linux is holding back all progress of Western Civilisation.
Absolutely. Well said. If Microsoft would stop trying to push their ill-concieved and poorly-implemented schlock on the unsuspecting polulace and went open-source, the world would be a much better place. Babies might even cry less.
I wish more people had your kind of attitude. ;)
The reason I use Linux is simple. It doesn't crash every two hours. Windows did. No, I'm not exagerating. I've been running Linux for about two months now, and I've only had it crash once. I've had *programs* (Netscape) crash a lot, but the system itself has been brought down only once.
Note to self: don't run Netscape and xlock at the same time. They don't seem to like each other. :)
I lost a lot when I moved to Linux. My games don't work any more. My scanner doesn't work. My printer doesn't work (bad Hewlet Packard!). Everquest doesn't work (sob!).
Even so, I refuse to give up my Linux installation. You can't make me! One of these days I might even learn enough about it to use it without relying on my brother (who is a Unix programmer).
The more I learn about Windows, the more I think that everyone at Microsoft ought to be beaten senseless with a wet noodle. My hatred of Microsoft products comes from hard, painful experience.
On the other hand, the more I learn about Linux the more I like it.
Basically, this tells your computer that the numeric IP of these evil sites is 0.0.0.0, which doesn't exist. This is similar in concept to typing
ln -s /dev/null .netscape/cookies
God, I love Linux!
Note: I don't have anything against religion, per se, I just get really irritated by religious fanatics who try to force everyone else to conform to their particular strict interpretations of their holy scriptures.
When a situation like that comes up, you don't just ask people to change their passwords. You run a program that changes it for them. Then you expire their passwords so that they have to change it the next time the log on. Then you put their new, expired passwords (which, ideally, should be a totally random collection of numbers and letters) down on paper, and snail mail it to them. In the meantime, they can't access their computers. If you're really paranoid, you change their userids as well, which brings up a whole load of new problems.
Ever heard of orion engines? It's a type of space drive. Basically, you have a big-ass steel plate welded to the back of your space ship. You explode atomic bombs behind the plate, and it propells your ship.
On an even sillier note, there was a project proposed at the University of Alaska to dredge out a certain Alaskan harbor (forget which one; it's somewhere on the west coast) with atomic bombs. No, I'm not making this up. Apparently they didn't realize that it would make irritatingly radioactive glass-lined crater instead of a useful harbor.
Yea, work sucks, but somebody's got to pay the bills.
People need to learn that the two simply don't equate. Stealing means that a victim does no longer have what was once theirs.
Exactly. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that I broke into FooBar.com's computers, copied their customer list, and posted it to Slashdot.
Let's further suppose that the list was worth $100,000.
Well, after I post it, the list is worthless. I haven't taken the list away from them; they still have it. What I've taken away from them is the value of the list.
Regardless of whether a person steals a gold watch or valuable information, it's still theft, and should be treated as such.
I think that Do It Yourself weapons of mass destruction are illegal pretty much everywhere.
Or an AK-47 for weekend hunting?
Full auto or semi-auto? Do you have a license for a full-auto weapon? Where do you live?
In the US you can (with the proper license) legally own a fully automatic .50 caliber machine gun. Ahhh, yeah! It's rabbit season! :)
It would depend on where the fire was. For instance, if it was on your farm out in the country, probably not. If the fire was in a hotel room fireplace, I think that putting it out with dynamite could get you in trouble. :)
Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer, so I could be wrong.
Yep. It really pays to read those employment contracts. :) Basically, if you don't want your boss reading your email, don't use your work account, use your home account. (To add a little more paranoia to the situation, consider this: even using web-based email from work could conceivably be dangerous, since your employer could cache all data coming from certain well-known free-email sites. Not that they would ever do that...)
On the other tentacle, if your employer used its power to break into your computer at home, you would have cause for complaint. (And probably a pretty darned hefty out-of-court settlement, too.)
I wonder if Bresnan is an AOL/Time Warner company.
Just trying to be agreeable. :)
Not entirely true. US law does not deal with where the so-called "munitions" (encryption, etc.) was developed. It deals with the fact the the "munitions" are within the borders of the USA, and they'll be damned if you're going to export it out of the US without jumping through lots of flaming hoops, and probably not even then.
Yep, taking a floppy w/ the PERL RSA program onto US soil, and then off of US soil is a crime. If, for instance, someone in Elbonia sends me an email with the PERL RSA program, and I send it back to him, that's a crime. I could spend a lot of time cooling my heels in a Federal prison for that.
Hey, no one said that Jackbooted Federal Thuggery made sense.
ARRRRGH! Guns! War!
:)
:) myself.)
Huh? Oh, right. Sorry.
I'll go back to cleaning my weapons now.
(Disclaimer: no, THAT wasn't intended as a troll either. In fact, I own several weapons (some of which actually work
Please don't confuse the attitude of the American government with the attitude of the American citizens. Believe me, the arrogant, heavy-handed way that the US government deals with the rest of the world irritates the hell out of a lot of Americans.
True. But... if the US government can place legal restrictions on the export of strong cryptography, they can place legal restrictions on the export of beowulf clustering software.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they can effectively enforce their pathetic restrictions...
Huh? You mean like newspapers? I have fast internet access at home, and reasonably fast access at work, and I still buy newspapers and magazines. Then there's the 75% or so of the population that doesn't have reliable internet access.
Here's a prediction for you: The internet will kill traditional news media in the same way that television killed books and VCRs killed movie theaters.
Gosh, that sounds like Microsoft Windows. It seems that the Navy had a distributed failure a while back...
Could this sort of thing be used as protection against Denial of Service attacks?
Someone's patented xyz? Does this mean I have to pay royalties every time I check my fly?
Hell yes we boycott them! Amazon can take their fscking patents, fold them until they're all sharp corners, and stick them where the sun don't shine (and I don't mean Barrow, Alaska in January). Who needs the barstids, anyway, when we've got Barnes and Noble?