1) The file is being released in a proprietary Microsoft format, thus pushing certain favored open operating systems further outside the mainstream.
2) If the encryption is cracked, we will see another legal maelstrom like we have around Napster and DeCSS.
3) If the encryption isn't cracked, then what happens to fair use? Fair use effectively ceases to exist if you can excerpt films because of encryption measures.
Not quite true. You can have a hell of a lot of amps at negligible voltage and it won't hurt you, and you can have a high voltage at low amps and not hurt you. The concern is the amount of raw energy going through you which is a product of both volts and amps.
My favorite visualization of this is to imagine a table with a weight on it. The volts is the height of the table, the amps is the mass of the book. The bigger the weight or the higher the table, the more it is going to hurt if you it lands on you.
At standard house current 120 volts is enough to mess you up but not kill you (assuming you don't lower resistance by dunking yourself in salt water first). At around 240 volts though there is a problem in that the current can cause arythmia in the heart which is very bad.
In fact, you are actually better off at higher voltages to some extent. If you get hits at say 440 or higher, it will stop your heart, but it will likely start up right away. At some point the voltage gets high enough that it won't restart on its own.
Yeah, our health care system is definitely the envy of all other countries. Interesting facts:
Fact 1: America is rated like 10th or 11th on the average life expectancy amongst nations.
Fact 2: America spends WAY more than any other country in the world on medicine.
Maybe doctors looking for big paychecks are envying the U.S., but all things considered I'd rather get a little more bang for my buck.
Oh, incidentally, I firmly believe that quality of life is a far greater concern than length, but I see no indication that quality of life has been made better by the health care system in this country.
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Re:Gnutella is closed source, hence not secure
on
Gnutella VBS Worm
·
· Score: 1
Open source != secure. Open source means that there is greater potential for people to look at it and make sure it is, but it requires people willing to go through that effort.
Something to keep in mind is that yes, if somebody wants to trace down an indvidual, it isn't that hard. Anonymity though provides a way to prevent that individual from being recognized as a threat worthy of tracking.
Ultimately, to do a thorough and complete track down of an individual requires a great deal of resources. Sure, finding out the IP address that somebody came from when doing something naughty is one thing. Tracking down where that IP address is and who was logged on at the time is an entirely different matter. It requires contact with the administrators of that Internet provider and possi bly a court order.
It is important for our freedom to continue to insure that this process is difficult. If it was easy to connect identity with ip address, it would be much easier to go after individuals who were doing "naughty" things. Is it possible now to track them down, yes. But it is a giant pain to do it so it only happens when the degree of that naughtiness is high.
Reading the previous post reminded me of a little oddity with concentric DSL. After I signed up at 768/384 they started offering 1.5/384. I called them to see if I could get a free upgrade but as it turns out the 768 may be a better deal. With the 1.5 you get a higher possible rate, but your committed information rate is lower than on the 768 line. Kinda wierd way of doing things, but I guess they figure they can sell people on the ridiculously high 1.5Mbs and if they don't deliver it all the time you can't complain because your CIR isn't nearly as high.
When I got DSL service I got it through Concentric which resells Covad service. When I signed up for the service they said it would take 45-60 days to process. I wasn't happy with that, but there didn't seem to be any way to get it faster. As it turned out though it was a very cautious estimate. In fact it took about 3 weeks.
The installation went very smoothly and the guy who came out to my place appeared to actually have a clue about what he was doing. We got the line all set up and tested and I haven't had a problem since.
What's really nice is that concentric's target market seems to be small home office set ups. They explicitly state that you can run servers on your DSL connection, they just don't support it. With the service I have I've got a 768/384 line with 4 STATIC IP Addresses, and I haven't seen any unexpected downtime in the 4 months that I have had it.
So, I highly recommend them! And no, I don't receive any money from them, honest!:)
Really the people who are in the best shape are college grads with 2-5 years experience. They have a proven track record, better honed skills, and they are still young and are still in a position where they can work ridiculous hours.
I'm 25 right now, and I'm already starting to get this sense that I'm getting old. Why? Not because I can't burn the midnight oil anymore, but because I've got other things competing for my time. I'm married now, and scarily enough, I want to have a life outside of my career. So, I don't spend all my free time at work and I don't put in 60 hour weeks (usually).
Really though I think this mentality has a lot to do with the state of the economy right now. People are focussed on time to market above all else and so people who slavishly work 60-80 hour weeks are valued. In a few years when the pace of innovation has slowed a bit and a lot of this becomes old hat, companies aren't going to pay for people who can do hack and slash code til all hours of the night. They'll focus more on people who have experience, who know how to manage code properly, etc.
Just think, was this focus on youth really that strong until a few years ago? My impression is no. It seems like a cyclic thing which will happily go away when the economy cools a bit.
My point is this. Ultimately, the people in charge ARE beholden to the electorate. The only reason we appear to be powerless is because we believe we are. It is within the bounds of the constitution to rip apart the government aparatus and fix it. It is up to us to decide to do it.
Remember, the reason a plutocracy works is because money equates to power and votes. As soon as that ceases to be the case, a plutocracy falls apart. Right now, a politician's success is largely based on the size of his campaign fund. But, that doesn't mean we HAVE to vote for him.
Basically, we can either start a revolution within the system now or wait a few years, grab our guns, and do it the old fashioned way. Personally I'm not a big fan of death and destruction, so I'd rather just fix the current system (i.e. getting off our collective butts and doing something).
You think you have rights at ebay? All you have is the terms of a contractual relationship between you and them. Innocent until proven guilty is something that exists (for damn good reason) in a U.S. court of law. This is a corporation and they can make up their own damn rules.
Welcome to the world that you get when corporations begin to run everything. Your rights are governed by contracts, nothing so noble as a constitutional right. And your rights are only as enforcable as you can afford to make them through lawsuits.
So, if this pisses you off, do the following:
1) Cancel your ebay account 2) Let ebay know why you did it
If you are feeling really malicious, buy some stock in them, and go to the shareholder meeting. Proceed to ask uncomfortable questions about these policies. Wave hi for me as you are getting thrown out:)
A system for the people with big wallets by the people with big wallets. Our existences are increasingly being controlled by corporations who exist outside the influence of democracy. They only exist in a world controlled by money. So, MS, a company with big money comes along and the rights of individuals who don't have much money get stomped on. Big surprise!
Agreed. Since an entire sector of the economy has been built on this technology, there is a lot of money riding on this yahoo's patent being made invalid. If the courts won't do it, then congress will (as it is there perogative under the constitution to regulate this sort of thing).
I think I have finally figured out the USPTO. They know full well that they don't have a clue about a lot of the stuff people are asking for patents on. I mean given the state of the economy right now, it must be hard to find people who know technology and law, and want to work for a government paycheck. So, if you are the USPTo, and don't know what to do about a patent, do you decide to just arbitarily give or deny patents.
If you deny the patents, there is no established legal review process. You can't sue the USPTO, you can just resubmit through an arduous and expensive process and then you may be denied again. On the other hand, if they let it through, then ultimately it is up to the patent holder to enforce it. So, if they try to enforce it, then it is theorized that some corporation who can afford the kind of people who understand this stuff, can rifle off a few law suits. Thus, if it is a reasonable patent it will stand and if it isn't, it will get chucked out in court.
Really, this may not be a bad approach to things if you think about it. Those ideas which have the most potential to be lucrative will get the most financial backing for a challenge when applicable. Sort of a patent natural selection if you will. The only thing the USPTO does is fact check the legal documents, rubber stamp them as being a vaild patent and then let the lawyers settle it on the back end.
Something useful to remember is that the existence of economies came about because of scarcity. There is only so much stuff in the world and since not everybody can have as much as they want of any of it, there has to be a way to figure out who gets what. Why does gas cost what it does? Because there's only so much of it in the world and it takes effort to get it out and available for use.
With the existence of digital media and the ability to create unlimitied perfect copies, the notion of scarcity ceases to exist. It is impossible to base an economy on the control of something that isn't scarce.
If you want to make money off of an inherently non-scarce resource, you must take a different approach. Once possiblity is to provide services that make the resource more valuable to others. Another possiblity is to artificially create scarcity.
Thus we get to the land of digital media today. Today we are entering a time when the media's scarcity is only loosely enforced by copyright due to the inability to prosecute people en masse. So, with no scarcity, money can not be made on control of the media. So, the record companies and bands can take either or both of the options.
They can try to focus more on live performances, providing was to help people manage and get the music they want, etc. They can also take the approach of creating artifical scarcity, using encyrption, etc, to prevent the free copying.
Their smartest pick will be option 1. The second approach, although creating an economic model they are familiar with is ripe for falling apart. Entropy suggests that things always want to return to their natural state, order become chaos, buildings crumble, etc. Encryption, and artificial barriers must be maintained, and they will always be try to self-destruct.
One thing to keep in mind about Linux's future in the game market is that there is a great deal of overlap between the people who are already using Linux and people who are into gaming. The kind of people who will find ways to cool their overclocked chips to absolute zero are the same kind who like an O/S they can get into the guts of. Personally I've been considering the possibility of a Linux gaming machine. The major problem right now is the availability of games. On the bright side there is a rapidly growing supply of pretty decent free games.
Really this demonstration indicates the disparity between Windows and Linux for support by vendors, not the actual power of the O/S. If you ran a similar comparison of Mac vs. Windows you would probably see similar results. It's not because Windows is superior its because 90% of the market earns you 90% of the developer time.
As Linux grows because of its capabilities in other areas and its openness, it will gain market share, and the disparity between the two will decrease. Just give it time:)
Often times I've found that sending an attachment by e-mail was much easier than dealing with FTP and HTTP. For example, I was on-site at a client and needed to get some files from inside their firewall to my office. So, I just zipped them up and e-mailed them.
Blocking attachments seems like a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" kind of solution.
After a few days of the Love Bug circulating it finally managed to infect the inbox of somebody on a mailing list I'm on. I found it very amusing seeing as I use Pine and Netscape to read mail and neither one could give two hoots about VB script:)
Slashdot clearly disclaims that the posts are solely owned by the posters. So, if Microsoft wants to make an issue of this, let them take it up with the posters.
I think we should all take a step back from this issue and realize that there is something more important here than this so called "Freedom of Speech". Microsoft has spent countless billions building a monopoly in the industry, and it is their God given right to defend this monopoly. What is an individual's rights compared to the rights of the countless employees as represented by the corporate entity that is Microsoft.
The government has seen fit to protect the rights of Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA, and others. Should we, as mere citizens sit here and question the legitimacy of this position. How can we sit here and argue that we might somehow have a better grasp on the situation than our elected leaders. Our leaders are being paid good money by the tax system and political action commitees. Do you think they are being paid because they don't know anything about their job? Imagine if you showed up to work tomorrow, totally oblivious as to how to do your job properly. Wouldn't you be fired? They wouldn't stay there if they didn't know what they were doing!
What these posters did is wrong because our politicians said so. And really, what more justification do we need? I call on the editors of Slashdot to condemn these people as government heretics, and remove these posts immediately!
So are AOL, MSN, Netcom, and Compuserve now responsible for the content people send back and forth to eachother? What about the back bone providers? How about taking this a step further. Is FedEx responsible if you send a pirated CD to somebody?
The stupid thing about this, is unless they are going to go so far as to criminalize FTP, IRC and NNTP, this ruling is totally worthless. Fine if Napster loses, then another version will appear in its place. Welcome to fighting the hydra that is the Internet
Here's a good question (IMHO). Part of making something a trade secret requires that you make a reasonable effort to protect the information. Microsoft's answer to this is making you click a license agreement before seeing the information. But, is that really a protection. If every single person on the Internet can access that information (even if they have to click on a license), can that really still be considered secret???
The difference is that in the microsoft realm, this is the process:
embrace -> extend
In open source, this is the process:
embrace -> extend -> publish extensions
Open source advocates are very happy to back extension and improvement of a standard as long as it is a PUBLISHED standard. When a company adds an extension and refuses to publish it, they create incompatibility (or in other parlance, competitive advantage).
Microsoft, historically, has extended things purely as a means of maintaining control. They don't actually enhance anything, they just attempt to maintain their monopoly. This appears to be yet another case of the same thing.
I know that you have made an effort to drum up opposition to the existence of bad software patents such as the Amazon 1-click fiasco. I was wondering what your opinions are on the general principal of software patents (are they all wrong, or just some). Also, what are your feelings about the notion of altruistic patents (i.e. acquiring a patent on some process or technology for the purposes of making it publicly available).
That's right folks, the school system can be saved by simply giving every kid a laptop. You know why? Because:
1) Laptops are technology and as we all know, technology solves all problems 2) Its spending money and as we all know, spending money solves all problems
Say, I've got a wacky idea! Why don't we pay teachers good salaries? Why don't we invest some of that money set aside for the laptops into funding teachers who know how to make use of them.
Technology is an ethically and practically neutral thing. You can use it for good or bad. You can use it to be productive or waste time. You can use it to learn or you can use it to play Quake in class. Just simply dumping into a classroom without taking the effort to train teachers to use this stuff (and perhaps make it financially rewarding even) then this is all money flushed down the gaping toilet of rapid obsolescense!
I'll be really amused (in a grim depressed kind of way) when a few years down the road, the economy is in the toilet, the schools are out of neat-o computers, and the schools are still in the same sad shape they are now.
Slashdot Mirror
2) If the encryption is cracked, we will see another legal maelstrom like we have around Napster and DeCSS.
3) If the encryption isn't cracked, then what happens to fair use? Fair use effectively ceases to exist if you can excerpt films because of encryption measures.
---
My favorite visualization of this is to imagine a table with a weight on it. The volts is the height of the table, the amps is the mass of the book. The bigger the weight or the higher the table, the more it is going to hurt if you it lands on you.
At standard house current 120 volts is enough to mess you up but not kill you (assuming you don't lower resistance by dunking yourself in salt water first). At around 240 volts though there is a problem in that the current can cause arythmia in the heart which is very bad.
In fact, you are actually better off at higher voltages to some extent. If you get hits at say 440 or higher, it will stop your heart, but it will likely start up right away. At some point the voltage gets high enough that it won't restart on its own.
---
Fact 1: America is rated like 10th or 11th on the average life expectancy amongst nations.
Fact 2: America spends WAY more than any other country in the world on medicine.
Maybe doctors looking for big paychecks are envying the U.S., but all things considered I'd rather get a little more bang for my buck.
Oh, incidentally, I firmly believe that quality of life is a far greater concern than length, but I see no indication that quality of life has been made better by the health care system in this country.
---
---
Ultimately, to do a thorough and complete track down of an individual requires a great deal of resources. Sure, finding out the IP address that somebody came from when doing something naughty is one thing. Tracking down where that IP address is and who was logged on at the time is an entirely different matter. It requires contact with the administrators of that Internet provider and possi bly a court order.
It is important for our freedom to continue to insure that this process is difficult. If it was easy to connect identity with ip address, it would be much easier to go after individuals who were doing "naughty" things. Is it possible now to track them down, yes. But it is a giant pain to do it so it only happens when the degree of that naughtiness is high.
---
---
The installation went very smoothly and the guy who came out to my place appeared to actually have a clue about what he was doing. We got the line all set up and tested and I haven't had a problem since.
What's really nice is that concentric's target market seems to be small home office set ups. They explicitly state that you can run servers on your DSL connection, they just don't support it. With the service I have I've got a 768/384 line with 4 STATIC IP Addresses, and I haven't seen any unexpected downtime in the 4 months that I have had it.
So, I highly recommend them! And no, I don't receive any money from them, honest!
---
I'm 25 right now, and I'm already starting to get this sense that I'm getting old. Why? Not because I can't burn the midnight oil anymore, but because I've got other things competing for my time. I'm married now, and scarily enough, I want to have a life outside of my career. So, I don't spend all my free time at work and I don't put in 60 hour weeks (usually).
Really though I think this mentality has a lot to do with the state of the economy right now. People are focussed on time to market above all else and so people who slavishly work 60-80 hour weeks are valued. In a few years when the pace of innovation has slowed a bit and a lot of this becomes old hat, companies aren't going to pay for people who can do hack and slash code til all hours of the night. They'll focus more on people who have experience, who know how to manage code properly, etc.
Just think, was this focus on youth really that strong until a few years ago? My impression is no. It seems like a cyclic thing which will happily go away when the economy cools a bit.
---
Remember, the reason a plutocracy works is because money equates to power and votes. As soon as that ceases to be the case, a plutocracy falls apart. Right now, a politician's success is largely based on the size of his campaign fund. But, that doesn't mean we HAVE to vote for him.
Basically, we can either start a revolution within the system now or wait a few years, grab our guns, and do it the old fashioned way. Personally I'm not a big fan of death and destruction, so I'd rather just fix the current system (i.e. getting off our collective butts and doing something).
---
Welcome to the world that you get when corporations begin to run everything. Your rights are governed by contracts, nothing so noble as a constitutional right. And your rights are only as enforcable as you can afford to make them through lawsuits.
So, if this pisses you off, do the following:
1) Cancel your ebay account
2) Let ebay know why you did it
If you are feeling really malicious, buy some stock in them, and go to the shareholder meeting. Proceed to ask uncomfortable questions about these policies. Wave hi for me as you are getting thrown out
---
---
I think I have finally figured out the USPTO. They know full well that they don't have a clue about a lot of the stuff people are asking for patents on. I mean given the state of the economy right now, it must be hard to find people who know technology and law, and want to work for a government paycheck. So, if you are the USPTo, and don't know what to do about a patent, do you decide to just arbitarily give or deny patents.
If you deny the patents, there is no established legal review process. You can't sue the USPTO, you can just resubmit through an arduous and expensive process and then you may be denied again. On the other hand, if they let it through, then ultimately it is up to the patent holder to enforce it. So, if they try to enforce it, then it is theorized that some corporation who can afford the kind of people who understand this stuff, can rifle off a few law suits. Thus, if it is a reasonable patent it will stand and if it isn't, it will get chucked out in court.
Really, this may not be a bad approach to things if you think about it. Those ideas which have the most potential to be lucrative will get the most financial backing for a challenge when applicable. Sort of a patent natural selection if you will. The only thing the USPTO does is fact check the legal documents, rubber stamp them as being a vaild patent and then let the lawyers settle it on the back end.
---
With the existence of digital media and the ability to create unlimitied perfect copies, the notion of scarcity ceases to exist. It is impossible to base an economy on the control of something that isn't scarce.
If you want to make money off of an inherently non-scarce resource, you must take a different approach. Once possiblity is to provide services that make the resource more valuable to others. Another possiblity is to artificially create scarcity.
Thus we get to the land of digital media today. Today we are entering a time when the media's scarcity is only loosely enforced by copyright due to the inability to prosecute people en masse. So, with no scarcity, money can not be made on control of the media. So, the record companies and bands can take either or both of the options.
They can try to focus more on live performances, providing was to help people manage and get the music they want, etc. They can also take the approach of creating artifical scarcity, using encyrption, etc, to prevent the free copying.
Their smartest pick will be option 1. The second approach, although creating an economic model they are familiar with is ripe for falling apart. Entropy suggests that things always want to return to their natural state, order become chaos, buildings crumble, etc. Encryption, and artificial barriers must be maintained, and they will always be try to self-destruct.
---
---
As Linux grows because of its capabilities in other areas and its openness, it will gain market share, and the disparity between the two will decrease. Just give it time
---
Blocking attachments seems like a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" kind of solution.
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---
---
The government has seen fit to protect the rights of Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA, and others. Should we, as mere citizens sit here and question the legitimacy of this position. How can we sit here and argue that we might somehow have a better grasp on the situation than our elected leaders.
Our leaders are being paid good money by the tax system and political action commitees. Do you think they are being paid because they don't know anything about their job? Imagine if you showed up to work tomorrow, totally oblivious as to how to do your job properly. Wouldn't you be fired? They wouldn't stay there if they didn't know what they were doing!
What these posters did is wrong because our politicians said so. And really, what more justification do we need? I call on the editors of Slashdot to condemn these people as government heretics, and remove these posts immediately!
---
The stupid thing about this, is unless they are going to go so far as to criminalize FTP, IRC and NNTP, this ruling is totally worthless. Fine if Napster loses, then another version will appear in its place. Welcome to fighting the hydra that is the Internet
---
Just hope to god your filesystem doesn't try to launch a pledge drive!
---
---
embrace -> extend
In open source, this is the process:
embrace -> extend -> publish extensions
Open source advocates are very happy to back extension and improvement of a standard as long as it is a PUBLISHED standard. When a company adds an extension and refuses to publish it, they create incompatibility (or in other parlance, competitive advantage).
Microsoft, historically, has extended things purely as a means of maintaining control. They don't actually enhance anything, they just attempt to maintain their monopoly. This appears to be yet another case of the same thing.
---
---
1) Laptops are technology and as we all know, technology solves all problems
2) Its spending money and as we all know, spending money solves all problems
Say, I've got a wacky idea! Why don't we pay teachers good salaries? Why don't we invest some of that money set aside for the laptops into funding teachers who know how to make use of them.
Technology is an ethically and practically neutral thing. You can use it for good or bad. You can use it to be productive or waste time. You can use it to learn or you can use it to play Quake in class. Just simply dumping into a classroom without taking the effort to train teachers to use this stuff (and perhaps make it financially rewarding even) then this is all money flushed down the gaping toilet of rapid obsolescense!
I'll be really amused (in a grim depressed kind of way) when a few years down the road, the economy is in the toilet, the schools are out of neat-o computers, and the schools are still in the same sad shape they are now.
---