Actually, stenos transcribe phonetically. The translation software often makes these mistakes. One of those things that is a byproduct of trying to transcribe real time speech =)
It has always seemed to me that the real Achilles heel of e-voting is the networked approach that most vendors have taken. With a networked approach, fraud can be perpetrated on a mass scale if entry is gained at one weakness.
As a former election judge, I have enough experience to know that rigging a paper election is a daunting, nearly impossible task, as there are litterally thousands of ballot boxes that would have to be compromised for any sort of advanagte (on a state or national scale).
Are these concerns balanced (or even discussed) when officials are purchasing equipment? Do local Board of Elections have not only the expertise, but the concern to ask the right questions? And how do BoE directors react when they hear about your concerns and research?
Actually that situation is easy to resolve. If EA ever went bankrupt, their rights to use ESPN, NFL etc... would be sold once approved by the bankruptcy court. Rights contracts are an asset just like computers and inventory in this way.
Honestly, I don't see the issue here - someone can't make a product that says it officially endorsed by me without my permission. If I choose to only give that to one entity, then that is my decision.
If people don't like it, they should buy other games. It doesn't prevent someone from making another football game - it just prevents them from using trademarked property of the NFL/ESPN.
Look at it this way - should Microsoft be able to take IE7 and call it FireFox?
Keep in mind that although H&R Block may say they will accompany you to an audit, they are in no way responsible if they screw up. Tax law specifically states that liability for filing errors are the filer's responsibility unless the return is prepared by a Certified Pubilc Acct. You will notice that H&RB (and Hewitt, et al.) will call themselves "Certified Tax Preparers" or some such nonsense.
Bottom line is that if they screw up, it is YOUR ass, not theirs. If you use a CPA, then you still have to pay the tax on any mistakes, but penalties, criminal charges, etc. are on the CPA, not you.
Not saying that they don't provide a valuable service, but make sure the person you are dealing with is knowledgeable and understands how much risk you are willing to take.
No this doesn't sound workable, since a person operating at 99.5% accuracy would not make any money.
For example, they check 2,000 e-mails to earn a dollar, so they check 200 to earn 10 cents. If they make one mistake in that 200, then their entire payment for the 200 goes away.
Besides, you are throwing a human resource at a technology problem and when the technology is fixed, *poof* your business is gone.
In the case of MT the problem isn't the amount of spam, its the way in which static pages are rebuilt when they don't need to be, and mostly manifests itself in shared user environments (per the article). Your service wouldn't help this, because the problem isn't in the spam being displayed its the generation of the pages with the spam on it, which would have to be completed before your spam auditors could ever even see the copy.
Not to mention all the problems around fulfillment. So they see spam, what do they do? Send an e-mail? Do you think people would give your little spam army access to delete comments on the spot? Or do you plan on using some sort of live filtering to further slow down a bottle necked process?
Some things, like voting, should have human intervention and control. Others like this aren't as suited to the task.
Sarbanes-Oxley is not banking legislation. It is reform of Corporate Governance and SEC reporting reqirements, fraud, etc...and appliens to any corporation. Gramm/Leech/Bailey was the banking/insurance/brokerage bill.
That being said, as the article pointed out, the password requirements are not legislated, they are merely developed by consultants as a "show of controls". In other words, they are there so a company can say, "See - we try and protect our data from fraud."
Also, the FDIC does not audit bank security. That duty falls to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve System.
Every bank I have ever worked in uses an internal network for their transaction processing systems that is closed to the internet/public. In almost all cases, to compromise a bank network would mean:
1. physical access to a machine on the tx network 2. knowledge of the deposit systems used at that bank (most are custom in-house apps and not intuitive) 3. knowledge of login information and passwords
And even after all that there is a mile long audit trail. Its not like everything is on some linux box where you can delete the syslog. Bank security is had through iots architecture, not through the number of characters in a password.
Prior to my current position I was a Cost/Schedule Engineer with a construction firm. There have been numerous studies on labor productivity versus hours per week worked and they all point to an optimum long term weekly rate of around 50 hours in the building trades.
For short term gains (read: less than two weeks), 60 or 72 hours can give you a boost, but after abour 3 weeks you actually would have been farther along chugging at 50 hours per week than at 72. After a week or two of 72 hour weeks productivity is in the toilet.
Also, safety problems increase, attendance problems arise, etc. etc.
No construction site in the world would consider working those hours long term since it is so counterproductive.
I would love to see some research on how many criminal case juries were significantly influenced by the existence and contents of information gained form wiretaps.
It seems to me that most criminal cases do not rely on wiretaps, only certain high-profile and complex crimes (just speculation - I have no evidence). If this is the case then might there be a better way of funding it?
Taxes levied like this have little accountability on how they are spent. Taxes levied by a legislative body, on the other hand, have annual budgets and audits. I guess I would like to see how much wiretaps are needed first.
If I were to guess, we would see that in the last 2 years wiretaps have gone up dramatically while convictions from wiretaps have declined as a percentage. In other words, more spying, less results.
The article indicates an anti-terrorism task force was investigating. How likely is this?
Are we to believe that an al Qaeda sleeper cell was activated to inconvenience Midtown? Perhaps a domestic militia group was getting into the colo business.
One of the worst reactions we have had from Sept. 11 is to immediately try and associate everything with terrorism. Next thing you know, MSNBC will have security cam footage and speculating on what happened like it was the damn Zapruder film....
The article specifically states the mascot is for the OO.org schools project, not a general mascot for the OO.org project.
I have enough trouble trying to convince coworkers to adopt F/OS Software without having to deal with "cutesy" mascots. Not that Clippy was any better.
Re:Except that they don't make any profit on iTune
on
Why iPod Can't Save Apple
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· Score: 2, Informative
You obviously have never been a VISA / MasterCard / AmEx merchant.
It is next to impossible to profitably conduct a VISA transaction for less than $1, particularly in an internet business where fraud incidence is higher (and therefore transaction fees are higher).
Every time a merchant accepts a credit card transaction, the associated CC network and affiliated Banks charge a fee. Normally this fee is X% of the purchase price, based on things like volume, risk, fraud, etc. The rub is that there is a minimum per-transaction fee (that varies from merchant to merchant).
The only way the iTMS makes money is if people purchase multiple songs in the same session. This is why Apple pushes things like Gift Certs and their "Allowance" packages so much - it allows them to process a single VISA transaction for 20 or 30 songs.
The network is such that a merchant purchases services from a CC Merchant Services vendor or a bank. The CC Merchant Svcs company must contract with a bank to have their transactions processed (only banks may directly transact with the VISA clearinghouse - which is a consortium of member banks). All of these networks need a cut, which is why low dollar credit card transactions are expensive. I know MasterCard operationally is almost identical to VISA, I am less sure about AmEx's model.
The bottom line is that for every single or two song transactions Apple conducts, they probably are losing money on the purchase.
In the age of the internet, it seems that traditional law falls down in a alot of places. We are all familiar with the various IP issues with electronic media, but other issues are at the forefront as well, such as: jurisdiction, international transactions, taxation, morality, etc... For most of these items, the paradigm changes so much in the electronic world that current laws are next to impossible to reconcile.
Are most American and other legal systems so broken that they will never be able to adequately address cyberspace? Does the whole system need blown up and reconstructed, or maybe a new adjunct system built?
Contrary to what the Slashdot story says, the article DOES NOT say he committed no Australian crime. The article states that his defense attorney CLAIMS he committed no crime.
That is a defense attorney's job, isn't it? And its hardly a fair assessment of the law. His only basis for saying he committed no crime is that the servers he used were in the U.S. (MIT).
The point is there is a reciprocal extradition treaty between the U.S. and Australia (See Australian Extradition Act of 1988).
Despite the "overlord" assertions on many posts this is a simple matter of law and will be determined by an Australian Court in their own sovereign nation. This isn't like the U.S. showed up in NSW and forcibly kidnapped him.
He isn't referring to putting Linux in the public domain, he is referring to placing Unix in the public domain.
In other words, he is surprised that the quick solution - buy the source to Unix then place Unix source in the public domain - has not happened.
There are a lot of things that Anderer stands for that I despise, however someone like IBM doing what he suggests would actually be good for the community in that it would settle a lot of the licensing murkiness around Unix that has hung like a pall over it for years (AT&T, BSD, Novell, SCO, SCO/Caldera, etc...).
I think this would prove next to impossible in a practical sense, however, as I am sure that other companies would claim that IBM doesn't own *ALL* of Unix and sue on that basis.
The bottom line is that I don't see Unix license issues ever disappearing completely - the best we can hope for is a clear judgement against SCO that prevents any other company from trying similar tactics.
First, the First Amendment only prevents the Government form impinging on free speech.
Second, HardOCP has done nothing criminal, they are being threatened by a civil action under the tort of libel. For HarcOCP to be liable for anything Infinium needs to prove that the article by HardOCP was both false and malicious.
In the case that the article IS both false and malicious, then I think HardOCP should be responsible for the damage done. Note that I am not saying that they ARE responsible, just that if the facts bear out that they are, then they should be held accountable to their words.
Free speech does not mean speech without accountability.
Under most interpretations of libel law, there are three things that Infinium would need to prove.
The first is that not only did HardOCP publish incorrect information, but they did so willingly. In other words, they had to know at the time the article was factually incorrect. If Infinium provided correct information at the time, then this might not really be in dispute. That said, many of the items in the letter appear to be judgements and opinions.
Second, Infinium would have to prove that HardOCP published incorrect information with malice. This is not easy by a long shot, since you are trying to prove motivation.
Finally, Infinium has to prove that they were damaged by the article in clear monetary terms. This is always one of the hardest things to measure in a libel action.
All that being said, I think it is clear that HardOCP has some valid points in the article but at the same time, has been given corrected information (such as location of offices, etc). If HardOCP truly takes journalism seriously, then a few corrections should be forthcoming. The fact that an expense paid invitation to view the facility was turned down suggests a strong anti-Infinium bias.
This is one of those things where both parties stop the shenanigans and own up to the truth. Each is falling far short of being forthright about the matter.
Though it doesn't completely discredit the research, there are flaws (one large, one not so large) that are immediately evident.
1. It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors. All anecdotal research I have seen is that minors make up a significant population of online file traders. It is my opinion that this segment of the population could have a serious impact on the results.
2. The fact that the research is conducted during a time when the RIAA is efectively criminalizing file sharing will motivate people to answer dishonestly for fear of being "tagged" a copyright violator. When a survey relies on an honest answer to be an admission of criminal activity, people will not be as forthright with their answers.
I don't think that this would change the overall answer, that copyrighted file trading is down, but I think it would sigificantly impact the degree of its decrease. I think the Pew Internet research is most likely overstating the impact of the lawsuits.
Which actually raises another issue - how much of the decline can be attributed to other factors, such as:
1. Poor music released in 4th qtr 2003
2. Increased self-regulation of file sharing in the University/College segment
3. Filesharing becoming "old news" - basically the idea that everyone gets a TON of music when they first discover file sharing, then taper off as the previous 3 months of new music is no where near the volume of multiple decades of music people were grabbing at the outset.
4. The proliferation of licensed online music distribution, such as iTunes, Napster 2.0, etc
All in all I would conclude that the research has limited usefulness in measuring the effects of RIAA subpoena activity.
I don't believe RMS is a hypocrite, he is merely using a different standard by which to evaluate his decisions. Your example uses the standard of "freedom" or "liberty" or in a practical manner, "flexibility". I believe Stallman talks about freedom quite a bit, but his ideals are clearly rooted in a form of "greatest good" philosophy. The GPL limits freedom, but in RMS's (and many other's) eyes it compromoses absolute freedom for the greatest good of society.
This is much like John Locke contemplated the original Social Contract, where people forfeit a portion of absolute rights for guaranteed protection of the remaining.
That said, you have also mischaracterized the GPL somewhat - you have the absolute right under the GPL to "keep your mouth shut about code modifications." What the GPL does not allow is if you do tell someone of your modifications, you cannot prevent that person from telling anyone else.
Also, the GPL's limit on freedom tends to be one of a task nature, where it merely compels certain acts on distribution. What the GPL prevents is giving anyone the authority to limit *other's* freedoms in using the code. The BSD style license allows someone to use code, then immediately restrict the freedom of the rest of society with more restrictive terms.
If you stop at one person using the code, then the BSD license may appear to be a "free-er" license, but if you carry the analysis out through many code derivations, the GPL ensures protection of freedom to a much larger audience.
Digital Right Management, on the other hand, is used to enforce a position on freedom - it is a tool. In that DRM never adds more freedom to any item implementing it, I can understand RMS's point of view. DRM is a technology which has the sole purpose of limiting freedom. TCPA is similar. It should be up to a user to decide to use a technology like DRM or TCPA, but a choice not to use the technology (accept limits in freedom) should not limit freedom elsewhere (where I watch a movie).
I understand most of the arguments against what Lamo did, but there are a few points I want to get off my chest:
1. To all those saying, 'Its like he broke in your house': No it isn't. The machines were connected to the internet, which is a public medium. A house is a physically closed space where courts have rules one can have an expectation of privacy. Nobody can claim that the internet should provide an expectation of privacy - by its very nature of using shared resources it flies in the face of such an argument.
2. I don't know how it needs to be done, but truthfully do you (the collective Slashdot you) trust companies to secure their networks, perform audits and be upfront and honest about their failures? If I were a NYT partner I would be furious that my information may have been publicly accessible, yet I would never have known about its vulnerability without Lamo. How many companies have been hacked, had credit card or other info stolen, and just not said anything about it? When Acxiom was hacked, personal information on individuals was stolen over 8 months before they "discovered" the hack - and the hack was found by Hamilton County, Ohio Prosecutor's office when investigating another case that had come forward. What are the chances that Acxiom KNEW they had been hacked, compromised personal information, and said nothing? I am guessing with the current climate of corporate ethics, a pretty high chance exists that a lot of information is being disseminated by people who stole it and consumers have no idea because the company in question is sweeping it under the rug.
Hacking into someone else's system is bad. Nobody can disagree there, but the bottom line is a tradeoff of negative impacts - for what Lamo did I see a lot fewer negative consequences than today's corporate irresponsibility with personal information and computer security.
Actually you need to continue reading Section 1201 of the DMCA:
`(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
As is clear, the DMCA ONLY applies when the copyright holder does not give authority to circumvent the technological measure.
My point is that the copyright holder is not Microsoft, so they cannot enforce this provision. If I write a document in Office 2003 and encrypt it, then choose to decrypt it myself, I am essentially granting myself authorization, since I am the copyright holder. MS can not sue, as the Slashdot post alludes, under the DMCA, since they are not the copyright holder. The DMCA's scope is limited to breeches against the copyright holder.
Basically, the copyright holder of the document that is digitally encrypted is the person and/or company that is responsible for it being authored.
Since the DMCA forbids circumventing a device to protect copyright, it is irrelevant since the person doing the circumventing is:
1. Opening their own document, and as the copyright holder they can't very well be infringing upon themselves (though if this were possible no doubt the RIAA would find a way, but that is another topic).
2. Opening a document gievn to them by the copyright holder, in which they have been granted express use of the document.
Even larger than this, however, is the fact that the copyright holder DID NOT implement the DRM technology. A third party cannot unilaterally implement DRM technology on behalf of copyright holders to protected works that do not even exist yet.
I guess what I am saying is that MS (holder of the DRM device) cannot sue PersonX because they do not own the copyright to the protected work.
All this being said - did Judge Jackson have incredible foresight into the possible transgressions of a Microsoft monopoly, or are we really dealing with yet another Bush Administration pandering to large corporations? Each time I read something like this I wonder how our political representatives can be so blind to the societal harm of a software monopoly.
I am sure this has less to do with exorbitant fees and more to do with licensing restrictions. Do you really think MS will allow a GPL'd piece of software to access their network after the anti-GPL campaign they have conducted?
MS is stifling interoperability. Just like they have in the past, and just like they will do in the forseeable future.
The implication that a network is more secure by only allowing MS developed software to access it is bunk. There is no logical reason why restricting clients and implementing security-through-obscurity will reduce anyone's exposure to network security problems.
Well, I guess it would reduce Microsoft's exposure since everyone using the network would have agreed to a Draconian EULA that stripped them of all their rights.
Be assured, this is not about security, it is about control.
Users want to know how a piece of hardware performs. When a hardware vendor takes a shortcut it improve results against a specific benchmark, it is subverting the purpose of the benchmark and is unethical. By 'optimizing' or 'cheating', NVIDIA simply has created a situation where the benchmark is not indicative of real-world performance, and consumers lose a source of factual data.
It would not surprise me to see that much of this is an attempt by NVIDIA to marginalize the value of FutureMark 3d 2003. If a benchmark isn't favorable to a piece of hardware, then make the benchmark a 3-ring circus with these antics - then nobody trusts the benchmark at all.
A sad way to do business and I can't say when my GF3 Ti 200 will be replaced, but it when it is I will not be using NVIDIA. Apparently they don't trust users to make a decision based on an honest assessment of facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, stenos transcribe phonetically. The translation software often makes these mistakes. One of those things that is a byproduct of trying to transcribe real time speech =)
It has always seemed to me that the real Achilles heel of e-voting is the networked approach that most vendors have taken. With a networked approach, fraud can be perpetrated on a mass scale if entry is gained at one weakness.
As a former election judge, I have enough experience to know that rigging a paper election is a daunting, nearly impossible task, as there are litterally thousands of ballot boxes that would have to be compromised for any sort of advanagte (on a state or national scale).
Are these concerns balanced (or even discussed) when officials are purchasing equipment? Do local Board of Elections have not only the expertise, but the concern to ask the right questions? And how do BoE directors react when they hear about your concerns and research?
Actually that situation is easy to resolve. If EA ever went bankrupt, their rights to use ESPN, NFL etc... would be sold once approved by the bankruptcy court. Rights contracts are an asset just like computers and inventory in this way.
Honestly, I don't see the issue here - someone can't make a product that says it officially endorsed by me without my permission. If I choose to only give that to one entity, then that is my decision.
If people don't like it, they should buy other games. It doesn't prevent someone from making another football game - it just prevents them from using trademarked property of the NFL/ESPN.
Look at it this way - should Microsoft be able to take IE7 and call it FireFox?
Keep in mind that although H&R Block may say they will accompany you to an audit, they are in no way responsible if they screw up. Tax law specifically states that liability for filing errors are the filer's responsibility unless the return is prepared by a Certified Pubilc Acct. You will notice that H&RB (and Hewitt, et al.) will call themselves "Certified Tax Preparers" or some such nonsense.
Bottom line is that if they screw up, it is YOUR ass, not theirs. If you use a CPA, then you still have to pay the tax on any mistakes, but penalties, criminal charges, etc. are on the CPA, not you.
Not saying that they don't provide a valuable service, but make sure the person you are dealing with is knowledgeable and understands how much risk you are willing to take.
No this doesn't sound workable, since a person operating at 99.5% accuracy would not make any money.
For example, they check 2,000 e-mails to earn a dollar, so they check 200 to earn 10 cents. If they make one mistake in that 200, then their entire payment for the 200 goes away.
Besides, you are throwing a human resource at a technology problem and when the technology is fixed, *poof* your business is gone.
In the case of MT the problem isn't the amount of spam, its the way in which static pages are rebuilt when they don't need to be, and mostly manifests itself in shared user environments (per the article). Your service wouldn't help this, because the problem isn't in the spam being displayed its the generation of the pages with the spam on it, which would have to be completed before your spam auditors could ever even see the copy.
Not to mention all the problems around fulfillment. So they see spam, what do they do? Send an e-mail? Do you think people would give your little spam army access to delete comments on the spot? Or do you plan on using some sort of live filtering to further slow down a bottle necked process?
Some things, like voting, should have human intervention and control. Others like this aren't as suited to the task.
Sarbanes-Oxley is not banking legislation. It is reform of Corporate Governance and SEC reporting reqirements, fraud, etc...and appliens to any corporation. Gramm/Leech/Bailey was the banking/insurance/brokerage bill.
That being said, as the article pointed out, the password requirements are not legislated, they are merely developed by consultants as a "show of controls". In other words, they are there so a company can say, "See - we try and protect our data from fraud."
Also, the FDIC does not audit bank security. That duty falls to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve System.
Every bank I have ever worked in uses an internal network for their transaction processing systems that is closed to the internet/public. In almost all cases, to compromise a bank network would mean:
1. physical access to a machine on the tx network
2. knowledge of the deposit systems used at that bank (most are custom in-house apps and not intuitive)
3. knowledge of login information and passwords
And even after all that there is a mile long audit trail. Its not like everything is on some linux box where you can delete the syslog. Bank security is had through iots architecture, not through the number of characters in a password.
Prior to my current position I was a Cost/Schedule Engineer with a construction firm. There have been numerous studies on labor productivity versus hours per week worked and they all point to an optimum long term weekly rate of around 50 hours in the building trades.
For short term gains (read: less than two weeks), 60 or 72 hours can give you a boost, but after abour 3 weeks you actually would have been farther along chugging at 50 hours per week than at 72. After a week or two of 72 hour weeks productivity is in the toilet.
Also, safety problems increase, attendance problems arise, etc. etc.
No construction site in the world would consider working those hours long term since it is so counterproductive.
I would love to see some research on how many criminal case juries were significantly influenced by the existence and contents of information gained form wiretaps.
It seems to me that most criminal cases do not rely on wiretaps, only certain high-profile and complex crimes (just speculation - I have no evidence). If this is the case then might there be a better way of funding it?
Taxes levied like this have little accountability on how they are spent. Taxes levied by a legislative body, on the other hand, have annual budgets and audits. I guess I would like to see how much wiretaps are needed first.
If I were to guess, we would see that in the last 2 years wiretaps have gone up dramatically while convictions from wiretaps have declined as a percentage. In other words, more spying, less results.
The article indicates an anti-terrorism task force was investigating. How likely is this?
Are we to believe that an al Qaeda sleeper cell was activated to inconvenience Midtown? Perhaps a domestic militia group was getting into the colo business.
One of the worst reactions we have had from Sept. 11 is to immediately try and associate everything with terrorism. Next thing you know, MSNBC will have security cam footage and speculating on what happened like it was the damn Zapruder film....
The article specifically states the mascot is for the OO.org schools project, not a general mascot for the OO.org project.
I have enough trouble trying to convince coworkers to adopt F/OS Software without having to deal with "cutesy" mascots. Not that Clippy was any better.
You obviously have never been a VISA / MasterCard / AmEx merchant.
It is next to impossible to profitably conduct a VISA transaction for less than $1, particularly in an internet business where fraud incidence is higher (and therefore transaction fees are higher).
Every time a merchant accepts a credit card transaction, the associated CC network and affiliated Banks charge a fee. Normally this fee is X% of the purchase price, based on things like volume, risk, fraud, etc. The rub is that there is a minimum per-transaction fee (that varies from merchant to merchant).
The only way the iTMS makes money is if people purchase multiple songs in the same session. This is why Apple pushes things like Gift Certs and their "Allowance" packages so much - it allows them to process a single VISA transaction for 20 or 30 songs.
The network is such that a merchant purchases services from a CC Merchant Services vendor or a bank. The CC Merchant Svcs company must contract with a bank to have their transactions processed (only banks may directly transact with the VISA clearinghouse - which is a consortium of member banks). All of these networks need a cut, which is why low dollar credit card transactions are expensive. I know MasterCard operationally is almost identical to VISA, I am less sure about AmEx's model.
The bottom line is that for every single or two song transactions Apple conducts, they probably are losing money on the purchase.
In the age of the internet, it seems that traditional law falls down in a alot of places. We are all familiar with the various IP issues with electronic media, but other issues are at the forefront as well, such as: jurisdiction, international transactions, taxation, morality, etc... For most of these items, the paradigm changes so much in the electronic world that current laws are next to impossible to reconcile.
Are most American and other legal systems so broken that they will never be able to adequately address cyberspace? Does the whole system need blown up and reconstructed, or maybe a new adjunct system built?
Contrary to what the Slashdot story says, the article DOES NOT say he committed no Australian crime. The article states that his defense attorney CLAIMS he committed no crime.
That is a defense attorney's job, isn't it? And its hardly a fair assessment of the law. His only basis for saying he committed no crime is that the servers he used were in the U.S. (MIT).
The point is there is a reciprocal extradition treaty between the U.S. and Australia (See Australian Extradition Act of 1988).
Despite the "overlord" assertions on many posts this is a simple matter of law and will be determined by an Australian Court in their own sovereign nation. This isn't like the U.S. showed up in NSW and forcibly kidnapped him.
You are thinking about the wrong OS.
He isn't referring to putting Linux in the public domain, he is referring to placing Unix in the public domain.
In other words, he is surprised that the quick solution - buy the source to Unix then place Unix source in the public domain - has not happened.
There are a lot of things that Anderer stands for that I despise, however someone like IBM doing what he suggests would actually be good for the community in that it would settle a lot of the licensing murkiness around Unix that has hung like a pall over it for years (AT&T, BSD, Novell, SCO, SCO/Caldera, etc...).
I think this would prove next to impossible in a practical sense, however, as I am sure that other companies would claim that IBM doesn't own *ALL* of Unix and sue on that basis.
The bottom line is that I don't see Unix license issues ever disappearing completely - the best we can hope for is a clear judgement against SCO that prevents any other company from trying similar tactics.
They are two different things.
First, the First Amendment only prevents the Government form impinging on free speech.
Second, HardOCP has done nothing criminal, they are being threatened by a civil action under the tort of libel. For HarcOCP to be liable for anything Infinium needs to prove that the article by HardOCP was both false and malicious.
In the case that the article IS both false and malicious, then I think HardOCP should be responsible for the damage done. Note that I am not saying that they ARE responsible, just that if the facts bear out that they are, then they should be held accountable to their words.
Free speech does not mean speech without accountability.
I know it is a nitpick, but slander is a verbal tort. Print and published defamation fall under libel.
Under most interpretations of libel law, there are three things that Infinium would need to prove.
The first is that not only did HardOCP publish incorrect information, but they did so willingly. In other words, they had to know at the time the article was factually incorrect. If Infinium provided correct information at the time, then this might not really be in dispute. That said, many of the items in the letter appear to be judgements and opinions.
Second, Infinium would have to prove that HardOCP published incorrect information with malice. This is not easy by a long shot, since you are trying to prove motivation.
Finally, Infinium has to prove that they were damaged by the article in clear monetary terms. This is always one of the hardest things to measure in a libel action.
All that being said, I think it is clear that HardOCP has some valid points in the article but at the same time, has been given corrected information (such as location of offices, etc). If HardOCP truly takes journalism seriously, then a few corrections should be forthcoming. The fact that an expense paid invitation to view the facility was turned down suggests a strong anti-Infinium bias.
This is one of those things where both parties stop the shenanigans and own up to the truth. Each is falling far short of being forthright about the matter.
Though it doesn't completely discredit the research, there are flaws (one large, one not so large) that are immediately evident.
1. It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors. All anecdotal research I have seen is that minors make up a significant population of online file traders. It is my opinion that this segment of the population could have a serious impact on the results.
2. The fact that the research is conducted during a time when the RIAA is efectively criminalizing file sharing will motivate people to answer dishonestly for fear of being "tagged" a copyright violator. When a survey relies on an honest answer to be an admission of criminal activity, people will not be as forthright with their answers.
I don't think that this would change the overall answer, that copyrighted file trading is down, but I think it would sigificantly impact the degree of its decrease. I think the Pew Internet research is most likely overstating the impact of the lawsuits.
Which actually raises another issue - how much of the decline can be attributed to other factors, such as:
1. Poor music released in 4th qtr 2003
2. Increased self-regulation of file sharing in the University/College segment
3. Filesharing becoming "old news" - basically the idea that everyone gets a TON of music when they first discover file sharing, then taper off as the previous 3 months of new music is no where near the volume of multiple decades of music people were grabbing at the outset.
4. The proliferation of licensed online music distribution, such as iTunes, Napster 2.0, etc
All in all I would conclude that the research has limited usefulness in measuring the effects of RIAA subpoena activity.
I don't believe RMS is a hypocrite, he is merely using a different standard by which to evaluate his decisions. Your example uses the standard of "freedom" or "liberty" or in a practical manner, "flexibility". I believe Stallman talks about freedom quite a bit, but his ideals are clearly rooted in a form of "greatest good" philosophy. The GPL limits freedom, but in RMS's (and many other's) eyes it compromoses absolute freedom for the greatest good of society.
This is much like John Locke contemplated the original Social Contract, where people forfeit a portion of absolute rights for guaranteed protection of the remaining.
That said, you have also mischaracterized the GPL somewhat - you have the absolute right under the GPL to "keep your mouth shut about code modifications." What the GPL does not allow is if you do tell someone of your modifications, you cannot prevent that person from telling anyone else.
Also, the GPL's limit on freedom tends to be one of a task nature, where it merely compels certain acts on distribution. What the GPL prevents is giving anyone the authority to limit *other's* freedoms in using the code. The BSD style license allows someone to use code, then immediately restrict the freedom of the rest of society with more restrictive terms.
If you stop at one person using the code, then the BSD license may appear to be a "free-er" license, but if you carry the analysis out through many code derivations, the GPL ensures protection of freedom to a much larger audience.
Digital Right Management, on the other hand, is used to enforce a position on freedom - it is a tool. In that DRM never adds more freedom to any item implementing it, I can understand RMS's point of view. DRM is a technology which has the sole purpose of limiting freedom. TCPA is similar. It should be up to a user to decide to use a technology like DRM or TCPA, but a choice not to use the technology (accept limits in freedom) should not limit freedom elsewhere (where I watch a movie).
I understand most of the arguments against what Lamo did, but there are a few points I want to get off my chest:
1. To all those saying, 'Its like he broke in your house': No it isn't. The machines were connected to the internet, which is a public medium. A house is a physically closed space where courts have rules one can have an expectation of privacy. Nobody can claim that the internet should provide an expectation of privacy - by its very nature of using shared resources it flies in the face of such an argument.
2. I don't know how it needs to be done, but truthfully do you (the collective Slashdot you) trust companies to secure their networks, perform audits and be upfront and honest about their failures? If I were a NYT partner I would be furious that my information may have been publicly accessible, yet I would never have known about its vulnerability without Lamo. How many companies have been hacked, had credit card or other info stolen, and just not said anything about it? When Acxiom was hacked, personal information on individuals was stolen over 8 months before they "discovered" the hack - and the hack was found by Hamilton County, Ohio Prosecutor's office when investigating another case that had come forward. What are the chances that Acxiom KNEW they had been hacked, compromised personal information, and said nothing? I am guessing with the current climate of corporate ethics, a pretty high chance exists that a lot of information is being disseminated by people who stole it and consumers have no idea because the company in question is sweeping it under the rug.
Hacking into someone else's system is bad. Nobody can disagree there, but the bottom line is a tradeoff of negative impacts - for what Lamo did I see a lot fewer negative consequences than today's corporate irresponsibility with personal information and computer security.
Actually you need to continue reading Section 1201 of the DMCA:
`(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
As is clear, the DMCA ONLY applies when the copyright holder does not give authority to circumvent the technological measure.
My point is that the copyright holder is not Microsoft, so they cannot enforce this provision. If I write a document in Office 2003 and encrypt it, then choose to decrypt it myself, I am essentially granting myself authorization, since I am the copyright holder. MS can not sue, as the Slashdot post alludes, under the DMCA, since they are not the copyright holder. The DMCA's scope is limited to breeches against the copyright holder.
Basically, the copyright holder of the document that is digitally encrypted is the person and/or company that is responsible for it being authored.
Since the DMCA forbids circumventing a device to protect copyright, it is irrelevant since the person doing the circumventing is:
1. Opening their own document, and as the copyright holder they can't very well be infringing upon themselves (though if this were possible no doubt the RIAA would find a way, but that is another topic).
2. Opening a document gievn to them by the copyright holder, in which they have been granted express use of the document.
Even larger than this, however, is the fact that the copyright holder DID NOT implement the DRM technology. A third party cannot unilaterally implement DRM technology on behalf of copyright holders to protected works that do not even exist yet.
I guess what I am saying is that MS (holder of the DRM device) cannot sue PersonX because they do not own the copyright to the protected work.
All this being said - did Judge Jackson have incredible foresight into the possible transgressions of a Microsoft monopoly, or are we really dealing with yet another Bush Administration pandering to large corporations? Each time I read something like this I wonder how our political representatives can be so blind to the societal harm of a software monopoly.
I am sure this has less to do with exorbitant fees and more to do with licensing restrictions. Do you really think MS will allow a GPL'd piece of software to access their network after the anti-GPL campaign they have conducted?
MS is stifling interoperability. Just like they have in the past, and just like they will do in the forseeable future.
The implication that a network is more secure by only allowing MS developed software to access it is bunk. There is no logical reason why restricting clients and implementing security-through-obscurity will reduce anyone's exposure to network security problems.
Well, I guess it would reduce Microsoft's exposure since everyone using the network would have agreed to a Draconian EULA that stripped them of all their rights.
Be assured, this is not about security, it is about control.
Users want to know how a piece of hardware performs. When a hardware vendor takes a shortcut it improve results against a specific benchmark, it is subverting the purpose of the benchmark and is unethical. By 'optimizing' or 'cheating', NVIDIA simply has created a situation where the benchmark is not indicative of real-world performance, and consumers lose a source of factual data.
It would not surprise me to see that much of this is an attempt by NVIDIA to marginalize the value of FutureMark 3d 2003. If a benchmark isn't favorable to a piece of hardware, then make the benchmark a 3-ring circus with these antics - then nobody trusts the benchmark at all.
A sad way to do business and I can't say when my GF3 Ti 200 will be replaced, but it when it is I will not be using NVIDIA. Apparently they don't trust users to make a decision based on an honest assessment of facts.