I really feel for the telemarketting industry here. I'm in the same boat, really. I used to make over $2 Million/year as a hit man for the mob. Now, due to government meddling, it has become very difficult for me to make a living at all in the murder industry.
This is one of many reasons why I've become an Anarcho-syndicalist.
The correct ethical choice would be to include a back door that would allow you to later hack their computers and bring them to their proverbial knees.
I was just trying to correct great granddaddy poster. I know perfectly well that Echelon has been abused, and is bad. It just pisses me off to hear people act like it's bad because it's another example of the US playing GloboCop. It's bad because it's used illegally.
I've been going nuts about our political situation for a long long time. I'd move to another country if there were a single one with a legal environment that were satisfactory to me.
It's hard for me to believe that monitoring radiowaves from our home shores (or locations selected via treaty) could possibly be considered a violation of your consitution. Especially since the US government is limited by:
1) The laws of the United States of America 2) Its signed treaties.
I know perfectly well that it doesn't follow those two limits. I hate my government. But those are the only two ways you get to complain to me.
Well, you got modded troll, but of course you're correct. If echelon were only used to eavesdrop on foreign spies and soldiers, that would be absolutely fine. However, that isn't all it's used for. It is well known that echelon has been used to give American companies advantages over foreign ones many times in the past. Dunno of any accusations in recent history, but they might just be getting better at covering it up.
Everybody tries to monitor as many communications as possible. We know how the anglo- types do it. We don't know how the han- and slav- types do it. That doesn't mean the anglos are any worse than anyone else, necessarily. The question, simply, is whether it serves the purposes outlined in the US constitution. If so, it's perfectly acceptable to me. If that shit ever gets used to monitor someone that is neither a foreign spy nor a foreign soldier, we'll have every reason to go nuts.
Um. If IBM has released code under the GPL that is covered by those "atomic bomb" patents, then they have given a free license to use those patents in any GPL product. Perhaps any project at all.
Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you must force others to not use it.
The Mysterious Future is a new feature for slashdot subscribers. If you pay, you get to see stories somewhat before they appear for everyone else.
This feature had been open to editors, so that they could catch mistakes. This change does not effect regular users at all (except that now some subscribers are mirroring ahead of time for us).
Great Grandaddy poster was asking why the story disappeared, and pudge was saying that it's cause he changed his mind about whether or not it should have been posted to the front page.
Iduno. Passing arguments by reference in TCL drove me completely bonkers. Perhaps I did it the wrong way (It's been a long time. I don't even recall what was the matter.) but I submit that I'm a pretty sharp guy, and the right way should have been easier to figure out.
It charges to 100% incredibly quickly, even under heavy use (DVD). Under an hour. Perhaps a half an hour.
It discharges under medium use (Web browsing, full brightness, airport, no accessories) incredibly quickly. A half an hour. It used to last a full hour under those conditions.
These times are estimations, but I really don't think I spent more than a half an hour on the toilet surfing porn when it went to sleep on me yesterday.
Conversely, I remember when a (self absorbed, egotistical) friend of mine wanted to break up with his (self absorbed, controlling) girlfriend. He was asking everyone for advice on how he should break up with her, and he eventually decided, "I know I can't just break up with her on the phone. I'll invite her over."
I said, "Do it on her territory. Don't make her have to leave, drive home, etc."
So he called her, and said he was coming over, there was something they needed to talk about. She says, "Look, if you're breaking up with me, just tell me now and get it over with."
"Um, no, that's not it. I'll be right over."
Boy, what a dick. There is nothing wrong with doing it the impersonal way in situations like that. She felt bad about being rejected, and then she felt bad for letting this asshole see her get upset. Hell, in that case, it might have been better if it were an SMS:
New SMS From Alan:
Hey girl. I h8 u. Nvr call me again.
I'll point out that you're paying money every time you talk to your friends. You could have been spending that time getting paid.
I pay money so that I can talk to my friends, and I wish I could do it more. I'd keep spending more until I was spending 100% of my time talking to my friends. Then I'd be as happy as humanly possible.
Talking to my friends is the reward I get for being alive. I'll do whatever it takes to get more. Tell me what's wrong with that?
That's a great setup. So if I'm writing a trojan for use in a highly secure company such as yours, I would ensure that it only made outbound connections while a user was logged in and using the computer.
Of course, you would prevent me from using the machine as a DDOS/DrDOS zombie, but I could still post internal documents randomly on slashdot. That's something.
My only point was that a firewall doesn't obviate the need for other computer security. You, obviously, agree.
Not only that, you could easily make the rootkit query a webpage for instructions. It could check slashdot for posts by an anonymous coward with a certain set of keywords. If you are rooted, and your attacker has 10 ounces of creativity, a firewall will offer you zero protection. The firewall is there to make it more difficult to get rooted in the first place.
The question, really, is should each/. reader pay for their portion of the/. effect.
It's kindof like caller-pays long distance. The caller pays for both people's bandwidth on the telephone system. This means no one is concerned by the (monetary) cost of receiving phone calls.
I'm sure there's no good way to build this into TCP/IP, but if the readers of a web page paid a tiny amount for the required bandwidth, it'd cost nothing to host information on the internet. We would be much, much closer to truly decentralized publishing.
What Linux and BSD need is something like Cocoa (or Carbon or whatever it's called) in OS X. Yes, X is part of the Unix legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment. Desktops ain't that.
Yes, X is part of the Unix Legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment, or ANYTIME YOU WANT A FREE GUI.
Jiminy Cricket. X is bad? Is there an alternative that is Open Source, is ported to the major platforms, has drivers for the major devices, and has thousands of applications written for it. How much work would that be to create? How much work would it take to fix X? (Hint: How much worse was Xfree86 four years ago?)
The reason we keep X isn't because we have a religious need to network the GUI. VNC is a better solution for that anyway. The reason we use X is because it works and is free.
One other observation: Apple uses the "blue screen" thing as part of their FUD on Windows. But isn't it funny how most of their users are still using Mac OS 9.x, which is far less stable than WinXP?
Well. If we're going to argue about what most users run, then you'll have to compare Mac OS 9.x to Win9x. What they're advertising is that OS X is better than Win9x. Easy target, I know. Still, that's the point of the advertisement.
It's hard to argue that either MacOS 9 or Win9x are less stable than the other, since their stability is 100% determined by the amount of crap installed on the system. Win2K and Mac OS X are the first OSs from either vendor that change the "Stability vs. Amount of crap installed" ratio.
There is a distinct difference from grandparent post's method and your method.
His method is automated and run by the customer. Your method is remote, manual, and run by the developer.
His method would be much, much easier to defend in court. It would be a matter of contract law only. Your method might get you arrested for illegal computer access. The fact that your customer violated their contract doesn't absolve you of criminal activity.
Don't get me wrong. Morally, I feel that what you did is perfectly acceptable. I also think it might be illegal. In the future, make it a license check that is automatically run by the installed software.
Ok. Fair enough. Radiohead might make less money with this model. However, I'd suggest that the $1 barrier of entry is so much lower for fans of Creep, that they might get more than 13x the number of purchases they currently get for Pablo Honey.
Of course, Apple could sign big names like Radiohead, let Radiohead figure out their own production & marketting, and give Radiohead $0.90 on the dollar. That might be quite an improvement on their bottom line. Wouldn't work so well for midlevel artists. Might work fine for tiny artists with no marketting anyway.
When will he give it to you? Tomorrow? Is you friend online right now? Do you get good throughput from your friend? I get better download speeds from Akamai than anything else on the net...
Iduno. I feel like $4/album w/o DRM is such a good value proposition that they'd make more money per potential customer than any other music delivery channel, bar none.
Slashdot Mirror
I really feel for the telemarketting industry here. I'm in the same boat, really. I used to make over $2 Million/year as a hit man for the mob. Now, due to government meddling, it has become very difficult for me to make a living at all in the murder industry.
This is one of many reasons why I've become an Anarcho-syndicalist.
The correct ethical choice would be to include a back door that would allow you to later hack their computers and bring them to their proverbial knees.
Yes, I'm kidding.
I was just trying to correct great granddaddy poster. I know perfectly well that Echelon has been abused, and is bad. It just pisses me off to hear people act like it's bad because it's another example of the US playing GloboCop. It's bad because it's used illegally.
I've been going nuts about our political situation for a long long time. I'd move to another country if there were a single one with a legal environment that were satisfactory to me.
It's hard for me to believe that monitoring radiowaves from our home shores (or locations selected via treaty) could possibly be considered a violation of your consitution. Especially since the US government is limited by:
1) The laws of the United States of America
2) Its signed treaties.
I know perfectly well that it doesn't follow those two limits. I hate my government. But those are the only two ways you get to complain to me.
Well, you got modded troll, but of course you're correct. If echelon were only used to eavesdrop on foreign spies and soldiers, that would be absolutely fine. However, that isn't all it's used for. It is well known that echelon has been used to give American companies advantages over foreign ones many times in the past. Dunno of any accusations in recent history, but they might just be getting better at covering it up.
Everybody tries to monitor as many communications as possible. We know how the anglo- types do it. We don't know how the han- and slav- types do it. That doesn't mean the anglos are any worse than anyone else, necessarily. The question, simply, is whether it serves the purposes outlined in the US constitution. If so, it's perfectly acceptable to me. If that shit ever gets used to monitor someone that is neither a foreign spy nor a foreign soldier, we'll have every reason to go nuts.
Um. If IBM has released code under the GPL that is covered by those "atomic bomb" patents, then they have given a free license to use those patents in any GPL product. Perhaps any project at all.
Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you must force others to not use it.
Uh, no. I've been doing VB for a few months. I'm much more at home with Perl, C, Java, etc.
This economy is making smart people do funny things.
The Mysterious Future is a new feature for slashdot subscribers. If you pay, you get to see stories somewhat before they appear for everyone else.
This feature had been open to editors, so that they could catch mistakes. This change does not effect regular users at all (except that now some subscribers are mirroring ahead of time for us).
Great Grandaddy poster was asking why the story disappeared, and pudge was saying that it's cause he changed his mind about whether or not it should have been posted to the front page.
Iduno. Passing arguments by reference in TCL drove me completely bonkers. Perhaps I did it the wrong way (It's been a long time. I don't even recall what was the matter.) but I submit that I'm a pretty sharp guy, and the right way should have been easier to figure out.
But what the hell do I know. I code VB. Eugh.
My dual USB 600mHz iBook is almost a year old.
It charges to 100% incredibly quickly, even under heavy use (DVD). Under an hour. Perhaps a half an hour.
It discharges under medium use (Web browsing, full brightness, airport, no accessories) incredibly quickly. A half an hour. It used to last a full hour under those conditions.
These times are estimations, but I really don't think I spent more than a half an hour on the toilet surfing porn when it went to sleep on me yesterday.
I said, "Do it on her territory. Don't make her have to leave, drive home, etc."
So he called her, and said he was coming over, there was something they needed to talk about. She says, "Look, if you're breaking up with me, just tell me now and get it over with."
"Um, no, that's not it. I'll be right over."
Boy, what a dick. There is nothing wrong with doing it the impersonal way in situations like that. She felt bad about being rejected, and then she felt bad for letting this asshole see her get upset. Hell, in that case, it might have been better if it were an SMS:
Mr. Poag, you're my favorite /. blowhard.
I'll point out that you're paying money every time you talk to your friends. You could have been spending that time getting paid.
I pay money so that I can talk to my friends, and I wish I could do it more. I'd keep spending more until I was spending 100% of my time talking to my friends. Then I'd be as happy as humanly possible.
Talking to my friends is the reward I get for being alive. I'll do whatever it takes to get more. Tell me what's wrong with that?
That's a great setup. So if I'm writing a trojan for use in a highly secure company such as yours, I would ensure that it only made outbound connections while a user was logged in and using the computer.
Of course, you would prevent me from using the machine as a DDOS/DrDOS zombie, but I could still post internal documents randomly on slashdot. That's something.
My only point was that a firewall doesn't obviate the need for other computer security. You, obviously, agree.
Not only that, you could easily make the rootkit query a webpage for instructions. It could check slashdot for posts by an anonymous coward with a certain set of keywords. If you are rooted, and your attacker has 10 ounces of creativity, a firewall will offer you zero protection. The firewall is there to make it more difficult to get rooted in the first place.
The question, really, is should each /. reader pay for their portion of the /. effect.
It's kindof like caller-pays long distance. The caller pays for both people's bandwidth on the telephone system. This means no one is concerned by the (monetary) cost of receiving phone calls.
I'm sure there's no good way to build this into TCP/IP, but if the readers of a web page paid a tiny amount for the required bandwidth, it'd cost nothing to host information on the internet. We would be much, much closer to truly decentralized publishing.
What Linux and BSD need is something like Cocoa (or Carbon or whatever it's called) in OS X. Yes, X is part of the Unix legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment. Desktops ain't that.
Hmmm. Like Cocoa. If only there were some free alternative...
Yes, X is part of the Unix Legacy. No, it's not needed anymore except in a server, multi-user environment, or ANYTIME YOU WANT A FREE GUI.
Jiminy Cricket. X is bad? Is there an alternative that is Open Source, is ported to the major platforms, has drivers for the major devices, and has thousands of applications written for it. How much work would that be to create? How much work would it take to fix X? (Hint: How much worse was Xfree86 four years ago?)
The reason we keep X isn't because we have a religious need to network the GUI. VNC is a better solution for that anyway. The reason we use X is because it works and is free.
Anyway. IHBT. IHL. IWHAND.
Boy, is that the trollingest troll I've ever read. Troll somewhere else, troll boy.
One other observation: Apple uses the "blue screen" thing as part of their FUD on Windows. But isn't it funny how most of their users are still using Mac OS 9.x, which is far less stable than WinXP?
Well. If we're going to argue about what most users run, then you'll have to compare Mac OS 9.x to Win9x. What they're advertising is that OS X is better than Win9x. Easy target, I know. Still, that's the point of the advertisement.
It's hard to argue that either MacOS 9 or Win9x are less stable than the other, since their stability is 100% determined by the amount of crap installed on the system. Win2K and Mac OS X are the first OSs from either vendor that change the "Stability vs. Amount of crap installed" ratio.
There is a distinct difference from grandparent post's method and your method.
His method is automated and run by the customer.
Your method is remote, manual, and run by the developer.
His method would be much, much easier to defend in court. It would be a matter of contract law only. Your method might get you arrested for illegal computer access. The fact that your customer violated their contract doesn't absolve you of criminal activity.
Don't get me wrong. Morally, I feel that what you did is perfectly acceptable. I also think it might be illegal. In the future, make it a license check that is automatically run by the installed software.
They use LEDs, not lasers. It's not a beam of parallel light.
Visa debit cards. Everyone who has a bank account has a visa card in the US. It's not credit, but it works everywhere Visa works. Which is everywhere.
Ok. Fair enough. Radiohead might make less money with this model. However, I'd suggest that the $1 barrier of entry is so much lower for fans of Creep, that they might get more than 13x the number of purchases they currently get for Pablo Honey.
Of course, Apple could sign big names like Radiohead, let Radiohead figure out their own production & marketting, and give Radiohead $0.90 on the dollar. That might be quite an improvement on their bottom line. Wouldn't work so well for midlevel artists. Might work fine for tiny artists with no marketting anyway.
When will he give it to you? Tomorrow? Is you friend online right now? Do you get good throughput from your friend? I get better download speeds from Akamai than anything else on the net...
Iduno. I feel like $4/album w/o DRM is such a good value proposition that they'd make more money per potential customer than any other music delivery channel, bar none.
Guess I'm a little pessimisstic about the effectiveness of social pressures.
Yeah, but you didn't jump on the table and start tap dancing, did you? Most cell phone users are quite polite.