What?!! You mean Microsoft didn't originate the technology behind one of their products? I'm shocked,yes shocked, that this could happen! (Ok, ok, I should have known.)
I think the recent offering by Stephen King of his serialized novel at $1 per chapter will be a good laboratory for the future of distribution of intellectual works. Once artists become well known, it may be that they can bypass the major media outlets and go to their audiences directly. If so, the marketplace will sort all of this out without the need for government involvement. That would be the more desireable path than future abortions like the DMCA.
The thing that I found intriguing in the article was the mention of the object code printed on the T-shirt. If 2600 really wants to emphasize the free-speech aspects of this whole issue, they ought to start selling T-shirts with the DeCSS source code printed on them, along with the URLs of the sites offering DeCSS. Let the MPAA try to get that stopped under the DMCA.
I don't know if there's any sort of flaw in the IntelliEye technology (which I understand Apple licensed from Msft), but I have horrible problems with my IntelliMouse Explorer. The left mouse button 'clicks' when I don't press it, and frequently double clicks when I do. It also has occasional problems detecting movement on the black keyboard extender surface on which I rest it. I hope Apple's doesn't have these same difficulties. On the other hand, I love the two buttons on the left side. I use them as substitutes for the forward and back buttons of the browser. A one-button mouse like Apple's would seem way too limiting after having this feature. In fact, when I use a normal two-button mouse I frequently find myself squeezing the left side, trying to press these nonexistent buttons. It's surprising how quickly you can get accustomed to using them.
I think it's just you:-). Seriously, the old guard always hates the transformations wrought by the arrivistes. I myself have been known to utter a curse or two about what Usenet has become compared to its heydays (IMHO) of 1980-1994. Probably someone loving it today will be bitching about what a sewer it is in 2005. It's just the way the world works. (COMDEX - what a zoo. I stood in line for over an hour to get into the last one. I may boycott the next one with you.)
Didn't I hear that AOL was going to use Netscape (hence Mozilla) in some future release? If so, that would give it quite a shot in the arm. I've got some sites where 50% of the visitors come in via AOL.
I've been in work environments where, for testing purposes, I was given root permissions on my particular Unix workstation but not on other machines. In that case, I'd have been able to run a packet sniffer (and in fact did a number of times because I was debugging a network-using app). I was actually thinking , however, of Win98 users in particular, since they have no restrictions on what they can do with their NICs.
I agree that anyone who is knowledgeable and wants to remain undetected can probably do so. My warning wasn't addressed to the hackers/crackers out there (who, after all, don't need me to tell them about the dangers) but rather those who out of curiosity might run out and install this software on their work machine running, for example, Win98. If their network administrator suddenly notices that they're sniffing the local net, there're are going to be some questions asked. And legitimately so. There a are a number of ways, some easier to implement than others, to tell when there's a packet sniffer on your net. For a list, take a look here (scroll down to 2.5 - "How can I detect a packet sniffer?").
The Ethereal document makes a mistake that I see more and more. The stuff that comes before the main part of the text is the 'foreword' not the 'forward'. Maybe we ought to just shift to 'preface' since there's less chance to screw it up.
If you're sniffing your local Ethernet network at work, be careful. To watch net traffic, the Ethernet interface must be put into 'promiscuous' mode (accepts all packets, even if not addressed to your particular machine). Some network administrators are sensitive to this sort of thing, since it can be used to compromise security. There are software tools that can detect when a machine has an Ethernet interface in this mode, and they may be in use at your organization. Be prepared to explain why you're monitoring the net traffic.
Good point. The inconvenience I'm willing to put up with is inversely proportional to how much I have to pay. I was speculating that the proposed service was going to end up charging a significant sum, if only because the copyright holders will want their cut and have grown used to getting, say, a dollar or more per song (never mind that their 'manufacturing' and distribution costs are much lower in an online model). For that kind of money, my tolerance level would be about nonexistent.
In network slang, connections are sometimes referred to as "pipes". A "fat-pipe" is one with a high datarate (also sometimes called 'bandwidth') and hence the ability to pass large amounts of data quickly.
From what I've seen, the post-Thatcherite Conservatives in the UK are pretty far to the left, at least compared to conservatives in the U.S. In the U.S. they'd be the equivalent of Democrats. What happens with political parties is that they will adapt their policies to the mood of the country in order to win elections. And the mood of the U.K. seems to be that quite invasive actions by government are ok. As an example, look at the number of cameras covering public places in the U.K. We're on that road in the U.S. as well, but the emphasis seems to be on red-light and speeder cameras (mainly because they're a great source of revenue to cities). Example 2: as part of the new RIP law, the U.K. proposes to track the movements of cellular phone users without a warrant. The only justification would be that a police supervisor thinks its a good idea if they know where you've been. I'm beginning to wonder just where the limits are, as far as the Brits are concerned.
I don't understand why so many people think the Napster model is the way to go in the for-pay distribution business. For all its glories, Napster is, quite frankly, a hassle. Even when I manage to find an offering of what I'm looking for, about 1 in two of my Napster downloads succeed. Not to mention the times that I've invested half an hour in getting something from a person running a 28.8 modem only to have them shut off the machine before the download completes. Why would anyone offering product for money retain a distribution model that relies on a loose confederation of oft-unreliable amateurs? I'm willing to put up with it if it doesn't cost me anything, but if I'm being charged, I want something better. They'll sell a lot more of their stuff if they simply put put the material on a solid server with a nice fat-pipe connection.
By the way, if Napster ever goes off-line, there's a site that provides a browser interface to the Gnutella stuff without your having to run Gnutella itself (take the Napster hassles and multiply by 3 and you have Gnutella). www.gnute.com.
Put a server farm out there, use heavy encryption, et violá! instant data haven. Let the FBI try to seize that! Of course, a half-day transaction latency could be a problem, but faster than lightspeed communication is just around the corner, right?
I find it interesting that the more socialist governments seem to be the ones first out of the box with these sorts of proposals. Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, etc. talk a good game about being for the ordinary person, but are the first ones to heave individual rights over the side when it suits them.
HAL, open zee slashdot URL. HAL? HAL? Goddammit, open theme slashdot URL! Who vee hell designed this natural language interface software anyway? Okie, finally. Click mon the "ask slashdot reed more" link. No, the "ask slashdot read snore" link, not the "apache" clink! Yes, that's right. Man what hey piece of crap. Whoops, telephone. Hello? Oh, hi doll. No, she's out with her friends, sew the coast is clear. Come on over. I just got a Tivo with instant reply, so whee can make some interesting videos. Wait a minute my computer just clicked on reply. What a piece of submit
I read the article and got pretty disgusted with Napster's attempts to suppress the reverse-engineering of its software. If they get shut down, I think it's important for people to be able to drop back to alternatives. Soooo, for those interested, here's OpenNap's definition of the Napster Protocol. Here's OpenNap's home page, which contains links to non-Napster clients, non-Napster servers, references, etc.
Notice that the hoax article say that they were indundated with 'orders'. While I can infer from the wording of the article that they weren't taking credit card numbers, it occurs to me that it would be simplicity itself to replicate this hoax (or just put up a phony online 'business') and get people to submit their card numbers. I guess one moral of the story is to watch out who you do business with. That, and don't believe everything you read online.
It's not difficult to find accounts of Europeans visiting the nascent colonies in the 18th century and complaining of the lack of values found in the US.
Hell, it's not tough to find that here on SlashDot. Rarely a day goes by without a Brit taking the U.S. to task for its failings in some area or other. Must be frustration over their government not trusting them with firearms:-).
Re:Danger Will Robinson!
on
Geek Flavor
·
· Score: 1
I don't know what a Hotline server is. From his description, he was running the server in his own home as part of his graphic-artist web business.
There was a posting by a guy over on Kuro5hin who had set up an open file area for his web users to put their files so that they could be accessed anywhere in the world. Unfortunately he set it up so that anyone could acess anyone else's files. People put copyrighted programs and fonts there, and apparently people were downloading them. The vendors complained and the FBI came and seized his computers and the U.S. attorney was considering prosecuting him. He may or may not have been in the right, but he faces some heavy legal bills nevertheless.
Just to start with, Cringeley is nuts. Even if the FBI had some nefarious scheme to shut down the (United States) Internet with Carnivore, it wouldn't work. The second it started to cause problems, the ISP admins would think it had malfunctioned and take it off line. No warrant is going to give the feds the right to shut down all comms at the ISP. From what I've read, Carnivore isn't installed in series anyway; it hangs off the network and just watches stuff go by. That's when it's used at all. I watched an interview with an FBI guy who said that an ISP that has the ability to supply the feds with the information required by the warrant (and many of them can) won't have to have Carnivore attached to their network. So pffft, Bob X.
As to other types of catastrophic failure, the only thing I can conceive of taking the entire U.S. out is nuclear war, or Network Solutions getting really pissed off. If that happens, the root Domain Name Server is in jeopardy. There are some DNS root overseas backups from what I understand, but without the U.S. lawsuit industry (motto: "Somebody's infringing on our motto!") resolving domain ownership disputes through litigation, they will soon be hopelessly out of date. The world's internet users will be reduced to petitioning Tonga to let them register in the.to domain.
Actually, the reason we can't read their transmissions is that E.T is using strong crypto and it just looks like noise. The FBI was right, we need clipper chips. Damn you, Ronald Rivest!
Slashdot Mirror
What?!! You mean Microsoft didn't originate the technology behind one of their products? I'm shocked,yes shocked, that this could happen! (Ok, ok, I should have known.)
I think the recent offering by Stephen King of his serialized novel at $1 per chapter will be a good laboratory for the future of distribution of intellectual works. Once artists become well known, it may be that they can bypass the major media outlets and go to their audiences directly. If so, the marketplace will sort all of this out without the need for government involvement. That would be the more desireable path than future abortions like the DMCA.
The thing that I found intriguing in the article was the mention of the object code printed on the T-shirt. If 2600 really wants to emphasize the free-speech aspects of this whole issue, they ought to start selling T-shirts with the DeCSS source code printed on them, along with the URLs of the sites offering DeCSS. Let the MPAA try to get that stopped under the DMCA.
I don't know if there's any sort of flaw in the IntelliEye technology (which I understand Apple licensed from Msft), but I have horrible problems with my IntelliMouse Explorer. The left mouse button 'clicks' when I don't press it, and frequently double clicks when I do. It also has occasional problems detecting movement on the black keyboard extender surface on which I rest it. I hope Apple's doesn't have these same difficulties. On the other hand, I love the two buttons on the left side. I use them as substitutes for the forward and back buttons of the browser. A one-button mouse like Apple's would seem way too limiting after having this feature. In fact, when I use a normal two-button mouse I frequently find myself squeezing the left side, trying to press these nonexistent buttons. It's surprising how quickly you can get accustomed to using them.
I think it's just you :-). Seriously, the old guard always hates the transformations wrought by the arrivistes. I myself have been known to utter a curse or two about what Usenet has become compared to its heydays (IMHO) of 1980-1994. Probably someone loving it today will be bitching about what a sewer it is in 2005. It's just the way the world works. (COMDEX - what a zoo. I stood in line for over an hour to get into the last one. I may boycott the next one with you.)
Didn't I hear that AOL was going to use Netscape (hence Mozilla) in some future release? If so, that would give it quite a shot in the arm. I've got some sites where 50% of the visitors come in via AOL.
I've been in work environments where, for testing purposes, I was given root permissions on my particular Unix workstation but not on other machines. In that case, I'd have been able to run a packet sniffer (and in fact did a number of times because I was debugging a network-using app). I was actually thinking , however, of Win98 users in particular, since they have no restrictions on what they can do with their NICs.
I agree that anyone who is knowledgeable and wants to remain undetected can probably do so. My warning wasn't addressed to the hackers/crackers out there (who, after all, don't need me to tell them about the dangers) but rather those who out of curiosity might run out and install this software on their work machine running, for example, Win98. If their network administrator suddenly notices that they're sniffing the local net, there're are going to be some questions asked. And legitimately so. There a are a number of ways, some easier to implement than others, to tell when there's a packet sniffer on your net. For a list, take a look here (scroll down to 2.5 - "How can I detect a packet sniffer?").
The Ethereal document makes a mistake that I see more and more. The stuff that comes before the main part of the text is the 'foreword' not the 'forward'. Maybe we ought to just shift to 'preface' since there's less chance to screw it up.
If you're sniffing your local Ethernet network at work, be careful. To watch net traffic, the Ethernet interface must be put into 'promiscuous' mode (accepts all packets, even if not addressed to your particular machine). Some network administrators are sensitive to this sort of thing, since it can be used to compromise security. There are software tools that can detect when a machine has an Ethernet interface in this mode, and they may be in use at your organization. Be prepared to explain why you're monitoring the net traffic.
Good point. The inconvenience I'm willing to put up with is inversely proportional to how much I have to pay. I was speculating that the proposed service was going to end up charging a significant sum, if only because the copyright holders will want their cut and have grown used to getting, say, a dollar or more per song (never mind that their 'manufacturing' and distribution costs are much lower in an online model). For that kind of money, my tolerance level would be about nonexistent.
What is a "fat-pipe connection"?
In network slang, connections are sometimes referred to as "pipes". A "fat-pipe" is one with a high datarate (also sometimes called 'bandwidth') and hence the ability to pass large amounts of data quickly.
From what I've seen, the post-Thatcherite Conservatives in the UK are pretty far to the left, at least compared to conservatives in the U.S. In the U.S. they'd be the equivalent of Democrats. What happens with political parties is that they will adapt their policies to the mood of the country in order to win elections. And the mood of the U.K. seems to be that quite invasive actions by government are ok. As an example, look at the number of cameras covering public places in the U.K. We're on that road in the U.S. as well, but the emphasis seems to be on red-light and speeder cameras (mainly because they're a great source of revenue to cities). Example 2: as part of the new RIP law, the U.K. proposes to track the movements of cellular phone users without a warrant. The only justification would be that a police supervisor thinks its a good idea if they know where you've been. I'm beginning to wonder just where the limits are, as far as the Brits are concerned.
I don't understand why so many people think the Napster model is the way to go in the for-pay distribution business. For all its glories, Napster is, quite frankly, a hassle. Even when I manage to find an offering of what I'm looking for, about 1 in two of my Napster downloads succeed. Not to mention the times that I've invested half an hour in getting something from a person running a 28.8 modem only to have them shut off the machine before the download completes. Why would anyone offering product for money retain a distribution model that relies on a loose confederation of oft-unreliable amateurs? I'm willing to put up with it if it doesn't cost me anything, but if I'm being charged, I want something better. They'll sell a lot more of their stuff if they simply put put the material on a solid server with a nice fat-pipe connection.
By the way, if Napster ever goes off-line, there's a site that provides a browser interface to the Gnutella stuff without your having to run Gnutella itself (take the Napster hassles and multiply by 3 and you have Gnutella). www.gnute.com.
And what are we looking for on Pluto again?
Put a server farm out there, use heavy encryption, et violá! instant data haven. Let the FBI try to seize that! Of course, a half-day transaction latency could be a problem, but faster than lightspeed communication is just around the corner, right?
I find it interesting that the more socialist governments seem to be the ones first out of the box with these sorts of proposals. Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, etc. talk a good game about being for the ordinary person, but are the first ones to heave individual rights over the side when it suits them.
HAL, open zee slashdot URL. HAL? HAL? Goddammit, open theme slashdot URL! Who vee hell designed this natural language interface software anyway? Okie, finally. Click mon the "ask slashdot reed more" link. No, the "ask slashdot read snore" link, not the "apache" clink! Yes, that's right. Man what hey piece of crap. Whoops, telephone. Hello? Oh, hi doll. No, she's out with her friends, sew the coast is clear. Come on over. I just got a Tivo with instant reply, so whee can make some interesting videos. Wait a minute my computer just clicked on reply. What a piece of submit
I read the article and got pretty disgusted with Napster's attempts to suppress the reverse-engineering of its software. If they get shut down, I think it's important for people to be able to drop back to alternatives. Soooo, for those interested, here's OpenNap's definition of the Napster Protocol. Here's OpenNap's home page, which contains links to non-Napster clients, non-Napster servers, references, etc.
How does /. prevent this same type of attack? Or does K5 operate differently?
Notice that the hoax article say that they were indundated with 'orders'. While I can infer from the wording of the article that they weren't taking credit card numbers, it occurs to me that it would be simplicity itself to replicate this hoax (or just put up a phony online 'business') and get people to submit their card numbers. I guess one moral of the story is to watch out who you do business with. That, and don't believe everything you read online.
It's not difficult to find accounts of Europeans visiting the nascent colonies in the 18th century and complaining of the lack of values found in the US.
:-).
Hell, it's not tough to find that here on SlashDot. Rarely a day goes by without a Brit taking the U.S. to task for its failings in some area or other. Must be frustration over their government not trusting them with firearms
I don't know what a Hotline server is. From his description, he was running the server in his own home as part of his graphic-artist web business.
There was a posting by a guy over on Kuro5hin who had set up an open file area for his web users to put their files so that they could be accessed anywhere in the world. Unfortunately he set it up so that anyone could acess anyone else's files. People put copyrighted programs and fonts there, and apparently people were downloading them. The vendors complained and the FBI came and seized his computers and the U.S. attorney was considering prosecuting him. He may or may not have been in the right, but he faces some heavy legal bills nevertheless.
Just to start with, Cringeley is nuts. Even if the FBI had some nefarious scheme to shut down the (United States) Internet with Carnivore, it wouldn't work. The second it started to cause problems, the ISP admins would think it had malfunctioned and take it off line. No warrant is going to give the feds the right to shut down all comms at the ISP. From what I've read, Carnivore isn't installed in series anyway; it hangs off the network and just watches stuff go by. That's when it's used at all. I watched an interview with an FBI guy who said that an ISP that has the ability to supply the feds with the information required by the warrant (and many of them can) won't have to have Carnivore attached to their network. So pffft, Bob X.
.to domain.
As to other types of catastrophic failure, the only thing I can conceive of taking the entire U.S. out is nuclear war, or Network Solutions getting really pissed off. If that happens, the root Domain Name Server is in jeopardy. There are some DNS root overseas backups from what I understand, but without the U.S. lawsuit industry (motto: "Somebody's infringing on our motto!") resolving domain ownership disputes through litigation, they will soon be hopelessly out of date. The world's internet users will be reduced to petitioning Tonga to let them register in the
Actually, the reason we can't read their transmissions is that E.T is using strong crypto and it just looks like noise. The FBI was right, we need clipper chips. Damn you, Ronald Rivest!