Just when I thought I could read and speak geek correctly, here we go again.
*Sigh...*
Seriously though... Nah... this is the jargon file we're talking about -- IMHO this is more about fun than being serious. 'Cause anybody that tries to speak too much geek in my office finds themselves with a one way ticket out-ta-there.
You may be right. But IIRC part of Sony's argument was that Connectix' box was able to "illegally play" copyrighted Sony games, right? So in effect, the Connectix box was bypassing Sony's protection mechanism, i.e., the design of the console.
By the way, I think that major sections of the DCMA are going to get slammed by the courts, because AFAICT there is no way to enforce some of the provisions without violating enough Constitutional rights that the ACLU and others would just sit back and ignore it. I just hope that the 9th Circuit's decision is the first sign that the the DCMA wall is coing to crumble as completely as the one in Berlin did 11 yrs ago.
You missed my whole point, which is not trying to talk down Win95. I agree that the installations aren't necessarily that big a deal, aside from my wasted time -- it's that the initial release wasn't stable, the second release, -- well, when I upgraded to a new Intel motherboard, the OS started flaking out, but instead of having to tweak a few configs, I had to go to (and pay for) a whole new version of the OS. With no upgrade path other than a hard disk reformat.
Here's the key: all three (OSR 2 has some huge flaky bugs) are so-called "gold releases", which M$ touts as being "low defect".
So let me ask you, do you want to recommend to your IS masters that they install an OS with 28,000 announced "larger" bugs, just to assist the beast from Redmond in perpetuating a tradition of shoddy bug fixes?
That I just ordered the latest ____ Linux Distribution (name omitted to avoid fws (flame war sparks).
Seriously though, after my experience with Win95, I'm not surprised. The short story is that 95 trashed a disk it wasn't even on, the so-called stable version didn't work with newer motherboards, and the OSR-2 release (yes, the OEM version), required me to completely reformat my hard disk in order to install. That doesn't count the fact that IIRC at least one of the service packs cost additional from M$, didn't it?
So when the next great Linux version comes out, or I change hardware, etc.? Rebuild the new kernels, config changes -- the point is, I am in control, and if there are bugs, they get fixed and tested before M$ can even blink and charge me for a partial fix to their so called "gold code" -- complete with 65,000 bugs - 28,000 serious.
IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but having just finished reading the decision, it seems to me like the precedent set here pretty much has the capacity to invalidate the DCMA especially in regard to the DCMA. Because if I can legally reverse engineer and sell a player for games published in cartridges (Connectix vs. Sony), then I can reverse engineer and sell a player for DVD movies (MPAA vs. the rest of the world)
So as a programmer, my feeling is now this -- the war is over, (which is where I would have personally drawn the ethics line anyway) use the DeCSS code to make players, but don't even bother to extend the code into making it copy the DVD's, even if it's relatively easy to do.
That keeps us off the hook in terms of the piracy claim, and really puts the onus back on the MPAA to focus on what is really piracy -- and go after those folks, which is what they should have done anyway, rather than attacking the code itself.
I agree with most of your points. However, my concern about corporate influence in the form of sponsorship still stands. Without a more highly technical group overseeing what should/should not have a software patent, innovation can get stuck in the courtroom instead of the free market.
One of the little nasties that I saw in a law as proposed by Congress (wish I had the link: I'd put it here...) would have even changed things so that the discoveries of prior art would not automatically negate a patent. So while the database being made public is good, I'd still like to see more protections for the public well- being in the form of more stringent requirements and arbitratable review and revocation of current software patents if they just aren't any good.
Wasn't this actually requested and/or negotiated for by the UAW in the current contract negotiations? If so, then what was the tradeoff? I.e., if a company offers me a free PC, web access, etc. instead of a $1.00 per hour raise, then ($1 * avg of 2080 work hours year) I can buy a new low to medium end PC every year, pay for DSL internet access, and still have money left over.
So this may not be as altruistic as it initially sounded. As for me, call me jaded and selfish, but I'll take the cash, please.
And this is off topic why? The original article stated that they were having difficulty with device drivers, etc. So I mention my own experiences, which would have been more successful if Linux and OpenGL had existed as they do now.
The whole point of my post is that if IBM and Toshiba are having problems, they can solve them faster by working with the community than without.
Okay, Mr. UK policeperson, I'd like to give you the keys to this information which I have conveniently burned onto this here handy dandy DVD and which I conveniently encoded using the same codes which allow it to play only on my licensed DVD player. But I can't because the MPAA has this thing that says that if I turn over the key, I'll be sued. And since I'm a US citizen, I'd be in violation of the DCMA if we used the DeCSS source code to let you look at it.
The more they remain the same. Between '89 and '94, I was involved in several projects which have essentially been superceded by the development of the WWW and browser software.
The reason most of these projects suffered either significant changes of function and purpose and/or were abandoned came down to one issue: the availability of a common interface with which to program our software for multiple interfaces and interface resolutions. We even experimented with database driven technology so that after an initial q & a with a user, the system would auto-configure for the best resolution it could find.
The bottom line was that with open standards (such as Open GL, etc.), we would have succeeded. So I wish IBM and Toshiba luck in bringing this to market, and offer them one simple word of advice: let the Open Source movement help you succeed, and don't try to bottle up the technology genie just for short term profit. IMHO companies that work with us in this new era of computing freedom-of-choice will be handsomely rewarded over the long haul.
No, they don't have to mass standardize. What I got from the article is that they are trying to avoid the type of problems that nearly gave Microsoft a stranglehold on the software market.
You are all being led down the same path as ESR... (etc.) Please feel free to elucidate your points, because I am interested.
I don't understand what you mean, and I hope I was pointing out some of the flaws, and no, I don't see where the sort of thought will take us. What sort of thought? Only when I understand what you mean can I take the long hard look which you suggest.
Featuring hard-hitting sponsors like Microsoft, IBM, USENIX and the United States Patent and Trademark Office,
Hmmm, the FUD mongering "embrace of death", the thankfully mostly reformed but previously anti-competitive Big Blue,...., and the seemingly clueless USPTO. Why am I not reassured?
I like the fact that they have this huge database online, with lots of search criteria, but what good does it do when they admit that 'The Software Patent Institute has among its members some who believe strongly in the desirability of patents for software-related inventions and some who are strongly opposed to patents for software-related inventions. SPI deliberately takes no position on this issue...'
Sounds more like they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. I for one say this: make the SPI a non-corporate dominated non-profit which the free community can easily support, and which might even work as an arbitrator with the USPTO to resolve when a software patent should be given and when not. (Personally, I don't think patent law should be applied to 99.9% of all software, but that's slightly off topic.)
The SPI also offers courses to the United States Patent and Trademark Office four to six times a year, working with their software training specialists to build a curriculum for the USPTO Patent Academy training program.
Well (see preceding paragraphs), I should feel better now that I know that trainees are being trained...not to take a stand for or against software patents. Hello? What the hell happened to the government's responsibility to defend the common good?? which is mentioned nowhere in the SPI's statements. Just that companies might use the patent info against each other.
Use is absolutely free, provided you're willing to 'click through' an agreement.Well, I for one will read the agreement and all it's fine print before I click through. Okay, I read it. And admit that I need more legally minded folks here at/. to go over the darn thing and see if I lose any significant rights when I click through the damn thing.
My personal belief is that M$ knows that they have burned too much "good karma" in the U.S. market to recover the margins of profitability and customer trust that they enjoyed in the late 1990s
With another viable, quality desktop on the horizon, running on a free and stable OS, the leveraging ability of the WinApi becomes moot, which allows every other company to invest in the new paradigm. Thus the high significance mergers between Cygnus and RedHat, Borland/Inprise and Corel. The only major companies that haven't moved super-significantly into Linux are Lotus and Symantec -- and Lotus has moved Notes, just not the consumer grade "Smart Suite" applications. Which (AFAICT as a programmer) is because much of the code is so intertwined with the WinApi that extracting the core functionality is extremely difficult -- it would probably be faster to start over.
So if I were the head(s) of Microsoft, I would of course seek to recover by moving my heavy-handed techniques overseas, hoping that the rest of the world wouldn't be ready.
So we here that people at the EU is watching Microsoft's operations like a hawk watches a rabbit? Damn right they should!!Well, sorry folks in Redmond, Europe has SUSE [no distro-flame- war spark intended -- but last I checked SUSE was the #1 distro in Europe] and doesn't need you. Of course, if you would a) play nice and b) port your apps (which we acknowledge as having good qualities) to Linux, and c)open the API so that bugs can be found, fixed, etc. in a timely manner...
...the Itsy port contains several pieces of software not yet available in the newer versions, including the FTL flash file system, power management support, support to dynamically change clock speeds, etc. We expect that these features will eventually be integrated into later versions of Linux, by the Linux community.
I sure hope so. I've been following the SA-110 ever since it was announced, and this is still one great set of CPU chips, even if the Pentiums of the world outclock it.
So when a mammoth PC integrator like Compaq says they researching and giving giving code back to the Open Source Community here, we're talking about a major feather in Linux' cap. Not to mention that when that code is fully vetted and ported to other architectures, the whole community benefits, not just one small (PDA) sector.
In your book, Running to the Mountain, you mentioned having a difficulty finding a belief in God, and also that in some ways the cabin in the mountains has represented a step into the unknown for you. I have also found a consistent voice for the freedom of the individual in most of the writings you post here.
Given those things, how do you feel that the things you are learning on your "journey" and expressed in your written "voice" are applicable to the (sometimes ravening) hordes here at Slashdot?
The problem with your idea is that the media would scoop the interesting stories and not bother to do more than cusory fact checking.
I think you missed my point. The point is that the fact checking would take place before the story was made available to the world side of the "wide web". This would be similar to the/. submit queue, only with an extended group of fact checkers instead of a handful of eyes.
The biggest problem I have thought of since the original post is, how do you keep a fact checker from leaking the story?
Actually, virtually all modern translations of the Bible are in fact copyrighted.
Nope...there is a project to produce a totally copyright free, modern English bible known as the World English Bible which I think you would be interested in.
As far as I know, a person could also derive a new modern translation from previous sources (such as the Gutenberg Bible, the KJ, the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims (spelling?) and not have a bit of legal trouble in doing so.
...such as calling analysts of MP3.com's stock and more or less twisting their arms with nice not-so-subtle things like "what would happen to MP3.com's stock if we sued them?".
I haven't heard anything about this, but AFAICT, this would be breaking SEC law, and they could be held both criminally and civilly liable, couldn't they? And if so, how do we get this out to the web in critical mass form?
Brings me to an idea I've thought about for a while... I wonder if there is a way to set up something on or like Slashdot that would operate sort of like an Open Source "investigative journalism." For example, I post my investigative piece, others do the fact and bias checks, and once it's thoroughly vetted for accuracy, the story is released to the web. Then the media would have a pre-screened, non-media conglomerate owned outlet where they could easily look for "scoops".
Idjits...The reason for this story is that over the past few days, the/. community has had a ton of critical, negative commentary about how Slashdot was going to change, lose editorial independence, etc. because Andover is merging with VA Linux.
So they responded with a letter from the head(s) of the corporation, and if you read some of the posts, you'll notice that Hemos, Chris Debona (who went to bat for all of us at the DeCSS fiasco in California), and others are posting to continue in that same voice of assurance. And from my point of view, the quality of those assurances doesn't sound like they're trying to put us back to sleep -- they are offering intelligent commentary on the reasons why they don't want things to change either.
Other posters talk about how the positive values held by a company trickle down through the whole workplace environment, and yet at least half of the posts so far in this thread continue to whine about the perceived changes, how/. will never be the same, etc.
Get a life folks, and try for once to start the day with a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). Change is the nature of the universe, and/. is/not cannot be simply a mouthpiece for a single company -- because for the most part, we are the voice of this community.
Unless someone has a better suggestion for how to let/. continue to grow (including bandwidth, etc.), than to have corporate ownership, quit whining, okay?
It worked, so hopefully the parent comment will get moderated down as redundant. it's real Weird though -- I haven't changed my settings in months, and this is the first time the post has gotten formatted weird. I'm guessing that some code got changed behind the scenes today, and I got caught by it.
[Moderators, if this comes out formatted correctly, please down my first attempt at this as redundant. I guess something in the/. code got changed, and so my tags showed up all of a sudden.]
Well, start here:
Get familiar with the issues in the cases. Study them and look for every possible angle which will probably not hold up in court.
One of the reasons we lost in the New York case is that the defense attorneys basically got their butts kicked in court because they weren't prepared with the specific details they needed. So based on the facts presented, the judge had little choice but to make what we all believe to be a bad decision.
As you find things which can come into play (other court cases which help our cause, loopholes or interpretations in the DCMA, etc.) correspond (politely) with the EFF attorneys who will be the point men in the fight. Equip them for the fight. This includes financial support, if you can come up with it.
Write calm, lucid commentary about how your local Users group is supporting the fight to free the deCss code. Send it to local media outlets (all types: newspaper, tv stations, radio). Make noise, people!!
Most importantly, vocally and frequently announce and follow through with a personal boycott on the purchase of DVD movies until the movie studios back down, or alternatively, the CCA offers an open license (LGPL would be fine) to the rest of the world allowing us to develop non-industry controlled players.
I did the old "view source trick" to see what you actually did. ('Cause I really didn't want to send you my slashdot cookies.)
I hope you don't mind my explaining what the link would do if someone actually clicked it. This is an absolutely brilliant demonstration of the security hole. The link works like this:
the standard <A HREF= "" opening, followed by
an http...slashdot page which I assume is bogus.
Without closing the HREF, Mark then included a <script> tag, with the
location set to his server's printenv as the target, and the
document.cookie (for/.) as part of the contents of the http request header which this script would send.
Then he closed the script tag, (</SCRIPT>) then the HREF.
the right to be left alone is the beginning of all freedom
I had never heard this quote before, and I'm glad John posted it. What I would like to focus on now is much later in the article, where he says "The distance between corporate and government computers is a very short one.
Exactly right. This is one of the key issues we need to understand and be up in arms about. As corporate America seeks to gain an increasingly tight stranglehold around the influences which move government America (witness the unbelievably large contributions to election coffers on both sides of the political fence via "soft money", the unwillingness of the federal judiciary to open up their records (which would assist in insuring that a specific judge a "conflict of interest" by ruling in cases where he/she owns stocks, etc. ). Folks, that's all three branches of the government which can be corrupted by the money available to big business. IMHO we haven't faced an us (individuals from all walks of life) vs. them (big companies, extremely rich, powerful people (whose wealth is in those big companies) battle like this since the extremely violentm early part of the 20th century.
Wake up folks!! This is a war for freedom(s) that we can't afford to lose.
Slashdot Mirror
*Sigh...*
Seriously though... Nah... this is the jargon file we're talking about -- IMHO this is more about fun than being serious. 'Cause anybody that tries to speak too much geek in my office finds themselves with a one way ticket out-ta-there.
By the way, I think that major sections of the DCMA are going to get slammed by the courts, because AFAICT there is no way to enforce some of the provisions without violating enough Constitutional rights that the ACLU and others would just sit back and ignore it. I just hope that the 9th Circuit's decision is the first sign that the the DCMA wall is coing to crumble as completely as the one in Berlin did 11 yrs ago.
Here's the key: all three (OSR 2 has some huge flaky bugs) are so-called "gold releases", which M$ touts as being "low defect".
So let me ask you, do you want to recommend to your IS masters that they install an OS with 28,000 announced "larger" bugs, just to assist the beast from Redmond in perpetuating a tradition of shoddy bug fixes?
Seriously though, after my experience with Win95, I'm not surprised. The short story is that 95 trashed a disk it wasn't even on, the so-called stable version didn't work with newer motherboards, and the OSR-2 release (yes, the OEM version), required me to completely reformat my hard disk in order to install. That doesn't count the fact that IIRC at least one of the service packs cost additional from M$, didn't it?
So when the next great Linux version comes out, or I change hardware, etc.? Rebuild the new kernels, config changes -- the point is, I am in control, and if there are bugs, they get fixed and tested before M$ can even blink and charge me for a partial fix to their so called "gold code" -- complete with 65,000 bugs - 28,000 serious.
So as a programmer, my feeling is now this -- the war is over, (which is where I would have personally drawn the ethics line anyway) use the DeCSS code to make players, but don't even bother to extend the code into making it copy the DVD's, even if it's relatively easy to do.
That keeps us off the hook in terms of the piracy claim, and really puts the onus back on the MPAA to focus on what is really piracy -- and go after those folks, which is what they should have done anyway, rather than attacking the code itself.
One of the little nasties that I saw in a law as proposed by Congress (wish I had the link: I'd put it here...) would have even changed things so that the discoveries of prior art would not automatically negate a patent. So while the database being made public is good, I'd still like to see more protections for the public well- being in the form of more stringent requirements and arbitratable review and revocation of current software patents if they just aren't any good.
So this may not be as altruistic as it initially sounded. As for me, call me jaded and selfish, but I'll take the cash, please.
And this is off topic why? The original article stated that they were having difficulty with device drivers, etc. So I mention my own experiences, which would have been more successful if Linux and OpenGL had existed as they do now.
The whole point of my post is that if IBM and Toshiba are having problems, they can solve them faster by working with the community than without.
Okay, Mr. UK policeperson, I'd like to give you the keys to this information which I have conveniently burned onto this here handy dandy DVD and which I conveniently encoded using the same codes which allow it to play only on my licensed DVD player. But I can't because the MPAA has this thing that says that if I turn over the key, I'll be sued. And since I'm a US citizen, I'd be in violation of the DCMA if we used the DeCSS source code to let you look at it.
Sigh...
--Smart A$$ mode off--
The reason most of these projects suffered either significant changes of function and purpose and/or were abandoned came down to one issue: the availability of a common interface with which to program our software for multiple interfaces and interface resolutions. We even experimented with database driven technology so that after an initial q & a with a user, the system would auto-configure for the best resolution it could find.
The bottom line was that with open standards (such as Open GL, etc.), we would have succeeded. So I wish IBM and Toshiba luck in bringing this to market, and offer them one simple word of advice: let the Open Source movement help you succeed, and don't try to bottle up the technology genie just for short term profit. IMHO companies that work with us in this new era of computing freedom-of-choice will be handsomely rewarded over the long haul.
Oops. I hit the enter key instead of the apostrophe, and poof! instant post, durn it.
No, they don't have to mass standardize. What I got from the article is that they are trying to avoid the type of problems that nearly gave Microsoft a stranglehold on the software market.
I don't understand what you mean, and I hope I was pointing out some of the flaws, and no, I don't see where the sort of thought will take us. What sort of thought? Only when I understand what you mean can I take the long hard look which you suggest.
Hmmm, the FUD mongering "embrace of death", the thankfully mostly reformed but previously anti-competitive Big Blue, ...., and the seemingly clueless USPTO. Why am I not reassured?
I like the fact that they have this huge database online, with lots of search criteria, but what good does it do when they admit that 'The Software Patent Institute has among its members some who believe strongly in the desirability of patents for software-related inventions and some who are strongly opposed to patents for software-related inventions. SPI deliberately takes no position on this issue...'
Sounds more like they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. I for one say this: make the SPI a non-corporate dominated non-profit which the free community can easily support, and which might even work as an arbitrator with the USPTO to resolve when a software patent should be given and when not. (Personally, I don't think patent law should be applied to 99.9% of all software, but that's slightly off topic.)
The SPI also offers courses to the United States Patent and Trademark Office four to six times a year, working with their software training specialists to build a curriculum for the USPTO Patent Academy training program.
Well (see preceding paragraphs), I should feel better now that I know that trainees are being trained...not to take a stand for or against software patents. Hello? What the hell happened to the government's responsibility to defend the common good?? which is mentioned nowhere in the SPI's statements. Just that companies might use the patent info against each other.
Use is absolutely free, provided you're willing to 'click through' an agreement.Well, I for one will read the agreement and all it's fine print before I click through. Okay, I read it. And admit that I need more legally minded folks here at /. to go over the darn thing and see if I lose any significant rights when I click through the damn thing.
With another viable, quality desktop on the horizon, running on a free and stable OS, the leveraging ability of the WinApi becomes moot, which allows every other company to invest in the new paradigm. Thus the high significance mergers between Cygnus and RedHat, Borland/Inprise and Corel. The only major companies that haven't moved super-significantly into Linux are Lotus and Symantec -- and Lotus has moved Notes, just not the consumer grade "Smart Suite" applications. Which (AFAICT as a programmer) is because much of the code is so intertwined with the WinApi that extracting the core functionality is extremely difficult -- it would probably be faster to start over.
So if I were the head(s) of Microsoft, I would of course seek to recover by moving my heavy-handed techniques overseas, hoping that the rest of the world wouldn't be ready.
So we here that people at the EU is watching Microsoft's operations like a hawk watches a rabbit? Damn right they should!!Well, sorry folks in Redmond, Europe has SUSE [no distro-flame- war spark intended -- but last I checked SUSE was the #1 distro in Europe] and doesn't need you. Of course, if you would a) play nice and b) port your apps (which we acknowledge as having good qualities) to Linux, and c)open the API so that bugs can be found, fixed, etc. in a timely manner...
I sure hope so. I've been following the SA-110 ever since it was announced, and this is still one great set of CPU chips, even if the Pentiums of the world outclock it.
So when a mammoth PC integrator like Compaq says they researching and giving giving code back to the Open Source Community here, we're talking about a major feather in Linux' cap. Not to mention that when that code is fully vetted and ported to other architectures, the whole community benefits, not just one small (PDA) sector.
Cool, eh?
Given those things, how do you feel that the things you are learning on your "journey" and expressed in your written "voice" are applicable to the (sometimes ravening) hordes here at Slashdot?
I think you missed my point. The point is that the fact checking would take place before the story was made available to the world side of the "wide web". This would be similar to the /. submit queue, only with an extended group of fact checkers instead of a handful of eyes.
The biggest problem I have thought of since the original post is, how do you keep a fact checker from leaking the story?
Nope...there is a project to produce a totally copyright free, modern English bible known as the World English Bible which I think you would be interested in.
As far as I know, a person could also derive a new modern translation from previous sources (such as the Gutenberg Bible, the KJ, the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims (spelling?) and not have a bit of legal trouble in doing so.
I haven't heard anything about this, but AFAICT, this would be breaking SEC law, and they could be held both criminally and civilly liable, couldn't they? And if so, how do we get this out to the web in critical mass form?
Brings me to an idea I've thought about for a while... I wonder if there is a way to set up something on or like Slashdot that would operate sort of like an Open Source "investigative journalism." For example, I post my investigative piece, others do the fact and bias checks, and once it's thoroughly vetted for accuracy, the story is released to the web. Then the media would have a pre-screened, non-media conglomerate owned outlet where they could easily look for "scoops".
So they responded with a letter from the head(s) of the corporation, and if you read some of the posts, you'll notice that Hemos, Chris Debona (who went to bat for all of us at the DeCSS fiasco in California), and others are posting to continue in that same voice of assurance. And from my point of view, the quality of those assurances doesn't sound like they're trying to put us back to sleep -- they are offering intelligent commentary on the reasons why they don't want things to change either.
Other posters talk about how the positive values held by a company trickle down through the whole workplace environment, and yet at least half of the posts so far in this thread continue to whine about the perceived changes, how /. will never be the same, etc.
Get a life folks, and try for once to start the day with a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). Change is the nature of the universe, and /. is/not cannot be simply a mouthpiece for a single company -- because for the most part, we are the voice of this community.
Unless someone has a better suggestion for how to let /. continue to grow (including bandwidth, etc.), than to have corporate ownership, quit whining, okay?
It worked, so hopefully the parent comment will get moderated down as redundant. it's real Weird though -- I haven't changed my settings in months, and this is the first time the post has gotten formatted weird. I'm guessing that some code got changed behind the scenes today, and I got caught by it.
Well, start here:
As you find things which can come into play (other court cases which help our cause, loopholes or interpretations in the DCMA, etc.) correspond (politely) with the EFF attorneys who will be the point men in the fight. Equip them for the fight. This includes financial support, if you can come up with it.
fight to free the deCss code. Send it to local media outlets (all types: newspaper, tv stations, radio). Make noise, people!!
I hope you don't mind my explaining what the link would do if someone actually clicked it. This is an absolutely brilliant demonstration of the security hole. The link works like this:
- the standard <A HREF= "" opening, followed by
- an http...slashdot page which I assume is bogus.
- Without closing the HREF, Mark then included a <script> tag, with the
- location set to his server's printenv as the target, and the
- document.cookie (for
/.) as part of the contents of the http request header which this script would send. - Then he closed the script tag, (</SCRIPT>) then the HREF.
Absolutely brilliant. Like he said: DO NOT FOLLOW THIS LINKI had never heard this quote before, and I'm glad John posted it. What I would like to focus on now is much later in the article, where he says "The distance between corporate and government computers is a very short one.
Exactly right. This is one of the key issues we need to understand and be up in arms about. As corporate America seeks to gain an increasingly tight stranglehold around the influences which move government America (witness the unbelievably large contributions to election coffers on both sides of the political fence via "soft money", the unwillingness of the federal judiciary to open up their records (which would assist in insuring that a specific judge a "conflict of interest" by ruling in cases where he/she owns stocks, etc. ). Folks, that's all three branches of the government which can be corrupted by the money available to big business. IMHO we haven't faced an us (individuals from all walks of life) vs. them (big companies, extremely rich, powerful people (whose wealth is in those big companies) battle like this since the extremely violentm early part of the 20th century.
Wake up folks!! This is a war for freedom(s) that we can't afford to lose.