More high tech - NASA realized in the 60s that traditional pens were useless in the microgravity, unpressured environment of space - there was no "down" for the ink to flow to. A million-dollar contract was awarded to a high-tech firm who solved the problem in a high-tech way by creating a pressurized ink cartridge which forced the ink out, even in outer space. The Russians, facing the same problems but strapped for cash, sent their cosmonauts into space...with pencils.
The reason its not considered a remote admin tool is not the fact thats its "stealthy" but has the ability to do serious damage to an endusers computer.
Ever hear of file sharing? Windows NT will let you share all the drives and files on a system. It's not stealthy, since you get this little hand holding the object that's shared.
So, is file sharing a hacking tool? I could secretly go to your computer and share everything on it, then go back to my computer and delete everything on your computer, or change it slightly, or just watch how it changes over time.
No if you deplyoyed BO2K into a real enviorment you would probably get tagged for privacy invasion or worse. Why do you want to take away my rights? I have the right to install any software I want to on any computer I own. If I want to install BO2K on my computer, I have the right to do this. If I own 100 computers and want to install BO2K on all of them, I have the right to do so. If you want to walk into a building I own, and tell me what software I can put on computers I own, I'll be happy to show you the door.
I think the courts would agree that if you are sitting at my desk in my building using my computer and I am giving you money, and I can walk up to your desk at any time and see and hear what you are doing, then you don't have a reasonable expectiation of privacy. If you don't like that, then you are free to leave.
Pointy haired bosses wouldn't want their workers to have these, but the same PHBs would love to have them for themselves. As a school teacher, I would find it useful; I could write tests without worrying that students would come up behind me and start writing crib notes. HR types (a subspecies of PHBs) - or anyone who dealt with private personnel information - would have a use for these.
This is one of those things that comes under the category of keeping honest people honest. Most people won't sit down and search through their boss's computer for someone else's performance review, but they might read what just happens to be on the boss's screen.
This is all assuming that the product lives up to it's hype, which I doubt.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly?
Because the government subsidizes it. The USPS is required by law to deliver letters from anybody in the country to anybody in the country. In every rural and metropolitan area I've lived in, a representative of the USPS walked or drove past by my mailbox on a daily basis (except Sundays and holydays - a strange thing for a nation that prides itself on separation of church and state). They permit you to address envelopes in such a way that automated sorting is impossible - writing with black ink on a red valentine envelope, for example.
One thing to consider is that some routes are profitable (urban ones, perhaps) and some are unprofitable (rural Alaska, for example). The thing about privatization and competition is that no one would compete for the unprofitable routes, and either our taxes would subsidize those routes, or mail delivery to parts of the country would cease. I seriously doubt that a private company could compete with the USPS in the area of point-to-point letter deliverif they had to serve the ENTIRE clientele of the USPS with the same level of service or higher. By same level of service, I mean that their delivery time distribution curve would have to be better at all points (a very vague definition, I know, but I'm still trying to visualize how to quantiy that:). I think if someone came along and said "Hey, we can do the 1st class mail thing for 20c per envelope without subsidies and with better service and delivery times" the USPS would lose its monopoly in a hurry. but that's not going to happen because of the economics of the situation.
Repeal any laws that give USPS special powers so that other companies are free to compete.
If you want to get rid of the USPS's special privileges, then you will have also have to get rid of their special responsibilities. Does the UPS man walk down your street every day? Is FedEx required to charge you the same price regardless of where you live? If you permit these other carriers to deliver letters, are you going to require them to pick them up from ANYWHERE and deliver them to ANYWHERE for 33c apiece?
Are other carriers recognized by the Constitution? Do other nations recognize them as governmental bodies? If Uganda halts delivery of UPS packages, does that have the same effect on national policy as if they halted delivery of mail bearing U.S. stamps?
If someone else thinks they can make a profit delivering letters, I think we should permit it, but I think they should also be REQUIRED to service the same population as the USPS. Otherwise other companies take away the profitable routes, the USPS can't get rid of the unprofitable routes, and the profits from profitable routes go to private stockholders rather than subsidizing the unprofitable routes, so our taxes go up in order to maintain mail delivery to areas that no private companies will serve.
This post was a classic example of a political art form flourishing in modern times. Seems the Americans don't like you conspiring to blow up their buildings but they do permit freedom of speech. So terrorists just use encryption to communicate on the internet. This time it just happened to end up on Slashdot.
You'll note that the first letter of each paragraphs spells out "ART DO TBO", an obvious message to "Art" to kill someone with initials "TBO".
Anyway - it's an interesting idea, but it's hardly supportable on any level. The Revelation of St. John the Divine might make good religion, but it makes lousy history and an even lousier spy story.
"...and that the name of the copyright holders be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to the distribution of the software with specific, written prior permission..." (The copyright holder is David Markley.)
This strikes me as the more dangerous clause. You can't distribute this package without publicizing it (how will people know your distribution exists if you don't tell them?). You have to use David's name when you publicize the distribution. You must have written permission before using his name this way. In effect, you can't distribute this package without getting David's permission.
My guess is that the writer took the clause "the name of the copyright holders not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission" and eliminated the double negative. The English language, of course, is not as simplistic as Boolean logic.
(PREACH target = "THE CHOIR")If you want your software to be free, use the GPL - it's had lots of eyeballs look it over and most of its bugs are gone. (/PREACH)
In approximately 1985, I was able to download and play a piece of digitized music music on my COMMODORE 64! It had no hard drive or mouse. However, if you fast-forward to 1995, the hard-drive and mouse are obvious additions to a computer, and patents are supposed to be for non-obvious additions/improvements. I don't think they can patent the combination of hardware involved, as it is all pretty obvious.
This seems to me to be a software patent, pure and simple, since they seem to be making a case for an integrated, seamless process.
One more piece of evidence that the patent office is incompetent to do more than the copyright office does, and that software patents are evil.
Two thoughts - If you "lose" the rental, they'll charge you for it. You haven't stolen it, you've bought it, and at a MUCH higher price than if you bought it new. If you wait until the initial feeding frenzy dies down, you can buy a used copy of the movie pretty cheap. One more thought - Don't buy a DVD player - buy a computer with a DVD-ROM that will play DVD movies. Be sure you've got a video-out connector somewhere on the back and patch it into the TV. Voila.
"Also, I certainly believe and hope that the Amiga people continue to build on the old Amiga foundation - strong technology. I see them as being commercial, but also as a market where people really care about doing the right thing technologically."
Gateway (the spotted cow people) bought Amiga a while back, and so in my mind, Amiga = Gateway - they are owned and managed by the same billionaire bean-counters. I worked for three years in Gateway's tech support (the filter through which passes all blunders made by the rest of the company) and I can assure you that the only thing they care about is the $. Gateway's stated reasons for buying Amiga were to increase their intellectual property portfolio (ie they wanted Amiga's patents). There were indications that Gateway was unaware of a the active Amiga community until after the purchase. I can remember checking daily to see if there were any new developments with Amiga for a couple of months after the acquisition and being disappointed when I saw nothing.
Keep in mind also that Gateway is one of those that won't offer Linux on their systems*, won't offer you a system without Windows, and won't honor the EULA. Do you think they will do nice things with Linux?
*OK, to be totally accurate, while they don't OFFER a Linux system, you CAN buy a system from Gateway with Linux on it. Be prepared to add at least $700 to the list price for the privilege of buying a custom-integrated solution.
I've not read any anouncement by WB regarding their release-to-video of this film, so I'm going totally by your statements, and I'm thinking, WTF! Do they REALLY think they're keeping this movie out of the hands of impressionable youth by selling it at a high price? If I can rent it for $2 at Blockbuster, it's sort of a moot point, isn't it?
This tastes a lot more like creating demand through artificial scarcity.
Pratchett is to Douglas Adams as the Saturn V is to a pop-bottle rocket. Pratchett is as funny in his latest Discworld novel as he was in his first. Adams was funny in HHGTTG and petered out pretty rapidly after that.
PS - Most IS people that I know don't like to target individuals for monitoring, and when it does occur, it usally happens at the request/order of the Boss.
I would suggest that the one exception to this is that IS people like to target the Boss for monitoring and report his eventual misdeeds to the BOSS.
OK, who's the New Age business consultant who's raking in all the dough telling these companies to be trusted guide? Before I left Gateway they were always talking about how we needed to be our clients' "trusted guide". Anybody else seen this?
We could use actively generated radio signals rather than reflected visible light to locate the comet when it comes 'round again. this would make them a lot easier to locate, as the surface of a comet has a pretty low albedo (think dirty snowball, where all the snow has melted).
As another poster noted, the orbit can change. Tag enough comets this way and we'd have YEARS of notice of potential comet collisions, rather than a few months. (hmm...that's make an interesting RPG scenario...the Comet Beacon Team...) But what power source could you use that would last for hundreds (or thousands) of years? How do you make sure the transmitter doesn't get blown off by a bit of steam without burying it so deep that no signal can escape?
Anyone even remotely involved in the Mozilla project knows that what is claimed above is completly untrue.
My impression of the story at news.com was that upper management was considering changes. Do you really think they will let the peons who are actually doing the work know what's going on?
The guidelines I've seen for "unsolicited" implies that you have no former relationship (business or personal)with the sender or that the sender has expressly informed you that they don't want email from you. So if you buy something from me, I can email you about current specials; if you say you don't want email from me anymore, I can't ever send you email again.
Most spammers never go out of business. Individual corporations may go under, but the principals merely set up shop under a different name. Individual spammers merely get another ISP. If no one will accept their name or credit card number, they merely get another credit card and user someone else's (like their wife, or kids) to set up an account. Apart from that you're dead on.
This is an informed common-sense guess rather than a statement of known fact, but I'll hold to it unless you can point me to contrary evidence
I'm sure MS's indemnification or "hold harmless" clause in the EULA would protect them from lawsuits over problems caused by crashes.
Make an unauthorized copy [of] any printed or electronic form of computer data However, their recent collection of registry entries (or whatever it was) would clearly violate this clause, since people did not agree to it. They will get around that pretty quickly. Look for EULA's to begin including disclaimers saying that MS can extract configuration information for troubleshooting purposes (or some other bogus reason) or else you can't use the software.
Slashdot Mirror
bo2k is promoted as a SA tool...
yeah, that's why it was released at def con...
More high tech -
NASA realized in the 60s that traditional pens were useless in the microgravity, unpressured environment of space - there was no "down" for the ink to flow to. A million-dollar contract was awarded to a high-tech firm who solved the problem in a high-tech way by creating a pressurized ink cartridge which forced the ink out, even in outer space. The Russians, facing the same problems but strapped for cash, sent their cosmonauts into space...with pencils.
The reason its not considered a remote admin tool is not the fact thats its "stealthy" but has the ability to do serious damage to an endusers computer.
Ever hear of file sharing? Windows NT will let you share all the drives and files on a system. It's not stealthy, since you get this little hand holding the object that's shared.
So, is file sharing a hacking tool? I could secretly go to your computer and share everything on it, then go back to my computer and delete everything on your computer, or change it slightly, or just watch how it changes over time.
No if you deplyoyed BO2K into a real enviorment you would probably get tagged for privacy invasion or worse.
Why do you want to take away my rights?
I have the right to install any software I want to on any computer I own.
If I want to install BO2K on my computer, I have the right to do this.
If I own 100 computers and want to install BO2K on all of them, I have the right to do so.
If you want to walk into a building I own, and tell me what software I can put on computers I own, I'll be happy to show you the door.
I think the courts would agree that if you are sitting at my desk in my building using my computer and I am giving you money, and I can walk up to your desk at any time and see and hear what you are doing, then you don't have a reasonable expectiation of privacy. If you don't like that, then you are free to leave.
Pointy haired bosses wouldn't want their workers to have these, but the same PHBs would love to have them for themselves. As a school teacher, I would find it useful; I could write tests without worrying that students would come up behind me and start writing crib notes. HR types (a subspecies of PHBs) - or anyone who dealt with private personnel information - would have a use for these.
This is one of those things that comes under the category of keeping honest people honest. Most people won't sit down and search through their boss's computer for someone else's performance review, but they might read what just happens to be on the boss's screen.
This is all assuming that the product lives up to it's hype, which I doubt.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly?
:). I think if someone came along and said "Hey, we can do the 1st class mail thing for 20c per envelope without subsidies and with better service and delivery times" the USPS would lose its monopoly in a hurry. but that's not going to happen because of the economics of the situation.
Because the government subsidizes it. The USPS is required by law to deliver letters from anybody in the country to anybody in the country. In every rural and metropolitan area I've lived in, a representative of the USPS walked or drove past by my mailbox on a daily basis (except Sundays and holydays - a strange thing for a nation that prides itself on separation of church and state). They permit you to address envelopes in such a way that automated sorting is impossible - writing with black ink on a red valentine envelope, for example.
One thing to consider is that some routes are profitable (urban ones, perhaps) and some are unprofitable (rural Alaska, for example). The thing about privatization and competition is that no one would compete for the unprofitable routes, and either our taxes would subsidize those routes, or mail delivery to parts of the country would cease. I seriously doubt that a private company could compete with the USPS in the area of point-to-point letter deliverif they had to serve the ENTIRE clientele of the USPS with the same level of service or higher. By same level of service, I mean that their delivery time distribution curve would have to be better at all points (a very vague definition, I know, but I'm still trying to visualize how to quantiy that
Repeal any laws that give USPS special powers so that other companies are free to compete.
If you want to get rid of the USPS's special privileges, then you will have also have to get rid of their special responsibilities. Does the UPS man walk down your street every day? Is FedEx required to charge you the same price regardless of where you live? If you permit these other carriers to deliver letters, are you going to require them to pick them up from ANYWHERE and deliver them to ANYWHERE for 33c apiece?
Are other carriers recognized by the Constitution? Do other nations recognize them as governmental bodies? If Uganda halts delivery of UPS packages, does that have the same effect on national policy as if they halted delivery of mail bearing U.S. stamps?
If someone else thinks they can make a profit delivering letters, I think we should permit it, but I think they should also be REQUIRED to service the same population as the USPS. Otherwise other companies take away the profitable routes, the USPS can't get rid of the unprofitable routes, and the profits from profitable routes go to private stockholders rather than subsidizing the unprofitable routes, so our taxes go up in order to maintain mail delivery to areas that no private companies will serve.
This post was a classic example of a political art form flourishing in modern times. Seems the Americans don't like you conspiring to blow up their buildings but they do permit freedom of speech. So terrorists just use encryption to communicate on the internet. This time it just happened to end up on Slashdot.
You'll note that the first letter of each paragraphs spells out "ART DO TBO", an obvious message to "Art" to kill someone with initials "TBO".
Anyway - it's an interesting idea, but it's hardly supportable on any level. The Revelation of St. John the Divine might make good religion, but it makes lousy history and an even lousier spy story.
"...and that the name of the copyright holders be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to the distribution of the software with specific, written prior permission..."
(The copyright holder is David Markley.)
This strikes me as the more dangerous clause. You can't distribute this package without publicizing it (how will people know your distribution exists if you don't tell them?). You have to use David's name when you publicize the distribution. You must have written permission before using his name this way. In effect, you can't distribute this package without getting David's permission.
My guess is that the writer took the clause "the name of the copyright holders not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software with out specific, written prior permission" and eliminated the double negative. The English language, of course, is not as simplistic as Boolean logic.
(PREACH target = "THE CHOIR")If you want your software to be free, use the GPL - it's had lots of eyeballs look it over and most of its bugs are gone. (/PREACH)
In approximately 1985, I was able to download and play a piece of digitized music music on my COMMODORE 64! It had no hard drive or mouse. However, if you fast-forward to 1995, the hard-drive and mouse are obvious additions to a computer, and patents are supposed to be for non-obvious additions/improvements. I don't think they can patent the combination of hardware involved, as it is all pretty obvious.
This seems to me to be a software patent, pure and simple, since they seem to be making a case for an integrated, seamless process.
One more piece of evidence that the patent office is incompetent to do more than the copyright office does, and that software patents are evil.
But he was rather proud of the fact that he DID coin the word "robotics".
Two thoughts -
If you "lose" the rental, they'll charge you for it. You haven't stolen it, you've bought it, and at a MUCH higher price than if you bought it new.
If you wait until the initial feeding frenzy dies down, you can buy a used copy of the movie pretty cheap.
One more thought -
Don't buy a DVD player - buy a computer with a DVD-ROM that will play DVD movies. Be sure you've got a video-out connector somewhere on the back and patch it into the TV. Voila.
"Also, I certainly believe and hope that the Amiga people continue to build on the old Amiga foundation - strong technology. I see them as being commercial, but also as a market where people really care about doing the right thing technologically."
Gateway (the spotted cow people) bought Amiga a while back, and so in my mind, Amiga = Gateway - they are owned and managed by the same billionaire bean-counters. I worked for three years in Gateway's tech support (the filter through which passes all blunders made by the rest of the company) and I can assure you that the only thing they care about is the $. Gateway's stated reasons for buying Amiga were to increase their intellectual property portfolio (ie they wanted Amiga's patents). There were indications that Gateway was unaware of a the active Amiga community until after the purchase. I can remember checking daily to see if there were any new developments with Amiga for a couple of months after the acquisition and being disappointed when I saw nothing.
Keep in mind also that Gateway is one of those that won't offer Linux on their systems*, won't offer you a system without Windows, and won't honor the EULA. Do you think they will do nice things with Linux?
*OK, to be totally accurate, while they don't OFFER a Linux system, you CAN buy a system from Gateway with Linux on it. Be prepared to add at least $700 to the list price for the privilege of buying a custom-integrated solution.
I've not read any anouncement by WB regarding their release-to-video of this film, so I'm going totally by your statements, and I'm thinking, WTF! Do they REALLY think they're keeping this movie out of the hands of impressionable youth by selling it at a high price? If I can rent it for $2 at Blockbuster, it's sort of a moot point, isn't it?
This tastes a lot more like creating demand through artificial scarcity.
Pratchett is to Douglas Adams as the Saturn V is to a pop-bottle rocket. Pratchett is as funny in his latest Discworld novel as he was in his first. Adams was funny in HHGTTG and petered out pretty rapidly after that.
PS - Most IS people that I know don't like to target individuals for monitoring, and when it does occur, it usally happens at the request/order of the Boss.
I would suggest that the one exception to this is that IS people like to target the Boss for monitoring and report his eventual misdeeds to the BOSS.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three)." - RFC 1925, 2.7.a
So you're saying MMX doesn't stand for Multi Media instruXions? I thought it didn't stand for Multi Media Xtensions.
Our new role is as a trusted guide.
OK, who's the New Age business consultant who's raking in all the dough telling these companies to be trusted guide? Before I left Gateway they were always talking about how we needed to be our clients' "trusted guide". Anybody else seen this?
We could use actively generated radio signals rather than reflected visible light to locate the comet when it comes 'round again. this would make them a lot easier to locate, as the surface of a comet has a pretty low albedo (think dirty snowball, where all the snow has melted).
As another poster noted, the orbit can change. Tag enough comets this way and we'd have YEARS of notice of potential comet collisions, rather than a few months. (hmm...that's make an interesting RPG scenario...the Comet Beacon Team...) But what power source could you use that would last for hundreds (or thousands) of years? How do you make sure the transmitter doesn't get blown off by a bit of steam without burying it so deep that no signal can escape?
Anyone even remotely involved in the Mozilla project knows that what is claimed above is completly untrue.
My impression of the story at news.com was that upper management was considering changes. Do you really think they will let the peons who are actually doing the work know what's going on?
The guidelines I've seen for "unsolicited" implies that you have no former relationship (business or personal)with the sender or that the sender has expressly informed you that they don't want email from you. So if you buy something from me, I can email you about current specials; if you say you don't want email from me anymore, I can't ever send you email again.
Most spammers never go out of business. Individual corporations may go under, but the principals merely set up shop under a different name. Individual spammers merely get another ISP. If no one will accept their name or credit card number, they merely get another credit card and user someone else's (like their wife, or kids) to set up an account. Apart from that you're dead on.
This is an informed common-sense guess rather than a statement of known fact, but I'll hold to it unless you can point me to contrary evidence
I'm sure MS's indemnification or "hold harmless" clause in the EULA would protect them from lawsuits over problems caused by crashes.
Make an unauthorized copy [of] any printed or electronic form of computer data
However, their recent collection of registry entries (or whatever it was) would clearly violate this clause, since people did not agree to it. They will get around that pretty quickly. Look for EULA's to begin including disclaimers saying that MS can extract configuration information for troubleshooting purposes (or some other bogus reason) or else you can't use the software.
I'd challenge anyone to argue with that point, but since I probalby won't revisit this page, there's really no reason.
Since you're not interested in hearing any one else's opinion, I guess censorship wouldn't have much effect on you anyway, would it?