Dale Clapperton has posted a review of the doubleTwist EULA, ToS and Privacy Policy on his blog. These agreements purport to prohibit the very activities that made DVD Jon infamous (such as reverse engineering, and DRM circumvention), and Dale opines that these agreements are 'rank hypocrisy' and a sign that DVD Jon has become much like the corporations he has fought against.
EFA dismayed by IP Clauses of Free Trade Agreement
Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today expressed dismay about the
intellectual property clauses of the recently announced Free Trade
Agreement with the United States of America, saying they would leave average
Australians at the mercy of legal action from multinational media companies,
and represent a massive step backwards for Australian Intellectual Property
law.
"The United States has one of the worst systems of intellectual property laws
in the world." said EFA board member Dale Clapperton. "Their Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been widely condemned by civil liberties
and users groups throughout the world, and now the Howard government has
committed itself to implementing its worst, most insidious provisions."
US copyright terms have been extended multiple times at the behest of
lobbyists, and now extend to 120 years from publication, a period which
has no purpose but to protect the vested interests of large corporate
copyright holders. The 50 years (from the death of the author) afforded
by Australian law are ample, promote the growth and reuse of public
domain material, supporting ongoing innovation and development both in the
arts and business, and are in line with Australia's commitments under the
World Intellectual Property Organization treaty.
"Nothing published in the United States of America since 1923 has ever
come into the public domain, thanks to lobbying from the music and
motion picture industries to repeatedly extend the term of copyright.
The public domain has ceased to grow, and unless these continual
senseless extensions are stopped, it will never grow again."
There is nothing positive for Australia in these clauses. No additional
usage rights are granted to Australians or Australian companies, and these
provisions are a blatant sell-out to the interests of large US-based media
companies.
Additionally, "harmonisation" of Australian patent law with the United
States risks the creation of "software patents" in Australia. These types of
patents have been regularly abused in the United States by major software
companies who use them to intimidate and suppress competition and innovation.
Litigation over the alleged infringement of "software patents" has become a
lucrative business model in the United States, and is a path that Australia
would be ill-advised to follow.
"The Howard government intends to sell out the Intellectual Property rights of
average Australians to billion-dollar music and motion picture companies in
the United States, who can use these new enforcement powers to prosecute
Australians for trivial infractions of copyright, that would be legal under
American law.
Australian copyright law recognises only very limited 'fair dealing' rights,
typically for the purposes of scholarly study or review. In contrast,
Americans enjoy wide-ranging 'fair use' rights, which Australians do not, such
as the right to record TV programs for viewing at a later time, or to copy a
legally purchased Compact Disk onto an audio cassette. Unless very specific
and limited exemptions apply, Australians who perform these acts are breaking
the law.
"If the Howard government couples the draconian enforcement and prosecution
provisions of the DMCA with the already unbalanced Australian copyright law,
it will place every Australian at the mercy of a lawsuit for breach of
copyright", Clapperton continued. "It will turn the Australian Internet
industry into a litigation mill, as well-funded US media groups launch waves
of prosecutions against Internet users and Internet Service Providers
themselves."
My brother-in-law-to-be and his fiancee gave me (and my other half) a 1.25l pepsi bottle filled with some kind of green liquid and a hand-written label stating "melon liqueur". They announced proudly it was from his fiancee's mother's "own still". Allegedly it is 40% "alcohol", although they weren't specific as to whether it was ethanol or methanol.
What's really funny is that just an hour before when we were speculating about what gift we would get from them, I said they would probably give us a jug of moonshine. I wasn't far off.
I'm marrying into a family that contains Cleetus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Nooooooooooooo!!!!
The site in question does not host infringing content, it is merely a bunch of links to other sites where allegedly infringing content can allegedly be had. It's bad enough they're suing the operator of the site, it's worse that they're suing his ISP. If the music industry succeeds in criminalising this type of activity, you could be sued simply for linking to kazaalite.com or napster.com
The judge dismissed the lawsuit because EMarketersAmerica asked the judge to dismiss it (ie they abandoned the lawsuit which they themselves filed, supposedly because of lack of funds).
The dismissal "with prejudice" means that EMarketersAmerica cannot refile the lawsuit against the defendants at a later date. It does NOT mean that the judge rejected the basis for EMarketersAmerica's case, and it definately does not (as Steve Linford from Spamhaus claims) set a precedent in their favour. If some other (better funded) spammer decided to sue them tomorrow for the same causes of action, the dismissal of this lawsuit would have zero effect on that case.
I'm something of an serious-amateur photographer.. A while ago I realised that I'd like to get out and photograph stuff more than I currently can, and I'd like to have more creative control over the end product. I didnt have a metric assload of money to spend on something like a Canon EOS-1Ds, and I wouldn't really be happy with a lesser non-SLR digital camera. Neither did I have enough money to spend on a decent negative scanner. Actually, I didnt really have enough money to pay for a significant amount of colour film and minilab processing.
So, I decided to go back to basics. I had an old bulk film loader around that I'd never used, so I dusted it off, got myself a 100ft reel of Ilford FP4+ black and white film (AUD $60), and a bunch of reloadable film cannisters (AUD $1.50 each). That gives me enough film for about twenty 36-exposure rolls, which would cost me over AUD $10 each at retail prices. Plus I if I only need a few shots, I can load less film into the cannisters without needing to waste half a roll, or wait till I used it up.
I picked up a darkroom starter kit for AUD$100 which included all the basic hardware to get me started, except for an enlarger (which I scrounged off a friend), safelight (bought, about AUD$13 for a magic light bulb), and some extra chemical mixing bits (jugs, etc). I built myself (with some assistance from the father-in-law-to-be) a collapsable bench which allows me to turn our poky little bathroom/laundry into a darkroom (it fits quite nicely over the washing machine and toilet), and bought some chemicals and paper (again, Ilford).
I can now load my own film, develop it in my own house in about 10 minutes, monkey with the developing (push/pull) if I want, make my own prints up to 8*10", cropped how I want, with the contrast how I want it, dodged and burned how I want (yes, dodging and burning did exist before Adobe Photoshop). It's not always fun. Acutally, the fun factor wore off after 24 hours, but its starting to creep back in. Its long, tiring, painstaking work. There's no undo button - if you screw it up, bin it and try again. It teaches you to be methodical, precise, but also lets you experiment to "see what happens".
It's also taught me that I'm not as good a photographer as I thought I was. Looking back at my previous photographic efforts I've realised that the majority of them were more about the colour than the composition, and without the colour, they just looked crappy... But now that I know this, I'm getting better. Playing with black and white in the darkroom can be a very sadisfying experience, you get to create something with your own two hands from start to end. No computer-assisted magic, just light, glass, and silver. If this posting sounds interesting to you, you should probably try it. If you get hooked, you can also do color processing in a home darkroom, but its a lot more involved.
This smells like a massive cash-grab from Cisco. In Australia, as in most countries, telecommunications providers (including ISPs) are required by law to be able to intercept communications across their network, and deliver a copy to the appropriate Law Enforcement Agency ("LEA"). Before, this has been hard to do effectively, especially for small ISPs.
Now, Cisco come to the rescue, with their magic interception product. Except it will require a new version of the software (IOS) on the router, which will cost $bomb. And it will require Cisco proprietary back-end software (costing $bomb) which will only be sold with a Cisco-supplied server (a rebadged Compaq, costing $bomb). And of course, the ISP will probably have to put the routers, back-end software, and server under a maintainance contract so that Cisco wont disown them when something breaks, the interception stops, and the LEA is threatening to charge the ISP with obstruction of justice. That'll cost $BOMB, per year, every year.
So, the LEA's will come yelling to the ISPs demanding interception capability on their networks. The LEA's will probably want the ISP to use the Magic Cisco Solution(TM) because thats What Everybody Else Uses, and depending on the country, may even be able to force them to use it. The ISP will get railroaded into spending a metric assload of money with Cisco, which will get them a carnivore box to call their own, and not a lot else. Quite an elegent little marketing strategy that Cisco has..
... some "think tank" calling themselves the "Australia Institute" published a rather sensationally written teaser of a pro-Internet-censorship report saying that the existing Internet censorship legislation was a complete failure (which it is) and to Save The Children the answer was legislating to force ISPs to filter peoples Internet access (which is horse excrement of the highest order). They then expect people to pay AU$21 to have a hard-copy of the full report mailed to them. Of course, someone published a PDF file of it online;)
The media obligingly jumped on the Save The Children bandwagon (as is their want), the politicians followed along, and the result is the current mess, where instead of pulling the plug on the current abomination of a scheme, the politicians are openly contemplating making it even worse. All because of a rather shabby report from a group of publicity-hounds (personal opinion).
On the other, they have made it illegal to sell region-coded DVD players.
I beg to differ! The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is against reigon-coding DVDs because of the anti-compeditive aspects of it, but walk into any place selling DVD players in Australia and I guarentee you that better than %95 of them are reigon-coded. Because of ambiguity regarding the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act (Australia's version of the DMCA) and whether this makes reigon-free DVD players illegal "circumvention devices", most places will not stock (or admit to stocking) reigon-free DVD players.
You dont need physical access, although it can help if you dont know the passwords to the router (search for "password recovery" on cisco.com). If you know the passwords, you telnet/ssh to the router (most low-end routers only support telnet, so an eavesdropping attack to obtain the passwords is possable), make whatever configuration changes you want, and voila, it's hijacked. Or, you can try and knock it offline somehow, then try and impersonate it to cause mischief. That's a lot more difficult though.
That ZDnet article is one of the greatest crocks of sh_t I've read online. "Digital identification" might prevent someone impersonating a particular router to stage an attack, but if a router is either accidently or deliberately mis-configured to advertise networks it shouldn't, how is "digital identification" going to prevent this? Statements like "We have to stop trusting routers" make me think that the paper quoted in the article was written to get media attention and not much else.
First off, get rid of the stand-alone UPS systems. They are inefficient and not reliable from a system standpoint. You are much better off with a single 30kW unit rather than ten or twenty 1,000VA units.
You may be right about the efficiency, and probability says you are right about the reliability, but I'd disagree with the statement that you are "much better off" with One Big UPS as opposed to Many Little UPSes. Yes, UPSes in the ~30kW range are typically designed/engineered better, provide "better" power output, are generally less likely to die in the arse than a UPS in the ~2kW range, and more likely to fail over onto bypass rather than just stop providing power altogether, however, replacing Many Little UPSes with One Large UPS does create a single point of failure.
In the current setup, if any one UPS dies, it affects only the equipment attached to that one UPS. With One Large UPS, if it dies, all the protected equipment dies. If reliability was a concern (as I imagine it is) I'd be much happier with 2* 30kW UPSes, or 3* 15kW UPSes.
Also, check the electrical codes in your jurisdiction. I dont know the exact situation in the US, but in Australia recent legislative reforms (caused by too many brain-dead sparkys frying themselves) mean that performing "live work" (ie tapping live busbars etc) now comes with a *significant* amount of administrative BS (significant enough that a lot of sparkys who follow the rules will no longer do live work. Of course, the brain-dead ones will continue to fry themselves). I've had electrical fitters from a major UPS vendor tell me that they're are no longer permitted (by management) to perform live work for any reason, so extensions to an existing system will require the complete shutdown of the protected power (and all the equipment attached to it)!
... isn't as bad as one might expect from the article. Quite a number of small and medium-sized ISPs peer, as do larger ISPs. The problem is that larger ISPs (ie Telstra, Optus, Connect.com etc) will only peer among themselves, and not with anyone further down the foodchain. Peering groups such as Pipe networks and ausbone have had good results getting the smaller ISPs to peer with eachother, and varying results with medium-sized ISPs, but the carte^H^H^H^H^Hclique of large-sized ISPs (ie have non-trivial amounts of International bandwidth, and large amounts of content on their network) just wont play ball, and the ACCC will have a fight on their hands if they want to make them.
Complicating things is the fact that probably the biggest content host in Australia (no names, no pack drill) steadfastly refuses to peer. Of course, they're owned by $tier_1_ISP. If they peer, they give away the traffic. If they don't peer, they charge money for the traffic. What do you think they're going to do?
I'm not particularly worried about it, but I really do not want to be here when it happens. The earth's magnetic field (ie the magnetosphere, see here and here) has a vital role in keeping tremendous amounts of radiation (least of all from our own sun) away from the planet. Buildings make pretty lousy radiation shields, the average building wouldn't keep you safe from the radiation from the fallout from a nuclear weapon, let alone the massive amounts of radiation which would pour onto the earth without the magnetosphere. Even without the direct effects of the radiation on life-forms (massive deaths, sterility, mutations etc), it would be pretty tough to survive once the solar wind had stripped the atmosphere away from this rock we sit on.
Q: How many Microsoft Customers does it take to replace a light bulb?
A: Three. One to replace it, one to hold the ladder, and one to ring M$, explain that the old one burned out, ask politely for a new activation key, and be told that your OEM license for Micro$oft Light 2003 is valid only for the particular bulb it was bought with, and you are required to buy a new license for your new bulb.
A lot of the humor in error messages is not the messages themselves, but the "interpretation" that l^Husers put on them. The following is an actual conversation that happened last week (transcribed to the best of my memory) with a somewhat clue-challenged individual regarding a Win2k BSOD. I am not kidding. I have witnesses. (Oh, and I'm in Network Engineering, not tech support, so I have a lower tolerance for cretins than I used to..)
Twit: My computer went spastic
Me: (doctor evil voice) Rrrrrrrrrrrrright.
T: You know, it did the thing.
M: Which thing?
T: The blue thing!
M: You mean the blue screen with the white writing?
T: Yes!
M: And what does the white writing say?
T: Windows has something about an error blah blah blah
M: Ohhhhhhhh! One of those blah blah blah errors, they're nasty.
T: You dont have to get smart about it!
M: Well just read out exactly what is written on the screen!
T: Its all gobbeldygook.
(At this point I give up, grab a number 5 cluebat and walk out to reception)
M: The registry is pooched. Did you install that stupid thing your friend emailed you last week?
T: Well yes...
M: The one that pooched your registry LAST week?
T: But you fixed that!
M: Yes, I fixed your registry last week after that stupid program broke it. Now someone has to fix your registry THIS week because the same stupid program broke it AGAIN.
T: (getting angry) Well why did it do that?
M: I didn't write the thing, I dont know.
T: (yelling) Well you SHOULD know!
At this point things got rather ugly, but lets just say the Twit quoted above is currently bitching that she can't run ICQ because she doesnt have power-user rights. (Boo hoo)
The decision in the case (Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment v Stevens [2002] FCA 906) is available here
This was the first attempted prosecution in Australia under the changes introduced in the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000, and Sony has vowed to appeal the above adverse decision to the full bench of the Federal Court.
OK, I know its (very) bad form to reply to your own posting, but it appears my crystal ball has been right again. From the Senate Hansard (parliamentary transcripts) of 15 October (sorry, PDF file):
Senator NETTLE -- Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I thank the minister for his answer and I am sure that he will be able to pursue that further. Could the minister assure the Senate that the government will not be using the horrendous events that happened on the weekend as an excuse to justify a further crackdown on civil liberties in Australia?
Senator HILL -- We certainly will not crack down
on civil liberties, but we do believe that, in effectively responding to terrorism, there is sometimes a need for us all to accept that the extent of our traditional freedoms needs to be modified in these circumstances.
That is why we have put legislation before
this parliament which has that effect. We seek to
do no more to modify those traditional liberties than is absolutely necessary to attack this terrorist threat, but if ever we need an example and illustration of how real this threat is we have had it in the last few days. We must do everything possible to effectively respond to it and to protect our people.
Wrong! It's actually protected by law, and further extended by the 2000 amendment. Similar fair use clauses apply to other media.
You're about half right and I'm about half wrong. I did pick a bad example (ie broadcast television), because that is protected for personal use (I goofed, my bad). However, I think you're confusing fair use with fair dealing. Fair use is stuff like time-shifting and space-shifting and applies in the USA. Fair dealing is what is defined in Division Three of the Australian Copyright Act, and is a much narrower definition.
As an example, in the USA if I own an audio CD and encode (rip) those tracks to MP3 files for my own personal use, this is "space-shifting" and is legal as a fair use. In Australia, this is not considered fair dealing, and is therefore illegal. The Australian Record Industry Association is on record as saying this is the case.
Indeed, after the recent "terrorist attack" against Australians in Bali, the government is already making noises that it is going to "review domestic anti-terrorist legislation", so it is almost a certainty that they are going to go and pass some more half-arsed legislation like they did after September 11 claiming that it is needed to fight the terrorists, etc.
Australia is vastly different to the USA. Our consitutution guarentees us almost no rights. No freedom of speech, or religion, or of the press. No right to keep and bear arms. No protection aginst unreasonable searches and siezures, or against self incrimination. We have no doctrine of "fair use" under copyright laws, meaning that taping a movie tonight to watch tomorrow is illegal, because our courts never decided we have the right to time-shift anything. We have our own version of the DMCA, with penalties of up to five years jail. Australia is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. Oh wait, I do.
The Federal Cybercrime Act 2001 (which was, coincidentally, rushed through parliament with little or no debate shortly after the 9/11 attacks) would apply to offences committed against a computer anywhere in Australia, not just within the state of Victoria.
Section 477.2 Unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment would cover hacking or attempted hacking of peoples systems, and Section 477.3 Unauthorised impairment of electronic communication would cover DoS attempts. Both sections have a maximum penalty of 10 years jail.
Ironically, Section 478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer offence would make it an offence to even possess software or information required to hack or DoS somebody, if they had intent to use it to commit an offence against section 477. Three years up the river for this one.
Oh, and Section 3LA in schedule two of the Act says that a law enforcement authority could obtain an order requiring a specified person to provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary to allow the officer to do one or more of the following: (a)
access data held in, or accessible from, a computer that is on warrant premises; (b)
copy the data to a data storage device; (c)
convert the data into documentary form. ie they can force you to help them search for incriminating evidence, divulge passwords, encryption keys, etc... and you can get 6 months jail if you refuse to comply.
IMHO the Cybercrime Act is a steaming crock of sh_t. It criminalises practically anything you can twist its vague definitions to apply to. Thus, its a Very Big Stick for the police to wave at people. Pity they'd never have the balls to wave it at the RIAA, MPAA, and their merry men.
The "law" in question was passed by parliament, and received the royal assent, but has not yet been proclaimed, and is therefore not yet law, and not enforceable.
Electronic Frontiers Australia's information page about this legislation can be found here and the report reccomending the repeal of the legislation can be found here (PDF file).
Slashdot Mirror
Dale Clapperton has posted a review of the doubleTwist EULA, ToS and Privacy Policy on his blog. These agreements purport to prohibit the very activities that made DVD Jon infamous (such as reverse engineering, and DRM circumvention), and Dale opines that these agreements are 'rank hypocrisy' and a sign that DVD Jon has become much like the corporations he has fought against.
Come on, this is slashdot ... motorcycle riding photo-snapping babe through nuclear wasteland ... show me a geek that isn't drooling by now.
I believe you mean "motorcycle riding photo-snapping Russian babe through nuclear wasteland" ;)
<drool>
Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has today issued the following press release: http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/PR040212.html
EFA dismayed by IP Clauses of Free Trade AgreementElectronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today expressed dismay about the intellectual property clauses of the recently announced Free Trade Agreement with the United States of America, saying they would leave average Australians at the mercy of legal action from multinational media companies, and represent a massive step backwards for Australian Intellectual Property law.
"The United States has one of the worst systems of intellectual property laws in the world." said EFA board member Dale Clapperton. "Their Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been widely condemned by civil liberties and users groups throughout the world, and now the Howard government has committed itself to implementing its worst, most insidious provisions."
US copyright terms have been extended multiple times at the behest of lobbyists, and now extend to 120 years from publication, a period which has no purpose but to protect the vested interests of large corporate copyright holders. The 50 years (from the death of the author) afforded by Australian law are ample, promote the growth and reuse of public domain material, supporting ongoing innovation and development both in the arts and business, and are in line with Australia's commitments under the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty.
"Nothing published in the United States of America since 1923 has ever come into the public domain, thanks to lobbying from the music and motion picture industries to repeatedly extend the term of copyright. The public domain has ceased to grow, and unless these continual senseless extensions are stopped, it will never grow again."
There is nothing positive for Australia in these clauses. No additional usage rights are granted to Australians or Australian companies, and these provisions are a blatant sell-out to the interests of large US-based media companies.
Additionally, "harmonisation" of Australian patent law with the United States risks the creation of "software patents" in Australia. These types of patents have been regularly abused in the United States by major software companies who use them to intimidate and suppress competition and innovation. Litigation over the alleged infringement of "software patents" has become a lucrative business model in the United States, and is a path that Australia would be ill-advised to follow.
"The Howard government intends to sell out the Intellectual Property rights of average Australians to billion-dollar music and motion picture companies in the United States, who can use these new enforcement powers to prosecute Australians for trivial infractions of copyright, that would be legal under American law.
Australian copyright law recognises only very limited 'fair dealing' rights, typically for the purposes of scholarly study or review. In contrast, Americans enjoy wide-ranging 'fair use' rights, which Australians do not, such as the right to record TV programs for viewing at a later time, or to copy a legally purchased Compact Disk onto an audio cassette. Unless very specific and limited exemptions apply, Australians who perform these acts are breaking the law.
"If the Howard government couples the draconian enforcement and prosecution provisions of the DMCA with the already unbalanced Australian copyright law, it will place every Australian at the mercy of a lawsuit for breach of copyright", Clapperton continued. "It will turn the Australian Internet industry into a litigation mill, as well-funded US media groups launch waves of prosecutions against Internet users and Internet Service Providers themselves."
My brother-in-law-to-be and his fiancee gave me (and my other half) a 1.25l pepsi bottle filled with some kind of green liquid and a hand-written label stating "melon liqueur". They announced proudly it was from his fiancee's mother's "own still". Allegedly it is 40% "alcohol", although they weren't specific as to whether it was ethanol or methanol.
What's really funny is that just an hour before when we were speculating about what gift we would get from them, I said they would probably give us a jug of moonshine. I wasn't far off.
I'm marrying into a family that contains Cleetus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Nooooooooooooo!!!!
The body of this article is completely wrong.
The site in question does not host infringing content, it is merely a bunch of links to other sites where allegedly infringing content can allegedly be had. It's bad enough they're suing the operator of the site, it's worse that they're suing his ISP. If the music industry succeeds in criminalising this type of activity, you could be sued simply for linking to kazaalite.com or napster.com
It does NOT mean that the judge rejected the basis for EMarketersAmerica's case, and it definately does not (as Steve Linford from Spamhaus claims) set a precedent in their favour. If some other (better funded) spammer decided to sue them tomorrow for the same causes of action, the dismissal of this lawsuit would have zero effect on that case.
So, I decided to go back to basics. I had an old bulk film loader around that I'd never used, so I dusted it off, got myself a 100ft reel of Ilford FP4+ black and white film (AUD $60), and a bunch of reloadable film cannisters (AUD $1.50 each). That gives me enough film for about twenty 36-exposure rolls, which would cost me over AUD $10 each at retail prices. Plus I if I only need a few shots, I can load less film into the cannisters without needing to waste half a roll, or wait till I used it up.
I picked up a darkroom starter kit for AUD$100 which included all the basic hardware to get me started, except for an enlarger (which I scrounged off a friend), safelight (bought, about AUD$13 for a magic light bulb), and some extra chemical mixing bits (jugs, etc). I built myself (with some assistance from the father-in-law-to-be) a collapsable bench which allows me to turn our poky little bathroom/laundry into a darkroom (it fits quite nicely over the washing machine and toilet), and bought some chemicals and paper (again, Ilford).
I can now load my own film, develop it in my own house in about 10 minutes, monkey with the developing (push/pull) if I want, make my own prints up to 8*10", cropped how I want, with the contrast how I want it, dodged and burned how I want (yes, dodging and burning did exist before Adobe Photoshop). It's not always fun. Acutally, the fun factor wore off after 24 hours, but its starting to creep back in. Its long, tiring, painstaking work. There's no undo button - if you screw it up, bin it and try again. It teaches you to be methodical, precise, but also lets you experiment to "see what happens".
It's also taught me that I'm not as good a photographer as I thought I was. Looking back at my previous photographic efforts I've realised that the majority of them were more about the colour than the composition, and without the colour, they just looked crappy... But now that I know this, I'm getting better. Playing with black and white in the darkroom can be a very sadisfying experience, you get to create something with your own two hands from start to end. No computer-assisted magic, just light, glass, and silver. If this posting sounds interesting to you, you should probably try it. If you get hooked, you can also do color processing in a home darkroom, but its a lot more involved.
Now, Cisco come to the rescue, with their magic interception product. Except it will require a new version of the software (IOS) on the router, which will cost $bomb. And it will require Cisco proprietary back-end software (costing $bomb) which will only be sold with a Cisco-supplied server (a rebadged Compaq, costing $bomb). And of course, the ISP will probably have to put the routers, back-end software, and server under a maintainance contract so that Cisco wont disown them when something breaks, the interception stops, and the LEA is threatening to charge the ISP with obstruction of justice. That'll cost $BOMB, per year, every year.
So, the LEA's will come yelling to the ISPs demanding interception capability on their networks. The LEA's will probably want the ISP to use the Magic Cisco Solution(TM) because thats What Everybody Else Uses, and depending on the country, may even be able to force them to use it. The ISP will get railroaded into spending a metric assload of money with Cisco, which will get them a carnivore box to call their own, and not a lot else. Quite an elegent little marketing strategy that Cisco has..
Oh, and Electronic Frontiers Australia has issued a Press Release about this..
The media obligingly jumped on the Save The Children bandwagon (as is their want), the politicians followed along, and the result is the current mess, where instead of pulling the plug on the current abomination of a scheme, the politicians are openly contemplating making it even worse. All because of a rather shabby report from a group of publicity-hounds (personal opinion).
I beg to differ! The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is against reigon-coding DVDs because of the anti-compeditive aspects of it, but walk into any place selling DVD players in Australia and I guarentee you that better than %95 of them are reigon-coded. Because of ambiguity regarding the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act (Australia's version of the DMCA) and whether this makes reigon-free DVD players illegal "circumvention devices", most places will not stock (or admit to stocking) reigon-free DVD players.
You dont need physical access, although it can help if you dont know the passwords to the router (search for "password recovery" on cisco.com). If you know the passwords, you telnet/ssh to the router (most low-end routers only support telnet, so an eavesdropping attack to obtain the passwords is possable), make whatever configuration changes you want, and voila, it's hijacked. Or, you can try and knock it offline somehow, then try and impersonate it to cause mischief. That's a lot more difficult though.
That ZDnet article is one of the greatest crocks of sh_t I've read online. "Digital identification" might prevent someone impersonating a particular router to stage an attack, but if a router is either accidently or deliberately mis-configured to advertise networks it shouldn't, how is "digital identification" going to prevent this? Statements like "We have to stop trusting routers" make me think that the paper quoted in the article was written to get media attention and not much else.
You may be right about the efficiency, and probability says you are right about the reliability, but I'd disagree with the statement that you are "much better off" with One Big UPS as opposed to Many Little UPSes. Yes, UPSes in the ~30kW range are typically designed/engineered better, provide "better" power output, are generally less likely to die in the arse than a UPS in the ~2kW range, and more likely to fail over onto bypass rather than just stop providing power altogether, however, replacing Many Little UPSes with One Large UPS does create a single point of failure.
In the current setup, if any one UPS dies, it affects only the equipment attached to that one UPS. With One Large UPS, if it dies, all the protected equipment dies. If reliability was a concern (as I imagine it is) I'd be much happier with 2* 30kW UPSes, or 3* 15kW UPSes.
Also, check the electrical codes in your jurisdiction. I dont know the exact situation in the US, but in Australia recent legislative reforms (caused by too many brain-dead sparkys frying themselves) mean that performing "live work" (ie tapping live busbars etc) now comes with a *significant* amount of administrative BS (significant enough that a lot of sparkys who follow the rules will no longer do live work. Of course, the brain-dead ones will continue to fry themselves). I've had electrical fitters from a major UPS vendor tell me that they're are no longer permitted (by management) to perform live work for any reason, so extensions to an existing system will require the complete shutdown of the protected power (and all the equipment attached to it)!
Complicating things is the fact that probably the biggest content host in Australia (no names, no pack drill) steadfastly refuses to peer. Of course, they're owned by $tier_1_ISP. If they peer, they give away the traffic. If they don't peer, they charge money for the traffic. What do you think they're going to do?
Electronic Frontiers Australia has just issued a media release on this topic.
I'm not particularly worried about it, but I really do not want to be here when it happens. The earth's magnetic field (ie the magnetosphere, see here and here) has a vital role in keeping tremendous amounts of radiation (least of all from our own sun) away from the planet. Buildings make pretty lousy radiation shields, the average building wouldn't keep you safe from the radiation from the fallout from a nuclear weapon, let alone the massive amounts of radiation which would pour onto the earth without the magnetosphere. Even without the direct effects of the radiation on life-forms (massive deaths, sterility, mutations etc), it would be pretty tough to survive once the solar wind had stripped the atmosphere away from this rock we sit on.
A: Three. One to replace it, one to hold the ladder, and one to ring M$, explain that the old one burned out, ask politely for a new activation key, and be told that your OEM license for Micro$oft Light 2003 is valid only for the particular bulb it was bought with, and you are required to buy a new license for your new bulb.
Twit: My computer went spastic
Me: (doctor evil voice) Rrrrrrrrrrrrright.
T: You know, it did the thing.
M: Which thing?
T: The blue thing!
M: You mean the blue screen with the white writing?
T: Yes!
M: And what does the white writing say?
T: Windows has something about an error blah blah blah
M: Ohhhhhhhh! One of those blah blah blah errors, they're nasty.
T: You dont have to get smart about it!
M: Well just read out exactly what is written on the screen!
T: Its all gobbeldygook.
(At this point I give up, grab a number 5 cluebat and walk out to reception)
M: The registry is pooched. Did you install that stupid thing your friend emailed you last week?
T: Well yes...
M: The one that pooched your registry LAST week?
T: But you fixed that!
M: Yes, I fixed your registry last week after that stupid program broke it. Now someone has to fix your registry THIS week because the same stupid program broke it AGAIN.
T: (getting angry) Well why did it do that?
M: I didn't write the thing, I dont know.
T: (yelling) Well you SHOULD know!
At this point things got rather ugly, but lets just say the Twit quoted above is currently bitching that she can't run ICQ because she doesnt have power-user rights. (Boo hoo)
The decision in the case (Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment v Stevens [2002] FCA 906) is available here
This was the first attempted prosecution in Australia under the changes introduced in the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000, and Sony has vowed to appeal the above adverse decision to the full bench of the Federal Court.
Senator NETTLE -- Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I thank the minister for his answer and I am sure that he will be able to pursue that further. Could the minister assure the Senate that the government will not be using the horrendous events that happened on the weekend as an excuse to justify a further crackdown on civil liberties in Australia?
Senator HILL -- We certainly will not crack down on civil liberties, but we do believe that, in effectively responding to terrorism, there is sometimes a need for us all to accept that the extent of our traditional freedoms needs to be modified in these circumstances. That is why we have put legislation before this parliament which has that effect. We seek to do no more to modify those traditional liberties than is absolutely necessary to attack this terrorist threat, but if ever we need an example and illustration of how real this threat is we have had it in the last few days. We must do everything possible to effectively respond to it and to protect our people.
You're about half right and I'm about half wrong. I did pick a bad example (ie broadcast television), because that is protected for personal use (I goofed, my bad). However, I think you're confusing fair use with fair dealing. Fair use is stuff like time-shifting and space-shifting and applies in the USA. Fair dealing is what is defined in Division Three of the Australian Copyright Act, and is a much narrower definition.
As an example, in the USA if I own an audio CD and encode (rip) those tracks to MP3 files for my own personal use, this is "space-shifting" and is legal as a fair use. In Australia, this is not considered fair dealing, and is therefore illegal. The Australian Record Industry Association is on record as saying this is the case.
Australia is vastly different to the USA. Our consitutution guarentees us almost no rights. No freedom of speech, or religion, or of the press. No right to keep and bear arms. No protection aginst unreasonable searches and siezures, or against self incrimination. We have no doctrine of "fair use" under copyright laws, meaning that taping a movie tonight to watch tomorrow is illegal, because our courts never decided we have the right to time-shift anything. We have our own version of the DMCA, with penalties of up to five years jail. Australia is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. Oh wait, I do.
The Federal Cybercrime Act 2001 (which was, coincidentally, rushed through parliament with little or no debate shortly after the 9/11 attacks) would apply to offences committed against a computer anywhere in Australia, not just within the state of Victoria.
Section 477.2 Unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment would cover hacking or attempted hacking of peoples systems, and Section 477.3 Unauthorised impairment of electronic communication would cover DoS attempts. Both sections have a maximum penalty of 10 years jail.
Ironically, Section 478.3 Possession or control of data with intent to commit a computer offence would make it an offence to even possess software or information required to hack or DoS somebody, if they had intent to use it to commit an offence against section 477. Three years up the river for this one.
Oh, and Section 3LA in schedule two of the Act says that a law enforcement authority could obtain an order requiring a specified person to provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary to allow the officer to do one or more of the following: (a) access data held in, or accessible from, a computer that is on warrant premises; (b) copy the data to a data storage device; (c) convert the data into documentary form. ie they can force you to help them search for incriminating evidence, divulge passwords, encryption keys, etc... and you can get 6 months jail if you refuse to comply.
IMHO the Cybercrime Act is a steaming crock of sh_t. It criminalises practically anything you can twist its vague definitions to apply to. Thus, its a Very Big Stick for the police to wave at people. Pity they'd never have the balls to wave it at the RIAA, MPAA, and their merry men.
The "law" in question was passed by parliament, and received the royal assent, but has not yet been proclaimed, and is therefore not yet law, and not enforceable.
Electronic Frontiers Australia's information page about this legislation can be found here and the report reccomending the repeal of the legislation can be found here (PDF file).