To boil down the parent post, is this fight for real?
Is this really some corporate-backed entity trying to chip away at some of the self-destructive provisions of the DMCA? Will it attempt to establish the "meaning" of media in this age? Or will it be an out of court backstab leaving nothing changed and more and more people classified as criminals?
I can't believe this is still in the news. It's been cracked so long, it has already spawned the successful careers of several pre-bubble programming magicians from RIT.
unnamed this, coulda-done that... My problem with these grey hat hacks is this:
if you didn't actually take down the grid, how do you know with absolute certainty that you could have finished the job?
From TFA, this is what we have:
the server downloaded malware that enabled the team to take command of the machines. "Then we had full system control," Winkler says sure, buddy. Right. How did you know? What did you try to do? What was the last step where you decided NOT to press "Enter"?
I'll wait until someone actually has the gonads to bring down the system, and then use the "I told you so" argument to prevent being totally raped by the authorities. In other words, we need a sacrificial lamb.
People talk a lot of smack about office Wikis. It is true that most people aren't going to edit them or keep their "assigned" parts up to date, I've realized that now. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't an invaluable tool for YOU personally. It gives managers the ability to see details what you're doing, and its a wonderful training tool.
When I came to my current job, there was no process. No specifications, no standards; 600,000 lines of spaghetti pascal code and probably 100-or-so installations with no version information or bug tracking. The code wasn't even under RCS. I can't say that I've solved all these problems 100%, but I'm well on my way. Using my experience as a guide, here's the steps from no standards to some standards:
1. Get all moving targets under revision control, and write up a simple method of version tagging. This includes software, user documentation, database scripts, etc.
2. Start a Wiki and make a short page for each project. Make rough pages outlining things like the release process and version tagging (as mentioned in #1). Include any developer instructions such as build instructions and dependency lists.
3. Use a ticket tracking system for problem resolution, both internally and externanly. I use OTRS, and that is pretty functional (and F/OSS). Bugzilla is good too but is a little more quick-and-dirty.
Get that done, and you're well on your way. About 20 years later, and you'll get ISO!
as anyone will tell you, young one, undergraduate work has nothing to do with learning anything. It only proves you have the self discipline to wake up in the morning and finish something that you started.
Heed the best educational advice I ever got on my second day of college: "College is just like high school. Eventually you just figure out how to get good grades."
Figure out the professors and tell them what they want to hear. Get your degree and then go do something useful with your time.
true. that's what I get for not proofreading. you must listen to geeknights.
To defend the usage, I'd say this is a circular argument as posed by the industry. Because I have no rights as the consumer, they can release music without DRM. Since they release music without DRM, I have the right to copy for personal user without violating the letter of the DMCA. But it is true that the DMCA prevents copying music. Therefore, I have no rights, because I have no rights.
Logic, like law, can be manipulated to say almost anything.
It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.
This begs the question: what exactly can I/do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?
Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.
Average play time ranges from 30 seconds to 10 hours. Perfect for those long software builds when you've already checked your email 30 times in the last 5 minutes. No scrolling, just perfect stick-figure ninja goodness.
I can only assume that 60% of moderators took karma away from me because I'm arguing too much of the ideal. The fact is this software update only closed a security hole that the hack was exploiting to keep the phone unlocked. Without knowing any details of the actual hack , I can only assume it was somewhat fragile and could easily be "broken" by a patch like this. I understand it worked through a buffer overflow and therefore fixing it was not an option.
However, it would be very easy to envision a scenario in the near future where instead of exploiting software weakness, people simply start patching their phones. What then? Should the software updates be smart enough to leave hacked phones well-enough alone? Or will they force their way in? Worse yet, will they disable the whole system a la Windows Genuine Advantage?
This ain't trolling, fellas. This is our future at stake.
Or are you just super-anti-corporate man? No, but I do ask for some respect from the corporate man. I think it would be far more ethical (and IMO, legal) to display the following rather than bricking the phone:
"we see that you have altered your iPhone in an unofficial way. Further updates will not be available for your phone. Thank you, have a nice day."
Could someone point me to when the US or world law changed to disallow the ownership of personal electronics?
How does anyone -- be it Apple Inc. or Script Kiddie Inc. -- think they have the right to hack into and disable any piece of electronic equipment which I own? Even if I should open the door for this through "software updates"? Would I have to explicitly sign away this right if I should choose to purchase an iPhone?
variety.com is supposed to be the site for the magazine of the same name, but the site looks strictly amature. The entire article was also about 3 paragraphs long. Half the links on the page were broken, and now the article won't even come up anymore (18:12:48 ERROR 500: Internal Server Error.).
Germany enacts a law that turns a huge portion of their population into state criminals, and this is all we see? Did anyone check to make sure this is a real article?
It looks very promising for people familiar with the Delphi brand of RAD (Rapid Application Devel., I don't even know if that acronym is still hip or not). I myself haven't written a project in it yet, but the few tests I've thrown at it seem to work OK. Its the most functional IDE I've seen for Linux/X11 yet.
You're right, the scope of open source is simply too large for MS to create their own. However, I do fear that they will hijack open source this way. In other words, create hip and cool hacker communities with no obvious connection to MS, install project managers on the MS payroll, and use them as puppet governments to control masses of honest developers who believe they are working on a free (as in freedom) project. I believe we've already seen this with some commercial semi-open software (Skype comes to mind...).
Taking it a step further, many people might say, "Great! If the source code is open, and I can copy it to my heart's content, then its a win no matter who controls the copyright!" Here lies the dragon: inevitably, some of the more functional code will get copied into some true F/OSS projects, leaving the door open for MS to make good on their patent enforcement promises.
I still haven't made up my mind on GPLv3, but I was under the impression that it was designed to unite, not to fork.
If most F/OSS goes GPLv3, and simultaneously Microsoft denies GPLv3 bug still has a vested interest in Novell Linux, won't that just mean that MS will fork every open source project at the point where it switches to GPLv3? They'll create their own faux-communities loyal to the regime and play them off as open source, and the public will eat it up since they don't know any better. Those who believe in F/OSS as a philosophy and accept GPLv3 will be branded pinkos and commies by "commercial friendly" open source, and die a slow death...?
So I checked out the Theora code, refreshed my knowledge of assembly language, and within a couple days I had a working MMX/SSE-accelerated encoder. Wow.
Muchos Kudos.
Anyone who works on Theora - especially digging into ASM optimization and 64 bit processing - deserves a fat cuban cigar and a government grant. Vorbis and Theora are the only things keeping the world free these days, IMHO.
Speech with political consequences shouldn't be restrained, but speech with violent consequences ought not be protected. Drawing the line between the two isn't easy, because political speech often has violent consequences. Well said!
However, if history has taught us anything, it is that the repression of any form of speech, even violent speech, serves only to fan the flames and causes far much more damage to humanity than any possible result of the original banned material.
I should never have to be in fear of losing my civil rights simply because I put certain words to a page, no matter what those words are. Now if those words have action attached to them (e.g. I told you to go kill my rival), then I have to worry. That's where the line is crossed.
a) to really learn how a computer works, inside and out. and b) to have a reliable headless server that you can whip like a mule and it still keeps running.
Many people start at (a) and graduate to (b) (myself included). Some start at (a), get interested, go to school for computer science, and get good jobs. Others start at (b) and wonder what they missed.
The fact is, neither (a) nor (b) have anything at all to do with (c), which is "to have a user friendly operating system". People pay for user friendly systems that have gone through thousands of hours of q/a in thousands of different environments in thousands of different use cases. If you ain't paying for it, you just don't get it. Not free as in beer, remember people?
Therefore, anyone who isn't willing to pay for linux (usually in the form of time), will not use it. My linux server runs like a champ, on free hardware, using gratuit software, but I certainly pay for it every single time I run apt-get. Simple as that.
Guess I deserved the "-1 Flamebait." Emotion and/. don't mix:)
First, I moved the hours for this India office to be banker's hours, 9-5. I'm the one who stays up until midnight making sure they have work for the day. Asking professionals to work 3pm to midnight is disrespectful and counter-productive.
Second, I'm a F/OSS evangelist. Part of that philosophy is the belief that on the global scale, there is several magnitudes more work than there are engineers. Once the technological economy comes back into balance (hopefully within a generation or so), works in emerging economies won't have to work slave labor just to get a foot in the door.
Slashdot Mirror
To boil down the parent post, is this fight for real?
Is this really some corporate-backed entity trying to chip away at some of the self-destructive provisions of the DMCA? Will it attempt to establish the "meaning" of media in this age? Or will it be an out of court backstab leaving nothing changed and more and more people classified as criminals?
-dave
I can't believe this is still in the news. It's been cracked so long, it has already spawned the successful careers of several pre-bubble programming magicians from RIT.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1148249
if you didn't actually take down the grid, how do you know with absolute certainty that you could have finished the job?
From TFA, this is what we have: the server downloaded malware that enabled the team to take command of the machines. "Then we had full system control," Winkler says sure, buddy. Right. How did you know? What did you try to do? What was the last step where you decided NOT to press "Enter"?
I'll wait until someone actually has the gonads to bring down the system, and then use the "I told you so" argument to prevent being totally raped by the authorities. In other words, we need a sacrificial lamb.
Any takers?
Any monkey can code in assembly on most architectures.
The question is, can he code assembly.... USING VI.
People talk a lot of smack about office Wikis. It is true that most people aren't going to edit them or keep their "assigned" parts up to date, I've realized that now. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't an invaluable tool for YOU personally. It gives managers the ability to see details what you're doing, and its a wonderful training tool.
When I came to my current job, there was no process. No specifications, no standards; 600,000 lines of spaghetti pascal code and probably 100-or-so installations with no version information or bug tracking. The code wasn't even under RCS. I can't say that I've solved all these problems 100%, but I'm well on my way. Using my experience as a guide, here's the steps from no standards to some standards:
1. Get all moving targets under revision control, and write up a simple method of version tagging. This includes software, user documentation, database scripts, etc.
2. Start a Wiki and make a short page for each project. Make rough pages outlining things like the release process and version tagging (as mentioned in #1). Include any developer instructions such as build instructions and dependency lists.
3. Use a ticket tracking system for problem resolution, both internally and externanly. I use OTRS, and that is pretty functional (and F/OSS). Bugzilla is good too but is a little more quick-and-dirty.
Get that done, and you're well on your way. About 20 years later, and you'll get ISO!
-dave
as anyone will tell you, young one, undergraduate work has nothing to do with learning anything. It only proves you have the self discipline to wake up in the morning and finish something that you started.
Heed the best educational advice I ever got on my second day of college: "College is just like high school. Eventually you just figure out how to get good grades."
Figure out the professors and tell them what they want to hear. Get your degree and then go do something useful with your time.
My 2 centavos.
true. that's what I get for not proofreading. you must listen to geeknights.
To defend the usage, I'd say this is a circular argument as posed by the industry. Because I have no rights as the consumer, they can release music without DRM. Since they release music without DRM, I have the right to copy for personal user without violating the letter of the DMCA. But it is true that the DMCA prevents copying music. Therefore, I have no rights, because I have no rights.
Logic, like law, can be manipulated to say almost anything.
-d
It seems to be that the music industry is pulling a "new coke" method of marketing: come out with a new product that sucks (DRM-laden "music"), and then all reap the rewards when they revert back to the original (real and liberated music). This will make everyone feel like they're "sticking it to the man" by purchasing this new flavor, when in fact the industry is in fact reverting back to the old tried-and-true method.
/do/ with this music that is being sold to me without expressed limitation. Do I now have my fair-use rights back because I don't have to violate the DMCA by breaking copy protection? Or is breaking copy protection now back within my right because the industry is trashing DRM in general?
This begs the question: what exactly can I
Somehow, I fear, the consumer is still going to end up losing in the end.
-d
Listening to Danger Doom right now....
for the on topic comment: best.... promo.... ever.
The greatest free cycle eater in the universe doesn't make the list? I can't believe it.
http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html
Average play time ranges from 30 seconds to 10 hours. Perfect for those long software builds when you've already checked your email 30 times in the last 5 minutes. No scrolling, just perfect stick-figure ninja goodness.
careful, questions about electronic ownership will be greeted with 20% flamebate and 40% troll here on good ol' slashdot.
(and only 20% insightful, mind you)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=311881&cid=20786707
user space thread scheduling? Sign me up, linus. There is not a better example of process empowerment.
I can only assume that 60% of moderators took karma away from me because I'm arguing too much of the ideal. The fact is this software update only closed a security hole that the hack was exploiting to keep the phone unlocked. Without knowing any details of the actual hack , I can only assume it was somewhat fragile and could easily be "broken" by a patch like this. I understand it worked through a buffer overflow and therefore fixing it was not an option.
However, it would be very easy to envision a scenario in the near future where instead of exploiting software weakness, people simply start patching their phones. What then? Should the software updates be smart enough to leave hacked phones well-enough alone? Or will they force their way in? Worse yet, will they disable the whole system a la Windows Genuine Advantage?
This ain't trolling, fellas. This is our future at stake.
"we see that you have altered your iPhone in an unofficial way. Further updates will not be available for your phone. Thank you, have a nice day."
dontcha think?
Could someone point me to when the US or world law changed to disallow the ownership of personal electronics?
How does anyone -- be it Apple Inc. or Script Kiddie Inc. -- think they have the right to hack into and disable any piece of electronic equipment which I own? Even if I should open the door for this through "software updates"? Would I have to explicitly sign away this right if I should choose to purchase an iPhone?
-dave
variety.com is supposed to be the site for the magazine of the same name, but the site looks strictly amature. The entire article was also about 3 paragraphs long. Half the links on the page were broken, and now the article won't even come up anymore (18:12:48 ERROR 500: Internal Server Error.).
Germany enacts a law that turns a huge portion of their population into state criminals, and this is all we see? Did anyone check to make sure this is a real article?
Shouldn't this article be under the censorship icon? That's what we're talking about, isn't it?
props to the slashdot strawman.
Have you tried Lazarus and Free Pascal?
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php
It looks very promising for people familiar with the Delphi brand of RAD (Rapid Application Devel., I don't even know if that acronym is still hip or not). I myself haven't written a project in it yet, but the few tests I've thrown at it seem to work OK. Its the most functional IDE I've seen for Linux/X11 yet.
You're right, the scope of open source is simply too large for MS to create their own. However, I do fear that they will hijack open source this way. In other words, create hip and cool hacker communities with no obvious connection to MS, install project managers on the MS payroll, and use them as puppet governments to control masses of honest developers who believe they are working on a free (as in freedom) project. I believe we've already seen this with some commercial semi-open software (Skype comes to mind...).
Taking it a step further, many people might say, "Great! If the source code is open, and I can copy it to my heart's content, then its a win no matter who controls the copyright!" Here lies the dragon: inevitably, some of the more functional code will get copied into some true F/OSS projects, leaving the door open for MS to make good on their patent enforcement promises.
itsatrap?
now that's a post worthy of a +5. Nice story.
I still haven't made up my mind on GPLv3, but I was under the impression that it was designed to unite, not to fork.
If most F/OSS goes GPLv3, and simultaneously Microsoft denies GPLv3 bug still has a vested interest in Novell Linux, won't that just mean that MS will fork every open source project at the point where it switches to GPLv3? They'll create their own faux-communities loyal to the regime and play them off as open source, and the public will eat it up since they don't know any better. Those who believe in F/OSS as a philosophy and accept GPLv3 will be branded pinkos and commies by "commercial friendly" open source, and die a slow death...?
I sure hope I'm wrong.
Muchos Kudos.
Anyone who works on Theora - especially digging into ASM optimization and 64 bit processing - deserves a fat cuban cigar and a government grant. Vorbis and Theora are the only things keeping the world free these days, IMHO.
However, if history has taught us anything, it is that the repression of any form of speech, even violent speech, serves only to fan the flames and causes far much more damage to humanity than any possible result of the original banned material.
I should never have to be in fear of losing my civil rights simply because I put certain words to a page, no matter what those words are. Now if those words have action attached to them (e.g. I told you to go kill my rival), then I have to worry. That's where the line is crossed.
Here we go again.
People install linux for one of two reasons:
a) to really learn how a computer works, inside and out. and
b) to have a reliable headless server that you can whip like a mule and it still keeps running.
Many people start at (a) and graduate to (b) (myself included). Some start at (a), get interested, go to school for computer science, and get good jobs. Others start at (b) and wonder what they missed.
The fact is, neither (a) nor (b) have anything at all to do with (c), which is "to have a user friendly operating system". People pay for user friendly systems that have gone through thousands of hours of q/a in thousands of different environments in thousands of different use cases. If you ain't paying for it, you just don't get it. Not free as in beer, remember people?
Therefore, anyone who isn't willing to pay for linux (usually in the form of time), will not use it. My linux server runs like a champ, on free hardware, using gratuit software, but I certainly pay for it every single time I run apt-get. Simple as that.
Guess I deserved the "-1 Flamebait." Emotion and /. don't mix :)
First, I moved the hours for this India office to be banker's hours, 9-5. I'm the one who stays up until midnight making sure they have work for the day. Asking professionals to work 3pm to midnight is disrespectful and counter-productive.
Second, I'm a F/OSS evangelist. Part of that philosophy is the belief that on the global scale, there is several magnitudes more work than there are engineers. Once the technological economy comes back into balance (hopefully within a generation or so), works in emerging economies won't have to work slave labor just to get a foot in the door.
Hate the game, not the player.