The BBC provide some evidence to back this up, and are not known for rash accusations
Yes, thanks to the BBC's insightful investigative reporting, I know now that the Pfc. Lynch rescue was a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. Military, and that Israel attacks Palestinians with poisonous gases.
they mention the FBI knocking on a "Stanford-educated" Pakistani man's door because of books that he purchased on eBay. It's a good thing he had his ducks in a row immigration-wise
IOW, "it's a good thing he wasn't breaking the law, or else he would have had to face the consequences of breaking the law".
Do you have any idea how much it would COST the state tax collectors to collect and process all the information necessary to track down, collect from, and/or prosecute every Joe or Jane that doesn't report $11 of income from auctioning off a Beanie Baby?
If they want to crack down on tax avoision, there are MUCH more common and lucrative exploits for them to focus on first.
The thing about conspiracy theories is, they're NEVER proven true.
in any computer system there is a person/persons/entity that is trusted. in the simplest form it is supervisor/admin/etc.
On a single-user system (as is the case with most desktop computers), the trusted party is the user. I.e., you.
DRM declared the user explicitly untrustable, ignoring their desires in favor of some monolithic and inflexible organization that probably has no accountability to the user (Microsoft, RIAA, the government...)
The total cost to replace the hardware with machines 3x as powerful was around $6000 (and was necessary for further expansion plans), while refactoring the code came in at at least $24000. These sorts of idiotic refusals to do the cost analysis are common...
You just did a cost analysis for them. Did you give a copy of that to the bean-counters at the time? It's possible they were not stubborn, just lazy, and would have fixed the problem once they were made aware of it.
Then again, if you showed them proof that they were wasting money and they STILL failed to do anything about it, well...
Imagine when high-quality digital recording facilities are available at low cost to those that want to use them.
Already happened. It doesn't change anything.
Me and my Sound Blaster Audigy can crank out music with greater fidelidy than the top-of-the-line pro studio hardware was capable of 25 years ago. And yet, Led Zeppelin's old albums still outsell mine at a rate of 1,000 to zero.
Artists can "create works and distribute them easily in return for a fair price" today. That's not what the Music Industry (read: RIAA) exists for (though they'll gladly take money from the artists for doing those things). The real value that the Industry provides to artists is PUBLICITY.
You speak as if ProTools is the only vendor that you can get high-end multitrack audio DSP hardware from. I can go to my local Sam Ash, or crack open a Musician's Friend catalog, and find a half dozen companies that will sell me monster PCI cards, with or without bundled software.
The OSS community doesn't need to provide the hardware, it's already out there.
"The great things about this deal: the Army is going through a reseller, when clearly they have the purchasing power to buy direct; and most of the computers they purchase are normal consumer machines which will be purchased with Windows and Office already installed, so the Army will be paying twice for each machine."
There, Michael, I just took your smart-assed thoughts about the story submission and posted them as a Comment in response to the story. Is that so hard? I mean, it's what us common folk have to do all the time if we have something to say about a story. We don't have the luxury of forcing everyone else to read our comments without the ability to mod them up or down.
You're an ass and you continually abuse your article posting privileges. And since you also have unlimited mod points, I expect you'll abuse them too and mod me down for pointing your abuses out.
That difference is absolutely negligible. Even if it's a difference in the fine points of the company strategy, it should NOT be sufficient for a patent. To me this is definitely another case of patent abuse.
So basically you're saying that you, some anonymous guy on Slashdot, knows US Patent Law than the patent examiners who work for the US Patent Office.
How do you tell someone who wants to help, no. Or better yet, what's a good project to let parents feel good about helping without damaging my network, or my systems?
"I'm sorry, but the district security policy forbids anyone except network admin staff from working on the network. I'm sure you can understand why. Please leave your equipment donations on that shelf and I'll take it from there."
Did the newspaper bypass security and illegally access copyrighted material?
What security? There was none -- that's the point.
Also, what copyrighted material? Public school records not only are property of the government and thus uncopyrightable, but something like a list of grades is also a collection of facts, which have also been affirmed as uncopyrightable.
On a side note, could the newspaper be held liable for this, given that they were intruding on the network without permission?
The school district could go after the newspaper, but that would only gain them more bad press. Not only from the paper that did the investigating, but from all the other media outlets that worry a judgment against it would have a stifling effect on investigative journalism across the board.
the kernel is still essential due to the high level of hardware support.. but hopefully if something would happen, the drivers get ported to other kernels..
Um, what.
RMS is just saying that GNU does not depend on Linux to survive. And it's absolutely true. I've got GNU utilities on my Windows box under Cygwin, no Linux kernel there. And I dare you to find a commerical Unix-ish system from the past 10 years that you CAN'T compile Emacs under.
Having gone and taken a look at your Open Source Music License", I disagree with your definition of what "source" means as pertaining to music.
The way I see it, any audio recording of a piece of music IS the end product. It's a performance of the 'source', which is the words and notes that comprise the music itself.
Even copyright law makes a similar distinction -- the copyright of a song pertains to the chords, lyrics, printed sheet music of a song; the phonographic copyright pertains to recordings of the song. If you make a copy of an audio recording, you must get permission from the phonographic copyright holder; if you record a song yourself that was written by someone else, you must get permission from the other kind of copyright holder (under US Copyright Law there are conditions where licensing is compulsory, but I digress).
My conception of a GPL-like music license would be one where artists could sell CD's containing recordings of their music. They would not have to allow people to make their own copies of the CD's, but they WOULD have to provide 'source code' for their music (as lyric files, sheet music, MIDI, or some other conceptual representation) and allow people to make their own recordings of the music, provided the orchestration/interpretation/whatever changes were documented in the 'source' and distributed along with the rerecordings.
There are at least a dozen different open music licenses listed on the EFF site, I bet at least one of them contains exactly what I've described. But it does demonstrate a concern about open-source movements -- what is the most appropriate way to apply computer programming concepts like 'source', 'binary', and 'compile' to fields that are not computer programming?
Re:Like it or not, managers default to commercial
on
What is Open Source?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I was going to point out that reliable, accountable support is available for many open-source software packages too, from vendors ranging from IBM and RedHat down to the self-employed geek down the street that runs his own consulting business, but I realized you had a point.
When a commercial support organization for an open-source application gets a bug report, they can analyze the source code to gain an understanding of the app design, troubleshoot to the best of their understanding, and consult the original authors via mailing lists or whatever about the things they can't understand themselves (and the authors have no obligation to respond, since they're not getting paid to). If the support company does not provide good support, they lose the support contract.
When the support org of a proprietary software company gets a bug report, they have vast amounts of internal resources available to help them understand, troubleshoot, and correct the error. Many of the people who originally developed the application are likely to still be employed by the company, obligating them to share what they know. If the software company does not provide good support, they lose the support contract -- AND lose out on future sales of their product.
Ultimately, source code alone is NOT sufficient documentation to support an application. In order to understand how something works, you need the project specs, design docs, etc. -- and very few OSS projects provide that kind of documentation with their source. On the other hand, most commercial developers are required by company policy to create such documentation.
If you tried using Xerox's original GUI today, you'd be surprised at how little it resembles the modern Windows/OSX/Gnome/KDE GUI's you're used to. A lot has changed.
So yes, everyone borrowed initially from Xerox, but since then they've been borrowing from each other depending on whomever comes up with the best ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
Browsers are still forgiving about handling crappy HTML
Who would benefit from a browser that won't render crappy HTML? Browser developers and webmasters. Who would NOT benefit? Users.
I have a feeling that you couldn't envision anything like a browser 10 years ago.
Ten years ago I was using Win3.1's "Help" tool, which was a full-featured if primitive-looking hypertext document browser.
The BBC provide some evidence to back this up, and are not known for rash accusations
Yes, thanks to the BBC's insightful investigative reporting, I know now that the Pfc. Lynch rescue was a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. Military, and that Israel attacks Palestinians with poisonous gases.
What ever happened to the concept of privacy?
Outside of your home, you have never had any expectation of privacy.
Never.
they mention the FBI knocking on a "Stanford-educated" Pakistani man's door because of books that he purchased on eBay. It's a good thing he had his ducks in a row immigration-wise
IOW, "it's a good thing he wasn't breaking the law, or else he would have had to face the consequences of breaking the law".
Well, yeah.
You're kidding, right?
Do you have any idea how much it would COST the state tax collectors to collect and process all the information necessary to track down, collect from, and/or prosecute every Joe or Jane that doesn't report $11 of income from auctioning off a Beanie Baby?
If they want to crack down on tax avoision, there are MUCH more common and lucrative exploits for them to focus on first.
The thing about conspiracy theories is, they're NEVER proven true.
The circumstance is usually just being in a directory whose path name is several hundred thousand characters long
If this ever actually happens, you need to SERIOUSLY reconsider the way you're organizing your filesystems. Jeebus.
in any computer system there is a person/persons/entity that is trusted. in the simplest form it is supervisor/admin/etc.
On a single-user system (as is the case with most desktop computers), the trusted party is the user. I.e., you.
DRM declared the user explicitly untrustable, ignoring their desires in favor of some monolithic and inflexible organization that probably has no accountability to the user (Microsoft, RIAA, the government...)
Lots of hackers know how to read hex code!
If they REALLY want their code to be more secure, they should write it in duodecimal!
The total cost to replace the hardware with machines 3x as powerful was around $6000 (and was necessary for further expansion plans), while refactoring the code came in at at least $24000. These sorts of idiotic refusals to do the cost analysis are common...
You just did a cost analysis for them. Did you give a copy of that to the bean-counters at the time? It's possible they were not stubborn, just lazy, and would have fixed the problem once they were made aware of it.
Then again, if you showed them proof that they were wasting money and they STILL failed to do anything about it, well...
Imagine when high-quality digital recording facilities are available at low cost to those that want to use them.
Already happened. It doesn't change anything.
Me and my Sound Blaster Audigy can crank out music with greater fidelidy than the top-of-the-line pro studio hardware was capable of 25 years ago. And yet, Led Zeppelin's old albums still outsell mine at a rate of 1,000 to zero.
Artists can "create works and distribute them easily in return for a fair price" today. That's not what the Music Industry (read: RIAA) exists for (though they'll gladly take money from the artists for doing those things). The real value that the Industry provides to artists is PUBLICITY.
You speak as if ProTools is the only vendor that you can get high-end multitrack audio DSP hardware from. I can go to my local Sam Ash, or crack open a Musician's Friend catalog, and find a half dozen companies that will sell me monster PCI cards, with or without bundled software.
The OSS community doesn't need to provide the hardware, it's already out there.
"The great things about this deal: the Army is going through a reseller, when clearly they have the purchasing power to buy direct; and most of the computers they purchase are normal consumer machines which will be purchased with Windows and Office already installed, so the Army will be paying twice for each machine."
There, Michael, I just took your smart-assed thoughts about the story submission and posted them as a Comment in response to the story. Is that so hard? I mean, it's what us common folk have to do all the time if we have something to say about a story. We don't have the luxury of forcing everyone else to read our comments without the ability to mod them up or down.
You're an ass and you continually abuse your article posting privileges. And since you also have unlimited mod points, I expect you'll abuse them too and mod me down for pointing your abuses out.
That difference is absolutely negligible. Even if it's a difference in the fine points of the company strategy, it should NOT be sufficient for a patent. To me this is definitely another case of patent abuse.
So basically you're saying that you, some anonymous guy on Slashdot, knows US Patent Law than the patent examiners who work for the US Patent Office.
Yeah, okay, right.
How do you tell someone who wants to help, no. Or better yet, what's a good project to let parents feel good about helping without damaging my network, or my systems?
"I'm sorry, but the district security policy forbids anyone except network admin staff from working on the network. I'm sure you can understand why. Please leave your equipment donations on that shelf and I'll take it from there."
they can "crack" into a school district computer and no one blinks an eye. But the moment a student would try the same thing, he would be expelled.
There's a crucial difference here.
The newspaper's motive for accessing the school's computer is to serve the public interest.
The student's motive is to serve his own interests -- dig up some dirt on classmates, maybe change a couple grades.
Just getting an IP address constitutes committing [a] felony...
So if I go up to a guy on the street and ask him for $5, and he says 'okay' and gives it to me, I've just committed a felony?
Asking for something and taking it are not the same.
Did the newspaper bypass security and illegally access copyrighted material?
What security? There was none -- that's the point.
Also, what copyrighted material? Public school records not only are property of the government and thus uncopyrightable, but something like a list of grades is also a collection of facts, which have also been affirmed as uncopyrightable.
On a side note, could the newspaper be held liable for this, given that they were intruding on the network without permission?
The school district could go after the newspaper, but that would only gain them more bad press. Not only from the paper that did the investigating, but from all the other media outlets that worry a judgment against it would have a stifling effect on investigative journalism across the board.
the kernel is still essential due to the high level of hardware support.. but hopefully if something would happen, the drivers get ported to other kernels..
Um, what.
RMS is just saying that GNU does not depend on Linux to survive. And it's absolutely true. I've got GNU utilities on my Windows box under Cygwin, no Linux kernel there. And I dare you to find a commerical Unix-ish system from the past 10 years that you CAN'T compile Emacs under.
You're right, "inexorable" probably isn't the word they meant to use.
I suggest "execrable" as an alternative.
Having gone and taken a look at your Open Source Music License", I disagree with your definition of what "source" means as pertaining to music.
The way I see it, any audio recording of a piece of music IS the end product. It's a performance of the 'source', which is the words and notes that comprise the music itself.
Even copyright law makes a similar distinction -- the copyright of a song pertains to the chords, lyrics, printed sheet music of a song; the phonographic copyright pertains to recordings of the song. If you make a copy of an audio recording, you must get permission from the phonographic copyright holder; if you record a song yourself that was written by someone else, you must get permission from the other kind of copyright holder (under US Copyright Law there are conditions where licensing is compulsory, but I digress).
My conception of a GPL-like music license would be one where artists could sell CD's containing recordings of their music. They would not have to allow people to make their own copies of the CD's, but they WOULD have to provide 'source code' for their music (as lyric files, sheet music, MIDI, or some other conceptual representation) and allow people to make their own recordings of the music, provided the orchestration/interpretation/whatever changes were documented in the 'source' and distributed along with the rerecordings.
There are at least a dozen different open music licenses listed on the EFF site, I bet at least one of them contains exactly what I've described. But it does demonstrate a concern about open-source movements -- what is the most appropriate way to apply computer programming concepts like 'source', 'binary', and 'compile' to fields that are not computer programming?
I was going to point out that reliable, accountable support is available for many open-source software packages too, from vendors ranging from IBM and RedHat down to the self-employed geek down the street that runs his own consulting business, but I realized you had a point.
When a commercial support organization for an open-source application gets a bug report, they can analyze the source code to gain an understanding of the app design, troubleshoot to the best of their understanding, and consult the original authors via mailing lists or whatever about the things they can't understand themselves (and the authors have no obligation to respond, since they're not getting paid to). If the support company does not provide good support, they lose the support contract.
When the support org of a proprietary software company gets a bug report, they have vast amounts of internal resources available to help them understand, troubleshoot, and correct the error. Many of the people who originally developed the application are likely to still be employed by the company, obligating them to share what they know. If the software company does not provide good support, they lose the support contract -- AND lose out on future sales of their product.
Ultimately, source code alone is NOT sufficient documentation to support an application. In order to understand how something works, you need the project specs, design docs, etc. -- and very few OSS projects provide that kind of documentation with their source. On the other hand, most commercial developers are required by company policy to create such documentation.
If you tried using Xerox's original GUI today, you'd be surprised at how little it resembles the modern Windows/OSX/Gnome/KDE GUI's you're used to. A lot has changed.
So yes, everyone borrowed initially from Xerox, but since then they've been borrowing from each other depending on whomever comes up with the best ideas.
Little known fact, but it's true.
Do you have a cite? I don't believe it for a second. It doesn't take sales tax into consideration.
A $20 item, plus 6% sales tax, comes out to $21.20.
A $19.99 item, plus 6% sales tax, comes out to $21.19.
What are the chances a cashier would be able to provide exact change for either of those without opening the register?