Ok, MS is going to implement Hailstorm, which nobody asked for, nor do they want, and they're going to shove it down our throats along with Passport and take away our privacy and security. So Sun's reasoning is if we have a choice of being screwed by Sun or MS, we'll choose Sun.
Well, I guess I probably would prefer getting screwed by somebody different now and then. Although I think I'd rather have a choice of "none of the above".
Hmmm, which service that I don't want will I choose...
If they did do a freebie to get people back on, then they'd need to give away a certain number of songs away for free, otherwise the college kids will just suck enough down in 1 month, to keep them content for another year.
Actually I was referring to his poor writing abilities in that nobody understood what he wrote and he found himself trying to explain what he meant because what he wrote was poorly worded.
As far as whether or not that was intentional, I'm just not sure. He did try to get it passed quickly so it's a possibility. It's also possible he's just an idiot and can't get his pen to write what his brain is thinking. Which isn't that important on Slashdot, but when something is going to become law, it should be.
I'm getting off on a tangent here, but watching a rebroadcast of Ashcroft addressing Congress last night on C-SPAN change how I felt about the man as well as his proposal.
I'm not a supporter of him, but his ideas may have some merit, however his writing skills seemed to lack and I noticed him apologizing on the wording of the laws quite a bit, and instead of reading the text, stating what his intentions were. I think he may be getting some much needed criticism and maybe these new laws will not be the end of the tech world after everybody else gets there paws into the exact wording of it.
This brings up another point: for this man to be in the position of power that he is, shouldn't there have been more though put into his proposal? Obvisouly the confusion I watched last night was just the beginning as several members didn't get a chance to query Ashcroft as he had another appointment. The members that did, all had concerns over the wording of the proposal.
I guess I'm just glad to see that this wasn't rushed through and passed as law and that some officials are actually reading it and listening to their constituents.
I wouldn't even really worry about encryption at the moment. It seems that all congressmen aren't idiots.
Of course, this is just the way I feel at the moment, this is subject to change.
You're right, thinking back my download attempts always started with the people that listed themselves as T1. I probably only got a few songs from other modem users, just because it was an oddball track.
I guess I'm somewhat assuming that when Napster goes commercial, they'll be hosting the songs on their server.
Broadband is not required. Back when Napster was in full swing and I only have a 56k modem, I still managed to download about 500 128kbps+ songs in a few months. Queue em up and let it go all night.
Gnutella is pretty bad right now regardless of which client you use. If I'm on a 56k connection and I'm trying to download an MP3, I usually get somewhere in the range of "busy" to "2.1kbps". The fact that your also getting bombarded with everybody elses search requests doesn't help the connection out. Seriously, Gnutella requires that EVERYONE have broadband, on Napster it's just a convenience.
When they helped her with the HD, it was a couple years ago, back when they had good customer service. From what I hear nowadays, they suck pretty bad.
At least they didn't take the typical dot-com role and just close shop.
A year ago I would have said nobody will pay for that service. But now I think enough time has elapsed and enough other free services have gone under, that they maybe be able to get a user base going again.
I'm frustrated enough right now with the dot-coms and the ever slowing gnutella network, that I may just pry my wallet open to get something I want, when I want it, without having to pay for stuff I don't want.
So is Intel making REALLY good deals to major manufacturers? AMDs are obviously the price/performance leader right now, so the only reason I could see a failing PC maker switching to the more expensive processor is if they aren't really more expensive. Or possibly the name game is coming into play here. Gateway is better consumers want PCs with a higher GHz value and will be willing to pay for a higher price.
No matter what the reason, bad move Gateway.
Although I must take the time to thank Gateway. Over the years they have provided my relatives with enough tech support to keep them from calling me. Hell, they spent 3 hours on the phone with my mom while she installed a new HD she bought at the local computer store, and her Gateway machine wasn't even under warranty anymore. Gee, ya think that could be part of the reason they're having trouble now?
I didn't mention the number of connections or even what type of aircraft it is. We cater towards small airports. A 747 couldn't even land at our customers airports. At most, we might have 40-50 simultaneous connections, which are all handled through perl scripts.
Couldn't help but notice you hid behind an AC name while mentioning you're a sql server dba. Why is that?
Ha ha, we created an online aircraft scheduling system that runs on a P2 with 256MB RAM, with IIS and MSSQL. I think you're right about that being an overkill. With that much power I'd expect it to simultaneously guide all the aircraft that are in the air at any given time.
Not being a server dude, are these things parallel processing machines or just a server farm contained within a refridgerator?
Actually for that price I hope it functions as a refridgerator, as well as a dishwasher, robotic maid and would provide protection during nuclear fallout.
Yes, the ATA and the DMCA are two totally different scenarios. One was created by corporations to stifle new technology, the other has been created by an extremist under the guise of protecting America.
You're definitely right about the DMCA's purpose though, the important point are already covered under existing laws. At this point, we would really need to show the flaws in the DMCA instead of proposing a modified version of it.
Just out of curiosity, did you e-mail or write the letter?
Good points. However, I disagree on us being the "wardens". In the case of technological legislation, we are in fact the prisoners. These are not affecting the lower-class citizens, because they are not the ones that will be affected by these laws. It is the middle-class, average slashdotter that will be hurt by these laws. The laws are aimed at restricting what we do for a living which in many cases is what we do for fun.
It is true that most of us are happy with our lives, I don't have a $40,000 car but I'm happy with where my life is headed right now. But I also see what could be in store for me in the next decade. Government mandated coding specifications, governmental review of source code used in non-critical applications, special licensing to write software or use a compiler. There are a lot of things the government could try to take control of for the sake of attempts at controlling a "greater evil". By the time we get to this point, if there is no political influence coming from the technology sector, then it will be too late to respond in a civilized political manner.
It would be nice if politicians listened to us, but they just see us as minority group of finatics.
There's still a good chunk of people out there that believe in some mystical entity controlling our lives without any proof of such thoughts. Yet these are the same people that say "that's impossible" when they see what science is capable of. Like it or not, these people have more political influence than we do. They have more power because they are unified, with leadership and there's a lot of history behind them.
There's a lot of programmers here, and I'm sure they're all used to trying to see the big picture and chart all the variables. This is one of those BIG projects in mapping all the variables and figuring out their relationship. The major points are: there's little history in computer technology right now; t's still new and strange to a majority of people; pogrammers work long hours, and the pay is decreasing, leaving less time for political movements; and there is no single "leader" that represents us, which is very important towards political advancement. You can't expect politicians to summarize the demands of many individuals, all with different points of view. They're more likely to listen to an individual with well thought ideas and the backing of a large community.
What we have been proposing on/. is that the advancement of laws be stopped. We don't have any alternatives, we just want these laws to go away. You want to make a difference and be listened to? Propose your own laws that include regulations we can live with. You want to get the RIAA off everbodies back, weaken their economical standing or find a middle ground everybody will be happy with. From what I see, nobody is doing this. We're basically starting our own little war with every other industry including our own, and yet we're still not unified in our efforts of opposition. Last I checked, a group of separated individuals don't win wars against unified groups.
Does anybody have any stats on the time spent administrating Linux boxes vs. NT boxes, and how much time is spent learning the systems in order to administrate them at a competent level?
Why do they need to know? If they were told, would they understand? Code Red was referenced on LOCAL news channels for 2 weeks, even giving users instructions on how to fix their machines. Telling them didn't help. And if informing the users that they are stupid is required, this corrective worm has complete control of the machine just as Code Red does. Change their wallpaper to a bitmap of instructions. That's really a minor point though.
Ok, this is getting a little absurd, this is my last explanation:
I don't know what you're referring to in saying that I want everybody to waste their bandwidth. Somebody would need to release a worm that fixes the whole, spreads itself, and removes itself.
Where do you think the bandwidth issue comes from? When a worm scans host machines to look for places to spread, it uses a lot of bandwidth. This is what most people here are complaining about. Your proposed worm may fix bad IIS installations, but it would have to use at least as much bandwidth as the worm it's designed to fix.
It wouldn't use as much bandwidth because the corrective worm would only fix machine it knows to have the virus, by analyzing the servers log files to see what machines have infected it and then making sure those machines are no longer infected. There would be no random connections made. After all the infected servers have been hit, that's it. Code Red continually tries random address. I'm not going to figure out the math but my solution would require a lot less bandwidth overall. Not that it wouldn't require an equal amount of bandwidth at it's peak, but there would be a peak, and then a dropoff of both Code Red/Nimda and the corrective worm itself.
Google has that nice little AdWords program. Its like a penny per impression I think. We use it and have gotten a bit of extra traffic from it. It's much better than shelling out thousands of dollars to setup a campaign on Yahoo. I think you can start as low as $15.00 on an account. That's a good deal, and that's going to make them some money. Even if they don't work, our attitude is "what the hell, it's only a few bucks".
I'm sure echelon can handle ROT13, but can it handle ROT14. One problem is a minor change in the encryption formula can make the governments efforts futile. Rotate the bits right, rotate them left, invert them, invert the high 4, rotate the low 4, there's lots of combinations. Even if they programmed all the different variations in, it would take a bit of time to process a single e-mail.
What about encryption formulas created in other countries? Didn't we just get past the point where we can export basic encryption. Are they going to ban importing (maybe they already did, I don't know).
I don't know the answers, unfortunately, neither does the government, but they're gonna pass some laws anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, MS is going to implement Hailstorm, which nobody asked for, nor do they want, and they're going to shove it down our throats along with Passport and take away our privacy and security. So Sun's reasoning is if we have a choice of being screwed by Sun or MS, we'll choose Sun.
Well, I guess I probably would prefer getting screwed by somebody different now and then. Although I think I'd rather have a choice of "none of the above".
Hmmm, which service that I don't want will I choose...
If they did do a freebie to get people back on, then they'd need to give away a certain number of songs away for free, otherwise the college kids will just suck enough down in 1 month, to keep them content for another year.
Actually I was referring to his poor writing abilities in that nobody understood what he wrote and he found himself trying to explain what he meant because what he wrote was poorly worded.
As far as whether or not that was intentional, I'm just not sure. He did try to get it passed quickly so it's a possibility. It's also possible he's just an idiot and can't get his pen to write what his brain is thinking. Which isn't that important on Slashdot, but when something is going to become law, it should be.
I'm getting off on a tangent here, but watching a rebroadcast of Ashcroft addressing Congress last night on C-SPAN change how I felt about the man as well as his proposal.
I'm not a supporter of him, but his ideas may have some merit, however his writing skills seemed to lack and I noticed him apologizing on the wording of the laws quite a bit, and instead of reading the text, stating what his intentions were. I think he may be getting some much needed criticism and maybe these new laws will not be the end of the tech world after everybody else gets there paws into the exact wording of it.
This brings up another point: for this man to be in the position of power that he is, shouldn't there have been more though put into his proposal? Obvisouly the confusion I watched last night was just the beginning as several members didn't get a chance to query Ashcroft as he had another appointment. The members that did, all had concerns over the wording of the proposal.
I guess I'm just glad to see that this wasn't rushed through and passed as law and that some officials are actually reading it and listening to their constituents.
I wouldn't even really worry about encryption at the moment. It seems that all congressmen aren't idiots.
Of course, this is just the way I feel at the moment, this is subject to change.
You're right, thinking back my download attempts always started with the people that listed themselves as T1. I probably only got a few songs from other modem users, just because it was an oddball track.
I guess I'm somewhat assuming that when Napster goes commercial, they'll be hosting the songs on their server.
I wasn't referring to file sharing, although you must have forgotten about Scour. I was referring to the free service market in general.
Broadband is not required. Back when Napster was in full swing and I only have a 56k modem, I still managed to download about 500 128kbps+ songs in a few months. Queue em up and let it go all night.
Gnutella is pretty bad right now regardless of which client you use. If I'm on a 56k connection and I'm trying to download an MP3, I usually get somewhere in the range of "busy" to "2.1kbps". The fact that your also getting bombarded with everybody elses search requests doesn't help the connection out. Seriously, Gnutella requires that EVERYONE have broadband, on Napster it's just a convenience.
When they helped her with the HD, it was a couple years ago, back when they had good customer service. From what I hear nowadays, they suck pretty bad.
At least they didn't take the typical dot-com role and just close shop.
A year ago I would have said nobody will pay for that service. But now I think enough time has elapsed and enough other free services have gone under, that they maybe be able to get a user base going again.
I'm frustrated enough right now with the dot-coms and the ever slowing gnutella network, that I may just pry my wallet open to get something I want, when I want it, without having to pay for stuff I don't want.
Her next computer was a Micron, price beat service.
So is Intel making REALLY good deals to major manufacturers? AMDs are obviously the price/performance leader right now, so the only reason I could see a failing PC maker switching to the more expensive processor is if they aren't really more expensive. Or possibly the name game is coming into play here. Gateway is better consumers want PCs with a higher GHz value and will be willing to pay for a higher price.
No matter what the reason, bad move Gateway.
Although I must take the time to thank Gateway. Over the years they have provided my relatives with enough tech support to keep them from calling me. Hell, they spent 3 hours on the phone with my mom while she installed a new HD she bought at the local computer store, and her Gateway machine wasn't even under warranty anymore. Gee, ya think that could be part of the reason they're having trouble now?
I didn't mention the number of connections or even what type of aircraft it is. We cater towards small airports. A 747 couldn't even land at our customers airports. At most, we might have 40-50 simultaneous connections, which are all handled through perl scripts.
Couldn't help but notice you hid behind an AC name while mentioning you're a sql server dba. Why is that?
Ha ha, we created an online aircraft scheduling system that runs on a P2 with 256MB RAM, with IIS and MSSQL. I think you're right about that being an overkill. With that much power I'd expect it to simultaneously guide all the aircraft that are in the air at any given time.
Not being a server dude, are these things parallel processing machines or just a server farm contained within a refridgerator?
Actually for that price I hope it functions as a refridgerator, as well as a dishwasher, robotic maid and would provide protection during nuclear fallout.
Yes, the ATA and the DMCA are two totally different scenarios. One was created by corporations to stifle new technology, the other has been created by an extremist under the guise of protecting America.
You're definitely right about the DMCA's purpose though, the important point are already covered under existing laws. At this point, we would really need to show the flaws in the DMCA instead of proposing a modified version of it.
Just out of curiosity, did you e-mail or write the letter?
Good points. However, I disagree on us being the "wardens". In the case of technological legislation, we are in fact the prisoners. These are not affecting the lower-class citizens, because they are not the ones that will be affected by these laws. It is the middle-class, average slashdotter that will be hurt by these laws. The laws are aimed at restricting what we do for a living which in many cases is what we do for fun.
It is true that most of us are happy with our lives, I don't have a $40,000 car but I'm happy with where my life is headed right now. But I also see what could be in store for me in the next decade. Government mandated coding specifications, governmental review of source code used in non-critical applications, special licensing to write software or use a compiler. There are a lot of things the government could try to take control of for the sake of attempts at controlling a "greater evil". By the time we get to this point, if there is no political influence coming from the technology sector, then it will be too late to respond in a civilized political manner.
It would be nice if politicians listened to us, but they just see us as minority group of finatics.
/. is that the advancement of laws be stopped. We don't have any alternatives, we just want these laws to go away. You want to make a difference and be listened to? Propose your own laws that include regulations we can live with. You want to get the RIAA off everbodies back, weaken their economical standing or find a middle ground everybody will be happy with. From what I see, nobody is doing this. We're basically starting our own little war with every other industry including our own, and yet we're still not unified in our efforts of opposition. Last I checked, a group of separated individuals don't win wars against unified groups.
There's still a good chunk of people out there that believe in some mystical entity controlling our lives without any proof of such thoughts. Yet these are the same people that say "that's impossible" when they see what science is capable of. Like it or not, these people have more political influence than we do. They have more power because they are unified, with leadership and there's a lot of history behind them.
There's a lot of programmers here, and I'm sure they're all used to trying to see the big picture and chart all the variables. This is one of those BIG projects in mapping all the variables and figuring out their relationship. The major points are: there's little history in computer technology right now; t's still new and strange to a majority of people; pogrammers work long hours, and the pay is decreasing, leaving less time for political movements; and there is no single "leader" that represents us, which is very important towards political advancement. You can't expect politicians to summarize the demands of many individuals, all with different points of view. They're more likely to listen to an individual with well thought ideas and the backing of a large community.
What we have been proposing on
That's very interesting, thanks.
Does anybody have any stats on the time spent administrating Linux boxes vs. NT boxes, and how much time is spent learning the systems in order to administrate them at a competent level?
I think he already responded to this by saying we wouldn't see back doors in PGP.
Why do they need to know? If they were told, would they understand? Code Red was referenced on LOCAL news channels for 2 weeks, even giving users instructions on how to fix their machines. Telling them didn't help. And if informing the users that they are stupid is required, this corrective worm has complete control of the machine just as Code Red does. Change their wallpaper to a bitmap of instructions. That's really a minor point though.
Explain...
It wouldn't use as much bandwidth because the corrective worm would only fix machine it knows to have the virus, by analyzing the servers log files to see what machines have infected it and then making sure those machines are no longer infected. There would be no random connections made. After all the infected servers have been hit, that's it. Code Red continually tries random address. I'm not going to figure out the math but my solution would require a lot less bandwidth overall. Not that it wouldn't require an equal amount of bandwidth at it's peak, but there would be a peak, and then a dropoff of both Code Red/Nimda and the corrective worm itself.
Google has that nice little AdWords program. Its like a penny per impression I think. We use it and have gotten a bit of extra traffic from it. It's much better than shelling out thousands of dollars to setup a campaign on Yahoo. I think you can start as low as $15.00 on an account. That's a good deal, and that's going to make them some money. Even if they don't work, our attitude is "what the hell, it's only a few bucks".
I'm sure echelon can handle ROT13, but can it handle ROT14. One problem is a minor change in the encryption formula can make the governments efforts futile. Rotate the bits right, rotate them left, invert them, invert the high 4, rotate the low 4, there's lots of combinations. Even if they programmed all the different variations in, it would take a bit of time to process a single e-mail.
What about encryption formulas created in other countries? Didn't we just get past the point where we can export basic encryption. Are they going to ban importing (maybe they already did, I don't know).
I don't know the answers, unfortunately, neither does the government, but they're gonna pass some laws anyways.