There is no more or less accountability with the "new" maintainer than with the old one. i.e. probably still not enough to convince your employer (if you're downloading for free). With Open Source, accountability is sold seperately -- by companies like RedHat, Corel, Caldera, etc. If you are purchasing a box from such a vendor, you have at least as much accountability as you do from MS, etc.
Okay, question from a non-programmer, here, so be gentle:-)
How much of NS 6 is mozilla.org's work? The article makes it sound like "Gecko" is a single defined unit within NS6, and it is that part which mozilla.org contributed. Though from reading/. and mozilla.org, I have the impression that the mozilla project touched on just about every part of the browser.
Okay it depends on what the site does. But I think your figure is on the low side. You need to show them the (potential) income they will receive. For example, if you had a banner on every page at an average of $10 CPM, that would be $180,000/year in banner ads alone. Other revenue-generating possibilities (e.g. selling stuff) would probably be even more profitable. I'm not a business-type, but it seems to me that businesses are typically sold for the equivalent of several years' revenue.
Make up a mock business plan showing what they could do with all that traffic. The traffic alone is worth the money. I'll assume that 1.5 million page views a month is 0.5 million visits per month (adjust as necessary). If they are buying traffic (e.g. with pay-per-click banners) at five cents per visit (the lowest price possible, usually -- your traffic is worht alot more, assuming it's targeted to their market), then a year of your traffic would be worth $300,000. (But, as I say, your traffic is probably worth several times that if it's in any way targeted).
Another interesting line from the article: "A programmer might be able to modify cphack and legally distribute the substantially altered version as long as Mattel has not notified him of the license change."
Most systems only hash the first eight characters, so the potential hacker only has to guess the first eight characters not the entire sentence
Um, but here we're giving advice to the person developing the software which hashes the password. So I'm saying that instead of hashing the first eight characters, hash the whole thing and require it to be at least 25 characters long.
I think the nasty letter people would have a hard time making their case. To claim a trademark, you need to defend the trademark -- which is what they're doing by writing this letter, but why on earth didn't they renew the domain name, then?
When a domain owner doesn't pay the renewal fee, NSI puts it "on hold" -- i.e. it's out of the root servers and therefore doesn't exist online, just as though the domain was not registered. But it remains in the whois database for a few months, during which time the owner can reactivate it at any time by handing over 35 bucks. So this domain has been unusable for months -- this is not a "mistake" on the part of the previous owner, or something they didn't notice. This also hurts their argument in that it is clear evidence that they stopped using their supposed trademark. If it's not a registered trademark, they will never be able to register it at this point and if it is registered, you can prove they abandonded it.
is not (or does not contain, for extra security) a word that's in your spellchecker's dictionary
is not on a list of common names (the most common passwords are the most common female names)
contains at least one non-alpha (for extra security: contains at least one numeric, one alpha, and one non-alphanumeric)
minimum length of 8 chars
does not match pattern of phone no., SSN, birthday, etc.
other options:
assign randomly-generated passwords automatically
have users choose pass-phrases of at least 25 chracters -- requiring them to use spaces and punctuation. Complete sentences can be easier to remember than "hcv97e#" and just as difficult to "guess" if they're long enough.
For a change, it appears that it is the exclusivity rather than electronic distribution that is causing the problem.
Better yet, the fact that they are protesting the exclusivity must mean that they wanted to do some electronic distribution themselves!
Many American artists and labels have exclusive arrangements with online sites like emusic, real, etc. and retailers haven't made a peep about it as far as I know
The OpenSRS model, whereby anybody with a bit of Perl know-how can plug into their API for registering domain names, really opens up a lot of possibilities.
For example, one webhost I use, WorldWebserver.com, offers free domain registration with hosting. But if you're getting, "just domain registration" for $25/year you get one page hosting of one-page site that you can change whenever you want, a catch-all POP3 email box, http logs including http_referer and graphical stats. That's a lot better deal that having your parked domain point at an ad for the registrar!
You can actually do alot with a one-page domain. I've used a few as "storefronts" for affiliate links, or you can just use it for your "front page" and have your other pages on the web space that comes with your dial-up.
Plus the tech support at worldwebserver.com is amazing. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Oh and they use Apache on Slackware too.
In most places minors are not necessarily bound by legal agreements. For example in the USA, minors can pretty much invalidate any contract they enter into by just saying "I invalidate this contract" -- in other places, contracts entered into by minors without their guardians are not valid in the first place. So, in short, you can't really hold a minor to any legal agreement.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is probably a gross oversimplification of the matter, but you get the gist of it:-)
According to the announcement on SlashNet, it's on the 26th, and seeing as the 19th has already passed, I'll betting that's the correct one.
Of course the/. story'll probably be corrected by the time I post this and it'll be moderated "redundant" but, hey, at least I tried to help my fellow slashdotters.
What makes you think that the first time you saw it wasn't the first time it happened?
Grits is an oatmeal-like hot cereal popular in the Southern USA -- that is all (sorry if that's too obvious -- on the Internet everyone assumes you're a dog:-)
Where's the beef? And whats with the non-dairy cheese? This can't possibly qualify as geek food - its not even close to unhealthy enough. We don't drink coffee and Dew and Jolt becuase we're taking care of our bodies!
That's the beauty of it! One of these dilberitos and all that nutritional stuff is taken care of for the day. You can take even less care about what you eat than you do now if you just have one dilberito a day -- all you have to worry about anymore is getting calories when you start to droop. And which foods are the best source of calories?
My thoughts on the rant: the people who are described in the rant are certainly being jerks, but they should not be confused with the people who say "I submitted this story two weeks ago and it was rejected and now it's being posted late." I think the latter complaint does indicate that editorial processes at/. could use some ironing out (no conspiriacy theory, no attribution of ill will, just a boring technicality:-)
This is also a relatively minor complaint./. is still probably the most up-to-date place on the net on most of the issues it covers -- but it could be even more so. If/. were able to work out a system whereby if a story is to be posted, it will actually be posted the first time it is submitted,/. would probably have a scoop (or close to it) on with about every story
Anyway, keep up the good work, Rob & co. We do love you (think of it as having 100,000 attentive mothers fussing over you and encouraging you to do what you can to improve:-)
Re:Your few remaining rights have been annihilated
on
etoy.com Returns
·
· Score: 3
Isn't this just great? A gang of European homosexuals and drug abusers steals (yes, steals) the "good name" of an honest company, and the tort monster chews them up and spits them out. "Sorry guys! You don't own your own name any more!"
Um, have you even read any of the stories on the topic? etoy owned the name years before etoys even existed
This is going to take a few hours, but this is what you do. While the admin and tech contacts are the ones who can make changes online, the registrant trumps them both (I assume that's you too -- the name and address at the very top of the whois record)
To make a change as the registrant, you'll need to fax them a letter on company letterhead, signed by someone with authority for the company (e.g. "President"). If the registrant name is the domain name itself, make up a letterhead on your word processor for it and sign yourself with the title "Owner." If the domain is registered to your personal name, you need to fax them your driver's license along with the letter as proof of your ID and signature (make an enlarged photocopy)
Two very important points:
First phone NSI and have the customer service (?) rep tell you exactly what the letter needs to contain and follow this to a T.
On that same phone call, you need to insist that this is an emergency until the rep gives you a fax number that you can use to send it personally to that rep.
Using NSI's regular fax number will take up to a week for work to be started. By faxing it to the rep's attention, it should be done on the next business day. BUT when I had to do this, I set my fax to retry indefinately and it took five hours to get through to this fax number. You should also allow an hour or two for the phone call to NSI
As the article points out, there are still newsgroups with extrememely high quality discussion (and others with nothing but noise). As long as it's useful for something, I don't think it's going to be trashed any time soon.
Perhaps it will eventually be replaced by a system that is less prone to the problems described. Or the dead parts will need to be amputated to restore the balance. I don't think we're going to find ourselves entirely without some sort of distributed/non-centralized discussion system, however.
[OFFTOPIC] == I believe x.com and z.com predate the rule disallowing single-letter domains. The other screwups to which you refer were from new registrars and this is with NSI -- so, in any case, it's not part of the same problem. == The "record created" date is not necessarily the date the domain was registered - it could be that, on that date, the domain was transfered to a new owner (therefore, a new record).
Nope. There are two ways to adjust your example to make it fit
If your are convicted of banana theft, you don't get the banana back
Also, you don't get tools for lawbreaking back. If you take a radar detector into someplace where radar detectors are illegal, you maybe able to convince the cops you didn't know it was illegal and to let you off, but you don't get the radar detector back (after all, to take it back at this point would convict you:-). If someone slips cocaine in your luggage, you could convince the customs agents that you didn't know it was there and maybe no-one will ever be charged or convicted, but that doesn't mean they'll put the cocaine back in your bags and send you on your way.
To bring this back to the car example, a vehicle modified for smuggling counts as a tool for lawbreaking -- even something as simple as pulling back the door panel and dropping in a few packs of smokes means you can lose your car forever
The murkiness in this case comes from the fact that the cops don't know for sure whether the banana or the radar detector are in the car or not.
In Canada (and most of the rest of the world) all non-profits would have to pay royalties. (In fact both places referred to in my message were non-profit)
Slashdot Mirror
There is no more or less accountability with the "new" maintainer than with the old one. i.e. probably still not enough to convince your employer (if you're downloading for free). With Open Source, accountability is sold seperately -- by companies like RedHat, Corel, Caldera, etc. If you are purchasing a box from such a vendor, you have at least as much accountability as you do from MS, etc.
========
Okay, question from a non-programmer, here, so be gentle :-)
How much of NS 6 is mozilla.org's work? The article makes it sound like "Gecko" is a single defined unit within NS6, and it is that part which mozilla.org contributed. Though from reading /. and mozilla.org, I have the impression that the mozilla project touched on just about every part of the browser.
========
Make up a mock business plan showing what they could do with all that traffic. The traffic alone is worth the money. I'll assume that 1.5 million page views a month is 0.5 million visits per month (adjust as necessary). If they are buying traffic (e.g. with pay-per-click banners) at five cents per visit (the lowest price possible, usually -- your traffic is worht alot more, assuming it's targeted to their market), then a year of your traffic would be worth $300,000. (But, as I say, your traffic is probably worth several times that if it's in any way targeted).
========
Let's get to it, people.
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I forgot the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer -- you need to talk to one today
========
When a domain owner doesn't pay the renewal fee, NSI puts it "on hold" -- i.e. it's out of the root servers and therefore doesn't exist online, just as though the domain was not registered. But it remains in the whois database for a few months, during which time the owner can reactivate it at any time by handing over 35 bucks. So this domain has been unusable for months -- this is not a "mistake" on the part of the previous owner, or something they didn't notice. This also hurts their argument in that it is clear evidence that they stopped using their supposed trademark. If it's not a registered trademark, they will never be able to register it at this point and if it is registered, you can prove they abandonded it.
========
- is not (or does not contain, for extra security) a word that's in your spellchecker's dictionary
- is not on a list of common names (the most common passwords are the most common female names)
- contains at least one non-alpha (for extra security: contains at least one numeric, one alpha, and one non-alphanumeric)
- minimum length of 8 chars
- does not match pattern of phone no., SSN, birthday, etc.
other options:========
Better yet, the fact that they are protesting the exclusivity must mean that they wanted to do some electronic distribution themselves!
Many American artists and labels have exclusive arrangements with online sites like emusic, real, etc. and retailers haven't made a peep about it as far as I know
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
For example, one webhost I use, WorldWebserver.com, offers free domain registration with hosting. But if you're getting, "just domain registration" for $25/year you get one page hosting of one-page site that you can change whenever you want, a catch-all POP3 email box, http logs including http_referer and graphical stats. That's a lot better deal that having your parked domain point at an ad for the registrar!
You can actually do alot with a one-page domain. I've used a few as "storefronts" for affiliate links, or you can just use it for your "front page" and have your other pages on the web space that comes with your dial-up.
Plus the tech support at worldwebserver.com is amazing. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Oh and they use Apache on Slackware too.
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is probably a gross oversimplification of the matter, but you get the gist of it :-)
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
Of course the /. story'll probably be corrected by the time I post this and it'll be moderated "redundant" but, hey, at least I tried to help my fellow slashdotters.
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
Grits is an oatmeal-like hot cereal popular in the Southern USA -- that is all (sorry if that's too obvious -- on the Internet everyone assumes you're a dog :-)
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist :-)
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
This is also a relatively minor complaint. /. is still probably the most up-to-date place on the net on most of the issues it covers -- but it could be even more so. If /. were able to work out a system whereby if a story is to be posted, it will actually be posted the first time it is submitted, /. would probably have a scoop (or close to it) on with about every story
Anyway, keep up the good work, Rob & co. We do love you (think of it as having 100,000 attentive mothers fussing over you and encouraging you to do what you can to improve :-)
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
Um, have you even read any of the stories on the topic? etoy owned the name years before etoys even existed
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
To make a change as the registrant, you'll need to fax them a letter on company letterhead, signed by someone with authority for the company (e.g. "President"). If the registrant name is the domain name itself, make up a letterhead on your word processor for it and sign yourself with the title "Owner." If the domain is registered to your personal name, you need to fax them your driver's license along with the letter as proof of your ID and signature (make an enlarged photocopy)
Two very important points:
- First phone NSI and have the customer service (?) rep tell you exactly what the letter needs to contain and follow this to a T.
- On that same phone call, you need to insist that this is an emergency until the rep gives you a fax number that you can use to send it personally to that rep.
Using NSI's regular fax number will take up to a week for work to be started. By faxing it to the rep's attention, it should be done on the next business day. BUT when I had to do this, I set my fax to retry indefinately and it took five hours to get through to this fax number. You should also allow an hour or two for the phone call to NSI========
Perhaps it will eventually be replaced by a system that is less prone to the problems described. Or the dead parts will need to be amputated to restore the balance. I don't think we're going to find ourselves entirely without some sort of distributed/non-centralized discussion system, however.
========
== I believe x.com and z.com predate the rule disallowing single-letter domains. The other screwups to which you refer were from new registrars and this is with NSI -- so, in any case, it's not part of the same problem.
== The "record created" date is not necessarily the date the domain was registered - it could be that, on that date, the domain was transfered to a new owner (therefore, a new record).
========
========
- If your are convicted of banana theft, you don't get the banana back
- Also, you don't get tools for lawbreaking back. If you take a radar detector into someplace where radar detectors are illegal, you maybe able to convince the cops you didn't know it was illegal and to let you off, but you don't get the radar detector back (after all, to take it back at this point would convict you
:-). If someone slips cocaine in your luggage, you could convince the customs agents that you didn't know it was there and maybe no-one will ever be charged or convicted, but that doesn't mean they'll put the cocaine back in your bags and send you on your way.- To bring this back to the car example, a vehicle modified for smuggling counts as a tool for lawbreaking -- even something as simple as pulling back the door panel and dropping in a few packs of smokes means you can lose your car forever
The murkiness in this case comes from the fact that the cops don't know for sure whether the banana or the radar detector are in the car or not.========
Tips, Cheats, Hints
Fan Pages
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