Yes. Just like the Vx bbs scene. We had two sides. 1) Virus Exchange BBS systems, who offered access to all who wanted it, and catalogued and provided source and binaries of viruses, and provided for discussion and analysis of viruses.
2) Anti-virus companies, running 'commercial' Anti-virus BBS systems, who offered access to those who both PAID and proved they had a LEGITIMATE USE for public domain software (as viruses are...)(please don't nit-pick about the exact definition of public domain.. you know what I mean). These people said 'those other boards are bad, because they have virus source. But we have virus source, and we are good.
See, the thing is, they aren't a police organization. Virii were (are) legal, authors provided source. Hypocricy in action.
2.4Ghz receive and 900Mhz send? That wouldn't make a lot of sense.. you would need two different antennae, and two different radios. And the two different bands have wildly different radio properties. 2.4Ghz does not penetrate anywhere near as well as 900Mhz does.
Also, most 2.4Ghz stuff is ISM band, and uses spread spectrum techniques.
Actually, using a yagi instead of an omni to increase directional gain does *not* violate ISM band rules (2.4Ghz). Regulation on power output are based on an omnidirectional source. If the beam is 'focused', higher gain is very much permitted.
Example. a 2.4Ghz ISM band wireless router that I have. It operates up to about 150 feet with an small omni. With a pair of yagi antennae, we can use them to create a link over 5km long. And this is still within regulations.
Take a couple of hundred windows NT/95/98 server/workstation, Macintosh, linux, and solaris boxes all thrown together. Using tar and cpio REALLY SUCKS when you need to restore one file from your 350 GB tape changer. Especially when you have to manually figure out where the file is supposed to be. Backup clients DO help, and make work easier.
Besides, why? Because, it exists for other unix platforms.
Given that the Internet really only exists by millions of private agreements, and is simply the 'end result' of a bunch of computers being hooked together... it should really simply be a law regarding communication. A business may not send unsolicited advertisements using a service unless it is known up front that that is the primary purpose of that service (Television).
You know, it still irks me to no end. e-mail is only e-mail because we all agree on SMTP/POP/IMAP/what have you.... yet my ISP sells me bandwidth and in my contract tells me 'you aren't allowed to run a server of any kind'. feh. foo.
Hmm. I'm not arguing that this is supersoinc, but realize that the speed of sound varies with air pressure. At 100,000 feet elevation, the air is so thin that if you were to jump out of your (whatever goes this high.. I dunno), and fall, (you'd need a pressure suit to keep from freezing...), your shirt wouldn't even flutter in the wind, and you would very quickly attain speeds of over 600MPH. The speed of sound in rarified air is very fast, afiak.
Yes. In several interviews with panel members involved in the creation of the DHRA, I recall reading that they knowingly exempted general purpose home computers from the DHRA, they KNEW that this kind of stuff would be possible in the future, and they did not want to impede the progress of technology. They didn't just 'forget' about computers.. they knowingly exempted them.
The rio is not a recording device, it is a playback device. Secondly, yes, any device that is marketed for the primary purpose of moaking a digital recording is covered by the act. A home computer, though fully capable of digital recording, does not fall under this clause. And neither does software for use on that computer.
The digital home recording act also EXPLICITLY exempts home computer equipment. This was done SPECIFICALLY so that the DHRA would not hinder the development of the fast growing computer industry (and it is still so very young).
The DHRA does not apply WHATSOEVER to computers. It ONLY applies to consumer hardware that is sold for the sole purpose of recording music. If it is a computer peripheral, it is exempt.
Okay. What does this mean? This means, that no matter HOW much the PEOPLE beg, scream, kick, and yell at their representatives, they CAN NOT make a law abridiging various freedoms. (Hey, I'm not American. I don't have them memorized.) It doens't just mean 'the government shouldn't do these things', it means they DO NOT HAVE THE POWER to do these things.
Or, as one of my favourite authors once put (paraphrased), "A new society must be careful when creating laws in haste." Almost any law we create can come back to haunt us in many unforseen ways. Example: Copyright was originally intended to foster creativity. Now it can stifle it at times. The Drivers License used to be a 'license to drive', now it is a universal ID, something that can be revoked for OTHER infractions, unrelated to driving.
In Canadian law, the first line of the Income Tax Act clearly states "Whereas the paying of Income Tax is on a purely voluntary basis"... It also never received Royal Assent (as all acts brought into law must have). Yet it is commonly accepted that we MUST pay tax, as it has always been!
What about the federal reserve? Our respective governments (in other words, the people), have GIVEN UP the right to print our own cash. It is now in the hands of the Bank of Canda (not government) and the Federal Reserve (not federal, not a reserve)
The banking system controls money, NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
People have posted very good points about the pros/cons of bandwidth limiting.
I feel that the best solution, (the one that would make ME happy) would be to allow the full bandwidth available to the client, unless things get busy. Then, you enforce a CIR, like in frame relay. And, you make it VERY CLEAR when you sell the service that this is how things work!
Also, there are lots of posts about linux traffic shaping, and other free solutions. There are several commercial products that do this for you. One is called the iPATH. It's not horribly expensive, and allows you to do many interesting things with ethernet/IP.
Also... regarding traffic. I am a firm believe that the proper way and the only long-term way to deal with bandwidth is to charge people based on what they use. Chare a relatively small monthly fee for the hookup, and charge a fair rate for the bandwidth used.
I get REALLY mad when I read my cablemodem contract and it says 'you can NOT run a server of ANY kind, shaw@home is for casual, home use only. Who the heck made THEM the god of deciding what 'Internet USE' is? They provide me with a certain amount of bandwidth to my house. I can FTP things UP to people all day long.. but if I put up a server so they can request things themselves, I risk losing my connection. It is for 'attended use only'... what??? They make it out like someone who does more than surf for porn and read email is 'abusing' their service. You know, if they chargedbased on bandwidth, they wouldn't have a problem. I would be MORE than willing to pay a fair rate for the bandwidth I use, as a tradeoff for them providing me with proper service.
Yes, but this is only true if you aren't diligently running tools that maintain offsite hashed indexes of the contents of your machine so you can tell if anything critical has been modified.
Primary investigator? What planet are you on? The boss will want to know 'what happened'. The guy will say 'some kind changed our page to a picture of alf. He left everything else alone, i've already verified this. It was due to a bug that MS didn't reveal until yesterday, and it was my day off. It's been fixed now. NO harm done. That'll be 24 hours overtime.
Perhaps it's a funny way of saying 'Your site is insecure?' The original site, as they say, was backed up. Restoring it is probably a matter of 'mv backup/*.' no big deal. Kinda funny.
Okay. Perhaps the univeristy acted harshly. But from my point of view, if someone was hosting something on my network, because one of my staff let him (who didn't have the authority to, and the network admin probably DOESN'T have the authority to delegate university resources wherever he feels like it), and I was threatened with a lawsuit, I would say 'delete it all, this isn't our problem'. No, I probably woulnd't bother erasing all the backups, because that is a PAIN and makes extra work. Yes, the guy who's site was gone should have had a backup. It's not your web-hoster's responsibility, generally, to keep backups of your site for you.
Yes, anti-online might be bad.. but you know what? I've been at this game for 15 years now. You can drop lots of names that I understand.. All the cDc fellows have done many many great things that added to my enjoyment of the computer world, for instance. Names like Kevin Mitnick that actually stand for something, there are lots of them. But who are these antionline people? Or packetstorm? All I see are a bunch of kids who like calling themselves 'security' experts.. why, because they hacked some sites? because they know some exploits they farmed out of the net like wild mushrooms in the forest? Yes, some of them put up nice sites, collect information.. but then they go on big slander campaigns against each other. You knwo what? I couldn't care less if Attrition.org says antionline.com violated some stupid copyrights. None of this is REAL! Run a site, brag lots, sign your mail as the 'founder' of some group/site/whatever... GET A JOB! GET A LIFE!
Someone in a post here on Slashdot mentioned the l0pht had been accused of something.... how does L0pht Heavy Industries, the old cDc guys, compare with ANYONE who is new? They do REAL things, they work HARD at it, and they have been doing so for a LONG LONG TIME! And they STILL don't go around bragging like a bunch of kids.
Damn. What is the world coming to.
-- mindstrm Founder of nothing. Member of nothing.
Many posters seem to think this article is about how 'evil' WB is.... I have a different take.
The article is about the 'Net, and the power it gives us. I've seen this for years.. but it's hard to put into words.
You can see it with most software. You can see it with mp3, you can see it with vcd, and anything else that can be broken down to information. Regardless of any percieved 'morality' issues, regardless of any attempt at cencorship, regardless of what laws governing 'money' or 'intellectual property', there is nothing that will stop people from sharing information easily and quickly.
I don't have to speak out against IP, or against morality, or against *anything* to state that people will copy, pirate, whatever you want to call it anyway, and that they should have the right to.
Our society is run by money.. but shouldn't it be run by people? Money is a means to an end, but it's gotten out of hand. We spend our lives inside, watching TV, even playing on the Internet, and don't pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. THAT is why our cities suck, are ugly, and dirty. THAT is why we take a new suburb where there is TONS of space and cram the houses closer and closer together instead of putting up nice yards for people.. because of money.
There is something besides money here... there is the inalienable right for ME to share any information I want with YOU, and I will!
Keep in mind that the companies were requested to provide detailed information about the 'total value of the software that Mitnick made copies of', not 'how much money did your company lose as a result of Mitnick copying your software'
The costs of the software involved may be true, and the reason that no SEC filings were made is because the company was not claiming a loss... they were just responding to a straightforward question from the feds. HOW MUCH DID THAT SOFTWARE THAT MITNICK COPIED COST YOU TO CREATE.
Every time I hear someone say 'you are a linux expert, what distribution should I use', I tend to send them to redhat. Me myself? I don't *CARE* what distribution I use. Depends on what I want to do. Yes, for tiny installs, routers, etc, I use debian at the moment. For desktops, I use redhat. Is SUSE Better? From what I hear it is, but who cares? I can make slackware be my deskop if I want. Heck, I could take MCC and make it work. RedHat is turning into a successful company, yes. and we keep our eyes on them, but so far, they have absolutely done the right thing. I keep hearing stories about how the linux community 'dislikes' redhat's certification program. I haven't heard anyone complain. When I first heard about it, I thought 'oh great, someone to botch up a certification and screw me out of a job', but I took a look at the critera. It's GOOD. It covers a lot of ground. People who say 'it must cover all distributions to be fair' are out to lunch. REdhat's certification, though it of course USES redhat's distro, requires a good solid knowledge of unix in general and many of the popular (and not-so-popular) systems we use. Yes, it could make them popular with employers because there is a program to certify people tow ork on equipment. Has anyone else provided a good, solid certification yet? Is anyone planning it? If so, what distro are THEY going to use?
IMHO, if it matters to you what distro you are using, you aren't a linux 'expert'.
And besides, when you order a redhat bundle, you get some cool little stickers!
Internic does not 'own' domain names. They administer the root nameservers (sort of). Your fee is a fee for them to add the entry for your domain to the root servers as well as to administer changes to it.
Yes. Good idea.... How do you enforce it? It may be too late for something like this, though on any new TLD's this would be a great idea. As for enforcement? Lying on a domain application should be fraud. Too many domains are registered to 'bogus' businesses.
If they want to do that, and the licensing on linux lets them, power to them! The more proprietary they made their 'version' of things, the less anyone will want to use it. Sure, at this point, they could say, 'Linux is what you want, linux is what you get' and trick the unknowing into thinking this is linux (which it would be)... but really. If they replace X, then they are screwed. They are left with a closed-source Computing environment, and are no better off than they are now, except they can call it 'Linux'.
Whoppee. So if they decide to do something like this, that's fine! It doesn't stop us from doing what we've already done, and continute to do, and that's produce GOOD code and GOOD apps for a GOOD os.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Just like the Vx bbs scene.
We had two sides.
1) Virus Exchange BBS systems, who offered access to all who wanted it, and catalogued and provided source and binaries of viruses, and provided for discussion and analysis of viruses.
2) Anti-virus companies, running 'commercial' Anti-virus BBS systems, who offered access to those who both PAID and proved they had a LEGITIMATE USE for public domain software (as viruses are...)(please don't nit-pick about the exact definition of public domain.. you know what I mean). These people said 'those other boards are bad, because they have virus source. But we have virus source, and we are good.
See, the thing is, they aren't a police organization. Virii were (are) legal, authors provided source.
Hypocricy in action.
DSSS refers to Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum.
2.4Ghz receive and 900Mhz send? That wouldn't make a lot of sense.. you would need two different antennae, and two different radios.
And the two different bands have wildly different radio properties.
2.4Ghz does not penetrate anywhere near as well as 900Mhz does.
Also, most 2.4Ghz stuff is ISM band, and uses spread spectrum techniques.
Actually, using a yagi instead of an omni to increase directional gain does *not* violate ISM band rules (2.4Ghz). Regulation on power output are based on an omnidirectional source. If the beam is 'focused', higher gain is very much permitted.
Example.
a 2.4Ghz ISM band wireless router that I have.
It operates up to about 150 feet with an small omni.
With a pair of yagi antennae, we can use them to create a link over 5km long. And this is still within regulations.
Do you mean to say that BRU isn't commercial, and that there is a free version?
Take a couple of hundred windows NT/95/98 server/workstation, Macintosh, linux, and solaris boxes all thrown together. Using tar and cpio REALLY SUCKS when you need to restore one file from your 350 GB tape changer. Especially when you have to manually figure out where the file is supposed to be.
Backup clients DO help, and make work easier.
Besides, why? Because, it exists for other unix platforms.
Given that the Internet really only exists by millions of private agreements, and is simply the 'end result' of a bunch of computers being hooked together...
it should really simply be a law regarding communication. A business may not send unsolicited advertisements using a service unless it is known up front that that is the primary purpose of that service (Television).
You know, it still irks me to no end.
e-mail is only e-mail because we all agree on SMTP/POP/IMAP/what have you....
yet my ISP sells me bandwidth and in my contract tells me 'you aren't allowed to run a server of any kind'. feh.
foo.
So what's a 'Check' card? Does it say 'visa' on it? Is it just a secured visa?
Hmm.
I'm not arguing that this is supersoinc, but realize that the speed of sound varies with air pressure.
At 100,000 feet elevation, the air is so thin that if you were to jump out of your (whatever goes this high.. I dunno), and fall, (you'd need a pressure suit to keep from freezing...), your shirt wouldn't even flutter in the wind, and you would very quickly attain speeds of over 600MPH.
The speed of sound in rarified air is very fast, afiak.
Yes. In several interviews with panel members involved in the creation of the DHRA, I recall reading that they knowingly exempted general purpose home computers from the DHRA, they KNEW that this kind of stuff would be possible in the future, and they did not want to impede the progress of technology. They didn't just 'forget' about computers.. they knowingly exempted them.
The rio is not a recording device, it is a playback device.
Secondly, yes, any device that is marketed for the primary purpose of moaking a digital recording is covered by the act.
A home computer, though fully capable of digital recording, does not fall under this clause. And neither does software for use on that computer.
The DHRA specifically exempts computers.
The digital home recording act also EXPLICITLY exempts home computer equipment. This was done SPECIFICALLY so that the DHRA would not hinder the development of the fast growing computer industry (and it is still so very young).
The DHRA does not apply WHATSOEVER to computers. It ONLY applies to consumer hardware that is sold for the sole purpose of recording music. If it is a computer peripheral, it is exempt.
1) Congress shall make NO LAW...
Okay. What does this mean? This means, that no matter HOW much the PEOPLE beg, scream, kick, and yell at their representatives, they CAN NOT make a law abridiging various freedoms. (Hey, I'm not American. I don't have them memorized.)
It doens't just mean 'the government shouldn't do these things', it means they DO NOT HAVE THE POWER to do these things.
Or, as one of my favourite authors once put (paraphrased), "A new society must be careful when creating laws in haste."
Almost any law we create can come back to haunt us in many unforseen ways.
Example:
Copyright was originally intended to foster creativity. Now it can stifle it at times.
The Drivers License used to be a 'license to drive', now it is a universal ID, something that can be revoked for OTHER infractions, unrelated to driving.
In Canadian law, the first line of the Income Tax Act clearly states "Whereas the paying of Income Tax is on a purely voluntary basis"...
It also never received Royal Assent (as all acts brought into law must have). Yet it is commonly accepted that we MUST pay tax, as it has always been!
What about the federal reserve? Our respective governments (in other words, the people), have GIVEN UP the right to print our own cash. It is now in the hands of the Bank of Canda (not government) and the Federal Reserve (not federal, not a reserve)
The banking system controls money, NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
People have posted very good points about the pros/cons of bandwidth limiting.
I feel that the best solution, (the one that would make ME happy) would be to allow the full bandwidth available to the client, unless things get busy. Then, you enforce a CIR, like in frame relay.
And, you make it VERY CLEAR when you sell the service that this is how things work!
Also, there are lots of posts about linux traffic shaping, and other free solutions. There are several commercial products that do this for you. One is called the iPATH. It's not horribly expensive, and allows you to do many interesting things with ethernet/IP.
Also... regarding traffic.
I am a firm believe that the proper way and the only long-term way to deal with bandwidth is to charge people based on what they use. Chare a relatively small monthly fee for the hookup, and charge a fair rate for the bandwidth used.
I get REALLY mad when I read my cablemodem contract and it says 'you can NOT run a server of ANY kind, shaw@home is for casual, home use only.
Who the heck made THEM the god of deciding what 'Internet USE' is? They provide me with a certain amount of bandwidth to my house. I can FTP things UP to people all day long.. but if I put up a server so they can request things themselves, I risk losing my connection. It is for 'attended use only'... what???
They make it out like someone who does more than surf for porn and read email is 'abusing' their service.
You know, if they chargedbased on bandwidth, they wouldn't have a problem. I would be MORE than willing to pay a fair rate for the bandwidth I use, as a tradeoff for them providing me with proper service.
Yes, but this is only true if you aren't diligently running tools that maintain offsite hashed indexes of the contents of your machine so you can tell if anything critical has been modified.
Primary investigator? What planet are you on?
The boss will want to know 'what happened'. The guy will say 'some kind changed our page to a picture of alf. He left everything else alone, i've already verified this. It was due to a bug that MS didn't reveal until yesterday, and it was my day off. It's been fixed now. NO harm done.
That'll be 24 hours overtime.
Perhaps it's a funny way of saying 'Your site is insecure?' .'
The original site, as they say, was backed up. Restoring it is probably a matter of 'mv backup/*
no big deal. Kinda funny.
Okay. Perhaps the univeristy acted harshly. But from my point of view, if someone was hosting something on my network, because one of my staff let him (who didn't have the authority to, and the network admin probably DOESN'T have the authority to delegate university resources wherever he feels like it), and I was threatened with a lawsuit, I would say 'delete it all, this isn't our problem'.
No, I probably woulnd't bother erasing all the backups, because that is a PAIN and makes extra work.
Yes, the guy who's site was gone should have had a backup. It's not your web-hoster's responsibility, generally, to keep backups of your site for you.
Yes, anti-online might be bad.. but you know what? I've been at this game for 15 years now. You can drop lots of names that I understand.. All the cDc fellows have done many many great things that added to my enjoyment of the computer world, for instance. Names like Kevin Mitnick that actually stand for something, there are lots of them. But who are these antionline people? Or packetstorm?
All I see are a bunch of kids who like calling themselves 'security' experts.. why, because they hacked some sites? because they know some exploits they farmed out of the net like wild mushrooms in the forest? Yes, some of them put up nice sites, collect information.. but then they go on big slander campaigns against each other.
You knwo what? I couldn't care less if Attrition.org says antionline.com violated some stupid copyrights. None of this is REAL! Run a site, brag lots, sign your mail as the 'founder' of some group/site/whatever... GET A JOB! GET A LIFE!
Someone in a post here on Slashdot mentioned the l0pht had been accused of something....
how does L0pht Heavy Industries, the old cDc guys, compare with ANYONE who is new? They do REAL things, they work HARD at it, and they have been doing so for a LONG LONG TIME! And they STILL don't go around bragging like a bunch of kids.
Damn. What is the world coming to.
--
mindstrm
Founder of nothing.
Member of nothing.
Many posters seem to think this article is about how 'evil' WB is.... I have a different take.
The article is about the 'Net, and the power it gives us. I've seen this for years.. but it's hard to put into words.
You can see it with most software. You can see it with mp3, you can see it with vcd, and anything else that can be broken down to information.
Regardless of any percieved 'morality' issues, regardless of any attempt at cencorship, regardless of what laws governing 'money' or 'intellectual property', there is nothing that will stop people from sharing information easily and quickly.
I don't have to speak out against IP, or against morality, or against *anything* to state that people will copy, pirate, whatever you want to call it anyway, and that they should have the right to.
Our society is run by money.. but shouldn't it be run by people? Money is a means to an end, but it's gotten out of hand. We spend our lives inside, watching TV, even playing on the Internet, and don't pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. THAT is why our cities suck, are ugly, and dirty.
THAT is why we take a new suburb where there is TONS of space and cram the houses closer and closer together instead of putting up nice yards for people.. because of money.
There is something besides money here... there is the inalienable right for ME to share any information I want with YOU, and I will!
Keep in mind that the companies were requested to provide detailed information about the 'total value of the software that Mitnick made copies of', not 'how much money did your company lose as a result of Mitnick copying your software'
The costs of the software involved may be true, and the reason that no SEC filings were made is because the company was not claiming a loss... they were just responding to a straightforward question from the feds.
HOW MUCH DID THAT SOFTWARE THAT MITNICK COPIED COST YOU TO CREATE.
Every time I hear someone say 'you are a linux expert, what distribution should I use', I tend to send them to redhat. Me myself? I don't *CARE* what distribution I use. Depends on what I want to do. Yes, for tiny installs, routers, etc, I use debian at the moment. For desktops, I use redhat. Is SUSE Better? From what I hear it is, but who cares? I can make slackware be my deskop if I want. Heck, I could take MCC and make it work.
RedHat is turning into a successful company, yes. and we keep our eyes on them, but so far, they have absolutely done the right thing.
I keep hearing stories about how the linux community 'dislikes' redhat's certification program. I haven't heard anyone complain.
When I first heard about it, I thought 'oh great, someone to botch up a certification and screw me out of a job', but I took a look at the critera. It's GOOD. It covers a lot of ground. People who say 'it must cover all distributions to be fair' are out to lunch. REdhat's certification, though it of course USES redhat's distro, requires a good solid knowledge of unix in general and many of the popular (and not-so-popular) systems we use.
Yes, it could make them popular with employers because there is a program to certify people tow ork on equipment. Has anyone else provided a good, solid certification yet? Is anyone planning it? If so, what distro are THEY going to use?
IMHO, if it matters to you what distro you are using, you aren't a linux 'expert'.
And besides, when you order a redhat bundle, you get some cool little stickers!
I like Stephenson too.. but you must consider that Gibsons work was very original, and written quite a bit earlier. (mid 80's?)
Internic does not 'own' domain names. They administer the root nameservers (sort of).
Your fee is a fee for them to add the entry for your domain to the root servers as well as to administer changes to it.
Yes. Good idea....
How do you enforce it? It may be too late for something like this, though on any new TLD's this would be a great idea. As for enforcement? Lying on a domain application should be fraud. Too many domains are registered to 'bogus' businesses.
If they want to do that, and the licensing on linux lets them, power to them! The more proprietary they made their 'version' of things, the less anyone will want to use it. Sure, at this point, they could say, 'Linux is what you want, linux is what you get' and trick the unknowing into thinking this is linux (which it would be)...
but really. If they replace X, then they are screwed. They are left with a closed-source Computing environment, and are no better off than they are now, except they can call it 'Linux'.
Whoppee. So if they decide to do something like this, that's fine! It doesn't stop us from doing what we've already done, and continute to do, and that's produce GOOD code and GOOD apps for a GOOD os.
And how do you propose that after the massive switchover to a new set of root servers, that it be managed? How would it be 'better?'