Troll?.. perhaps I'm still confused on the subject.. but does the word troll mean anyone that disagrees with the majority of what slashdot readers believe?.. its amazing that every time I see a poster stray from the norm he gets branded as troll.. I really wish someone would give me a good definition of trolls..
This is a perfect troll. maks a valid point, but does it in such away as to provoke response.
Call me crazy and all but isn't that taking the troll thing too far.. I don't think I really understand about trolls but IMHO a perfect post is a post that makes a valid point and a provokes a response.. I thought trolls made no point at all and provoked a response.. it seems that slashdot would be worthless if every time a poster invoked thought they were ridiculed.. I thought we were nerds because we liked to think.. maybe I'm wrong.. maybe someone should define troll to me in a better way.. but IMHO your post was more of a troll than the original (MUCH more)..
Your analogy is bad also.. because currently it goes a bit like this:
You bought a door lock from a company.. which is more likely to get broken into:
1. I, a third party, purchase every lock on the market as soon as it comes out. I hit the lock with every tool in my house in every combintation that I possibly can. I finally find a combination of tools that breaks the lock. I publish exact details for how to break the lock, futhermore I offer to purchase the tools for anyone who wants to try to break the locks that are out there. This is the first case of the company hearing that there is a problem.
2. I, a third party, purchase every lock on the market as soon as it comes out. I hit the lock with every tool in my house in every combintation that I possibly can. I finally find a combination of tools that breaks the lock. I inform the company that the lock can be broken, with exact details on how the lock can be broken.
Now I undertsand if the company doesn't move you drop a press release that tells there is a way to break the lock. But you don't give the exact details.. the IT industry will push for a fix at that point. When you give out source code on how to break locks.. that is just plain stupid IMHO...
I recently did quite a bit of work with VxWorks on palmtops and it seems to be pretty widely used in the space industry. Remember the Martian Rover that had software problems after it landed on mars? That was running VxWorks (I read a paper describing the software problem as being related to compiling VxWorks incorrectly. It had to do with leaving priority inversion on/off (I can't remember which one) and creating a Race Condition).
VxWorks is a POSIX operating system with Real Time abilities. I would also imagine some other POSIX RTOS's have been used (PSOS is probably up there). But as far as RTOS goes VxWorks was the largest RTOS out there when I was developing under it. In case anyone cares, its a joy to develop for, uses GNU tools and has a wonderfull debugger/profiler. The tools work well under both Solaris and Windows. I recommend using it if you have any needs for a RTOS (I've used quite a few).
I think it's Occams Razor.. and I have to say that the simpilest explanation is that he just doesn't understand the monumental feat of humanity he's asked for (requiring 75% of us to have honor is quite a request, from anyone, including Stephen King).. So Occam's Razor points towards he just didn't think about the math..
Slashdot, like the National Enquirer, doesn't exactly do extensive checking-up on its sources.
IMHO - That seems to be an unfair comparison. Slashdot only links us to third party articles (for the most part) where the National Enquirer is an agency for creating news articles. Slashdot only serves the purpose of collecting articles, skimming them, and then displaying links to the articles they feel are interesting. It is my understanding that Slashdot never vouched for the third party news honesty. Slashdot is not responisble for the honesty of the news services. The person writing the article is the one that should be compared to National Enquirer.
But you are missing one of the fundamentals of Physics I back in high school. There are four forces an atom exerts. Strong Nuclear Force, Weak Nuclear Force, Electromagnetic, and Gravity. Gravity is the weakest of those four forces. The physics community has been trying to explain why for quite some time. That is where this theory comes into play.
CSS is an access control device. The wording of the DMCA protects any access control devices (IMHO) even if the access control device is just an arbitrary road block. Thats why the fight must attack the DMCA and not defend DeCSS. IMHO the DeCSS is definately what the DMCA is trying to prevent; however, the DMCA steps on just about every right we have. Eric Raymonds makes an analogy between welding shut the hood of a car and closed source software. I think it applies here, but instead of welding they used an off brand bike lock and they claim if we see inside the hood we'll start making cars just like theirs and selling it.
Well, maybe clearly was a bit strong of a word. I'm still IANAL and this is IMHO and all, but I think the grounds they are attacking on is that DeCSS allows you to skip the copy protection/country code part of the DVD. It is in my understanding that that is illegal according the the DMCA. Granted I haven't read the entire DMCA (but now I think I will read it tonight), so I'm quite probably wrong. It could be wishfull thinking on my part, I do want the DMCA to be ruled unconstitutional (which I believe it is), so it would be best if the fight took that direction IMHO, rather than splinter off into a million little court battles. I sorta want a good strong face off that is united right now, rather than give the MPAA the upper hand because they have the cash that the DeCSS community doesn't have.
IANAL - If I understand correctly, doesn't Judge Kaplan get to decide if it is a conflict of interest? The proposal will go to Kaplan who will deny it and the case will go on like normal. But after a ruling (Kaplan will rule in favor of the MPAA) it will garuntee that 2600 gets an apeal won't it? Thats really when 2600 will be able to play the "conflict of interest" thing to the apeals court and bring it to the next level.
But on the other hand, in this case DeCSS is clearly breaking the law (DMCA) and they are guilty. The only hope is that this goes to a court that can look at the constitutional legality of the DMCA (the Supreme Court?) and actually rule the DMCA illegal. Which we all pray that will happen, but it will take a lot of money on 2600's part to do it. And there is no telling if it will be declared unconsitutional for that matter.
Actually posting a bond is a pretty good idea overall. IANAL and all, but I don't think that is common practice atm, and it seems an easy way to make huge companies less scary in court battles. It is my personal belief that at the moment we the people can't fight for our rights against things like the RIAA and DMCA even in cases that we we clearly win (like this IOC case), because we just can't afford it.
Even when the law is on our side, we have no way to fight for our rights because a long court battle will just bankrupt us. If huge companies going into a lawsuit were made to post a bond like this, it would allow people to fight on issues they would normally have to just back out of.
Of course it could also be that I'm just stupid!:)
You are 100% correct that everyone trolls on occasion, you can't ban everyone. I think what you are missing is that 40-45 times in the past 3 months is excessive. Just like everyone stares a cute member of the opposite (or same for some) sex on occasion, but approaching him/her with a knife is considered taboo. There has to be a line drawn at which point you go from expressing your opinion on a private server to just harrasing the users, just like there is a line between attraction and stalking.
That isn't nearly as easy as you make it sound. He likley doesn't have 1 IP addy but is dynamically allocated an addy every logon. The only way to stop him in that case is ban the IP's of the entire ISP that he belongs to, which probably would mean banning some of eBay's good customers. Not to mention that he could then just switch ISPs. I doubt any metro area has a single ISP anymore. And think about if his ISP is someone big like AOL. Now it really becomes an act of cyberterrorism, after all, he can either harras you or your customers, or you can site ban his IP range and likley take out a portion of your customers.
Seems that this is pretty close to the textbook definition of harassment. I would hope that we as entities in "cyber-space" could get a restraining order against a harassing user. IRL wouldn't you be a little concerned if you had had to remove someone from your personal property 40-45 times. After all the goverments main role is protection of its customers (both we the people and we the companies), so this seems like a classic example of why the government exists. Just because the offense took place on the internet does not mean the offense didn't happen (or that the goverment is censoring the internet when stoping it). After all why do you pay taxes everyday if not to have a hand in stoping people like this?
In my opinion the GPL poorly fits server applications. Take for instance a MUD. If I were to write a MUD and distribute it GPL'ed, in my interpretation of the GPL anyone can take that MUD and change it and run it without having to distribute modified source, unless of course they decide to distribute modified binaries. In this case the MUD administration gets the advantage of profitting from my hard work, and furthermore they can do anything they want with my hard work and never give back to me or the community. The only thing they have to refrain from doing is passing out the binaries to anyone, which is exactly what you would want to do in a competing market.
Okay this is a little off-topic but I'm curious why the debate centers around Napster? Napster is no more than a tool to transfer data from one computer to another (no different than FTP). Why doesn't Napster defend itself in this way? The argument I've seen really puts Microsoft at risk for being sued by the RIAA. After all Windows 9x allows people to play MP3's. It also alows people to cut and paste MP3's onto diskettes or other storage media. In reality, it is Windows 9x that allows Napster to operate, so Napster is itself not at fault. If Windows 9x did not allow Napster to execute there would be no problem. But then again perhaps it falls back on the chip manufacturers for producing a tool that can be used to pirate songs, but in reality it even falls back to anyone that produces Silicon. Where does it end? How can anyone blame Napster? It really is the users transfering copywrited materials. Napster is a tool.
I've yet to see anyone sue Honda for the cars they produce. After all criminals can use cars to make a getaway, so Honda must be at fault!
I was a software developer for the gambling industry, and I believe probably the biggest difference in state sanctioned vs illegal gambling is probably odds manipulation. Typically the people running gambling are not exactly honest people (after all, they do make a living preying on the fact that people want to make money for nothing, sorta like dot-com companies).
The point is, without regulation its easy to pull the old "Which hand am I holding the coin in" trick. Make the odds look good, but really just take money. This is only really helpfull when you can pull a fast one, like give out a big prize that everyone can see, give it a large deal of publicity and then lower the odds without anyone knowing. Everyone shows up because you are giving out the big prizes, but low and behold you are just taking their money.
This is highly regulated in Las Vegas (Vegas is a highly honest gambling community, by far the most upstanding group of casino's I've ever seen) and in state sanctioned lotteries. But if gambling on the internet isn't regulated, then no one can stop these scams from happening to the average user (the person who thinks "Vegas is regulated so this place must be").
This is the same setup that came with my GTE DSL. They Fedexed me the modem, some line filters, a CAT 5 Cable and a CD. I personally didn't use the CD, but their service is setup to use DHCP. I easily installed my 2 Win98 and 1 Redhat machine (over a cheap 10BaseT 8 port hub). The service didn't complain about me using 3 IP's so I assume you can install multiple machines through GTE with no problems (or maybe my bill will be more than I expected!!:)).
I had the benifit of computers in the classroom from elementary through high-school. In the early days we had IBM PC Jr's, in high-school we had i386's. As an elective in my high-school we had a course titled Computer Math (I-IV), in which I took an hour of Pascal every day for four years. During this time I always had a knowledgable computer teacher, including one very well versed in programming during my high-school years. The computers were never used as a crutch, but they were used as a tool.
It is my personal belief that a computer in the classroom can be very benificial if it is used as a tool for interactive learning. Teachers should not ever view PC's as the sole means to teach a classroom, or feel that the introduction of PC's will require less interaction on the part of the teacher. Just as in an elementary school, one would not rely soley on the teachings of a text book, one cannot rely on the teachings of a piece of software.
I do believe that software makes a good replacement for a textbook, as long as the software is viewed in the same light. It is nothing more than an interactive textbook. This does not mean that labs can be forgone, or that students can learn better with a PC than a text book. It is a 1:1 ratio, PC's are nothing more than a textbook (just a gathering of information).
Students using a pc should be supervised, and allowed only to use it as a tool to aid the in completion of assignments, i.e. no games, no internet. I don't think that students should be introduced to the internet in a learning environment until university (learn to learn, before being given an easy way to find any information).
Slashdot Mirror
Troll?.. perhaps I'm still confused on the subject.. but does the word troll mean anyone that disagrees with the majority of what slashdot readers believe?.. its amazing that every time I see a poster stray from the norm he gets branded as troll.. I really wish someone would give me a good definition of trolls..
This is a perfect troll. maks a valid point, but does it in such away as to provoke response.
Call me crazy and all but isn't that taking the troll thing too far.. I don't think I really understand about trolls but IMHO a perfect post is a post that makes a valid point and a provokes a response.. I thought trolls made no point at all and provoked a response.. it seems that slashdot would be worthless if every time a poster invoked thought they were ridiculed.. I thought we were nerds because we liked to think.. maybe I'm wrong.. maybe someone should define troll to me in a better way.. but IMHO your post was more of a troll than the original (MUCH more)..
You bought a door lock from a company.. which is more likely to get broken into:
1. I, a third party, purchase every lock on the market as soon as it comes out. I hit the lock with every tool in my house in every combintation that I possibly can. I finally find a combination of tools that breaks the lock. I publish exact details for how to break the lock, futhermore I offer to purchase the tools for anyone who wants to try to break the locks that are out there. This is the first case of the company hearing that there is a problem.
2. I, a third party, purchase every lock on the market as soon as it comes out. I hit the lock with every tool in my house in every combintation that I possibly can. I finally find a combination of tools that breaks the lock. I inform the company that the lock can be broken, with exact details on how the lock can be broken.
Now I undertsand if the company doesn't move you drop a press release that tells there is a way to break the lock. But you don't give the exact details.. the IT industry will push for a fix at that point. When you give out source code on how to break locks.. that is just plain stupid IMHO...
VxWorks is a POSIX operating system with Real Time abilities. I would also imagine some other POSIX RTOS's have been used (PSOS is probably up there). But as far as RTOS goes VxWorks was the largest RTOS out there when I was developing under it. In case anyone cares, its a joy to develop for, uses GNU tools and has a wonderfull debugger/profiler. The tools work well under both Solaris and Windows. I recommend using it if you have any needs for a RTOS (I've used quite a few).
I think it's Occams Razor.. and I have to say that the simpilest explanation is that he just doesn't understand the monumental feat of humanity he's asked for (requiring 75% of us to have honor is quite a request, from anyone, including Stephen King).. So Occam's Razor points towards he just didn't think about the math..
But you are missing one of the fundamentals of Physics I back in high school. There are four forces an atom exerts. Strong Nuclear Force, Weak Nuclear Force, Electromagnetic, and Gravity. Gravity is the weakest of those four forces. The physics community has been trying to explain why for quite some time. That is where this theory comes into play.
CSS is an access control device. The wording of the DMCA protects any access control devices (IMHO) even if the access control device is just an arbitrary road block. Thats why the fight must attack the DMCA and not defend DeCSS. IMHO the DeCSS is definately what the DMCA is trying to prevent; however, the DMCA steps on just about every right we have. Eric Raymonds makes an analogy between welding shut the hood of a car and closed source software. I think it applies here, but instead of welding they used an off brand bike lock and they claim if we see inside the hood we'll start making cars just like theirs and selling it.
Well, maybe clearly was a bit strong of a word. I'm still IANAL and this is IMHO and all, but I think the grounds they are attacking on is that DeCSS allows you to skip the copy protection/country code part of the DVD. It is in my understanding that that is illegal according the the DMCA. Granted I haven't read the entire DMCA (but now I think I will read it tonight), so I'm quite probably wrong. It could be wishfull thinking on my part, I do want the DMCA to be ruled unconstitutional (which I believe it is), so it would be best if the fight took that direction IMHO, rather than splinter off into a million little court battles. I sorta want a good strong face off that is united right now, rather than give the MPAA the upper hand because they have the cash that the DeCSS community doesn't have.
But on the other hand, in this case DeCSS is clearly breaking the law (DMCA) and they are guilty. The only hope is that this goes to a court that can look at the constitutional legality of the DMCA (the Supreme Court?) and actually rule the DMCA illegal. Which we all pray that will happen, but it will take a lot of money on 2600's part to do it. And there is no telling if it will be declared unconsitutional for that matter.
Even when the law is on our side, we have no way to fight for our rights because a long court battle will just bankrupt us. If huge companies going into a lawsuit were made to post a bond like this, it would allow people to fight on issues they would normally have to just back out of.
Of course it could also be that I'm just stupid! :)
You are 100% correct that everyone trolls on occasion, you can't ban everyone. I think what you are missing is that 40-45 times in the past 3 months is excessive. Just like everyone stares a cute member of the opposite (or same for some) sex on occasion, but approaching him/her with a knife is considered taboo. There has to be a line drawn at which point you go from expressing your opinion on a private server to just harrasing the users, just like there is a line between attraction and stalking.
That isn't nearly as easy as you make it sound. He likley doesn't have 1 IP addy but is dynamically allocated an addy every logon. The only way to stop him in that case is ban the IP's of the entire ISP that he belongs to, which probably would mean banning some of eBay's good customers. Not to mention that he could then just switch ISPs. I doubt any metro area has a single ISP anymore. And think about if his ISP is someone big like AOL. Now it really becomes an act of cyberterrorism, after all, he can either harras you or your customers, or you can site ban his IP range and likley take out a portion of your customers.
Seems that this is pretty close to the textbook definition of harassment. I would hope that we as entities in "cyber-space" could get a restraining order against a harassing user. IRL wouldn't you be a little concerned if you had had to remove someone from your personal property 40-45 times. After all the goverments main role is protection of its customers (both we the people and we the companies), so this seems like a classic example of why the government exists. Just because the offense took place on the internet does not mean the offense didn't happen (or that the goverment is censoring the internet when stoping it). After all why do you pay taxes everyday if not to have a hand in stoping people like this?
In my opinion the GPL poorly fits server applications. Take for instance a MUD. If I were to write a MUD and distribute it GPL'ed, in my interpretation of the GPL anyone can take that MUD and change it and run it without having to distribute modified source, unless of course they decide to distribute modified binaries. In this case the MUD administration gets the advantage of profitting from my hard work, and furthermore they can do anything they want with my hard work and never give back to me or the community. The only thing they have to refrain from doing is passing out the binaries to anyone, which is exactly what you would want to do in a competing market.
Whats to stop me from registering sesamestreetsex.com right now? Isn't it really the same difference?
I've yet to see anyone sue Honda for the cars they produce. After all criminals can use cars to make a getaway, so Honda must be at fault!
I was a software developer for the gambling industry, and I believe probably the biggest difference in state sanctioned vs illegal gambling is probably odds manipulation. Typically the people running gambling are not exactly honest people (after all, they do make a living preying on the fact that people want to make money for nothing, sorta like dot-com companies).
The point is, without regulation its easy to pull the old "Which hand am I holding the coin in" trick. Make the odds look good, but really just take money. This is only really helpfull when you can pull a fast one, like give out a big prize that everyone can see, give it a large deal of publicity and then lower the odds without anyone knowing. Everyone shows up because you are giving out the big prizes, but low and behold you are just taking their money.
This is highly regulated in Las Vegas (Vegas is a highly honest gambling community, by far the most upstanding group of casino's I've ever seen) and in state sanctioned lotteries. But if gambling on the internet isn't regulated, then no one can stop these scams from happening to the average user (the person who thinks "Vegas is regulated so this place must be").
This is the same setup that came with my GTE DSL. They Fedexed me the modem, some line filters, a CAT 5 Cable and a CD. I personally didn't use the CD, but their service is setup to use DHCP. I easily installed my 2 Win98 and 1 Redhat machine (over a cheap 10BaseT 8 port hub). The service didn't complain about me using 3 IP's so I assume you can install multiple machines through GTE with no problems (or maybe my bill will be more than I expected!! :)).
I had the benifit of computers in the classroom from elementary through high-school. In the early days we had IBM PC Jr's, in high-school we had i386's. As an elective in my high-school we had a course titled Computer Math (I-IV), in which I took an hour of Pascal every day for four years. During this time I always had a knowledgable computer teacher, including one very well versed in programming during my high-school years. The computers were never used as a crutch, but they were used as a tool.
It is my personal belief that a computer in the classroom can be very benificial if it is used as a tool for interactive learning. Teachers should not ever view PC's as the sole means to teach a classroom, or feel that the introduction of PC's will require less interaction on the part of the teacher. Just as in an elementary school, one would not rely soley on the teachings of a text book, one cannot rely on the teachings of a piece of software.
I do believe that software makes a good replacement for a textbook, as long as the software is viewed in the same light. It is nothing more than an interactive textbook. This does not mean that labs can be forgone, or that students can learn better with a PC than a text book. It is a 1:1 ratio, PC's are nothing more than a textbook (just a gathering of information).
Students using a pc should be supervised, and allowed only to use it as a tool to aid the in completion of assignments, i.e. no games, no internet. I don't think that students should be introduced to the internet in a learning environment until university (learn to learn, before being given an easy way to find any information).