Re:Charging for content sealed Salon's fate
on
Salon in Dire Straits
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· Score: 4, Interesting
If Salon was serious about surviving, it should have canned it expensive SF offices and become basically a virtual company. Web space is cheap, and writer can live anywhere.
Not necesarily. If they were writing solely about pieces of hardware (e.g. Tom's Hardware) or had other people submit article to them (e.g. Slashdot), then yes, the company could be anywhere.
Salon, however, often writes about social trends and what's happening in society; they write about people. In order to do that coherently and effectively, the writers have to be where the people are. One cannot write a story about what people in the big city think while living in Eye Socket, Montana. Yes, land is cheap there, but only because nobody else wants it. For some businesses, living in an expensive city is a necessary expense.
Because we all know how terrorists are the only ones who use mobile phones and drug dealers are the only ones who use pages.
While the above is not particularly insightful, it does touch on a good point. It's not just the bad guys who use mobile phones. Having been part of security details for a government organization in the past, our government issued radios don't always work, especially inside large buildings. (Think of the same folks who designed your tax forms trying to make a working radio.) I've found my mobile to be invaluable to make sure the car to pick everybody up is outside and waiting when the principal is ready to go.
Technology is tool that can be used either for good or for evil. By jamming the airwaves, you're preventing everybody from using it and trying to technology from changing the way you do business.
You don't always have to speak with money to get lawmakers on your side. If you can give them a cause to rally around that is a) safe for them (i.e. nobody could possibly object) and b) will make them popular with the people (e.g. pass laws against major souless corporations that are attacking small furry animals with chainsaws), they will be all over it in a heartbeat.
Give lawmakers the chance to oust those in the government who have "been hiring criminals to fulfill government contracts in direct violation of the rules," and you're getting close...
Many people, myself included, believe that for many governmental application, open source products are superior to closed source products, particularly those sold by Microsoft. I won't dive deeply into the arguments, but governments require open access to their data for all time; they shouldn't be forced to buy expensive upgrades from a single vendor because the vendor has decided to change the file format.
That being said, we're not going to convince members of governments on technical merits. They don't understand technical issues, nor should they. We charge them with governing the people, not with hacking around with e-mail servers. In order to talk to these people, we have to speak a language that they understand; the language of laws and regulations.
If we want the government to do something for us, we have to speak their language.
An interesting idea, but how do you cope for users forgetting their passwords on a daily basis? If we assume that the administrator(s) can change the passwords for users, there has to be more than one administrative user. (Somebody has to man the tech support desk every day!) How can you guard the admin password like Fort Knox if it has to be given to several people?
I disagree. The lesson we should take away is that there should be a password recovery mechanism.
If this person had used a strong password and strong crypto, all of their work could be lost! The password recovery mechanism has to be difficult enough to deter an attacker (e.g. require physical presence of company CIO, etc), but easy enough to do in an emergency. This could be necessary for untimely deaths, disgruntled employees leaving without turning over the access devices to their accounts, etc.
What if it wasn't a local ISP and what if it wasn't just a short attack. What about five people working together to destroy (read as rm -rf/) the e-mails servers of the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service. Maybe trash a personnel computer too. People might not die, but it could cause some serious problems. If the tax refund checks of 50,000 people never got sent...
Just because nobody has done it before doesn't mean it's not a threat.
The really scary thing is that somebody may try this. If you're objective is just to cause disruption and panic, why go through all of the trouble of sneaking past the INS, paying for flight school, buying expensive GPS receivers and losing 19 believers in your cause? Why not just hire some 31337 geeks, preferably young teenagers who want to show off their skillz without caring about what happens, to shut down the e-mail and telephone systems in your favorite target country. You can be at home drinking at MaiTai instead of getting your hands dirty.
I'm pretty sure that the only Executive office exempt from this is the White House. All other offices/departments/agencies/commissions must release information whenever asked.
Nope. Each agency can withold information based on the following exemptions, which can be found in 5 USC 552(b).
It is the policy of the agency to make records available to the public to the greatest extent possible, in keeping with the spirit of the FOIA, while at the same time protecting sensitive information that may be withheld pursuant to one of the FOIA's exemptions. In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 552(b), the following is a list of these exemptions which apply to Government information subject to the FOIA:
(b)(1) EXEMPTION - Protects Classified Matters of National Defense or Foreign Policy
This exemption protects from disclosure national security information concerning the national defense or foreign policy,provided that it has been properly classified in accordance with the substantive and procedural requirements of an executive order.
(b)(2) EXEMPTION - Internal Personnel Rules and Practices
This exemption exempts from mandatory disclosure records "related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency." Courts have interpreted the exemption to encompass two distinct categories of information:
(a) internal matters of a relatively trivial nature--sometimes referred to as "low2" information; and
(b) more substantial internal matters, the disclosure of which would risk circumvention of a legal requirement--sometimes referred to as "high 2" information.
(b)(3) EXEMPTION - Information Specifically Exempted by Other Statutes
This exemption incorporates the disclosure prohibitions that are contained in various other federal statutes. As originally enacted in 1966, Exemption 3 was broadly phrased so as to simply cover information "specifically exempted from disclosure by statute." The new Exemption 3 statute prohibits agencies from releasing under the FOIA any proposal "submitted by a contractor in response to the requirements of a solicitation for a competitive proposals," unless that proposal "is set forth or incorporated by reference in a contract entered into between the agency and the contractor that submitted the proposal."
(b)(4) EXEMPTION - Trade Secrets, Commercial or Financial Information
This exemption protects "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential." This exemption is intended to protect the interests of both the government and submitters of information.
(b)(5) EXEMPTION - Privileged Interagency or Intra-agency Memoranda or Letters
This exemption protects "interagency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party...in litigation with the agency." As such, it has been construed to "exempt those documents and only those documents that are normally privileged in the civil discovery context."
(b)(6) EXEMPTION - Personal Information Affecting an Individual's Privacy
This exemption permits the government to withhold all information about individuals in "personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information " would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." This exemption cannot be invoked to withhold from a requester information pertaining to the requester.
(b)(7) EXEMPTION - Investigatory Records Compiled for Law Enforcement Purposes
As amended, this exemption protects from disclosure "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes...."
EXEMPTION 7(A) Records or information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. This exemption authorizes the withholding of "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that production of such law enforcement records or information... could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."
EXEMPTION 7(B) Records, the disclosure of which would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.
This exemption is aimed at preventing prejudicial pretrial publicity that could impair a court proceeding, protects "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes [the disclosure of which] would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication."
EXEMPTION 7(C) Personal Information in Law Enforcement Records. This exemption provides protection for personal information in law enforcement records. This exemption is the law enforcement counterpart to Exemption 6, providing protection for law enforcement information the disclosure of which "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
EXEMPTION 7 (D) Identity of a Confidential Source. This exemption provides protection for "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes [which] could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source --including a State, local, or foreign agency or authority or any private institution which furnished information on a confidential basis--and, in the case of a record or information compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation,information furnished by a confidential source."
EXEMPTION 7(E) Circumvention of the Law. This exemption affords protection to all law enforcement information which "would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law."
EXEMPTION 7(F) To Protect the Physical Safety of a Wide Range of Individuals. This exemption permits the withholding of information necessary to protect the physical safety of a wide range of individuals. Whereas Exemption 7(F) previously protected records that "would... endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel," the amended exemption provides protection to "any individual" when disclosure of information about him or her "could reasonably be expected to endanger [his/her] life or physical safety."
(b)(8) EXEMPTION - Regulation of Financial Institutions
This exemption protects matters that are "contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by,on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions."
(b)(9) EXEMPTION - Geological and Geophysical Information Concerning Wells
This exemption covers "geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells."
You have the name of the law correct. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that most kinds of information be available to the general public. There are exceptions for classified information, information that's protected by privacy (e.g. you shouldn't be able to get a copy of my tax return, etc).
I think the big jump you're making here is how the information is stored versus the information itself.
The Peruvian (and most free software people) want to say that the way the information is stored should be open and accessible to all. That is, whether the documents are kept in a locked filing cabinet, a computer, or posted to every chat room in the world, the way to access the information should be held hostage by a single vendor. The information must be accessible at all times.
That doesn't mean that the government should share all of the information all of the time with the people. While storing documents in an open format such as HTML would give them the opportunity to do so, it doesn't mean that they have to.
What's scary to me about that list is not what's on the list of prohibited items, but what you're allowed to bring. I'm not thrilled about the idea of somebody having a baseball bat on the plane, but I can live with it. But a parachute? That's just scary. And restraint devices? Are people so kinky they can't wait until they get to baggage claim before pulling out the handcuffs?
While I agree with the author that it's hard to sell an Open Source only project, I'm really curious to see how Covalent does selling Apache web server management systems. They take a good open source engine and add something of value, a good user interface for doing complicated tasks, to it before selling it. Perhaps that's a better business model than trying to sell GPL'ed software directly?
Yes, but this group might not want to sit around playing Civilization together, lest they reveal their strategy for taking over the new world too soon...
Given the rest of that sentence, "The portable computing device, which IBM Research will unveil on Feb. 11 at a technology conference in Phoenix, Arizona, includes 128 megabytes of dynamic random access memory, a 10-gigabit hard drive and a microprocessor -- which is the brain of the computer -- that runs at 800 megahertz, or 800 million cycles per second.", I suspect the author is not a computer expert and that it's just a typo.
Yes, but "AOL" is much more well known in the non-geek community than "RedHat." People where I work think RedHat is just another dot-com and could go under at any moment. They don't want to trust their business to that. But everybody knows what AOL is, and everybody knows they're going to be around tomorrow. That could help push them towards trusting linux.
Slashdot Mirror
If Salon was serious about surviving, it should have canned it expensive SF offices and become basically a virtual company. Web space is cheap, and writer can live anywhere.
Not necesarily. If they were writing solely about pieces of hardware (e.g. Tom's Hardware) or had other people submit article to them (e.g. Slashdot), then yes, the company could be anywhere.
Salon, however, often writes about social trends and what's happening in society; they write about people. In order to do that coherently and effectively, the writers have to be where the people are. One cannot write a story about what people in the big city think while living in Eye Socket, Montana. Yes, land is cheap there, but only because nobody else wants it. For some businesses, living in an expensive city is a necessary expense.
Are we going to see more of those "UHF is dying" posts?
The heck with that. Get that cave girl dancer!
Well, yes!
"The weapon of the enemy is a gift, let us use it against him!"
Because we all know how terrorists are the only ones who use mobile phones and drug dealers are the only ones who use pages.
While the above is not particularly insightful, it does touch on a good point. It's not just the bad guys who use mobile phones. Having been part of security details for a government organization in the past, our government issued radios don't always work, especially inside large buildings. (Think of the same folks who designed your tax forms trying to make a working radio.) I've found my mobile to be invaluable to make sure the car to pick everybody up is outside and waiting when the principal is ready to go.
Technology is tool that can be used either for good or for evil. By jamming the airwaves, you're preventing everybody from using it and trying to technology from changing the way you do business.
You don't always have to speak with money to get lawmakers on your side. If you can give them a cause to rally around that is a) safe for them (i.e. nobody could possibly object) and b) will make them popular with the people (e.g. pass laws against major souless corporations that are attacking small furry animals with chainsaws), they will be all over it in a heartbeat.
Give lawmakers the chance to oust those in the government who have "been hiring criminals to fulfill government contracts in direct violation of the rules," and you're getting close...
Many people, myself included, believe that for many governmental application, open source products are superior to closed source products, particularly those sold by Microsoft. I won't dive deeply into the arguments, but governments require open access to their data for all time; they shouldn't be forced to buy expensive upgrades from a single vendor because the vendor has decided to change the file format.
That being said, we're not going to convince members of governments on technical merits. They don't understand technical issues, nor should they. We charge them with governing the people, not with hacking around with e-mail servers. In order to talk to these people, we have to speak a language that they understand; the language of laws and regulations.
If we want the government to do something for us, we have to speak their language.
I prefer the term "anti-play" technology. That's what the technology does; it prevents you from playnig the music.
An interesting idea, but how do you cope for users forgetting their passwords on a daily basis? If we assume that the administrator(s) can change the passwords for users, there has to be more than one administrative user. (Somebody has to man the tech support desk every day!) How can you guard the admin password like Fort Knox if it has to be given to several people?
I disagree. The lesson we should take away is that there should be a password recovery mechanism.
If this person had used a strong password and strong crypto, all of their work could be lost! The password recovery mechanism has to be difficult enough to deter an attacker (e.g. require physical presence of company CIO, etc), but easy enough to do in an emergency. This could be necessary for untimely deaths, disgruntled employees leaving without turning over the access devices to their accounts, etc.
Or perhaps a set of good blinds to keep those X10 cameras away...
What if it wasn't a local ISP and what if it wasn't just a short attack. What about five people working together to destroy (read as rm -rf /) the e-mails servers of the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service. Maybe trash a personnel computer too. People might not die, but it could cause some serious problems. If the tax refund checks of 50,000 people never got sent...
Just because nobody has done it before doesn't mean it's not a threat.
Odd... They don't mention Pitr Cola once in the whole paper. Are they overlooking the obvious?
Scary. I've been wondering why someone hasn't done it yet.
If they were, do you think they would tell you?
The really scary thing is that somebody may try this. If you're objective is just to cause disruption and panic, why go through all of the trouble of sneaking past the INS, paying for flight school, buying expensive GPS receivers and losing 19 believers in your cause? Why not just hire some 31337 geeks, preferably young teenagers who want to show off their skillz without caring about what happens, to shut down the e-mail and telephone systems in your favorite target country. You can be at home drinking at MaiTai instead of getting your hands dirty.
Are we scared now? We should be.
Heh, don't worry about it. Let's just say that I work with this kind of stuff on a regular basis.
I'm pretty sure that the only Executive office exempt from this is the White House. All other offices/departments/agencies/commissions must release information whenever asked.
...in
... could reasonably be expected to interfere
Nope. Each agency can withold information based on the following exemptions, which can be found in
5 USC 552(b).
To wit the Census Bureau says:
It is the policy of the agency to make records available to the public to the greatest extent possible, in keeping with the spirit of the FOIA, while at the same time protecting sensitive information that may be withheld pursuant to one of the FOIA's exemptions. In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 552(b), the following is a list of these exemptions which apply to Government information subject to the FOIA:
(b)(1) EXEMPTION - Protects Classified Matters of National Defense or Foreign Policy
This exemption protects from disclosure national security information concerning the national defense or foreign policy,provided that it has been properly classified in accordance with the substantive and procedural requirements of an executive order.
(b)(2) EXEMPTION - Internal Personnel Rules and Practices
This exemption exempts from mandatory disclosure records "related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency." Courts have interpreted the exemption to encompass two distinct categories of information:
(a) internal matters of a relatively trivial nature--sometimes referred to as "low2" information; and
(b) more substantial internal matters, the disclosure of which would risk circumvention of a legal requirement--sometimes referred to as "high 2" information.
(b)(3) EXEMPTION - Information Specifically Exempted by Other Statutes
This exemption incorporates the disclosure prohibitions that are contained in various other federal statutes. As originally enacted in 1966, Exemption 3 was broadly phrased so as to simply cover information "specifically exempted from disclosure by statute." The new Exemption 3 statute prohibits agencies from releasing under the FOIA any proposal "submitted by a contractor in response to the requirements of a solicitation for a competitive proposals," unless that proposal "is set forth or incorporated by reference in a
contract entered into between the agency and the contractor that submitted the proposal."
(b)(4) EXEMPTION - Trade Secrets, Commercial or Financial Information
This exemption protects "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential." This exemption is intended to protect the interests of both the government and submitters of information.
(b)(5) EXEMPTION - Privileged Interagency or Intra-agency Memoranda or Letters
This exemption protects "interagency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party
litigation with the agency." As such, it has been construed to "exempt those documents and only those documents that are normally privileged in the civil discovery context."
(b)(6) EXEMPTION - Personal Information Affecting an Individual's Privacy
This exemption permits the government to withhold all information about individuals in "personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information " would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." This exemption cannot be invoked to withhold from a requester information pertaining to the requester.
(b)(7) EXEMPTION - Investigatory Records Compiled for Law Enforcement Purposes
As amended, this exemption protects from disclosure "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes...."
EXEMPTION 7(A) Records or information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. This exemption authorizes the withholding of "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that production of such law enforcement records or information
with enforcement proceedings."
EXEMPTION 7(B) Records, the disclosure of which would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.
This exemption is aimed at preventing prejudicial pretrial publicity that could impair a court proceeding, protects "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes [the disclosure of which] would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication."
EXEMPTION 7(C) Personal Information in Law Enforcement Records. This exemption provides protection for personal information in law enforcement records. This exemption is the law enforcement counterpart to Exemption 6, providing protection for law enforcement information the disclosure of which "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy."
EXEMPTION 7 (D) Identity of a Confidential Source. This exemption provides protection for "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes [which] could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source --including a State, local, or foreign agency or authority or any private institution which furnished information on a confidential basis--and, in the
case of a record or information compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation,information furnished by a confidential source."
EXEMPTION 7(E) Circumvention of the Law. This exemption affords protection to all law enforcement information which "would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law."
EXEMPTION 7(F) To Protect the Physical Safety of a Wide Range of Individuals. This exemption permits the withholding of information necessary to protect the physical safety of a wide range of individuals. Whereas Exemption 7(F) previously protected records that "would... endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel," the amended exemption provides protection to "any individual" when disclosure of information about him or her "could reasonably be expected to endanger [his/her] life or physical safety."
(b)(8) EXEMPTION - Regulation of Financial Institutions
This exemption protects matters that are "contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by,on
behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions."
(b)(9) EXEMPTION - Geological and Geophysical Information Concerning Wells
This exemption covers "geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells."
You have the name of the law correct. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires that most kinds of information be available to the general public. There are exceptions for classified information, information that's protected by privacy (e.g. you shouldn't be able to get a copy of my tax return, etc).
I think the big jump you're making here is how the information is stored versus the information itself.
The Peruvian (and most free software people) want to say that the way the information is stored should be open and accessible to all. That is, whether the documents are kept in a locked filing cabinet, a computer, or posted to every chat room in the world, the way to access the information should be held hostage by a single vendor. The information must be accessible at all times.
That doesn't mean that the government should share all of the information all of the time with the people. While storing documents in an open format such as HTML would give them the opportunity to do so, it doesn't mean that they have to.
What's scary to me about that list is not what's on the list of prohibited items, but what you're allowed to bring. I'm not thrilled about the idea of somebody having a baseball bat on the plane, but I can live with it. But a parachute? That's just scary. And restraint devices? Are people so kinky they can't wait until they get to baggage claim before pulling out the handcuffs?
While I agree with the author that it's hard to sell an Open Source only project, I'm really curious to see how Covalent does selling Apache web server management systems. They take a good open source engine and add something of value, a good user interface for doing complicated tasks, to it before selling it. Perhaps that's a better business model than trying to sell GPL'ed software directly?
Things in /bin change very rarely. And they don't have to be small, only the last block has to be small relative to the block size.
Wait? You mean there's a place in the Universe where there isn't a Waffle House right off the Interstate?
Yes, but this group might not want to sit around playing Civilization together, lest they reveal their strategy for taking over the new world too soon...
Given the rest of that sentence, "The portable computing device, which IBM Research will unveil on Feb. 11 at a technology conference in Phoenix, Arizona, includes 128 megabytes of dynamic random access memory, a 10-gigabit hard drive and a microprocessor -- which is the brain of the computer -- that runs at 800 megahertz, or 800 million cycles per second.", I suspect the author is not a computer expert and that it's just a typo.
Yes, but "AOL" is much more well known in the non-geek community than "RedHat." People where I work think RedHat is just another dot-com and could go under at any moment. They don't want to trust their business to that. But everybody knows what AOL is, and everybody knows they're going to be around tomorrow. That could help push them towards trusting linux.