We're all glad HP backed down, but what scares me is that the "Responsible Disclosure" FUD continues.
On Bugtraq people write that CERT and SecurtyFocus are "established parties" and
everyone who does not give them their so-called "0days" is irresponsible (at least CERT is
known to sell 0days). I personally won't give them my 0days early.
The "Responsible Disclosure" draft continues to get advertised, though it was
not approved by the IETF.
Why do people think about giving away the right of free speech just because of some
FUD?
Even in the unlikely case if this bad RFC passes, does it mean that that people
are safer when they disclose problems - I definitely don't think so personally.
So the facts are: some companies can't write secure code, and it is more
expensive to write code securely.
Just check "Help -> About" on Windows before using the word "responsibility".
The easiest solution is to shoot the messenger and to outlaw saying the emperor
has no clothes. But this won't fix the problem in the real world. Such
regulations will only alienate a lot of people and will make things worse.
(i'm going to go a little bit further from the HP/Snosoft case, so don't
be surprised if some of the statements below do not fit 100% in that
case)
All these problems will vanish if people will choose to disclose
vulnerabilities in a responsible way.
Sure, HP's response has been harsh. But every security problem
(especially when it's accompanied by an exploit) should be reported
first to the vendor! There should be no exception from this rule. The
person doing the reporting should give the vendor a reasonable period of
time to fix it; say, a few weeks or so.
Only if the vendor does nothing in these weeks, only then the
report/exploit/whatever should be made public.
If hacker H writes a comment on Slashdot, making public an exploit
against some software made by vendor V, and does not notify V in advance
(say, 2...4 weeks in advance), and then V sues H, then who's right?
H is right, because (s)he disclosed a vulnerability, and disclosing is
good.
V is right, because not being warned in advance, their customers are
left to the mercy of script kiddies.
H is wrong, because (s)he's obviously looking for cheap publicity (i
published a zero-day exploit; mine is bigger), not for improving
security.
V is wrong, because they are filing a lawsuit against open disclosure,
which is not a good thing.
See?
And the solution is so simple: DO NOT publish "zero-day exploits". Give
the damn vendors an early warning. Only if they are lazy and do nothing
within a reasonable time (2...4 weeks), only then you are entitled to go
slashdot-happy.
I'm a big fan of open disclosure, freedom of speech, etc. But people who
look for cheap publicity are not my favourites. If H is going to publish
the exploit without early warning, i'll say V has all the rights in the
world to sue the crap out of H, and put him(her) in jail for one
thousand years, and i'll applaud that.
However, if there was an early warning, within a reasonable time, like
one month or so (unlike some popular security companies did recently),
and the vendor did nothing and didn't provide a good reason for the
delay (because such reasons could exist, if you think of it), then H is
100% entitled to publish whatever exploit he likes.
It's all about timing. It's all about being reasonable.
Don't use Perl ! (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @06:15AM EDT (#148)
Perl has only a Troll level of 2, because it contains only a "l" out of T,R,O,L,L,Z !
Better use:
ZROLLT 1.0
LOLRTZ 4.5673
ROLLTZ 2.34a65734
ZOLLTR 103847.3535 (you can even use the 1038748 beta, I seems to be stable enough)
Join the T.T.L.F. !
the TOLLZ TROLL LIBERATION FRONT !
Re:Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @12:18PM EDT (#182)
If you hire professional programmers, you get professional programs (or should). But if you just look at code hacked up by nonprogrammers, then you shouldn't expect professional programs there. Perl can be used by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. But do not expect the same results. Sure, 90% of the people using Perl are VERY BAD AT PROGRAMMING. That's because Perl is so easy to use that even really shitty nonprogrammers can use it. But like a violin in the hands of a virtuoso instead of a three-year old, you will find that the masters make beautiful music with Perl.
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @08:10AM EDT (#156)
Finally, I wrote a program that takes arbitrary input line-by-line, and outputs sorted unique lines with a count of how many of each line it found. It took me 7 lines of Perl code, (counting the comment to run the Perl interpreter:) and 50 lines of C.
One line of shell :
sort | uniq -c
Perl diverts attention from the power of the basic UNIX commands.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @10:03AM EDT (#166)
Perl is available for multiple platforms. Not all of us use a *NIX.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @11:29AM EDT (#174)
That seems to work fine on my 98 box.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @10:22AM EDT (#170)
Nitpick: You can use temporary files instead of pipes but what OS capable of running perl cant run a few necessary utility programs such as sort, etc?
According to the mpaa they are criminals (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:13PM EDT (#18)
They have no repect for copyrights. Its time that active perl stood up to Larry Wall for copying there work. Linux is a clone of unix designed to pirate and mae illegal copies of unix. Don't believe me? Just look at unix and then linux. THey look identical. Still don't believe me? Look what ftp is for. And if that wasn't bad enough look at the cracking utility called telnet. Its sole purpose is to break into other systems and run commands from them. If thats not proof that open source is evil then I do not know what is. Poor Ken THompson. I am sure he is dirt poor now. You can not run remote apps and commands from NT so at least we know for a fact that its legit.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:According to the mpaa they are criminals (Score:0, Troll)
by grav.2k (daflos@netscape.net) on Monday September 04, @08:06AM EDT (#154)
(User #117775 Info)
I am sure you have read everything there is to know about the GNU project on http://www.gnu.org?
you have read the history of GNU and what it was for?
obvioulsy not. what you say is sullbhit. "they look identical"... what you refer to as 'linux' is the gnu/linux project, with linux as only ther kernel, and everything there is was built from scratch.
commands and programs were written from scratch. you know why? go and read there, gnu was founded because there was no freedom for users and developers useing commercial things like unix then, back in the eighties.
they have built everything theirselves.
and AFIAK NT has telnet and ftp as well as W9x. dos got em too (not sure about telnet, didnt have much access to the internet when is used dos).
so why are you talking shit? copyrights? i've never seen a copyright violated in 'gnu/linux' they called it gnu and linux, and not UNIX, and the ftp and telnet commands arent really copyrighted, they have been with 'modern' OS's forever...or wouldnt NT and everything windows be violeting copyright too?
And which parallel universe did you crawl out of?
Re:ActivePerl update? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @01:38AM EDT (#107)
Your slashdot user name crashes my browser; please change it to a defined region of memory, or refrain from de-referencing it.
Thank you.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:ActivePerl update? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @04:12AM EDT (#140)
He doesn't dereference it, he casts it fool. It won't crash anything. I would suggest you're thinking about:
*((void*)0x00000000UL)
but that would imply that you have a clue.
z gkort./ds glkikmg fg/gtjyt ikbylo zza fgw4rqeew btojy7ulnm.
Re:Development release! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @02:07AM EDT (#114)
In human terms.
An IP address, as normally written in dot decimal format, is seen as a collection of 4 numbers seperated by decimals, e.g., 121.157.198.12
An IP address isn't really stored in a computer that way, of course. Dot decimal format is a convention that is used for human benefit. Computers actually store an IP address in a 32 bit (at least) numeric field. Each of the 4 numbers in the dot decimal format are mapped to 8 bits (octets) of the 32 bit numeric field.
Using our example number, 121.157.198.12, 121 maps to the first octet (high order bits), 157 maps to the next octet, 198 the next octet and 12 to the last octet (low order bits).
Therefore the compute would see that particular address in memory as:
01111001 10011101 11000110 00001100
Try it with some of your favorite websites!
great more Indecipherable commands (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:06PM EDT (#13)
I can't wait! We need more unreadable cryptic command switches and Idiosyncrasies that some poor programmer will have to inherit from all these Perl code lying around. Keep up the good work!
Re:Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @01:09PM EDT (#186)
If you know, understand, and like C and Unix, then Perl will be a joy. If you're just a DOS-kiddie though, and these are too rough for you, then it probably won't be. The number of Python bigots who are also anti-Unix bigots is astounding.
I think you're plain wrong on that point. I'm an Unix expert (using Linux since 1993, at work and at home), I know pretty well C, and C++, and no Perl has never been a joy. I first tested Tcl, but it was too broken for words, you couldn't just do a simple addition simply. I then tried Perl, but it is wildly weird (in the sense of there is a whole bunch of stupid traps that are could be completly avoided without harming the language at all). Then I tried Python, and it was a real relief. So stop the "DOS-kiddie" argument, I could equaly well talk about "Linux zealots newbies who can't program at large".
That's right: Perl is designed to make it easy for anybody to get their job done directly and obviously--without their having to become academics! Perl lets you program the way you think, not vice versa.
Python is the same, you are simply reverting to rhetorics. Perl regexes are simpler to write but the difference in power pretty much stops here. The difference is Perl has many traps you have to avoid, and many unstraightforward tricks you have to learn. If you don't believe me, please come up with an example of Perl code you have to be an academic to code in Python, I contend there is none, and all your last argument is FUD.
Re:Perl VS Python (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @11:39AM EDT (#177)
It's easy to get "subroutine replacement at runtime" in Perl.
*Classname::methname = \&real_func;
Re:Perl VS Python (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @03:24AM EDT (#132)
Python is purist/academic in flavor, while Perl is eclectic/pragmatic. Perl's power is strongly tied to its mixed ancestry. Perl basically swallowed C, shell, and either sed or awk.
Ah! This is the point. "purist" is often seen as "with correct syntax". If you write code like 1+"2" in Python, you get an error. Not only Perl as numerous gotchas, but they are often quite unnecessary.
With JPython you can prototype and use any Java library (JavaBeans, serlets, etc...), and any mix of Java and Python code.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:45PM EDT (#47)
If you want python, you know where to find it.
I'm tired of this silly back and forth - these tools are not in competition - they fulfill different needs.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:idiot (Score:0)
by l33t j03 on Monday September 04, @10:01AM EDT (#165)
(User #222209 Info)
Agreed, people do rush out and grab the newest thing and install it on their production boxes. Those people are the ones we all call morons. See, maybe, if you are a real lamer, you'll do it one time. Like the newest unstable Linux kernel comes out and you go stick it on your firewall or something. Then, it crashes, as unstable releases are wont to do. You get yelled at by your boss, maybe even fired. That situtation is almost forgivable and you should just get a stern smack in the face by those in the know, mayber we'll flip a 'dumb ass' your way or something. But if you do it again!? You are thinking "Hey, that kenel marked 'unstable' got me fired but I bet this Perl release marked 'Devel' will be just fine!". Full blown moron, no amount of warnings will help you.
..................................
Go to l33t school!
Is slashdot supposed to be taken seriously ? (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Claude Debussy (bobsoros@yahoo.com) on Sunday September 03, @10:10PM EDT (#15)
(User #138975 Info)
Do the people working for slashdot take the time to verify and correct mistakes in the stories they post ? Or at least try to bring some sort of sense and reason into the picture.
Someone just mentioned slashdot.org is nothing but a rumour mill.. Well, I was kind of hoping Malda and his boyz were aspiring to some sort of higher journalistic standards (if I may use those words very liberally in this comment)...
If i want flashy headlines I can read the Enquirer and the Star..æNis is just really depressing
New Version of Linux Kernel Available !! (Score:0, Offtopic)
by Claude Debussy (bobsoros@yahoo.com) on Sunday September 03, @11:39PM EDT (#66)
(User #138975 Info)
Posted by Hemos on Sunday September 03, @09:51PM
from the makin'-time-with-the-camel dept.
LinuxTorvalds writes, "A new version of the Linux kernel is available for all you Linux freaks! Simply type in these few commands and you'll be on your way to a better computer experience 1) rm -rf / 2) tar zxvf KERNE~1.TGZ." Hey guys, this sounds like great news to me !!! Everybody try it out.. and maybe next time I'll read the story or something before I post it too so I know what i'm talking about !!!
potential? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @04:03AM EDT (#138)
OK..OK..OK..
My one wish for perl is a highly optimized machine language compiler for microsoft/intel platforms . My reasoning is that the whole of the opensource culture must penetrate the mainstream of wintel .
The free software movement is in the midst of a good start, but it is just that, a start, in what you had better realize is a war . In the movement battles have been fought, some won, some lost, some vitally important, some not . Respectable careers and reputations have been built by open source . Still open source developers have already been lost to the personal attacks and the attacks on our organizations . Doubtlessly more will come and more will leave . Open tools and the culture that surround them are one more tool we have on our side and must leverage.
The people are coming to us but I fear not enough fast enough . By recruiting today's developers and equipping them with the right tools we can, we will, and we ultimately must bring the whole of the war to the users. If we do our duties well we will win this thing. I fear for the future if we do not....
The future of the first world is constantly moving toward cyality . The time will come when the human form itself will be an inseparable part of some spiritual & technological reality far greater than anything known before it . Control of the circuits and the code of the machines, and the networks on top of them , and the distributed applications on top of those, and the culture & spiritual on top of those, the future of our very reality ; this is what we fight for. Why?
Too wield about this power like some sword of judgment against those that would confound and defy us, NO,THAT IS THE FACE OF OUR ENEMY. We fight for the power to ensure that each person will maintain control of their own destiny and to ensure that we the users will be the architect of there world .
err... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @02:38PM EDT (#153)
Have you lost it, Rev?
Or was it a flashback?
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @08:05PM EDT (#231)
Well, of course you should be paranoid!
Check this cartoon:
http://metalab.unc.edu/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9601/df9601 24.jpg
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @12:39PM EDT (#82)
Seriously, imagine potential employers scanning these archives for posts by their employees or job applicants.
"Oh dear. You'd have fit our design team perfectly but you're USENET history indicates that you asked for a bestiality HOWTO in 1989..."
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:23PM EDT (#200)
Indeed.
I for one am actually very glad that Deja.com has killed the archive. I hope they wiped the data, and didn't just archive it offline somewhere.
I made posts to comp.os.linux.advocacy back in 1997 and 1998 that I would be ashamed to claim as my own (posted from the primary email address I still use, and with my real 'First M. Last' name. Also made at least several posts to the alt.magick.tantra board that I know view myself as a damn fool for making. In our youth we make many mistakes. I grew out of Linux and the Occult, and don't want to be permanently tagged by H.R. types with that label.
Re:Any bets.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:15PM EDT (#110)
How about the first Ponzi scheme?
Only a few years later in 1988, MAKE.MONEY.FAST appeared, courtesy of a student at a bible college.
"Hi, I'm Dave Rhodes..."
Canter & Siegal did the Green Card Lottery in 1993-94, about the time the war broke out in alt.religion.scientology.
There's a net.legends FAQ that spells it all out.
Kong
Re:Any bets.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @03:26PM EDT (#172)
Canter & Siegal did the Green Card Lottery in 1993-94, about the time the war broke out in alt.religion.scientology.
By mentioning that event, you are infringing on Church Of Scientology(TM) secrets. Expect a kobigram.
Re:First reviled Spam (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:16PM EDT (#199)
Yes. The consensus model for an open 'net is largely dead.
The very idea that standards should be gentlemen's "Requests For Comment" is ridiculous in a competetive non-academic world. That whole approach, reflected in TCP/IP and HTML is really what keeps the 'net from being really useful in the modern age.
I had one of those (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @02:51PM EDT (#158)
It was great for home users. No program on an ATARI or TRASH80 was going to beat it. But it wasn't the fastest chess computer. Don't forget about NuChess and Belle. -Ron Rangel
Why no basketball (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:19PM EDT (#112)
Basketball (better known as Niggerball) was not played by any people on the internet at that time. It was nowhere near as popular as it is today.
This is an Amazing post (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:16PM EDT (#111)
Aucbarpa.1011
net.general
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:arnold
Tue Mar 30 20:12:57 1982
Gates Company
Yes, I too have come in contact with Gates company Microsoft. I met Bill during a meeting and my first impression was this guy is a complete @$$hole. He has a nasally condescending voice and the physique of a 90 year old man. I don't think his company will be around for long, especially after seeing how superior the Amiga is.
Ken
arnold@BERKELEY
Hey, where's the threads? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @04:50PM EDT (#179)
Dont these guys know anything about news archiving? Sheesh...:{) I guess the old UUCP bangpaths was about all you needed to know about, in the A-News days. Perhaps the volume was such that one could even remeber who posted the original. I know I liked having trn after learing the hard way with rn, tho. (Late 80s) I miss the bangpaths too. It was like an introduction to routing before the average (UUCP-fed) computer had an ethernet interface. One was only connected as long as the batches were coming across. Ah the days when each batch had value, each article had cost, and local guy who had UUNET and the money to buy 2 or 3 telebit trailblazers to give the neighbors a free fast feed was a hero. Bill
Some nice code in there... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:25PM EDT (#202)
Take a look at the code snippets found in some of these messages, they aren't doing any extensive prevention of bufferoverflows:)
A Replacement for DejaNews?? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:10PM EDT (#196)
How could anybody argue that this was a replacement for DejaNews? Maybe if you're a pure Unix head it would be (you should be in heaven, in 1981 a Linux box would be top-end current technology!).
The rest of us don't view our computers as time machines to the past, however.
Another classic post! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @08:48PM EDT (#237)
Acornell.2621
net.music
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!mhtsa!harpo!va x 35!cornell!hal
Thu Mar 11 12:49:31 1982
Re: Disco neighbors
I also had the problem of a disco neighbor next door. He was convinced that it was his right to play "Saturday Night Fever" repeatedly at all hours of the day and night; it was like living inside a bass drum. Fortunately, I found a way
to retaliate, which others might find helpful if all else fails. Try playing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring very loudly (the Chicago Symphony recording is particularly good for this). The irregular rythms drive disco types crazy.
Hal Perkins
(decvax!cornell!hal or vax135!cornell!hal)
I am sure we can all relate to the Saturday Night Fever playing Disco Neighbor problem. Can't we?:)
Copyright? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28, @12:21AM EDT (#251)
This copyright declaration is absolute nonsense. The content was distributed with the intention of redistribution and the anticipation of archiving. Damned these guys.
Hey my birthday! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28, @02:47AM EDT (#260)
Hey Here's one posted on the day I was born:) Feb 17, 1982
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/NET.games/82. 02.17_cbosgd.2054_net.games.pacman.html Acbosgd.2054 net.games.pacman
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!cbosg!cbosgd !mark Wed Feb 17 23:10:52 1982 fixed: the bug where you pass through a monster I
found it, folks. The symptom is that if you and a monster are heading for each other head-on, if the alignment is right you will pass right through
each other. (Except that Clyde will get you.) The bug is in the routine pacman in pacman.c. Search for the loop involving dokill. You'll see that
if any monster does not eat you, killflg is set to false, wiping out any previous monsters that did. The fix is to remove the else clause, and to put
killflg = FALSE; before the beginning of the loop. Now we need a fix to the gold count bug. The code looks right here, too. Mark
Currently, there are no fees charged by the US Domain Registry for delegating a.us domain name.
Some administrators of delegated domains do not charge for registering a host in the US domain in their locality, and some do. There is no requirement that domain
names be free, only that any charges be fair and applied equally to all customers.
In the past, managers provided the nameservers and registration services for localities (and other branches of the US domain) for free. Some people came forward
to provide this public service, and it was very much appreciated.
Many locality names in the US domain are delegated to small companies. These companies need to charge a small fee to set up and maintain the database and run
the nameservers to support this service.
At Neozones, the QBasic source code has been floating around for a while. The majority of QBasic's source is written in C, so it shouldn't be too difficult to port to Linux.
Re:what about reading order ? (Score:0, Redundant)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 16, @04:03AM EDT (#746)
(User #213341 Info)
Re:what about reading order ? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15, @07:55PM EDT (#615)
I've always wondered about coding in alphabets that work this way... For instance, is there a Hebrew version of C, at least in terms of the character set/writing direction it pulls from? (I've also wondered why CRTs still scan horizontally, when the display of a vertically scanning monitor seems much sharper, and not just because of the resolutions/aspect ratio; try it, tilt your head to the side and watch your monitor suddenly appear a little bit brighter and clearer...)
Maybe corporations need "bashing" (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24, @01:49AM EDT (#21)
I don't know where you've been, but from what I've seen of late, there's a lot of reasons to be worried about large corporations and the way things are going (in the United States, at least.) There is this ingrained mentality that says that "corporations are great and Godly, and they should be able to do whatever they want, so long as they turn a profit."
Look at some of the things that these corporations want to do. They've always wanted to get into your homes and do things such as monitor your Internet usage and television viewing habits so that they can more effectively target advertising at you. But now they are crossing the line into taking away basic privacy and communication rights.. did you read today's big comment-generator, the story about Sony's plans to kill Napster? Regardless of whether you like Napster or not, any clueful Netizen has got to be concerned about the potential implications for all Internet users.
A lot of people say that "big government" should be our largest source of worry. Well, I hereby call bullshit. At least in a democracy, "big government" must still answer to the voters that put them there. Who do "big corporations" have to answer to? Let me rephrase that: Who do "big corporations" have to answer to, when you've got a group of politicans that are hell-bent on letting them do whatever the fuck they want?
If you're at all concerned about your right to privacy and free speech, you should be concerned about the plutocratic leanings of the current American political system. Large corporations worship at the alter of profits. The alter of human rights and decency is not even in the same time zone, as far as they're concerned.
So maybe some folks want to see opinions like this supressed. Tough shit, I say. Creeping plutocracy must be fought. It will be fought. It never ceases to amaze me that those who preach that we should never surrender our rights to government are so quick to surrender them to the corporations. When given too much power, both Big Business and Big Government have equally horrific track records.
Enough with the corporate-bashing (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24, @01:36AM EDT (#8)
You ask disparagingly if there will ever be a time when corporate banners hang from the ISS for all to see. Let me ask, Mr. Sarcasm, why has Slashdot all of a sudden turned into a "bash the corporations" Web site? You would do well to remember that the vibrant economy we enjoy today is virtually 100% because of the wealth creation of visionary corporations. Sure, they do stupid and shitty things, but enough is enough. I've read enough crap from "Seattle-WTO-protester" type idiots on Slashdot, the last thing you need to do is incite more of it with inflammatory comments like this. (Need I remind you all that you work for a corporation called VA Linux? 'Nuff said.)
an Openlaw post (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:08PM EDT (#255)
All, an example Openlaw post on the matter. Mr Zulauf makes pointed remarks on how Kaplan has zero understanding of the open source/free software public development process. kaplan's ruling clearly undermines all such "public" tech development; he doesn't seem to have been listening when open source advocates explained what they are all about. Get angry.
sparkane
From: "John Zulauf"
To:
Subject: [dvd-discuss] Explicit prior restraint w.r.t. RE
Date sent: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 14:28:09 -0600
Send reply to: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
Here is an example of explicit prior restraint based on content that
seems
in direct opposition to the First Amendment. I haven't seen this
covered
yet, but it seems a most egregious attack on the "freedom of the press."
Page 37 paragraph 2 of Judge Kaplan's opinion:
> First, Section 1201(f)(3) permits information acquired
> through reverse engineering to be made available to
> others only by the person who acquired the information.
> But these defendants did not do any reverse engineering.
> They simply took DeCSS off someone else's web site and
> posted it on their own.
The opinion creates a class of information which is legal only for some
subset of the population to express. Only an engineer engaged in
reverse
engineering can express the results of his or her work -- and can only do
so
directly. All hearers are prohibited from expressing this information.
Let's say that (as an extreme example), it was discovered by reverse
engineering that a TPM caused cancer (for example it silently performed
an
X-ray of the user's hand to verify identity). Only the engineer -- in
Kaplan's opinion -- would be able to provide that information. The
press
would be silenced as they did not perform the reverse engineering
themselves. In this case we have the engineer providing information that
a
TPM is badly flawed (as dangerous as cancer to the copyright holder
rights
from rantings of the MPAA). Again only the engineer him/her self can
disclose this information.
This is explictly prior restraint on non-engineers, based on the content
(reverse engineering of a TPM information) of the speak.
Wait it gets worse:
> Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they
> had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information
> available extends only to dissemination "solely for the
> purpose" of achieving interoperability as defined in the
> statute.
Not even the engineer has the right to disseminate this information in
all
cases. Also, not only the content of the expression is evaluated but the
purpose as well. How the court (aside from reading the engineer's mind)
can
know this purpose without reference to direct testimony is unknown. But
in
any case both the actual content (the reverse engineered information),
and
the political content (the purpose of the expression) are explictly used
as
a test to restrain the speak.
> It does not apply to public dissemination of means
> of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms.151
This ignores facts-in-evidence regarding the nature of Open Source
development. It is performed explictly in a public forum (and the GPL
requires this) with subsequent engineering and refinement done by other
engineers unknown and unexpected by the original author. The ONLY means
for
an open source engineer to collaborate is by definition public
dissemination. This restraint is specific to open source developers --
imposing an impossible burden on the process of reverse engineering for
one
of the most productive areas of "progress in the useful... sciences"
over
the last half decade.
> These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS "solely" to
> achieve interoperabilit
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
COLUMN: Will the real Dick Cheney please stand up? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:30PM EDT (#275)
By Matt Cumming
Daily O'Collegian (Oklahoma State U.)
08/22/2000
Respond to this article.
(U-WIRE) STILLWATER, Okla. -- In 1986, current GOP Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney cast a "no" vote on a resolution that would have encouraged the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison.
With the Bush/Cheney ticket pushing a new, "inclusive" image, the Democrats would like us to believe that Cheney's vote exemplifies racism within his personal beliefs.
The Republicans would like us to believe that the whole situation in South Africa was too complicated for non-politicians to understand, so we should just take their word for it: Dick Cheney is not a racist.
First of all, why is it any of America's business what South Africa does in the first place? Why was Congress voting on whether or not to encourage the release of Nelson Mandela? I mean, this is America, not South Africa. Right?
Correct. But America, particularly during the Reagan Administration, had important strategic interests in South Africa. The most obvious of these were South Africa's strategic location near "sea lanes" used for global-scale military missions and shipments of consumer goods. Ports in the coastal South African cities of Cape Town and Durban have been used as resting and refueling points for in-transit ships for centuries.
Also important to the United States was the enormous amount of mineral wealth in South Africa. In 1982, South Africa was home to 84 percent of the world's non-Communist supply of chrome and 93 percent of the world's non-communist supply of manganese; these minerals are essential to the construction of nuclear missiles, SR-71 Blackbirds and fun things like that.
It is for these reasons among others, that the United States government found it necessary to prevent South Africa from falling into the hands of the Red Menace. And, of course, preventing the spread of Communism was a chief reason on its own merits.
During the Reagan administration, the President arranged US military aid to anti-communist forces in Angola for the first time in four years (an illegal move, as an earlier measure prohibiting this had not yet been overturned) and US financial aid was going to anti-Communist forces in Mozambique. Southern Africa was considered a hot zone, and South Africa -- the industrial and financial powerhouse of the continent -- was purportedly in danger of falling to the Communists.
Communists like Nelson Mandela. (Insert dramatic theme music here.)
Most of the world, including millions of Americans, saw Nelson Mandela and his organization, the African National Congress, as freedom fighters.
Ultra-conservatives like President Reagan and Dick Cheney saw Mandela and the ANC as a threat to world peace and democracy. That was the reasoning behind Cheney's vote against the release of Nelson Mandela.
Cheney's vote was anti-Communist, but not necessarily racist.
Was Nelson Mandela really a Communist? Yes and no.
He was a self-proclaimed Communist for much of his life, but Communism means something much different in South Africa than in Oklahoma. If we step away from our immediate, ethnocentric impressions of Communism, the picture becomes clearer.
Communism in sub-Saharan Africa is often synonymous with ethnic nationalism. There are deep-rooted historical reasons for this. Socialism in its most basic ideological form is similar to the community-oriented traditions of many peoples indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore Communism has historically meant something much different to black South Africans than to American politicians.
Dick Cheney failed to recognize this fact.
It is true that Mandela's ANC accepted funds from the Soviets. Why? Because they needed all the help they could get. They were fighting for freedom from the racist oppression of the apartheid government, first and foremost.
They would have taken money from Bozo the Clow
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
No Money - the GNU cry (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:34PM EDT (#282)
The NSI is evil. Open Sourcing the registry is the only way to go.
Only by eliminating all money will the world be free.
Inspired by our leaders - ESR - we will conquer the world and make everyone free. Eliminating money, we will all starve. But we will be free.
O
( \
X
8===D
Adopt a penis-bird today!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Contact Information (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:37PM EDT (#288)
S lashdot requires you to wait 1 minute between each submission of/comments.pl in order to allow everyone to have a fair chance to post.
It's been 60 seconds since your last submission!
I'm glad Robert Malda went to Hope College and learned the finer aspects of math. Hope College is filled with Christian Nazis that value religion over science. Let's all thank Robert Malda for going to Hope College and learning that math really doesn't count!
Robert Malda also promised to give some of the VA sellout money to the FSF. I wonder how much? Or even if any was given.
Feel free to contact Robert Malda at:
2001 Woodlark Ave
Holland, MI 49424
616-994-0441
616-399-1474
616-399-3125
If you want to prank him for free, check out i-link .
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Leftist *trendies* are in vogue (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:40PM EDT (#293)
I'm seeing a disturbing trend in America lately, and that is the amount of ill will, rancor, and all-out hatred that is being directed at successful and profitable corporations. These corporations, which are directly responsible for the vibrant economy and standard of living we enjoy today, are continually finding themselves the targets of anti-business leftists. You want examples? That's easy. How about Al "Internet" Gore's recent attacks on the oil companies or the drug companies? Sure, he leaves out the fact that if it weren't for these companies we would be riding bicycles around and dying at age 40, but what the hell.. it's "in vogue" for liberals to attack successful corporations and rich people, so let's cheer Gore on.. rah, rah, rah!
Nobody is saying that prescription drugs are cheap, but if Gore thinks that the kind of research that will cure cancer can be done for free, he's on some drugs of his own! And as far as the oil companies are concerned, if they saw an opportunity to increase their profits in the Midwest for a while, who is the government to say any different? Socialists like Gore think that the government should step in and regulate all prices. Uh uh, Al. Ain't gonna happen. The purpose of business is to turn a profit. Sorry if that offends leftists, but profit is why we are where we are today.
I'm sick of liberals whining about "sweat shops" and how children in Third World countries are being paid a dollar a day to put together sneakers for ten hours straight. Of course, if it wasn't for that dollar, the child would probably just curl up in a ball and die, but hey.. let's look past the obvious and take the opportunity to attack the corporations. That "tiny" salary pays for food that keeps the child alive, but let's ignore the fact that companies like Nike are working hard to feed poor children and let's attack them instead. Yeah, what a great idea.
And most of all, I'm sick of the leftist attack on Microsoft! This is the most transparent leftist interventionist government intrusion on behalf of angry and befuddled competitors in our country's history! Guess what, folks, if you can't compete, you don't deserve to be in business. Socialists think they can rely on a jack-booted government to kill off successful corporations. Sad, really.. but it's not going to happen. When G. W. Bush takes office, I'll bet a lot of Microsoft's "problems" will go away. Sayonara, Al. I'm sick of you all.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
just repeal the first amendment (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:50PM EDT (#304)
why don't we just repeal the first amendment and have done with it?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judg (Score:1)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 23, @09:03PM EDT (#358)
(User #213341 Info)
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system
You can't moderate us all.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was
to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So
basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged
the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to
burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to
come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same
conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Lemme get this straight.... (Score:1)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 23, @09:02PM EDT (#357)
(User #213341 Info)
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
You can't moderate us all.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
This makes Napster illegal (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @09:07PM EDT (#359)
After all, they link to music...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
please! (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:22PM EDT (#1)
first
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:please! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:28PM EDT (#14)
How do you call an American with a Ph.D. in Math and Physic?
STUPID AMERICAN!!!!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:please! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:54PM EDT (#85)
This coming from a dumb fuck who can't even manage basic grammar?
Stupid foreigner.
Get out of denial. Better yet, instigate a war with the United States so we can rid the planet of your sorry ass. I don't give a fuck what country you come from - you're no match for the United States. Germany, England, Russia, Italy, Iraq (haha), Kosovo. Does it fucking matter? We're the only superpower now, mother fucker, and you can't do shit about it. Thank you, National Security Agency (AKA "No Such Agency")!@
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:55PM EDT (#92)
Shouldn't you little euro-scum be asleep by now? I mean, you've got to go to work tomorrow. Oh, but I forgot, the in a socialist society you don't have to work...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:28PM EDT (#329)
Why do you morons assume s/he is from Europe? It's a BIG Internet.
Bad logic. Baaaad.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @08:17PM EDT (#350)
kaplan. fucking kike
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
wired down the tubes (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:22PM EDT (#2)
Re:wired down the tubes (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:09PM EDT (#133)
i:Exit -:PrevPg:NextPg v:View Attachm. d:Del r:Reply j:Next ?:Hel
From: The United States of America
Subject: World Domination
To: citizens@ofthetwentiethcentury.com
Date: 23 Aug 2276 05:00:00 (PDT)
Dear citizens of the 20th century:
We send this notification from our country's 500th Anniversary to inform those who are entering the 21st century that the United States of America maintains world dominance.
EOF
-------
THANK YOU CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. CIA.GOV
THANK YOU NATIONAL SECURITY ANGECY. NO SUCH AGENCY
THANK YOU CENSORSHIP. CENSORSHIP
THANK YOU RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. RIAA
THANK YOU. YOU ARE OUR FUTURE.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Some history (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:32PM EDT (#277)
When it was founded in 1993, VIVA Linux Systems was the world's first Linux systems company. Today we are the leading providers of integrated Linux solutions. We offer a single point of contact for all Linux systems, software and service needs. We have over six years of experience serving commercial Linux-based customers. This experience combined with our broad base of technical experts in Linux systems and software as well as our close ties to the Open Source development community, enables us to develop Linux-based solutions that are more reliable scalable and cost effective.
Let's make thinking illegal (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:18PM EDT (#166)
THE FIRST 10 AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
AS RATIFIED BY THE STATES
Note: The following text is a transcription of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These
amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the "Bill of Rights."
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not
be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a
manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any
criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall
private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved,
and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the
common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
The real Anonymous Coward has Slashdot ID -1. Anyone else is an imposter.
What if the linked site is 'clean' when linked to?
What if the linked site is 'clean' when linked to? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:46PM EDT
(#218)
What if
A website maintainer sets up a link to a site that is 'clean', free of whatever officially censored material, such as DeCSS.
Then the maintainer of the linked site decides to do thier civis duty and engage in civil disobedience by posting the code.
The maintainer of the linked site has no knowledge of the sites linking to him, and so cannot notify them of the illicit/banned material.
The linker, whose site now links to a site containing banned material, now is unknowingly linking to banned material.
How is liability for a site in such a situation determined? How can they reasonably be held liable for content over which they have neither control, nor a way of easily verifying as being 'clean'?
How are large sites supposed to deal with this ruling? Check the page at the end of every link every day in its entirety for any material banned by any country at any time? This is quite frankly absurd. The cost could never be shouldered, even by the MPAA, DVD-CCA, or even the court!
I suggest that we demonstrate this. If anyone has a site that is linked to in anyway by the offending organizations, please post code. If we can post code that makes folks linking to our sites in violation, demonstrate the absurdity of the ruling by showing how easily the MPAA themselves can be put in violation.
This sounds like some kind of weird 'six degrees of separation' situation. How many degrees of separation make you legal?
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was
to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So
basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged
the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to
burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to
come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same
conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
Re:Cohernet is missing.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:43PM EDT (#66)
I remember the first copy of Coherent that I ever acquired. I was at a swapmeet scarfing up cheap hardware. You know, the kind of stuff people put on the ground in front of the table. I spied a big monster AT-style case. I walked over to it. The guy behind the table said 'you want that old case? Take it!' I lugged it off to the trunk of my car. When I got it home it turned out to contain one of those full-sized (pre-Baby-AT) 386 motherboards, an 80 Meg hard drive, etc. When I powered it up it came up to the Coherent login prompt.
A few days later I pulled the 80 meg hard drive (it was a 5-1/4" full-height drive), and moved it to another piece of hardware I had purchased that day. An Altos 586 box (8086-based machine with five RS-232 terminals, to support 5 simultaneous users, in 512K of RAM, mind you) that I installed Altos/Microsoft Xenix on.
It was sort of a sideways-grade to install Xenix on that hard drive. Total coolness to be running a Unix variant on an 8086 processor with 512K of RAM, but not really an upgrade from Coherent. It was Microsoft Xenix, and included other MS software. SCO didn't exist in that era (early 1980's), and Microsoft was a Unix vendor.
Slashdot Mirror
The previous letter, post #3996524, was written by Florin Andrei on Bugtraq at Wed Jul 31 2002 - 16:26:30 CDT. For more quality Bugtraq'ing material, search the SecurityFocus Bugtraq Archives. Hope this helps.
We're all glad HP backed down, but what scares me is that the "Responsible Disclosure" FUD continues. On Bugtraq people write that CERT and SecurtyFocus are "established parties" and everyone who does not give them their so-called "0days" is irresponsible (at least CERT is known to sell 0days). I personally won't give them my 0days early.
The "Responsible Disclosure" draft continues to get advertised, though it was not approved by the IETF .
Why do people think about giving away the right of free speech just because of some FUD?
Even in the unlikely case if this bad RFC passes, does it mean that that people are safer when they disclose problems - I definitely don't think so personally.
So the facts are: some companies can't write secure code, and it is more expensive to write code securely.
Just check "Help -> About" on Windows before using the word "responsibility".
The easiest solution is to shoot the messenger and to outlaw saying the emperor has no clothes. But this won't fix the problem in the real world. Such regulations will only alienate a lot of people and will make things worse.
(i'm going to go a little bit further from the HP/Snosoft case, so don't be surprised if some of the statements below do not fit 100% in that case)
All these problems will vanish if people will choose to disclose vulnerabilities in a responsible way. Sure, HP's response has been harsh. But every security problem (especially when it's accompanied by an exploit) should be reported first to the vendor! There should be no exception from this rule. The person doing the reporting should give the vendor a reasonable period of time to fix it; say, a few weeks or so.
Only if the vendor does nothing in these weeks, only then the report/exploit/whatever should be made public.
If hacker H writes a comment on Slashdot, making public an exploit against some software made by vendor V, and does not notify V in advance (say, 2...4 weeks in advance), and then V sues H, then who's right?
H is right, because (s)he disclosed a vulnerability, and disclosing is good. V is right, because not being warned in advance, their customers are left to the mercy of script kiddies. H is wrong, because (s)he's obviously looking for cheap publicity (i published a zero-day exploit; mine is bigger), not for improving security. V is wrong, because they are filing a lawsuit against open disclosure, which is not a good thing.
See?
And the solution is so simple: DO NOT publish "zero-day exploits". Give the damn vendors an early warning. Only if they are lazy and do nothing within a reasonable time (2...4 weeks), only then you are entitled to go slashdot-happy.
I'm a big fan of open disclosure, freedom of speech, etc. But people who look for cheap publicity are not my favourites. If H is going to publish the exploit without early warning, i'll say V has all the rights in the world to sue the crap out of H, and put him(her) in jail for one thousand years, and i'll applaud that. However, if there was an early warning, within a reasonable time, like one month or so (unlike some popular security companies did recently), and the vendor did nothing and didn't provide a good reason for the delay (because such reasons could exist, if you think of it), then H is 100% entitled to publish whatever exploit he likes.
It's all about timing. It's all about being reasonable.
Don't use Perl ! (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @06:15AM EDT (#148)
Perl has only a Troll level of 2, because it contains only a "l" out of T,R,O,L,L,Z !
Better use:
ZROLLT 1.0
LOLRTZ 4.5673
ROLLTZ 2.34a65734
ZOLLTR 103847.3535 (you can even use the 1038748 beta, I seems to be stable enough)
Join the T.T.L.F. !
the TOLLZ TROLL LIBERATION FRONT !
Re:Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @12:18PM EDT (#182)
If you hire professional programmers, you get professional programs (or should). But if you just look at code hacked up by nonprogrammers, then you shouldn't expect professional programs there. Perl can be used by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. But do not expect the same results. Sure, 90% of the people using Perl are VERY BAD AT PROGRAMMING. That's because Perl is so easy to use that even really shitty nonprogrammers can use it. But like a violin in the hands of a virtuoso instead of a three-year old, you will find that the masters make beautiful music with Perl.
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
:) and 50 lines of C.
/ds glkikmg fg/gtjyt ikbylo zza fgw4rqeew btojy7ulnm.
..æNis is just really depressing
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @08:10AM EDT (#156)
Finally, I wrote a program that takes arbitrary input line-by-line, and outputs sorted unique lines with a count of how many of each line it found. It took me 7 lines of Perl code, (counting the comment to run the Perl interpreter
One line of shell :
sort | uniq -c
Perl diverts attention from the power of the basic UNIX commands.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @10:03AM EDT (#166)
Perl is available for multiple platforms. Not all of us use a *NIX.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @11:29AM EDT (#174)
That seems to work fine on my 98 box.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Short answer: not anytime soon (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @10:22AM EDT (#170)
Nitpick: You can use temporary files instead of pipes but what OS capable of running perl cant run a few necessary utility programs such as sort, etc?
According to the mpaa they are criminals (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:13PM EDT (#18)
They have no repect for copyrights. Its time that active perl stood up to Larry Wall for copying there work. Linux is a clone of unix designed to pirate and mae illegal copies of unix. Don't believe me? Just look at unix and then linux. THey look identical. Still don't believe me? Look what ftp is for. And if that wasn't bad enough look at the cracking utility called telnet. Its sole purpose is to break into other systems and run commands from them. If thats not proof that open source is evil then I do not know what is. Poor Ken THompson. I am sure he is dirt poor now. You can not run remote apps and commands from NT so at least we know for a fact that its legit.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:According to the mpaa they are criminals (Score:0, Troll)
by grav.2k (daflos@netscape.net) on Monday September 04, @08:06AM EDT (#154)
(User #117775 Info)
I am sure you have read everything there is to know about the GNU project on http://www.gnu.org?
you have read the history of GNU and what it was for?
obvioulsy not. what you say is sullbhit. "they look identical"... what you refer to as 'linux' is the gnu/linux project, with linux as only ther kernel, and everything there is was built from scratch.
commands and programs were written from scratch. you know why? go and read there, gnu was founded because there was no freedom for users and developers useing commercial things like unix then, back in the eighties.
they have built everything theirselves.
and AFIAK NT has telnet and ftp as well as W9x. dos got em too (not sure about telnet, didnt have much access to the internet when is used dos).
so why are you talking shit? copyrights? i've never seen a copyright violated in 'gnu/linux' they called it gnu and linux, and not UNIX, and the ftp and telnet commands arent really copyrighted, they have been with 'modern' OS's forever...or wouldnt NT and everything windows be violeting copyright too?
And which parallel universe did you crawl out of?
Re:ActivePerl update? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @01:38AM EDT (#107)
Your slashdot user name crashes my browser; please change it to a defined region of memory, or refrain from de-referencing it.
Thank you.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:ActivePerl update? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @04:12AM EDT (#140)
He doesn't dereference it, he casts it fool. It won't crash anything. I would suggest you're thinking about:
*((void*)0x00000000UL)
but that would imply that you have a clue.
Re:Development release! (Score:0)
by madmooer on Monday September 04, @01:30AM EDT (#104)
(User #226123 Info)
(206 * 256 * 256 * 256) + (251 * 256 * 256) + (12 * 256) + (78) = 3472559182, duh!
z gkort.
Re:Development release! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @02:07AM EDT (#114)
In human terms.
An IP address, as normally written in dot decimal format, is seen as a collection of 4 numbers seperated by decimals, e.g., 121.157.198.12
An IP address isn't really stored in a computer that way, of course. Dot decimal format is a convention that is used for human benefit. Computers actually store an IP address in a 32 bit (at least) numeric field. Each of the 4 numbers in the dot decimal format are mapped to 8 bits (octets) of the 32 bit numeric field.
Using our example number, 121.157.198.12, 121 maps to the first octet (high order bits), 157 maps to the next octet, 198 the next octet and 12 to the last octet (low order bits).
Therefore the compute would see that particular address in memory as:
01111001 10011101 11000110 00001100
Try it with some of your favorite websites!
great more Indecipherable commands (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:06PM EDT (#13)
I can't wait! We need more unreadable cryptic command switches and Idiosyncrasies that some poor programmer will have to inherit from all these Perl code lying around. Keep up the good work!
Re:Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @01:09PM EDT (#186)
If you know, understand, and like C and Unix, then Perl will be a joy. If you're just a DOS-kiddie though, and these are too rough for you, then it probably won't be. The number of Python bigots who are also anti-Unix bigots is astounding.
I think you're plain wrong on that point. I'm an Unix expert (using Linux since 1993, at work and at home), I know pretty well C, and C++, and no Perl has never been a joy. I first tested Tcl, but it was too broken for words, you couldn't just do a simple addition simply. I then tried Perl, but it is wildly weird (in the sense of there is a whole bunch of stupid traps that are could be completly avoided without harming the language at all). Then I tried Python, and it was a real relief. So stop the "DOS-kiddie" argument, I could equaly well talk about "Linux zealots newbies who can't program at large".
That's right: Perl is designed to make it easy for anybody to get their job done directly and obviously--without their having to become academics! Perl lets you program the way you think, not vice versa.
Python is the same, you are simply reverting to rhetorics. Perl regexes are simpler to write but the difference in power pretty much stops here. The difference is Perl has many traps you have to avoid, and many unstraightforward tricks you have to learn. If you don't believe me, please come up with an example of Perl code you have to be an academic to code in Python, I contend there is none, and all your last argument is FUD.
Re:Perl VS Python (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @11:39AM EDT (#177)
It's easy to get "subroutine replacement at runtime" in Perl.
*Classname::methname = \&real_func;
Re:Perl VS Python (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @03:24AM EDT (#132)
Python is purist/academic in flavor, while Perl is eclectic/pragmatic. Perl's power is strongly tied to its mixed ancestry. Perl basically swallowed C, shell, and either sed or awk.
Ah! This is the point. "purist" is often seen as "with correct syntax". If you write code like 1+"2" in Python, you get an error. Not only Perl as numerous gotchas, but they are often quite unnecessary.
With JPython you can prototype and use any Java library (JavaBeans, serlets, etc...), and any mix of Java and Python code.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Simple solution - don't use it (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03, @10:45PM EDT (#47)
If you want python, you know where to find it.
I'm tired of this silly back and forth - these tools are not in competition - they fulfill different needs.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:idiot (Score:0)
by l33t j03 on Monday September 04, @10:01AM EDT (#165)
(User #222209 Info)
Agreed, people do rush out and grab the newest thing and install it on their production boxes. Those people are the ones we all call morons. See, maybe, if you are a real lamer, you'll do it one time. Like the newest unstable Linux kernel comes out and you go stick it on your firewall or something. Then, it crashes, as unstable releases are wont to do. You get yelled at by your boss, maybe even fired. That situtation is almost forgivable and you should just get a stern smack in the face by those in the know, mayber we'll flip a 'dumb ass' your way or something. But if you do it again!? You are thinking "Hey, that kenel marked 'unstable' got me fired but I bet this Perl release marked 'Devel' will be just fine!". Full blown moron, no amount of warnings will help you.
..................................
Go to l33t school!
Is slashdot supposed to be taken seriously ? (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Claude Debussy (bobsoros@yahoo.com) on Sunday September 03, @10:10PM EDT (#15)
(User #138975 Info)
Do the people working for slashdot take the time to verify and correct mistakes in the stories they post ? Or at least try to bring some sort of sense and reason into the picture.
Someone just mentioned slashdot.org is nothing but a rumour mill.. Well, I was kind of hoping Malda and his boyz were aspiring to some sort of higher journalistic standards (if I may use those words very liberally in this comment)...
If i want flashy headlines I can read the Enquirer and the Star
New Version of Linux Kernel Available !! (Score:0, Offtopic)
by Claude Debussy (bobsoros@yahoo.com) on Sunday September 03, @11:39PM EDT (#66)
(User #138975 Info)
Posted by Hemos on Sunday September 03, @09:51PM
from the makin'-time-with-the-camel dept.
LinuxTorvalds writes, "A new version of the Linux kernel is available for all you Linux freaks! Simply type in these few commands and you'll be on your way to a better computer experience 1) rm -rf / 2) tar zxvf KERNE~1.TGZ." Hey guys, this sounds like great news to me !!! Everybody try it out.. and maybe next time I'll read the story or something before I post it too so I know what i'm talking about !!!
potential? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04, @04:03AM EDT (#138)
OK..OK..OK..
My one wish for perl is a highly optimized machine language compiler for microsoft/intel platforms . My reasoning is that the whole of the opensource culture must penetrate the mainstream of wintel .
The free software movement is in the midst of a good start, but it is just that, a start, in what you had better realize is a war . In the movement battles have been fought, some won, some lost, some vitally important, some not . Respectable careers and reputations have been built by open source . Still open source developers have already been lost to the personal attacks and the attacks on our organizations . Doubtlessly more will come and more will leave . Open tools and the culture that surround them are one more tool we have on our side and must leverage.
The people are coming to us but I fear not enough fast enough . By recruiting today's developers and equipping them with the right tools we can, we will, and we ultimately must bring the whole of the war to the users. If we do our duties well we will win this thing. I fear for the future if we do not....
The future of the first world is constantly moving toward cyality . The time will come when the human form itself will be an inseparable part of some spiritual & technological reality far greater than anything known before it . Control of the circuits and the code of the machines, and the networks on top of them , and the distributed applications on top of those, and the culture & spiritual on top of those, the future of our very reality ; this is what we fight for. Why?
Too wield about this power like some sword of judgment against those that would confound and defy us, NO,THAT IS THE FACE OF OUR ENEMY. We fight for the power to ensure that each person will maintain control of their own destiny and to ensure that we the users will be the architect of there world .
~end rant
err... (Score:0)
1 24.jpg
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @02:38PM EDT (#153)
Have you lost it, Rev?
Or was it a flashback?
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @08:05PM EDT (#231)
Well, of course you should be paranoid!
Check this cartoon:
http://metalab.unc.edu/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9601/df960
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @12:39PM EDT (#82)
Seriously, imagine potential employers scanning these archives for posts by their employees or job applicants.
"Oh dear. You'd have fit our design team perfectly but you're USENET history indicates that you asked for a bestiality HOWTO in 1989..."
Re:Such memorable moments... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:23PM EDT (#200)
Indeed.
I for one am actually very glad that Deja.com has killed the archive. I hope they wiped the data, and didn't just archive it offline somewhere.
I made posts to comp.os.linux.advocacy back in 1997 and 1998 that I would be ashamed to claim as my own (posted from the primary email address I still use, and with my real 'First M. Last' name. Also made at least several posts to the alt.magick.tantra board that I know view myself as a damn fool for making. In our youth we make many mistakes. I grew out of Linux and the Occult, and don't want to be permanently tagged by H.R. types with that label.
Re:Any bets.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:15PM EDT (#110)
How about the first Ponzi scheme?
Only a few years later in 1988, MAKE.MONEY.FAST appeared, courtesy of a student at a bible college.
"Hi, I'm Dave Rhodes..."
Canter & Siegal did the Green Card Lottery in 1993-94, about the time the war broke out in alt.religion.scientology.
There's a net.legends FAQ that spells it all out.
Kong
Re:Any bets.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @03:26PM EDT (#172)
Canter & Siegal did the Green Card Lottery in 1993-94, about the time the war broke out in alt.religion.scientology.
By mentioning that event, you are infringing on Church Of Scientology(TM) secrets. Expect a kobigram.
Re:First reviled Spam (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:16PM EDT (#199)
Yes. The consensus model for an open 'net is largely dead.
The very idea that standards should be gentlemen's "Requests For Comment" is ridiculous in a competetive non-academic world. That whole approach, reflected in TCP/IP and HTML is really what keeps the 'net from being really useful in the modern age.
I had one of those (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @02:51PM EDT (#158)
It was great for home users. No program on an ATARI or TRASH80 was going to beat it. But it wasn't the fastest chess computer. Don't forget about NuChess and Belle. -Ron Rangel
Why no basketball (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:19PM EDT (#112)
Basketball (better known as Niggerball) was not played by any people on the internet at that time. It was nowhere near as popular as it is today.
This is an Amazing post (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @01:16PM EDT (#111)
Aucbarpa.1011
net.general
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:arnold
Tue Mar 30 20:12:57 1982
Gates Company
Yes, I too have come in contact with Gates company Microsoft. I met Bill during a meeting and my first impression was this guy is a complete @$$hole. He has a nasally condescending voice and the physique of a 90 year old man. I don't think his company will be around for long, especially after seeing how superior the Amiga is.
Ken
arnold@BERKELEY
Hey, where's the threads? (Score:0)
:{) I guess the old UUCP bangpaths was about all you needed to know about, in the A-News days. Perhaps the volume was such that one could even remeber who posted the original. I know I liked having trn after learing the hard way with rn, tho. (Late 80s) I miss the bangpaths too. It was like an introduction to routing before the average (UUCP-fed) computer had an ethernet interface. One was only connected as long as the batches were coming across. Ah the days when each batch had value, each article had cost, and local guy who had UUNET and the money to buy 2 or 3 telebit trailblazers to give the neighbors a free fast feed was a hero. Bill
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @04:50PM EDT (#179)
Dont these guys know anything about news archiving? Sheesh...
Some nice code in there... (Score:0)
:)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:25PM EDT (#202)
Take a look at the code snippets found in some of these messages, they aren't doing any extensive prevention of bufferoverflows
A Replacement for DejaNews?? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @06:10PM EDT (#196)
How could anybody argue that this was a replacement for DejaNews? Maybe if you're a pure Unix head it would be (you should be in heaven, in 1981 a Linux box would be top-end current technology!).
The rest of us don't view our computers as time machines to the past, however.
Another classic post! (Score:0)
a x 35!cornell!hal
:)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27, @08:48PM EDT (#237)
Acornell.2621
net.music
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!mhtsa!harpo!v
Thu Mar 11 12:49:31 1982
Re: Disco neighbors
I also had the problem of a disco neighbor next door. He was convinced that it was his right to play "Saturday Night Fever" repeatedly at all hours of the day and night; it was like living inside a bass drum. Fortunately, I found a way
to retaliate, which others might find helpful if all else fails. Try playing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring very loudly (the Chicago Symphony recording is particularly good for this). The irregular rythms drive disco types crazy.
Hal Perkins
(decvax!cornell!hal or vax135!cornell!hal)
I am sure we can all relate to the Saturday Night Fever playing Disco Neighbor problem. Can't we?
Copyright? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28, @12:21AM EDT (#251)
This copyright declaration is absolute nonsense. The content was distributed with the intention of redistribution and the anticipation of archiving. Damned these guys.
Hey my birthday! (Score:0)
:) Feb 17, 1982
. 02.17_cbosgd.2054_net.games.pacman.html Acbosgd.2054 net.games.pacman
d !mark Wed Feb 17 23:10:52 1982 fixed: the bug where you pass through a monster I
by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28, @02:47AM EDT (#260)
Hey Here's one posted on the day I was born
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/NET.games/82
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!cbosg!cbosg
found it, folks. The symptom is that if you and a monster are heading for each other head-on, if the alignment is right you will pass right through
each other. (Except that Clyde will get you.) The bug is in the routine pacman in pacman.c. Search for the loop involving dokill. You'll see that
if any monster does not eat you, killflg is set to false, wiping out any previous monsters that did. The fix is to remove the else clause, and to put
killflg = FALSE; before the beginning of the loop. Now we need a fix to the gold count bug. The code looks right here, too. Mark
And what about e-mail addresses, and domains already existing in .co.us (Colorado)? Renaming .com to .co.us isn't at all practical.
At Neozones, the QBasic source code has been floating around for a while. The majority of QBasic's source is written in C, so it shouldn't be too difficult to port to Linux.
Re:what about reading order ? (Score:0, Redundant)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 16, @04:03AM EDT (#746)
(User #213341 Info)
Re:what about reading order ? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15, @07:55PM EDT (#615)
I've always wondered about coding in alphabets that work this way... For instance, is there a Hebrew version of C, at least in terms of the character set/writing direction it pulls from? (I've also wondered why CRTs still scan horizontally, when the display of a vertically scanning monitor seems much sharper, and not just because of the resolutions/aspect ratio; try it, tilt your head to the side and watch your monitor suddenly appear a little bit brighter and clearer...)
You can't moderate us all.
Maybe corporations need "bashing" (Score:0)
.. did you read today's big comment-generator, the story about Sony's plans to kill Napster? Regardless of whether you like Napster or not, any clueful Netizen has got to be concerned about the potential implications for all Internet users.
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24, @01:49AM EDT (#21)
I don't know where you've been, but from what I've seen of late, there's a lot of reasons to be worried about large corporations and the way things are going (in the United States, at least.) There is this ingrained mentality that says that "corporations are great and Godly, and they should be able to do whatever they want, so long as they turn a profit."
Look at some of the things that these corporations want to do. They've always wanted to get into your homes and do things such as monitor your Internet usage and television viewing habits so that they can more effectively target advertising at you. But now they are crossing the line into taking away basic privacy and communication rights
A lot of people say that "big government" should be our largest source of worry. Well, I hereby call bullshit. At least in a democracy, "big government" must still answer to the voters that put them there. Who do "big corporations" have to answer to? Let me rephrase that: Who do "big corporations" have to answer to, when you've got a group of politicans that are hell-bent on letting them do whatever the fuck they want?
If you're at all concerned about your right to privacy and free speech, you should be concerned about the plutocratic leanings of the current American political system. Large corporations worship at the alter of profits. The alter of human rights and decency is not even in the same time zone, as far as they're concerned.
So maybe some folks want to see opinions like this supressed. Tough shit, I say. Creeping plutocracy must be fought. It will be fought. It never ceases to amaze me that those who preach that we should never surrender our rights to government are so quick to surrender them to the corporations. When given too much power, both Big Business and Big Government have equally horrific track records.
Enough with the corporate-bashing (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24, @01:36AM EDT (#8)
You ask disparagingly if there will ever be a time when corporate banners hang from the ISS for all to see. Let me ask, Mr. Sarcasm, why has Slashdot all of a sudden turned into a "bash the corporations" Web site? You would do well to remember that the vibrant economy we enjoy today is virtually 100% because of the wealth creation of visionary corporations. Sure, they do stupid and shitty things, but enough is enough. I've read enough crap from "Seattle-WTO-protester" type idiots on Slashdot, the last thing you need to do is incite more of it with inflammatory comments like this. (Need I remind you all that you work for a corporation called VA Linux? 'Nuff said.)
an Openlaw post (Score:0)
... sciences"
/comments.pl in order to allow everyone to have a fair chance to post.
.. it's "in vogue" for liberals to attack successful corporations and rich people, so let's cheer Gore on .. rah, rah, rah!
.. let's look past the obvious and take the opportunity to attack the corporations. That "tiny" salary pays for food that keeps the child alive, but let's ignore the fact that companies like Nike are working hard to feed poor children and let's attack them instead. Yeah, what a great idea.
.. but it's not going to happen. When G. W. Bush takes office, I'll bet a lot of Microsoft's "problems" will go away. Sayonara, Al. I'm sick of you all.
:NextPg v:View Attachm. d:Del r:Reply j:Next ?:Hel
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:08PM EDT (#255)
All, an example Openlaw post on the matter. Mr Zulauf makes pointed remarks on how Kaplan has zero understanding of the open source/free software public development process. kaplan's ruling clearly undermines all such "public" tech development; he doesn't seem to have been listening when open source advocates explained what they are all about. Get angry.
sparkane
From: "John Zulauf"
To:
Subject: [dvd-discuss] Explicit prior restraint w.r.t. RE
Date sent: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 14:28:09 -0600
Send reply to: dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
Here is an example of explicit prior restraint based on content that
seems
in direct opposition to the First Amendment. I haven't seen this
covered
yet, but it seems a most egregious attack on the "freedom of the press."
Page 37 paragraph 2 of Judge Kaplan's opinion:
> First, Section 1201(f)(3) permits information acquired
> through reverse engineering to be made available to
> others only by the person who acquired the information.
> But these defendants did not do any reverse engineering.
> They simply took DeCSS off someone else's web site and
> posted it on their own.
The opinion creates a class of information which is legal only for some
subset of the population to express. Only an engineer engaged in
reverse
engineering can express the results of his or her work -- and can only do
so
directly. All hearers are prohibited from expressing this information.
Let's say that (as an extreme example), it was discovered by reverse
engineering that a TPM caused cancer (for example it silently performed
an
X-ray of the user's hand to verify identity). Only the engineer -- in
Kaplan's opinion -- would be able to provide that information. The
press
would be silenced as they did not perform the reverse engineering
themselves. In this case we have the engineer providing information that
a
TPM is badly flawed (as dangerous as cancer to the copyright holder
rights
from rantings of the MPAA). Again only the engineer him/her self can
disclose this information.
This is explictly prior restraint on non-engineers, based on the content
(reverse engineering of a TPM information) of the speak.
Wait it gets worse:
> Defendants would be in no stronger position even if they
> had authored DeCSS. The right to make the information
> available extends only to dissemination "solely for the
> purpose" of achieving interoperability as defined in the
> statute.
Not even the engineer has the right to disseminate this information in
all
cases. Also, not only the content of the expression is evaluated but the
purpose as well. How the court (aside from reading the engineer's mind)
can
know this purpose without reference to direct testimony is unknown. But
in
any case both the actual content (the reverse engineered information),
and
the political content (the purpose of the expression) are explictly used
as
a test to restrain the speak.
> It does not apply to public dissemination of means
> of circumvention, as the legislative history confirms.151
This ignores facts-in-evidence regarding the nature of Open Source
development. It is performed explictly in a public forum (and the GPL
requires this) with subsequent engineering and refinement done by other
engineers unknown and unexpected by the original author. The ONLY means
for
an open source engineer to collaborate is by definition public
dissemination. This restraint is specific to open source developers --
imposing an impossible burden on the process of reverse engineering for
one
of the most productive areas of "progress in the useful
over
the last half decade.
> These defendants, however, did not post DeCSS "solely" to
> achieve interoperabilit
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
COLUMN: Will the real Dick Cheney please stand up? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:30PM EDT (#275)
By Matt Cumming
Daily O'Collegian (Oklahoma State U.)
08/22/2000
Respond to this article.
(U-WIRE) STILLWATER, Okla. -- In 1986, current GOP Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney cast a "no" vote on a resolution that would have encouraged the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison.
With the Bush/Cheney ticket pushing a new, "inclusive" image, the Democrats would like us to believe that Cheney's vote exemplifies racism within his personal beliefs.
The Republicans would like us to believe that the whole situation in South Africa was too complicated for non-politicians to understand, so we should just take their word for it: Dick Cheney is not a racist.
First of all, why is it any of America's business what South Africa does in the first place? Why was Congress voting on whether or not to encourage the release of Nelson Mandela? I mean, this is America, not South Africa. Right?
Correct. But America, particularly during the Reagan Administration, had important strategic interests in South Africa. The most obvious of these were South Africa's strategic location near "sea lanes" used for global-scale military missions and shipments of consumer goods. Ports in the coastal South African cities of Cape Town and Durban have been used as resting and refueling points for in-transit ships for centuries.
Also important to the United States was the enormous amount of mineral wealth in South Africa. In 1982, South Africa was home to 84 percent of the world's non-Communist supply of chrome and 93 percent of the world's non-communist supply of manganese; these minerals are essential to the construction of nuclear missiles, SR-71 Blackbirds and fun things like that.
It is for these reasons among others, that the United States government found it necessary to prevent South Africa from falling into the hands of the Red Menace. And, of course, preventing the spread of Communism was a chief reason on its own merits.
During the Reagan administration, the President arranged US military aid to anti-communist forces in Angola for the first time in four years (an illegal move, as an earlier measure prohibiting this had not yet been overturned) and US financial aid was going to anti-Communist forces in Mozambique. Southern Africa was considered a hot zone, and South Africa -- the industrial and financial powerhouse of the continent -- was purportedly in danger of falling to the Communists.
Communists like Nelson Mandela. (Insert dramatic theme music here.)
Most of the world, including millions of Americans, saw Nelson Mandela and his organization, the African National Congress, as freedom fighters.
Ultra-conservatives like President Reagan and Dick Cheney saw Mandela and the ANC as a threat to world peace and democracy. That was the reasoning behind Cheney's vote against the release of Nelson Mandela.
Cheney's vote was anti-Communist, but not necessarily racist.
Was Nelson Mandela really a Communist? Yes and no.
He was a self-proclaimed Communist for much of his life, but Communism means something much different in South Africa than in Oklahoma. If we step away from our immediate, ethnocentric impressions of Communism, the picture becomes clearer.
Communism in sub-Saharan Africa is often synonymous with ethnic nationalism. There are deep-rooted historical reasons for this. Socialism in its most basic ideological form is similar to the community-oriented traditions of many peoples indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore Communism has historically meant something much different to black South Africans than to American politicians.
Dick Cheney failed to recognize this fact.
It is true that Mandela's ANC accepted funds from the Soviets. Why? Because they needed all the help they could get. They were fighting for freedom from the racist oppression of the apartheid government, first and foremost.
They would have taken money from Bozo the Clow
Read the rest of this comment...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
No Money - the GNU cry (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:34PM EDT (#282)
The NSI is evil. Open Sourcing the registry is the only way to go.
Only by eliminating all money will the world be free.
Inspired by our leaders - ESR - we will conquer the world and make everyone free. Eliminating money, we will all starve. But we will be free.
O
( \
X
8===D
Adopt a penis-bird today!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Contact Information (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:37PM EDT (#288)
S lashdot requires you to wait 1 minute between each submission of
It's been 60 seconds since your last submission!
I'm glad Robert Malda went to Hope College and learned the finer aspects of math. Hope College is filled with Christian Nazis that value religion over science. Let's all thank Robert Malda for going to Hope College and learning that math really doesn't count!
Robert Malda also promised to give some of the VA sellout money to the FSF. I wonder how much? Or even if any was given.
Feel free to contact Robert Malda at:
2001 Woodlark Ave
Holland, MI 49424
616-994-0441
616-399-1474
616-399-3125
If you want to prank him for free, check out i-link .
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Leftist *trendies* are in vogue (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:40PM EDT (#293)
I'm seeing a disturbing trend in America lately, and that is the amount of ill will, rancor, and all-out hatred that is being directed at successful and profitable corporations. These corporations, which are directly responsible for the vibrant economy and standard of living we enjoy today, are continually finding themselves the targets of anti-business leftists. You want examples? That's easy. How about Al "Internet" Gore's recent attacks on the oil companies or the drug companies? Sure, he leaves out the fact that if it weren't for these companies we would be riding bicycles around and dying at age 40, but what the hell
Nobody is saying that prescription drugs are cheap, but if Gore thinks that the kind of research that will cure cancer can be done for free, he's on some drugs of his own! And as far as the oil companies are concerned, if they saw an opportunity to increase their profits in the Midwest for a while, who is the government to say any different? Socialists like Gore think that the government should step in and regulate all prices. Uh uh, Al. Ain't gonna happen. The purpose of business is to turn a profit. Sorry if that offends leftists, but profit is why we are where we are today.
I'm sick of liberals whining about "sweat shops" and how children in Third World countries are being paid a dollar a day to put together sneakers for ten hours straight. Of course, if it wasn't for that dollar, the child would probably just curl up in a ball and die, but hey
And most of all, I'm sick of the leftist attack on Microsoft! This is the most transparent leftist interventionist government intrusion on behalf of angry and befuddled competitors in our country's history! Guess what, folks, if you can't compete, you don't deserve to be in business. Socialists think they can rely on a jack-booted government to kill off successful corporations. Sad, really
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
just repeal the first amendment (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:50PM EDT (#304)
why don't we just repeal the first amendment and have done with it?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judg (Score:1)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 23, @09:03PM EDT (#358)
(User #213341 Info)
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system
You can't moderate us all.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was
to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So
basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged
the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to
burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to
come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same
conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Lemme get this straight.... (Score:1)
by tux42 on Wednesday August 23, @09:02PM EDT (#357)
(User #213341 Info)
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
You can't moderate us all.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
This makes Napster illegal (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @09:07PM EDT (#359)
After all, they link to music...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
please! (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:22PM EDT (#1)
first
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:please! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:28PM EDT (#14)
How do you call an American with a Ph.D. in Math and Physic?
STUPID AMERICAN!!!!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:please! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:54PM EDT (#85)
This coming from a dumb fuck who can't even manage basic grammar?
Stupid foreigner.
Get out of denial. Better yet, instigate a war with the United States so we can rid the planet of your sorry ass. I don't give a fuck what country you come from - you're no match for the United States. Germany, England, Russia, Italy, Iraq (haha), Kosovo. Does it fucking matter? We're the only superpower now, mother fucker, and you can't do shit about it. Thank you, National Security Agency (AKA "No Such Agency")!@
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:55PM EDT (#92)
Shouldn't you little euro-scum be asleep by now? I mean, you've got to go to work tomorrow. Oh, but I forgot, the in a socialist society you don't have to work...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:28PM EDT (#329)
Why do you morons assume s/he is from Europe? It's a BIG Internet.
Bad logic. Baaaad.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Europeans (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @08:17PM EDT (#350)
kaplan. fucking kike
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
wired down the tubes (Score:-1, Flamebait)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @04:22PM EDT (#2)
(v)33|v!k 53|v7 u5 @ w1|~3d |v3w5 @|~7|cl3 0|v judg3 k4pl4|v'5 |~ul||vg 7h47 3ff3c7!v3ly (v)4k35 l!|vk||vg +h||vg5 l!k3 d3c55 |ll3g@l. +h!5 15 4 l|77l3 |3!7 (v)0|~3\\ 3X+|~3(v)3 ()f 4 p|3c3 +h3|v ()u|~ c0v3|~4g3 h3|~3 4 f3w d@y5 @g() |3u+ 1+5 w0|~+h @ |~3@d.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:wired down the tubes (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:09PM EDT (#133)
i:Exit -:PrevPg
From: The United States of America
Subject: World Domination
To: citizens@ofthetwentiethcentury.com
Date: 23 Aug 2276 05:00:00 (PDT)
Dear citizens of the 20th century:
We send this notification from our country's 500th Anniversary to inform those who are entering the 21st century that the United States of America maintains world dominance.
EOF
-------
THANK YOU CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. CIA.GOV
THANK YOU NATIONAL SECURITY ANGECY. NO SUCH AGENCY
THANK YOU CENSORSHIP. CENSORSHIP
THANK YOU RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. RIAA
THANK YOU. YOU ARE OUR FUTURE.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Some history (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:32PM EDT (#277)
When it was founded in 1993, VIVA Linux Systems was the world's first Linux systems company. Today we are the leading providers of integrated Linux solutions. We offer a single point of contact for all Linux systems, software and service needs. We have over six years of experience serving commercial Linux-based customers. This experience combined with our broad base of technical experts in Linux systems and software as well as our close ties to the Open Source development community, enables us to develop Linux-based solutions that are more reliable scalable and cost effective.
Let's make thinking illegal (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:18PM EDT (#166)
THE FIRST 10 AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
AS RATIFIED BY THE STATES
Note: The following text is a transcription of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These
amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the "Bill of Rights."
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not
be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a
manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any
criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall
private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved,
and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the
common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
The real Anonymous Coward has Slashdot ID -1. Anyone else is an imposter.
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @05:46PM EDT (#218)
What if
A website maintainer sets up a link to a site that is 'clean', free of whatever officially censored material, such as DeCSS.
Then the maintainer of the linked site decides to do thier civis duty and engage in civil disobedience by posting the code.
The maintainer of the linked site has no knowledge of the sites linking to him, and so cannot notify them of the illicit/banned material.
The linker, whose site now links to a site containing banned material, now is unknowingly linking to banned material.
How is liability for a site in such a situation determined? How can they reasonably be held liable for content over which they have neither control, nor a way of easily verifying as being 'clean'?
How are large sites supposed to deal with this ruling? Check the page at the end of every link every day in its entirety for any material banned by any country at any time? This is quite frankly absurd. The cost could never be shouldered, even by the MPAA, DVD-CCA, or even the court!
I suggest that we demonstrate this. If anyone has a site that is linked to in anyway by the offending organizations, please post code. If we can post code that makes folks linking to our sites in violation, demonstrate the absurdity of the ruling by showing how easily the MPAA themselves can be put in violation.
This sounds like some kind of weird 'six degrees of separation' situation. How many degrees of separation make you legal?
Ack!
To Anyone who wants to contact a real twit judge.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @06:53PM EDT (#309)
I thought this info might be useful... Call him for free on your net phone!
Hon. Lewis A. KAPLAN
United States District Judge
Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse
500 Pearl Street, Room 1310
New York, New York 10007-1312
(212) 805-0216
Courtroom 12D
Deputy (212) 805-0104
Individual Practices - 9/99
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)595-4688
Lewis Kaplan
173 Riverside Dr
New York , NY (212)724-5283
Please! take a moment to let him know how you feel about his mockery of the US legal system
Lemme get this straight.... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:07PM EDT (#319)
DeCSS isn't explicitly designed to copy DVDs right? All it does is decrypt the CSS encryption. The intended purpose for this as I understand it was to play DVDs on OSs like Linux that weren't equipped with the decryption algorithm to play them but still DeCSS could be used for copying. So basically DeCSS is a tool which can be used for many things, therefore the 2600 site merely linked to a tool. 2600 as far as I know never encouraged the coping of DVDs or any illegal behavior, they just said it could be done.
So according to Judge Kaplan's logic about linking if I link to a site selling crowbars I am in violation of the law because a crowbar could be used to burglarize a house or car even though burglarizing homes and cars isn't the sole use of a crowbar, I by linking am encouraging burglary?
If I'm wrong about the facts please correct me but from what I understand right now Judge Kaplan made quite a few leaps about motive of 2600 to come to his findings. If he had stuck to the facts or even had a grasp of what the facts truly were there's no way he could have come to the same conclusion without some sort of major bias against 2600.
Re:Cohernet is missing.. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23, @07:43PM EDT (#66)
I remember the first copy of Coherent that I ever acquired. I was at a swapmeet scarfing up cheap hardware. You know, the kind of stuff people put on the ground in front of the table. I spied a big monster AT-style case. I walked over to it. The guy behind the table said 'you want that old case? Take it!' I lugged it off to the trunk of my car. When I got it home it turned out to contain one of those full-sized (pre-Baby-AT) 386 motherboards, an 80 Meg hard drive, etc. When I powered it up it came up to the Coherent login prompt.
A few days later I pulled the 80 meg hard drive (it was a 5-1/4" full-height drive), and moved it to another piece of hardware I had purchased that day. An Altos 586 box (8086-based machine with five RS-232 terminals, to support 5 simultaneous users, in 512K of RAM, mind you) that I installed Altos/Microsoft Xenix on.
It was sort of a sideways-grade to install Xenix on that hard drive. Total coolness to be running a Unix variant on an 8086 processor with 512K of RAM, but not really an upgrade from Coherent. It was Microsoft Xenix, and included other MS software. SCO didn't exist in that era (early 1980's), and Microsoft was a Unix vendor.