1. find a stupid law (cybercrime, euthenasia, sodomy) 2. break it 3. get arrested 4. rally your support group behind you via the media 5. abolish stupid law
The way I see it, Adrian Lamo has accomplished 1 and 2, is about to accomplish 3, and we're working on number 4.
Go Adrian!
$1.5 billion well spent
on
Goodbye, Galileo
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There's also a bit of dissention currently about the decision to crash the probe. Apparently, there's enough plutonium on board (34 pounds!) that we'll be donating to the Jovian depths.
I'll first disclaim that I'm unfairly biased against Microsoft. But then, that puts me in good company here.
Microsoft is no longer at the top of their game. They're still the dominant world superpower, but the world can now see that MSFT has vulnerabilities, and that we have alternatives.
As much as I'd like to see them go the way of the Roman Empire, Soviet Russia, and Enron, I'm afraid of what happens when MSFT falls. What does that do to the US economy? Does Microsoft fall with a "Splat!" like Enron and take a million jobs and half of every American's 401(k) with them, or do they quietly fade into obsoloscence like Atari?
The other beauty of this is that there are no transaction costs. Sell 20 shares short means that you are selling shares (you don't own) to someone who thinks they're worth something. Right now they're trading at $10.40. So you sell these shares and pocket $188 ($208.00 less $20 commission.) You do this by borrowing 20 shares from your broker. You pay interest on the original $208.00 at 6% or so per annum, which is taken out of your $188.
Sometime in the future, you buy back 20 shares of SCOX (at $1.50 or less?) for a net outlay of $30 plus $20 commission. You give these shares to your broker to repay the debt.
In this hypothetical example, you've profited $130 or so, and you've put forth nothing out of your own pocket. Once you've repaid your broker, you're free to take your $130 and do with it what you will.
And don't forget the legal advice. It's important to remember that an organized campaign to influence investors with the sole intent being an artificial move in the share price is wrong and results in jail time.
That same organized campaign with the intent of informing potential investors of a legitmate, profitable investment opportunity is how most financial advisors earn their livings.
The good news here is that this effort actually accomplishes both ends. It simply remains important to place primary focus on the second.
There are enough readers here to actually make a difference if we all started taking short positions on SCOX. I think that the vast majority would agree that the target share price is somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.00, it's just a question of when.
As of right now, short positions on SCOX are at 391K, or about 2x daily volume.
Take a stand, go short on 20 shares of SCOX, and put $200 into your pocket today. The downward pressure you create thwarts the efforts of SCO management to inflate the price through non-news press releases.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press?
The big houses might be more afraid of this, actually. It seems to me that the better, sleeper movies lately have been either foreign films or from art houses, neither of which are spending a lot on marketing campaigns.
It's a fact of life that as communication continues to advance, we need corporate media less and less to tell us what to think. And this pisses them off to no end.
An excellent point, and I was not aware that there WAS a USS Jimmy Carter until you pointed it out. However, they're very different ships; the USS Ronald Reagan is limited to traveling above the surface, while the USS Jimmy Carter has the option of travelling below it.
I agree that it's dangerous to "crown" a living person with such an honor. But honestly (and with respect for Mr. Reagan) he may never become aware of the honor bestowed upon him. There is zero chance that he will ever capitalize on this honor during the remainder of his life for personal, political, or monetary gain.
I imagine that it wasn't a wild coincidence that Microsoft launches this product on the same day that a big part of the computer world is waiting on pins and needles to hear what Apple has to say at the WWDC, which won't begin for another few hours.
Let's change it up a bit: A Segway rider, traveling 15 miles across town in three hours with 1 TB in his backpack will be running faster than OC12.
Re:It's more complicated than that.
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
I think I see your point -- but I also think that I've got a condition that lies outside your conditions:
Taking my point to the extreme, imagine that I manufacture and market the KoolBox, and sell KB-BIOS upgrades. I don't touch the OS at all. However, I "key" the BIOS to particular kernels, and announce this limitation. "KB-BIOS v3.4 will only allow the KoolBox to boot with Linux-2.4.18-ia64-020722 installed."
Presumambly, I've built the BIOS in such a way that it can actually enforce this constraint.
You may, of course, use this kernel on many other pieces of hardware you may own. You may use other kernels on other hardware you own. But you can't use any other kernel on the piece of hardware I sold you. Unless and until you install a BIOS upgrade, which will either come from me, or be provided by the hacker community.
Alternatively, I could (in theory) write and provide a BIOS which would refuse to cooperate with Linux (or BeOS, or DR-DOS) entirely, forcing those who use my box to use another OS. Surely the GPL doesn't grant the user the freedom to run GPLed code on any arbitrary device.
I don't grasp the relevance of changing the signature of a particular piece of code. Certainly the MD5sum for a particular version of code is immutable. Given a hash-generating algorithm, it's clear to see that the key can be changed, by changing the code. A PKI (e.g. GPG) system of signing would presumably combine a hash on the code with a key private to the user generating the signature. Again, the signature can be changed, either by changing the code, or by changing the private (user) key used in generating the signature.
This is the point I've been (unsuccessfully and awkardly) been trying to make: In signing GPLed code, neither the source nor object code need be in any way obfuscated, and may in fact be very useful to the average user not using my proprietary hardware. I'd even go so far as to allow the method of signing and the signature key be public as well. The hardware manufacturer, however, has an ace up his sleeve, in that he can use these code signatures to control the user's ability to execute (or not) that signed code on that box.
The DMCA would not prohibit reverse engineering the BIOS on said box for the purpose of executing otherwise legal code. But (to circle back to my original original point) the hackers shouldn't expect the hardware maker to provide much useful information to that end.
Re:It's more complicated than that.
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
The source code to the GPLed object code would, of course, be available. That's clear.
The scenario I'm envisioning is this:
I (imagine I'm the commercial developer with the really neat hardware for the moment) take some GPLed code (say an OS) and I modify it to run on my hardware. This new code is, of course, also GPLed, and I distribute the source. I sign the object code. This could be as simple as calculating an MD5 checksum.
I write my own (closed source) BIOS for my box. And here's the key: I hardwire that signature (or checksum) into the BIOS.
Future upgrades to the box's OS are now tied to the BIOS - I can distribute the source and object code of the OS freely, but charge an arm and a leg for the BIOS upgrade needed to actually use it.
Of course, you're free to use the OS I've developed on any other hardware you wish. You have the source, after all.
If you can figure out a way around my BIOS, your're free to do so, and you then may use modified code on the box I sold you as you wish.
Under no circumstances, however, will my profit motive compel me to help you hack my BIOS.
You're not looking at the true "cost" of an Amazon product. By supporting Amazon financially, you're supporting their intellectual property practices. How did their one-click "patent" cost in terms of lost innovation? Divide that total by the 200 million books they sold last year, and add to your purchase price. That's the true "cost" of Amazon's product.
There are some great deals advertised through spam, and through genuine "opt-in" mailing lists. I never click through an email or a banner ad - I navigate to the site manually.
If we all stopped responding to spam, it would go away.
Re:It's more complicated than that.
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
4) A set-top box designer uses this BIOS. I'm with you so far. 5) They set the BIOS to only boot kernels with their own signature, and don't give the BIOS password to people who buy the set-top boxes. Completely kosher, assuming their BIOS is not GPLed 6) They refuse to sign any kernels that anyone else makes, and refuse to sign any kernels with dynamic module loading turned on. You're asking a commercial developer to sign someone else's code?
As an end user, you have a lot of flexibility under the law to reverse engineer the hardware you've purchased for your own personal use. The law does not obligate the manufacturer of the hardware to assist you in any way. As with the XBox, the "protection" instituted by the manufacturer will be broken by enterprising hackers, in time.
None of this is ideal for the end user community, but without the profit motive, the manufacturers won't produce the products. Signing GPLed code is still not a Bad Thing.
It's worth quite a bit, actually. Guys like Eddie Marin, "probably the world's largest smammer," didn't get there as a result of an ego trip, but through his profit motive. There's money to be made in spam.
Getting rid of the top 180 spammers in the world wouldn't eliminate spam, any more than "getting rid of" the top 20 auto makers would rid the world of new cars. They are both competitive industries, with new suppliers waiting in the wings. Guess which industry has the lower cost of entry barrier? Making it more difficult for spam to break through the filter will only enourage more technologically advanced, more prolific spam; it's just a slightly higher cost of entry. However advanced the technology behind the anti-spam filters become, is exactly how advanced the anti-anti-spam filters will be.
There's gold in them thar spam.
Spam will not go away until it becomes unprofitable: either stop responding to spam with your checkbooks, or start collecting a (small) toll on each email received. Where there's profit to be had, the profit motive will always succeed.
Move along, folks, nothing to see here...
on
Beige Box Apple Clone?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Apple has NOTHING to worry about from young Mr. Fraser. As discussed in the article, Fraser said he doesn't have any grand plans for building the iBox business into the next Dell or Gateway. "I'm not doing it for profit," he said. "I'm doing it for a hobby.
On the contrary, those who purchase these systems could be in for some serious headaches if they ever need tech support. I can't see Mr. Fraser being able to take his hobby seriously if he's personally getting phone calls from nebie users in Dallas, Topeka, and Seattle. Don't get me wrong, I wish Mr. Fraser much happiness and little frustration in his hobby. He has very little hope (and, it appears, no desire) to make this in any way a threat to Apple's business model.
Apple's best strategy in this case is to ignore the close and 2khappyware give a real-world example of the differences between a small-time clone and a bona fide Apple.
Intel: "We have a new product which will make a number of our core products less useful and less valuable to our customers. Just to be sure nobody else siezes on this untapped potential, we've patented the new product."
More power to 'em.
This is like Microsoft patenting a security hole in IIS to prevent Apache from implementing it, too.
I wonder how many crackers and script kiddies cut their teeth on Microsoft vulnerabilities. I'd wager that the vast majority of the black hats out there owe their "careers" to Microsoft software.
Re:It's not about the oil
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
Granted: in today's world, where there is oil, there is foreign interest. It simply can't be ignored.
My point is, everyone agrees that Iraq has oil. Right now, we can buy as much of that oil as we want. When the dust clears, we will STILL be able to buy as much oil as we want from Iraq. Our ability to buy oil from Iraq has never been in jeopardy.
It is an interesting dynamic to add to the equation that Iraq is a small, less technologically advanced country with vast wealth underground. Unfortunately, the current authoritarian leadership of the country chooses to utilize that wealth, not to better its own people, but to intimidate and oppress them and their neighboring countries. It is our present government's official position that Iraq has also used that wealth to aid an attack on US soil. This position may never be proven or disproven.
The US gets less than 10% of its oil from Iraq. Iraq is the seventh largest supplier of oil for US consumption. We get from Iraq as much oil as we currently care to buy. This will likely not change under any change in Iraqi leadership.
If Bush were looking at a cost-benefit analysis, most oil for the military dollar, he'd invade either Mexico or the Alaskan arctic.
History will prove wrong those who posit that this is about oil.
Whether you like or dislike Bush
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
You've got to agree that he's been nothing if not consistent:
"Disarm, or you will be forced to disarm" ...repeat a few times...
"Leave in 48 hours or we bring force"
"Here we come."
The biggest surprise, for me, is that none of this has been even slightly surprising.
While it's obvious that, given a sufficiently simple(minded) Interrogator, many "AI" programs would pass the TT, you may not have considered that:
If the creator (designer, programmer) of the subject "AI" were to sit in the Interrogator's seat, he or she would most likely identify it immediately as non-human.
On the other hand, if the subject AI can "fool" even its own creator, this would be a very strong indicator of intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
This is how we do it in America:
1. find a stupid law (cybercrime, euthenasia, sodomy)
2. break it
3. get arrested
4. rally your support group behind you via the media
5. abolish stupid law
The way I see it, Adrian Lamo has accomplished 1 and 2, is about to accomplish 3, and we're working on number 4.
Go Adrian!
There's also a bit of dissention currently about the decision to crash the probe. Apparently, there's enough plutonium on board (34 pounds!) that we'll be donating to the Jovian depths.
I'm not sure I like that idea.
I'll first disclaim that I'm unfairly biased against Microsoft. But then, that puts me in good company here.
Microsoft is no longer at the top of their game. They're still the dominant world superpower, but the world can now see that MSFT has vulnerabilities, and that we have alternatives.
As much as I'd like to see them go the way of the Roman Empire, Soviet Russia, and Enron, I'm afraid of what happens when MSFT falls. What does that do to the US economy? Does Microsoft fall with a "Splat!" like Enron and take a million jobs and half of every American's 401(k) with them, or do they quietly fade into obsoloscence like Atari?
These are the things that keep me up at night.
The other beauty of this is that there are no transaction costs. Sell 20 shares short means that you are selling shares (you don't own) to someone who thinks they're worth something. Right now they're trading at $10.40. So you sell these shares and pocket $188 ($208.00 less $20 commission.) You do this by borrowing 20 shares from your broker. You pay interest on the original $208.00 at 6% or so per annum, which is taken out of your $188.
Sometime in the future, you buy back 20 shares of SCOX (at $1.50 or less?) for a net outlay of $30 plus $20 commission. You give these shares to your broker to repay the debt.
In this hypothetical example, you've profited $130 or so, and you've put forth nothing out of your own pocket. Once you've repaid your broker, you're free to take your $130 and do with it what you will.
And don't forget the legal advice. It's important to remember that an organized campaign to influence investors with the sole intent being an artificial move in the share price is wrong and results in jail time.
That same organized campaign with the intent of informing potential investors of a legitmate, profitable investment opportunity is how most financial advisors earn their livings.
The good news here is that this effort actually accomplishes both ends. It simply remains important to place primary focus on the second.
There are enough readers here to actually make a difference if we all started taking short positions on SCOX. I think that the vast majority would agree that the target share price is somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.00, it's just a question of when.
As of right now, short positions on SCOX are at 391K, or about 2x daily volume.
Take a stand, go short on 20 shares of SCOX, and put $200 into your pocket today. The downward pressure you create thwarts the efforts of SCO management to inflate the price through non-news press releases.
It seems never to have occurred to them that some people might be texting to say "you have to see this movie!" for movies that didn't get the full court marketing press?
The big houses might be more afraid of this, actually. It seems to me that the better, sleeper movies lately have been either foreign films or from art houses, neither of which are spending a lot on marketing campaigns.
It's a fact of life that as communication continues to advance, we need corporate media less and less to tell us what to think. And this pisses them off to no end.
releases the code to the worm under the GPL?
I can almost hear Bill Gates' insidious little laugh now, just thinking about irony of it.
An excellent point, and I was not aware that there WAS a USS Jimmy Carter until you pointed it out. However, they're very different ships; the USS Ronald Reagan is limited to traveling above the surface, while the USS Jimmy Carter has the option of travelling below it.
I agree that it's dangerous to "crown" a living person with such an honor. But honestly (and with respect for Mr. Reagan) he may never become aware of the honor bestowed upon him. There is zero chance that he will ever capitalize on this honor during the remainder of his life for personal, political, or monetary gain.
I imagine that it wasn't a wild coincidence that Microsoft launches this product on the same day that a big part of the computer world is waiting on pins and needles to hear what Apple has to say at the WWDC, which won't begin for another few hours.
Why does it always have to be the station wagon full of tapes? Why is it always across the continental U.S.?
What is it about the credit card that makes it the ideal object with which to compare the size of a new product?
Why are unimaginably large storage devices measured in Libraries of Congress?
Let's change it up a bit: A Segway rider, traveling 15 miles across town in three hours with 1 TB in his backpack will be running faster than OC12.
I think I see your point -- but I also think that I've got a condition that lies outside your conditions:
Taking my point to the extreme, imagine that I manufacture and market the KoolBox, and sell KB-BIOS upgrades. I don't touch the OS at all. However, I "key" the BIOS to particular kernels, and announce this limitation. "KB-BIOS v3.4 will only allow the KoolBox to boot with Linux-2.4.18-ia64-020722 installed."
Presumambly, I've built the BIOS in such a way that it can actually enforce this constraint.
You may, of course, use this kernel on many other pieces of hardware you may own. You may use other kernels on other hardware you own. But you can't use any other kernel on the piece of hardware I sold you. Unless and until you install a BIOS upgrade, which will either come from me, or be provided by the hacker community.
Alternatively, I could (in theory) write and provide a BIOS which would refuse to cooperate with Linux (or BeOS, or DR-DOS) entirely, forcing those who use my box to use another OS. Surely the GPL doesn't grant the user the freedom to run GPLed code on any arbitrary device.
I don't grasp the relevance of changing the signature of a particular piece of code. Certainly the MD5sum for a particular version of code is immutable. Given a hash-generating algorithm, it's clear to see that the key can be changed, by changing the code. A PKI (e.g. GPG) system of signing would presumably combine a hash on the code with a key private to the user generating the signature. Again, the signature can be changed, either by changing the code, or by changing the private (user) key used in generating the signature.
This is the point I've been (unsuccessfully and awkardly) been trying to make: In signing GPLed code, neither the source nor object code need be in any way obfuscated, and may in fact be very useful to the average user not using my proprietary hardware. I'd even go so far as to allow the method of signing and the signature key be public as well. The hardware manufacturer, however, has an ace up his sleeve, in that he can use these code signatures to control the user's ability to execute (or not) that signed code on that box.
The DMCA would not prohibit reverse engineering the BIOS on said box for the purpose of executing otherwise legal code. But (to circle back to my original original point) the hackers shouldn't expect the hardware maker to provide much useful information to that end.
The source code to the GPLed object code would, of course, be available. That's clear.
The scenario I'm envisioning is this:
I (imagine I'm the commercial developer with the really neat hardware for the moment) take some GPLed code (say an OS) and I modify it to run on my hardware. This new code is, of course, also GPLed, and I distribute the source.
I sign the object code. This could be as simple as calculating an MD5 checksum.
I write my own (closed source) BIOS for my box. And here's the key: I hardwire that signature (or checksum) into the BIOS.
Future upgrades to the box's OS are now tied to the BIOS - I can distribute the source and object code of the OS freely, but charge an arm and a leg for the BIOS upgrade needed to actually use it.
Of course, you're free to use the OS I've developed on any other hardware you wish. You have the source, after all.
If you can figure out a way around my BIOS, your're free to do so, and you then may use modified code on the box I sold you as you wish.
Under no circumstances, however, will my profit motive compel me to help you hack my BIOS.
You're not looking at the true "cost" of an Amazon product. By supporting Amazon financially, you're supporting their intellectual property practices. How did their one-click "patent" cost in terms of lost innovation? Divide that total by the 200 million books they sold last year, and add to your purchase price. That's the true "cost" of Amazon's product.
There are some great deals advertised through spam, and through genuine "opt-in" mailing lists. I never click through an email or a banner ad - I navigate to the site manually.
If we all stopped responding to spam, it would go away.
4) A set-top box designer uses this BIOS.
I'm with you so far.
5) They set the BIOS to only boot kernels with their own signature, and don't give the BIOS password to people who buy the set-top boxes.
Completely kosher, assuming their BIOS is not GPLed
6) They refuse to sign any kernels that anyone else makes, and refuse to sign any kernels with dynamic module loading turned on.
You're asking a commercial developer to sign someone else's code?
As an end user, you have a lot of flexibility under the law to reverse engineer the hardware you've purchased for your own personal use. The law does not obligate the manufacturer of the hardware to assist you in any way. As with the XBox, the "protection" instituted by the manufacturer will be broken by enterprising hackers, in time.
None of this is ideal for the end user community, but without the profit motive, the manufacturers won't produce the products. Signing GPLed code is still not a Bad Thing.
It's worth quite a bit, actually. Guys like Eddie Marin, "probably the world's largest smammer," didn't get there as a result of an ego trip, but through his profit motive. There's money to be made in spam.
Getting rid of the top 180 spammers in the world wouldn't eliminate spam, any more than "getting rid of" the top 20 auto makers would rid the world of new cars. They are both competitive industries, with new suppliers waiting in the wings. Guess which industry has the lower cost of entry barrier? Making it more difficult for spam to break through the filter will only enourage more technologically advanced, more prolific spam; it's just a slightly higher cost of entry. However advanced the technology behind the anti-spam filters become, is exactly how advanced the anti-anti-spam filters will be.
There's gold in them thar spam.
Spam will not go away until it becomes unprofitable: either stop responding to spam with your checkbooks, or start collecting a (small) toll on each email received. Where there's profit to be had, the profit motive will always succeed.
Apple has NOTHING to worry about from young Mr. Fraser. As discussed in the article, Fraser said he doesn't have any grand plans for building the iBox business into the next Dell or Gateway. "I'm not doing it for profit," he said. "I'm doing it for a hobby.
On the contrary, those who purchase these systems could be in for some serious headaches if they ever need tech support. I can't see Mr. Fraser being able to take his hobby seriously if he's personally getting phone calls from nebie users in Dallas, Topeka, and Seattle. Don't get me wrong, I wish Mr. Fraser much happiness and little frustration in his hobby. He has very little hope (and, it appears, no desire) to make this in any way a threat to Apple's business model.
Apple's best strategy in this case is to ignore the close and 2khappyware give a real-world example of the differences between a small-time clone and a bona fide Apple.
Intel: "We have a new product which will make a number of our core products less useful and less valuable to our customers. Just to be sure nobody else siezes on this untapped potential, we've patented the new product."
More power to 'em.
This is like Microsoft patenting a security hole in IIS to prevent Apache from implementing it, too.
...that doesn't contain uneccessary and often confusing references to obsolete virgins I know little (and care less) about.
You mean like, Little Women?
I wonder how many crackers and script kiddies cut their teeth on Microsoft vulnerabilities. I'd wager that the vast majority of the black hats out there owe their "careers" to Microsoft software.
Granted: in today's world, where there is oil, there is foreign interest. It simply can't be ignored.
My point is, everyone agrees that Iraq has oil. Right now, we can buy as much of that oil as we want. When the dust clears, we will STILL be able to buy as much oil as we want from Iraq. Our ability to buy oil from Iraq has never been in jeopardy.
It is an interesting dynamic to add to the equation that Iraq is a small, less technologically advanced country with vast wealth underground. Unfortunately, the current authoritarian leadership of the country chooses to utilize that wealth, not to better its own people, but to intimidate and oppress them and their neighboring countries. It is our present government's official position that Iraq has also used that wealth to aid an attack on US soil. This position may never be proven or disproven.
The US gets less than 10% of its oil from Iraq. Iraq is the seventh largest supplier of oil for US consumption. We get from Iraq as much oil as we currently care to buy. This will likely not change under any change in Iraqi leadership.
If Bush were looking at a cost-benefit analysis, most oil for the military dollar, he'd invade either Mexico or the Alaskan arctic.
History will prove wrong those who posit that this is about oil.
You've got to agree that he's been nothing if not consistent:
...repeat a few times...
"Disarm, or you will be forced to disarm"
"Leave in 48 hours or we bring force"
"Here we come."
The biggest surprise, for me, is that none of this has been even slightly surprising.
While it's obvious that, given a sufficiently simple(minded) Interrogator, many "AI" programs would pass the TT, you may not have considered that:
If the creator (designer, programmer) of the subject "AI" were to sit in the Interrogator's seat, he or she would most likely identify it immediately as non-human.
On the other hand, if the subject AI can "fool" even its own creator, this would be a very strong indicator of intelligence.