where I point out that maybe if they'd kept those jobs in the United States instead of tying to save a few pennies or getting a contract or two from a state airline that the parts might actually work right the first time.
Who knows, but you don't have to be Alanis Morissette to see the irony of an Italian plant making fuselages for Boeing, and a Seattle coffee company wanting to sell me something called a "grandee latte."
Those guys really should have been more careful about their cover then, unless they just don't give a damn about their families. Because it seems like their plan was to hope that no one would know how to use a computer, or a phonebook, or the library, or the county records. And their bosses should hang their heads in shame.
Pretty much the conclusion drawn by the Washington Post:
The task force's officers may have worked undercover on occasion, but one wonders about their undercover abilities, given that Ms. Strom was able to out them so consistently. Chief Longo warned Ms. Strom that her blog posts were scaring off informants and endangering the officers and their families, but he provided no evidence. At no point did Ms. Strom's blog express a threat, explicit or otherwise, to police or their sources.
This reminds me of the Bernie S. case. The victim of a number of mind-boggling coincidences, Bernie (real name Ed Cummings) ended up being viciously assaulted during a five-year term in federal prison for the crimes of possessing some 6.5 MHz phone crystals and - apparently - four photographs of secret service agents, including one who was picking his nose:
On April 26, Cummings was moved by Agent Varney from Delaware County Prison to federal court. Cummings describes the ride as uneventful but says that Varney was very curious about four photographs that had been found in his file cabinets at home -- all four were shots of Secret Service agents, one of which captured an agent "picking his nose."
Cummings explained to Varney that he didn't take the shots himself but had received the four photos from a friend (who apparently sells electronics surveillance equipment to law enforcement agencies). "The Secret Service received an unfounded tip that one of his employees might have been involved in telecommunications fraud and sent two undercover agents to his place of business where they were captured on videotape," Cummings says. Suspecting that he was being investigated, Cummings' friend gave him the photos and asked that he bring them to a 2600 hacker meeting in Philadelphia to see if anyone could confirm his suspicions. Coincidentally, a camera crew from the Philadelphia Fox-TV affiliate, WTXF, was attending the meeting to film a short report on hacking. In an unfortunate twist, the four photos were broadcast on the evening news two nights later, causing an enormous embarrassment for the Secret Service.
This woman went a lot further than showing some unflattering photos at a meeting of communications enthusiasts, but her only "crime" seems to have been to embarrass the police, and expose the ineffectiveness of their drug task force. I have a feeling the force is going to be tasked with finding something incriminating enough in her files or on her hard drive to send her away for a long time.
I guess because - rather than sue the company who presumably violated their contract they had with him - he's chosen to use the taxpayer-funded hammer of the DMCA to go after them?
You're missing something important... if you outsource your IT work to India (or to someone who subcontracts it to India), you have no such recourse
You're correct, I didn't consider that the submitter was outsourcing this work to a far away country. That's not as much of a front-and-center issue where I live as it probably is where you do.
I would give consideration to some of the other responses to your comment. I think having agreements in place with these contractors that establish who is liable for potentially illegal or actionable conduct by a particular employee would be a key part of doing "due diligence," to use a phrase my boss loves.
The company I work for hires subcontractors to do specialized work that we just don't want to get in to ourselves (especially at our smaller branches with less than 20 people). We also supplement our regular full time staff with temporary staff as needed. This is different than the "off-site scenario" described by the submitter (which I think is the root of his distrust), but it speaks to your point.
We send people in to people's homes, so we check references and supervise people as closely as we can. We won't hire a subcontractor unless they provide proof of liability insurance and up-to-date proof of compliance with the local authority for workplace standards.
Even still, at some point - if a person really wanted to - any given person - staff or sub trade - can cause you trouble. Sometimes a someone we send in to someone's home sets his greasy toolbox down on the hardwood floor, or stinks up the bathroom or - * forbid - breaks or steals something. In my experience staff cause you grief in roughly the same proportions as subs, but you've made an investment in your staff. For all scenarios other than the "stealing" one, you might consider giving someone a second chance, especially if they recongnize their error.
With a sub, your only recourse may be to stop using them, if they don't resolve any contentious issues to your satisfaction. Again, where I'm from there are plenty of companies trying to pry our business away from our established vendors and subs, so I guess we have the luxury of being able to insist on a certain standard of conduct.
I think you put the same amount of effort in to selecting a sub contractor as you would in hiring an employee. That doesn't mean you do all the backgrounc checking yourself. But you make sure the company your are hiring does, by checking their references and insisting liability is addressed in the contract.
If the sort of thing the submitter was concerned about was happening with any sort of frequency with any given company - whether in India or another local business - there's no way in the age of the Internet that company should be able to continue to do business.
If you keep it in house, you still need to trust the people you hire. Hell, you need to trust your non-IT staff to not steal whatever IP (or physical equipment) they have access to.
Good point.
Do you trust your accountant to not embezzle from you? Do you trust the rest of your staff to not slack off every time you turn your back?
Do you trust the kitchen staff in the restaurant you ate lunch at to not hork a booger-laden loogie in your lunch?
Do you trust your wife to not fuck around on you? Or your kids to not steal money out of your wallet?
Honestly, if you are so distrustful of those who do work for you that you feel you need to stand behind the administrator and watch what he types, you should really be examining the root cause of your distrust. Asking a contractor what safe guards they have in place to ensure the confidentiality of their clients' information is one thing; feeling the need to stand over somebody's should while they type is just insane.
Well, Wired ran the story, so it's done more than generate a few blog posts, but you are apparently correct in pointing out that it hasn't appeared in the more mainstream media sources. I don't know whether keeping *some* of the information and publicizing it would have made any difference. My gut tells me it would have changed the tone of the story from "look at the information leaking out of your wallet" to "hackers can steal your ID remotely", but who knows.
Regardless, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing a demonstration for news agencies, maybe even showing a reporter what kind of information can be gleaned from the RFID equipped plastic (s)he is carrying around. The trick is getting them to stop talking about Michael Jackson long enough to tackle an issues with a bit of complexity.
It's one thing to expose a security flaw, quite a different thing to exploit it. You're right, the Feds shoulda oughta known better; I'm sure the security issues with RFID are being given a closer look at several alphabet agencies as I write this.
You seem to be advocating some sort of vigilante action on the part of the people doing the demonstration, but I think that is exactly the wrong approach if your goal is to raise public awareness. If the people doing the demonstration had dug their heals in and kept the information they harvested, the likely result would have been arrests and confiscation of the information and headlines reading "Hackers Steal Identities of Federal Agents." This would have been wrong as well, and cause for much bitching on Slashdot, but would have done exactly nothing to address the insecurity of RFID.
By volunteering to destroy the data collected, Priest got the best of all worlds - the dangers of RFID were exposed, as was the ignorance of the general public to these dangers (including the people who oughta know better) and he left them with no opportunity to spin this as a story of Hackers Out Of Control.
Sometimes it's better to go after the big fish, rather than eat your bait.
I can take a cell phone picture of my license's 2-D code and within seconds, pull out my full name, date of birth, endorsements/restrictions, address and license number.
While it's in your wallet?
Don't be afraid of the technology - just be afraid of leaking sensitive information.
Oh, I'm not afraid of technology. Just the people who abuse it.
Put "why is windows so expensive" without the quotes in Google. I just did, and the eighth result was
Why are Macs so expensive? | News | TechRadar UK Why are Macs so expensive? Mac desktop prices rise while PC prices fall - why?... So this is much more expensive in place of Windows, Windows is user...
Don't take my word for it, clone53421 got similar results.
Apparently Microsoft programmers did some quick cover-up, like a bunch of 1940s-era Germans digging-up bodies and burning them to hide the evidence. Microsoft was exposed by the media, and now MS is trying to pretend it never happened.
So are these jack booted Microsoft programmers responsible for Google's obvious attempt to boost Microsoft at Apple's expense as well?
Hopefully now that Google's Pro-Microsoft bias has been publicly exposed in my Slashdot comment, they will start returning non-biased results.
As I replied above, I searched with the string in quotes and not in quotes. Neither of these searches returned any results that referred to Apple. I'm not doubting the article writer's screen shot. Nor am I arguing that Macs are not expensive (they are, in my opinion). Just doing a little science, trying to duplicate the experiment and getting different results. There are many possible reasons why mine are different, just as there are many possible reasons the author's search query returned the results it did.
For shits & giggles, I just did the same search - without quotes - on Google and this was the eighth result:
Why are Macs so expensive? | News | TechRadar UK Why are Macs so expensive? Mac desktop prices rise while PC prices fall - why?... So this is much more expensive in place of Windows, Windows is user... www.techradar.com/.../why-are-macs-so-expensive--609128 - Cached - Similar
But that would be because you put it in quotes? And the guy writing the article didn't.
The first time I tried it without the quotes. I got different, but similar, results. Since the summary put the string in quotes, I tried it a second time like that and put the results in my comment.
I know you often get different results searching with the same string at different times, but I didn't see any references to Apple. Maybe bdcny7927's Bing is borked.
*
Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium | TalkBack...
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66314&messageID=1250260
o Cached page
*
MacNN | Acer: Home Premium is the real Vista
"Hmmm, I'll have to think about that... Why is Windows so expensive?" "That's the Microsoft tax." "Doesn't e v e r y b o d y use Windows?" "Not anymore."
o www.macnn.com/articles/06/10/27/acer.on.windows.vista
o Cached page
*
Do you need more than Windows 7 Home Premium? | TalkBack on ZDNet
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66219&messageID=1249894
o Cached page
*
Rittman Mead Consulting Blog Archive Virtually there
I suppose the next thing is to build a Windows VM for the stuff that needs Microsoft Windows (OBI SE-ONE, for example) - but why is Windows so expensive to license?
o www.rittmanmead.com/2007/11/21/virtually-there
o Cached page
*
PC World Community: Hollywood's Victory Over The Pirate Bay...
Why is Windows so expensive to buy in a box, when Dell can buy it in bulk for a couple dollars? How much money does Bill Gates need? What is fair trade?
o forums.pcworld.com/message/209250
o Cached page
*
PC World Community: Windows XP User: I'm No Thief...
At least I think it is. Why is windows so expensive in the first place? They're totally ripping us off!!
o forums.pcworld.com/thread/60075?start=30&tstart=0
o Cached page
*
ffextensionguru.wordpress.com - Traffic Details from Alexa
why is windows so expensive; new tab homepage; guru blog; the book of mozilla; mozilla weekly; ie 8 windows update; primo pdf; tabs open relative; flash player updates
o www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ffextensionguru.wordpress.com
It's not known if any Feds were caught by the reader. The group that set it up never looked closely at the captured data before it was destroyed. Priest told Threat Level that one person caught by the camera resembled a Fed he knew, but he couldn't positively identify him.
"But it was enough for me to be concerned," he said. "There were people here who were not supposed to be identified for what they were doing... I was [concerned] that people who didn't want to be photographed were photographed."
Priest asked Adam Laurie, one of the researchers behind the project, to "please do the right thing," and Laurie removed the SD card that stored the data and smashed it. Laurie, who is known as "Major Malfunction" in the hacker community, then briefed some of the Feds on the capabilities of the RFID reader and what it collected.
Nice to see that - after they made their point - the organizers and attendees at "one of the most hostile hacker environments in the country" did the right thing and destroyed the data. I'm sure we could count on law enforcement, our employers and credit card companies to show the same moral character.
It doesn't really make sense to say RFID is "very dangerous" unless you have that same fear of bar-codes.
There is no bar code on my passport, credit card or driver's license. Even if there was, it's unlikely that person sitting at the next table with a portable bar code reader could read the bar code off my Visa card while it's in my wallet.
I don't _want_ to remember 500 different console command
You don't have to remember 500 different console commands. You can simply copy/past the 'lspci -v -v -v' part. Also, people learn by osmosis; they may not understand what the command means - any more than they will understand all the values in the list of ports/interrupts from the GUI - but having minor successes like providing the person helping them with exactly the information they need goes a long way toward making the computer less scary.
Is it really easier to remember how to navigate your way through a myriad of menus and icons - or * help you - the Windows Registry? Especially when Microsoft moves things around/changes names with each new version, and hides system files and filename extensions by default?
As far as being frustrated by the GUIs available in Linux, at least you have plenty of choice in GUIs in the Linux world, and the ability to get lots of free support for your GUI of choice. Sure, you can replace explorer.exe with a different shell, but Googling for a solution to your problem will be far more difficult with your non-standard shell.
All of this is moot, anyway. Plenty of Ubuntu users never drop to a command line and are perfectly happy to use the GUI for everything. But by dipping their toe in the shallow end once in a while they can greatly increase their command over the powerful, multi-purpose machine they have sitting on their lap or desk.
how many times have you had to go CLI in the past month?
I use one constantly. An operating system would be pretty useless without one of the easiest and most efficient interfaces ever created, wouldn't it?
Hell most Mac and Windows users don't even know there IS a CLI interface, and they sure as hell don't want to be using it!
When I started using computers, all users knew what a CLI was and how to use it. Now users can't understand why they can't find pdf documents when they use the open file dialog in Word (Microsoft thoughtfully hides file extensions by default). The ability of users to be in control of their machines has drastically decreased since the introduction of Windows 95, precisely because of Microsoft's efforts to hide the basic concepts of how a computer works from the user.
If you can learn to drive a car, surely you can learn to do basic tasks on a command line.
And as far as fixing something that breaks, I would surely prefer editing a couple of well-commented text files to trying to navigate the Windows registry.
I know this will get me modded to hell
Always good for at least of couple of Insightful mods;)
You do realize, don't you, that Horizon (the company that owned the building with the alleged mould problem) never asked Amanda Bonnen to remove the post (or about her mould problem, for that matter), that she had roughly 20 followers (meaning they believe 20 people reading that comment resulted in $50,000 in damages to their reputation) and that Jeffrey Michael, whose family has run Horizon for more than 25 years, stated "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization"?
Perhaps complaining in a public forum is a lousy way of notifying your landlord about a mould problem; then again, none of the articles I could find made it clear whether or not she had tried to bring it to their attention via other means. The comment "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay" would suggest she did bring it to her attention and was frustrated with their response. Regardless, Horizon's response to the remark should have been to
contact Ms. Bonnen to ask her about the mould in her apartment
have someone investigate and rectify said mould problem
ask her (politely) to remove the comment, or revise it to reflect the fact that they were making an effort to rectify the problem
sue her for for defamation if they felt the mould problem didn't exist or that she was unfairly characterizing Horizon as not caring about the problem if it did exist
Instead, they just jumped right to four, as they're a "sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization."
So tell me, what type of lawsuit would you say fits the SLAPP description, if not this one?
folks dont seem to understand that the internet is a serious place with actions having far reaching effects
Yes, just like in the real world, if you criticize someone on the Internet they can slapp you with a lawsuit designed to silence critics, rather than spending their money on useless things like fixing the mould problem in their building.
Fortunately, the Internet is a serious place where actions like this lawsuit can also have far reaching effects.
Free* Software is not the same as Free Software. I write Free Software, which means that I don't give a crap who uses it, forks it, or puts it into their propitiatory application. Because of this, I am not allowed to re-use code written by people who publish under GPL. It is downright ridiculous to even imply that public domain code is somehow "less free" than GPL code.
You may not give a crap, and you may not take any action to enforce your copyright on your code, but it falls under copyright protection just the same as GPL code does. Allowing others to do as they please with your code does not make it Public Domain. The Public Domain is a very specific and different thing than what you are referring to.
As far as being "not allowed to re-use code written by people who publish under the GPL" because you don't care who uses your code or puts it in a (I'm assuming you meant) proprietary application,
why can you not do that? I have seen the GPL turn up in the EULA of lots of proprietary applications, including a very proprietary application used in my industry that is provided by a company that makes Microsoft look like the EFF. It doesn't mean I get access to their entire code base, just the parts that use the GPL code. That's as it should be. Without the GPL, they would have had no right to use that code at all. The GPL enabled them to re-use someone else's code rather than reinvent the wheel. It most certainly did not result in them having to release the source code of their entire application suite.
Can you take Microsft's code and use it in your "I don't care who uses my code" application, and let others re-use it? You don't think Microsoft might have something to say about that?
So the GPL doesn't prevent you from doing anything you are not already prevented from doing with any other code, as the mechanism that governs your use of other people's copyrighted material is - wait for it! - Copyright.
What the GPL does is to grant rights to users that are normally prohibited due to copyright. And nobody is forced to license their code under it. Nobody is forcing you in to a rice paddy.
There are significant benefits to releasing your software as GPL, and some developers choose to take advantage of those benefits. You choose not to, apparently for reasons that don't make a lot of sense, but that is your choice.
Actually, what I said was "assuming you are not just trolling on behalf of Microsoft" I would like a response. In other words, if you are simply trolling, don't bother. Thanks for giving me one.
What DOES bother me is when either of them are striving to extend their political influence
How is he striving to extend his political influence? By advocating free software? There is a pretty long list of parties who are exerting real influence on politicians. Stallman is simply doing what every company does when they bring a product to market. If you honestly believe that Steve Ballmer wouldn't like every computer to run Windows, and isn't striving to extend his political influence to achieve that goal, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
He demands 100% compliance with his growing list of restrictions, or you aren't free
"Growing list of restriction?" A quick glance at the "What is free software?" page covers the same ground it always has, as far as I can tell. I won't recite the four software freedoms, but they are the only "restrictions" I know of that bind developers who license their software under the GPL. What do you mean by a "growing list?" Can you provide more information please?
Freedom is not a list of restrictions
Neither is the GPL. It enumerates the qualities that the FSF believes software (or more accurately its license) must possess for them to consider it "free." It's no different than me saying without self-determination I am not free. If you want to see that as me placing a "restriction on freedom" that's your business, but I don't see how you can define something without identifying the qualities it possesses.
In reality, he wants to remove rights, give you a list of restrictions, and do so to protect the interests of developers, protecting their code from being stolen."
Wow, I don't even know where to begin with that. Let me give you my take:
He wants to extend rights, define the qualities that make software free and do so to protect the interest of users, protecting them from being subjected to the will of developers. At least that's what I get from "the freedom to run the program, to study how it works, to share it with others and to make improvements to it." (sorry, I know I said I wouldn't recite the list, but I felt it was necessary to make my point).
You are most certainly entitled to disagree with Stallman, to think the GPL is BS and to voice your opinion to anyone who will listen. I'm not questioning that. But you haven't done much to convince me Stallman is restricting anyone's rights. If you write code, don't license it under the GPL if it offends you. If you simply use software, then you can happily ignore the GPL altogether, since (unlike every EULA I've ever read) it places no restrictions on the user.
He doesn't have the power to do so, but his explicitly stated goal is for people to only use "Free" software, where "Free" refers to his own twisted definition.
Why does that bother you?
He would like all computer users to enjoy the same freedom that users of GPL software enjoy. Born again Christians would like everyone to accept Jesus as their savior. Obama would like everyone to buy a domestic car. I would like developed nations to work together to improve the standard of living in underdeveloped nations. You would probably like to change the world to bring it more in line with your own ideals if you could.
Other people working to achieve their goals doesn't impact you in any way unless they are able to force you to toe their line. Since you've stated that Stallman is not able to force you to do anything, why do you have a problem with him working to further his goals?
And while we're at it, what exactly is "twisted" about the FSF's definition of free software? Ensuring the user has complete control over their own property seems like a pretty good definition of freedom to me. If you don't agree with Stallman's definition - and assuming you are not just trolling on behalf of Microsoft - I would really like to know what exactly it is that you object to. Is the very existence of the FSF in some way harming you?
Abolish the tax on blank media. Fair dealing is non-infringing activity, and copyright holders should not be compensated for it
Establish the right of citizens to access the copyrighted media they own, even if it means defeating technological measures put in place by copyright holders to prevent them from doing so (I would actually go further, voiding copyrights on media that is encumbered by DRM, as it prevents these materials from ever entering the Public Domain)
Slashdot Mirror
Who knows, but you don't have to be Alanis Morissette to see the irony of an Italian plant making fuselages for Boeing, and a Seattle coffee company wanting to sell me something called a "grandee latte."
I thought this was in the UK, not Germany
Pretty much the conclusion drawn by the Washington Post:
This reminds me of the Bernie S. case. The victim of a number of mind-boggling coincidences, Bernie (real name Ed Cummings) ended up being viciously assaulted during a five-year term in federal prison for the crimes of possessing some 6.5 MHz phone crystals and - apparently - four photographs of secret service agents, including one who was picking his nose:
Source: underground-online
This woman went a lot further than showing some unflattering photos at a meeting of communications enthusiasts, but her only "crime" seems to have been to embarrass the police, and expose the ineffectiveness of their drug task force. I have a feeling the force is going to be tasked with finding something incriminating enough in her files or on her hard drive to send her away for a long time.
I guess because - rather than sue the company who presumably violated their contract they had with him - he's chosen to use the taxpayer-funded hammer of the DMCA to go after them?
You're correct, I didn't consider that the submitter was outsourcing this work to a far away country. That's not as much of a front-and-center issue where I live as it probably is where you do.
I would give consideration to some of the other responses to your comment. I think having agreements in place with these contractors that establish who is liable for potentially illegal or actionable conduct by a particular employee would be a key part of doing "due diligence," to use a phrase my boss loves.
The company I work for hires subcontractors to do specialized work that we just don't want to get in to ourselves (especially at our smaller branches with less than 20 people). We also supplement our regular full time staff with temporary staff as needed. This is different than the "off-site scenario" described by the submitter (which I think is the root of his distrust), but it speaks to your point.
We send people in to people's homes, so we check references and supervise people as closely as we can. We won't hire a subcontractor unless they provide proof of liability insurance and up-to-date proof of compliance with the local authority for workplace standards.
Even still, at some point - if a person really wanted to - any given person - staff or sub trade - can cause you trouble. Sometimes a someone we send in to someone's home sets his greasy toolbox down on the hardwood floor, or stinks up the bathroom or - * forbid - breaks or steals something. In my experience staff cause you grief in roughly the same proportions as subs, but you've made an investment in your staff. For all scenarios other than the "stealing" one, you might consider giving someone a second chance, especially if they recongnize their error.
With a sub, your only recourse may be to stop using them, if they don't resolve any contentious issues to your satisfaction. Again, where I'm from there are plenty of companies trying to pry our business away from our established vendors and subs, so I guess we have the luxury of being able to insist on a certain standard of conduct.
I think you put the same amount of effort in to selecting a sub contractor as you would in hiring an employee. That doesn't mean you do all the backgrounc checking yourself. But you make sure the company your are hiring does, by checking their references and insisting liability is addressed in the contract.
If the sort of thing the submitter was concerned about was happening with any sort of frequency with any given company - whether in India or another local business - there's no way in the age of the Internet that company should be able to continue to do business.
Good point.
Do you trust your accountant to not embezzle from you? Do you trust the rest of your staff to not slack off every time you turn your back?
Do you trust the kitchen staff in the restaurant you ate lunch at to not hork a booger-laden loogie in your lunch?
Do you trust your wife to not fuck around on you? Or your kids to not steal money out of your wallet?
Honestly, if you are so distrustful of those who do work for you that you feel you need to stand behind the administrator and watch what he types, you should really be examining the root cause of your distrust. Asking a contractor what safe guards they have in place to ensure the confidentiality of their clients' information is one thing; feeling the need to stand over somebody's should while they type is just insane.
And put in your earplugs ...
put on your eyeshades
you know where to put the cork
Maybe they gave him a chocolate bar in exchange.
Well, Wired ran the story, so it's done more than generate a few blog posts, but you are apparently correct in pointing out that it hasn't appeared in the more mainstream media sources. I don't know whether keeping *some* of the information and publicizing it would have made any difference. My gut tells me it would have changed the tone of the story from "look at the information leaking out of your wallet" to "hackers can steal your ID remotely", but who knows.
Regardless, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing a demonstration for news agencies, maybe even showing a reporter what kind of information can be gleaned from the RFID equipped plastic (s)he is carrying around. The trick is getting them to stop talking about Michael Jackson long enough to tackle an issues with a bit of complexity.
It's one thing to expose a security flaw, quite a different thing to exploit it. You're right, the Feds shoulda oughta known better; I'm sure the security issues with RFID are being given a closer look at several alphabet agencies as I write this.
You seem to be advocating some sort of vigilante action on the part of the people doing the demonstration, but I think that is exactly the wrong approach if your goal is to raise public awareness. If the people doing the demonstration had dug their heals in and kept the information they harvested, the likely result would have been arrests and confiscation of the information and headlines reading "Hackers Steal Identities of Federal Agents." This would have been wrong as well, and cause for much bitching on Slashdot, but would have done exactly nothing to address the insecurity of RFID.
By volunteering to destroy the data collected, Priest got the best of all worlds - the dangers of RFID were exposed,
as was the ignorance of the general public to these dangers (including the people who oughta know better) and he left them with no opportunity to spin this as a story of Hackers Out Of Control.
Sometimes it's better to go after the big fish, rather than eat your bait.
While it's in your wallet?
Oh, I'm not afraid of technology. Just the people who abuse it.
Put "why is windows so expensive" without the quotes in Google. I just did, and the eighth result was
Don't take my word for it, clone53421 got similar results.
So are these jack booted Microsoft programmers responsible for Google's obvious attempt to boost Microsoft at Apple's expense as well?
Hopefully now that Google's Pro-Microsoft bias has been publicly exposed in my Slashdot comment, they will start returning non-biased results.
As I replied above, I searched with the string in quotes and not in quotes. Neither of these searches returned any results that referred to Apple. I'm not doubting the article writer's screen shot. Nor am I arguing that Macs are not expensive (they are, in my opinion). Just doing a little science, trying to duplicate the experiment and getting different results. There are many possible reasons why mine are different, just as there are many possible reasons the author's search query returned the results it did.
For shits & giggles, I just did the same search - without quotes - on Google and this was the eighth result:
Draw your own conclusions.
The first time I tried it without the quotes. I got different, but similar, results. Since the summary put the string in quotes, I tried it a second time like that and put the results in my comment.
I know you often get different results searching with the same string at different times, but I didn't see any references to Apple. Maybe bdcny7927's Bing is borked.
Search string: "Why is Windows so expensive?"
Results:
* ...
Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium | TalkBack
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard ...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66314&messageID=1250260
o Cached page
*
MacNN | Acer: Home Premium is the real Vista
"Hmmm, I'll have to think about that... Why is Windows so expensive?" "That's the Microsoft tax." "Doesn't e v e r y b o d y use Windows?" "Not anymore."
o www.macnn.com/articles/06/10/27/acer.on.windows.vista
o Cached page
*
Do you need more than Windows 7 Home Premium? | TalkBack on ZDNet
If so don't PC users ask WHY is Windows so expensive? Cheapest upgrade for Win 7 is 50 and that's temporarily for early adopters (119 later) Snow Leopard is only 29 for all Leopard ...
o talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66219&messageID=1249894
o Cached page
*
Rittman Mead Consulting Blog Archive Virtually there
I suppose the next thing is to build a Windows VM for the stuff that needs Microsoft Windows (OBI SE-ONE, for example) - but why is Windows so expensive to license? ...
o www.rittmanmead.com/2007/11/21/virtually-there
o Cached page
*
PC World Community: Hollywood's Victory Over The Pirate Bay
Why is Windows so expensive to buy in a box, when Dell can buy it in bulk for a couple dollars? How much money does Bill Gates need? What is fair trade? ...
o forums.pcworld.com/message/209250
o Cached page
*
PC World Community: Windows XP User: I'm No Thief
At least I think it is. Why is windows so expensive in the first place? They're totally ripping us off!!
o forums.pcworld.com/thread/60075?start=30&tstart=0
o Cached page
*
ffextensionguru.wordpress.com - Traffic Details from Alexa
why is windows so expensive; new tab homepage; guru blog; the book of mozilla; mozilla weekly; ie 8 windows update; primo pdf; tabs open relative; flash player updates
o www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ffextensionguru.wordpress.com
I found this part really interesting:
Nice to see that - after they made their point - the organizers and attendees at "one of the most hostile hacker environments in the country" did the right thing and destroyed the data. I'm sure we could count on law enforcement, our employers and credit card companies to show the same moral character.
There is no bar code on my passport, credit card or driver's license. Even if there was, it's unlikely that person sitting at the next table with a portable bar code reader could read the bar code off my Visa card while it's in my wallet.
As far as being frustrated by the GUIs available in Linux, at least you have plenty of choice in GUIs in the Linux world, and the ability to get lots of free support for your GUI of choice. Sure, you can replace explorer.exe with a different shell, but Googling for a solution to your problem will be far more difficult with your non-standard shell.
All of this is moot, anyway. Plenty of Ubuntu users never drop to a command line and are perfectly happy to use the GUI for everything. But by dipping their toe in the shallow end once in a while they can greatly increase their command over the powerful, multi-purpose machine they have sitting on their lap or desk.
I use one constantly. An operating system would be pretty useless without one of the easiest and most efficient interfaces ever created, wouldn't it?
When I started using computers, all users knew what a CLI was and how to use it. Now users can't understand why they can't find pdf documents when they use the open file dialog in Word (Microsoft thoughtfully hides file extensions by default). The ability of users to be in control of their machines has drastically decreased since the introduction of Windows 95, precisely because of Microsoft's efforts to hide the basic concepts of how a computer works from the user.
If you can learn to drive a car, surely you can learn to do basic tasks on a command line.
And as far as fixing something that breaks, I would surely prefer editing a couple of well-commented text files to trying to navigate the Windows registry.
Always good for at least of couple of Insightful mods ;)
You do realize, don't you, that Horizon (the company that owned the building with the alleged mould problem) never asked Amanda Bonnen to remove the post (or about her mould problem, for that matter), that she had roughly 20 followers (meaning they believe 20 people reading that comment resulted in $50,000 in damages to their reputation) and that Jeffrey Michael, whose family has run Horizon for more than 25 years, stated "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization"?
Perhaps complaining in a public forum is a lousy way of notifying your landlord about a mould problem; then again, none of the articles I could find made it clear whether or not she had tried to bring it to their attention via other means. The comment "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay" would suggest she did bring it to her attention and was frustrated with their response. Regardless, Horizon's response to the remark should have been to
Instead, they just jumped right to four, as they're a "sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization."
So tell me, what type of lawsuit would you say fits the SLAPP description, if not this one?
Yes, just like in the real world, if you criticize someone on the Internet they can slapp you with a lawsuit designed to silence critics, rather than spending their money on useless things like fixing the mould problem in their building.
Fortunately, the Internet is a serious place where actions like this lawsuit can also have far reaching effects.
You may not give a crap, and you may not take any action to enforce your copyright on your code, but it falls under copyright protection just the same as GPL code does. Allowing others to do as they please with your code does not make it Public Domain. The Public Domain is a very specific and different thing than what you are referring to.
As far as being "not allowed to re-use code written by people who publish under the GPL" because you don't care who uses your code or puts it in a (I'm assuming you meant) proprietary application,
So the GPL doesn't prevent you from doing anything you are not already prevented from doing with any other code, as the mechanism that governs your use of other people's copyrighted material is - wait for it! - Copyright.
What the GPL does is to grant rights to users that are normally prohibited due to copyright. And nobody is forced to license their code under it. Nobody is forcing you in to a rice paddy.
There are significant benefits to releasing your software as GPL, and some developers choose to take advantage of those benefits. You choose not to, apparently for reasons that don't make a lot of sense, but that is your choice.
Isn't having choice a wonderful thing?
Actually, what I said was "assuming you are not just trolling on behalf of Microsoft" I would like a response. In other words, if you are simply trolling, don't bother. Thanks for giving me one.
How is he striving to extend his political influence? By advocating free software? There is a pretty long list of parties who are exerting real influence on politicians. Stallman is simply doing what every company does when they bring a product to market. If you honestly believe that Steve Ballmer wouldn't like every computer to run Windows, and isn't striving to extend his political influence to achieve that goal, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
"Growing list of restriction?" A quick glance at the "What is free software?" page covers the same ground it always has, as far as I can tell. I won't recite the four software freedoms, but they are the only "restrictions" I know of that bind developers who license their software under the GPL. What do you mean by a "growing list?" Can you provide more information please?
Neither is the GPL. It enumerates the qualities that the FSF believes software (or more accurately its license) must possess for them to consider it "free." It's no different than me saying without self-determination I am not free. If you want to see that as me placing a "restriction on freedom" that's your business, but I don't see how you can define something without identifying the qualities it possesses.
Wow, I don't even know where to begin with that. Let me give you my take:
He wants to extend rights, define the qualities that make software free and do so to protect the interest of users, protecting them from being subjected to the will of developers. At least that's what I get from "the freedom to run the program, to study how it works, to share it with others and to make improvements to it." (sorry, I know I said I wouldn't recite the list, but I felt it was necessary to make my point).
You are most certainly entitled to disagree with Stallman, to think the GPL is BS and to voice your opinion to anyone who will listen. I'm not questioning that. But you haven't done much to convince me Stallman is restricting anyone's rights. If you write code, don't license it under the GPL if it offends you. If you simply use software, then you can happily ignore the GPL altogether, since (unlike every EULA I've ever read) it places no restrictions on the user.
Why does that bother you?
He would like all computer users to enjoy the same freedom that users of GPL software enjoy. Born again Christians would like everyone to accept Jesus as their savior. Obama would like everyone to buy a domestic car. I would like developed nations to work together to improve the standard of living in underdeveloped nations. You would probably like to change the world to bring it more in line with your own ideals if you could.
Other people working to achieve their goals doesn't impact you in any way unless they are able to force you to toe their line. Since you've stated that Stallman is not able to force you to do anything, why do you have a problem with him working to further his goals?
And while we're at it, what exactly is "twisted" about the FSF's definition of free software? Ensuring the user has complete control over their own property seems like a pretty good definition of freedom to me. If you don't agree with Stallman's definition - and assuming you are not just trolling on behalf of Microsoft - I would really like to know what exactly it is that you object to. Is the very existence of the FSF in some way harming you?
Here are a couple more: