Dumbest? Thats how you extend mysql. Thats how you extend any serious database (replace dll with so or other dynamic object for the platform of choice). Thats how you can add things like server-side scripting, new datatypes and operations, new functions, and so on. The reason only database administrators are allowed to install such extensions is because it is inherently insecure.
The answer is of course, yes, they can be sued. Patents, as others have said, protect not only the PRODUCTION of the patented idea, but the sale and use of it as well.
OK, this is the OBVIOUS question:
If intel paid these people for the right to use their cache design (in the settlement), why does everyone else have to as well? Do I have to pay them since I use the cache design in my dell pc at work, even though Intel and Dell already paid twice for that processor to use that design?
Well, to spread it specifically uses weak default/unset DB admin passwords and MySQL running as a system or admin level task with write access to everything. Once the worm is in your server as the db admin password, it uses the db admin's ability to load a dll into mysql to allow it to perform actions outside of mysql.
See the details on this for information about what exactly is happening. There are plenty of DLLs on windows laying around that do all sorts of stuff, once you define a function call in MySQL to use a dll that allows you to execute whatever you want on the system, you win.
There was a fear-mongering news item on late night local news recently claiming that terrorist groups had installed "black boxes" at gas stations that read the credit card information after you swiped it at the pump and saved it for them. (This is here in Texas, so I'm sure we're just swarming with terrorists all out to get us)
-ECC is "error correction code" aka parity. -Registered/buffered makes for slightly slower RAM (though at pc2700, you could use higher-end circuitry) by storing memory fetches in latched registers/buffers to ensure that no timing weirdness occurrs (ie, reading a byte when only 4 of the bits have been set) -the extra bits (72 vs 64) are used for the parity bits for ECC.
So to recap, what apple is installing is "better" in terms of stability, and if they use faster-rated RAM (say, PC3000) to build it, the speed lost to ECC and buffering will be negligible compared to normal PC2700. Theres a good chance they used normal PC2700 with buffering and ecc, which would make it slower than PC2700 without.
I think the problem is that what you see as "superuser", capability-based systems see as "user with all capabilities".
In this case, theres a capability that says "create or modify accounts" and some user(s) will be given that capability, and those users will be responsible for creating or resetting passwords on accounts, and hopefully they won't all take the same airplane together, or at least that they have a password to an account saved in some vault somewhere.
I'm sure there is, but unlike on a Unix system where the "super-user" account would be used to run everything under the sun from the daily cron jobs to the mail server, this account would never be used except to replace the "user-control-account" account. Its password would probably be an md5 hash of some very long string that would be memorized by all the VPs of the company so that any one of them could use it. (Or however the company deals with the root passwords now... sealed in a vault?)
So wait, statistically speaking people will not be a detriment to society, but you're ok with killing the wrong person (with the double whammy of removing a "responsible taxpayer" and leaving the real criminal out to do more damage to other taxpayers, as you put it) because they were "probably" a detriment to society anyway?
Which means your idea is good until you get taken to court and that court decides to ignore the precedent you have "stashed" somewhere.
Case law doesn't protect you from people attempting to create new precedents, and with the money behind the harry potter empire, you'd better believe someone would try, and would probably afford good enough lawyers to pull it off.
Fortunately we now have DNA testing to help ensure that this type of investigatorial mistake is not frequently repeated.
See also Houston's crime lab where DNA "testing" simply became another way for prosecutors to lie in court and go for convicting whoever they thought should take the fall rather than the real criminals.
He's got a point. If the child would have grown into a individual who would be "detrimental to society" who you'd kill without any proof of that detriment, what is the point of worrying about the outcome of that childhood?
Yes, you might mistakenly incarcerate somebody once on a given crime, but 3 times?
Given how often people are cleared of capital murder cases post-humously, think about the number of people who are innocent who serve a short sentence (not enough time to prove it) and get out, only to be arrested again the next time someone's TV goes missing and they can't provide an alibi for that night.
Sir, You have sick thoughts. Those thoughts can probably be cured.
Thats what they say about gay people too.
Anyways, look at it this way (assuming you have any experience with being attracted to someone, which being a/. AC, you probably haven't left your basement den in months, so...) When you see someone attractive and your heart begins to race and your hormones begin to flow, did you consciously order that reaction? Did you think to yourself "body type: check, facial structure: check, sexy pose: check. Ok, we are go for heart pumping. Accelerate heartbeat! Release hormones! Make a move... go! go! go!"
No?
Then why when someone else is attracted to people in a different way than you do you claim its a choice or their fault?
And since you're slamming this guy's point of view, you should probably actually read it, you fuckwit.
(feeling love for children but appalled at the thought of molestation)
Yeah, loving children and not molesting them is such an "evil thought". I better repent and next time I see kids playing in the street, I'll just speed up instead of waiting for them to clear out. Wouldn't want to love the kids too much and hurt them too little now.
To continue the car analogy in a more appropriate way than the previous poster, the current batch of P2P wannabe-laws is more like requiring cars to not crash: implementation is left up to the vendor.
How do you tell a computer to not transmit copyrighted information (without it already being tagged in some unremovable, unmodifiable DRM container, in which case it wouldn't matter anyway)? If I send you a file that's not named like a known song, doesn't hash to a known song, and doesn't have a "sound print" like a known song, how is your computer supposed to know that Metal_Lica-Zandman with 3.1 seconds of silence at the end and sped up by 1% is copyrighted?
Well, the first time around it has to be written by me, so I still consider myself to have written it by hand. After that, my program fills in the blanks in the PostScript program with the form data.
All this because my college Programming Languages professor required our term paper to be about the similarities and differences between Perl and PostScript, with code examples in each.
Well, the problem with saying that "copyright laws are just" is that they're no longer what was originally intended. Their existance is to promote art, and to do so by protecting the rights of the creators to control who publishes and profits from their work, thus ensuring that they can always negotiate a cut.
End of story.
Now we have the DCMA granting "Access Control" as a "copy"right. Read the posting on slashdot about the guy getting stiffed by an outsourcing firm. He can't access the source he paid for thanks to the SourceGuard encryption, and breaking that encryption to access his own code is illegal now. It no longer has anything to do with authorship or creation.
We have companies who have actively fought against media shifting (copy protected CDs anyone?), despite the fact that you paid them for the music. Companies are pushing the Broadcast flag which will prevent timeshifting of "some" (read "oops, did I leave that switch on all day? Sowwy") shows, despite the fact that nowhere in the concept of "copy"right is "forcing consumers to enjoy the product only on specific devices at a specific time".
I do. I use it in my web application that has to produce PDF's that can then be printed out on top of various forms to fill in the blanks, print contracts, etc... I have yet to find ANY library or pdf-generator that can do this like I need it to for me. We pride ourselves on having documents that don't use shitty monospace fonts, so knowing how long a line is or how many pages of text you have is impossible until you've set the text.
If someone wants to suggest something, I need:
0) Absolute text placement. The blank on the form is 13pt from the left, 82pt from the top and is 52pt wide. Someone please tell LaTeX that this is NOT A SUGGESTION.
1) line-wrapping. If it doesn't fit on the line, it needs to wrap to the right location on the next line.
2) form-wrapping. If it doesn't fit on the page, it needs to wrap to the right location on the next page, not to the top of the page or somewhere else. (think of your credit card statement if you've ever rung up enough to wrap to a second page.)
3) Document footer. Like a page footer, except it only happens at the end. We use this for one mostly free-format document with a signature line at bottom of the last page, whichever page that is.
4) Mid-document reset. We do hundreds of these forms at once. Printing out hundreds of individual PDFs make Baby Jesus cry. Once it prints the Document Footer, the internal counter resets to page 1.
5) The ability to go back and add page numbering (something I can't do in PS). Since I don't know how many pages something is going to take up until its all laid out, I need to go back pages and put in the page numbers.
6) Headers and footers that appear on certain pages. We have forms that after the first page have blanks at the top for account numbers/names/etc. Again, think of your credit card statement.
bonus points) the ability to stab adobe acrobat developers in the face over the internet for making every version of acrobat turn on the "distort the hell out of my PDF when I print it" options, requiring me to instruct my customers on a regular basis in how to turn it off in whatever version they just installed.
If you've been paying attention at all to your webcomics, you'd be noticing the number like this one discussing the fact that the boxes ran out weeks ago.
I'm sure Blizzard knows what kind of press they get from PA and have a pretty good idea of their influence on gamers. However, in this case, the decision was made a long time ago and they're just announcing it to the public.
Dig past the useless article. The blackberry device itself doesn't infringe, only processes that only run on the server and never occur within the US infringe:
5,625,670: "A system (100) for transmitting information from one of a plurality of originating processors..." (which goes on to describe the switches, hardware, etc. in place at the server end.) (Filed in 1995. When did alphanumeric pagers appear?) 5,631,946: begins the exact same way "A system for transmitting originated information from one of a plurality of originating processors" 5,819,172: Again, "A system for transmitting an inputted message, contained in an electronic mail message originating from one of a plurality of originating processors" 6,067,451: "In a system comprising a communication system which transmits electronic mail, inputted to the communication system from a plurality of processors" 6,317,592: And finally, "In a communication system comprising a wireless system which communication system transmits electronic mail inputted to the communication system from an originating device"
So now the question is, if I build a car that phones my server to ask it where the nearest hotel is, and my server is in Canada, if someone has a patent in the US on "a system for automatically locating the nearest hotel based on GPS coordinates", is it illegal to sell my car in the US?
The car doesn't use GPS coordinates to find a hotel, so it doesn't infringe. The act of calling to find the hotel doesn't infringe. So the car does nothing thats infringing this patent.
This is quickly going to become huge, probably WTO-level, in more than just blackberries... if I write a web-based application that would be patented in the US and host it in Taiwan, does it infringe on the US patent? If US users use it does it magically start to infringe on the patent despite being physically outside the US? These things have to be solved, and soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Dumbest? Thats how you extend mysql. Thats how you extend any serious database (replace dll with so or other dynamic object for the platform of choice). Thats how you can add things like server-side scripting, new datatypes and operations, new functions, and so on. The reason only database administrators are allowed to install such extensions is because it is inherently insecure.
The answer is of course, yes, they can be sued. Patents, as others have said, protect not only the PRODUCTION of the patented idea, but the sale and use of it as well.
OK, this is the OBVIOUS question:
If intel paid these people for the right to use their cache design (in the settlement), why does everyone else have to as well? Do I have to pay them since I use the cache design in my dell pc at work, even though Intel and Dell already paid twice for that processor to use that design?
Well, to spread it specifically uses weak default/unset DB admin passwords and MySQL running as a system or admin level task with write access to everything. Once the worm is in your server as the db admin password, it uses the db admin's ability to load a dll into mysql to allow it to perform actions outside of mysql.
See the details on this for information about what exactly is happening. There are plenty of DLLs on windows laying around that do all sorts of stuff, once you define a function call in MySQL to use a dll that allows you to execute whatever you want on the system, you win.
There was a fear-mongering news item on late night local news recently claiming that terrorist groups had installed "black boxes" at gas stations that read the credit card information after you swiped it at the pump and saved it for them. (This is here in Texas, so I'm sure we're just swarming with terrorists all out to get us)
Besides, most of the violence in film and games is hardly of the "necessary to preserve society" variety.
But if I didn't blow off the terrorist's head at point blank range and splatter blood everywhere, then the terrorists would have won!
-ECC is "error correction code" aka parity.
-Registered/buffered makes for slightly slower RAM (though at pc2700, you could use higher-end circuitry) by storing memory fetches in latched registers/buffers to ensure that no timing weirdness occurrs (ie, reading a byte when only 4 of the bits have been set)
-the extra bits (72 vs 64) are used for the parity bits for ECC.
So to recap, what apple is installing is "better" in terms of stability, and if they use faster-rated RAM (say, PC3000) to build it, the speed lost to ECC and buffering will be negligible compared to normal PC2700. Theres a good chance they used normal PC2700 with buffering and ecc, which would make it slower than PC2700 without.
I think the problem is that what you see as "superuser", capability-based systems see as "user with all capabilities".
In this case, theres a capability that says "create or modify accounts" and some user(s) will be given that capability, and those users will be responsible for creating or resetting passwords on accounts, and hopefully they won't all take the same airplane together, or at least that they have a password to an account saved in some vault somewhere.
I'm sure there is, but unlike on a Unix system where the "super-user" account would be used to run everything under the sun from the daily cron jobs to the mail server, this account would never be used except to replace the "user-control-account" account. Its password would probably be an md5 hash of some very long string that would be memorized by all the VPs of the company so that any one of them could use it. (Or however the company deals with the root passwords now... sealed in a vault?)
So wait, statistically speaking people will not be a detriment to society, but you're ok with killing the wrong person (with the double whammy of removing a "responsible taxpayer" and leaving the real criminal out to do more damage to other taxpayers, as you put it) because they were "probably" a detriment to society anyway?
Explain.
I have some case law stashed somewhere in here.
Which means your idea is good until you get taken to court and that court decides to ignore the precedent you have "stashed" somewhere.
Case law doesn't protect you from people attempting to create new precedents, and with the money behind the harry potter empire, you'd better believe someone would try, and would probably afford good enough lawyers to pull it off.
Yeah. as soon as I hit submit I realized I should have looked that up in IMDB first... ah well :P
Does this mean that they're going to be selling Tron, Cloak and Dagger, and The Wiz?
Thats what They want you to think.
Fortunately we now have DNA testing to help ensure that this type of investigatorial mistake is not frequently repeated.
See also Houston's crime lab where DNA "testing" simply became another way for prosecutors to lie in court and go for convicting whoever they thought should take the fall rather than the real criminals.
He's got a point. If the child would have grown into a individual who would be "detrimental to society" who you'd kill without any proof of that detriment, what is the point of worrying about the outcome of that childhood?
Yes, you might mistakenly incarcerate somebody once on a given crime, but 3 times?
Given how often people are cleared of capital murder cases post-humously, think about the number of people who are innocent who serve a short sentence (not enough time to prove it) and get out, only to be arrested again the next time someone's TV goes missing and they can't provide an alibi for that night.
Sir, You have sick thoughts. Those thoughts can probably be cured.
/. AC, you probably haven't left your basement den in months, so...) When you see someone attractive and your heart begins to race and your hormones begin to flow, did you consciously order that reaction? Did you think to yourself "body type: check, facial structure: check, sexy pose: check. Ok, we are go for heart pumping. Accelerate heartbeat! Release hormones! Make a move... go! go! go!"
Thats what they say about gay people too.
Anyways, look at it this way (assuming you have any experience with being attracted to someone, which being a
No?
Then why when someone else is attracted to people in a different way than you do you claim its a choice or their fault?
And since you're slamming this guy's point of view, you should probably actually read it, you fuckwit.
(feeling love for children but appalled at the thought of molestation)
Yeah, loving children and not molesting them is such an "evil thought". I better repent and next time I see kids playing in the street, I'll just speed up instead of waiting for them to clear out. Wouldn't want to love the kids too much and hurt them too little now.
To continue the car analogy in a more appropriate way than the previous poster, the current batch of P2P wannabe-laws is more like requiring cars to not crash: implementation is left up to the vendor.
How do you tell a computer to not transmit copyrighted information (without it already being tagged in some unremovable, unmodifiable DRM container, in which case it wouldn't matter anyway)? If I send you a file that's not named like a known song, doesn't hash to a known song, and doesn't have a "sound print" like a known song, how is your computer supposed to know that Metal_Lica-Zandman with 3.1 seconds of silence at the end and sped up by 1% is copyrighted?
Well, the first time around it has to be written by me, so I still consider myself to have written it by hand. After that, my program fills in the blanks in the PostScript program with the form data.
All this because my college Programming Languages professor required our term paper to be about the similarities and differences between Perl and PostScript, with code examples in each.
Well, the problem with saying that "copyright laws are just" is that they're no longer what was originally intended. Their existance is to promote art, and to do so by protecting the rights of the creators to control who publishes and profits from their work, thus ensuring that they can always negotiate a cut.
End of story.
Now we have the DCMA granting "Access Control" as a "copy"right. Read the posting on slashdot about the guy getting stiffed by an outsourcing firm. He can't access the source he paid for thanks to the SourceGuard encryption, and breaking that encryption to access his own code is illegal now. It no longer has anything to do with authorship or creation.
We have companies who have actively fought against media shifting (copy protected CDs anyone?), despite the fact that you paid them for the music. Companies are pushing the Broadcast flag which will prevent timeshifting of "some" (read "oops, did I leave that switch on all day? Sowwy") shows, despite the fact that nowhere in the concept of "copy"right is "forcing consumers to enjoy the product only on specific devices at a specific time".
(No one sits and writes Postscript!)
I do. I use it in my web application that has to produce PDF's that can then be printed out on top of various forms to fill in the blanks, print contracts, etc... I have yet to find ANY library or pdf-generator that can do this like I need it to for me. We pride ourselves on having documents that don't use shitty monospace fonts, so knowing how long a line is or how many pages of text you have is impossible until you've set the text.
If someone wants to suggest something, I need:
0) Absolute text placement. The blank on the form is 13pt from the left, 82pt from the top and is 52pt wide. Someone please tell LaTeX that this is NOT A SUGGESTION.
1) line-wrapping. If it doesn't fit on the line, it needs to wrap to the right location on the next line.
2) form-wrapping. If it doesn't fit on the page, it needs to wrap to the right location on the next page, not to the top of the page or somewhere else. (think of your credit card statement if you've ever rung up enough to wrap to a second page.)
3) Document footer. Like a page footer, except it only happens at the end. We use this for one mostly free-format document with a signature line at bottom of the last page, whichever page that is.
4) Mid-document reset. We do hundreds of these forms at once. Printing out hundreds of individual PDFs make Baby Jesus cry. Once it prints the Document Footer, the internal counter resets to page 1.
5) The ability to go back and add page numbering (something I can't do in PS). Since I don't know how many pages something is going to take up until its all laid out, I need to go back pages and put in the page numbers.
6) Headers and footers that appear on certain pages. We have forms that after the first page have blanks at the top for account numbers/names/etc. Again, think of your credit card statement.
bonus points) the ability to stab adobe acrobat developers in the face over the internet for making every version of acrobat turn on the "distort the hell out of my PDF when I print it" options, requiring me to instruct my customers on a regular basis in how to turn it off in whatever version they just installed.
If you've been paying attention at all to your webcomics, you'd be noticing the number like this one discussing the fact that the boxes ran out weeks ago.
I'm sure Blizzard knows what kind of press they get from PA and have a pretty good idea of their influence on gamers. However, in this case, the decision was made a long time ago and they're just announcing it to the public.
Dig past the useless article. The blackberry device itself doesn't infringe, only processes that only run on the server and never occur within the US infringe:
5,625,670: "A system (100) for transmitting information from one of a plurality of originating processors..." (which goes on to describe the switches, hardware, etc. in place at the server end.) (Filed in 1995. When did alphanumeric pagers appear?)
5,631,946: begins the exact same way "A system for transmitting originated information from one of a plurality of originating processors"
5,819,172: Again, "A system for transmitting an inputted message, contained in an electronic mail message originating from one of a plurality of originating processors"
6,067,451: "In a system comprising a communication system which transmits electronic mail, inputted to the communication system from a plurality of processors"
6,317,592: And finally, "In a communication system comprising a wireless system which communication system transmits electronic mail inputted to the communication system from an originating device"
So now the question is, if I build a car that phones my server to ask it where the nearest hotel is, and my server is in Canada, if someone has a patent in the US on "a system for automatically locating the nearest hotel based on GPS coordinates", is it illegal to sell my car in the US?
The car doesn't use GPS coordinates to find a hotel, so it doesn't infringe. The act of calling to find the hotel doesn't infringe. So the car does nothing thats infringing this patent.
This is quickly going to become huge, probably WTO-level, in more than just blackberries... if I write a web-based application that would be patented in the US and host it in Taiwan, does it infringe on the US patent? If US users use it does it magically start to infringe on the patent despite being physically outside the US? These things have to be solved, and soon.
You'll have to use fieldname ILIKE 'IbRoKeMyShIfTkEy'.