The only way to find the computers with open ports is to scan them. And this is what is the big problem with the counterworms. They infect a host and go on the offensive, spewing as much traffic as the original infected host did, making us scratch our heads and wonder why.
I wish people would take the high road and let the losers who can't admin their way out of a paper bag wallow around in their own ignorance, but if you feel like you must absolutely write a counterworm, please, please, PLEASE make it only counterattack against boxes that are connecting to the host!
For example, instead of scanning for machines, simply lie in wait on a computer, and when something connects to you on 3127, then attack and clean that computer, and only that computer.
It is "unreasonable" that you don't get 2/256 all the time only if you were guaranteed 2/256 continuously.
By this logic it is entirely reasonable to expect your car to explode when you start it, flatten out into a pancake when you put it into gear, and turn an ugly shade of green if you park it outside. After all, nobody guaranteed you it wouldn't when you bought it.
I'm with parent to an extent. If I bought service that said that I had max 2MB/256K, I'd expect to be able to reach something approaching that max. Thats why when I was looking for broadband, I looked for the companies that said if I could not reach that speed, I could choose to downgrade to a lower plan without a penalty or cancel with a refund. Parent should have done that due diligence.
Sometimes I wonder if some of the posters here really believe what they are saying
I suspect that they're really saying that they don't want to rent. You have to realize that the crowd here on slashdot believe that the megacorps are out to get them, and that if this scheme had succeeded, Disney would never release another DVD again, only these EZ-D's. And they're probably close to right. It doesn't take a CEO counting his retirement funds to figure out that at $7 a viewing, I'd have passed the $20 mark on The Princess Bride in three years, and by not giving me the choice of the DVD instead of EZ-D, they'd have made $70 off of me in 10 years instead of $20.
Linux and FreeBSD are not a lot better, but they are somwhat better. If any of these OS's had the share of Windows, trust me we would be seeing exploit after exploit just like Windows. Probably not mail worms and such, but something.
Morons, your train is leaving.
What, you say that like you expect every OS to ship with its pants pulled down to its ankles and bent over ready to take it without a firewall. Does 2k3 server ship with its firewall on by default yet (after 6 major OSes not counting OSRs?)? MacOSX does.
My friend brought his xp laptop over one day for some LAN gaming. He plugged it in to the LAN and it told him there were updates to install. I asked him when the last time he updated, and when he told me it had never been updated, I told him to turn on the firewall. He got to the network configuration box and was about 2 clicks away when the system told him it was shutting down. Doh!
So we've got Windows, and it shipping with a large number of services that are useless to nearly every user (such as the ms-blaster port, the spam-messenger port, and so on...) MacOSX client comes with... well, not much at all. I don't even think it runs apache out of the box.
And that remote root exploit? Its in the DHCP client's system configuration module. Meaning that 1) the attacker would have to be the DHCP server. 2) The system would have to have been configured to DHCP for an address. And 3) the system would have to be configured to fetch its configuration from the DHCP server, which isn't on by default, and would pretty much only be used in a corporate environment.
As for mail-transmitted worms/trojans/viruses, they'll certainly be around for the popular platform, but lets take a look at how they behave in windows. In fact, we'll use the w32.novarg.a@mm virus. According to that site, the third thing it does is
- %System%/taskmon.exe (If a copy of taskmon.exe exists in the %System%, it is overwritten and replaced by this copy of the worm.)
Whoa, there! Allowing USERS to overwrite SYSTEM FILES! -10 points! What about access levels? NT4 had it, and 2k and XP finally give it to the end users. Too bad that there are so many applications that require Administrator account privileges that most users effectively run as Administrator (if not actually use the Administrator account full time). Now of course, you can use various policy control tools and registry inspectors to determine what exactly the program is trying to access and granting specifically that access level to that program, but from what I've seen of Real Professional (ie not paper MCSE) Windows Administrators, its a long and thankless job that is repeated every new version of a program, for program after program from insert-nearly-any-game-here to your scanner. Now, get your mother to do that when she wants to use the scanner, or your 12 year old little brother who wants to play the latest Grand Theft Helicopter 14.
Oh and 5 words: "Don't click on any links"
I think the windows camp should worry more about the termites, cockroaches, and toxic mold infesting their own houses before calling the exterminator in on the ant in the Mac house.
Err, huh? Could you explain that? I'd love to see where I could raise a family anywhere in California on the $11k these people get to support their family and have money to burn.
People who are worried about their job moving offshore should think about how they can do things that can't move as easily, perhaps by increasing their education (MS/PhD)...
Obviously you have some interest in the number of defaulting student loans.
Or do you think that there are a considerable number of/. readers here with the talent to earn their PhD faster than the Indian workers who you can be sure are on their way as we chat. You can bet that people who start now and get their PhD will discover themselves competing for jobs with Indian PhDs willing to work for... oh... $20k a year? And where will they be? Jobless, and with even more student debt that they can't pay off.
The fact is, its impossible to compete in numbers, the law here prohibits us working for $11k a year in a full time job. And with experience comes training and competence, and more and more Indian programmers will have competitive skills.
I think I'll switch to net admin. Sure, they can try and outsource it, but when the VP knocks his "wire-thingy" out of the wall, how long is he willing to wait for someone to fly over to plug it back in for him? I'm sure that when I make the switch, so will all the other useless programmers, so I'll probably barely make enough to raise a family and keep my certs up to date.
But thats ok. I've learned that worrying over this whole thing is going to kill me early, and I won't live to see the $30 retirement I get after the CEO takes his $5billion golden parachute.
Hell no. They have a handcuffs and a gun. You've got... well, you've got calling my facts "bullshit".
So I'll tell you what, you produce the text of this agreement you're talking about and on what DVD cover I can find this agreement on, and after I've either found this DVD in my house or at my library/local store and verified that you are not spouting the bullshit you claim I am, THEN we'll talk.
No, it doesn't. And explain that to the judge when you go down.
Go down? Go down for what, watching Labyrinth on Linux? This goes back to the above paragraph, show me what text on the back of the DVD prohibits me from watching Labyrinth on Linux. That is the issue here.
steal copyrighted works ("music must be free") and get away with it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about stealing? The purpose of DeCSS was originally, and has always been, to decode encrypted DVDs for the purpose of viewing them on platforms where no decoder exists (ie, Linux).
If you're going to claim that you somehow have the right to take away DeCSS because teenaged kiddies use it to pimp out the latest release of the matrix on kazaa, then its only fair that you also take away guns, cars, airplanes, knives, forks, baseball bats, golf clubs, fireplace pokers, and everything else that could conceivably be used in the comission of a murder.
If you're going to backpedal now and claim that copyright isn't anywhere on the same level as murder, then how about a world without printers, fax machines, scanners, and copiers?
Your ignorence of the purchase agreement does not mean you are not bound by that agreement.
Yes it does. I looked over the outside of my DVD cases and I have yet to see ONE dvd out of my collection of 100+ that has ANY MENTION of this mythical agreement. Not a single case holds any text that would appear to restrict my ability to play the DVD in any device I choose to.
Not a single DVD I have can even claim the "clickwrap" license software has, as the ONLY notice on the dvd itself is that I am not permitted to distribute copies of it or use it in a public showing, and I am not required to agree to this notice in order to proceed with my usage of the DVD.
So, in the absense of notifying me of this agreement, the manufacturers of the DVD cannot legally claim I have entered into this agreement. The purchase of every one of those DVDs was made and completed unconditionally.
Wow sweet! you mean if I take a bunch of things that other people wrote, I can patent the use of them? Wow, I know! I'll patent using dhcpd to keep track of who is using my network!
Yeah! And then I'll throw in patenting squid to make sure that users who are new to the network see my webpage!
Sure, I didn't invent a single thing, and all I did was use existing tools for the purposes they were designed (authenticating and tracking users: dhcp, controlling websites viewed by users: squid) . But hey! According to you that doesn't matter! I think while I'm on a roll I'll patent serving out webpages with apache, and just to cover my bases I'll include "Claim 2: the method in Claim 1 using IIS instead of Apache". What an idea! And when I'm done, I'll sell my patent on patenting the use of XML to perform its specified purpose of sharing information between systems to Microsoft so that they can back up their patents too!
</i-can't-think-of-a-tag-that-begins-to-explan-w ha ts-wrong-with-your-idea>
I doubt these people are paying anything to the people who really made their so-called "idea" a reality. I'd love to see the groups their "idea" was based on demand a cut of the royalties.
The obvious workaround is to simply not redirect. Install a transparent proxy and serve up your desired page on the first request. This defeats
"modifying, at the gateway device, the original destination address access request and communicating the modified request to a redirection server if redirection is required;"
Better yet, claim 1 is fatally flawed. It includes the words "storing the original destination address if redirection is required". Claim 6 is likewise flawed: "stores the original destination address request if redirection is required". So the really obvious and easiest solution is to do exactly what you've been doing, except that you don't store where the user was trying to go, and they have to type the URL or back up and hit the link again.
While this was a valiant attempt by Nomadix to patent a process that was in common usage (my university used something with this effect, though not necessarially this process when I first hooked up on its dorm network the second half of my sophomore year, in '98), it ultimately falls short of the goal, and Nomadix should fire whatever patent attourney they had file this one.
the 9th just gave the OK for rogue organizations within the U.S. to give Al Qaida strategic information about oh... nuclear plants or chemical plants... without the risk of penalty.
It also gave the OK to give some change to the bum on the street corner, to help out the guy down the block with his computer problem, and to give to a charitable organization which claims to be aiding orphaned children in Iraq.
The fact is, its easy for the government to claim you knew the bum was collecting for enough fertilizer to take out a building, or the guy down the street was a "cyberterrorist" or the organization was really a front using the money to buy arms for terrorists. Its impossible for you to prove otherwise. And when it comes to terrorism, you don't even get a chance to. Witness the fact that it takes months for a US citizen to get a trial under the current environment, if they even get one at all. If you're lucky your story gets posted somewhere where enough people see it to make a ruckus. I wonder how many people our government has "disappeared" that nobody noticed.
Actually, as I recall the problem of deciding if one algorithm is equivalent to another is undecidable. Isn't it?
Not that the courts really care about the science behind it. Instead, they'd demand the source be opened for inspection. This would be ok for opensource developers, but for a small proprietary business, you might as well commit corporate suicide or settle out of court. Especially if your way is better than the patented version.
Or an automobile. But auto parts are still patentable.
Thats funny, I don't see many eniacs around, yet I see a dozen cars or so from the 50s-70s every day on the streets.
The patent office is only part of the system, and is really only a first screen for validity. The courts are another part.
Oh, if only this were true. Too bad that a defense against a "business process" software patent typically costs around $1.5million dollars. Certainly out of reach of most small-medium business developers, much less opensource developers who code in their free time. The courts are hardly an effective "part" of the system as the system is currently designed. The number of companies who settle rather than fight invalid patents is proof of this.
An unfortunate consequence of free enterprise is that protecting your rights can be expensive.
The only reason its expensive is because the giant behemoth-companies have driven the costs up and locked normal people and companies out of the process.
Meaningful and somewhat beneficial? Are you smoking something?
Lets say that you work the helpdesk at WhizzyFast ISP. Someone calls you up, and asks you how to connect. You explain how the dialup process works, and step him through the settings he needs on his computer.
Three days later the men in black put you in a cell and leave you there for a month or so without even telling you what you did (if you haven't been paying attention, this is Bush's favorite tactic).
So what happened? Well, after the person called you, they successfully connected to the internet and pwn3d three fbi.gov servers in quick succession. Naturally, the FBI was pissed, so they moved quickly and issued a subpoena for the phone records. The next day, they subpoena WhizzyFast ISP records to see who handles which calls. And the third day, you're in a cell with very plain walls, rather bewildered.
Oh, and don't forget, "cyberterrorism" is a terrorism offense, so by helping the script kiddie, you aided a terrorist. You could claim that you had no way of knowing that the person on the other end of the line was a terrorist, but I suspect "Bubba" who you're sharing the cell with doesn't care much. Without a trial you don't even get the benefit of "guilty until proven innocent".
Sure, it "works" for values of works that involve the use of unconstitutional laws to terrorize citizens. How much do you think it cost to appeal this law to a federal court? How much do you think it will cost when its appealed to the SCOTUS? Do you think that the ones the government goes after with illegal laws are the ones that have the cash on hand to fight back and break the government's toy laws? No, for every illegal law that manages to be appealed to the SCOTUS and gets broken, how many people have their lives ruined and spend time in prison?
At this point if the action dies, then we have a law thats unconstitutional in one district, in the rest of the US, the law is just fine. So if you're going to help a terrorist intentionally or accidentally (remember, when you're rotting in a jail cell without a trial, you don't even get "guilty until proven innocent" you just get "guilty" without even the chance to present your side of the case.)
So, my point is : why patent should not describe a "digital process" to handle immaterial data
I'll bite.
Software patents are bad because 1: The life cycle of a patent is about 4-5 times longer than the life cycle of software. 2: Patent language does not fit well with software language. Patent language often fails to cover a specific algorithm in the lawyer's attempt to cover everything possible. 3: Given a single patented algorithm, its impossible to tell if a given program is using THAT algorithm, or some other method of performing the same task. The "business process" patnets currently touted and used as the model for software patents only cover processes, not results, yet the outcome of these patents is that everyone who obtains the same results is lawsuit bait. Companies will be sued and forced to open their source for scrutiny. 4: The USPTO is unable to handle the current patent process, empowering them with even more oversight is certainly not what I'd call punishment for its failure to operate properly. 5: In the event of failure in the above mentioned government organization to perform its duties properly, the cost of undoing the patent is footed entirely by the victims. Assuming no court time is needed (ie, the patent holder does not appeal, which they ALWAYS do) it still costs a considerable amount of money just to present your prior art to the USPTO for a simple review, and a considerable amount more to pay the USPTO to actually listen to your argument. (in the cheaper review, the USPTO takes your evidence and you go home. The USPTO calls up the patent holder and asks them to explain, and if they have a good explanation for not citing the prior art, you loose. The more expensive version allows the victim to actually participate in the process.)
From the customer's POV, #1 makes it even worse. Lets imagine a few scenarios:
1) Xerox patents "the process by which a document is converted into data which the printer can understand" and suddenly has a 16+ year long monopoly on printers because no other company can write a driver for their printer.
2) Brother patents the word processor in the mid-80's (I really have no idea when they started making those things). If you wanted to do any word processing at all, you would need to buy a Brother word processor machine, and that would be in addition to the PC (if you even owned one, without a wordprocessor, it would be no more useful than a Nintendo).
3) Microsoft patents the operating system (or more accurately, the patented DRM required to boot the OS on their patented Palladium technology, which will only be licensed to companies who use it in every motherboard. The alternative is being unable to produce any motherboards that can run windows). Windows DRM2005 is released, requiring yearly fees of $700 per user. No further development on windows is done for 16 years as they rest on their government-provided monopoly.
4) A company called PanIP "renews" an old out-of-date patent by adding a few words to a patent on selling things using a display and a phone line. The USPTO, seeing that the patent is an "improvement" over their existing patent automatically grants it without even stopping to think. PanIP then goes about suing small e-commerce sites for infringing on its "new" patent from the early 80's... oh wait, this one's really happening.
If this "DS" portable is not to replace the GBA, it will ultimately be its rival.
Given that the DS's specs *seem* (is there any official word on this?) to indicate that backwards compatibility should be possible, it looks like it will replace the GBA.
In terms of game support though, what if they arranged it so that people kept developing gba games, and some games could be made to work in a gba, but in a DS, it would use the second screen? Nintendo did this with some of the original gameboy games when the gbc came out. The GB games would still be for the GB, but they could also have a 4 color palette programmed in for the GBC to use. (granted, a second display would be somewhat more complex "optional addon" to code for, especially with mismatched processors, so this is quite unlikely to happen.)
I suspect you use the keyboard to copy and paste stuff in emacs... or are you one of those newbies who insists on a mouse-based text editor as well?
As a matter of fact, I use vim in an xterm and unless its bigger than the xterm, I use the mouse to copy and paste.
Even in console I use the mouse to copy and paste, thanks to gpm.
I think, as a rule, power users do whatever gets the most stuff done the fastest. If I'm using mozilla and someone writes a link into a webpage instead of using an <a> tag, I can get there in a flick of the wrist and two mouse button pushes. In your perfect world, you'd have to use the mouse then shift your attention to the keyboard and hit ctrl-whatever-the-hell-it-is, move up to the address bar, delete whats there, then paste it in, or alternatively mouse through the edit menu. Speaking of shortcut keys, who came up with those shortcuts? ^C is the only one that makes sense, too bad that it matches two of the commands. Someone needs to smack down that designer and explain that "next to each other" is NOT a valid intuitive interface, then move on to the winamp people.
Oh, and don't forget that you'd have to completely rewrite the *term to use ctrl-whatever or to get a menubar at the top, and if you're going to use ctrl-whatever, you better start running before the screen, emacs, and the millions of other program users who already use ctrl-c catch you.
You say it like you don't think that it can be simplified without crippling it.
In this particular case, its easy, if more apps use the clipboard as well as the selection, you just don't tell the grandma's and the newbies about the selection. It's not like any of them middle click anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Err Huh?
The only way to find the computers with open ports is to scan them. And this is what is the big problem with the counterworms. They infect a host and go on the offensive, spewing as much traffic as the original infected host did, making us scratch our heads and wonder why.
I wish people would take the high road and let the losers who can't admin their way out of a paper bag wallow around in their own ignorance, but if you feel like you must absolutely write a counterworm, please, please, PLEASE make it only counterattack against boxes that are connecting to the host!
For example, instead of scanning for machines, simply lie in wait on a computer, and when something connects to you on 3127, then attack and clean that computer, and only that computer.
It is "unreasonable" that you don't get 2/256 all the time only if you were guaranteed 2/256 continuously.
By this logic it is entirely reasonable to expect your car to explode when you start it, flatten out into a pancake when you put it into gear, and turn an ugly shade of green if you park it outside. After all, nobody guaranteed you it wouldn't when you bought it.
I'm with parent to an extent. If I bought service that said that I had max 2MB/256K, I'd expect to be able to reach something approaching that max. Thats why when I was looking for broadband, I looked for the companies that said if I could not reach that speed, I could choose to downgrade to a lower plan without a penalty or cancel with a refund. Parent should have done that due diligence.
globally unique identifiers that are de-registered at the store upon sale
That might be true, until the store realizes it gets better information by not disabling the tag.
If the tag isn't disabled, it will still send a signal that identifies itself even if you remove its id from whatever original database.
"Oh yah, we didn't tell you but the hero can destroy all the bad guys instantaneously with a twitch of a finger"
He no longer needs the weirding module.
Sometimes I wonder if some of the posters here really believe what they are saying
I suspect that they're really saying that they don't want to rent. You have to realize that the crowd here on slashdot believe that the megacorps are out to get them, and that if this scheme had succeeded, Disney would never release another DVD again, only these EZ-D's. And they're probably close to right. It doesn't take a CEO counting his retirement funds to figure out that at $7 a viewing, I'd have passed the $20 mark on The Princess Bride in three years, and by not giving me the choice of the DVD instead of EZ-D, they'd have made $70 off of me in 10 years instead of $20.
Morons, your train is leaving.
What, you say that like you expect every OS to ship with its pants pulled down to its ankles and bent over ready to take it without a firewall. Does 2k3 server ship with its firewall on by default yet (after 6 major OSes not counting OSRs?)? MacOSX does.
My friend brought his xp laptop over one day for some LAN gaming. He plugged it in to the LAN and it told him there were updates to install. I asked him when the last time he updated, and when he told me it had never been updated, I told him to turn on the firewall. He got to the network configuration box and was about 2 clicks away when the system told him it was shutting down. Doh!
So we've got Windows, and it shipping with a large number of services that are useless to nearly every user (such as the ms-blaster port, the spam-messenger port, and so on...) MacOSX client comes with... well, not much at all. I don't even think it runs apache out of the box.
And that remote root exploit? Its in the DHCP client's system configuration module. Meaning that 1) the attacker would have to be the DHCP server. 2) The system would have to have been configured to DHCP for an address. And 3) the system would have to be configured to fetch its configuration from the DHCP server, which isn't on by default, and would pretty much only be used in a corporate environment.
As for mail-transmitted worms/trojans/viruses, they'll certainly be around for the popular platform, but lets take a look at how they behave in windows. In fact, we'll use the w32.novarg.a@mm virus. According to that site, the third thing it does is
Whoa, there! Allowing USERS to overwrite SYSTEM FILES! -10 points! What about access levels? NT4 had it, and 2k and XP finally give it to the end users. Too bad that there are so many applications that require Administrator account privileges that most users effectively run as Administrator (if not actually use the Administrator account full time). Now of course, you can use various policy control tools and registry inspectors to determine what exactly the program is trying to access and granting specifically that access level to that program, but from what I've seen of Real Professional (ie not paper MCSE) Windows Administrators, its a long and thankless job that is repeated every new version of a program, for program after program from insert-nearly-any-game-here to your scanner. Now, get your mother to do that when she wants to use the scanner, or your 12 year old little brother who wants to play the latest Grand Theft Helicopter 14.
Oh and 5 words: "Don't click on any links"
I think the windows camp should worry more about the termites, cockroaches, and toxic mold infesting their own houses before calling the exterminator in on the ant in the Mac house.
All aboard!
Thanks, I didn't realize I didn't have to buy visual studio just to play around with this stuff.
Sorta like how you can do MS dev for free, or you can drop $3000 for MSDN & VisualStudio.
Whoa, I'll take that free, where do I get it?
Flamebait? How about offtopic?
That fix is to alert users to URLs of the form
www.microsoft.com/blahblahblahblah@goatse.cx
and has nothing to do with the %01%00 disappearing-URL bug, or the CLSID id bug that this article is on.
Which is exactly what outsourcing is doing.
Err, huh? Could you explain that? I'd love to see where I could raise a family anywhere in California on the $11k these people get to support their family and have money to burn.
People who are worried about their job moving offshore should think about how they can do things that can't move as easily, perhaps by increasing their education (MS/PhD)...
/. readers here with the talent to earn their PhD faster than the Indian workers who you can be sure are on their way as we chat. You can bet that people who start now and get their PhD will discover themselves competing for jobs with Indian PhDs willing to work for... oh... $20k a year? And where will they be? Jobless, and with even more student debt that they can't pay off.
Obviously you have some interest in the number of defaulting student loans.
Or do you think that there are a considerable number of
The fact is, its impossible to compete in numbers, the law here prohibits us working for $11k a year in a full time job. And with experience comes training and competence, and more and more Indian programmers will have competitive skills.
I think I'll switch to net admin. Sure, they can try and outsource it, but when the VP knocks his "wire-thingy" out of the wall, how long is he willing to wait for someone to fly over to plug it back in for him? I'm sure that when I make the switch, so will all the other useless programmers, so I'll probably barely make enough to raise a family and keep my certs up to date.
But thats ok. I've learned that worrying over this whole thing is going to kill me early, and I won't live to see the $30 retirement I get after the CEO takes his $5billion golden parachute.
Do you argue with cops too?
Hell no. They have a handcuffs and a gun. You've got... well, you've got calling my facts "bullshit".
So I'll tell you what, you produce the text of this agreement you're talking about and on what DVD cover I can find this agreement on, and after I've either found this DVD in my house or at my library/local store and verified that you are not spouting the bullshit you claim I am, THEN we'll talk.
No, it doesn't. And explain that to the judge when you go down.
Go down? Go down for what, watching Labyrinth on Linux? This goes back to the above paragraph, show me what text on the back of the DVD prohibits me from watching Labyrinth on Linux. That is the issue here.
steal copyrighted works ("music must be free") and get away with it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about stealing? The purpose of DeCSS was originally, and has always been, to decode encrypted DVDs for the purpose of viewing them on platforms where no decoder exists (ie, Linux).
If you're going to claim that you somehow have the right to take away DeCSS because teenaged kiddies use it to pimp out the latest release of the matrix on kazaa, then its only fair that you also take away guns, cars, airplanes, knives, forks, baseball bats, golf clubs, fireplace pokers, and everything else that could conceivably be used in the comission of a murder.
If you're going to backpedal now and claim that copyright isn't anywhere on the same level as murder, then how about a world without printers, fax machines, scanners, and copiers?
Your ignorence of the purchase agreement does not mean you are not bound by that agreement.
Yes it does. I looked over the outside of my DVD cases and I have yet to see ONE dvd out of my collection of 100+ that has ANY MENTION of this mythical agreement. Not a single case holds any text that would appear to restrict my ability to play the DVD in any device I choose to.
Not a single DVD I have can even claim the "clickwrap" license software has, as the ONLY notice on the dvd itself is that I am not permitted to distribute copies of it or use it in a public showing, and I am not required to agree to this notice in order to proceed with my usage of the DVD.
So, in the absense of notifying me of this agreement, the manufacturers of the DVD cannot legally claim I have entered into this agreement. The purchase of every one of those DVDs was made and completed unconditionally.
Wow sweet! you mean if I take a bunch of things that other people wrote, I can patent the use of them? Wow, I know! I'll patent using dhcpd to keep track of who is using my network!
w ha ts-wrong-with-your-idea>
Yeah! And then I'll throw in patenting squid to make sure that users who are new to the network see my webpage!
Sure, I didn't invent a single thing, and all I did was use existing tools for the purposes they were designed (authenticating and tracking users: dhcp, controlling websites viewed by users: squid) . But hey! According to you that doesn't matter! I think while I'm on a roll I'll patent serving out webpages with apache, and just to cover my bases I'll include "Claim 2: the method in Claim 1 using IIS instead of Apache". What an idea! And when I'm done, I'll sell my patent on patenting the use of XML to perform its specified purpose of sharing information between systems to Microsoft so that they can back up their patents too!
</i-can't-think-of-a-tag-that-begins-to-explan-
I doubt these people are paying anything to the people who really made their so-called "idea" a reality. I'd love to see the groups their "idea" was based on demand a cut of the royalties.
The obvious workaround is to simply not redirect. Install a transparent proxy and serve up your desired page on the first request. This defeats
"modifying, at the gateway device, the original destination address access request and communicating the modified request to a redirection server if redirection is required;"
Better yet, claim 1 is fatally flawed. It includes the words "storing the original destination address if redirection is required". Claim 6 is likewise flawed: "stores the original destination address request if redirection is required". So the really obvious and easiest solution is to do exactly what you've been doing, except that you don't store where the user was trying to go, and they have to type the URL or back up and hit the link again.
While this was a valiant attempt by Nomadix to patent a process that was in common usage (my university used something with this effect, though not necessarially this process when I first hooked up on its dorm network the second half of my sophomore year, in '98), it ultimately falls short of the goal, and Nomadix should fire whatever patent attourney they had file this one.
the 9th just gave the OK for rogue organizations within the U.S. to give Al Qaida strategic information about oh... nuclear plants or chemical plants... without the risk of penalty.
It also gave the OK to give some change to the bum on the street corner, to help out the guy down the block with his computer problem, and to give to a charitable organization which claims to be aiding orphaned children in Iraq.
The fact is, its easy for the government to claim you knew the bum was collecting for enough fertilizer to take out a building, or the guy down the street was a "cyberterrorist" or the organization was really a front using the money to buy arms for terrorists. Its impossible for you to prove otherwise. And when it comes to terrorism, you don't even get a chance to. Witness the fact that it takes months for a US citizen to get a trial under the current environment, if they even get one at all. If you're lucky your story gets posted somewhere where enough people see it to make a ruckus. I wonder how many people our government has "disappeared" that nobody noticed.
Actually, as I recall the problem of deciding if one algorithm is equivalent to another is undecidable. Isn't it?
Not that the courts really care about the science behind it. Instead, they'd demand the source be opened for inspection. This would be ok for opensource developers, but for a small proprietary business, you might as well commit corporate suicide or settle out of court. Especially if your way is better than the patented version.
Or an automobile. But auto parts are still patentable.
Thats funny, I don't see many eniacs around, yet I see a dozen cars or so from the 50s-70s every day on the streets.
The patent office is only part of the system, and is really only a first screen for validity. The courts are another part.
Oh, if only this were true. Too bad that a defense against a "business process" software patent typically costs around $1.5million dollars. Certainly out of reach of most small-medium business developers, much less opensource developers who code in their free time. The courts are hardly an effective "part" of the system as the system is currently designed. The number of companies who settle rather than fight invalid patents is proof of this.
An unfortunate consequence of free enterprise is that protecting your rights can be expensive.
The only reason its expensive is because the giant behemoth-companies have driven the costs up and locked normal people and companies out of the process.
Meaningful and somewhat beneficial? Are you smoking something?
Lets say that you work the helpdesk at WhizzyFast ISP. Someone calls you up, and asks you how to connect. You explain how the dialup process works, and step him through the settings he needs on his computer.
Three days later the men in black put you in a cell and leave you there for a month or so without even telling you what you did (if you haven't been paying attention, this is Bush's favorite tactic).
So what happened? Well, after the person called you, they successfully connected to the internet and pwn3d three fbi.gov servers in quick succession. Naturally, the FBI was pissed, so they moved quickly and issued a subpoena for the phone records. The next day, they subpoena WhizzyFast ISP records to see who handles which calls. And the third day, you're in a cell with very plain walls, rather bewildered.
Oh, and don't forget, "cyberterrorism" is a terrorism offense, so by helping the script kiddie, you aided a terrorist. You could claim that you had no way of knowing that the person on the other end of the line was a terrorist, but I suspect "Bubba" who you're sharing the cell with doesn't care much. Without a trial you don't even get the benefit of "guilty until proven innocent".
I call this ruling proof that the system works.
Sure, it "works" for values of works that involve the use of unconstitutional laws to terrorize citizens. How much do you think it cost to appeal this law to a federal court? How much do you think it will cost when its appealed to the SCOTUS? Do you think that the ones the government goes after with illegal laws are the ones that have the cash on hand to fight back and break the government's toy laws? No, for every illegal law that manages to be appealed to the SCOTUS and gets broken, how many people have their lives ruined and spend time in prison?
At this point if the action dies, then we have a law thats unconstitutional in one district, in the rest of the US, the law is just fine. So if you're going to help a terrorist intentionally or accidentally (remember, when you're rotting in a jail cell without a trial, you don't even get "guilty until proven innocent" you just get "guilty" without even the chance to present your side of the case.)
You call this "works"?
So, my point is : why patent should not describe a "digital process" to handle immaterial data
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I'll bite.
Software patents are bad because
1: The life cycle of a patent is about 4-5 times longer than the life cycle of software.
2: Patent language does not fit well with software language. Patent language often fails to cover a specific algorithm in the lawyer's attempt to cover everything possible.
3: Given a single patented algorithm, its impossible to tell if a given program is using THAT algorithm, or some other method of performing the same task. The "business process" patnets currently touted and used as the model for software patents only cover processes, not results, yet the outcome of these patents is that everyone who obtains the same results is lawsuit bait. Companies will be sued and forced to open their source for scrutiny.
4: The USPTO is unable to handle the current patent process, empowering them with even more oversight is certainly not what I'd call punishment for its failure to operate properly.
5: In the event of failure in the above mentioned government organization to perform its duties properly, the cost of undoing the patent is footed entirely by the victims. Assuming no court time is needed (ie, the patent holder does not appeal, which they ALWAYS do) it still costs a considerable amount of money just to present your prior art to the USPTO for a simple review, and a considerable amount more to pay the USPTO to actually listen to your argument. (in the cheaper review, the USPTO takes your evidence and you go home. The USPTO calls up the patent holder and asks them to explain, and if they have a good explanation for not citing the prior art, you loose. The more expensive version allows the victim to actually participate in the process.)
From the customer's POV, #1 makes it even worse. Lets imagine a few scenarios:
1) Xerox patents "the process by which a document is converted into data which the printer can understand" and suddenly has a 16+ year long monopoly on printers because no other company can write a driver for their printer.
2) Brother patents the word processor in the mid-80's (I really have no idea when they started making those things). If you wanted to do any word processing at all, you would need to buy a Brother word processor machine, and that would be in addition to the PC (if you even owned one, without a wordprocessor, it would be no more useful than a Nintendo).
3) Microsoft patents the operating system (or more accurately, the patented DRM required to boot the OS on their patented Palladium technology, which will only be licensed to companies who use it in every motherboard. The alternative is being unable to produce any motherboards that can run windows). Windows DRM2005 is released, requiring yearly fees of $700 per user. No further development on windows is done for 16 years as they rest on their government-provided monopoly.
4) A company called PanIP "renews" an old out-of-date patent by adding a few words to a patent on selling things using a display and a phone line. The USPTO, seeing that the patent is an "improvement" over their existing patent automatically grants it without even stopping to think. PanIP then goes about suing small e-commerce sites for infringing on its "new" patent from the early 80's... oh wait, this one's really happening
If this "DS" portable is not to replace the GBA, it will ultimately be its rival.
Given that the DS's specs *seem* (is there any official word on this?) to indicate that backwards compatibility should be possible, it looks like it will replace the GBA.
In terms of game support though, what if they arranged it so that people kept developing gba games, and some games could be made to work in a gba, but in a DS, it would use the second screen? Nintendo did this with some of the original gameboy games when the gbc came out. The GB games would still be for the GB, but they could also have a 4 color palette programmed in for the GBC to use. (granted, a second display would be somewhat more complex "optional addon" to code for, especially with mismatched processors, so this is quite unlikely to happen.)
I suspect you use the keyboard to copy and paste stuff in emacs... or are you one of those newbies who insists on a mouse-based text editor as well?
As a matter of fact, I use vim in an xterm and unless its bigger than the xterm, I use the mouse to copy and paste.
Even in console I use the mouse to copy and paste, thanks to gpm.
I think, as a rule, power users do whatever gets the most stuff done the fastest. If I'm using mozilla and someone writes a link into a webpage instead of using an <a> tag, I can get there in a flick of the wrist and two mouse button pushes. In your perfect world, you'd have to use the mouse then shift your attention to the keyboard and hit ctrl-whatever-the-hell-it-is, move up to the address bar, delete whats there, then paste it in, or alternatively mouse through the edit menu. Speaking of shortcut keys, who came up with those shortcuts? ^C is the only one that makes sense, too bad that it matches two of the commands. Someone needs to smack down that designer and explain that "next to each other" is NOT a valid intuitive interface, then move on to the winamp people.
Oh, and don't forget that you'd have to completely rewrite the *term to use ctrl-whatever or to get a menubar at the top, and if you're going to use ctrl-whatever, you better start running before the screen, emacs, and the millions of other program users who already use ctrl-c catch you.
You say it like you don't think that it can be simplified without crippling it.
In this particular case, its easy, if more apps use the clipboard as well as the selection, you just don't tell the grandma's and the newbies about the selection. It's not like any of them middle click anyway.