I just lost out on a deal to get this idea going, so i'll GPL it as long as I get credit(donations to keep me thinkin are cool). I was gonna post my business plan but i'll keep it short to save bandwidth.
Gamehouses are just starting to arrive on the US shores. They are a import from over the pacific.
If current economic trends continue, gamehouses will continue to rise in popularity because games will continue to require ever more complex hardware than before.
Plus setting up a network is easy when you got 3 network guys in the room (unless they start arguing over what's wrong with the network) but can be quite intimidating to the average user.
Broadband companies are dropping like flies.
So the time is good to start one.
I've looked at several game houses around where I live, and I know the secret to setting myself apart from the ordinary screwdriver shop gamehouse..
Game House with hard rock cafe style nostalgia gimmick.
Not rock and roll, game nostalgia, you know, old console systems and computers. Thresh's mouse from the first tourney he won, or his ferrari(actually carmacks). The first pong machine or maybe one of those atari store units with 100 cartridges in it.
Serve sugary sweet liquids and solids.
Anyways lan parties are nice, but i've done many and there is allways some kind of hassle. I can't provide hardware for my buds to play on cause I just can't afford it. Game houses, one's gonna be near you soon.
--toq
~~Mods *Note, posted with my real account because I stand behind my opinions, remember AC=karma whore
Yes but how is that going to effect GPL and other Free (as in beer) stuff? It won't. You only have to worry if you are breaking some copyright.
DMCA just provides people that don't want thier stuff copied, to have a say.
Someone else mentioned that because digital content is cheap, it's value is less. But in a free market society the seller has the right to choose whatever price they feel like. Sure you may think that 15 bucks is awefully expensive to d/l a CD in mp3 format, but the seller reserves the right to set the price.
The link says you may make a copy for personal use. All adobe has to do is prove just once that dimitri's software resulted in some pirated books and it's game over dimitri.
From what i've seen floating around the net, that shouldn't be a problem. WinMX has tons of ripped e-books. He did something that financially put the hurt on a lot of authors, he needs to pay some sort of restitution. Jail's prolly a lot cheaper than copyright fines anyhow.
Lol insults,
>>I can buy a mechanical device which contains proprietary or patented technolgy and I can take it apart, test it, make and publish a set of design documents, basically anything I want to do with it. I can make more tools for taking apart the thing and sell those tools.
Yes but you are talking about something that is tangible, hard to reproduce, the fact that it is tangable makes it allmost copy proof.
File's are not tangable, I can reproduce a million copies with the stroke of a key or a click of a mouse.
>>Maybe a product is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Maybe content in digital form that is so easily duplicated is of lower value than content in a proprietary form. Let them devise their own formats and HW if they don't like the general purpose computing world.
I'm starting to get the picture that you must not live in America, otherwise you would know that in the capitalist marketplace you sell where there is a market. THEY are NOT trying make YOUR computer into anything. They just want to fill a market demand. So apparently a LARGE majority want this product. Ever hear of democracy?
>>Instead these bloody fascists are trying to make MY general purpose computer into THEIR pay per view delivery system. (SSSwhatsit) That makes me very angry. What a bunch of rat-fucking bastards.
Then you got a choice, DON'T USE IT THEN!! Support authors that GPL their work and publish in free ascii and not e-book. Phew I had to just stop myself from going into a flame, anyhow.
Maybe you should stop and look at yourself before you go calling a company trying to protect it's shareholders interest a facist. Open source is an idea, not facism.
>>How about the person down the street? Perhaps they do need this sort of program in order to do their job. Perhaps they went blind in an accident and are trying to get on with their life.
Simple answer, then it would have been a case for the Americans with Disabilities against Adobe. He broke a law, and if blind people are his excuse then he's guilty of being a vigilante.
In america, we have laws against making certain type of weapons, silly stuff like lawn darts and blowguns all the way up to firearms.
Dimitri made a artillery gun, not a knife..
He broke the law, the company he worked for purposefully makes the equiv of artillery guns for all manners of password cracking.
>>Non sequitur. Vigilante justice has nothing to do with this.
Do you know what the americans with disabilities act is? It's a law, if adobe had not provided blind people with access to e-books, then they would have been reamed in court.
Dimitri wrote a program so blind people could read e-books, instead of going through proper channel which would have been a lawsuit under the AWDA act, he took the law into his own hands. I.E. Vigilantism.
>>You are correct that he broke a law
Then why are you defending him? Just another/. clone?
Damn you, those were some really intellegent arguments. Fuck another debate lost on/.:(
Luckily I got at least 1 rebutt to a comment...
>>You are arguing that lack of technical competence of a solution can be compensated for by resorting to law?
Ok let's say my bank decided to build itself out of paper mache instead of 6 foot concrete walls. Is it the banks fault for getting broken into because they used fscked up building materials?
No, it is still the criminals fault. That's what this dimitri case is really about, he did a crime, so he should do the time. Letting him walk is not going to send the right message out to people, you need to think before you code something plain and simple. Yes I can understand the impulsive urge to code when you say, "Eureka!" when you figure somethng out. It's allmost comparable to a Driving while intoxicated, you're so excited about a discovery that you put better judgement aside and you go out and do something illeagle.
Just because something is insecure, it does not give anyone a license to go willy nilly breaking things now does it? That's what I call vigilantism, last time I checked, vigilante justice was still illeagle in most parts of the world.
As far as the rest of the programs his company wrote, they are all shady. Like I said in another comment, all those companies provide password recovery if you own the program and call their tech support. This avenue of support was created purposefully by the software authors so these "cracker" programs just undermine authors closed source goals. As far as the e-books stuff,
1. why are blind people buying stuff they can't read and
2. If the information contained within those e-books was essential and adobe was not making it accessable for the blind, why didn't they make a case under the American's with Disabilities act?
See the whole blind person argument is what really gets me, just another bleeding heart tactic being used by a criminal to gain sympathy.
>>>> people have been complaining for years about the lack of law concering computing in general.
>>The only people I hear complaining are mega-corporations and parental organizations. Both would rather pass laws than modify their obsolete ways of thinking.
Ok well i'm a sysadmin and being the victim of a few dos attacks and a rooting over the course of my career, I want laws to get these jokers. Nothing wrong with that and if I happen to work for a mega-corp, more power too me.
Still though how does that make adobe a totalitarian corporation? Mind if I try and get you to look at this from another angle?
Let's say you wrote a open source program for Linux, and someone used it either A. in a way you didn't agree with, or B. create another project to undermine your own based on your source code code.
Aren't you entitled to use the DMCA against them?
DMCA protects more than just the big faceless corporations out there, it can also be used to protect an individual. What if dimitri had made a better than e-books solution and adobe was writing software to help pirate it.
What would happen? Well if dimitri had a competent lawyer then most likely he would win a settlement.
I'm on/. everyday, it does a decent job of keeping me up on laws. Dimitri had no excuse, his intent was clear. He wrote code that intentionally converted e-book format which is supposed to be uncopyable, to a copyable format. That is what I call vigilante justice which is a definite no no in USA. Adobe isn't innocent either, they should be sued for false advertisement and be required to pay author royalties for all the pirated books out there now (try some binary newsgroups).
Now another argument I heard is, well he wrote it while in another country. Just because bin laden ordered his troops from Afghanistan is he innocent because he committed that crime from another country?
Now it's easy to get caught up in all the hype surrounding this case. I see bumper stickers, t-shirts, 2600, banner ads, you name it. All that just boils down to is hype. The age of responsible computing is upon us. We've been to long without law on the net, people have been complaining for years about the lack of law concering computing in general. Oh it's not a real photograph of a young girl its 0-1's represented as a blah blah blah. I've heard that sort of excuse and a million others.
Funny how AC's don't think.. Guess registration is too hard for them..
I'm positive that it wasn't intended to prevent the blind from enjoying e-books that they PAID FOR.
Why would the blind try and buy something they can't read to begin with? Like I said in another post, it wasn't up to dimitri to provide access for blind people to E-book documents. That job is for adobe, and thus this whole demitri thing is pulling away from the real issue here which is an American with disabilities violation that adobe created. What dimitri did was the equivalent of vigilante justice.
Learn to temper your intelligence with common sense. Too many smart people runnin around without the sense to run a comb through their head.
If you post anonymously you avoid -1 charma to your registered account. You probably post AC anytime you know you're posting something that can be modded down, like you are at -1 now.
I'm not going to flame you back, i'll set you straight like a good adult should but I won't resort to your childish flaming.
If the blind people could not get access to the documents in a format read-able by them, then it should have been a case for the supreme court under the Americans with disabilities act. It wasn't up to demitri to take the laws into his own hands.
How can you compare this case to a totalitarian regime ?
totalitarian (t-tl-târ-n)
adj.
Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: "A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul" (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Nobody is forcing the authors to use e-books. The authors could have chosen PDF in the first place if they had not been worried about someone trying to copy their copyrighted material. They chose e-books for copyright protection.
We have a copyright system in place so I can't copy your entire post and quote it as my own, thereby giving me the right to sell it on my behalf. It's called capitalism.
Dmitry is from a historicly non-capitalist country, he can argue he didn't know what he was doing was against the law, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. (and I have serious doubt's he did this not knowing it was a grey line he was crossing...he knew)
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you give me a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
Don't automatically mod this down because of the title, hear me out first..
There are fuzzy lines, and there are just solid lines in the law. Free speech and 1st ammendment right's go between these two all the time.
goatse.cx is just a classic example..
Is it art? Is it some really disgusting picture of a man? Is it a joke? It must be art because you cannot clearly define it as pornagraphy. It is obcene and obnoxious, but so are some rap and punk lyrics. It is clearly not causing any direct harm towards children because it is not child pornography. So then the question must be asked, what is harmful?
At one time or another, we were all kids, curious wondering what (we called it humping) was. We went into our father's top drawers and snagged that issue of playboy. We would go hide in some bushes and brag to our buddies about the pirates booty (pun) of nudies we had just gotten our hands on.
You can do your best to keep it in a top drawer, but those damn kids allways find a way in. I don't think my mom ever blamed my stepdad for keeping his porn somewhere I couldn't get it.
--toq
~~Moderators Note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you mod me -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
I read carefully everything I could on this case. Here is what happened.
Adobe E-book is a proprietary file format used by adobe's e-book program. The company he works for looks like they specialize in all types and manners of password cracking.
From http://www.elcomsoft.com/ front page..
Advanced ACT Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced PDF Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Outlook Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Office 2000 Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Disk Catalog,
Advanced Word 2000 Password Recovery
Advanced Excel 2000 Password Recovery have been released.
Obviously elcomsoft is not clearly white hat research.
Ok now why is it important for the goverment to put his ass in a sling. Think, think harder, I'll tell you. OTB when users have lost passwords to the afformentioned programs. I as a sysadmin have to call the software manufacturers tech support. I've done it for act, i've done it with MS products, I've done it with peachtree and quickbooks. This is the authors way of retaining a certain amount of right's to their property.
*quote*
The software only works on legitimately purchased eBooks.
You mean it makes copies of copyrighted material? WOW I can make copies of my copyrighted materials for my friends!
He was fiddlin where he wasn't supposed to be. I didn't need his programs to do my job.
His defense page's obvious use of bleeding heart tactics make me sick.
*quote*
" has been used, for example, by blind people to read otherwise-inaccessible PDF user's manuals"
Cool so because a blind person is copying COPYRIGHTED material, IT'S OK!! I forgot about the blind man loophole in the law, maybe I forgot because it NEVER existed.
He's just another sore loser doing something I would classify as grey-hat for a living, when with his cryptography skills could have landed him a million other jobs in anything from working for the.gov to working for cisco to help implement VPN into their routers or something.
He chose to break instead of build. He chose to start on something wrong to begin with. If it had been open source crypto crackers he was making he would have been left alone. Of course, that would have kept him busier because he is a lazy man. Open source seems better secured than closed. Harder to break.
But he was breaking somebody else's work. Someone else that had the American Right, to dictate exactly how they are to make money from it. It was adobe's right for a fee, or if not for a fee to provide support (and earn a pocketfull of dollars) to those poor blind people.
Quality support is like a phone psychic, 3.99 a minute and they might tell you what you want to hear.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you give me a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
I'm not going to go through snipping your comment, I get the one point you're trying to make with it so let me rebut your statement.
Name one time, where people given any level of authority, have not abused it.
For every bad apple, there are at least 100 good one's. I refuse to make a decision on my safety based on just a few bad apples. With your logic, we shouldn't have speeding laws because only a few people speed. I mean that is basically what it amounts to right?
Like spock said, the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.
Same thing applies with cars, planes, trains.
Thing I'm really ticked off about is the title of this article.. On a per-word basis, this may be the best summary of why calls to ban or restrict encryption technology (as with government key escrow, or constrained key sizes) has little to do with enhancing national or world security.
I'm a NRA member, I own a car. Guns and cars can be dangerous things, especially in the hands of the wrong people. The thing I don't like about the quick blurb at the top is.. restrict encryption technology
Restrictions are in place for our own safety. An all out ban will never happen but we do need ways for law enforcement to go after the bad guys. Goverment phone taps do not bother me because I know the only reason the.gov would want to tap my phones is if I were doing something bad (drug deals, white slavery, anything)
We all need to start accepting the fact that American is tightening it's belt. It's time we all started using the internet responsibly.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if they get a -1, unlike anonymous karma whores.
Sorry I did 2 replies, the songs were just too funny to pass up.
Well looks like we'll have to concede on disagreement. New articles to debate on and I don't want to miss them. But thanks os/2, this was a fun and even enlightening debate for me, I think we learned despite being on different sides of the fence, we do have much in common as geeks:P
Did you ever sing any of these LOL, I knew they existed but DAMN they are funny. Now where is my MS songbook LOL.
MARCH ON WITH IBM
Verse:
The fame of IBM
Spreads across the seven seas,
Our standards fly aloft,
Proudly waving in the breeze,
With T.J. Watson guiding us
we lead throughout the world,
For peace and trade our
banners are unfurled - unfurled.
Chorus:
March on with IBM
We lead the way,
Onward we'll ever go,
In strong array;
Our thousands to the fore,
Nothing can stem,
Our march forevermore,
With IBM.
March on with IBM
Work hand in hand,
Stout hearted men go forth,
In every land;
Our flags on every shore,
We march with them,
On high forevermore,
For IBM.
To: THOMAS J. WATSON
Tune: "Auld Lang Syne"
T.J. Watson - you're our leader fine,
the greatest in the land,
We sing your praises from our hearts
we're here to shake your hand.
You're IBM's guiding star
throughout the hemispheres,
No matter what the future brings,
we all will perservere.
You've made our IBM so great
in every land supreme,
Our service meets all needs of men
and works just like a team.
You've brought us through to victory,
with leadership that's prime,
We'll always love and honor you
for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.
To: THOMAS J. WATSON
Pack up your troubles - T.J. Watson's here!
And smile, smile, smile.
He's the genius in our IBM
He's the man worth while
He's inspiring all the time,
And very versatile - oh!
He is our strong and able President!
His smile's worth while.
"Great organizer and a friend so true,"
Say all we boys,
Ever he thinks of things to say and do
To increase our joys.
He is building every day
In his outstanding style - so
Pack up your troubles Mr. Watson's here
And Smile - Smile - Smile
To: F. W. NICHOL (VP and General Manager, IBM)
His cause IBM and for all of its men
He is working and planning, we know;
His time without spare, and a knowledge
that's rare
Is making our company grow.
Yes, yes, we all know
Mr. Nichol you're making us grow;
Your thoughts full of zeal
which to you reveal
Ever help to keep us on the go.
Wherever we are, be it near or afar
We will find he has given us with care
A mesage to all that has sounded the call
For the will to go forward and dare.
Yes, yes we all know
Mr. Nichol you're making us grow;
the lessons you teach
make us strive to e'er reach
Our records and keep on the go.
To: C.L. KIRK (Executive Vice-President, IBM)
Tune: "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"
Ever we praise our able leaders.
And our progressive C.A. Kirk
is one of them.
He is endowed with the will to go forward.
He'll always work in the cause of IBM;
All of our people united applaud him,
As his success in our Company recall,
As we know that each one
is solidly for him.
Proud of the job he is doing for us all.
To: J.L. BARTON (Plant Manager, Endicott Plant)
In Endicott we have a man,
Whose thoughts will ever be,
To fill each need with greater speed,
Throughout our factory;
J.L. Barton, to IBM you're true;
You'll ever go ahead we know
And we are back of you.
IBM COUNTRY CLUB SONG
by Miss Viola M. Lee, Associate Member, IBM Country Club
(Sung to the tune of "Annie Lisle," the Cornell Alma Mater)
Verse:
'Twixt the Susquehanna River,
and the hills so green:
Stands the Club House white and shining,
Fairest ever seen.
Fields for sport and lawns for playgrounds
Games when days are gray,
Many hours of healthful pleasure
Found there day by day.
Chorus:
Thanks we give to our great leader
And we sing with vim,
"Hail to Mr. T.J. Watson
And the IBM."
HAIL TO THE IBM
Lift up our proud and loyal voices,
Sing out in accents strong and true,
With hearts and hands to you devoted
And inspiration ever new,
Your ties of friendship cannot sever,
Your glory time will never stem
We will toast a name that lives forever
Hail to the IBM.
Our voices swell in admiration,
Of T.J. Watson proudly sing,
He'll ever be our inspiration,
To him our voices loudly ring.
The IBM will sing the praises
Of him who brought us world acclaim,
As the volume of the chorus raises
Hail! To his honored name.
EVER ONWARD
Verse:
There's a thrill in store for all
for we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer
and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men
our sterling president
The name of T.J. Watson means
a courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be
here to toast the IBM.
Chorus:
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
That's the spirit that has brought
us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be,
We can't fail for all can see,
that to serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known
in every zone.
Our reputation sparkles
like a gem.
We've fought our way through
And new fields we're sure to conquer, too,
For the Ever Onward IBM!
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
We're bound for the top
to never fall,
Right here and now we thankfully
Pledge sincerest loyalty
To the corporation
that's the best of all
Our leaders we revere
and while we're here,
Let's show the world just what
we think of them!
So let us sing men - Sing men
Once or twice, then sing again
for the EVER ONWARD IBM!
Re:Hey people he got what he DESERVED
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 1
>>Oh please spare me with the portscans, the only people annoyed,
You're right I am annoyed. I'm the sysadmin, I do my own port scans and exploit searches. I also script in patches on peoples log in scripts, and on top of that do the daily running around fixing problems and doing basic training. Nobody has a right to portscan my network without my authority. I can't count how many little lamer's i've wiped off the net from reporting their asses to their ISP.
Fine, next time i'm in your neighborhood, i'm gonna go from door to door, just to check and see if any doors are open. Then i'll report down to the local jail and let all the criminals know that I_redwolf leave's his door unlocked. On top of that i'll pick up some varient of the crip gang to scrawl tags all over your house, cause you prolly think website defacement isn't a crime either.
It's only a neighborhood watch if everyone get's together and agree's to watch. If I don't know you, if I didn't give you permission to look for exploits in my system, you're guilty of breaking and entering plain and as simple as that.
--toq
~~moderators note* posted with my real account cause I stand behind my opinion's even risking -1 mods, unlike anonymous karma whore's
Re:Some advice to cut down on the runnin around.
on
Nimda To Strike Again
·
· Score: 1
>>Gee, why do you think that is?
*snip*
Logisticly speaking, if I wanted to move a virus would I
A. Write it for the most common, used and accepted O/S in the world? (%99 of the world uses MS)
B. Write it for some obscure o/s that maybe has a what.. %2 market share if that?
*gasp*
Don't you think it's on the news because it affect's %99 of the computers in the world?
>>Damn, the logic train just keeps going...
Looks like your train just left the station.
--toq
Re:Some advice to cut down on the runnin around.
on
Nimda To Strike Again
·
· Score: 1
>>After all, it is the other car that actually caused the fatalities, right?
First off, it was the person driving the car that caused the fatalities... Accidents do not happen without careless people, same rule applies to virii.
>>From the OpenBSD website: "Four years without a remote hole in the default install!"
Second, I say, "There are more people trying to exploit windows than any other system" What would be funny, and I hope someone in redmond is reading this, is if MS forms a non-ms o/s exploit team. I'd like to see how fast THEY could find remote exploits in alternative O/S.
Third and most importantly, if you wanted to write an effective virus, would you write it for an o/s that is installed on %1 of the worlds computers, or for the o/s that is installed on %99 of the computers. From a logistics standpoint, nimda on MS made sense for the virii author.
Don't hate MS for being on top, there's many of us that have built solid careers from fixing their buggy o/s.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I stand behind my opinions even at the risk of a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whores.
>>In cases where the wrong people are in charge (like the dev team), it can help to try to get support from outside IT.
Yeah I was definetly trying that. It worked successfully to some degree but then you get retaliation flak. I was in the COO's office helping him with a problem when a member of the dev team came into his office and started screaming at the top of his lungs telling me I didn't have his permission to put his laptop into the DHCP pool and off the (allow all traffic) on the firewall AFTER i had just spent 1/2 a day cleaning up his rooted machine. I had asked him for 3 weeks to comply and he wouldn't because of my going around him before that on another issue.
Fortunately I did not raise my voice, years earlier my training as a phone monkey taught me how to handle hot customers. Let them rant for 3 minutes and they allways leave.
My black hole comment was based upon many covnversations with corporarate controllers over the years (actually fights) The dev team makes a product that requires a certain level of hardware that is expensive. The Controllers allways had to balance between profit and cost, as we have seen over the last year those that did not find that balance closed their doors.
But anyways, yeah thanks for enlightening me, it was simple and beutiful point you made, too bad it didn't get a +4 bonus from the mods.
Slashdot Mirror
I just lost out on a deal to get this idea going, so i'll GPL it as long as I get credit(donations to keep me thinkin are cool). I was gonna post my business plan but i'll keep it short to save bandwidth.
Gamehouses are just starting to arrive on the US shores. They are a import from over the pacific.
If current economic trends continue, gamehouses will continue to rise in popularity because games will continue to require ever more complex hardware than before.
Plus setting up a network is easy when you got 3 network guys in the room (unless they start arguing over what's wrong with the network) but can be quite intimidating to the average user.
Broadband companies are dropping like flies.
So the time is good to start one.
I've looked at several game houses around where I live, and I know the secret to setting myself apart from the ordinary screwdriver shop gamehouse..
Game House with hard rock cafe style nostalgia gimmick.
Not rock and roll, game nostalgia, you know, old console systems and computers. Thresh's mouse from the first tourney he won, or his ferrari(actually carmacks). The first pong machine or maybe one of those atari store units with 100 cartridges in it.
Serve sugary sweet liquids and solids.
Anyways lan parties are nice, but i've done many and there is allways some kind of hassle. I can't provide hardware for my buds to play on cause I just can't afford it. Game houses, one's gonna be near you soon.
--toq
~~Mods *Note, posted with my real account because I stand behind my opinions, remember AC=karma whore
Yes but how is that going to effect GPL and other Free (as in beer) stuff? It won't. You only have to worry if you are breaking some copyright.
DMCA just provides people that don't want thier stuff copied, to have a say.
Someone else mentioned that because digital content is cheap, it's value is less. But in a free market society the seller has the right to choose whatever price they feel like. Sure you may think that 15 bucks is awefully expensive to d/l a CD in mp3 format, but the seller reserves the right to set the price.
Are you a communist? Not flame, just checking.
--toq
Ok I read the link, thank you..
The link says you may make a copy for personal use. All adobe has to do is prove just once that dimitri's software resulted in some pirated books and it's game over dimitri.
From what i've seen floating around the net, that shouldn't be a problem. WinMX has tons of ripped e-books. He did something that financially put the hurt on a lot of authors, he needs to pay some sort of restitution. Jail's prolly a lot cheaper than copyright fines anyhow.
--toq
>>he didn't know what he was doing was against the law
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, any judge will tell you that.
--toq
>>Look schmukus,
Lol insults,
>>I can buy a mechanical device which contains proprietary or patented technolgy and I can take it apart, test it, make and publish a set of design documents, basically anything I want to do with it. I can make more tools for taking apart the thing and sell those tools.
Yes but you are talking about something that is tangible, hard to reproduce, the fact that it is tangable makes it allmost copy proof.
File's are not tangable, I can reproduce a million copies with the stroke of a key or a click of a mouse.
>>Maybe a product is worth what people are willing to pay for it. Maybe content in digital form that is so easily duplicated is of lower value than content in a proprietary form. Let them devise their own formats and HW if they don't like the general purpose computing world.
I'm starting to get the picture that you must not live in America, otherwise you would know that in the capitalist marketplace you sell where there is a market. THEY are NOT trying make YOUR computer into anything. They just want to fill a market demand. So apparently a LARGE majority want this product. Ever hear of democracy?
>>Instead these bloody fascists are trying to make MY general purpose computer into THEIR pay per view delivery system. (SSSwhatsit) That makes me very angry. What a bunch of rat-fucking bastards.
Then you got a choice, DON'T USE IT THEN!! Support authors that GPL their work and publish in free ascii and not e-book. Phew I had to just stop myself from going into a flame, anyhow.
Maybe you should stop and look at yourself before you go calling a company trying to protect it's shareholders interest a facist. Open source is an idea, not facism.
--toq
Sucks I got modded down to -1 but anyways.
>>How about the person down the street? Perhaps they do need this sort of program in order to do their job. Perhaps they went blind in an accident and are trying to get on with their life.
Simple answer, then it would have been a case for the Americans with Disabilities against Adobe. He broke a law, and if blind people are his excuse then he's guilty of being a vigilante.
--toq
>>Dimitri is the knife maker
/. clone?
In america, we have laws against making certain type of weapons, silly stuff like lawn darts and blowguns all the way up to firearms.
Dimitri made a artillery gun, not a knife..
He broke the law, the company he worked for purposefully makes the equiv of artillery guns for all manners of password cracking.
>>Non sequitur. Vigilante justice has nothing to do with this.
Do you know what the americans with disabilities act is? It's a law, if adobe had not provided blind people with access to e-books, then they would have been reamed in court.
Dimitri wrote a program so blind people could read e-books, instead of going through proper channel which would have been a lawsuit under the AWDA act, he took the law into his own hands. I.E. Vigilantism.
>>You are correct that he broke a law
Then why are you defending him? Just another
--toq
Damn you, those were some really intellegent arguments. Fuck another debate lost on /. :(
Luckily I got at least 1 rebutt to a comment...
>>You are arguing that lack of technical competence of a solution can be compensated for by resorting to law?
Ok let's say my bank decided to build itself out of paper mache instead of 6 foot concrete walls. Is it the banks fault for getting broken into because they used fscked up building materials?
No, it is still the criminals fault. That's what this dimitri case is really about, he did a crime, so he should do the time. Letting him walk is not going to send the right message out to people, you need to think before you code something plain and simple. Yes I can understand the impulsive urge to code when you say, "Eureka!" when you figure somethng out. It's allmost comparable to a Driving while intoxicated, you're so excited about a discovery that you put better judgement aside and you go out and do something illeagle.
Just because something is insecure, it does not give anyone a license to go willy nilly breaking things now does it? That's what I call vigilantism, last time I checked, vigilante justice was still illeagle in most parts of the world.
As far as the rest of the programs his company wrote, they are all shady. Like I said in another comment, all those companies provide password recovery if you own the program and call their tech support. This avenue of support was created purposefully by the software authors so these "cracker" programs just undermine authors closed source goals. As far as the e-books stuff,
1. why are blind people buying stuff they can't read and
2. If the information contained within those e-books was essential and adobe was not making it accessable for the blind, why didn't they make a case under the American's with Disabilities act?
See the whole blind person argument is what really gets me, just another bleeding heart tactic being used by a criminal to gain sympathy.
--toq
>>>> people have been complaining for years about the lack of law concering computing in general.
>>The only people I hear complaining are mega-corporations and parental organizations. Both would rather pass laws than modify their obsolete ways of thinking.
Ok well i'm a sysadmin and being the victim of a few dos attacks and a rooting over the course of my career, I want laws to get these jokers. Nothing wrong with that and if I happen to work for a mega-corp, more power too me.
--toq
Still though how does that make adobe a totalitarian corporation? Mind if I try and get you to look at this from another angle?
/. everyday, it does a decent job of keeping me up on laws. Dimitri had no excuse, his intent was clear. He wrote code that intentionally converted e-book format which is supposed to be uncopyable, to a copyable format. That is what I call vigilante justice which is a definite no no in USA. Adobe isn't innocent either, they should be sued for false advertisement and be required to pay author royalties for all the pirated books out there now (try some binary newsgroups).
Let's say you wrote a open source program for Linux, and someone used it either A. in a way you didn't agree with, or B. create another project to undermine your own based on your source code code.
Aren't you entitled to use the DMCA against them?
DMCA protects more than just the big faceless corporations out there, it can also be used to protect an individual. What if dimitri had made a better than e-books solution and adobe was writing software to help pirate it.
What would happen? Well if dimitri had a competent lawyer then most likely he would win a settlement.
I'm on
Now another argument I heard is, well he wrote it while in another country. Just because bin laden ordered his troops from Afghanistan is he innocent because he committed that crime from another country?
Now it's easy to get caught up in all the hype surrounding this case. I see bumper stickers, t-shirts, 2600, banner ads, you name it. All that just boils down to is hype. The age of responsible computing is upon us. We've been to long without law on the net, people have been complaining for years about the lack of law concering computing in general. Oh it's not a real photograph of a young girl its 0-1's represented as a blah blah blah. I've heard that sort of excuse and a million others.
--toq
Funny how AC's don't think.. Guess registration is too hard for them..
I'm positive that it wasn't intended to prevent the blind from enjoying e-books that they PAID FOR.
Why would the blind try and buy something they can't read to begin with? Like I said in another post, it wasn't up to dimitri to provide access for blind people to E-book documents. That job is for adobe, and thus this whole demitri thing is pulling away from the real issue here which is an American with disabilities violation that adobe created. What dimitri did was the equivalent of vigilante justice.
Learn to temper your intelligence with common sense. Too many smart people runnin around without the sense to run a comb through their head.
--toq
If you post anonymously you avoid -1 charma to your registered account. You probably post AC anytime you know you're posting something that can be modded down, like you are at -1 now.
I'm not going to flame you back, i'll set you straight like a good adult should but I won't resort to your childish flaming.
Grow up.
--toq
Oh and one other thing while i'm here,
If the blind people could not get access to the documents in a format read-able by them, then it should have been a case for the supreme court under the Americans with disabilities act. It wasn't up to demitri to take the laws into his own hands.
--toq
How can you compare this case to a totalitarian regime ?
totalitarian (t-tl-târ-n)
adj.
Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: "A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul" (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Nobody is forcing the authors to use e-books. The authors could have chosen PDF in the first place if they had not been worried about someone trying to copy their copyrighted material. They chose e-books for copyright protection.
We have a copyright system in place so I can't copy your entire post and quote it as my own, thereby giving me the right to sell it on my behalf. It's called capitalism.
Dmitry is from a historicly non-capitalist country, he can argue he didn't know what he was doing was against the law, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. (and I have serious doubt's he did this not knowing it was a grey line he was crossing...he knew)
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you give me a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
Don't automatically mod this down because of the title, hear me out first..
There are fuzzy lines, and there are just solid lines in the law. Free speech and 1st ammendment right's go between these two all the time.
goatse.cx is just a classic example..
Is it art? Is it some really disgusting picture of a man? Is it a joke? It must be art because you cannot clearly define it as pornagraphy. It is obcene and obnoxious, but so are some rap and punk lyrics. It is clearly not causing any direct harm towards children because it is not child pornography. So then the question must be asked, what is harmful?
At one time or another, we were all kids, curious wondering what (we called it humping) was. We went into our father's top drawers and snagged that issue of playboy. We would go hide in some bushes and brag to our buddies about the pirates booty (pun) of nudies we had just gotten our hands on.
You can do your best to keep it in a top drawer, but those damn kids allways find a way in. I don't think my mom ever blamed my stepdad for keeping his porn somewhere I couldn't get it.
--toq
~~Moderators Note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you mod me -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
on the job
I read carefully everything I could on this case. Here is what happened.
.gov to working for cisco to help implement VPN into their routers or something.
Adobe E-book is a proprietary file format used by adobe's e-book program. The company he works for looks like they specialize in all types and manners of password cracking.
From http://www.elcomsoft.com/ front page..
Advanced ACT Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced PDF Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Outlook Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Office 2000 Password Recoverynow available.
Advanced Disk Catalog,
Advanced Word 2000 Password Recovery
Advanced Excel 2000 Password Recovery have been released.
Obviously elcomsoft is not clearly white hat research.
Ok now why is it important for the goverment to put his ass in a sling. Think, think harder, I'll tell you. OTB when users have lost passwords to the afformentioned programs. I as a sysadmin have to call the software manufacturers tech support. I've done it for act, i've done it with MS products, I've done it with peachtree and quickbooks. This is the authors way of retaining a certain amount of right's to their property.
*quote*
The software only works on legitimately purchased eBooks.
You mean it makes copies of copyrighted material? WOW I can make copies of my copyrighted materials for my friends!
He was fiddlin where he wasn't supposed to be. I didn't need his programs to do my job.
His defense page's obvious use of bleeding heart tactics make me sick.
*quote*
" has been used, for example, by blind people to read otherwise-inaccessible PDF user's manuals"
Cool so because a blind person is copying COPYRIGHTED material, IT'S OK!! I forgot about the blind man loophole in the law, maybe I forgot because it NEVER existed.
He's just another sore loser doing something I would classify as grey-hat for a living, when with his cryptography skills could have landed him a million other jobs in anything from working for the
He chose to break instead of build. He chose to start on something wrong to begin with. If it had been open source crypto crackers he was making he would have been left alone. Of course, that would have kept him busier because he is a lazy man. Open source seems better secured than closed. Harder to break.
But he was breaking somebody else's work. Someone else that had the American Right, to dictate exactly how they are to make money from it. It was adobe's right for a fee, or if not for a fee to provide support (and earn a pocketfull of dollars) to those poor blind people.
Quality support is like a phone psychic, 3.99 a minute and they might tell you what you want to hear.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if you give me a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whore's.
I'm not going to go through snipping your comment, I get the one point you're trying to make with it so let me rebut your statement.
Name one time, where people given any level of authority, have not abused it.
For every bad apple, there are at least 100 good one's. I refuse to make a decision on my safety based on just a few bad apples. With your logic, we shouldn't have speeding laws because only a few people speed. I mean that is basically what it amounts to right?
Like spock said, the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.
--toq
Same thing applies with cars, planes, trains. .gov would want to tap my phones is if I were doing something bad (drug deals, white slavery, anything)
Thing I'm really ticked off about is the title of this article..
On a per-word basis, this may be the best summary of why calls to ban or restrict encryption technology (as with government key escrow, or constrained key sizes) has little to do with enhancing national or world security.
I'm a NRA member, I own a car. Guns and cars can be dangerous things, especially in the hands of the wrong people. The thing I don't like about the quick blurb at the top is.. restrict encryption technology Restrictions are in place for our own safety. An all out ban will never happen but we do need ways for law enforcement to go after the bad guys. Goverment phone taps do not bother me because I know the only reason the
We all need to start accepting the fact that American is tightening it's belt. It's time we all started using the internet responsibly.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I take responsibility for my opinions, even if they get a -1, unlike anonymous karma whores.
Sorry I did 2 replies, the songs were just too funny to pass up.
:P
:)
Well looks like we'll have to concede on disagreement. New articles to debate on and I don't want to miss them. But thanks os/2, this was a fun and even enlightening debate for me, I think we learned despite being on different sides of the fence, we do have much in common as geeks
I look forward to our next debate
Yours Truly,
--toq
Did you ever sing any of these LOL, I knew they existed but DAMN they are funny. Now where is my MS songbook LOL.
MARCH ON WITH IBM
Verse:
The fame of IBM
Spreads across the seven seas,
Our standards fly aloft,
Proudly waving in the breeze,
With T.J. Watson guiding us
we lead throughout the world,
For peace and trade our
banners are unfurled - unfurled.
Chorus:
March on with IBM
We lead the way,
Onward we'll ever go,
In strong array;
Our thousands to the fore,
Nothing can stem,
Our march forevermore,
With IBM.
March on with IBM
Work hand in hand,
Stout hearted men go forth,
In every land;
Our flags on every shore,
We march with them,
On high forevermore,
For IBM.
To: THOMAS J. WATSON
Tune: "Auld Lang Syne"
T.J. Watson - you're our leader fine,
the greatest in the land,
We sing your praises from our hearts
we're here to shake your hand.
You're IBM's guiding star
throughout the hemispheres,
No matter what the future brings,
we all will perservere.
You've made our IBM so great
in every land supreme,
Our service meets all needs of men
and works just like a team.
You've brought us through to victory,
with leadership that's prime,
We'll always love and honor you
for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.
To: THOMAS J. WATSON
Pack up your troubles - T.J. Watson's here!
And smile, smile, smile.
He's the genius in our IBM
He's the man worth while
He's inspiring all the time,
And very versatile - oh!
He is our strong and able President!
His smile's worth while.
"Great organizer and a friend so true,"
Say all we boys,
Ever he thinks of things to say and do
To increase our joys.
He is building every day
In his outstanding style - so
Pack up your troubles Mr. Watson's here
And Smile - Smile - Smile
To: F. W. NICHOL (VP and General Manager, IBM)
His cause IBM and for all of its men
He is working and planning, we know;
His time without spare, and a knowledge
that's rare
Is making our company grow.
Yes, yes, we all know
Mr. Nichol you're making us grow;
Your thoughts full of zeal
which to you reveal
Ever help to keep us on the go.
Wherever we are, be it near or afar
We will find he has given us with care
A mesage to all that has sounded the call
For the will to go forward and dare.
Yes, yes we all know
Mr. Nichol you're making us grow;
the lessons you teach
make us strive to e'er reach
Our records and keep on the go.
To: C.L. KIRK (Executive Vice-President, IBM)
Tune: "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"
Ever we praise our able leaders.
And our progressive C.A. Kirk
is one of them.
He is endowed with the will to go forward.
He'll always work in the cause of IBM;
All of our people united applaud him,
As his success in our Company recall,
As we know that each one
is solidly for him.
Proud of the job he is doing for us all.
To: J.L. BARTON (Plant Manager, Endicott Plant)
In Endicott we have a man,
Whose thoughts will ever be,
To fill each need with greater speed,
Throughout our factory;
J.L. Barton, to IBM you're true;
You'll ever go ahead we know
And we are back of you.
IBM COUNTRY CLUB SONG
by Miss Viola M. Lee, Associate Member, IBM Country Club
(Sung to the tune of "Annie Lisle," the Cornell Alma Mater)
Verse:
'Twixt the Susquehanna River,
and the hills so green:
Stands the Club House white and shining,
Fairest ever seen.
Fields for sport and lawns for playgrounds
Games when days are gray,
Many hours of healthful pleasure
Found there day by day.
Chorus:
Thanks we give to our great leader
And we sing with vim,
"Hail to Mr. T.J. Watson
And the IBM."
HAIL TO THE IBM
Lift up our proud and loyal voices,
Sing out in accents strong and true,
With hearts and hands to you devoted
And inspiration ever new,
Your ties of friendship cannot sever,
Your glory time will never stem
We will toast a name that lives forever
Hail to the IBM.
Our voices swell in admiration,
Of T.J. Watson proudly sing,
He'll ever be our inspiration,
To him our voices loudly ring.
The IBM will sing the praises
Of him who brought us world acclaim,
As the volume of the chorus raises
Hail! To his honored name.
EVER ONWARD
Verse:
There's a thrill in store for all
for we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer
and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men
our sterling president
The name of T.J. Watson means
a courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be
here to toast the IBM.
Chorus:
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
That's the spirit that has brought
us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be,
We can't fail for all can see,
that to serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known
in every zone.
Our reputation sparkles
like a gem.
We've fought our way through
And new fields we're sure to conquer, too,
For the Ever Onward IBM!
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
We're bound for the top
to never fall,
Right here and now we thankfully
Pledge sincerest loyalty
To the corporation
that's the best of all
Our leaders we revere
and while we're here,
Let's show the world just what
we think of them!
So let us sing men - Sing men
Once or twice, then sing again
for the EVER ONWARD IBM!
>>Oh please spare me with the portscans, the only people annoyed,
You're right I am annoyed. I'm the sysadmin, I do my own port scans and exploit searches. I also script in patches on peoples log in scripts, and on top of that do the daily running around fixing problems and doing basic training. Nobody has a right to portscan my network without my authority. I can't count how many little lamer's i've wiped off the net from reporting their asses to their ISP.
Fine, next time i'm in your neighborhood, i'm gonna go from door to door, just to check and see if any doors are open. Then i'll report down to the local jail and let all the criminals know that I_redwolf leave's his door unlocked. On top of that i'll pick up some varient of the crip gang to scrawl tags all over your house, cause you prolly think website defacement isn't a crime either.
It's only a neighborhood watch if everyone get's together and agree's to watch. If I don't know you, if I didn't give you permission to look for exploits in my system, you're guilty of breaking and entering plain and as simple as that.
--toq
~~moderators note* posted with my real account cause I stand behind my opinion's even risking -1 mods, unlike anonymous karma whore's
>>Gee, why do you think that is?
*snip*
Logisticly speaking, if I wanted to move a virus would I
A. Write it for the most common, used and accepted O/S in the world? (%99 of the world uses MS)
B. Write it for some obscure o/s that maybe has a what.. %2 market share if that?
*gasp*
Don't you think it's on the news because it affect's %99 of the computers in the world?
>>Damn, the logic train just keeps going...
Looks like your train just left the station.
--toq
>>After all, it is the other car that actually caused the fatalities, right?
First off, it was the person driving the car that caused the fatalities... Accidents do not happen without careless people, same rule applies to virii.
>>From the OpenBSD website: "Four years without a remote hole in the default install!"
Second, I say, "There are more people trying to exploit windows than any other system" What would be funny, and I hope someone in redmond is reading this, is if MS forms a non-ms o/s exploit team. I'd like to see how fast THEY could find remote exploits in alternative O/S.
Third and most importantly, if you wanted to write an effective virus, would you write it for an o/s that is installed on %1 of the worlds computers, or for the o/s that is installed on %99 of the computers. From a logistics standpoint, nimda on MS made sense for the virii author.
Don't hate MS for being on top, there's many of us that have built solid careers from fixing their buggy o/s.
--toq
~~moderators note* Posted with my real account because I stand behind my opinions even at the risk of a -1, unlike those anonymous karma whores.
>>In cases where the wrong people are in charge (like the dev team), it can help to try to get support from outside IT.
Yeah I was definetly trying that. It worked successfully to some degree but then you get retaliation flak. I was in the COO's office helping him with a problem when a member of the dev team came into his office and started screaming at the top of his lungs telling me I didn't have his permission to put his laptop into the DHCP pool and off the (allow all traffic) on the firewall AFTER i had just spent 1/2 a day cleaning up his rooted machine. I had asked him for 3 weeks to comply and he wouldn't because of my going around him before that on another issue.
Fortunately I did not raise my voice, years earlier my training as a phone monkey taught me how to handle hot customers. Let them rant for 3 minutes and they allways leave.
My black hole comment was based upon many covnversations with corporarate controllers over the years (actually fights) The dev team makes a product that requires a certain level of hardware that is expensive. The Controllers allways had to balance between profit and cost, as we have seen over the last year those that did not find that balance closed their doors.
But anyways, yeah thanks for enlightening me, it was simple and beutiful point you made, too bad it didn't get a +4 bonus from the mods.
--Toq