For three years, we had to contend with extremely stupid and non-sensical rules. At times, the school even censored of services like Hotmail to require users to use "in-house" email, regardless of how long people had external accounts. Eventually the system was abandoned because sites people needed to do research from were blocked, and it became increasingly difficult for admins to remove single sites with ~'s in them. -MR
If there were 19,000 potential errors in Folorida (heck if there were only 3,000 from the crappy ballots), it makes you wonder what it was like elsewhere in the country. Granted there are going to be errors in counting 100,000,000 votes, but the only reason it has come to light in Florida is because it was the deciding state, and the vote was so close. But what about errors in California or New York? Won't there potentially affect the outcome there too? -MR
I heard about MP3-format audio from people here long before i heard a peep from American media. MP3 is as big in Canada as in the US. Every 11-year-old and up with a computer has a hard-drive full of the same pop-crap, with Napster and SX to go along with it. Heck, they don't know that you can't play mp3's without napster. Basically, its the same here as in the US, except the copyright laws are probably slightly different, and we don't directly have the DMCA. -MR
... for the US patent office to start actually READING applications for patents? I mean, it seems absurd that people can patent things like websevers, which are so common. Patents are designed to protect ORIGINAL ideas, so that people who put time and effort into them can reap the benefits of their work. What they've turned into is a free-for-all on "what can i sue people over?". Eventually, these stupid patents will be overturned by some higher authority (i'm assuming there is one), because 20-something years without being able to use your own webserver is a long time! -MR
...its not all that different. Granted, we don't have draconian laws like the DMCA and such, and we don't (to our knowledge) have the RCMP with records on citizens, but that said, we don't have the kinda rights on individual freedoms that you do. While we are guaranteed protection agains "unreasonable search and seizure", no one is exactly clear what comprises this, especially when it comes to computers. Now, I know people who were charged with computer-related offenses, and didn't get their equipment back for years afterwards. However, I haven't heard of hacking offenses up here like in the US. However, i think that in light of all the laws outlawing "hackers" and "crackers" in both countries, I think that some law or precident needs to be set to apply freedom laws to people with computers. I mean, if my boxen got confiscated because of firewall logs, i would be sitting on a judges ass to get it overturned.
Um, one little problem: Minidisc is an audio format. Yes, there is a data-storage version, but it only stores like 100-and-something megs, and its very hard to come by, especially for several hundred machines. That, and audio minidiscs won't work in data drives, and dumb people WILL make that mistake. Nice try, but... -MR
and neither me nor my friends have had any problems. I've been using Zip disks for about 4 years, and love 'em. They're reasonable fast, relatively cheap, and what has happened at school since every non-Solaris box has one is that everyone carries one around. There are people who have had the same disc for all three years of school! Its a widely available format, and 100 megs is more then enough for any student. Reliability is not an issue. The university, BTW, is U of Manitoba, and widespread Zip use has worked for them. They do, of course, still have floppy drives. -MR
...had the police sent in to recover a mis-addressed prototype sent in the mail.
There was an article on Slashdot quite a while ago about Microsoft accidentally shipping a customer a prototype TV-Internet unit, rather then the normal model. Because of their mistake, Micosoft had the police go to the customers house to retreive their mistake.
While Angelfire and the other hosting site aren't govt owned, doesn't it seem like large companies have a little too much power to fix their mistakes? -MR
I have fought more with Videon@Home people then any other tech support service I have ever dealt with. Originaly, they used a local ISP for access, and supplied hardware for a system called "Wave". This was great for me cuz i had shell access on the same ISP i've been using for 7 years. However, when people started to sign up, they realized it'd be cheaper to provide crappier service through @Home, using their standards and tech-support, then do it right. I've been suffering ever since. Connection speeds have dropped an average of 65%, news is now censored, and its down half the time. Oh, and to add to the pain, they forced everyone to change email addresses. It would cost them nothing to maintain the wave email addresses, rather then getting an AOLish @home address (ie, you6948@home.com).
What really hurts is that business customers can maintain the old service, but at double the cost. They want to charge me the business rate just to keep my email address. DSL is around here, but its horribly unreliable. What the broadband industry needs is competition. The CRTC made a ruling saying that even privately-held cable networks can be used by other ISP's, so i'm thinging how hard could it be to piggy-back a legit cable ISP on their network? I don't even have to make money on it, just as long as i get decent bandwidth... here's the link to the ruling - http://www.crtc.gc.ca/a rch ive/Decisions/1999/DT99-11.htm -MR
No, they don't have a point. The concept of contemptuously breaking into a system and caused damage is bad, and should be illegal, but the problem becomes how do lawyers, who don't even type their own memos, create laws regarding this?
OK, so systems admins are allowed "hacking tools". What makes someone a system-admin? I mean, I have a server at home with 4 users... does that make me an admin? Besides, hackers have caused just as much good as harm. How often have you heard of "hacker takes down DOJ database" or whatever? Never! (almost). Thats because most systems are relatively secure, and because the only way to ensure that is to get broken into. I know several IT people who learned their lessons big-time after being attacked, and it made the rest of the systems they designed that much safer.
Besides, making hacking tools illegal is like making ZigZag's illegal (bad example but same idea). It doesn't stop druggies by any means. The internet is a free medium, and as long as it stays that way, it means that ISPs and Server Admins have to protect their little corner of cyberspace. If they can't do that, they shouldn't be allowed online. -MR
Without things like BugTraq, hacking may be illeagle, but those who don't get caught will be far more effective if IT Admins can't patch (or know about) security holes... Thats all part of the game... besides, in the US at least, free speech laws will overrule that part of it. -MR
To be simple, i was in the same boat as the article writer (sorry, your name escapes me). So i built (for $120) a Celeron-based linux box from spare parts, and run roymail.com
I am slowly adding features, includeing redundancy (i'm in Winnipeg, and will soon have secondary DNS and MX reciprocating with someone in Toronto off a separate backbone), and am adding SSH. My uptime on the server is 31 days, and the server has been together 31 days (I lied: no UPS + power outage two nights ago). I have shell access, web based access, and pop3 access. All server software is opensource, and anyone wanting an account is welcome to one (shell access requires an email to me). What more could i ask for?!? -MR
Back in the laste '50, when nuclear power was still all "new and wonderful", the US Government embarked on Project Plowshare, with the goal of using atomic and thermonuclear weapons for the purpose of digging.
I believe the project was abandoned, but the idea was highly publicised to the public at the time (since they had to be convinved it was safe if they were going to make canals and such near populated areas). I'm not sure what they decided about safety though. Atomic weapons would clearly not be safe (which is why you can't just go strolling around Murcury, Nevada nowadays!).
I come from a nuclear weapon free country (go Canada!), and ass for as i'm concerned, anyone trying to build rivers and resevoirs, regardless of where, with nuke's is nuts. All i can say is that your old weapons is just fuel for our reactors.
Slashdot Mirror
For three years, we had to contend with extremely stupid and non-sensical rules. At times, the school even censored of services like Hotmail to require users to use "in-house" email, regardless of how long people had external accounts. Eventually the system was abandoned because sites people needed to do research from were blocked, and it became increasingly difficult for admins to remove single sites with ~'s in them.
-MR
If there were 19,000 potential errors in Folorida (heck if there were only 3,000 from the crappy ballots), it makes you wonder what it was like elsewhere in the country. Granted there are going to be errors in counting 100,000,000 votes, but the only reason it has come to light in Florida is because it was the deciding state, and the vote was so close. But what about errors in California or New York? Won't there potentially affect the outcome there too?
-MR
I heard about MP3-format audio from people here long before i heard a peep from American media. MP3 is as big in Canada as in the US. Every 11-year-old and up with a computer has a hard-drive full of the same pop-crap, with Napster and SX to go along with it. Heck, they don't know that you can't play mp3's without napster. Basically, its the same here as in the US, except the copyright laws are probably slightly different, and we don't directly have the DMCA.
-MR
... for the US patent office to start actually READING applications for patents? I mean, it seems absurd that people can patent things like websevers, which are so common. Patents are designed to protect ORIGINAL ideas, so that people who put time and effort into them can reap the benefits of their work. What they've turned into is a free-for-all on "what can i sue people over?". Eventually, these stupid patents will be overturned by some higher authority (i'm assuming there is one), because 20-something years without being able to use your own webserver is a long time!
-MR
...the agents were probably Yankees fans!
-MR
...its not all that different. Granted, we don't have draconian laws like the DMCA and such, and we don't (to our knowledge) have the RCMP with records on citizens, but that said, we don't have the kinda rights on individual freedoms that you do. While we are guaranteed protection agains "unreasonable search and seizure", no one is exactly clear what comprises this, especially when it comes to computers. Now, I know people who were charged with computer-related offenses, and didn't get their equipment back for years afterwards. However, I haven't heard of hacking offenses up here like in the US. However, i think that in light of all the laws outlawing "hackers" and "crackers" in both countries, I think that some law or precident needs to be set to apply freedom laws to people with computers. I mean, if my boxen got confiscated because of firewall logs, i would be sitting on a judges ass to get it overturned.
Just my $0.02
-MR
Um, one little problem: Minidisc is an audio format. Yes, there is a data-storage version, but it only stores like 100-and-something megs, and its very hard to come by, especially for several hundred machines. That, and audio minidiscs won't work in data drives, and dumb people WILL make that mistake. Nice try, but...
-MR
and neither me nor my friends have had any problems. I've been using Zip disks for about 4 years, and love 'em. They're reasonable fast, relatively cheap, and what has happened at school since every non-Solaris box has one is that everyone carries one around. There are people who have had the same disc for all three years of school! Its a widely available format, and 100 megs is more then enough for any student. Reliability is not an issue. The university, BTW, is U of Manitoba, and widespread Zip use has worked for them. They do, of course, still have floppy drives.
-MR
...had the police sent in to recover a mis-addressed prototype sent in the mail.
There was an article on Slashdot quite a while ago about Microsoft accidentally shipping a customer a prototype TV-Internet unit, rather then the normal model. Because of their mistake, Micosoft had the police go to the customers house to retreive their mistake.
While Angelfire and the other hosting site aren't govt owned, doesn't it seem like large companies have a little too much power to fix their mistakes?
-MR
I have fought more with Videon@Home people then any other tech support service I have ever dealt with. Originaly, they used a local ISP for access, and supplied hardware for a system called "Wave". This was great for me cuz i had shell access on the same ISP i've been using for 7 years. However, when people started to sign up, they realized it'd be cheaper to provide crappier service through @Home, using their standards and tech-support, then do it right. I've been suffering ever since. Connection speeds have dropped an average of 65%, news is now censored, and its down half the time. Oh, and to add to the pain, they forced everyone to change email addresses. It would cost them nothing to maintain the wave email addresses, rather then getting an AOLish @home address (ie, you6948@home.com).
What really hurts is that business customers can maintain the old service, but at double the cost. They want to charge me the business rate just to keep my email address. DSL is around here, but its horribly unreliable. What the broadband industry needs is competition. The CRTC made a ruling saying that even privately-held cable networks can be used by other ISP's, so i'm thinging how hard could it be to piggy-back a legit cable ISP on their network? I don't even have to make money on it, just as long as i get decent bandwidth... here's the link to the ruling - http://www.crtc.gc.ca/a rch ive/Decisions/1999/DT99-11.htm
-MR
No, they don't have a point. The concept of contemptuously breaking into a system and caused damage is bad, and should be illegal, but the problem becomes how do lawyers, who don't even type their own memos, create laws regarding this?
OK, so systems admins are allowed "hacking tools". What makes someone a system-admin? I mean, I have a server at home with 4 users... does that make me an admin? Besides, hackers have caused just as much good as harm. How often have you heard of "hacker takes down DOJ database" or whatever? Never! (almost). Thats because most systems are relatively secure, and because the only way to ensure that is to get broken into. I know several IT people who learned their lessons big-time after being attacked, and it made the rest of the systems they designed that much safer.
Besides, making hacking tools illegal is like making ZigZag's illegal (bad example but same idea). It doesn't stop druggies by any means. The internet is a free medium, and as long as it stays that way, it means that ISPs and Server Admins have to protect their little corner of cyberspace. If they can't do that, they shouldn't be allowed online.
-MR
Without things like BugTraq, hacking may be illeagle, but those who don't get caught will be far more effective if IT Admins can't patch (or know about) security holes... Thats all part of the game... besides, in the US at least, free speech laws will overrule that part of it.
-MR
To be simple, i was in the same boat as the article writer (sorry, your name escapes me). So i built (for $120) a Celeron-based linux box from spare parts, and run roymail.com
I am slowly adding features, includeing redundancy (i'm in Winnipeg, and will soon have secondary DNS and MX reciprocating with someone in Toronto off a separate backbone), and am adding SSH. My uptime on the server is 31 days, and the server has been together 31 days (I lied: no UPS + power outage two nights ago). I have shell access, web based access, and pop3 access. All server software is opensource, and anyone wanting an account is welcome to one (shell access requires an email to me). What more could i ask for?!?
-MR
Back in the laste '50, when nuclear power was still all "new and wonderful", the US Government embarked on Project Plowshare, with the goal of using atomic and thermonuclear weapons for the purpose of digging.
I believe the project was abandoned, but the idea was highly publicised to the public at the time (since they had to be convinved it was safe if they were going to make canals and such near populated areas). I'm not sure what they decided about safety though. Atomic weapons would clearly not be safe (which is why you can't just go strolling around Murcury, Nevada nowadays!).
I come from a nuclear weapon free country (go Canada!), and ass for as i'm concerned, anyone trying to build rivers and resevoirs, regardless of where, with nuke's is nuts. All i can say is that your old weapons is just fuel for our reactors.
-MR
-MR