I couldn't find the shirt, but have you seen the graphic?
http://www.eff.org/Misc/Graphics/nsa_1984.gif
There's no mention of copyright. Perhaps contacting EFF and see if they have it and will let you use it? At the very least, I suspect they could set you up with someone. At that point, you could print a run of them youself.
You missed one. Look at the end users of the devices in question (e-book readers). My mother doesn't care about most of this stuff, but when I told her about this:
E-Book Users: Not only can you not use your books (often purchased for more than the cost of their paper counterparts) wherever and however you want, someone got arrested for trying to help you do that.
When I told her about the software, my mother wanted to know where/how to buy/use it.
The standard reply is "security through obscurity doesn't work". And in many cases, that does apply. However, this won't happen in the M$ case. Sure, they are no longer hiding their source (as much) but they have totally screwed up the feedback cycle.
First, they would need someone to dl the code and look at it. Some will, but due to the licensing weirdness, it won't be many.
Second, patches would have to be submitted, integrated, and then disseminated. The first might happen. The second will happen if the patches are good. But since WinCE lies in ROM, it's going to be hard (impossible?) to get this onto devices.
This is likely a pointless act, and the poster who mentioned it was used to demonstrate to the Supremes (I believe M$ is beginning to get around to filing an appeal with them) that they have changed. But, for various reasons, it is all BS.
It sure is. Ever tried Debian ? Now that's what i call upgrading.
To what? Kernel 2.0.39? X 3.3.5? Gnome 0.8?
Seriously though, I found Debian a bit too staid, and before I found out about sid, woody, etc., I had picked up progeny.
And it *has* been an improvement over RedHat (6.2 was working okay for me, but I wanted too much new stuff, and didn't want to deal with the 7.x weirdness).
Actually, I would have been editing/etc/lilo.conf if it weren't for how easy it was to install grub on progeny (or was it the default?)
I tried to wade through the grub documentation, but it didn't make any sense until I saw the menu.lst that progeny put on my machine. It actually works pretty well. I'm not sure that it's any better than lilo, but the menu.lst does look a bit cleaner than lilo.conf.
FWIW, I put in the comment because I felt someone had to. Looks like it cost me some karma.
And yes, lilo vs. grub may one day become the next emacs vs. vi. But really, who cares?
FWIW, I was due to upgrade kernels anyway. When sniffing around, I noticed two things: first, there was linux-2.4.7_tar.bz2. Second, things were going a bit slow towards the end. Thank goodness for my dumb luck:)
I would say that Slashdot just made a mistake. But... There's another POV:
Slashdot and EFF are the 'legitimate' and publicly accepted arms of the lunatic fringe. The people organizing the protest are the armed combatants and the nuts who give the EFF and/. their voice.
I might be looking at getting a serious down-modding, but it seems similar to the Sin Fein (sorry for butchering the spelling) and the IRA. Or similar splits amongst various Muslim groups.
One group comes to the table and talks. The other group beats on the windows and burns cars outside.
I find myself a fence-sitter. I was prepared to take off of work Monday had their been a protest in Wash. DC or Richmond, but I might very well have backed down.
My real concern is that the Monday protest would have likely gathered numbers due to the emotions involved. By delaying it, even if only for a few days, emotions will cool (especially other fencesitters, as well as those in the totally rational front) and the turnout will likely be less. The upshot is that more time=more chance to get the word out.
So, without playing devil's advocate: I think/. made a slight mistake in word usage (given their overall poor grammar, this is no surprise). But it can also be viewed as one member of one of the parts of the movement trying to cool down some hot heads. Unfortunately, rather than people listening to protesters, they are beating the shit out of them, and making efforts to conduct their meetings and so forth without an opportunity for protest at all. (The virtual WTO summit ideas, ie)
Yeah, having Superman's powers are great until Doomsday kicks your ass, or Imperiex kills your mom and dad.
(Boy, that latter was a bitch. But, somehow, I'm more upset about John Henry Irons' death. I'm thinking that the Kent's will turn up somewhere, whereas Steel is done.)
Rather as an investment in keeping poor people docile enough that they don't hunt rich people for food using any of the cheap and plentiful handguns available.
I might send them a portion of mine. But mostly, it's going to go to catch up on bills accumulated while my wife was out of work (four months. Maternity. Goes back on Monday.)
I would add that should you still not meet with satisfaction, mention the possibility of a small claims lawsuit. The CD was unfit for a particular use (playing it on a computer CD player.) Sure, this might not be a protected use, but your average small claims judge is just a regular slob, not like the assholes we have read so much about in/. at the federal level. When you tell him/her that it won't work in your PC, they'll likely say "well, shit, give 'em his money back". After all, s/he probably has a computer, and probably listens to CDs on it.
Unfortunately, the best you are probably going to get is a store credit, not cash.
Show the judge the puzzle and her solution, then demand that they also throw your mom in jail for circumventing the encryption on the eBook (and distributing the crack)!
Now we know where all the people on/. are getting it from!!
(The crack. As in "Gimme some of what you're smoking.")
The circumvention of security measures for educational and research reasons is explicitly protected. That is what this is.
Even if developing software and selling it commercially is illegal (okay, it probably is) the software was developed and only sold outside of the US (specifically, Russia).
Now, even though the US is a pretty damned big and important country (and let all those silly French people be damned. It's true. Don't fight it. Admit it;) its sovereignty does not extend over the borders of Russia.
He's been trying to get on the good side of the repo men, so he just buys off of the back of their truck.
Seriously though, you have a great point. It's not like he's new at this (making a purchase based on one odd line in a.conf file?) and it's not like he doesn't have the internet access to investigate further.
It's also not as if there aren't tons of scanners that are a) cheap and b) linux compatible. Okay, so you might have to go to one of those closeout type warehouse places (egghead software used to be one a year or two ago. I'm sure there are others).
This sounds like "I was too stupid to research a purchase, and now the 'leet skript kiddies are keeping HP from writing a driver".
In the end, he found a common solution to a common problem: he booted into Windows. And that merely compounded the problem.
HP hears all of the people ranting about what kind of whore-mongers they are. And CT doesn't send them a letter saying "HP, this seems like a great product. Unfortunately, I had to return it, as it doesn't support my OS. I appreciate your work on the printers. Is there a chance you could expand your open source efforts to a SANE module?"
How tough was that??? Certainly less so than writing this. Instead of HP seeing one rational letter vs. 100 irrational rants, they see only the rants.
Good job, Taco. You have made the problem worse (or, quite possibly, done another journalistic disservice by not giving the entire story. You know, the one where, in the end, you did write a letter to HP. Or at least HP via Bruce Perens. I'm sure you know him better than I.)
Maybe. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of a test. Who cares what the spead for writes, reads, and deletes are? The important things build on that. Examples:
When serving an NFS or SMB share, which filesystem performs best? In a shop with digital graphics files >100 MB? In a law office with files 100kb?
When used as a web server, with lots of static content? With dynamic content using Oracle? mySQL?
It's nice enough, but does it tell us anything other than (again, for example) the number of MFLOPS for a given CPU?
Well, why allow private lawsuits at all? Let the government watch all interactions, and settle all disputes with an impartial trying of facts!
Typically (again, blanket reminder, from a US perspective unless otherwise stated) private lawsuits are decided by impartial tryers of fact: judges. In this case, it seems (at least as far as German law has been explained in this and other discussions) that the law firm can, at its own discretion, decide who must pay for what. Further, the 'what' is damage and confusion to the public.
In the US, the lawyer would probably looked for somebody who downloaded the program, tried to install it under Windows and failed. Then he would sue for all real or imagined problems of that person...is this any better?
In one sense: something happened. In most instances in US law, something has to happen. Until recently, 'potential' problems aren't or weren't actionable. It would certainly help the case (at least my opinion of it, not necessarily the legal justification of it) if they could find one person who had suffered measurable harm from the confusing name. Barring that, I would like to know of a plausible situation where one person COULD come to harm (physical or monetary) owing to the confusion.
Were there a Corel Killustrator for $99.95, I could see it. Not a freely downloadable KDE/Linux Killustrator.
I am not claiming that the German system is perfect. It is one way to draw a boundary between public and private affairs, and I consider it to be a reasonable boundary
Perhaps this is the trick that is keeping me from accepting what you are saying. I was under the impression from the earlier post that German companies (or their representatives) could undertake actions like this for the "public good". If that is the case, then while a line between public and private concerns is important, it matters not, as this issue is a public one. Given that it is a public issue, a public forum should be the one to decide it (and that is a gut, emotional response. I'm sure that had I paid attention when reading Locke, et al. that I could offer a more reasoned response. But from my POV, it just makes sense.)
Ahh, found the quote from the earlier post:
So the lawyer is acting not on behalf of Adobe, but on behalf of the public.
Then let the public pay. I didn't pick those attorneys to protect me (okay, yeah, I'm in the US, but let's pretend I'm a German citizen).
I'm sure that this issue (and the laws upon which it hinges) are more in depth than presented here. I'm also quite sure that owing to differences in national mindset, I might never fully comprehend the rationale behind them.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't find the shirt, but have you seen the graphic?
http://www.eff.org/Misc/Graphics/nsa_1984.gif
There's no mention of copyright. Perhaps contacting EFF and see if they have it and will let you use it? At the very least, I suspect they could set you up with someone. At that point, you could print a run of them youself.
You missed one. Look at the end users of the devices in question (e-book readers). My mother doesn't care about most of this stuff, but when I told her about this:
E-Book Users: Not only can you not use your books (often purchased for more than the cost of their paper counterparts) wherever and however you want, someone got arrested for trying to help you do that.
When I told her about the software, my mother wanted to know where/how to buy/use it.
At least Katz is honest. It is not at all unusual for a movie critic to leave the theatre not long after the opening credits.
(Seen it myself. Lucky enough to score some press tickets while on my college newspaper.)
Okay, so using GPL code is cancerous and causes plagues, locusts, etc. But simply viewing M$ code is a danger.
Has that meeting with Mundie happened yet?
Is it possible to keep up with and inform the public of all of this BS that comes out of the M$ propaganda machine?
The standard reply is "security through obscurity doesn't work". And in many cases, that does apply. However, this won't happen in the M$ case. Sure, they are no longer hiding their source (as much) but they have totally screwed up the feedback cycle.
First, they would need someone to dl the code and look at it. Some will, but due to the licensing weirdness, it won't be many.
Second, patches would have to be submitted, integrated, and then disseminated. The first might happen. The second will happen if the patches are good. But since WinCE lies in ROM, it's going to be hard (impossible?) to get this onto devices.
This is likely a pointless act, and the poster who mentioned it was used to demonstrate to the Supremes (I believe M$ is beginning to get around to filing an appeal with them) that they have changed. But, for various reasons, it is all BS.
If Bill were my big brother, I'd have to beat his scrawny little ass.
Ever heard of reading? It says quite clearly in my post that I picked up progeny prior to learning exactly how sid worked.
And, FWIW, Progeny has much that sid does, without running the risk of hosing your system.
If there is justice, somebody is going to get metamodded to hell. "Flamebait"?
To what? Kernel 2.0.39? X 3.3.5? Gnome 0.8?
Seriously though, I found Debian a bit too staid, and before I found out about sid, woody, etc., I had picked up progeny.
And it *has* been an improvement over RedHat (6.2 was working okay for me, but I wanted too much new stuff, and didn't want to deal with the 7.x weirdness).
Actually, I would have been editing /etc/lilo.conf if it weren't for how easy it was to install grub on progeny (or was it the default?)
I tried to wade through the grub documentation, but it didn't make any sense until I saw the menu.lst that progeny put on my machine. It actually works pretty well. I'm not sure that it's any better than lilo, but the menu.lst does look a bit cleaner than lilo.conf.
FWIW, I put in the comment because I felt someone had to. Looks like it cost me some karma.
And yes, lilo vs. grub may one day become the next emacs vs. vi. But really, who cares?
Why not just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst?
FWIW, I was due to upgrade kernels anyway. When sniffing around, I noticed two things: first, there was linux-2.4.7_tar.bz2. Second, things were going a bit slow towards the end. Thank goodness for my dumb luck:)
I would say that Slashdot just made a mistake. But... There's another POV:
/. their voice.
/. made a slight mistake in word usage (given their overall poor grammar, this is no surprise). But it can also be viewed as one member of one of the parts of the movement trying to cool down some hot heads. Unfortunately, rather than people listening to protesters, they are beating the shit out of them, and making efforts to conduct their meetings and so forth without an opportunity for protest at all. (The virtual WTO summit ideas, ie)
Slashdot and EFF are the 'legitimate' and publicly accepted arms of the lunatic fringe. The people organizing the protest are the armed combatants and the nuts who give the EFF and
I might be looking at getting a serious down-modding, but it seems similar to the Sin Fein (sorry for butchering the spelling) and the IRA. Or similar splits amongst various Muslim groups.
One group comes to the table and talks. The other group beats on the windows and burns cars outside.
I find myself a fence-sitter. I was prepared to take off of work Monday had their been a protest in Wash. DC or Richmond, but I might very well have backed down.
My real concern is that the Monday protest would have likely gathered numbers due to the emotions involved. By delaying it, even if only for a few days, emotions will cool (especially other fencesitters, as well as those in the totally rational front) and the turnout will likely be less. The upshot is that more time=more chance to get the word out.
So, without playing devil's advocate: I think
Yeah, having Superman's powers are great until Doomsday kicks your ass, or Imperiex kills your mom and dad.
(Boy, that latter was a bitch. But, somehow, I'm more upset about John Henry Irons' death. I'm thinking that the Kent's will turn up somewhere, whereas Steel is done.)
Rock on. I've been saying this for years.
I might send them a portion of mine. But mostly, it's going to go to catch up on bills accumulated while my wife was out of work (four months. Maternity. Goes back on Monday.)
One of the benefits of a deaf wife:)
I thought EMACS was to text editing what a howitzer is to precision shooting:)
(I use emacs, so don't get all pissy)
I would add that should you still not meet with satisfaction, mention the possibility of a small claims lawsuit. The CD was unfit for a particular use (playing it on a computer CD player.) Sure, this might not be a protected use, but your average small claims judge is just a regular slob, not like the assholes we have read so much about in /. at the federal level. When you tell him/her that it won't work in your PC, they'll likely say "well, shit, give 'em his money back". After all, s/he probably has a computer, and probably listens to CDs on it.
Unfortunately, the best you are probably going to get is a store credit, not cash.
Now we know where all the people on
(The crack. As in "Gimme some of what you're smoking.")
(All together now...)
IANAL
But...
The circumvention of security measures for educational and research reasons is explicitly protected. That is what this is.
Even if developing software and selling it commercially is illegal (okay, it probably is) the software was developed and only sold outside of the US (specifically, Russia).
Now, even though the US is a pretty damned big and important country (and let all those silly French people be damned. It's true. Don't fight it. Admit it;) its sovereignty does not extend over the borders of Russia.
Well, maybe you can get 6 megs in 1.5 minutes, but most people can't. Many, many people can't (FWIW, I got it in about 2.5 minutes the other day:)
People will/are downloading Real* only as long as the builtin Windows Media Player isn't pre-installed. Same with WinAmp.
None of which really bothers me, personally, but that's how I'd explain the 'strum and drang' from the masses.
He's been trying to get on the good side of the repo men, so he just buys off of the back of their truck.
.conf file?) and it's not like he doesn't have the internet access to investigate further.
Seriously though, you have a great point. It's not like he's new at this (making a purchase based on one odd line in a
It's also not as if there aren't tons of scanners that are a) cheap and b) linux compatible. Okay, so you might have to go to one of those closeout type warehouse places (egghead software used to be one a year or two ago. I'm sure there are others).
This sounds like "I was too stupid to research a purchase, and now the 'leet skript kiddies are keeping HP from writing a driver".
In the end, he found a common solution to a common problem: he booted into Windows. And that merely compounded the problem.
HP hears all of the people ranting about what kind of whore-mongers they are. And CT doesn't send them a letter saying "HP, this seems like a great product. Unfortunately, I had to return it, as it doesn't support my OS. I appreciate your work on the printers. Is there a chance you could expand your open source efforts to a SANE module?"
How tough was that??? Certainly less so than writing this. Instead of HP seeing one rational letter vs. 100 irrational rants, they see only the rants.
Good job, Taco. You have made the problem worse (or, quite possibly, done another journalistic disservice by not giving the entire story. You know, the one where, in the end, you did write a letter to HP. Or at least HP via Bruce Perens. I'm sure you know him better than I.)
Maybe. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of a test. Who cares what the spead for writes, reads, and deletes are? The important things build on that. Examples:
When serving an NFS or SMB share, which filesystem performs best? In a shop with digital graphics files >100 MB? In a law office with files 100kb?
When used as a web server, with lots of static content? With dynamic content using Oracle? mySQL?
It's nice enough, but does it tell us anything other than (again, for example) the number of MFLOPS for a given CPU?
Heck, maybe not even that much.
Now I think I get it. And yes, I can see the similarities (especially after having read the other /. stories today).
Typically (again, blanket reminder, from a US perspective unless otherwise stated) private lawsuits are decided by impartial tryers of fact: judges. In this case, it seems (at least as far as German law has been explained in this and other discussions) that the law firm can, at its own discretion, decide who must pay for what. Further, the 'what' is damage and confusion to the public.
In one sense: something happened. In most instances in US law, something has to happen. Until recently, 'potential' problems aren't or weren't actionable. It would certainly help the case (at least my opinion of it, not necessarily the legal justification of it) if they could find one person who had suffered measurable harm from the confusing name. Barring that, I would like to know of a plausible situation where one person COULD come to harm (physical or monetary) owing to the confusion.
Were there a Corel Killustrator for $99.95, I could see it. Not a freely downloadable KDE/Linux Killustrator.
Perhaps this is the trick that is keeping me from accepting what you are saying. I was under the impression from the earlier post that German companies (or their representatives) could undertake actions like this for the "public good". If that is the case, then while a line between public and private concerns is important, it matters not, as this issue is a public one. Given that it is a public issue, a public forum should be the one to decide it (and that is a gut, emotional response. I'm sure that had I paid attention when reading Locke, et al. that I could offer a more reasoned response. But from my POV, it just makes sense.)
Ahh, found the quote from the earlier post:
Then let the public pay. I didn't pick those attorneys to protect me (okay, yeah, I'm in the US, but let's pretend I'm a German citizen).
I'm sure that this issue (and the laws upon which it hinges) are more in depth than presented here. I'm also quite sure that owing to differences in national mindset, I might never fully comprehend the rationale behind them.