Suppose that I had discovered a method to factor the product of two large strong prime numbers. This method allows me to factor the product in a reasonable amount of time using a small ( < 100K ) amount of commonly available computers and networking.
Such a discovery, if disclosed to the public, would represent a severe threat to the national security of the United States of America and her citizens. Disclosed only to the National Security Agency, it would be a useful tool in the defense and security of this nation.
What would the proper way to disclose such a discovery to elements of the National Security Agency?
You guys might not like this, but I think the reasonable answer is that "robots.txt" should be obeyed........If you don't want to be metabrowsed then you ought to accept that you can't be spidered by search engines either--all or nothing, you ought not to pick and choose who can or cannot spider you.
Do you understand robots.txt? It not only allows you to specify what areas, but also what spiders are allowed to visit. Are you for or against this?
It's not about copyright, but about someone who was specifically asked to stop an intrusive action from doing so.
If I knocked on your door, do you think you would have a chance in hell of getting a restraining order from a judge because it was a nuisance? Certainly not. Now what if I knocked on your door every five minutes 24 hours a day?
When it becomes excessive, and I've asked you to cut it out, and you ignore my polite requests, then the law steps in a brings the force of goverment against you. This is true for anything, and it will be true for the web.
Make no mistake, eBay is cutting it's own throat by this attempt at network domination, but it's their throat to cut..
The real problem is that there is a significant difference between a person viewing a page and a bot "viewing" a page. It is reasonable to assume that a person might (however remotely) bid on the listing. Bots can't bid.
Many ebay auctions have hit counters. I've seen those counters at a ratio of 80 views per 1 bid. That is a pretty remote chance. In the not so distant future we may have bots bidding on items.
Several people here have pointed out search engines, but there's a big difference: AltaVista/Google/etc. honor robots.txt. According to some posters here BiddersEdge appears not to have honored it.
Ebay does not have a/robots.txt. Pretty silly that they don't because then I think that most of the community would agree with the rest of your stated position.
Ebay isn't interested in protecting AD revenue. They are trying to prevent people from discovering other auction locations. They have allowed other companies to spider their site, but only when the ebay content is placed on a page separate from other auctions sites.
They want to inhibit the ability to co-mingle data from multiple sources, so that they can create an maintain a monopoly in the online auction space.
I used to be a real Trek junky. I would seldom miss a new or rerun episode and would usually tape them.
Then I got a DSS system, where Trek wasn't and still isn't available. Thus, I quit watching. While it was a great show, I wasn't about to go out of my way to pay to get it. Their active decision to not allow it on my distribution system of choice is why they lost a viewer.
Now, I don't have time to watch DSS. Now they would have to get it distributed through the net. There is an important lesson here. If the entertainment industry doesn't quickly adopt new distribution systems (like DSS & Internet) just because they conflict with their legacy systems (like geographic dist), the result will be a loss of viewership, and thus loss of revenue, that makes the potential loss of revenue from piracy totally negligble.
The song and movie have nothing to do with Canada. And the song was NOT nominated because of the "cool tune". The movie is about where responsibility should lay for anti-social activities. In the movie, Canada serves as a stand-in for the movie and TV industry. The whole point is to show the absurdity of trying to attack someone simply because you find their speech distasteful or crude. Canada is used solely for the absurdity factor.
This song got nominated over all others in the film because it spoke to the feelings that many in the guild have about the attacks on their craft. Nominations are a result of voting by the guild, not by the general public. So while we may all think "Uncle" is a great laugh, it's not as important as "Blame Canada" to the guild.
And for the record, I think it has a good chance of winning, and I'm sure many of the same people who are singing that song in their souls will condemn the industry for it. The sad thing about fanatics is they usually don't realize when they are being made fun of.
but it seems to me that it is in a different category because it is "tied" directly to hardware,
All software is tied to hardware in some way. If transmeta did open the source to the code morphing, then you or I, and huge bankroll could design our own chips that used the technology, or we might be able to use it at some other level.
Just because it's low level doesn't make the rules different. Metcalfe just doesn't understand the rules.
But, dosn't anyone realize that having the source makes it easier for the trinoo coders to see how they are being detected and then modify the clients?
It's painfully obvious to see what they are looking for. Just analyze the executable. They took no efforts to hide the "fingerprints". This attack isn't being done by skilled best-of-breed hackers. It's being done by script-kiddies. Having source wouldn't help them.
But, say, some Columbian drug lord wanted to guage build up of DEA forces in area Foo. He could go through a proxy, but how deeply would the company check backgrounds for ppossible nefarious uses? Oh how sad that we have come to the point where LOOKING at things has become "nefarious uses".
Re:Another (L)GPLed project that will never finish
on
GNUstep 0.6.5 freeze
·
· Score: 4
Anyone who would devote any time to GNUstep is an idiot.
Please, tell us what you really think. I devote time to GNUstep because it allows me to quickly write cool software that we need and distribute it on commodity hardware that runs an operating system that supports the cards and features we need. I make money doing this. How does this make me an idiot?
It is possible to work with GPLed software for the wrong, and wasteful reasons. But just choosing GNUstep over the competition doesn't make one an idiot.
This project will clearly never finish.
Probably so. Like most free software it will continue to live and improve each day. However they have met several important goals, and they stuff the code as it stands is useful TODAY.
GNUstep is in the same hopeless position as projects such as GNU Classpath, forever trying to catch up to an evolving standard.
At the time GNUstep started, OpenStep was supposed to become a certified standard. Since then Apple bought NeXT (who saw it coming?) and is trying to take their existing code base and justify the purchase. Whether they actually ship it is another question.
.. snip.. The bizarre GNUstep mission page claims that the project will accomodate both commercial and free software. How's that supposed to happen with GPLed libraries?
The libraries are LPGL, not GPL. There is nothing in the GPL that prevents commercial projects from using the source. There is nothing that requires them to distribute the source unless they distribute binaries. For MCCA users, there is no conflict
The problem is that GNUStep hasn't reached a point where GUI OpenStep apps can just be compiled
We find most command line stuff "just builds". We type make, and it's off to the races. The GUI stuff is a bit harder. It compiles, but the interface format used by NeXT / Apple is un-documented, so you have to convert the interfaces. The GUI apps compile, they just run a bit funky.
but where are the applications? Isn't that what people used to (and still) say about Linux? The fact is that it's a great API, and as it get's better more and more people will release it.
There's like maybe two that have been released. Having the library is great, but if there's no real use for it, no one will care. There is a real use for it. We use it internally to deploy apps that were originally written for OpenStep. Most current OpenStep developers are survivors of the great MCCA purge, and as a result, commercial apps aren't their highest priority or best focus. I
I don't know if there are very many open-source NeXTSTEP apps out there either. Many NeXT apps were released as OpenSource before the term was invented. You can find some of the latest and greatest on StepWise, or on ftp.peak.org.
Mac OS X has several programming interfaces, one of which is called Cocoa. Depending on what you combine with it, this is also similar to OS X Server, Rhapsody, Yellow Box, OpenStep and NeXTSTEP.
NeXTSTEP (an operating system) was first, and had a damn good programming model, but originally only ran on NeXT's hardware.(which was pretty sweet, but also pretty expensive) (and also one version on RS/6000, running on AIX, again fast, sweet and expensive.).
NeXT then began making moves to dump hardware and make NeXTSTEP available on Intel hardware.
Right around that time, they also started development on OpenStep, which has a very similar object hierarchy to NeXTSTEP, but uses a better object allocation model, and has renamed many methods to make the API "cleaner".
To move an application from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep, you ran a series of scripts that would convert to the new API.
OpenStep was made to run on several OS's including Solaris, Mach (from NeXT), HP/UX and Windows. OpenStep meant two things at the time, both the API and the NeXT delivered operating system as a whole. One was called OpenStep, and the other was OPENSTEP. You guess which was which.
Any ways, Apple bought NeXT so that the NeXT management team could take over Apple, and now all that API is part of OSX Server and soon OSX.
It is easy to move a program from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep or OSX Server. I moved Xox, an arcade style shooter with a few days of work.
It is trivial to move the average program from OpenStep or OSX Server to GNUstep. In many cases the same code compiles on both.
We moved our entire development over to GNUstep, and haven't looked back yet. We found the Foundation kit to be more stable than Apple's and easier to explore.
This is on eBays site today. The eBay site will be unavailable for Y2K verification from 15:30 PST to 18:00 PST on Friday, December 31 and from 23:00 PST, Friday, December 31 to 03:00 PST, Saturday, January 1. If you try to connect to eBay during these times, you may receive a "Failed to connect" error message.
What's the point of Y2K verification if you aren't going to be around on Y2K?
Why do WE need a legal defense fund? If Napster decided to go into business, they should be ready to fight the lawsuit.
Isn't napster the same people who made an open source developer remove the source to his competing product?
Why do they deserve my money to fight their lawsuit? Say they win against the RIAA, and then they go public, and have a multi-billion dollar marketcap. What have I accomplished except to make them rich?
Not every person who gets himself into a legal battle deserves free legal support.
The best way, IMO, to handle problems like this was what I (among several) suggested as the most direct solution: Mirror the site in an area outside FBI jurisdiction.
If the FBI contacted the ISP, and he did such a thing, he could be found guilty for obstruction of justice, even if the act of justice being performed by the FBI was illegal.
The right thing to do is not "avoid the problem", but rather to confront it head on, and stand up for your rights. Running to some mystical data haven won't solve the problem. The FBI is an agent of the country with the most firepower. Fortunately, it's also one of the most democratic countries in the world.
If you want to have rights you must stand up for them, and be prepared to fight for them. Don't wait for the ongoing of infringement of your right to be fought off by thrid parties.
The implementation of this technology will mean that any civilian broadcaster can be viewed as a legitime wartime target, solely due to the passive activity of transmitting.
MatrixCubed is just playing the media (which includes slashdot these days)
Everyone here seems to be making a big fuss over the "rights" of this 17 year old to attend. (this is a YRO story right?)
I first attended Comdex in 1984, when I was 14. Since I live in Las Vegas, it's not that hard to get there. While in the past years they have had a statement about minimum age, they make on average two dozen exceptions EVERY year. In other words, if you are for real, and you ask, no problem.
I know this because holding comdex really tasks this town for security people, and I know a few who end up working there for extra bucks. They all get the indoctrination on the different badge types, the show rules etc. Every year they hand out the list of "people under age who are allowed in anyways".
This whole story is just a way for MatrixCubed to get some free press
There was a time when/. was about people who are plugged in discounting the lies. That was the whole point of the "new-media". Now it has become just another instrument to get the populace roused up over non-issues.
Was this the case of another online investment scam or a bona fide attempt to conduct corporate finance in cyberspace?
This was a scam and illegal, even if the internet wasn't involved. In at least one case, the person offering to sell stock in the company, had no actual incorporation. That means that the stock didn't exist. "Corporate finance in cyberspace"? Give me a break.
To sell securities, anywhere , you must comply with certain simple regulations. In plain english here are some of the things they did wrong:
Did not have a corporate entity (You can't sell shares in a partnership)
Made outragreous claims (aka lies)
Did not disclose that the sale would be for a restricted unregistered security
Committed out and out fraud
I could go on with this list, but it's pretty obvious that all three of these acts were not about "corporate finance". Of course there are hundred of "paper cut" regulations that you still have to abide by in selling registered securities, or when generally soliciting, but that isn't what we are talking about here.
The sad thing is that as a result of these three, eBay has been closed off as an avenue for the sale of companies that are planning legitimate registered offerings.
The implications that the SEC is anti-internet that I see both in this post and in many of the replies are just puzzling. They have been bending over backwards with things like the U7 to make sure that small companies aren't shut out of public fund raising. They have been issuing No Action letters left and right for things like NIPHIX, and rule504. I guess a lot of this is just left over venom from those shutout from Red Hat.
With all the slamming that takes place on the securties market of late here on/. , how about Slashdot invites someone like Richard Wulff for an interview?
Are slashdotters just flame-a-holics, AOL bashers, or do they just not read the link?
I usually only read comments scored 2 and higher, and as of this post there are 27 of those. Almost every one refers to this mythical lawsuit. (It's the fault of Hemos for getting the ball rolling)
AOL sent a cease-and-desist letter. That is not a lawsuit. It is the common first round in a any trademark dispute. It basically says, "BOO! We don't like what you are doing and we want you to cut it out." I've recieved dozens of these over my lifetime, and I've sent a few out. It's a formal notification that you have been noticed doing something that irritates someone. It's never gone to court.
Companies seldom start with a lawsuit because they are costly, drawn out, difficult to endure, and most non legal people are scared off by a formal looking letter from a lawyer (just look at how many web sites fold on a cease and desist).
All she has to do is send a polite letter back telling them that she feels she is well within her rights, and that she isn't going to budge or give an inch. End of story.
If they persist, then she offers to clean up the second printing by putting in a disclaimer that the book is not endorsed or affiliated with AOL. Again, End of story.
If they still persist, then she points out why a lawsuit would be costly to them, require them to travel to CO to sue her, be a loss for them (no confusion, parody exemption, reasonable assumption exemption, similarity exemption, etc) or that it would endanger their trademark, or that it would generate bad press etc. Again, this is an end of story point where they come to an agreement
Finally, you can drag it out until a change in management, validity of the trademark, work the politics in the company, etc, and they decide to go away. Again, endgame.
It's also important for everyone to realize that when you are issued a trademark, you must defend or lose ownership. Defend doesn't mean sue, it means you just need to "care". A lot of these actions are merely for "show".
I can asure you that if I decided to print the slashdot.org trademark, or something similar (news for Geeks, stuff that matters) on a shirt tommorow, and then flaunted it in front of Andover legal staff, I would recieve the same letter. It is the way the real world plays.
Of course, according to p54 of the offering document, Rob can be terminated without cause at any time. When you get fire you tend to lose creative control.
Slashdot Mirror
Such a discovery, if disclosed to the public, would represent a severe threat to the national security of the United States of America and her citizens. Disclosed only to the National Security Agency, it would be a useful tool in the defense and security of this nation.
What would the proper way to disclose such a discovery to elements of the National Security Agency?
Do you understand robots.txt? It not only allows you to specify what areas, but also what spiders are allowed to visit. Are you for or against this?
It's not about copyright, but about someone who was specifically asked to stop an intrusive action from doing so.
If I knocked on your door, do you think you would have a chance in hell of getting a restraining order from a judge because it was a nuisance? Certainly not. Now what if I knocked on your door every five minutes 24 hours a day?
When it becomes excessive, and I've asked you to cut it out, and you ignore my polite requests, then the law steps in a brings the force of goverment against you. This is true for anything, and it will be true for the web.
Make no mistake, eBay is cutting it's own throat by this attempt at network domination, but it's their throat to cut..
Many ebay auctions have hit counters. I've seen those counters at a ratio of 80 views per 1 bid. That is a pretty remote chance. In the not so distant future we may have bots bidding on items.
Ebay does not have a /robots.txt. Pretty silly that they don't because then I think that most of the community would agree with the rest of your stated position.
They want to inhibit the ability to co-mingle data from multiple sources, so that they can create an maintain a monopoly in the online auction space.
Then I got a DSS system, where Trek wasn't and still isn't available. Thus, I quit watching. While it was a great show, I wasn't about to go out of my way to pay to get it. Their active decision to not allow it on my distribution system of choice is why they lost a viewer.
Now, I don't have time to watch DSS. Now they would have to get it distributed through the net. There is an important lesson here. If the entertainment industry doesn't quickly adopt new distribution systems (like DSS & Internet) just because they conflict with their legacy systems (like geographic dist), the result will be a loss of viewership, and thus loss of revenue, that makes the potential loss of revenue from piracy totally negligble.
Do they still have their privacy? Do they still have their secrets? No, they don't. It doesn't have to physical to be stealable.
This song got nominated over all others in the film because it spoke to the feelings that many in the guild have about the attacks on their craft. Nominations are a result of voting by the guild, not by the general public. So while we may all think "Uncle" is a great laugh, it's not as important as "Blame Canada" to the guild.
And for the record, I think it has a good chance of winning, and I'm sure many of the same people who are singing that song in their souls will condemn the industry for it. The sad thing about fanatics is they usually don't realize when they are being made fun of.
All software is tied to hardware in some way. If transmeta did open the source to the code morphing, then you or I, and huge bankroll could design our own chips that used the technology, or we might be able to use it at some other level.
Just because it's low level doesn't make the rules different. Metcalfe just doesn't understand the rules.
It's painfully obvious to see what they are looking for. Just analyze the executable. They took no efforts to hide the "fingerprints". This attack isn't being done by skilled best-of-breed hackers. It's being done by script-kiddies. Having source wouldn't help them.
But, say, some Columbian drug lord wanted to guage build up of DEA forces in area Foo. He could go through a proxy, but how deeply would the company check backgrounds for ppossible nefarious uses? Oh how sad that we have come to the point where LOOKING at things has become "nefarious uses".
Please, tell us what you really think. I devote time to GNUstep because it allows me to quickly write cool software that we need and distribute it on commodity hardware that runs an operating system that supports the cards and features we need. I make money doing this. How does this make me an idiot?
It is possible to work with GPLed software for the wrong, and wasteful reasons. But just choosing GNUstep over the competition doesn't make one an idiot.
This project will clearly never finish.
Probably so. Like most free software it will continue to live and improve each day. However they have met several important goals, and they stuff the code as it stands is useful TODAY.
GNUstep is in the same hopeless position as projects such as GNU Classpath, forever trying to catch up to an evolving standard.
At the time GNUstep started, OpenStep was supposed to become a certified standard. Since then Apple bought NeXT (who saw it coming?) and is trying to take their existing code base and justify the purchase. Whether they actually ship it is another question.
The libraries are LPGL, not GPL. There is nothing in the GPL that prevents commercial projects from using the source. There is nothing that requires them to distribute the source unless they distribute binaries. For MCCA users, there is no conflict
We find most command line stuff "just builds". We type make, and it's off to the races. The GUI stuff is a bit harder. It compiles, but the interface format used by NeXT / Apple is un-documented, so you have to convert the interfaces. The GUI apps compile, they just run a bit funky.
Isn't that what people used to (and still) say about Linux? The fact is that it's a great API, and as it get's better more and more people will release it.
There's like maybe two that have been released. Having the library is great, but if there's no real use for it, no one will care.
There is a real use for it. We use it internally to deploy apps that were originally written for OpenStep. Most current OpenStep developers are survivors of the great MCCA purge, and as a result, commercial apps aren't their highest priority or best focus. I
I don't know if there are very many open-source NeXTSTEP apps out there either.
Many NeXT apps were released as OpenSource before the term was invented. You can find some of the latest and greatest on StepWise, or on ftp.peak.org.
NeXTSTEP (an operating system) was first, and had a damn good programming model, but originally only ran on NeXT's hardware.(which was pretty sweet, but also pretty expensive) (and also one version on RS/6000, running on AIX, again fast, sweet and expensive.).
NeXT then began making moves to dump hardware and make NeXTSTEP available on Intel hardware.
Right around that time, they also started development on OpenStep, which has a very similar object hierarchy to NeXTSTEP, but uses a better object allocation model, and has renamed many methods to make the API "cleaner".
To move an application from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep, you ran a series of scripts that would convert to the new API.
OpenStep was made to run on several OS's including Solaris, Mach (from NeXT), HP/UX and Windows. OpenStep meant two things at the time, both the API and the NeXT delivered operating system as a whole. One was called OpenStep, and the other was OPENSTEP. You guess which was which.
Any ways, Apple bought NeXT so that the NeXT management team could take over Apple, and now all that API is part of OSX Server and soon OSX.
It is easy to move a program from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep or OSX Server. I moved Xox, an arcade style shooter with a few days of work.
It is trivial to move the average program from OpenStep or OSX Server to GNUstep. In many cases the same code compiles on both.
We moved our entire development over to GNUstep, and haven't looked back yet. We found the Foundation kit to be more stable than Apple's and easier to explore.
What's the point of Y2K verification if you aren't going to be around on Y2K?
Isn't napster the same people who made an open source developer remove the source to his competing product?
Why do they deserve my money to fight their lawsuit? Say they win against the RIAA, and then they go public, and have a multi-billion dollar marketcap. What have I accomplished except to make them rich?
Not every person who gets himself into a legal battle deserves free legal support.
If the FBI contacted the ISP, and he did such a thing, he could be found guilty for obstruction of justice, even if the act of justice being performed by the FBI was illegal.
The right thing to do is not "avoid the problem", but rather to confront it head on, and stand up for your rights. Running to some mystical data haven won't solve the problem. The FBI is an agent of the country with the most firepower. Fortunately, it's also one of the most democratic countries in the world.
If you want to have rights you must stand up for them, and be prepared to fight for them. Don't wait for the ongoing of infringement of your right to be fought off by thrid parties.
The site just change to say that it will be available today, then a few seconds later the site died. The info is up there now.
Everyone here seems to be making a big fuss over the "rights" of this 17 year old to attend. (this is a YRO story right?)
I first attended Comdex in 1984, when I was 14. Since I live in Las Vegas, it's not that hard to get there. While in the past years they have had a statement about minimum age, they make on average two dozen exceptions EVERY year. In other words, if you are for real, and you ask, no problem.
I know this because holding comdex really tasks this town for security people, and I know a few who end up working there for extra bucks. They all get the indoctrination on the different badge types, the show rules etc. Every year they hand out the list of "people under age who are allowed in anyways".
This whole story is just a way for MatrixCubed to get some free press
There was a time when /. was about people who are plugged in discounting the lies. That was the whole point of the "new-media". Now it has become just another instrument to get the populace roused up over non-issues.
This was a scam and illegal, even if the internet wasn't involved. In at least one case, the person offering to sell stock in the company, had no actual incorporation. That means that the stock didn't exist. "Corporate finance in cyberspace"? Give me a break.
To sell securities, anywhere , you must comply with certain simple regulations. In plain english here are some of the things they did wrong:
- Did not have a corporate entity (You can't sell shares in a partnership)
- Made outragreous claims (aka lies)
- Did not disclose that the sale would be for a restricted unregistered security
- Committed out and out fraud
I could go on with this list, but it's pretty obvious that all three of these acts were not about "corporate finance". Of course there are hundred of "paper cut" regulations that you still have to abide by in selling registered securities, or when generally soliciting, but that isn't what we are talking about here.The sad thing is that as a result of these three, eBay has been closed off as an avenue for the sale of companies that are planning legitimate registered offerings.
The implications that the SEC is anti-internet that I see both in this post and in many of the replies are just puzzling. They have been bending over backwards with things like the U7 to make sure that small companies aren't shut out of public fund raising. They have been issuing No Action letters left and right for things like NIPHIX, and rule504. I guess a lot of this is just left over venom from those shutout from Red Hat.
With all the slamming that takes place on the securties market of late here on /. , how about Slashdot invites someone like Richard Wulff for an interview?
Of course, since it is "strong" crypto, it can only be cracked in the US or Canada. Take a look at the rules.
I usually only read comments scored 2 and higher, and as of this post there are 27 of those. Almost every one refers to this mythical lawsuit. (It's the fault of Hemos for getting the ball rolling)
AOL sent a cease-and-desist letter. That is not a lawsuit. It is the common first round in a any trademark dispute. It basically says, "BOO! We don't like what you are doing and we want you to cut it out." I've recieved dozens of these over my lifetime, and I've sent a few out. It's a formal notification that you have been noticed doing something that irritates someone. It's never gone to court.
Companies seldom start with a lawsuit because they are costly, drawn out, difficult to endure, and most non legal people are scared off by a formal looking letter from a lawyer (just look at how many web sites fold on a cease and desist).
All she has to do is send a polite letter back telling them that she feels she is well within her rights, and that she isn't going to budge or give an inch. End of story.
If they persist, then she offers to clean up the second printing by putting in a disclaimer that the book is not endorsed or affiliated with AOL. Again, End of story.
If they still persist, then she points out why a lawsuit would be costly to them, require them to travel to CO to sue her, be a loss for them (no confusion, parody exemption, reasonable assumption exemption, similarity exemption, etc) or that it would endanger their trademark, or that it would generate bad press etc. Again, this is an end of story point where they come to an agreement
Finally, you can drag it out until a change in management, validity of the trademark, work the politics in the company, etc, and they decide to go away. Again, endgame.
It's also important for everyone to realize that when you are issued a trademark, you must defend or lose ownership. Defend doesn't mean sue, it means you just need to "care". A lot of these actions are merely for "show".
I can asure you that if I decided to print the slashdot.org trademark, or something similar (news for Geeks, stuff that matters) on a shirt tommorow, and then flaunted it in front of Andover legal staff, I would recieve the same letter. It is the way the real world plays.
Of course, according to p54 of the offering document, Rob can be terminated without cause at any time. When you get fire you tend to lose creative control.