This could be the first real test of the GPL's legal viability.
What concerns me is this: Who will be more convincing in court? RMS rambling about "taking away freedom"? Or Corel's army of knowledgable copyright lawyers, who have probably already found every legal loophole there is in the GPL?
The future of the open-source community hangs in the balance. If the GPL doesn't hold up in court, it's open season for profiteers and freeloaders -- and I think it will be a long time before anyone gives away their hard work for free again.
I hope they're not planning to sell that lunchbox based on value!
Only 64 MB of RAM, non-Intel chip, no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse -- and it starts at $1500?!? You can get a Dell PIII-450, fully-loaded with 17" monitor for $1,369! What are they smoking?
P.S.: If you want to sell a product, it also helps to be able to spell what you're selling, such as an ethernet "adopter."
Just make a list of all your passwords, put it in a text file, and encrypt it with PGP. Then you only need to remember one password -- your PGP password.
It might also be a good idea to encrypt the file with 2 separate keys & passwords so you have a backup in case you forget one of the PGP passwords.
This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Here's an analogy:
Imagine that Wired magazine (for example) has a great article about Linux in its latest print issue, and I want readers of my web site to know about it. Obviously, I couldn't post a verbatim copy of the article on my site -- that would be copyright infringement. But I would be able to write, "There's a great article about Linux on page 50 of Wired." Should Wired be able to sue me because people wouldn't read the ads on pages 1-49? Of course not.
>>The problem with BO2K being 'open-source' is that >>crackers will NOT publish their modifications to >>the code.
>What do you mean, they won't publish their >modifications? They have to, according to the >license, or else they're breaking the law!
1) They're only breaking the law if the license is the GPL or something similar - not all licenses require you to publish your changes
2) So what if they break the law? Aren't they doing that anyway by cracking an NT system? That's like saying a buglar wouldn't break a window to get into a house because that's vandalism!
To start, one thing needs to be clarified: This article has nothing to do with Linux or the open-source community, per se. Peer-reviewed open source programs (e.g. anything with the GPL) undergo great scrutiny by a virtual army of developers to ensure that the software IS secure.
The problem with BO2K being "open-source" is that crackers will NOT publish their modifications to the code. This will allow BO2K to potentially fragment into several mutated versions, each slightly different from the next. This makes it more difficult to detect and guard against all variations of BO2K, since crackers might be able to make small modifications to the software that would allow it to slip by security software undetected.
Does this strike anyone else as a colossally bad idea?
It's already become evident that advertising is one of the main driving forces behind the web; likewise, advertisers will be scrambling to create in-car ads that will put billboards and banner ads to shame.
Yahoo! and other search engines can demand a hefty price for a "keyword" that lets advertisers target consumers looking for a particular item. Online automobile services won't be far behind.
Picture this scenario: You're driving down the freeway. You get thirsty. You log on to a map service to find the nearest 7-Eleven. Suddenly a rich-media, Shockwave-enhanced Pepsi ad pops up onto your heads-up display, complete with streaming music and video -- you promptly crash into the center divider.
Not to mention online porn, crackers, and viruses...
Do we really need more connectivity while we're driving?
True, open source software may be higher-quality in the long run. But, since Netscape and Microsoft have two *very* similar products, the competition is based more on capturing mindshare than on producing quality software. Microsoft has succeeded in this by releasing frequently -- and while snazzy (and buggy) new features may not do much for the user, they get attention and make headlines. Meanwhile, from the mainstream's point of view, Netscape seems to have hit a dead end.
2. Reinventing the wheel
One of the many goals of OSS is to prevent the costly and time-consuming duplication of labor necessitated by proprietary code restrictions. However, the Mozilla project is doing exactly this: duplicating work (triplicating, actually) already done by scores of Netscape and MS programmers. It may be a *better* wheel, but it's still reinvention.
3. Necessity is the mother of invention
It's one of the best reasons to program for free: you need a tool to help you do something, but no such tool exists, so you build it yourself. However, the need for a good web browser is already being met by both Netscape and MS. Put simply: who really *needs* another browser? (besides Netscape, of course)
4. Cost isn't an issue
Cost is probably THE reason that Linux is attractive to so many people -- it is a free alternative to expensive proprietary OSes. However, Netscape and Microsoft's already give away their browsers, so cost will not be a compelling reason for IE users to switch. To make an analogy: Linux probably wouldn't be taking the mainstream world by storm if Microsoft were giving away NT for free.
Forget about "The Matrix" and "TPM." Granted, both had incredible visuals, but both were pretty short on plot and character development.
I hereby crown "Rushmore" the geek movie of the year. Max Fischer, the film's nerd hero, is the quintessence of geekdom: an eccentric whose ambition and sheer passion for his goals allow him to achieve personal success on his own terms -- irregardless of what anyone else's concept of "normal" is.
What the hell is with the TV commercials? They're horrible. The preachy narration sounds like a cross between a self-motivation cassette and bad amateur poetry.
Frankly, it looks like Episode I has the potential to be so cheesy that the dreaded Ewok dance in Jedi will look tame by comparison.
The most frightening aspect of Katz's article is that the self-proclaimed "geeks" who have written to him seem as much a product of socialization as the "jocks" they condemn. While ostensibly rejecting oppression and conformity, many are still slaves to these attitudes themselves. They still think in terms of the group and how to please (or displease) others. Most disturbing is the 26-year-old who feels no need to go to college "to prove that I have the facilities to be a meaningful member of society" -- completely disregarding the many individual benefits of a university education.
American schools have quickly become killing fields for individualism, thanks in no small part to esoteric educational theories being circulated among academics -- and being tested out on our children. In failed attempts to make education "sensitive" to a child's self-esteem, educators have managed to destroy any and all sense of individual self-worth. Indoctrinating children with the dogma of collectivism and relativism, the schools force the child to subjugate his individual thoughts to that of the group -- making him submissive, frightened, and intellectually impotent. Children who refuse to take part in this crusade are labeled antisocial or, even worse, diagnosed with ADD.
The virtues taught in today's schools are no longer those of freedom and self-reliance, but of duty and self-sacrifice. The former embodiment of the American Dream -- the successful entrepeneur, the self-made man -- has been scrapped in favor of the obedient serf who dutifully performs his mandatory community service. Even in the field of mathematics -- typically a geek haven, where it never mattered how cool or strong or popular you were, as long as you had the intelligence to get the right answer -- traditional math is being replaced by "group math," where the collective decides on an answer by consensus, whether or not it is objectively correct. In fact, postmodern educational theorists reject the concept of objective truth altogether.
Is it any wonder, then, that children turn to violence -- children who feel that the system has chewed them up and spit them out, leaving only a self-loathing shell of a human being? If we do not allow America's children to empower themselves with their minds, they have little choice but to empower themselves with guns. This is our national shame.
I worked at Blockbuster over the summer a couple of years ago, and I remember that video game theft was a MAJOR problem. Because games have gotten so expensive, teenagers (typically) would often either steal the games off the shelves or rent them and never return them.
I also remember spending hours calling customers (most of them honest but forgetful) whose movies or video games were overdue.
I think the rental market (including movie rental) would save a lot of money and trouble if they embraced a medium that simply deactivated itself -- making theft, returns, rewinding, reshelving, etc. a thing of the past.
Kipling.com cracked? -- or just a hoax?
on
Wired on Kipling
·
· Score: 1
It seems doubtful that the site was actually cracked, since everything else on the site except for the front page seems completely intact.
Besides, why would a site that was really broken into have that fancy "We've been hacked!" graphic anyway? Did they hire a guy to do that in Photoshop just for the occasion? Help! We've been hacked! Quick -- call a graphic design artist!
My guess is that it's just another marketing ploy designed to promote those ridiculous bags, which are obviously marketed toward 15-year-old AOL newbies who've rented "The Net" just a few times too many.
Slashdot Mirror
This could be the first real test of the GPL's legal viability.
What concerns me is this:
Who will be more convincing in court? RMS rambling about "taking away freedom"? Or Corel's army of knowledgable copyright lawyers, who have probably already found every legal loophole there is in the GPL?
The future of the open-source community hangs in the balance. If the GPL doesn't hold up in court, it's open season for profiteers and freeloaders -- and I think it will be a long time before anyone gives away their hard work for free again.
I hope they're not planning to sell that lunchbox based on value!
Only 64 MB of RAM, non-Intel chip, no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse -- and it starts at $1500?!? You can get a Dell PIII-450, fully-loaded with 17" monitor for $1,369! What are they smoking?
P.S.: If you want to sell a product, it also helps to be able to spell what you're selling, such as an ethernet "adopter."
Just make a list of all your passwords, put it in a text file, and encrypt it with PGP. Then you only need to remember one password -- your PGP password.
It might also be a good idea to encrypt the file with 2 separate keys & passwords so you have a backup in case you forget one of the PGP passwords.
This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Here's an analogy:
Imagine that Wired magazine (for example) has a great article about Linux in its latest print issue, and I want readers of my web site to know about it. Obviously, I couldn't post a verbatim copy of the article on my site -- that would be copyright infringement. But I would be able to write, "There's a great article about Linux on page 50 of Wired." Should Wired be able to sue me because people wouldn't read the ads on pages 1-49? Of course not.
>>The problem with BO2K being 'open-source' is that
>>crackers will NOT publish their modifications to
>>the code.
>What do you mean, they won't publish their
>modifications? They have to, according to the
>license, or else they're breaking the law!
1) They're only breaking the law if the license is the GPL or something similar - not all licenses require you to publish your changes
2) So what if they break the law? Aren't they doing that anyway by cracking an NT system? That's like saying a buglar wouldn't break a window to get into a house because that's vandalism!
To start, one thing needs to be clarified: This article has nothing to do with Linux or the open-source community, per se. Peer-reviewed open source programs (e.g. anything with the GPL) undergo great scrutiny by a virtual army of developers to ensure that the software IS secure.
The problem with BO2K being "open-source" is that crackers will NOT publish their modifications to the code. This will allow BO2K to potentially fragment into several mutated versions, each slightly different from the next. This makes it more difficult to detect and guard against all variations of BO2K, since crackers might be able to make small modifications to the software that would allow it to slip by security software undetected.
Does this strike anyone else as a colossally bad idea?
...
It's already become evident that advertising is one of the main driving forces behind the web; likewise, advertisers will be scrambling to create in-car ads that will put billboards and banner ads to shame.
Yahoo! and other search engines can demand a hefty price for a "keyword" that lets advertisers target consumers looking for a particular item. Online automobile services won't be far behind.
Picture this scenario:
You're driving down the freeway. You get thirsty. You log on to a map service to find the nearest 7-Eleven. Suddenly a rich-media, Shockwave-enhanced Pepsi ad pops up onto your heads-up display, complete with streaming music and video -- you promptly crash into the center divider.
Not to mention online porn, crackers, and viruses
Do we really need more connectivity while we're driving?
Hey, at least they aren't converting to Swatch Internet Time.
Vive la difference!
1. The mindshare problem: quality takes time
True, open source software may be higher-quality in the long run. But, since Netscape and Microsoft have two *very* similar products, the competition is based more on capturing mindshare than on producing quality software. Microsoft has succeeded in this by releasing frequently -- and while snazzy (and buggy) new features may not do much for the user, they get attention and make headlines. Meanwhile, from the mainstream's point of view, Netscape seems to have hit a dead end.
2. Reinventing the wheel
One of the many goals of OSS is to prevent the costly and time-consuming duplication of labor necessitated by proprietary code restrictions. However, the Mozilla project is doing exactly this: duplicating work (triplicating, actually) already done by scores of Netscape and MS programmers. It may be a *better* wheel, but it's still reinvention.
3. Necessity is the mother of invention
It's one of the best reasons to program for free: you need a tool to help you do something, but no such tool exists, so you build it yourself. However, the need for a good web browser is already being met by both Netscape and MS. Put simply: who really *needs* another browser? (besides Netscape, of course)
4. Cost isn't an issue
Cost is probably THE reason that Linux is attractive to so many people -- it is a free alternative to expensive proprietary OSes. However, Netscape and Microsoft's already give away their browsers, so cost will not be a compelling reason for IE users to switch. To make an analogy: Linux probably wouldn't be taking the mainstream world by storm if Microsoft were giving away NT for free.
Forget about "The Matrix" and "TPM." Granted, both had incredible visuals, but both were pretty short on plot and character development.
I hereby crown "Rushmore" the geek movie of the year. Max Fischer, the film's nerd hero, is the quintessence of geekdom: an eccentric whose ambition and sheer passion for his goals allow him to achieve personal success on his own terms -- irregardless of what anyone else's concept of "normal" is.
What the hell is with the TV commercials? They're horrible. The preachy narration sounds like a cross between a self-motivation cassette and bad amateur poetry.
Frankly, it looks like Episode I has the potential to be so cheesy that the dreaded Ewok dance in Jedi will look tame by comparison.
The most frightening aspect of Katz's article is that the self-proclaimed "geeks" who have written to him seem as much a product of socialization as the "jocks" they condemn. While ostensibly rejecting oppression and conformity, many are still slaves to these attitudes themselves. They still think in terms of the group and how to please (or displease) others. Most disturbing is the 26-year-old who feels no need to go to college "to prove that I have the facilities to be a meaningful member of society" -- completely disregarding the many individual benefits of a university education.
American schools have quickly become killing fields for individualism, thanks in no small part to esoteric educational theories being circulated among academics -- and being tested out on our children. In failed attempts to make education "sensitive" to a child's self-esteem, educators have managed to destroy any and all sense of individual self-worth. Indoctrinating children with the dogma of collectivism and relativism, the schools force the child to subjugate his individual thoughts to that of the group -- making him submissive, frightened, and intellectually impotent. Children who refuse to take part in this crusade are labeled antisocial or, even worse, diagnosed with ADD.
The virtues taught in today's schools are no longer those of freedom and self-reliance, but of duty and self-sacrifice. The former embodiment of the American Dream -- the successful entrepeneur, the self-made man -- has been scrapped in favor of the obedient serf who dutifully performs his mandatory community service. Even in the field of mathematics -- typically a geek haven, where it never mattered how cool or strong or popular you were, as long as you had the intelligence to get the right answer -- traditional math is being replaced by "group math," where the collective decides on an answer by consensus, whether or not it is objectively correct. In fact, postmodern educational theorists reject the concept of objective truth altogether.
Is it any wonder, then, that children turn to violence -- children who feel that the system has chewed them up and spit them out, leaving only a self-loathing shell of a human being? If we do not allow America's children to empower themselves with their minds, they have little choice but to empower themselves with guns. This is our national shame.
I worked at Blockbuster over the summer a couple of years ago, and I remember that video game theft was a MAJOR problem. Because games have gotten so expensive, teenagers (typically) would often either steal the games off the shelves or rent them and never return them.
I also remember spending hours calling customers (most of them honest but forgetful) whose movies or video games were overdue.
I think the rental market (including movie rental) would save a lot of money and trouble if they embraced a medium that simply deactivated itself -- making theft, returns, rewinding, reshelving, etc. a thing of the past.
It seems doubtful that the site was actually cracked, since everything else on the site except for the front page seems completely intact.
Besides, why would a site that was really broken into have that fancy "We've been hacked!" graphic anyway? Did they hire a guy to do that in Photoshop just for the occasion?
Help! We've been hacked! Quick -- call a graphic design artist!
My guess is that it's just another marketing ploy designed to promote those ridiculous bags, which are obviously marketed toward 15-year-old AOL newbies who've rented "The Net" just a few times too many.
In case anyone wants to see the "hacked" front page before Kipling changes it, I've put it on my website for the amusement of all y'all slashdotters.
- I