I think that in general I agree with you, but I'm not too happy about your example:
For example a webserver with no user accounts, the elevation of privileges exploits couldn't be used here.
If there are no user accounts the webserver must be running under root, thereby turning any remote exploit in the http deamon into a remote root exploit on the machine (what may be done with root privileges off cause depend on what the original exploit could do, you don't get a shell just because the exploit runs with root privs, but if you can e.g. alter files you do so with UID 0).
If on the other hand the server runs as a user, then there is a useraccount, and if a remote code execution exploit becomes available for the webserver it might very well be possible to use it to run a local privilege escalation exploit.
Just one tiny little question, that I'd like to have answered: Given the short distance between major airports and major population centers, how would you in fact shoot down a plane, without causing it to drop on top of other civilians? While fighters may certainly bring down the airplane, I'm just worried about what might come down, a 747 will still cause a major accident on ground even if it took a sidewinder or two while in the air, yes?
While I'm not a regular user of Office, I'd like to comment on your claim that one needs to stay with Office to prevent typographical problems. Just a little over a week ago I assisted some of my friends in putting together a final report, and since I needed to go to work we saved the report to a memory stick and went to my office to continue. The result was radical changes to the layout of the document, despite just having moved the document from one installation of Windows/Office to another. If that is the reality, how would it be any worse if the problem occured between Office and OO? Having to fix it would mean the same kind of delay and trouble no matter how the problem came about. And I still have NO clue as to how Office managed to screw up those fonts (and no, it was not some fancy font, it was one of the standard ones - plus I had reviewed earlier versions without problems). Bottom line is that when there is little time for dealing with it, even moving files from one installation of Office to another may fail (and both installations where on administered Win2k machines, so no blaming it on the user). Murphy strikes again, armed with Redmond software.
While not 100%, I'm fairly certain that atomic clocks are in fact precise enough for it to be an issue, since this link cites succesful experiments with it in 1971.
Funny, I've always been told by people who are supposed to know about such things that batteries should be fully discharged once in a while. How would that be able to hurt the battery, and if it could, I'd expect a safety cut off in hardware before that point (there is afterall enough electronics in laptop batteries to measure voltage, identify manufacturer, and display current charge level, why not cut power when the level gets too low (in fact I'd expect the laptop to shutdown before that time, since the voltage should fall when the battery nears depletion))?
Sorry, It seems that that post was filtered out of my view, sorry about that (I was sure I had it setup to include posts with highly moderated children (I think that was what that option said)).
I think we actually agree (at least as far as loading MS drivers into the kernel goes - YUCK!).
...since it uses the lufs kernel module to communicate via a unix socket with the user-land ntfs hack.
The important part is "user-land". The lufs module allows filesystems to be implemented in userspace, so the windows dlls will be running in usermode, no worse than running wine.
Worst case would be that lufs might recieve something wierd, if the ntfs.sys driver makes a mess, but I guess it should be no worse than a bad floppy or cd (I'd be surprised if lufs doesn't either have or will get some sanity checks between the userspace driver and the kernel module).
If the customer wish to keep the modified version for himself, wouldn't it be possible for him to contract the modification out as a work for hire (or whatever the copyright term is), so that he and not the consultant owns added material as far as copyright is concerned? Then no distribution has taken place, and the GPL is not in play (as far as the modified version is concerned, the original was of cause still obtained and modified under the permission of the GPL).
I don't know about Gentoo, but as far as installing module-init-tools/modutils, kernel and related stuff Source Mage GNU/Linux has been there for quite some time.
...NOT resort to lowering the bar and hitting below the belt...
You are right, we should take the high road. But just for a little while it is nice to fantasize about taking that bar (preferebly a bar of uranium or some other heavy metal) and dropping it below McBrides belt.
If you are a corporation with the resources that SCO has (I'm not saying that they are big, but they are not without resources) it seems IMHO to be a reasonable minimum requirement to actually try to defend one self, in order to not have a ruling against you. How does it work in the US if you don't defend yourself? If that tactic works, maybe the fileswappers should try it;-)
You can buy your own singular IP for about 50 bucks.
Where? From what network? CIDR is supposed to be used with route aggregation, to lighten the load on core routing tables, and you still need a netmask, which would likely make the absolute minimum allocation a/30 -- good luck getting that kind of route pushed to the core routers (which would be needed for it to be ISP independant). And classfull routing is AFAIK only defined for class A, B and C, so that's out of the question.
It's very helpful if you don't want to change it each time you change ISPs, especially if you're running a personal box as a server.
Are ISPs really willing to setup routes to IPs outside their own netblock (for netmasks smaller than say class C or maybe CIDR/25 or/26 -- and matching service contracts)? How can they get that kind of of routing tables propagated upstream? How much do they charge for this kind of service?
(pts/0)dossen@leela:~$ mount /devices/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part4 on / type xfs (rw,noatime) proc on/proc type proc (rw) devpts on/dev/pts type devpts (rw) tmpfs on/var/lock type tmpfs (rw) tmpfs on/var/run type tmpfs (rw) tmpfs on/tmp type tmpfs (rw,size=256m,nr_inodes=64m) /devices/ide/host0/b us0/target0/lun0/part3 on/mnt/win type vfat (rw) usbfs on/proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw) sysfs on/sys type sysfs (rw)
(pts/0)dossen@leela:~$ uname -a Linux leela 2.6.0-test1 #1 Fri Jul 18 23:56:44 CEST 2003 i686 unknown
From reading the post you quoted, I think that he was talking more about conferences. And IMHO anyone who pays to attend a conference should be free to spend the time in the way (s)he sees as most profitable, as long as it does not disturb the rest of the audience. Heck, the same could probably be said for education: If I'm paying, is it not my own problem how I spend the time I've paid for?
academic integrity is their reasoning behind it. Of course all my friends sharing answers through SMS have no complaints...
I'm reading this to say that WiFi would enable you to pass answers to each other using laptops, so I'm assuming that some of you have laptops during tests or some other evaluated part of the education. In that case, has the school considered the possibility of students using laptops with buildt in WiFi in ad-hoc mode? And what would they do about it (assuming that the students are not caught red-handed)? Unless they use jammers or something similar (and around here (Denmark) that would likely be illegal), how can they prevent it? And what about cellular internet connections?
I'm not saying that it is fair or right to cheat, but this is the technological landscape that the battle must be fought in.
Make ownership of robots past a certain complexity level illegal for businesses, reserve the right for individuals.
Can I, as an individual, then buy two robots? And make them do both your job and mine? How about getting one robot, that can work 24/7 and replace you, me and a whole bunch of other people?
I'm not saying that it could not be done, but you have to remember that one robot might not equal one worker. And trying to force that through legislation might not be the right way to go IMHO. It sounds a little too much like the complaints of buisnesses that are obsoleted (horse whips vs. cars, ??AA vs. the Internet etc.), and could easily lead to an artifical situation, where the stability society depends too heavily on a piece of legislation that can be circumvented, might not apply to other countries and so on (think about prohibition).
I will make this prediction: by 2008, every meal in every fast food restaurant will be ordered from a kiosk like this, or from a similar system embedded in each table.
Yeah, I'm going to go with a no on this one. Everyone said the same thing when ATMs came around, "Oh no, they're going to replace actual tellers!" But it didn't, banks still hire quite frequently for bank tellers.
Since I live in Denmark, I can't speak for the US. But over here the banking sector has been downsized drastically over the last decade or so. Personally (and I don't think I'm that unusual) I hardly ever have to interact with a humanbeing at the bank (as a matter of fact I hardly ever go to the bank). The only times where I have needed the banks personel has been for making a couple of bank transfers, depositing checks (a rare occurence) and getting a loan. Simply paying bills, checking my balance, moving money around and getting cash is handled by home banking, ATMs and credit-/debitcards at stores.
I'm not saying these kiosks aren't going to become more prevalent, but they won't replace actual human contact. Having previously worked in many service related jobs I know that people (especially older adults) will not allow this to occur. We all need to be able to talk to an actual human every once in a while. Computers don't care if you yell. Could you imagine the amount of complaints McDonalds would get?
I pretty much agree with this point, but I would still like to add a few questions. First of all the argument of about older adults is a good one, but what is going to happen as our generation (and the ones following us) grows up? At some point the oldest person alive will no longer have known a time where cash was not dispensed by ATMs. And for places like McDs it might actually be a bonus, that people cannot argue with the resturant staff (since they are not there). All they have to do is make sure the service is good/cheap enough that most reasonable people will not complain, and perhaps deal with the few people who are dedicated enough to contact the company and complain.
With this being said, I love automated services such as "Pay-at-the-Pump" and especially self-checkout at the grocery stores. It's not that I'm some hermit who likes no human contact, but who wants to make idle chit-chat with some register jockey?
And that's excatly the reason why a lot of jobs will be taken over by machines. These are simply the modern day equivalent of assemblyline jobs taken over by machines and robots, they just require some of the human senses and abilities that have not yet been replicated in machines.
But then we are left to consider what to do. Having been brought up in a country, where the government redistributes more of the wealth than is the case in the US, I might see this differently, but IMHO there are several ways to deal with it, and they should be combined for the best result.
The jobs that will remain can be distributed better. One way to achieve this would be to change laws, so that it becomes more profitable to have more people working less than fewer people working overtime. Another aproach might be to improve the options for further education, making room for substitutes and possibly replacements, as people move in the jobmarket.
There will naturally be new jobs created by the technology, like repair (although some might be automated), supervision, costumization and so on. Getting the most out of these opportunities will be a must.
It is also possible that society needs to realise that we might be moving out of the era, where there is a job for everybody (or has that ever been the case?), and start to structure our way of life accordingly.
As so often before, progress is going to change the way the world works, and we need to realise that this may change our lives in a big way. But I'm confiden
Just guessing her, but since you are talking hardware support, might it be possible to make it a kernel module. If there are already soft- or hardware support for this kind of thing in the kernel, you should properly try to conform to the API that is in place. If not, there might be some general class of hardware from which to be inspired. But no matter how the final interface looks, getting it into the kernel sounds like the ticket.
I don't know how easy it would be to get into the kernel, but this might not be a bad time[1], if the code is properly written. It should naturally not have any impact at all on kernels buildt without it (no changing existing interfaces, breaking drivers (properly best if the code is not even compiled unless requested)). And it would probably not hurt to point out actual hardware, that one gains support for by using this driver (donating a few pieces to some of the relevant kernel developers would probably not hurt either). Then it should simply be a matter of finding the right person in the linux hieracy to contact, or the lkml if no obvious candidates are found.
If the driver makes the kernel, then it is time to bug the distros to build it (as module, no need to load down people not using it), once they start shipping the new kernel (or you may backport it to earlier kernels[2]). Again it might help if the distros are provided with sample hardware to test against.
[1]: Yes, I know the current kernels are 2.6.0-test, but I don't think wellwritten drivers are going to be turned down, if they are contributed in a reasonable manner (working, non-destructive etc.). And since this is the begining of a new stable series, it is unlikely that major changes will be made to the driver/module interfaces (AFAIK they have been made already).
[2]: Yes, I think it would be better to develop it for 2.6 and backport, rather than develop it for 2.4, try to get it in the official release of 2.4, and then having to port it to 2.6 and get it included.
Since your package is written in perl, it might be a good idea to check out CPAN.
Check if they have anything that looks like your package (there might well be some math packages already (also remember to check what is shipped with perl). If there is, you might consider joining forces with whoever maintains the package that comes closest to yours. Move the logic of your programs into the modules you have found and make your programs as simple as possible, using the features of the combined modules. Then include tests, documentation and anything else you think would be relevant and contact the module maintainer with a patch or a new version. If (s)he accepts the contribution, the result should be a better and more useful package than either of you had before.
If you think you have found the perfect package to join forces with, but the maintainer does not want to hear your arguments, consider closely what you are offering. It might be that (s)he is right to turn you down, or there might be something you need to fix to fit into the package. If you get nowhere - and you are absolutely sure you have found the perfect home for your code, you might be able to make a fork (e.g. if the package you want to fork is GPL). Stop and think once more, whether this is the right course of action! You should have a good argument ready if you fork a known package, and you will need to do it better than the competition.
If you didn't find anything like your package, you might still get it into CPAN. But if you want it to be as useful as possible, you should still consider making it a module (or several) and using that module from your programs/scripts. Also again make sure that tests and documentation is good and plentiful. Then read the FAQ about getting your package on CPAN.
You might also look into the source based distros, the BSDs and debian. They might be more up to including your package than the commersial distros, especially if you make it easy (use the GPL license, provide packages/ebuilds/spells/Makefiles and what ever else is needed for a proper package in their systems).
As countless others have no doubt pointed out, you may also want to look into making C implementations of your programs, get them on freshmeat, sourceforge, savannah and what not. All this is good advice. And most of all, make sure you expand and improve the programs, support your users and generally do your best to find your niche in the software landscape. That way you might be able to avoid getting labeled as "just another quick script submitted to freshmeat" (not that I have researched your package enough to make that judgement). Then inclusion in the distros is simply a matter of being useful to enough people (and making it as easy as possible to include your package).
So, why cant we just admit that none of us are lawers in a courtroom, just people posting on a web site, and let normal useage of words go?
A good reason to avoid using words like theft and piracy when discussing copyright is the fundamental difference between physical property and copyrightable information: Theft of property deprives you of the stolen item, copyright infringement does not take the information away from you. What copyright infringement does is affect your potential for deriving profit from the information concerned.
I'm not saying that unauthorised copying is OK, just that it becomes easier to confuse the matter under discussion, when improper terminology and associations are used. This is similar to the terrible term "Intellectual Property", which not only tries to equate information with property but also confuses several different kinds of law.
In short, lets keep it simple but correct: What we do with KaZaa is copyright infringement, what thieves and pickpockets (and possibly some corperate executives) do is theft.
No, most unix geeks would know that you need to add --to-stdout to tar.
And what's the point of having a single file in a tarball? Just use gzip or bzip2 directly on the file.
Slashdot Mirror
If on the other hand the server runs as a user, then there is a useraccount, and if a remote code execution exploit becomes available for the webserver it might very well be possible to use it to run a local privilege escalation exploit.
Just one tiny little question, that I'd like to have answered: Given the short distance between major airports and major population centers, how would you in fact shoot down a plane, without causing it to drop on top of other civilians? While fighters may certainly bring down the airplane, I'm just worried about what might come down, a 747 will still cause a major accident on ground even if it took a sidewinder or two while in the air, yes?
While I'm not a regular user of Office, I'd like to comment on your claim that one needs to stay with Office to prevent typographical problems. Just a little over a week ago I assisted some of my friends in putting together a final report, and since I needed to go to work we saved the report to a memory stick and went to my office to continue. The result was radical changes to the layout of the document, despite just having moved the document from one installation of Windows/Office to another. If that is the reality, how would it be any worse if the problem occured between Office and OO? Having to fix it would mean the same kind of delay and trouble no matter how the problem came about. And I still have NO clue as to how Office managed to screw up those fonts (and no, it was not some fancy font, it was one of the standard ones - plus I had reviewed earlier versions without problems). Bottom line is that when there is little time for dealing with it, even moving files from one installation of Office to another may fail (and both installations where on administered Win2k machines, so no blaming it on the user). Murphy strikes again, armed with Redmond software.
While not 100%, I'm fairly certain that atomic clocks are in fact precise enough for it to be an issue, since this link cites succesful experiments with it in 1971.
Funny, I've always been told by people who are supposed to know about such things that batteries should be fully discharged once in a while. How would that be able to hurt the battery, and if it could, I'd expect a safety cut off in hardware before that point (there is afterall enough electronics in laptop batteries to measure voltage, identify manufacturer, and display current charge level, why not cut power when the level gets too low (in fact I'd expect the laptop to shutdown before that time, since the voltage should fall when the battery nears depletion))?
Sorry, It seems that that post was filtered out of my view, sorry about that (I was sure I had it setup to include posts with highly moderated children (I think that was what that option said)). I think we actually agree (at least as far as loading MS drivers into the kernel goes - YUCK!).
Quoting the comment you replied to:
The important part is "user-land". The lufs module allows filesystems to be implemented in userspace, so the windows dlls will be running in usermode, no worse than running wine.
Worst case would be that lufs might recieve something wierd, if the ntfs.sys driver makes a mess, but I guess it should be no worse than a bad floppy or cd (I'd be surprised if lufs doesn't either have or will get some sanity checks between the userspace driver and the kernel module).
If the customer wish to keep the modified version for himself, wouldn't it be possible for him to contract the modification out as a work for hire (or whatever the copyright term is), so that he and not the consultant owns added material as far as copyright is concerned? Then no distribution has taken place, and the GPL is not in play (as far as the modified version is concerned, the original was of cause still obtained and modified under the permission of the GPL).
I don't know about Gentoo, but as far as installing module-init-tools/modutils, kernel and related stuff Source Mage GNU/Linux has been there for quite some time.
Well, that logo happens to be way cool, IMHO, and I can't see why sgi stopped using it. But that's just me talking.
You are right, we should take the high road. But just for a little while it is nice to fantasize about taking that bar (preferebly a bar of uranium or some other heavy metal) and dropping it below McBrides belt.
according to the FSF gif will be patented technology in at least one country (Canada) until Wednesday 7 July 2004.
If you are a corporation with the resources that SCO has (I'm not saying that they are big, but they are not without resources) it seems IMHO to be a reasonable minimum requirement to actually try to defend one self, in order to not have a ruling against you. How does it work in the US if you don't defend yourself? If that tactic works, maybe the fileswappers should try it ;-)
It is permitted to remove one or more consecutive zero-block, which would make your example equivalent to:
21DA:D3::2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5A
Note the '::'
Where? From what network? CIDR is supposed to be used with route aggregation, to lighten the load on core routing tables, and you still need a netmask, which would likely make the absolute minimum allocation a /30 -- good luck getting that kind of route pushed to the core routers (which would be needed for it to be ISP independant). And classfull routing is AFAIK only defined for class A, B and C, so that's out of the question.
Are ISPs really willing to setup routes to IPs outside their own netblock (for netmasks smaller than say class C or maybe CIDR /25 or /26 -- and matching service contracts)? How can they get that kind of of routing tables propagated upstream? How much do they charge for this kind of service?
What problems are there with XFS?
It works for me.
From reading the post you quoted, I think that he was talking more about conferences. And IMHO anyone who pays to attend a conference should be free to spend the time in the way (s)he sees as most profitable, as long as it does not disturb the rest of the audience. Heck, the same could probably be said for education: If I'm paying, is it not my own problem how I spend the time I've paid for?
I'm reading this to say that WiFi would enable you to pass answers to each other using laptops, so I'm assuming that some of you have laptops during tests or some other evaluated part of the education. In that case, has the school considered the possibility of students using laptops with buildt in WiFi in ad-hoc mode? And what would they do about it (assuming that the students are not caught red-handed)? Unless they use jammers or something similar (and around here (Denmark) that would likely be illegal), how can they prevent it? And what about cellular internet connections?
I'm not saying that it is fair or right to cheat, but this is the technological landscape that the battle must be fought in.
Can I, as an individual, then buy two robots? And make them do both your job and mine? How about getting one robot, that can work 24/7 and replace you, me and a whole bunch of other people?
I'm not saying that it could not be done, but you have to remember that one robot might not equal one worker. And trying to force that through legislation might not be the right way to go IMHO. It sounds a little too much like the complaints of buisnesses that are obsoleted (horse whips vs. cars, ??AA vs. the Internet etc.), and could easily lead to an artifical situation, where the stability society depends too heavily on a piece of legislation that can be circumvented, might not apply to other countries and so on (think about prohibition).
Since I live in Denmark, I can't speak for the US. But over here the banking sector has been downsized drastically over the last decade or so. Personally (and I don't think I'm that unusual) I hardly ever have to interact with a humanbeing at the bank (as a matter of fact I hardly ever go to the bank). The only times where I have needed the banks personel has been for making a couple of bank transfers, depositing checks (a rare occurence) and getting a loan. Simply paying bills, checking my balance, moving money around and getting cash is handled by home banking, ATMs and credit-/debitcards at stores.
I pretty much agree with this point, but I would still like to add a few questions. First of all the argument of about older adults is a good one, but what is going to happen as our generation (and the ones following us) grows up? At some point the oldest person alive will no longer have known a time where cash was not dispensed by ATMs. And for places like McDs it might actually be a bonus, that people cannot argue with the resturant staff (since they are not there). All they have to do is make sure the service is good/cheap enough that most reasonable people will not complain, and perhaps deal with the few people who are dedicated enough to contact the company and complain.
And that's excatly the reason why a lot of jobs will be taken over by machines. These are simply the modern day equivalent of assemblyline jobs taken over by machines and robots, they just require some of the human senses and abilities that have not yet been replicated in machines.
But then we are left to consider what to do. Having been brought up in a country, where the government redistributes more of the wealth than is the case in the US, I might see this differently, but IMHO there are several ways to deal with it, and they should be combined for the best result.
As so often before, progress is going to change the way the world works, and we need to realise that this may change our lives in a big way. But I'm confiden
Just guessing her, but since you are talking hardware support, might it be possible to make it a kernel module. If there are already soft- or hardware support for this kind of thing in the kernel, you should properly try to conform to the API that is in place. If not, there might be some general class of hardware from which to be inspired. But no matter how the final interface looks, getting it into the kernel sounds like the ticket.
I don't know how easy it would be to get into the kernel, but this might not be a bad time[1], if the code is properly written. It should naturally not have any impact at all on kernels buildt without it (no changing existing interfaces, breaking drivers (properly best if the code is not even compiled unless requested)). And it would probably not hurt to point out actual hardware, that one gains support for by using this driver (donating a few pieces to some of the relevant kernel developers would probably not hurt either). Then it should simply be a matter of finding the right person in the linux hieracy to contact, or the lkml if no obvious candidates are found.
If the driver makes the kernel, then it is time to bug the distros to build it (as module, no need to load down people not using it), once they start shipping the new kernel (or you may backport it to earlier kernels[2]). Again it might help if the distros are provided with sample hardware to test against.
[1]: Yes, I know the current kernels are 2.6.0-test, but I don't think wellwritten drivers are going to be turned down, if they are contributed in a reasonable manner (working, non-destructive etc.). And since this is the begining of a new stable series, it is unlikely that major changes will be made to the driver/module interfaces (AFAIK they have been made already).
[2]: Yes, I think it would be better to develop it for 2.6 and backport, rather than develop it for 2.4, try to get it in the official release of 2.4, and then having to port it to 2.6 and get it included.
Since your package is written in perl, it might be a good idea to check out CPAN.
Check if they have anything that looks like your package (there might well be some math packages already (also remember to check what is shipped with perl). If there is, you might consider joining forces with whoever maintains the package that comes closest to yours. Move the logic of your programs into the modules you have found and make your programs as simple as possible, using the features of the combined modules. Then include tests, documentation and anything else you think would be relevant and contact the module maintainer with a patch or a new version. If (s)he accepts the contribution, the result should be a better and more useful package than either of you had before.
If you think you have found the perfect package to join forces with, but the maintainer does not want to hear your arguments, consider closely what you are offering. It might be that (s)he is right to turn you down, or there might be something you need to fix to fit into the package. If you get nowhere - and you are absolutely sure you have found the perfect home for your code, you might be able to make a fork (e.g. if the package you want to fork is GPL). Stop and think once more, whether this is the right course of action! You should have a good argument ready if you fork a known package, and you will need to do it better than the competition.
If you didn't find anything like your package, you might still get it into CPAN. But if you want it to be as useful as possible, you should still consider making it a module (or several) and using that module from your programs/scripts. Also again make sure that tests and documentation is good and plentiful. Then read the FAQ about getting your package on CPAN.
You might also look into the source based distros, the BSDs and debian. They might be more up to including your package than the commersial distros, especially if you make it easy (use the GPL license, provide packages/ebuilds/spells/Makefiles and what ever else is needed for a proper package in their systems).
As countless others have no doubt pointed out, you may also want to look into making C implementations of your programs, get them on freshmeat, sourceforge, savannah and what not. All this is good advice. And most of all, make sure you expand and improve the programs, support your users and generally do your best to find your niche in the software landscape. That way you might be able to avoid getting labeled as "just another quick script submitted to freshmeat" (not that I have researched your package enough to make that judgement). Then inclusion in the distros is simply a matter of being useful to enough people (and making it as easy as possible to include your package).
A good reason to avoid using words like theft and piracy when discussing copyright is the fundamental difference between physical property and copyrightable information: Theft of property deprives you of the stolen item, copyright infringement does not take the information away from you. What copyright infringement does is affect your potential for deriving profit from the information concerned.
I'm not saying that unauthorised copying is OK, just that it becomes easier to confuse the matter under discussion, when improper terminology and associations are used. This is similar to the terrible term "Intellectual Property", which not only tries to equate information with property but also confuses several different kinds of law.
In short, lets keep it simple but correct: What we do with KaZaa is copyright infringement, what thieves and pickpockets (and possibly some corperate executives) do is theft.
Does this project have some sort of web-presence? Google returns a lot of pages for the term, but none of the highranked ones look right.
No, most unix geeks would know that you need to add --to-stdout to tar. And what's the point of having a single file in a tarball? Just use gzip or bzip2 directly on the file.