If you can quote where I said that, I'll retract it.
What I object to is telling kids that they can all be winners, and consistently bombarding them with images only of the most excessively successful (read: lucky, not necessarily talented) of their peers.
Ask a hundred kids if they think that they'd be happy flipping burgers, picking up trash, cleaning pools, waiting tables, or inspecting sewers for a living. Subtract the number of kids that will actually end up doing that. Uh oh, negative numbers. Now, you pick out the ones that you want to be unhappy with their new careers.
Now, ask a hundred kids if they think that they can start their own business from scratch and make it a huge success. Ninety nine of them will say yes. The hundredth kid won't really be listening, but he will will sell you a better clipboard or pen, and you'll remember his name, because he's the one that's actually exceptional and doesn't need to be told it every day.
It doesn't have to be that way. The happiest guy that I know dropped out of the techie rat race and became a postal worker. But it took him fifteen years to figure it out, because at every stage he'd been told that he could do better, that he could produce more, that he hadn't achieved his potential. At no point was he ever happy clawing his way up various corporate ladders, but he believed that just a little more success would make him so, because that's what everyone was telling him. I'm planning my own exit strategy to emulate him. India and China are welcome to work their asses off to win global market share, because all that hard work gets you is the opportunity to work even harder to support your new ambitions.
I'm rambling a little off topic now, but while I agree with you that our reach should exceed our grasp, telling a hundred kids that they can all be winners is a pretty good way to ensure that ninety of them are going to be frustrated and bitter for most of their adult lives.
>It's better to have 100 kids who think they're exceptional [...] than to have 100 kids who think they're all worthless.
Now that you put it like that, I see that because I opposed the war in Iraq, I support terrorism.
Don't build that strawman near me. There's a huge gulf between exceptional and worthless, and I'm very well aware of the benefits of praising and being positive (by the way, I have kids of my own and do volunteer education work with children. Do you?). But the music industry (which is what we're talking about) is going down a path of deliberately manufacturing and selling the Kid Next Door Superstar that sends a message to kids that no matter how talentless or bland they are, they can make it if they just get that lucky break. Further, they're being sold on the idea that they deserve it, that they don't even have to work that hard for it. I'm not saying that the process of creating talent has changed much in the past thirty years, but it's now so honest and in your face that we even make programs that show how to drag talentless no hoper wannabes off the street and turn them into overnight sensations.
I'd never tell a child that they're going to spend their whole life flipping burgers, and for that matter, I'd never discourage one that showed real enthusiasm and talent. But we're increasingly selling the idea that anyone and everyone can be a winner. If we're all winners, who's going to flip our burgers? And how unhappy are we making burgers flippers by effectively telling them that they're failures for not being the huge successes that we told them they could be?
As a final thought, look into how many truly successful entrepeneurs are education dropouts. Truly exceptional individuals will quickly outgrow a nurturing system run by (literally, statistically) mediocre talents.
>That was my objection to the thing I was responding to, remember? The quote that implied that the artists wouldn't get anything? Remember?
It didn't imply anything, it stated it. "Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals... zero!"
Further, it stated it as a final conclusion, including clawing back the $45,000 from your selective extract. What you said was "In Courtney's article, she argues that the individual members of her hypothetical band end up with $45,000 each, once everything else is taken into account", which is 180 proof moonshine, because this is before the costs and income from the actual music sales are taken into account. Don't try to to pass of a selective quote from the start of a calculation as being the conclusion.
As to your other statements, well, given that you've got more experience than Courney Love, I'll believe you rather than her.
No, wait... something's not right there... and it's me responding to a poster that lacks the basic integrity to acknowledge a glaring misrepresentation.
I'd be the first to agree (hey, I am, in fact), but I do believe that there's a moral and pragmatic foundation behind copy rights. The problem is that the law isn't consistent, and it isn't clear. Until we can get it cleared up, all that the RIAA can do to support their (theoretically moral, pragmatic) position is to play the cards as they're dealt.
I'll also be the first to point out, however, that that's not what they're doing. They're buying laws and misrepresenting the morality. Once they get back to working for creative talent rather than owning it, I might change my mind.
But that said, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with copy right law in principle, it's just a clusterfuck in practice, and getting worse with each revision.
>I didn't realize being poor was a license to ignore the law
If we're getting into realpolitik, consider that the reason that we have welfare is that the alternative is to have to deal with millions of starving people in our midst with nothing to lose. Welfare and policing are the sandwich keeping the gooey crime filling from slopping on our jeans. If you cut one, you have to spend on the other, unless you particularly like waking to the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.
We're dealing with human nature. If you can't afford the things that you want, you are left with the choice of doing without, or taking them anyway. Of course, we should do without, but there are prisons full of people who demonstrate that we don't always do that.
The RIAA have clearly decided to drop the handouts and go hog wild on the policing. Perhaps in this specific context that makes sense, perhaps they've done the sums. But as long as they keep giving the goods away - or paying to give them away! - in the form of radio, webcast and videos - they're going to have a hard time persuading people that they're even doing anything wrong, let alone that they have a significant chance of being slapped on the wrist.
> she argues that the individual members of her hypothetical band end up with $45,000 each, once everything else is taken into account.
That's if they get a $1 million advance. And if you take the time to actually read the article, you'll find that's recoupable if the music doesn't clear a profit after all of the expenses that the label bills to them (pop quiz: who's got the better accountants and lawyers?). Perhaps you should read the whole thing rather than just selectively quoting pieces of it.
Absolute best case is the band taking the million dollars, and skipping the country, thus avoiding annoying expenses like tax or actually making any music. You'd be surprised how many startup games developers did that (or variations) after Eidos went hog wild in the 90's trying to create another Tomb Raider.
>If that were the case, you'd think that the RIAA would have a hard time finding bands willing to sign contracts
Only if wildly optimistic kids:
Don't believe it.
Don't believe that it applies to them.
Personally, I blame a system that tells kids that they can all be exceptional. It's very motivating and all, but the problem is that so many of them seem to actually believe it.
As it's after lunch, I'm switching to trolling the other way now. What you should have said was:
See Title 17 as amended by HR 2265 (NET Act). 10 or more copies, retail value over $5,000 = 3 year felony / $250,000 fine, any number of copies between $1,000 and $2,500 retail value = 1 year misdemeanor / $100,000 fine.
What will you bet that I can get modded informative for pushing both sides of this argument?
Ouch, sorry. About 2.2 milliseconds after hitting "Submit", I realised that you were actually asking that question. Sorry for attaching my rant to your post.
For what it's worth, I agree. Intellectual Property law needs to be revisited and some consistency brought to it. Why, for example, is it a criminal offence simply to obtain or supply a tool to break the encryption on a DVD? Why is it not a criminal offence to actually create or even use the tool to make a copy? Why is it a criminal offence to produce and sell shirts with a trademarked Nike logo, but not a criminal offence to sell copied CDs?
The only aspect of the RIAA's position with which I have the slightest sympathy is that they really do have to educate people about this area of the law. However, the fact that they're lying about it (consistently calling copy right infringement "theft") disinclines me to cut them any slack.
Haven't we had enough of morally deviant predators grooming little kids to turn them into compliant bitches?
Now, I'm all for teaching kids (and adults) about the consequences of their actions, but the action that the RIAA are objecting to isn't file copying, it's not buying music. There's a distinction, and I want them to be honest about what they're saying.
What these kids are really being told is: "If you don't do buy Freshy Q's new CD, the police will take your mommy away. Sorry, I mean, Freshy Q is going to die in the gutter."
Now, sure, Freshy is dead meat if you don't buy because you're downloading his m3p, but the thing is, he's just as destitute if you don't buy because you're happy listening to him on the radio, or by streamed webcast, or on MTV-a-like channels, or (shocker) if despite - or perhaps because of - the many ways that the RIAA pays to get the music to you, you simply choose not to buy a CD.
That's the message that the RIAA is giving, once you strip the bullshit away. Buy more music. Buy music, or you've killed Freshy Q. It's not our job to persuade you to pay, it doesn't matter how generic or plastic our miming meat puppets are, the fact is, Billy, it's your responsibility to pay, and frankly, you should pay whether you like the music or not. It's all about stopping poor Freshy Q from starving.
Spooky prediction? Next year, it's Driver's Ed, but first a short message from our sponsors, the Ford Motor Company Inc.
"Hello class. I'd like to tell you the story of Wally Doe. We had to lay Wally off because you selfish little bastards are walking to school instead of pestering your parents to buy you a Ford Weener. Now Wally has to give handjobs for food. Say, kids, how would you feel about choking the chicken of a 400lb trucker to make ends meet?"
Not stealing, infringing copy rights. Take it up with the liberal hippies in the Supreme Court, because until you get a reversal from them, copy right infringement is not theft.
> Why are they always suing in civil proceedings rather than prosecuting with a criminal trial?
Because - for the zillionth time - copy right infringement is not theft, and not a criminal offence. It is copy right infringement, an actionable matter carrying fixed penalties. Some associated activities are criminal: screwing with your cable connection, DMCA violations. But purely copying the data is not a criminal offence.
Is that enough italics, or do we need to go over this again?
Uh, OK, sorry, I didn't have my thinking head on. The exploit is just to clone the victim's MAC and then let your cableco's DHCP server serve you an IP, probably the same one that they just had, but it really doesn't matter, because as far as they're concerned, you are the other customer. I can confirm that cableco's (Blueyonder in the UK at least) use MACs to identify customers. What threw me was the description of changing IP addresses. This by itself is pointless, but changing MACs would do it.
Where your send email purporting to be from someone else, or in this case when spammers send spam purporting to be from the anti-spam orgs. SMTP servers don't validate the From: field, you can put anything in there. Most lusers and a shocking number of clueless sysadmins don't realise this.
We've had a succession of Washington suits yakking on about Information Security, and Cyber War and The Great Potential Threat To Our Infrastructure, and yet when DDoS attacks actually happen, what do they do?
You guessed it. Squat.
There's no votes and no budget in actually fighting crime. There's plenty of capital to be made in selling up the threat, and in promising that you'll fix it, given just a little more time in office, and a slightly larger personal empire.
What I'd like to see is our Dictator of Homeland Security pinned down and made to explain why he's not doing something about the attacks that are happening now. If we can't defend monkeys.com from a DDoS from malicious assholes, how does he expect to believe that we're able to defend safety or economic critical infrastructure from the same kind of attack launched by the truly malevolent?
I'm only unbiased in that I hate everyone and everything. And I gave up on K5 long ago; it requires far too much time and effort to troll effectively. Slashdot is like trolling with training wheels in comparison.
The "artist" is in most cases a dancing, miming meat puppet. The magic is done by songwriters, backing vocalists, session musicians, recording technicians, and deck monkeys, mostly paid at a flat rate. Or rather, not paid, if music doesn't sell.
Any actual artists that want to get more than pennies per song can go ahead and release through their own label. Once they - or anyone else involved in the process - sell their rights, they have no say, morally or legally, in what happens next.
If you want to support the artist, send money to the artist. Do you expect that they'll pass it on to the people that actually did the hard work on that track?
>Knowingly responding to a subpeona with false information would get them so deep in shit their great grandchildren would be shovelling
Says who? The subpoenad information is addressed to the plaintiff, not the court, so it's not perjury. Remember, the RIAA don't swear to the truth of their claims, they just argue their validityy in court. I doubt that a third party can be held to a higher standard.
>A more probable cause is someone used a net sniffing program and changed their IP address hi-jacking her assigned address to protect their identity. On a cable system, it's not too hard to do
Uh, head hurts. How do the packets get routed back to the spoofer's machine? You can spoof IPs for sending datagrams, but it's pointless for connection oriented protocols.
Which seems to be his problem. Why didn't they listen to him? The fools. The fools!. Listen to Peter (sigh) or be dooooomed. Thus the advice to take a chill pill.
>Sorry, I don't just use open source software for fun and enjoyable, I use it to get things to done in the real world
In the "real world", you tend to get what you're prepared to pay for. If you're just "using" open source projects, then you're a parasite. Good luck and all, but if the reason that the GPL insists on a disclaimer of warranty is, well, you.
>You are basically taking a cop-out, either your project (at the current time) is secure or it is not. If it is not secure, don't pretend that it is.
Leaving aside that I didn't say anything about my project, I'll assume that you're talking about the open source projects mentioned. Now, in theory I agree with you, but in the "real world", if you believe marketing blurb when you have the opportunity to verify or refute it yourself, then, well, good luck again. How many thighmasters do you own?
Slashdot Mirror
If you can quote where I said that, I'll retract it.
What I object to is telling kids that they can all be winners, and consistently bombarding them with images only of the most excessively successful (read: lucky, not necessarily talented) of their peers.
Ask a hundred kids if they think that they'd be happy flipping burgers, picking up trash, cleaning pools, waiting tables, or inspecting sewers for a living. Subtract the number of kids that will actually end up doing that. Uh oh, negative numbers. Now, you pick out the ones that you want to be unhappy with their new careers.
Now, ask a hundred kids if they think that they can start their own business from scratch and make it a huge success. Ninety nine of them will say yes. The hundredth kid won't really be listening, but he will will sell you a better clipboard or pen, and you'll remember his name, because he's the one that's actually exceptional and doesn't need to be told it every day.
It doesn't have to be that way. The happiest guy that I know dropped out of the techie rat race and became a postal worker. But it took him fifteen years to figure it out, because at every stage he'd been told that he could do better, that he could produce more, that he hadn't achieved his potential. At no point was he ever happy clawing his way up various corporate ladders, but he believed that just a little more success would make him so, because that's what everyone was telling him. I'm planning my own exit strategy to emulate him. India and China are welcome to work their asses off to win global market share, because all that hard work gets you is the opportunity to work even harder to support your new ambitions.
I'm rambling a little off topic now, but while I agree with you that our reach should exceed our grasp, telling a hundred kids that they can all be winners is a pretty good way to ensure that ninety of them are going to be frustrated and bitter for most of their adult lives.
>It's better to have 100 kids who think they're exceptional [...] than to have 100 kids who think they're all worthless.
Now that you put it like that, I see that because I opposed the war in Iraq, I support terrorism.
Don't build that strawman near me. There's a huge gulf between exceptional and worthless, and I'm very well aware of the benefits of praising and being positive (by the way, I have kids of my own and do volunteer education work with children. Do you?). But the music industry (which is what we're talking about) is going down a path of deliberately manufacturing and selling the Kid Next Door Superstar that sends a message to kids that no matter how talentless or bland they are, they can make it if they just get that lucky break. Further, they're being sold on the idea that they deserve it, that they don't even have to work that hard for it. I'm not saying that the process of creating talent has changed much in the past thirty years, but it's now so honest and in your face that we even make programs that show how to drag talentless no hoper wannabes off the street and turn them into overnight sensations.
I'd never tell a child that they're going to spend their whole life flipping burgers, and for that matter, I'd never discourage one that showed real enthusiasm and talent. But we're increasingly selling the idea that anyone and everyone can be a winner. If we're all winners, who's going to flip our burgers? And how unhappy are we making burgers flippers by effectively telling them that they're failures for not being the huge successes that we told them they could be?
As a final thought, look into how many truly successful entrepeneurs are education dropouts. Truly exceptional individuals will quickly outgrow a nurturing system run by (literally, statistically) mediocre talents.
>That was my objection to the thing I was responding to, remember? The quote that implied that the artists wouldn't get anything? Remember?
It didn't imply anything, it stated it. "Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!"
Further, it stated it as a final conclusion, including clawing back the $45,000 from your selective extract. What you said was "In Courtney's article, she argues that the individual members of her hypothetical band end up with $45,000 each, once everything else is taken into account", which is 180 proof moonshine, because this is before the costs and income from the actual music sales are taken into account. Don't try to to pass of a selective quote from the start of a calculation as being the conclusion.
As to your other statements, well, given that you've got more experience than Courney Love, I'll believe you rather than her.
No, wait... something's not right there... and it's me responding to a poster that lacks the basic integrity to acknowledge a glaring misrepresentation.
I'd be the first to agree (hey, I am, in fact), but I do believe that there's a moral and pragmatic foundation behind copy rights. The problem is that the law isn't consistent, and it isn't clear. Until we can get it cleared up, all that the RIAA can do to support their (theoretically moral, pragmatic) position is to play the cards as they're dealt.
I'll also be the first to point out, however, that that's not what they're doing. They're buying laws and misrepresenting the morality. Once they get back to working for creative talent rather than owning it, I might change my mind.
But that said, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with copy right law in principle, it's just a clusterfuck in practice, and getting worse with each revision.
>I didn't realize being poor was a license to ignore the law
If we're getting into realpolitik, consider that the reason that we have welfare is that the alternative is to have to deal with millions of starving people in our midst with nothing to lose. Welfare and policing are the sandwich keeping the gooey crime filling from slopping on our jeans. If you cut one, you have to spend on the other, unless you particularly like waking to the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.
We're dealing with human nature. If you can't afford the things that you want, you are left with the choice of doing without, or taking them anyway. Of course, we should do without, but there are prisons full of people who demonstrate that we don't always do that.
The RIAA have clearly decided to drop the handouts and go hog wild on the policing. Perhaps in this specific context that makes sense, perhaps they've done the sums. But as long as they keep giving the goods away - or paying to give them away! - in the form of radio, webcast and videos - they're going to have a hard time persuading people that they're even doing anything wrong, let alone that they have a significant chance of being slapped on the wrist.
> she argues that the individual members of her hypothetical band end up with $45,000 each, once everything else is taken into account.
That's if they get a $1 million advance. And if you take the time to actually read the article, you'll find that's recoupable if the music doesn't clear a profit after all of the expenses that the label bills to them (pop quiz: who's got the better accountants and lawyers?). Perhaps you should read the whole thing rather than just selectively quoting pieces of it.
Absolute best case is the band taking the million dollars, and skipping the country, thus avoiding annoying expenses like tax or actually making any music. You'd be surprised how many startup games developers did that (or variations) after Eidos went hog wild in the 90's trying to create another Tomb Raider.
>If that were the case, you'd think that the RIAA would have a hard time finding bands willing to sign contracts
Only if wildly optimistic kids:
Personally, I blame a system that tells kids that they can all be exceptional. It's very motivating and all, but the problem is that so many of them seem to actually believe it.
As it's after lunch, I'm switching to trolling the other way now. What you should have said was:
See Title 17 as amended by HR 2265 (NET Act). 10 or more copies, retail value over $5,000 = 3 year felony / $250,000 fine, any number of copies between $1,000 and $2,500 retail value = 1 year misdemeanor / $100,000 fine.
What will you bet that I can get modded informative for pushing both sides of this argument?
Ouch, sorry. About 2.2 milliseconds after hitting "Submit", I realised that you were actually asking that question. Sorry for attaching my rant to your post.
For what it's worth, I agree. Intellectual Property law needs to be revisited and some consistency brought to it. Why, for example, is it a criminal offence simply to obtain or supply a tool to break the encryption on a DVD? Why is it not a criminal offence to actually create or even use the tool to make a copy? Why is it a criminal offence to produce and sell shirts with a trademarked Nike logo, but not a criminal offence to sell copied CDs?
The only aspect of the RIAA's position with which I have the slightest sympathy is that they really do have to educate people about this area of the law. However, the fact that they're lying about it (consistently calling copy right infringement "theft") disinclines me to cut them any slack.
Haven't we had enough of morally deviant predators grooming little kids to turn them into compliant bitches?
Now, I'm all for teaching kids (and adults) about the consequences of their actions, but the action that the RIAA are objecting to isn't file copying, it's not buying music. There's a distinction, and I want them to be honest about what they're saying.
What these kids are really being told is: "If you don't do buy Freshy Q's new CD, the police will take your mommy away. Sorry, I mean, Freshy Q is going to die in the gutter."
Now, sure, Freshy is dead meat if you don't buy because you're downloading his m3p, but the thing is, he's just as destitute if you don't buy because you're happy listening to him on the radio, or by streamed webcast, or on MTV-a-like channels, or (shocker) if despite - or perhaps because of - the many ways that the RIAA pays to get the music to you, you simply choose not to buy a CD.
That's the message that the RIAA is giving, once you strip the bullshit away. Buy more music. Buy music, or you've killed Freshy Q. It's not our job to persuade you to pay, it doesn't matter how generic or plastic our miming meat puppets are, the fact is, Billy, it's your responsibility to pay, and frankly, you should pay whether you like the music or not. It's all about stopping poor Freshy Q from starving.
Spooky prediction? Next year, it's Driver's Ed, but first a short message from our sponsors, the Ford Motor Company Inc.
"Hello class. I'd like to tell you the story of Wally Doe. We had to lay Wally off because you selfish little bastards are walking to school instead of pestering your parents to buy you a Ford Weener. Now Wally has to give handjobs for food. Say, kids, how would you feel about choking the chicken of a 400lb trucker to make ends meet?"
>they're teaching kids that stealing is wrong.
Not stealing, infringing copy rights. Take it up with the liberal hippies in the Supreme Court, because until you get a reversal from them, copy right infringement is not theft.
> Why are they always suing in civil proceedings rather than prosecuting with a criminal trial?
Because - for the zillionth time - copy right infringement is not theft, and not a criminal offence. It is copy right infringement, an actionable matter carrying fixed penalties. Some associated activities are criminal: screwing with your cable connection, DMCA violations. But purely copying the data is not a criminal offence.
Is that enough italics, or do we need to go over this again?
Uh, OK, sorry, I didn't have my thinking head on. The exploit is just to clone the victim's MAC and then let your cableco's DHCP server serve you an IP, probably the same one that they just had, but it really doesn't matter, because as far as they're concerned, you are the other customer. I can confirm that cableco's (Blueyonder in the UK at least) use MACs to identify customers. What threw me was the description of changing IP addresses. This by itself is pointless, but changing MACs would do it.
> And what should they do? Squat. I want the government as far from the net as possible.
Caveat: until it happens to you.
Where your send email purporting to be from someone else, or in this case when spammers send spam purporting to be from the anti-spam orgs. SMTP servers don't validate the From: field, you can put anything in there. Most lusers and a shocking number of clueless sysadmins don't realise this.
We've had a succession of Washington suits yakking on about Information Security, and Cyber War and The Great Potential Threat To Our Infrastructure, and yet when DDoS attacks actually happen, what do they do?
You guessed it. Squat.
There's no votes and no budget in actually fighting crime. There's plenty of capital to be made in selling up the threat, and in promising that you'll fix it, given just a little more time in office, and a slightly larger personal empire.
What I'd like to see is our Dictator of Homeland Security pinned down and made to explain why he's not doing something about the attacks that are happening now. If we can't defend monkeys.com from a DDoS from malicious assholes, how does he expect to believe that we're able to defend safety or economic critical infrastructure from the same kind of attack launched by the truly malevolent?
I'm only unbiased in that I hate everyone and everything. And I gave up on K5 long ago; it requires far too much time and effort to troll effectively. Slashdot is like trolling with training wheels in comparison.
The "artist" is in most cases a dancing, miming meat puppet. The magic is done by songwriters, backing vocalists, session musicians, recording technicians, and deck monkeys, mostly paid at a flat rate. Or rather, not paid, if music doesn't sell.
Any actual artists that want to get more than pennies per song can go ahead and release through their own label. Once they - or anyone else involved in the process - sell their rights, they have no say, morally or legally, in what happens next.
If you want to support the artist, send money to the artist. Do you expect that they'll pass it on to the people that actually did the hard work on that track?
>Knowingly responding to a subpeona with false information would get them so deep in shit their great grandchildren would be shovelling
Says who? The subpoenad information is addressed to the plaintiff, not the court, so it's not perjury. Remember, the RIAA don't swear to the truth of their claims, they just argue their validityy in court. I doubt that a third party can be held to a higher standard.
Any actual lawyers want to chime in on this one?
Careful now. OCG was very careful not to say "thief" or "stolen", so don't you go "misquoting" him.
>A more probable cause is someone used a net sniffing program and changed their IP address hi-jacking her assigned address to protect their identity. On a cable system, it's not too hard to do
Uh, head hurts. How do the packets get routed back to the spoofer's machine? You can spoof IPs for sending datagrams, but it's pointless for connection oriented protocols.
The /. whats? We have editors now? When did that happen?
>What frustrated him was some of them ignored him
Which seems to be his problem. Why didn't they listen to him? The fools. The fools!. Listen to Peter (sigh) or be dooooomed. Thus the advice to take a chill pill.
>Sorry, I don't just use open source software for fun and enjoyable, I use it to get things to done in the real world
In the "real world", you tend to get what you're prepared to pay for. If you're just "using" open source projects, then you're a parasite. Good luck and all, but if the reason that the GPL insists on a disclaimer of warranty is, well, you.
>You are basically taking a cop-out, either your project (at the current time) is secure or it is not. If it is not secure, don't pretend that it is.
Leaving aside that I didn't say anything about my project, I'll assume that you're talking about the open source projects mentioned. Now, in theory I agree with you, but in the "real world", if you believe marketing blurb when you have the opportunity to verify or refute it yourself, then, well, good luck again. How many thighmasters do you own?
>Firstly I'm a professor type, so $10K is a fair pile of cash to me
I think we've identified a problem right there. If you're good enough at what you do to teach it, why are you getting paid so little to do it?
>>So that they'll do as you say, rather than (not) doing as you (don't) do? If you won't eat your own dogfood, why expect anyone else to?
>That doesn't even make sense.
It doesn't not make (no) sense.