I wonder if we could persuade Mr. Ashcroft to add post-forging, email-forging, and email blocking to the "hacking" category of his anti-civil liberties bill. Then we could stick MAPS and those other vigilanty bastards in jail for life...
Yes, double opt-in is good. What's bad is MAPS taking it upon themselves to: 1) Make a "rule" that they think is "good for everyone" without any public debate or input, without any elected representation, without any authority whatsoever. 2) Enforce that "rule" without any accountability, oversight, or authority whatsoever.
What government abdicated and left MAPS in charge? They're just a bunch of vigilanties and they will be run out of town just like the vigilanties of the Wild West. Hell, even those vigilanties could only spread their disease so far; MAPS tries to be global in scope. Hopefully we can get them labled the terrorists they are and get the FBI after them, too.
That's the good news. The fact that the vigilanties at MAPS settled means they realized they would lose in court and perhaps be subject to stiffer penalties, possibly being shut down altogether. Too bad it didn't go that far; another MAPS victim looking out for themselves and not carrying the banner for the rest of the world. ("they settled with us; they rest of you are on your own") That's the bad news: MAPS is still in business.
Still, it sets another precident: sue MAPS and they'll probably cave. Now, we should all sue and kill them once and for all, one out-of-court settlement at a time.
Damn vigalanties should be strung up on the closest tree (what's good for the goose and all that).
Uh, a clue, perhaps? Of course opt-in is better for the public than opt-out. That's why the FCC has never before supported opt-in for anything. Wake up! The news here is that they are even considering opt-out, but I suppose that can be written off to posturing so they can claim they asked for public comment. Asking doesn't mean they have to listen to our replies. But reply anyway -- tilting at windmills will give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside while you rot in jail for opposing the will of our corporate government, you terrorist.
It is widely believe that the explosion was caused by the flammable fabric covering of the ill-fated airship.
It is true that the Hindenburg disaster was due to the flammible covering. Someone at NASA proved it several years ago (see other posts for dozens of links). However, that fact is not "widely believed." As anyone can see by reading the posts here, the widely-held belief is the false claim that the hydrogen was the fuel source for the fire. If the truth were "widely believed" then you wouldn't need to debunk the falsehood, would you?
If enough people walk, their policies will change.
Walk where? Here, AT&T@Home is the only game in town. Heck, "here" isn't even "in town" -- which is the problem. We're so far out in the country that DSL is not an option. We're so far out in the country that 56K is not an option. We're so far out in the country that 28.8 isn't even an option. Until @Home, 24,000 bps was the best I'd ever seen.
In some cases, the only game in town is the city-owned cable system. What do people who live there get to do in your "free market" system? They get to move, that's what. Great option! Because they can move elsewhere, their ISP is not a monopoly? Get real.
Even if your solution were practical and affordable, it does nothing when I send an email from my non-blacklisting ISP of choice to your non-blacklisting ISP of choice and it still doesn't get through because some 3rd party in between us decides one of us is a spammer.
I agree with the post that says we need better laws -- both against spammers and against vigilanties. ISP are common carriers and the law should recognize that fact. Spammers are preying on otherwise law-abiding citizens and the law should recognize that fact, too. We won't solve one problem without solving the other. The vigilanties (and their supporters here on/.) don't understand that they are not part of the solution, just another problem for the rest of us to solve. We will solve it, one way or the other. If you're not part of the search for a reasonable solution, don't complain when the government-imposed solution targets you.
Re:Not quite the first..
on
GPS Meets PCS
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· Score: 2
the only time that anyone gets your specific location information is only when it is needed (as in during a 911 call).
Define "needed". Today John Ashcroft is again asking Congress to please approve his "Liberty Revocation Act", which among other civil rights takeaways will eliminate that pesky requirement to get court approval for all wiretaps (once he has the right to tap one of your phones, he wants that to cover every phone you now use, ever did use, or may ever possibly use in the future. which means if he's after me he can tap your phone without a court order just because he thinks I might call you).
What happens when the Justice Department asks Sprint PCS or Verizon or AT&T Wireless or any of the others to please give them a direct feed from your cellphone's GPS so they can crack another terrorist ring. Perhaps the terrorist ring that blew up the WTC. Perhaps the terrorist ring that's attempting to scratch-build garage door openers in violation of the SSSCA. Does that sound "needed" to YOU? If so, go right ahead and carry an E911 cell phone.
I'll keep my pre-E911 phone as long as I can, but the minute they tell me I must buy an E911-enabled phone is the minute I drop my service altogether and go back to pagers and payphones.
The problem is that the crackers and script kiddies attack the lowest common denominator. In this case it's IIS and other Microsoft wares. But what if Gardner suceeds and the Fortune 500 dump IIS and switch to Apache? When that happens the safe thing to do will be to use the less-common and thus less-attacked IIS, because the crackers will make Apache too expensive to use. In other words, once again the best course of action is to do exactly the opposite of what Gardner recommends.
I agree that Envelope is a better name than Encription, because it points out the fact, not at all obvious to most people, that email is the equivalent to a postcard, not a letter. Nobody can read what you put in a letter without opening the envalope, but anyone can read what you put on a postcard. Since your email may be handled by dozens of unknown systems, any of whom can read it, email envelopes are a very good idea.
The problem is that with currently available systems only the intended recipient can open the envelope. Of course, that's also the main selling point. What we need is a mechanism whereby no third party can open the envelope without a court order. Unfortunately, backdoors and key escrow don't work. There is nothing to prevent unauthorized use of that back door, including use by the cops without a warrant. Key escrow is the equivalent of requiring everyone to leave a copy of their housekey at the local Police Station. We don't need that in the physical world because, with a court order, the cops don't need your key. Email changes everything. They can't open your encrypted email without a key -- your key, and even with a search warrant they can't compel you to reveal it (there's that sticky Bill of Rights thing again).
So if anyone reading this wants to make a ton of money, design an email envelope such that the only way for the government to open it is with a court order. Of course, you'd better make that ton of money fast, because someone will figure out a way around it faster than you can say "Osama bin Laden."
Who cares about "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia or their products or services"? The phrase that caught my eye was "or promote...pornography." So the only businesses that actually make money on the internet are now barred from using Microsoft's web server? Ignore your largest, best funded customer base -- great idea, BillG!
Hmmm, I wonder if the porn shops will soon have more openings for Linux folks... My wife wouldn't like it, but I think it would be a great work environment;-)
But aside from that point, why is toaster / embedded device so different from software-only product? Are they not shipping GPLed program code in binary form; be it embedded or stand-alone? Isn't this exactly what GPL covers? The only difference is the visibility; it's easier to obfuscate / hide origins of software when software is embedded, ie. not directly accessible. Aside from that, how is this so different?
I can't speak as an expert, but it seems to me that the toaster does not come with binaries in the sense that you download an application that you run on your computer. Rather, you are getting a total package of hardware and firmware, and you cannot get the firmware without the hardware (e.g., you cannot get the firmware that runs your car's engine without buying the whole car). In some cases, to modify the firmware you may need to break a seal, open the box, remove a ROM chip, copy its contents, edit those binary contents, copy the new code to a PROM and then plug it into the toaster. At this point your toaster may well be, well, toast.
Now, if your new toaster comes with a disk drive or a network connection, and a user interface that allows you to load new firmware, then I would agree that the source must be made available. But this discussion came up before re: TiVo, and IIRC the general agreement was that TiVo did not need to release their modifications to the GPL code they used, because those modifications were not distributed as software but rather as firmware that only came with and only worked with their hardware. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I remember the discussion.
I believe you are correct, sir! Someone mod this up, it deserves more than a zero.
Is perhaps the problem not that they don't release the source to their modifications but rather that they didn't say "Linux Inside!" or something similar? The really sad thing is that this box would probably sell better if they did show you the code, so that you could maintain it yourself, as brtb so obviously needs to do. They may not need to show you the source if they use GPL code in a toaster, but wouldn't you choose the toaster with published source over the proprietary toaster? Even if you will never need the source? (Frankly, in my experience you're more likely to someday need the source if they don't automatically give it to you at time of purchase)
I agree with everything except your comment, "They don't 'think out of the box' about ways to use information they control." In the United States, banks now own insurance companies and other financial institutions they were previously barred from owning. As a consequence of this de-regulation Congress gave them strict guidelines to protect our privacy. The banks must inform you that they may give your private info to their new corporate bretheren. For example, your bank may give your personal information (SSN, phone number, etc.) and complete credit history (including who you wrote checks to and for how much) to their new insurance company, who can then see you're sending checks to a competitor and call you at dinner time to pitch their fabulous rates, comparing themselves to your current insurer. You must then tell the bank to go stuff sand up their ass -- if you don't tell them to not share your information, they will. Indeed, they already have, and you must trust them that when you tell them to stop they'll go around to all the other companies and tell them to please forget everything about you. Yeah, right. Like they're gonna put all that toothpaste back in the tube.
I think you misunderstand. Rather than pay the cable/dsl company for additional global IP addresses, you had to pay the firewall people for additional local IP addresses (192.168.x.x type addresses). Some are still at it (half-way down the page: "Network up to 10 computers together (upgradable to 50)").
Faced with $500 for a solution with a built-in limitation or $200 for an old 486 running Linux, I chose Linux. As I said, things may have changed in the last year and Linksys may now provision up to 255 PCs for no extra cost, in which case I have no idea why anyone would buy the WatchGuard SOHO product.
From a cost standpoint, I just bought a 99 dollar linksys router for about 45 after some clever rebates and amazon coupons.
I may be dead wrong here, because I set up my 486/133 Coyote Linux/Seawall box over a year ago and haven't looked at dedicated firewalls since, but at that time the old PC was far cheaper for one simple reason: no upgrade costs to add more PCs to your local network.
The dedicated firewalls of one year ago served you 3 or 4 local IP addresses and charged big bucks for the "right" to use additional local IP addresses. They were going for the 'service subscription' business model over 'make money on the hardware'. That sucks. I'll be damned if I'll pay $250 or even $50 for a firewall that doesn't cover 255 local IP addresses (reserving one for itself). I hope you bought a model without such artificial limitations, and if you did then you got a great deal. Which Linksys did you buy?
the PC that can't boot anything but Windows? (How will they do this?)
"How?" Wrong question. "When?" isn't even the right question. "Why haven't they done it yet?" is more like it. PC makers now make computers that are about as far removed from the original PC as an Explorer is from the Model T, but it's like the Explorer still has the Model T's pedal system (most drivers under 60 couldn't drive a Model T to save their life -- I know I couldn't). The BIOS allows new PCs to boot MS-DOS -- why? Who needs it? (retorical question, no flames please)
I can't believe Microsoft hasn't done a deal with Compaq, Dell, etc. to supply a BIOS (it's just more software, right?) that almost instantly boots a PC directly into Windows. Why bother with all that real-mode crap? Who buys a new PC to run MS-DOS? Just put the Windows NT kernel in the BIOS and boot your PC as fast as you "boot" your Palm. I'm not talking about a replacement for the "standard" BIOS, I'm talking new code to work with new hardware (they've already dropped almost all of the legacy hardware anyway) -- a whole new architecture. Make it proprietary, of course, and smother it with patents for good measure. Linux or *BSD wouldn't run on it in a million years.
Like I said, I'm amazed they haven't already done it. Maybe the OEMs just can't swallow the idea of having the same BIOS as their competitors, or being that closely tied to M$. But think about it -- M$ could even make this new BIOS open source, and license it under the GPL -- all the PCs built with it would only run Windows, so in this case the GPL would work in their favor (any Linux-supporting forks could be squashed with patent infringement suits, and don't think M$ can't get the patents -- look how long RAMBUS has had theirs, and despite the recent setbacks they're still valid).
There are times (one might argue the majority of internet traffic) when privacy just doesn't matter. If you can use reliable encrypted protocols for the exceptions then open mode 802.11b is fine. What are you trying to hide?
Cryptographic analysis includes analyzing what is encrypted and what isn't, and drawing conclusions from that data. For example, if you never encrypt your email to family members but always encrypt email to one individual, one might conclude that your corrispondence with that individual is of an illegal nature, and seek a search warrant to bug your PC and find out what you're really discussing. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the weather in Bolivia and how it will affect the next crop. We won't know, Judge, unless we tap that PC and read the mail ourselves. If you encrypt everything then you've cut off one more data source.
The other analogy would be to ask why you send letters when a post card would do; why not save money (bandwidth) with postcards for the familiy update to Mom and only use letters for the secret stuff, like love letters? The answer is that your family updates to Mom are nobody's business but yours, and my answer to you is that your Debian ISO download is also nobody's business but yours.
Update on my other reply. I got the computer from my nephew this weekend. Last night I took the heatsink off the chip, and to my delight I discovered it's a 500MHz K6-2. Cool -- an extra 100MHz for "free"! So now my 5 year old has the most powerful computer in the house! (mom & dad each have 266MHz PII IBM Thinkpads, the server's a 300MHz K6-2, and the firewall's a 133MHz 486)
So I was misinformed and you are right -- it's not a 400MHz Duron.
That's great, if all you want to do is go from New York City to Los Angeles. If you want to go from any point on Earth to any other point on Earth, and not just from Point LA to Point NYC, an airplane is a far better choice than a train. Any train.
Not to mention, did it clearly state on the outside of the package, that this limitation existed? I'm betting not!
I'll take that bet! Sorry, you lose. The ONLY good thing Zenith did was print the license on the outside of the disk envelope. You had to read the license to open the envelope (pretty hard to claim you missed it). Microsoft used to do that, too, remember? But Microsoft said you could transfer the license if you transfered all disks and destroyed any backups. Zenith said you could transfer the license with their permission, but they never gave permission. I asked, they said no. Hard to believe anyone could be worse than Microsoft, eh?
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What government abdicated and left MAPS in charge? They're just a bunch of vigilanties and they will be run out of town just like the vigilanties of the Wild West. Hell, even those vigilanties could only spread their disease so far; MAPS tries to be global in scope. Hopefully we can get them labled the terrorists they are and get the FBI after them, too.
Still, it sets another precident: sue MAPS and they'll probably cave. Now, we should all sue and kill them once and for all, one out-of-court settlement at a time.
Damn vigalanties should be strung up on the closest tree (what's good for the goose and all that).
Uh, a clue, perhaps? Of course opt-in is better for the public than opt-out. That's why the FCC has never before supported opt-in for anything. Wake up! The news here is that they are even considering opt-out, but I suppose that can be written off to posturing so they can claim they asked for public comment. Asking doesn't mean they have to listen to our replies. But reply anyway -- tilting at windmills will give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside while you rot in jail for opposing the will of our corporate government, you terrorist.
It is true that the Hindenburg disaster was due to the flammible covering. Someone at NASA proved it several years ago (see other posts for dozens of links). However, that fact is not "widely believed." As anyone can see by reading the posts here, the widely-held belief is the false claim that the hydrogen was the fuel source for the fire. If the truth were "widely believed" then you wouldn't need to debunk the falsehood, would you?
Walk where? Here, AT&T@Home is the only game in town. Heck, "here" isn't even "in town" -- which is the problem. We're so far out in the country that DSL is not an option. We're so far out in the country that 56K is not an option. We're so far out in the country that 28.8 isn't even an option. Until @Home, 24,000 bps was the best I'd ever seen.
In some cases, the only game in town is the city-owned cable system. What do people who live there get to do in your "free market" system? They get to move, that's what. Great option! Because they can move elsewhere, their ISP is not a monopoly? Get real.
Even if your solution were practical and affordable, it does nothing when I send an email from my non-blacklisting ISP of choice to your non-blacklisting ISP of choice and it still doesn't get through because some 3rd party in between us decides one of us is a spammer.
I agree with the post that says we need better laws -- both against spammers and against vigilanties. ISP are common carriers and the law should recognize that fact. Spammers are preying on otherwise law-abiding citizens and the law should recognize that fact, too. We won't solve one problem without solving the other. The vigilanties (and their supporters here on /.) don't understand that they are not part of the solution, just another problem for the rest of us to solve. We will solve it, one way or the other. If you're not part of the search for a reasonable solution, don't complain when the government-imposed solution targets you.
Define "needed". Today John Ashcroft is again asking Congress to please approve his "Liberty Revocation Act", which among other civil rights takeaways will eliminate that pesky requirement to get court approval for all wiretaps (once he has the right to tap one of your phones, he wants that to cover every phone you now use, ever did use, or may ever possibly use in the future. which means if he's after me he can tap your phone without a court order just because he thinks I might call you).
What happens when the Justice Department asks Sprint PCS or Verizon or AT&T Wireless or any of the others to please give them a direct feed from your cellphone's GPS so they can crack another terrorist ring. Perhaps the terrorist ring that blew up the WTC. Perhaps the terrorist ring that's attempting to scratch-build garage door openers in violation of the SSSCA. Does that sound "needed" to YOU? If so, go right ahead and carry an E911 cell phone.
I'll keep my pre-E911 phone as long as I can, but the minute they tell me I must buy an E911-enabled phone is the minute I drop my service altogether and go back to pagers and payphones.
The problem is that with currently available systems only the intended recipient can open the envelope. Of course, that's also the main selling point. What we need is a mechanism whereby no third party can open the envelope without a court order. Unfortunately, backdoors and key escrow don't work. There is nothing to prevent unauthorized use of that back door, including use by the cops without a warrant. Key escrow is the equivalent of requiring everyone to leave a copy of their housekey at the local Police Station. We don't need that in the physical world because, with a court order, the cops don't need your key. Email changes everything. They can't open your encrypted email without a key -- your key, and even with a search warrant they can't compel you to reveal it (there's that sticky Bill of Rights thing again).
So if anyone reading this wants to make a ton of money, design an email envelope such that the only way for the government to open it is with a court order. Of course, you'd better make that ton of money fast, because someone will figure out a way around it faster than you can say "Osama bin Laden."
Hmmm, I wonder if the porn shops will soon have more openings for Linux folks... My wife wouldn't like it, but I think it would be a great work environment ;-)
I can't speak as an expert, but it seems to me that the toaster does not come with binaries in the sense that you download an application that you run on your computer. Rather, you are getting a total package of hardware and firmware, and you cannot get the firmware without the hardware (e.g., you cannot get the firmware that runs your car's engine without buying the whole car). In some cases, to modify the firmware you may need to break a seal, open the box, remove a ROM chip, copy its contents, edit those binary contents, copy the new code to a PROM and then plug it into the toaster. At this point your toaster may well be, well, toast.
Now, if your new toaster comes with a disk drive or a network connection, and a user interface that allows you to load new firmware, then I would agree that the source must be made available. But this discussion came up before re: TiVo, and IIRC the general agreement was that TiVo did not need to release their modifications to the GPL code they used, because those modifications were not distributed as software but rather as firmware that only came with and only worked with their hardware. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I remember the discussion.
Is perhaps the problem not that they don't release the source to their modifications but rather that they didn't say "Linux Inside!" or something similar? The really sad thing is that this box would probably sell better if they did show you the code, so that you could maintain it yourself, as brtb so obviously needs to do. They may not need to show you the source if they use GPL code in a toaster, but wouldn't you choose the toaster with published source over the proprietary toaster? Even if you will never need the source? (Frankly, in my experience you're more likely to someday need the source if they don't automatically give it to you at time of purchase)
Banks "don't think out of the box." Riiiiiight.
ROTFLMAO!!!
I want a copy of The Phantom Edit. Heck, I just want to see The Phantom Edit. Any hints?
Faced with $500 for a solution with a built-in limitation or $200 for an old 486 running Linux, I chose Linux. As I said, things may have changed in the last year and Linksys may now provision up to 255 PCs for no extra cost, in which case I have no idea why anyone would buy the WatchGuard SOHO product.
I may be dead wrong here, because I set up my 486/133 Coyote Linux/Seawall box over a year ago and haven't looked at dedicated firewalls since, but at that time the old PC was far cheaper for one simple reason: no upgrade costs to add more PCs to your local network.
The dedicated firewalls of one year ago served you 3 or 4 local IP addresses and charged big bucks for the "right" to use additional local IP addresses. They were going for the 'service subscription' business model over 'make money on the hardware'. That sucks. I'll be damned if I'll pay $250 or even $50 for a firewall that doesn't cover 255 local IP addresses (reserving one for itself). I hope you bought a model without such artificial limitations, and if you did then you got a great deal. Which Linksys did you buy?
Yeah, but thank God there isn't someone handing you a new piece every 2 seconds!
"How?" Wrong question. "When?" isn't even the right question. "Why haven't they done it yet?" is more like it. PC makers now make computers that are about as far removed from the original PC as an Explorer is from the Model T, but it's like the Explorer still has the Model T's pedal system (most drivers under 60 couldn't drive a Model T to save their life -- I know I couldn't). The BIOS allows new PCs to boot MS-DOS -- why? Who needs it? (retorical question, no flames please)
I can't believe Microsoft hasn't done a deal with Compaq, Dell, etc. to supply a BIOS (it's just more software, right?) that almost instantly boots a PC directly into Windows. Why bother with all that real-mode crap? Who buys a new PC to run MS-DOS? Just put the Windows NT kernel in the BIOS and boot your PC as fast as you "boot" your Palm. I'm not talking about a replacement for the "standard" BIOS, I'm talking new code to work with new hardware (they've already dropped almost all of the legacy hardware anyway) -- a whole new architecture. Make it proprietary, of course, and smother it with patents for good measure. Linux or *BSD wouldn't run on it in a million years.
Like I said, I'm amazed they haven't already done it. Maybe the OEMs just can't swallow the idea of having the same BIOS as their competitors, or being that closely tied to M$. But think about it -- M$ could even make this new BIOS open source, and license it under the GPL -- all the PCs built with it would only run Windows, so in this case the GPL would work in their favor (any Linux-supporting forks could be squashed with patent infringement suits, and don't think M$ can't get the patents -- look how long RAMBUS has had theirs, and despite the recent setbacks they're still valid).
Cryptographic analysis includes analyzing what is encrypted and what isn't, and drawing conclusions from that data. For example, if you never encrypt your email to family members but always encrypt email to one individual, one might conclude that your corrispondence with that individual is of an illegal nature, and seek a search warrant to bug your PC and find out what you're really discussing. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the weather in Bolivia and how it will affect the next crop. We won't know, Judge, unless we tap that PC and read the mail ourselves. If you encrypt everything then you've cut off one more data source.
The other analogy would be to ask why you send letters when a post card would do; why not save money (bandwidth) with postcards for the familiy update to Mom and only use letters for the secret stuff, like love letters? The answer is that your family updates to Mom are nobody's business but yours, and my answer to you is that your Debian ISO download is also nobody's business but yours.
So I was misinformed and you are right -- it's not a 400MHz Duron.
Hey, timothy! Try reading the damn article before posting! Stupid Slashtot -- why aren't your parents supervising your use of the computer, timmy?
I'll take that bet! Sorry, you lose. The ONLY good thing Zenith did was print the license on the outside of the disk envelope. You had to read the license to open the envelope (pretty hard to claim you missed it). Microsoft used to do that, too, remember? But Microsoft said you could transfer the license if you transfered all disks and destroyed any backups. Zenith said you could transfer the license with their permission, but they never gave permission. I asked, they said no. Hard to believe anyone could be worse than Microsoft, eh?