I'm talking about actually giving people control over what they legally own. My computer? Then let me hack it as much as I want - software as well as hardware. My DVD? Then let me play it however I want (skip trailers, play it backwards, make my own "phantom edit").
The problem is that the protections you are talking about work both ways. The DMCA (although it's overly broad) is there to enforce the contract you have when you purchase a DVD (See where it says 'Do not make illegal copies'?) or an iTunes song. (That agreement you clicked 'Agree' on when you signed up.) You are complaining about that contract, but it has the exact same status as, say, the GPL. You can't have software you write protected against being co-opted into a commercial product, and at the same time not allow DVD publishers to enforce whatever restrictions they feel like on their content. (And yes, even if you bought a disc with the movie on it, it's still their content. Buying a Redhat CD doesn't let you re-license Redhat however you want.)
I don't know what the answer is, but disallowing content providers from placing restrictions on the use of their content isn't it.
Project Gutenburg has 11,531 titles as of now, in text format.
Project Gutenburg 2 claims to have 27,000 books available for free in HTML format, and 60,000 books they charge for in PDF/eBook format (Those aren't the same format, and their site confuses them.)
So, they're obviously ripping off PG's trademarked name (unless they have permission, as a couple people have speculated), but are they really ripping off their content? And even if they are, where are they getting the rest of their books? Presumably, all 27,000 HTML books are duplicated within the 60,000 PDFs, since they claim they pioneered converting from HTML to PDF... But that still leaves 50,000 books that had to come from somewhere other than PG. PG2 is a front for the World eBook Library, which claims to be a consortium of either 45 or 'hundreds' of companies, depending on what page you're on. But their counterfit Adobe page doesn't exactly instill confidence. Then again, with them claiming support from the likes of PG, the Internet Archive, Google, Amazon, Systran, and the LOC, how can they be bad? I mean, on that page they even list the CIA as one of their contributors, and have an outdated mirror of the CIA world factbook. That book is, of course, in the public domain, except that they didn't bother to strip out the official CIA logo, as required by the CIA. Talk about the wrong people to piss off.
So, this whole thing smells like a major scam, but I still want to know where they got the rest of their content (assuming they actually have it...)
Wow, I feel old now, nobody has mentioned yet that this isn't the first time MS has done this... Back in DOS 6.xx they included MSAV, a command line virus scanner, and VSAFE, a memory resident program that watched for suspicious activity (formatting drives, writing to the boot sector, etc.)
I believe they were stripped down versions of Central Point Antivirus (which later got bought out by Symantec) in much the same way that the later DOS's SCANDISK and DEFRAG utilities were stripped down versions of the Norton's Utilites that performed the same functions...
I don't see why MS would bother to write their own virus scanner this time around, either... I'd think either of the big 2 companies would jump at the chance to license MS a stripped down version of their product, with a convenient "Upgrade now!" button prominently displayed, of course. Or maybe even the full product, but you'd still need a definition subscription from them. Basically, whichever company did it, would put the other one out of the desktop market.
I don't think either big player will go under, though, both McAfee and Symantec have well entrenched server markets... At one previous employer (Gov agency), the inter-departmental flame wars over what (if any) virus scanner to standardize on for departmental email servers reached a 'vi vs emacs'-like level.
Among the reasons I left a certain former employer (besides gross incompetence) was that they had me implement a review system on one of our sites, then the phb proceeded to enter 2-4 glowing reviews for everything in the database, and pick those as the ones that showed on the front page. As of the time I left, not a single review on the site was legitimate.
On the plus side, I'm not the only one who didn't like the site, it's a specialized meta-search engine which is now blocked from using all the largest search engines in it's category. It didn't even pull results, it sent the traffic on to the originating sites, so you know they were doing something seriously wrong to get blocked.
Actually, looking at it again for the first time in a while, it looks like they've got some real reviews now, since every search engine has a bunch of negative 'This site sucks' reviews:)
If you're really paranoid you could add layers like this for as long as you wanted...
Require syns to ports A, B, C, and D, which opens port E where you have to send a password, which opens port F from which you must do an HTTP GET for/foobar.html, which opens ports G which when connected sends you the number of random port H, on which an anonymous FTP service is now running to which you must send a SITE STARTIT command then download the number of port I, which will be the SSH service once you've pinged the server 7 times with 42 byte packets. And to make it really challenging, you have maybe 10 seconds to complete the sequence. (Think a lot of terminals just waiting for you to hit 'enter'... The pings would take most of the time.)
Oh, and if you do anything wrong after the first 3 ports are hit, you can't try again for 30 seconds.
Any good admin knows the most secure system is one that is listening on as few ports as possible.
I don't know, I've been thinking lately that having a nice small dummy ssh/http daemon that opens every unused port would be fun. And it would also be the perfect place to implement the knocking scheme. Hmmm...
Whoa, that guy's really onto something. The top artifact in this picture is obviously a fury artifact from Activision's Battlezone! (I can't find a screenshot or my Battlezone CD... someone want to post one?)
Here in California, Verizon will not sell you DSL unless you also subscribe to voice service
That may be illegal, although I'm not sure what laws California has on forced bundling... If I were you I'd contact the California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advisor office, and find out if that is acceptable grounds for filing a complaint.
You know you spend too much time in front of computers when your short list of non-internet communications techniques doesn't include talking or writing.
1. They're expensive - 32MB = 40 (~$60) (not sure where you get $40 for 256MB the cheapest I can find is around $150).
2. 99% of Computers have USB ports at the *back*, meaning that you have to crawl around the floor to get the thing in. Floppy drives are (almost) universally at the front.
3. You need drivers. If you have to boot into DOS they stop working... For a similar reason they're not bootable, so you can't carry around a 'boot pen' to rescue systems the way you can a floppy.
4. They're not durable - electronics is too easy to break. If you get a floppy wet it'll usually keep working. If you get a pen drive wet then that's $40 (or $150) down the drain.
1. I don't think you looked very hard, since these guys are usually overpriced.
2. Mine came with a 4 foot extension and a cradle, which I've never used because 90% of the computers I work with are either customers with Dells or Compaqs or HPs; or ones I built, all of which have ports on the front.
3. Linux and Windows2k/XP both recognize mine just fine without any special drivers (although the linux systems do need to be configured right). You're right, they're not suitable for system rescue, that's what the mini-CDs in my wallet are for.
4. I've put mine through the washer twice, and it works fine. Try that with a floppy.
I'm not sure what your beef with USB drives is, but maybe you should try a modern one before you go bashing them. (I will admit I didn't like them when they first came out, but recent ones have improved a lot.)
Oh crap, n00b alert. How do you delete posts here?
The n00b alert didn't go off due to your formatting (or lack thereof), it went off because you seemed surprised at the number of posts from people who hadn't bothered to try the software before complaining about it. Welcome to slashdot.
Master and Slave is IDE terminology, not FAT. And it wouldn't get outlawed anyways, because on modern 80 pin cables the black connector is the master and the whitish one is the slave.
Of course, imagine the lawsuits if it was the other way around...
Invasion of slackware? That would be like the US responding to terrorists by invading Canada. (Not that I would rule that out with our current administration, though...) For Debian it's more like announcing the invasion of Microsoft. Based, of course, on firm intelligence that they have Weapons of Mass Cracking. Unfortunately, after the invasion, we'll find out that nobody at Microsoft has any clue about creating secure software, much less cracking it. Then they'll say that was never the reason we invaded in the first place...
That doesn't really make it any better. That means that either a) root (or a highly privileged user) had the same password on 4 important machines, or b) there's a local root exploit in the software they're running. Neither possibility makes me feel warm and fuzzy about using their software again...
Of course, we shouldn't jump to conclusions until we get more information, but really, I don't see an easy way out of this.
I hate to say it, but do the Debian developers use their own product? Were they not kept up to date? Or are all Debian boxes vulnerable? I noticed that nowhere did they mention just *how* they were compromised. Sure, it might be embarassing, but when a major distro's servers get cracked it doesn't help confidence in their distro. Letting us know what service is broken (and hopefully how to fix it) would go a long way towards correcting that.
I can't really speak to your restrictions questions (My parents were too uninformed to even think of restricting my BBS, and later Internet, access.), but I can definitely answer your last question. From 15 years of tech support, then computer repair, and now consulting, the answer is Yes. Everybody lies about what they're doing on the internet. Furthermore, 95% of computers connected to the internet contain porn, except in large organizations with filtering (and/or logging) proxies, in which case it drops to about 25%. I am not kidding. From the office PC of the president of a 400 person company (Impressive stuff, I'd never seen picture of actual penetration with a peeled banana before.) to the ancient home machine of the little old lady that answers the phones at a homeless shelter (Male gay porn? The hell?), nobody is exempt. And, even further, almost none of them "have any idea how that could possibly have gotten on there, they've never even considered looking at anything like that." Then depending on the situation, "Especially not on work time" and/or "For $20 could you clean that off and forget this ever happened?"
The answer to that last question, of course, is also yes.
Sprint Broadband Direct uses microwave frequencies (2.4Ghz) to provide fixed wireless access to entire cities. With only one exception (San Jose), they have *1* giant transmitter to cover each city they serve. Anybody working on the headend was required to wear a full body microwave-proof suit (think space suit). I never got to get near enough to one to see if there were dead birds, but I wouldn't have been surprised.
Of course, the energy density at those sites was probably several thousand times the density the article talks about, so it wouldn't really apply to the off-world power transmission. However, terrestrial communications links really can have harmful energy levels.
We have these strobe-preemptible lights in Tucson. The thing is, on top of the traffic signal's crossbar, right next to the detector is a strobe light that flashes when an emergency vehicle is preempting the light. It's actually very useful, since the flashing usually lets you know they're coming before you hear their sirens. However, it would sort of give you away if you were using a preempter, rushing to work, cruising through all the greens with the strobes going off while everybody else slowed down and wondered where the emergency vehicle was...
So sorry, I forgot you guys don't answer to the name 'Linux' anymore. I assure you, when we said "Linux needs to mature further before home users will get a positive experience from the operating system", we were talking about you. We never forget our unpaid labor when handing out knives in the back.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what the answer is, but disallowing content providers from placing restrictions on the use of their content isn't it.
Project Gutenburg 2 claims to have 27,000 books available for free in HTML format, and 60,000 books they charge for in PDF/eBook format (Those aren't the same format, and their site confuses them.)
So, they're obviously ripping off PG's trademarked name (unless they have permission, as a couple people have speculated), but are they really ripping off their content? And even if they are, where are they getting the rest of their books? Presumably, all 27,000 HTML books are duplicated within the 60,000 PDFs, since they claim they pioneered converting from HTML to PDF... But that still leaves 50,000 books that had to come from somewhere other than PG. PG2 is a front for the World eBook Library, which claims to be a consortium of either 45 or 'hundreds' of companies, depending on what page you're on. But their counterfit Adobe page doesn't exactly instill confidence. Then again, with them claiming support from the likes of PG, the Internet Archive, Google, Amazon, Systran, and the LOC, how can they be bad? I mean, on that page they even list the CIA as one of their contributors, and have an outdated mirror of the CIA world factbook. That book is, of course, in the public domain, except that they didn't bother to strip out the official CIA logo, as required by the CIA. Talk about the wrong people to piss off.
So, this whole thing smells like a major scam, but I still want to know where they got the rest of their content (assuming they actually have it...)
Check it out: Adminspotting.
I believe they were stripped down versions of Central Point Antivirus (which later got bought out by Symantec) in much the same way that the later DOS's SCANDISK and DEFRAG utilities were stripped down versions of the Norton's Utilites that performed the same functions...
I don't see why MS would bother to write their own virus scanner this time around, either... I'd think either of the big 2 companies would jump at the chance to license MS a stripped down version of their product, with a convenient "Upgrade now!" button prominently displayed, of course. Or maybe even the full product, but you'd still need a definition subscription from them. Basically, whichever company did it, would put the other one out of the desktop market.
I don't think either big player will go under, though, both McAfee and Symantec have well entrenched server markets... At one previous employer (Gov agency), the inter-departmental flame wars over what (if any) virus scanner to standardize on for departmental email servers reached a 'vi vs emacs'-like level.
That was really useful. Not often do I get to add 5 more actors to my "Don't see anything these people are in" list at once.
Among the reasons I left a certain former employer (besides gross incompetence) was that they had me implement a review system on one of our sites, then the phb proceeded to enter 2-4 glowing reviews for everything in the database, and pick those as the ones that showed on the front page. As of the time I left, not a single review on the site was legitimate. On the plus side, I'm not the only one who didn't like the site, it's a specialized meta-search engine which is now blocked from using all the largest search engines in it's category. It didn't even pull results, it sent the traffic on to the originating sites, so you know they were doing something seriously wrong to get blocked. Actually, looking at it again for the first time in a while, it looks like they've got some real reviews now, since every search engine has a bunch of negative 'This site sucks' reviews :)
Require syns to ports A, B, C, and D, which opens port E where you have to send a password, which opens port F from which you must do an HTTP GET for /foobar.html, which opens ports G which when connected sends you the number of random port H, on which an anonymous FTP service is now running to which you must send a SITE STARTIT command then download the number of port I, which will be the SSH service once you've pinged the server 7 times with 42 byte packets. And to make it really challenging, you have maybe 10 seconds to complete the sequence. (Think a lot of terminals just waiting for you to hit 'enter'... The pings would take most of the time.)
Oh, and if you do anything wrong after the first 3 ports are hit, you can't try again for 30 seconds.
Whoa, that guy's really onto something. The top artifact in this picture is obviously a fury artifact from Activision's Battlezone! (I can't find a screenshot or my Battlezone CD... someone want to post one?)
That may be illegal, although I'm not sure what laws California has on forced bundling... If I were you I'd contact the California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advisor office, and find out if that is acceptable grounds for filing a complaint.
You know you spend too much time in front of computers when your short list of non-internet communications techniques doesn't include talking or writing.
2. Mine came with a 4 foot extension and a cradle, which I've never used because 90% of the computers I work with are either customers with Dells or Compaqs or HPs; or ones I built, all of which have ports on the front.
3. Linux and Windows2k/XP both recognize mine just fine without any special drivers (although the linux systems do need to be configured right). You're right, they're not suitable for system rescue, that's what the mini-CDs in my wallet are for.
4. I've put mine through the washer twice, and it works fine. Try that with a floppy.
I'm not sure what your beef with USB drives is, but maybe you should try a modern one before you go bashing them. (I will admit I didn't like them when they first came out, but recent ones have improved a lot.)
Of course, imagine the lawsuits if it was the other way around...
Analogy... gone... too... far... Need... Caffeine.
Of course, we shouldn't jump to conclusions until we get more information, but really, I don't see an easy way out of this.
I hate to say it, but do the Debian developers use their own product? Were they not kept up to date? Or are all Debian boxes vulnerable? I noticed that nowhere did they mention just *how* they were compromised. Sure, it might be embarassing, but when a major distro's servers get cracked it doesn't help confidence in their distro. Letting us know what service is broken (and hopefully how to fix it) would go a long way towards correcting that.
The answer to that last question, of course, is also yes.
Of course, the energy density at those sites was probably several thousand times the density the article talks about, so it wouldn't really apply to the off-world power transmission. However, terrestrial communications links really can have harmful energy levels.
It's about time. Everybody knows that Bacon is the One True Breakfast Meat. No Bacon, no vote, it's as simple as that.
We have these strobe-preemptible lights in Tucson. The thing is, on top of the traffic signal's crossbar, right next to the detector is a strobe light that flashes when an emergency vehicle is preempting the light. It's actually very useful, since the flashing usually lets you know they're coming before you hear their sirens. However, it would sort of give you away if you were using a preempter, rushing to work, cruising through all the greens with the strobes going off while everybody else slowed down and wondered where the emergency vehicle was...
So sorry, I forgot you guys don't answer to the name 'Linux' anymore. I assure you, when we said "Linux needs to mature further before home users will get a positive experience from the operating system", we were talking about you. We never forget our unpaid labor when handing out knives in the back.
Love,
Red Hat
Damnit, I wanted to cure cancer. Oh, well, I guess I'll just move on to the next thing on my list, stopping aging.