many commentators with an eye towards, and knowledge about HCI find OS X to be a step backwards from MacOS.
True, and many of them raise important concerns. But I think many of them have ignored some important advances and really fine ideas. Yesterday, for example, a friend was admiring the wisdom of attaching dialogs to their relevant windows as pop-down sheets, which solves a lot of the problems with modal interaction.
IMO, too many of these reviews are from HCI people with very specific agendas upset because OS X's agendas are different. Now I'd say, for example, that Jeff Raskin has a pretty fine agenda...but his complaints are still more often about mismatched agendas than an understanding critique of new ideas.
Linux will never get anywhere if it _just_ mimics others...Copying popular features in a cargo-cult fashion will not result in a good, usable OS.
Are you kidding me? That's the bread and butter of Linux! I can hardly think of a single feature of Linux or a piece of widely-used software for it that didn't start off as a wholesale clone of an existing idea!
The thing is, with all those people looking at it, new ideas come in. And if Linux starts copying OS X features, it will pretty quickly acheive the customizability that's so lacking in OS X. Linux software starts as idea rip-off, but often ends up teaching the source of the idea how it's done.
For example. If I have Mac IE open with 5 windows, to get to the 5th window (which is hidden behind quark) I have to click on the apple menu to activate IE, then minimise 4 windows before I can get to the 5th. On a PC, the 5th window is 1 click on the task bar away!
Apparently you haven't used OS X much?
Right-click on IE in the dock (yes, I have a two-button mouse) and you get a list of all of its windows. You can choose one to bring it to the front. You can also hide or show all of them en masse.
I always found the windows taskbar irritating, because opening more windows clutters it up. I like having the windows grouped by app. I guess familiarity is king, and it's all a matter of individual taste -- although in this case, Microsoft agrees with Apple, since they're switching to a windows-grouped-by-app model in XP.
Sircusa's article is extraordinarily pedantic, which is not all bad -- he raises valid points, and we need to keep Apple on their toes. However, the big point sort of gets lost in the details: OS X is the magic combination of Usability and UNIX we've been wishing for all these years.
Linux developers, take notes. Most of what OS X is doing is not magic -- it's just a lot of steady, careful attention to usability. Honestly, how hard would it be to implement OS X's lovely Network Settings panel under Linux, for example? Yes, the OS X Finder is still a bit glitchy, but it's still way ahead of the various Linux file system browsers I've used. Yes, the Dock has its glitches, but it's a darn shot easier to use and configure than either Gnome or KDE's taskbars. Apple is hardly perfect, but they are extraordinarily good at the usability stuff, where Linux software generally is not.
That's a shame -- Linux can and should be just as gorgeous and usable as OS X, or any other OS on the planet.
Linux developers: get off the high horse, and lay off the one-button cracks. You have a lot to learn, and if you are earnest students of this new OS now, in five years you'll be teaching things to Apple.
REDMOND, October 21, 2001 -- Microsoft annouced today their new "Microsoft Court XP" software. The software settles legal claims using Microsoft Law XP technology, the company's new standard for legal systems. According to Microsoft's press release, the software is capable of establishing legal precedent, providing checks and balances against the "other three branches of government", and also "upholding the supreme law of the land."
The software, which will be bundled with all new pressings of Windows XP, is Microsoft's bid for entry in the competitive court market. Entry will prove difficult, but a Microsoft spokesperson expressed optimism. "We are confident that our innovative concept can compete. Just think about it: checks and balances, like, who'd come up with that shit? Innovation, baby! Can't touch this!"
According to the company's web site, Microsoft Law XP will be released under a "shared source" model in which selected plaintiffs and defendents using Microsoft Court will be allow to view the laws under which they are being tried, but not to modify or redistribute them. "We wanted to draw on the best of both worlds," said Microsoft spokesperson Craig Mundie. "We like the collaborative aspect of the Democratic model, but feel that its viral transmission of rights to all citizens constitutes a real threat to the intellectual assets of businesses."
Some critics charge that the release, which follows closely on the Supreme Court's rebuke of Microsoft on October 9, is an anti-competitive move by Microsoft, and an attempt to use monopoly power to take over the market for legal systems.
"This is more M$ FUD," said one post moderated +4 (Insightful) on Slashdot, "They're bundling this software with their OS, and the software keep reassociating itself with the 'legal action' file type. Sure, all the p0w3r u53rz will work around it, but most of those inept peons we call the public will file a suit, and end up using their software without even realizing they had an option."
Mundie vigorously denied these allegations, calling them "the unreasonable accusations of a vocal minority."
"I just want to emphasize Microsoft Law is an open standard," said Mundie.
A source at Microsoft, on condition of anonymity, told reporters, "All your law are belong to us."
Yes, it is -- and insults, too, are empty rhetoric. Welcome to the world of political debate.:)
...galvanized world opinion against them...
For the very most part, yes. But there is already a new round of anti-US riots among the very people whom the terrorists hope to push over the edge into joining them. I maintain that they were successful in generating the polarizing and inflammatory response they wanted.
I simply do not believe that we are capable of a military response which will achieve our long-term goals. I may be wrong; you may be wrong. Most likely, we are both wrong. Honestly, only time will decide the effects of our actions.
I understand that you desperately want to believe that avoiding military conflict is the way to go...
No, I do not want to believe it. I do believe it. Please respect that.
It seems to me that they were completely successful...The only thing they have to be unhappy about right now is...
So which one is it? 'Cause it ain't both.
Ah, an errant pedant.
OK, the terrorists weren't completely successful -- just very successful. Our response could have been worse, and they could have been more successful, but they still did pretty well for themselves.
Suffice it to say that we have allowed the terrorists to meet their objectives.
I think (1) money, and (2) places to operate with impunity are far more important assets to Osama than widespread public anger.
I think it's about a draw; in the long term, the anger is more important -- money and loci of operation are largely dependent on a base of public anger. Certainly the anger has a much larger effect on the post-bin-Laden presence of terrorism.
On the money front, I absolutely support the freezing of assets, and I'm boggled that it wasn't done sooner. Sure, military operations by the US will cost the terrorists money, but I doubt it will run them dry. We should cut the money off before it gets to them in every possible way.
As for places to operate... well, we'll definitely make it harder for them. But most of their bases of operation are likely in towns and crowded cities, even in homes inhabited by both the guilty and the innocent. Any military operation that really squeezes terrorists out of their hiding places will involve massive loss of innocent life. I'd rather have their families, friends and neighbors squeeze them out. Yes, that's starry-eyed idealism -- but face it, so is the fairy-tale idea of bombing them out of hiding!
The Brits...think that Osama is still in Afganistan, and if the Taliban are quickly disposed, there is a good chance of getting the guy. It would be harder later.
That's quite possible, and a tough call. If I had more confidence in the US's ability to pull of such a military operation in a non-harmful way, I suppose I would approve much more of the current military action. If in the coming weeks and months it emerges that there really was a very small loss of innocent life, I will change my tune.
I think this is a war that we can win. Anyway, we're going to see.
Yes, only time will unwrap this package. I, too, believe that we can win, but I fear the damage that will be done along the way.
Anyway, thank you for the thoughtful, articulate discussion. I fear that the "United We Stand" rhetoric, while good in some ways, has stifled much of this kind of debate -- especially in the public arena. Such debate is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy, and is extremely important in winning this quasi-war.
That may be overstating the case, but there has to be the idea of justice, even if the capture of one man does not make up for the recent tragedy.
I absolutely agree that there needs to be justice. It seems fairly likely that bin Laden is guilty; he should be captured and locked away to rot, and the use of force is justified in that mission -- but only force that will actually accomplish it. I just don't think that air strikes are likely to "smoke him out", as Rumsfeld put it. I do, however, think that they're at least as likely to kill innocent people as kill terrorists. I guess I don't have a lot of confidence that the US's military response will be truly just, if only because of past precedent.
If it is perceived that the U.S. is powerless to defend itself, that the U.S. people and military are cowards, that there is no justice in the world, then terrorists will correctly perceive that they have free reign in the world.
Very true. I would be more supportive of the current strikes if I thought that they had a good chance of making the terrorists hurt in any serious way, or cause them more pain than benefit.
You compare the war on terrorism to the war on drugs....I don't think the analogy is a good one....I suppose it means "instead of fighting terrorists, just don't piss people off." Is this your idea? please clarify.
Not really -- more like "fight terrorism by not pissing people off, for starters." Here's how I'd complete the analogy:
These are difficult, perhaps intractible, problems, and real solutions are very hard to come up with.
Given that, our first directive should be to at least not take action which makes the situation worse.
Thus, the primary criterion for any military action should be that it is perceived as just by the whole world, and does not kill innocents. The US has done much more on this front in the last few weeks than I'd expected, but I am still skeptical, since we've failed so miserably on this in the past. Previous pinpoint bombing turned out to actually kill a lot of civilians; nobody's managed to convince me that bombings can really be "pinpoint". Let's see what the casualties from today are like...maybe I'll change my mind.
Though we certainly can't let them off the hook... no way in hell!... destroying terrorist organizations is not an effective long-term solution. We need to look beyond immediate punishment to large-scale fixes. Establishing just foreign policy and curbing the CIA's destructive mucking abroad (e.g. creating bin Laden in the first place) would be a start. And no, I'm not a genius, and I have no definitive answer on what such fixes would be. But we should be searching for these answers with the same zeal and resources we put into the military operations.
The search for these causal solutions should be a national priority. It should involve the finest minds in the world, it should receive funding, it should receive open and probing public debate... and it should not be crimped by nationalist arrogance. None of this is happening right now.
Many dealers get exactly what they want--a lot of money--and so their expectations of success are reasonably higher than someone who wants to bring down the United States.
I don't think it's fair to say that "bringing down the United States" is the goal of these or other terrorists -- perhaps rhetorically, but not really. I imagine their goals are: (1) angering and humiliating the US, (2) letting off their own anger, (3) exacting perceived retribution for perceived crimes, and (4) most of all, encouraging a polarizing and inflamatory response from the US that will get them more support and more terrorists.
It seems to me that they were completely successful in every one of these goals.
Ten, eh? Care to supply any evidence for this statistic, or are you talking out of your ass?
It's a figure of speech, silly. Honestly.... If you're going to be such a pedant, read "many more" for "ten".
Well, at least one of the necessary ingredients seems to be the belief that you can strike with impunity...
Oh, get real. Do you honestly think that anybody intelligent enough to plan this attack would think that this arrogant, belligerant nation with the largest military in the world would turn the other cheek? I can't believe the terrorists thought there would be no response; on the contrary, I think they were counting on it. They love to see the US all shook up, behaving irrationally, and goading on the violence. A military response is exactly what the terrorists wanted. The only thing they have to be unhappy about right now is that the US actually made a stab at presenting evidence, got some support from Islamic nations, and is not killing more innocent people in air strikes than we already are.
Other than that, the terrorists got exactly what they wanted today.
Do you still think we should sit back on our hands on hope this all "blows over"?
No. But I don't think we should inflame the problem with military retaliation. I suspect that the "War on Terrorism" will be like the war on drugs: high cost in dollars, freedoms, and innocent lives; many high-profile busts; little actual effect on the problem. The War on Drugs is a dismal failure, and The War on Terrorism will be too if we fight it in the same supply-side fashion.
My prediction: in ten years, we're going to be poorer for this war, and still threatened by terrorism every bit as much as today.
Our country is at war now, even if it is undeclared one.
I agree, in some sense, we're at war. But as Bush and everyone else keep pointing out, this is not really a "war" in any conventional sense: we are not fighting a nation, a territory, or even a definable coalition or group. We are fighting this nebulous thing called "terrorism".
When people use all this language about the "War on Terrorism", I can't help thinking of how similar it is to the "War on Drugs"... which has been a dismal failure. It's cost us huge amounts of money, damaged our freedom, and claimed high collateral damage (i.e. killed innocent people). And guess what? People still do drugs, buy drugs, sell drugs... a lot.
Think of the attack on Noriega, and how little that accomplished. We nailed one of the biggest names in the drug-smuggling world, and there was no noticable effect on the drug supply. The fundamental problem is that as long as there's money in drugs, if you strike down one criminal, ten will suddenly appear ready to take their place.
The war on terrorism is going to be the same way. We'll wipe bin Laden's organization out. But for every terrorist we kill, ten will rise to take their place. Only this time, it's worse than the drug war: the fuel which drives terrorism is not money but anger, and these strikes actually increase the supply of this fuel.
So yes, I agree, it's high time we did something. Wake up: military strikes don't work in these nebulous modern quasi-wars. We need to figure out what turns people into terrorists (and no, it's not W's simplistic "hatred of our freedoms" -- get real!), and stop terrorism at the source. And no, that is not what these strikes are doing.
I do occasionally use IE, when hitting one of those pages designed by MS only shops
Really? I just uninstalled IE altogether.
Omniweb is a really beautifully designed program, probably the finest web browser I've used. I really recommend it to OS X users who haven't tried it out yet.
It's frustrating that Apple doesn't bundle Omniweb w/OS X. I'm sure that there is no M$ arm-twisting involved, though....
For those of you in Minnesota following this stuff, there is a lecture series on copyright law, the DMCA, the SSSCA, and related issues at the University of Minnesota. Bruce Schneier is one of the speakers:
October 4: Dan Burk , U of M law professors and an expert on intellectual property law (This Thursday!) More info
October 17: John Logie of the University of Minnesota's Department of Rhetoric
November 8: Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security, author of Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
We plan to make audio and maybe video of the talks available online for those of you who aren't in MN. Perhaps Slashdot will carry a link when it's available.
If you're right about how it works, and if record labels go for this scheme, it would be painfully ironic... since what you're describing is almost exactly what they tried to sue mp3.com out of existence for doing.
Their legal arguments notwithstanding, it seems to me that labels don't actually object to the new mp3.com/napster/etc. technologies at all; they just want to go on owning everything in sight.
From the article, it sounds like they do allow some ripping:
Ours is the only copy-protection scheme that doesn't violate fair-use rights...We allow (people) to make copies for their own personal use: for their computer, for their compilation disc and for their MP3 player, so they can have portable use of their music. The only fair use that's left--and it's not fair use at all--is the "fair use" of sending thousands of copies to file-sharing services to be copied hundreds of thousands or millions of times.
I'd like more detail on this. The only way I can imagine them accomplishing what they desribe is having some proprietary app "unlock" the CD. That, of course, would limit the fair use of playing the CD on your favorite non-standard OS. But I'm only guessing.
Does anybody know what their technology actually does? How does is copy protect if you can download (presumably unprotected) MP3s to your portable player?
On a semi-related, semi-offtopic note: the anti-DMCA group Minnesotans for Fair Copyright will be hosting a lecture by Bruce Schneier at the University of Minnesota on Thursday, November 8. Should be a great talk -- everyone agrees that Bruce is a really great speaker!
We also have some other DMCA speakers coming up -- Dan Burk on Oct 4, and John Logie on Oct 17. For more info, subscribe to the list:
Salon's spokesperson says in the article: "We are going to continue to be fluid until ad units are developed that are deemed effective by advertisers and acceptable by readers." Remember, they are not on a plot to upset readers -- they don't want you to hate the ads, because their revenue depends on it! Remember also that you vote with your actions; if people don't click on the ads and they aren't effective, away they go.
What really puzzles me is that these intrustive ads clearly do anger readers, and don't seem to work very well...yet this arms race of distracting ads continues unabated. There is at least one example of really effective web advertising, however, and that's Google's. Heck, they're even considering an IPO. Here's why it works:
Their ads are entirely textual and unobstrusive, so I don't have to hotwire my brain to tune them out. They're easy to ignore, so I can pay attention to them when I want.
They are right next to the content I care about (search results), but don't interfere with it by creating a visual distraction or a longer download time for the page. So I don't mind them being there at all.
Above all, the ads are sometimes for things I actually care about. Google matches ads with searches, and so I actually have some incentive to pay attention to them.
The lesson, I think, is that ads have to be inobstrusive and useful. Why aren't more companies picking up on this?
As I've understood these experiments in the past, entanglement involes splitting a particle, or taking two existing particles, and "entangling" their states -- so that, for example, if you change the spin of one electron, its partner electron's spin also changes, even at a great distance (or something to this effect).
The application to faster-than-light information transmission is obvious. But teleportation? The article doesn't give enough specifics. Can anybody shed light on this? How would this experiment lead to a teleporter??
You've summed it up marvelously. Please, if you haven't already done it, take a moment to call or write Ashcroft; otherwise, your articulate message will make no impact on policy.
John Ashcroft,Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC, 20530-0001
Phone: (202) 514-2001 Fax:(202) 307-6777
Tampering can still leave traces, and once you know how a tool works, you may be able to detect it. This turns out to be the case with almost all of the currently available steganographic tools. From the Slashback link:
"[The researcher has] been developing several interesting tools to do steganalysis during the course of his universal stego engine development: (http://www.outguess.org/) including stegbreak (which can detect images produced by all popular stego tools -- except outguess)....
Of course, this only works if you know the tool, so this research only would detect the use of "off-the-shelf" steganography, as the researchers point out. From the article:
The technique may not be infallible. The methods used by Provos and Honeyman were particularly aimed at uncovering use of steganographic tools already released on the internet.
There are more advanced methods of hiding communications within images that involve using active, as well as redundant parts, of the underlying code. Sushil Jajodia of the Centre for Secure Information Systems at George Mason University in Virginia, US, says that this could have evaded detection but would require considerable technical sophistication.
BTW, it's "steganography". "Stenography" is what those speedy typists in courtrooms do.
Developers give all kinds of reasons for developing free software -- noble spirit, peer respect, etc. -- but one of the big ones is all the shit you don't have to deal with.
Case in point: there is every reason to think that this author's name will be included with his code in the next release of the Linux kernel source. Think how vastly different this situation would be if this were about theft of proprietary code. Here, nobody's company is at stake, and nobody stands to lose by doing the right thing -- so there are no stupid lawsuits and no hard feelings. At least, I hope it plays out this way... but the odds are with it.
Forget all this paranoia about the venemous GPL. Proprietary code has a really, really high cost of ownership; at a certain point, it's just not worth it. Free is just so... easy. Yay!
This act and the DMCA are eerily similar. Both seek to address particular historical circumstances and events (e.g. Napster, terrorist attacks). Both sets of circumstances are genuinely complex and problematic. And, in both cases, there were already perfectly adequate laws more general laws which address the particular situation. We already have laws to address copyright violation, and we already have laws to convict violent criminals, spies, and yes...even hackers.
The DMCA and all these supposedly anti-terrorist laws, past and present, take a terribly backward approach to lawmaking. The best laws, like the best software, succeed on minimality and generality. Witness the excellent US constitution, which has been extremely effective considering how long it's been around. The constitution uses very broad terms -- "life", "property", "punishment", "vote" -- and very few specific terms. (Some parts are quite specific, like the quartering of soldiers bit. They seem very quaint now.)
Laws, like software, tend to break if they are designed in specificity but used in generality. The trouble with these new laws is that they create all kinds of special cases and extra circumstances designed for a particular moment in history, which we'll have to support for decades or even centuries. The new terrorist laws, in a way, are like the 640k RAM limit -- they seem good enough for now, but in the future, they'll cripple and break all kinds of things.
The difference is, in this case, it is our fundamental freedoms that are being to get crippled and broken. As always, please please please call your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. They are under a lot of pressure right now, and they need to hear from sensible people.
I was really surprised and impressed at some of the thoughtful, probing discussion of the terrorist attacks on Slashdot. Unlike many of the respondents to your post, I really do think the discussion is important.
However, humor is important too. It reminds us of our humanity, and keeps us sane -- which, in the current rush for military retalitation, is a very important thing. If we can laugh for a moment, we may find our perspective on the serious is a bit more balanced when we return to it.
Neither the serious nor the silly is out of place here. And as for the "attempt to create a geek culture"... well, honestly, I don't care a rat's ass about the Xbox, so I just skip those articles. This astonishing power of indifference is available to you, too: if you are sick of the WTC, or Legos, or Monty Python, or Jon Katz... don't read the frickin' article! The editors of Slashdot can only suggest topics of discussion; they can't make people care. Geek culture will emerge on its own, in all its quirky multifacted yummy goodness.
We can't let the same thing that happened with the DMCA happen with this law: the geeks of the world need to, just for a moment, crawl out of their holes and write to the folks in congress. Yes, we're not a megacorporation unto ourselves -- but we do have money, and we vote.
With the DMCA, most senators didn't even realize that anybody was even opposed to this law. That can't happen again.
Certainly the robust UNIX security model is one reason we haven't seen as many worms. The strategy of creating a separate "www" or "http" user to run Apache, a "db" user for the database, etc., is common and very wise. If somebody co-opts your web server, at least it can't wipe your db. It still has weaknesses -- it's sometimes necessary to grant more permission to certain users/processes than you might like, and it requires a lot of vigilance from sysadmins, but it works quite well.
I wonder if there isn't a way of generalizing this to allow more sweeping, more generalized expressions of security rules. A UNIX install has soooo many little apps, and so many points of contact for everything, it's sometimes hard to say "I want all apps that could access X to have permissions Y, or go through acces point Z." TCP wrappers are a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about -- they provide a single point of access and control for all things TCP, and they make it much easier to set up very broad rules that you know cover all possible cases.
Am I making any sense here? How might an OS take on this issue in the general case? It seems like one next logical step for UNIX security.
Slashdot Mirror
many commentators with an eye towards, and knowledge about HCI find OS X to be a step backwards from MacOS.
True, and many of them raise important concerns. But I think many of them have ignored some important advances and really fine ideas. Yesterday, for example, a friend was admiring the wisdom of attaching dialogs to their relevant windows as pop-down sheets, which solves a lot of the problems with modal interaction.
IMO, too many of these reviews are from HCI people with very specific agendas upset because OS X's agendas are different. Now I'd say, for example, that Jeff Raskin has a pretty fine agenda...but his complaints are still more often about mismatched agendas than an understanding critique of new ideas.
Linux will never get anywhere if it _just_ mimics others...Copying popular features in a cargo-cult fashion will not result in a good, usable OS.
Are you kidding me? That's the bread and butter of Linux! I can hardly think of a single feature of Linux or a piece of widely-used software for it that didn't start off as a wholesale clone of an existing idea!
The thing is, with all those people looking at it, new ideas come in. And if Linux starts copying OS X features, it will pretty quickly acheive the customizability that's so lacking in OS X. Linux software starts as idea rip-off, but often ends up teaching the source of the idea how it's done.
For example. If I have Mac IE open with 5 windows, to get to the 5th window (which is hidden behind quark) I have to click on the apple menu to activate IE, then minimise 4 windows before I can get to the 5th. On a PC, the 5th window is 1 click on the task bar away!
Apparently you haven't used OS X much?
Right-click on IE in the dock (yes, I have a two-button mouse) and you get a list of all of its windows. You can choose one to bring it to the front. You can also hide or show all of them en masse.
I always found the windows taskbar irritating, because opening more windows clutters it up. I like having the windows grouped by app. I guess familiarity is king, and it's all a matter of individual taste -- although in this case, Microsoft agrees with Apple, since they're switching to a windows-grouped-by-app model in XP.
Sircusa's article is extraordinarily pedantic, which is not all bad -- he raises valid points, and we need to keep Apple on their toes. However, the big point sort of gets lost in the details: OS X is the magic combination of Usability and UNIX we've been wishing for all these years.
Linux developers, take notes. Most of what OS X is doing is not magic -- it's just a lot of steady, careful attention to usability. Honestly, how hard would it be to implement OS X's lovely Network Settings panel under Linux, for example? Yes, the OS X Finder is still a bit glitchy, but it's still way ahead of the various Linux file system browsers I've used. Yes, the Dock has its glitches, but it's a darn shot easier to use and configure than either Gnome or KDE's taskbars. Apple is hardly perfect, but they are extraordinarily good at the usability stuff, where Linux software generally is not.
That's a shame -- Linux can and should be just as gorgeous and usable as OS X, or any other OS on the planet.
Linux developers: get off the high horse, and lay off the one-button cracks. You have a lot to learn, and if you are earnest students of this new OS now, in five years you'll be teaching things to Apple.
REDMOND, October 21, 2001 -- Microsoft annouced today their new "Microsoft Court XP" software. The software settles legal claims using Microsoft Law XP technology, the company's new standard for legal systems. According to Microsoft's press release, the software is capable of establishing legal precedent, providing checks and balances against the "other three branches of government", and also "upholding the supreme law of the land."
The software, which will be bundled with all new pressings of Windows XP, is Microsoft's bid for entry in the competitive court market. Entry will prove difficult, but a Microsoft spokesperson expressed optimism. "We are confident that our innovative concept can compete. Just think about it: checks and balances, like, who'd come up with that shit? Innovation, baby! Can't touch this!"
According to the company's web site, Microsoft Law XP will be released under a "shared source" model in which selected plaintiffs and defendents using Microsoft Court will be allow to view the laws under which they are being tried, but not to modify or redistribute them. "We wanted to draw on the best of both worlds," said Microsoft spokesperson Craig Mundie. "We like the collaborative aspect of the Democratic model, but feel that its viral transmission of rights to all citizens constitutes a real threat to the intellectual assets of businesses."
Some critics charge that the release, which follows closely on the Supreme Court's rebuke of Microsoft on October 9, is an anti-competitive move by Microsoft, and an attempt to use monopoly power to take over the market for legal systems.
"This is more M$ FUD," said one post moderated +4 (Insightful) on Slashdot, "They're bundling this software with their OS, and the software keep reassociating itself with the 'legal action' file type. Sure, all the p0w3r u53rz will work around it, but most of those inept peons we call the public will file a suit, and end up using their software without even realizing they had an option."
Mundie vigorously denied these allegations, calling them "the unreasonable accusations of a vocal minority."
"I just want to emphasize Microsoft Law is an open standard," said Mundie.
A source at Microsoft, on condition of anonymity, told reporters, "All your law are belong to us."
The phrase "empty rhetoric" is an insult.
:)
...galvanized world opinion against them...
Yes, it is -- and insults, too, are empty rhetoric. Welcome to the world of political debate.
For the very most part, yes. But there is already a new round of anti-US riots among the very people whom the terrorists hope to push over the edge into joining them. I maintain that they were successful in generating the polarizing and inflammatory response they wanted.
I simply do not believe that we are capable of a military response which will achieve our long-term goals. I may be wrong; you may be wrong. Most likely, we are both wrong. Honestly, only time will decide the effects of our actions.
I understand that you desperately want to believe that avoiding military conflict is the way to go...
No, I do not want to believe it. I do believe it. Please respect that.
Ah, an errant pedant.
OK, the terrorists weren't completely successful -- just very successful. Our response could have been worse, and they could have been more successful, but they still did pretty well for themselves.
Suffice it to say that we have allowed the terrorists to meet their objectives.
Happy?
I think (1) money, and (2) places to operate with impunity are far more important assets to Osama than widespread public anger.
... well, we'll definitely make it harder for them. But most of their bases of operation are likely in towns and crowded cities, even in homes inhabited by both the guilty and the innocent. Any military operation that really squeezes terrorists out of their hiding places will involve massive loss of innocent life. I'd rather have their families, friends and neighbors squeeze them out. Yes, that's starry-eyed idealism -- but face it, so is the fairy-tale idea of bombing them out of hiding!
I think it's about a draw; in the long term, the anger is more important -- money and loci of operation are largely dependent on a base of public anger. Certainly the anger has a much larger effect on the post-bin-Laden presence of terrorism.
On the money front, I absolutely support the freezing of assets, and I'm boggled that it wasn't done sooner. Sure, military operations by the US will cost the terrorists money, but I doubt it will run them dry. We should cut the money off before it gets to them in every possible way.
As for places to operate
The Brits...think that Osama is still in Afganistan, and if the Taliban are quickly disposed, there is a good chance of getting the guy. It would be harder later.
That's quite possible, and a tough call. If I had more confidence in the US's ability to pull of such a military operation in a non-harmful way, I suppose I would approve much more of the current military action. If in the coming weeks and months it emerges that there really was a very small loss of innocent life, I will change my tune.
I think this is a war that we can win. Anyway, we're going to see.
Yes, only time will unwrap this package. I, too, believe that we can win, but I fear the damage that will be done along the way.
Anyway, thank you for the thoughtful, articulate discussion. I fear that the "United We Stand" rhetoric, while good in some ways, has stifled much of this kind of debate -- especially in the public arena. Such debate is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy, and is extremely important in winning this quasi-war.
I absolutely agree that there needs to be justice. It seems fairly likely that bin Laden is guilty; he should be captured and locked away to rot, and the use of force is justified in that mission -- but only force that will actually accomplish it. I just don't think that air strikes are likely to "smoke him out", as Rumsfeld put it. I do, however, think that they're at least as likely to kill innocent people as kill terrorists. I guess I don't have a lot of confidence that the US's military response will be truly just, if only because of past precedent.
If it is perceived that the U.S. is powerless to defend itself, that the U.S. people and military are cowards, that there is no justice in the world, then terrorists will correctly perceive that they have free reign in the world.
Very true. I would be more supportive of the current strikes if I thought that they had a good chance of making the terrorists hurt in any serious way, or cause them more pain than benefit.
You compare the war on terrorism to the war on drugs....I don't think the analogy is a good one....I suppose it means "instead of fighting terrorists, just don't piss people off." Is this your idea? please clarify.
Not really -- more like "fight terrorism by not pissing people off, for starters." Here's how I'd complete the analogy:
The search for these causal solutions should be a national priority. It should involve the finest minds in the world, it should receive funding, it should receive open and probing public debate ... and it should not be crimped by nationalist arrogance. None of this is happening right now.
Many dealers get exactly what they want--a lot of money--and so their expectations of success are reasonably higher than someone who wants to bring down the United States.
I don't think it's fair to say that "bringing down the United States" is the goal of these or other terrorists -- perhaps rhetorically, but not really. I imagine their goals are: (1) angering and humiliating the US, (2) letting off their own anger, (3) exacting perceived retribution for perceived crimes, and (4) most of all, encouraging a polarizing and inflamatory response from the US that will get them more support and more terrorists.
It seems to me that they were completely successful in every one of these goals.
Ten, eh? Care to supply any evidence for this statistic, or are you talking out of your ass?
It's a figure of speech, silly. Honestly.... If you're going to be such a pedant, read "many more" for "ten".
Well, at least one of the necessary ingredients seems to be the belief that you can strike with impunity...
Oh, get real. Do you honestly think that anybody intelligent enough to plan this attack would think that this arrogant, belligerant nation with the largest military in the world would turn the other cheek? I can't believe the terrorists thought there would be no response; on the contrary, I think they were counting on it. They love to see the US all shook up, behaving irrationally, and goading on the violence. A military response is exactly what the terrorists wanted. The only thing they have to be unhappy about right now is that the US actually made a stab at presenting evidence, got some support from Islamic nations, and is not killing more innocent people in air strikes than we already are.
Other than that, the terrorists got exactly what they wanted today.
Do you still think we should sit back on our hands on hope this all "blows over"?
No. But I don't think we should inflame the problem with military retaliation. I suspect that the "War on Terrorism" will be like the war on drugs: high cost in dollars, freedoms, and innocent lives; many high-profile busts; little actual effect on the problem. The War on Drugs is a dismal failure, and The War on Terrorism will be too if we fight it in the same supply-side fashion.
My prediction: in ten years, we're going to be poorer for this war, and still threatened by terrorism every bit as much as today.
Our country is at war now, even if it is undeclared one.
... which has been a dismal failure. It's cost us huge amounts of money, damaged our freedom, and claimed high collateral damage (i.e. killed innocent people). And guess what? People still do drugs, buy drugs, sell drugs ... a lot.
I agree, in some sense, we're at war. But as Bush and everyone else keep pointing out, this is not really a "war" in any conventional sense: we are not fighting a nation, a territory, or even a definable coalition or group. We are fighting this nebulous thing called "terrorism".
When people use all this language about the "War on Terrorism", I can't help thinking of how similar it is to the "War on Drugs"
Think of the attack on Noriega, and how little that accomplished. We nailed one of the biggest names in the drug-smuggling world, and there was no noticable effect on the drug supply. The fundamental problem is that as long as there's money in drugs, if you strike down one criminal, ten will suddenly appear ready to take their place.
The war on terrorism is going to be the same way. We'll wipe bin Laden's organization out. But for every terrorist we kill, ten will rise to take their place. Only this time, it's worse than the drug war: the fuel which drives terrorism is not money but anger, and these strikes actually increase the supply of this fuel.
So yes, I agree, it's high time we did something. Wake up: military strikes don't work in these nebulous modern quasi-wars. We need to figure out what turns people into terrorists (and no, it's not W's simplistic "hatred of our freedoms" -- get real!), and stop terrorism at the source. And no, that is not what these strikes are doing.
I do occasionally use IE, when hitting one of those pages designed by MS only shops
Really? I just uninstalled IE altogether.
Omniweb is a really beautifully designed program, probably the finest web browser I've used. I really recommend it to OS X users who haven't tried it out yet.
It's frustrating that Apple doesn't bundle Omniweb w/OS X. I'm sure that there is no M$ arm-twisting involved, though....
We plan to make audio and maybe video of the talks available online for those of you who aren't in MN. Perhaps Slashdot will carry a link when it's available.
For more info, check out the Minnesotans for Fair Copyright mailing list.
If you're right about how it works, and if record labels go for this scheme, it would be painfully ironic ... since what you're describing is almost exactly what they tried to sue mp3.com out of existence for doing.
Their legal arguments notwithstanding, it seems to me that labels don't actually object to the new mp3.com/napster/etc. technologies at all; they just want to go on owning everything in sight.
From the article, it sounds like they do allow some ripping:
Ours is the only copy-protection scheme that doesn't violate fair-use rights...We allow (people) to make copies for their own personal use: for their computer, for their compilation disc and for their MP3 player, so they can have portable use of their music. The only fair use that's left--and it's not fair use at all--is the "fair use" of sending thousands of copies to file-sharing services to be copied hundreds of thousands or millions of times.
I'd like more detail on this. The only way I can imagine them accomplishing what they desribe is having some proprietary app "unlock" the CD. That, of course, would limit the fair use of playing the CD on your favorite non-standard OS. But I'm only guessing.
Does anybody know what their technology actually does? How does is copy protect if you can download (presumably unprotected) MP3s to your portable player?
On a semi-related, semi-offtopic note: the anti-DMCA group Minnesotans for Fair Copyright will be hosting a lecture by Bruce Schneier at the University of Minnesota on Thursday, November 8. Should be a great talk -- everyone agrees that Bruce is a really great speaker!
We also have some other DMCA speakers coming up -- Dan Burk on Oct 4, and John Logie on Oct 17. For more info, subscribe to the list:
DMCA-minnesota-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
What really puzzles me is that these intrustive ads clearly do anger readers, and don't seem to work very well...yet this arms race of distracting ads continues unabated. There is at least one example of really effective web advertising, however, and that's Google's. Heck, they're even considering an IPO. Here's why it works:
- Their ads are entirely textual and unobstrusive, so I don't have to hotwire my brain to tune them out. They're easy to ignore, so I can pay attention to them when I want.
- They are right next to the content I care about (search results), but don't interfere with it by creating a visual distraction or a longer download time for the page. So I don't mind them being there at all.
- Above all, the ads are sometimes for things I actually care about. Google matches ads with searches, and so I actually have some incentive to pay attention to them.
The lesson, I think, is that ads have to be inobstrusive and useful. Why aren't more companies picking up on this?As I've understood these experiments in the past, entanglement involes splitting a particle, or taking two existing particles, and "entangling" their states -- so that, for example, if you change the spin of one electron, its partner electron's spin also changes, even at a great distance (or something to this effect).
The application to faster-than-light information transmission is obvious. But teleportation? The article doesn't give enough specifics. Can anybody shed light on this? How would this experiment lead to a teleporter??
Same for all the rest of us.
Tampering can still leave traces, and once you know how a tool works, you may be able to detect it. This turns out to be the case with almost all of the currently available steganographic tools. From the Slashback link:
"[The researcher has] been developing several interesting tools to do steganalysis during the course of his universal stego engine development: (http://www.outguess.org/) including stegbreak (which can detect images produced by all popular stego tools -- except outguess)....
Of course, this only works if you know the tool, so this research only would detect the use of "off-the-shelf" steganography, as the researchers point out. From the article:
The technique may not be infallible. The methods used by Provos and Honeyman were particularly aimed at uncovering use of steganographic tools already released on the internet.
There are more advanced methods of hiding communications within images that involve using active, as well as redundant parts, of the underlying code. Sushil Jajodia of the Centre for Secure Information Systems at George Mason University in Virginia, US, says that this could have evaded detection but would require considerable technical sophistication.
BTW, it's "steganography". "Stenography" is what those speedy typists in courtrooms do.
Developers give all kinds of reasons for developing free software -- noble spirit, peer respect, etc. -- but one of the big ones is all the shit you don't have to deal with.
... but the odds are with it.
... easy. Yay!
Case in point: there is every reason to think that this author's name will be included with his code in the next release of the Linux kernel source. Think how vastly different this situation would be if this were about theft of proprietary code. Here, nobody's company is at stake, and nobody stands to lose by doing the right thing -- so there are no stupid lawsuits and no hard feelings. At least, I hope it plays out this way
Forget all this paranoia about the venemous GPL. Proprietary code has a really, really high cost of ownership; at a certain point, it's just not worth it. Free is just so
This act and the DMCA are eerily similar. Both seek to address particular historical circumstances and events (e.g. Napster, terrorist attacks). Both sets of circumstances are genuinely complex and problematic. And, in both cases, there were already perfectly adequate laws more general laws which address the particular situation. We already have laws to address copyright violation, and we already have laws to convict violent criminals, spies, and yes...even hackers.
The DMCA and all these supposedly anti-terrorist laws, past and present, take a terribly backward approach to lawmaking. The best laws, like the best software, succeed on minimality and generality. Witness the excellent US constitution, which has been extremely effective considering how long it's been around. The constitution uses very broad terms -- "life", "property", "punishment", "vote" -- and very few specific terms. (Some parts are quite specific, like the quartering of soldiers bit. They seem very quaint now.)
Laws, like software, tend to break if they are designed in specificity but used in generality. The trouble with these new laws is that they create all kinds of special cases and extra circumstances designed for a particular moment in history, which we'll have to support for decades or even centuries. The new terrorist laws, in a way, are like the 640k RAM limit -- they seem good enough for now, but in the future, they'll cripple and break all kinds of things.
The difference is, in this case, it is our fundamental freedoms that are being to get crippled and broken. As always, please please please call your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. They are under a lot of pressure right now, and they need to hear from sensible people.
I was really surprised and impressed at some of the thoughtful, probing discussion of the terrorist attacks on Slashdot. Unlike many of the respondents to your post, I really do think the discussion is important.
... well, honestly, I don't care a rat's ass about the Xbox, so I just skip those articles. This astonishing power of indifference is available to you, too: if you are sick of the WTC, or Legos, or Monty Python, or Jon Katz ... don't read the frickin' article! The editors of Slashdot can only suggest topics of discussion; they can't make people care. Geek culture will emerge on its own, in all its quirky multifacted yummy goodness.
However, humor is important too. It reminds us of our humanity, and keeps us sane -- which, in the current rush for military retalitation, is a very important thing. If we can laugh for a moment, we may find our perspective on the serious is a bit more balanced when we return to it.
Neither the serious nor the silly is out of place here. And as for the "attempt to create a geek culture"
We can't let the same thing that happened with the DMCA happen with this law: the geeks of the world need to, just for a moment, crawl out of their holes and write to the folks in congress. Yes, we're not a megacorporation unto ourselves -- but we do have money, and we vote.
With the DMCA, most senators didn't even realize that anybody was even opposed to this law. That can't happen again.
You can find your representatives online.
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Should the US fight terrorism with terrorism?
againstrevenge.org
Certainly the robust UNIX security model is one reason we haven't seen as many worms. The strategy of creating a separate "www" or "http" user to run Apache, a "db" user for the database, etc., is common and very wise. If somebody co-opts your web server, at least it can't wipe your db. It still has weaknesses -- it's sometimes necessary to grant more permission to certain users/processes than you might like, and it requires a lot of vigilance from sysadmins, but it works quite well.
I wonder if there isn't a way of generalizing this to allow more sweeping, more generalized expressions of security rules. A UNIX install has soooo many little apps, and so many points of contact for everything, it's sometimes hard to say "I want all apps that could access X to have permissions Y, or go through acces point Z." TCP wrappers are a good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about -- they provide a single point of access and control for all things TCP, and they make it much easier to set up very broad rules that you know cover all possible cases.
Am I making any sense here? How might an OS take on this issue in the general case? It seems like one next logical step for UNIX security.