I suspect the original poster was referring to Bruce Perens as a metaphorical entity-- i.e., the state of being Bruce Perens, the quissential conceptual mindset
Cool... will there ever be a way for me to go inside the metaphorical entity? Say by way of a small portal hidden behind a filing cabinet on the 8 1/2th floor of a New Youk office building?
And if so, will it dump me off the New Jersey Turnpike, or somewhere else?
and how exactly is this different from, say, removing the Vehicle ID Number (VIN) from your car?
When you buy a phone, can you go to a central registry, and find out the complete history of it? Like who owned it, and where they lived? If it's ever been in an accident?
THAT is what separates this from VIN laws.. the VIN is essentially PUBLIC INFORMATION, and it's used to protect consumers from theives..
Since there is no central EMEI database that consumers can access, this law is useless... it doesn't protect consumers, because the consumer can't verify that the number hasn't been changed...
I predict this forced change will have grave social repercussions. For some reason, our government is ignoring the impact on the poor
Not just "poor", but "not rich"..
Up until now, it's been almost impossible to get Joe Average interested in the DMCA, and the fact that rights are being removed by big media interest..
Once everything goes digital, Joe Sixpack can't tape the "big game", and Grandma can't record tonight's episode of Matlock for her bridge club, THEN you might actually see them start to care..
The VCR has been ingrained in our collective culture... Hollywood failed in their first bid to outlaw it.. so they've been doing everything surrepetiously.. once people realize what's at stake, maybe people in Washington will realize that they've made a mess, and start to clean it up.
Like most old-school geeks I saved considerable sums by turning my single-sided double-density 5 1/4" floppies into double-sided with the simple employment of a hole puncher.
Ahh.. those were the days...
I remember when the C1581 came out (that was the 3.5" floppy for the C64..) and one of my (not too bright) friends figured he could use the same trick..
It took me almost an hour to remove the 3.5" disk he had jammed upside down inside the mechanism... but the drive still worked afterwards:o)
He was pretty shocked when I explained that the 3.5" disks were already double-sided (two r/w heads)
The Canadian Copyright Board is currently discussing amending copyright law to this effect, but at this stage it's unclear whether such amendments will go as far as the DMCA.
The response they got to their RFC is neatly summarized here.
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. You would have two drives on the webserver... one for your swap partition and other stuff, and this read-only monster the article describes.
You misunderstood what I meant by disc caching..
On any modern system, the OS buffers drive data in the computer's RAM.. this gives a huge performance benefit.. (Try timing a grep of a large file, then do it again.. second time will be MUCH faster.)
The only reason this works is because the system knows that it's the only machine accessing the drive (so therefore the data read from the disk only changes if the OS changes it..) If the drive is connected to another system, then the OS can't cache anything read from the drive, because it might change between the time of reading, and when it's passed to the application.
The read/write status of the drive doesn't affect this (boot your favorute Linux distro's CD, and run the 'free' command - you'll see that buffers/cache are still used, even though the only drive is read-only.)
can any of you point to any of these studies to support your claims?
The "one in four" study, done by Mark Koss was commissioned in 1985 by Ms. magazine; It was published (in Ms. magazine) in 1988.
To the best of my knowledge, the Ms./Koss Study is not anywhere on the web; however, it (along with a few others) is covered very well in the following:
Cars could be made with a capped top speed of 75 (which is practical), but they don't.
Apples and oranges. Travelling at 75MPH isn't necessarily unsafe, and it's directly under the control of the driver.
If, on the other hand, your car had a tendancy to burst to 100MPH, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, and HELL YES there would be lawsuits.
Punish MS for this, and you'll open the door to punish a whole lotta companies for a similar deal. I'm not fond of MS, but I don't want that sequence of events to happen.
You mean like the lawsuits against Ford and Firestone stopped car manufacturers from making cars?
I thought it was the best way to make him understand where the responsibility really is.
But it doesn't, because part of the responsibility really is Microsoft's.
MS made a product. They sold a product. Due to a defect in the product, it's possible for the product to cause harm to a third party.
I'm not saying that MS should be held solely responsible, but this isn't a new attack - this type of thing has been known for over 10 years, and yet MS didn't do anything about it. That makes them negligent, and therefore liable.
we can assume this means something like the BSD or X lisences, especially since MS co developed it
If MS helped develop it, no way will it be BSD.
Bill Gates saying how governments should use BSD-style lisences
Well DUH! Can't this be translated as "World's greediest person says 'other people should give me stuff!'"?
Gates thinks that other organizations should release stuff under the BSD license, so that MS can profit from it... you'll note that he's never said Microsoft should use the BSD license.
I'd think that it'll probably be something more like the MPL or Apple's version (ie. if you release changes, you have to give nVidia license to bundle and sell it.)
Mounting the filesystem "read only" would be even easier.
Which is all fine and dandy, until the guy who just rooted you figures out that all he needs to do is 'mount -o remount,rw/dev/hda4'
Seriously, you can't rely on the OS to protect you from this (with the possible exception of BSD's hich security more coupled with the immutable flag - so the file can only be modified when the system is in runlevel 0..)
did you ever consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, they could share the same cache?
I'm sorry, but WHAT?!?!?!?!?!
If both computers are sharing the same cache (ie. RAM - not HD cache), then exactly what the hell is the point of having this whole hair-brained scheme to beging with?
another to go to another machine, that wouldn't need to have the same password. The computer that has the read/write capabilities doesn't even have to be on the network, so they would have to actually break physical security of the company
Have they thought this through? It sounds like a good idea, but in reality, it would be painfully slow. Say goodbye to OS disc caching - unless you rewrite the driver to make the OS flush it's buffers when the "secure" box updates the content (which may or may not be as easy as it sounds - does Linux or BSD even have a callback for that?)
If you require this kind of security, why not just burn the data to a CDRW? You'll get better speeds (once the server has the data cached)... or how about run the system over NFS or Samba? (I'm sure that a code audit of NFS would take less time/money than engineering something like this) You allow read-only access on the "secure" box, and filter everything else.
While not necessarily snake oil, I'm inclined to be as sceptical as the original poster... I have to wonder where the designer's thoughts were when he came up with this. It seems to me that there are much better ways of doing the same thing.
If Phillips no longer holds a patent, what (monetary) incentive do they have in trying to force record companies to adhere to the CD standard instead of corrupting it with their wacky, hopeless "protection" schemes?
Whether Phillips holds a patent or not is irrelevant.
The reason Phillips (rightly) got upset is because the offending companies were still using the CD-logo, which is trademarked by Phillips.
Trademarks don't expire, as long as the company that holds them continues to pay for and police them.
the Open Source community depends on a number of licenses that completely prevents this
Ahem, proof please? This is complete bullshit.
If I actually buy a copy of Linux I can tear it apart and modify it, but I don't have the rights to simply resell my new creation.
Again, bullshit. What you are describing (selling a modified Linux distro) has been done by at least 3 different companies; Mandrake, Suse, and Corel are all forks of different distros.
Do I want other people tearing apart my work and distributing the new creations as theirs?
Huh? WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?
Nobody is going to tear apart your work, because it's NOT yours. The work belongs to the people who wrote the code, you know, the copy of linux that you actually bought
Nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. If you don't want to GPL your products, then simply don't use other people's GPL'ed code. Write your own.
I can't believe how such an obvious troll got modded up.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect the original poster was referring to Bruce Perens as a metaphorical entity-- i.e., the state of being Bruce Perens, the quissential conceptual mindset
Cool... will there ever be a way for me to go inside the metaphorical entity? Say by way of a small portal hidden behind a filing cabinet on the 8 1/2th floor of a New Youk office building?
And if so, will it dump me off the New Jersey Turnpike, or somewhere else?
and how exactly is this different from, say, removing the Vehicle ID Number (VIN) from your car?
When you buy a phone, can you go to a central registry, and find out the complete history of it? Like who owned it, and where they lived? If it's ever been in an accident?
THAT is what separates this from VIN laws.. the VIN is essentially PUBLIC INFORMATION, and it's used to protect consumers from theives..
Since there is no central EMEI database that consumers can access, this law is useless... it doesn't protect consumers, because the consumer can't verify that the number hasn't been changed...
there is no legitimate reason to need to change the IMEI number
OK, true. Also irrelevant... like all of your other points, except this one...
The bill is legit
No, it isn't.
It's foolishness... how, exactly does this bill prevent anyone from stealing (and then using) a cell phone?
Do you honestly think that a theif would steal a phone, then say "oh, damn! I can't use it because I'm not allowed to change the ID!"
Stealing the phones is already illegal... all this does is make stealing them even more illegal...
Which is simply ludicrous.
I predict this forced change will have grave social repercussions. For some reason, our government is ignoring the impact on the poor
Not just "poor", but "not rich"..
Up until now, it's been almost impossible to get Joe Average interested in the DMCA, and the fact that rights are being removed by big media interest..
Once everything goes digital, Joe Sixpack can't tape the "big game", and Grandma can't record tonight's episode of Matlock for her bridge club, THEN you might actually see them start to care..
The VCR has been ingrained in our collective culture... Hollywood failed in their first bid to outlaw it.. so they've been doing everything surrepetiously.. once people realize what's at stake, maybe people in Washington will realize that they've made a mess, and start to clean it up.
Like most old-school geeks I saved considerable sums by turning my single-sided double-density 5 1/4" floppies into double-sided with the simple employment of a hole puncher.
:o)
Ahh.. those were the days...
I remember when the C1581 came out (that was the 3.5" floppy for the C64..) and one of my (not too bright) friends figured he could use the same trick..
It took me almost an hour to remove the 3.5" disk he had jammed upside down inside the mechanism... but the drive still worked afterwards
He was pretty shocked when I explained that the 3.5" disks were already double-sided (two r/w heads)
If you cut out Microsoft from *consideration*
What you miss is that the bill in no way cuts out MS (or any other company) from consideration of anything.
The bill simply says "if you want to sell to the government, you must supply the source and allow us to modify it"... THAT'S ALL.
If MS doesn't want to compete, that's fine - they're not hurting anyone but themselves.
Let's get this straight: it's MS themselves - NOT the government - that will stop them from competing
canada has a DMCA also
No, it doesn't.
The Canadian Copyright Board is currently discussing amending copyright law to this effect, but at this stage it's unclear whether such amendments will go as far as the DMCA.
The response they got to their RFC is neatly summarized here.
If you haven't heard of Three Dead Trolls yet, check out the rest of their music
Actually, the Trolls are a comedy troupe.. so go check out their comedy stuff too..
If you're interested specifically in their music, you should check out Hookahman.. which is the band Wes and Joe were (are?) in a few years ago..
That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. You would have two drives on the webserver... one for your swap partition and other stuff, and this read-only monster the article describes.
You misunderstood what I meant by disc caching..
On any modern system, the OS buffers drive data in the computer's RAM.. this gives a huge performance benefit.. (Try timing a grep of a large file, then do it again.. second time will be MUCH faster.)
The only reason this works is because the system knows that it's the only machine accessing the drive (so therefore the data read from the disk only changes if the OS changes it..) If the drive is connected to another system, then the OS can't cache anything read from the drive, because it might change between the time of reading, and when it's passed to the application.
The read/write status of the drive doesn't affect this (boot your favorute Linux distro's CD, and run the 'free' command - you'll see that buffers/cache are still used, even though the only drive is read-only.)
can any of you point to any of these studies to support your claims?
The "one in four" study, done by Mark Koss was commissioned in 1985 by Ms. magazine; It was published (in Ms. magazine) in 1988.
To the best of my knowledge, the Ms./Koss Study is not anywhere on the web; however, it (along with a few others) is covered very well in the following:
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html
He will not be arrested for breaking the DMCA
Maybe, maybe not, but not because of your reasoning (below)
region-breaking is not circumventing a copyright-protection device
Perhaps, but it is circumventing a mechanism which restricts access to a copyrighted work, and this is a violation of the DMCA.
Wouldn't the shortest day of the year be more appropriate?
:o)
Actually, I think if you check, you'll find that all days are the same length (24 hours.)
you can also "prove" that in the last century (19..) on average the number of car accidents increased with the number of refrigerators.
The best example (IMHO) of this is The Dread Tomato Addition, by Mark Clifton.
Cars could be made with a capped top speed of 75 (which is practical), but they don't.
Apples and oranges. Travelling at 75MPH isn't necessarily unsafe, and it's directly under the control of the driver.
If, on the other hand, your car had a tendancy to burst to 100MPH, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, and HELL YES there would be lawsuits.
Punish MS for this, and you'll open the door to punish a whole lotta companies for a similar deal. I'm not fond of MS, but I don't want that sequence of events to happen.
You mean like the lawsuits against Ford and Firestone stopped car manufacturers from making cars?
Sorry, try again.
I thought it was the best way to make him understand where the responsibility really is.
But it doesn't, because part of the responsibility really is Microsoft's.
MS made a product. They sold a product. Due to a defect in the product, it's possible for the product to cause harm to a third party.
I'm not saying that MS should be held solely responsible, but this isn't a new attack - this type of thing has been known for over 10 years, and yet MS didn't do anything about it. That makes them negligent, and therefore liable.
Nobody held a gun to your head and made you buy anything
OK, I'll bite.
What, exactly, does this have to do with ANYTHING the poster said?
Are you suggesting that nobody forced him to pay taxes? That's complete bunk.
He never mentioned anything about buying anything, nor did he say that he bought anything from MS.
He said: "can MS be held liable for wasting my tax dollars" - meaning "MS's negligence allowed this to happen, so can't they be held liable?"
we can assume this means something like the BSD or X lisences, especially since MS co developed it
If MS helped develop it, no way will it be BSD.
Bill Gates saying how governments should use BSD-style lisences
Well DUH! Can't this be translated as "World's greediest person says 'other people should give me stuff!'"?
Gates thinks that other organizations should release stuff under the BSD license, so that MS can profit from it... you'll note that he's never said Microsoft should use the BSD license.
I'd think that it'll probably be something more like the MPL or Apple's version (ie. if you release changes, you have to give nVidia license to bundle and sell it.)
I'd be bitter too if I'd wasted so much time writing free software for ungrateful fucks like you.
I know this is a troll, but I'll respond anyway.
If you're writing free software for anyone but yourself, then you're writing it for the wrong person.
This is the secret behind every successful open source product - the authors write it for themselves...
If you're bitter, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Mounting the filesystem "read only" would be even easier.
/dev/hda4'
Which is all fine and dandy, until the guy who just rooted you figures out that all he needs to do is 'mount -o remount,rw
Seriously, you can't rely on the OS to protect you from this (with the possible exception of BSD's hich security more coupled with the immutable flag - so the file can only be modified when the system is in runlevel 0..)
did you ever consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, they could share the same cache?
I'm sorry, but WHAT?!?!?!?!?!
If both computers are sharing the same cache (ie. RAM - not HD cache), then exactly what the hell is the point of having this whole hair-brained scheme to beging with?
another to go to another machine, that wouldn't need to have the same password. The computer that has the read/write capabilities doesn't even have to be on the network, so they would have to actually break physical security of the company
Have they thought this through? It sounds like a good idea, but in reality, it would be painfully slow. Say goodbye to OS disc caching - unless you rewrite the driver to make the OS flush it's buffers when the "secure" box updates the content (which may or may not be as easy as it sounds - does Linux or BSD even have a callback for that?)
If you require this kind of security, why not just burn the data to a CDRW? You'll get better speeds (once the server has the data cached)... or how about run the system over NFS or Samba? (I'm sure that a code audit of NFS would take less time/money than engineering something like this) You allow read-only access on the "secure" box, and filter everything else.
While not necessarily snake oil, I'm inclined to be as sceptical as the original poster... I have to wonder where the designer's thoughts were when he came up with this. It seems to me that there are much better ways of doing the same thing.
If Phillips no longer holds a patent, what (monetary) incentive do they have in trying to force record companies to adhere to the CD standard instead of corrupting it with their wacky, hopeless "protection" schemes?
Whether Phillips holds a patent or not is irrelevant.
The reason Phillips (rightly) got upset is because the offending companies were still using the CD-logo, which is trademarked by Phillips.
Trademarks don't expire, as long as the company that holds them continues to pay for and police them.
Do you really think hardware vendors are SO STUPID as to cripple them all in the processor?
If they're given the option of "Drop support for non-palladium systems, or we stop selling windows to you"
Then YES. Read the transcripts from MS's trial. They've done things like this already, and the manufacturers have caved.
the Open Source community depends on a number of licenses that completely prevents this
Ahem, proof please? This is complete bullshit.
If I actually buy a copy of Linux I can tear it apart and modify it, but I don't have the rights to simply resell my new creation.
Again, bullshit. What you are describing (selling a modified Linux distro) has been done by at least 3 different companies; Mandrake, Suse, and Corel are all forks of different distros.
Do I want other people tearing apart my work and distributing the new creations as theirs?
Huh? WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?
Nobody is going to tear apart your work, because it's NOT yours. The work belongs to the people who wrote the code, you know, the copy of linux that you actually bought
Nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do. If you don't want to GPL your products, then simply don't use other people's GPL'ed code. Write your own.
I can't believe how such an obvious troll got modded up.
Intellectual property is not stealing.
No, but stealing IS stealing. (Although the term used is incorrect, if you use someone's IP, you have to abide by their terms.)
His point is that if you incorporate GPL'd code with your own code that emcompasses your IP, you'll lose your IP.
And he's wrong.
If you GPL your source code, you do _NOT_, under _ANY_ circumstances, lose your rights to the code.
You are perfectly free to license it under other terms, or to make changes to it (without releasing them), or anything else you want to do.