If there's a U.S. case, I'm sure prosecution could subpoena the GMail account that was cracked, and I really doubt Google will be complicit in any data destruction. There will be an authentic, date and IP-logged, record for as long as Google keeps such records.
I made a comment a few days ago about my distaste for the way this information was obtained and presented, but if it ultimately results in nailing a bunch of industrial saboteurs on hire by "legitimate" businesses, I would be more than happy to see this end up as a long list of RICO charges in the States. Not to mention the misuse of SSN data, etc.
So please hang onto that account Google, for as long as it takes to apply public pressure to the Attorney General's office. Media Defender's biggest mistake was letting this much incriminating evidence onto someone else's servers.
It's a lesson for every remote network service user on the planet. It is notyour space, it is theirs. Don't store anything you wouldn't post on your front door on someone else's hardware.
True, thanks for the correction. But a distinction without a difference. Of course. Like, for example, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter. He's so indistinguishable that he's the ranking Republican on the judiciary committee, which he stayed on even after he had to surrender the chair at the start of this year.
He co-sponsored the amendment, co-authored it, and voted for it.
And this is hardly far flung information. The summary link to the voting record (same link as summary) refers to this as "Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Specter Amdt. No. 2022." (emph. added) Yup. That's the name of one of your so-called "Republican traitors" right there, though I'd guess by the rest of the rolls that he's only being called a traitor by you and the entire Bush Administration.
I wonder if you read carefully?
black hat behavior, for criminal ends, is wrong, (emph. added)
I had already specified that it wasn't always wrong, but in this case, it certainly is.
Simply being a security tester, and cracking an account to show a problem, so long as the information was never made public, is a legitimate use of cracking, sans your nuclear bomb.
But this action violates espionage, privacy, and all manner of security concerns, for the sole end of embarrassing a firm unpopular with the crackers. If there is a suit to be brought, this action complicates the rules of evidence, because anything gained by it is clearly inadmissible.
Had this been done with a warrant, through legitimate channels, for legitimate reasons, all of which would be available in your ridiculous scenario, then I would have no problem with it.
So, I've got more than a few principles to throw around, and see no purported benefit to cracking people's gmail accounts for sabotage or defamation purposes.
As much as I might dislike the methods this company was allegedly going to employ against a bunch of people who are breaking the law, I don't think that a smaller, hard-core subset of that group of lawbreakers further breaking the law, by cracking their way into the corporation's emails and violating their privacy, is something to cheer about.
I don't believe anyone on/. should be jumping for joy at the hacking of a gmail account. I know a lot of people with gmail accounts. So do you.
Let's all be consistent in affirming that black hat behavior, for criminal ends, is wrong, no matter who the target is.
We've all seen a million reviews like this, and those of us that don't trust them, because of the buzz on the Internet and Usenet, some of which is nonsense, but most of which is based on facts about the game, are not going to suddenly trust yours, because you're Zonk.
Just what are you trying to add to the debate? A testimonial? Are you giving free testimonials for 2k now?
Because that's what your review really adds up to. You should ask for compensation from their advertising department.
Ahh. The first baby steps onto the upgrade treadmill. 60,000,000 customers and they'll *all* be upgrading. Do you want fries with that?
They even got the "supersizing" into the upgrade act, with countless gigs of bloat. Add any groundbreaking new functionality? No. Instead, add minor incremental improvements, don't support modern hardware in the old version, subsume third party add-ons (or outright rip them off), and leave enough flaws in the product to keep 'em coming for more.
In other words, over salt those fries (the upgrade) so they'll buy a second drink (your other products).
Now you understand the MS business model. The class in this video is "Defective by Design 101." It's very interesting to hear it sold in terms of "fast" food. It's very telling to see it so obviously pimped off to the reseller channel like this.
It'll be interesting to see if they broke the cardinal rule of upgrade 101 and did "too" good a job with XP, and whether they'll put automatic updates into the channel to slow it down or outright break applications to get people back on the treadmill.
Clearly, I said exactly that later on. We were talking to an "average Joe," remember? The question was meant to spark thought about the power of distributed computing in an infinite time frame, not to frighten anyone.
Formerly insoluble problems are now soluble through these methods, including generating the large prime numbers for future crypto. I'm talking about monkeys and typewriters here, not completely breaking SHA-256.
This isn't useful to crackers, because you can't arbitrarily break any specific crypto problem with brute force, and so the industry itself is completely secure, because there is no solution that is reliable, discrete, specific and practical. You can't target anyone, and so phishing is easier, and more profitable, for the time being.
But dumb luck? Just going at it for an infinite period of time with unknown resources and seeing what shakes out? Freak occurrences are another matter entirely, and playing a long game with a distributed computing network is one (highly tedious, and by current assumptions and methods, fruitless) way to get at these problems.
Don't underestimate the power of dumb luck and persistence, and don't forget that assumptions can radically change. The former is the way most things get done, and the latter is a fact of a fallible human existence.
Truly, the question was meant to fuel imagination, not highlight a cause for alarm. As I later said, it's unlikely any of this has happened yet. I'll make that more emphatic: the likelihood is infinitesimal. There's no current threat, at least not in our current understanding of mathematics, and with competent folks versed in cryptography (e.g.: NSA) making recommendations about cypher strength.
But in my experience, while you can bank on not being outsmarted, dumb luck and persistence are never to be underestimated. While there is no threat, there is a danger.
I'm not willing to be Grand Moff Tarkin in his "moment of triumph."
You could also introduce him to the theory behind Bittorrent, which is a good demonstration of how many computers each doing a small task, given modest bandwidth, can add up to massive distribution and publication power in short order.
Now, what if some distributed network decided to siphon a gig of illegal or embarrassing materials onto a compromised target machine. Perhaps a politician that is voting the wrong way?
Then ask him, not if the entire banking industry is safe, but if an individual's information (SHA hash collision or private key, but that's not "average Joe" speak) could be subject to a distributed brute force attack.
With the growing power of computers making tiny pieces of malware harder and harder to notice (that 1% of processor time is more and more powerful), and malware being able to literally hide files from the user until such time that it chooses to reveal them, it seems like it's only a matter of time before someone with a large enough botnet, and enough imagination, could start attacking individuals and/or siphoning off their money. How you do this is not something I care to discuss, but the black hats (both the actual criminals and the security experts, as an exercise) already have ideas and are working on it. That's why you'll see them periodically calling for stronger encryption (more bits in the keys). If there was no possible threat, they wouldn't be creating and suggesting longer keys. Rootkits would not be a concern, if files hidden from the user were always benign (most are).
But all it takes is the wrong person to have the right idea, a breakthrough that changes the assumptions, especially in cryptography. Show him the movie "Sneakers" if you want to fuel some imagination regarding that. It's crap, but it's also fun and sizes the problem for the average Joe. Assuming that only ethical people work in cryptography is somewhat naive. Assuming that unethical people are not watching the progress of ethical individuals in the field is stupid.
There's nothing to say such solutions and attacks haven't occurred already, but it seems, as your son suggests, unlikely. You can bet if a criminal has figured it out, a little bit of money siphoned off here and there would be almost impossible to detect, especially in an environment where people are unwilling to believe it's even possible. Believe me, if the idea has hit Hollywood, it's old hat. That's exactly how such a criminal would proceed if they had found a way to leverage such distributed computing applications. They would target a distributed network of accounts, one by one, in a way that looked like banking errors (which are numerous and automatically corrected by the bank) and slowly siphon money from the banking industry itself, through compromised individual accounts. No individual would suffer, because of correction processes in the banks, the world's capital reserves would.
Then ask what that money could buy in terms of influence, weapons, elections?
Any compromised machine is a liability to its user. Botnets are a menace to society, and we're lucky all they're (hopefully) being used for is "penis enlargement" ads and DDoS attacks. That's barely scraping the surface of their potential.
If he wants to go on believing that his safety and security are a given, without any effort on his own part, there's little you can do, but anyone with any imagination, who is not in flat out denial, can demonstrate that distributed computing applications have a great deal of power, and that basic security is everyone's concern. It is definitely not good that these ne
You know, though I dislike MS, I honestly don't care who filed first, so long as a bunch of litigation doesn't sink another piece of innovative, if superfluous, technology.
(BTW, part of the process of filing a patent is establishing "proof of concept." For technologies such as this, that usually means physically producing at least a scripted demonstration model before you can even complete your application. A true prototype is often far in excess of what is needed to file, though, and you certainly don't need a shipping product to establish a patent filing.)
Sorry guys, we know your suffering a DDoS attack right now, but we just thought we'd publish links to your sites on Slashdot to compound the issue. Think of it as an experiment to see what effect a massive storm of legitimate traffic will have on an ongoing DDoS attack.
What? Your data center is a molten slag?! Eureka! We'll stop by with marshmallows and weenies.
This is one case where publishing the hyperlinks might have been a bad idea. I wonder how many people are hitting their refresh buttons right now.;^)
Is MS licensing Grumman on this one? Who owns the patents on this sort of system? In a litigious age where the entire industry for force feedback joysticks for gaming collapsed over IP issues, who owns the IP becomes a critical issue.
If the future really is a big ass table, then the question of who owns the rights to license that future are going to be a big deal.
Can anyone help me find the relevant filings on this technology? Is there a cross-licensing agreement between Grumman and MS?
This is actually getting quite interesting. I had only heard about the MS product prior to this.
Unless, of course, this task force is a training group enrolled in a ROTC program.
The use of the term "coed" dates the author in the first place. At this point, even the Citadel is "coed," the term has been obsolete for about a decade as there are no all-male schools worth mentioning, and this guy really needs to upgrade his vocabulary to a more current version.
For now they are the "good guys," but DHS is the KGB in America if we do not maintain vigilance.
Expecting all government agencies to accept full oversight and have court approval, even if it's a secret court, for any and all domestic spying is just and reasonable. Expecting unpopular surveillance programs, such as TIA, to remain scrapped when the public demands they be scrapped, instead of split up and farmed to less scrutinized agencies is simply government accountability, not paranoia.
These people are the good guys until they become the bad guys, and if we let them get that far, then we've given them too long of a leash, and it's too damned late.
They should be watched like a hawk by Congress and by citizen groups alike. It isn't good enough, in today's data mining age, to trust the "good guys" to secure our safety. We have to be protected from the protectors as well. Demand greater Congressional oversight and procedures for this relatively new, power hungry department. It's the duty of every American to secure his own freedom through participatory democracy, not trust.
scrapped - adj. - Broken up into smaller pieces and leveraged across different layers of the bureaucracy. As in: Building a new prototype from scrapped metal.
I guarantee there will be barely-to-marginally recognizable chunks of ADVISE in some other, less scrutinized department soon.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There is no complete victory over this sort of thing.
My wife has a law degree, but isn't a practicing lawyer, and we often argue about whether submitting a case to the courts is an act of faith, that these are good men and women who have an interest in seeing justice and should be trusted, or an act of cause and effect, where you can expect your claim to be handled objectively according to a regular set of rules and expectations.
I tend to believe that it is far more a case of the former, with just enough of the latter to require training. It's possible we'd do just as well applying to a set of priests as we would a court. Think of the Supreme Court as a set of high priests, then read a few of their more arbitrary rulings, and see if we haven't made a religion of Law in this country.
And just as any other religion, it is hardly infallible, and frequently unjust. Good luck.
Well, you see, it's all based on litmus paper. Girls are more acidic and therefore when dipped in liquefied girl, the paper stays pink. Boys are acerbic, so when dipped in liquefied boy, the paper turns blue.
Brings a whole new dimension to "pH+ balanced for a woman," eh?
I am not a lawyer. I have had conversations with law professors about these issues, but I may easily have misunderstood. I'm not using formal law language, this is all in lay terms.
First off, of course, "not having done it" is a defense to battery, and in the U.S., innocence is assumed with the burden of proof falling to the prosecution. If I seemed to disagree with that, then I did a poor job of expressing myself.
But a "self-defense" defense means that you've admitted to the court that you hit somebody. If you admit you so much as threw a wad of paper at someone, you can be found guilty of battery, at least in my state. In self-defense, the defendant is claiming is that he did so because he had reasonable cause to believe that the other person was going to cause him harm.
Therefore, there is a presumption of fact in employing the defense, which means that one is no longer presumed innocent; one must prove they were justified. This is usually when there are significant witnesses to the event and there is no way to dispute the contact. Otherwise, it's much easier to fall back on the presumption of innocence.
But this defense doesn't translate into a right to beat on anyone you think may harm you. There are people who, for instance, think anyone of a certain race is bent on harm. It doesn't give them the right to go beating on people of that race, no matter that they fear for their life, if it isn't "reasonable." Certain, but not all, defenses must be proven in court, and presume certain facts, usually based around the legal fiction of the "reasonable person."
That's why they talk about being found "not guilty," in a court, as opposed to being found "innocent." It's not up to the court to determine innocence, they determine guilt, or in civil cases, make a ruling and order a judgment against the losing party.
I hope that seems clearer and more consistent regarding self-defense.
I think we have different concepts of what the word "right" means, so I'll be more specific.
In my understanding, an individual right means that you have an intrinsic, legally binding ability (an entitlement) to perform in a certain manner, without qualification. These rights may be abridged only by other rights.
Therefore, you have a right to say whatever you want (freedom of speech), but not to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater because that would violate the rights of the other patrons to not be harmed in a riot, and that right legally outweighs your right to free speech. This is a case of one right abridging another. Only stronger rights can abridge another right.
"Fair use" refers to both the provision in copyright law, and the defense. It is a legal exception to a right, therefore can't be a right of its own. But if the question of copy itself is in dispute, there is no need for a fair use defense at all! You didn't make the copy.
Otherwise, such exceptions are often based around your own rights (such as self-defense, where it is reserving your right to defend yourself from be harm), but often also for the public good, as in fair use. There is no actual individual right involved with fair use. Fair use is for the good of the community, as is, supposedly, copyright.
There is no actual right to copy when a person uses fair use as a defense. The rights holder and his licensees are the only holders of that right. If the rights holder decides to make a stink about your purported fair use, and the fact is established that you indeed made copies, you have to prove it met the exceptions. You are not presumed to be entitled to copyright because you are a teacher and it was "for your class," for instance. You have to produce evidence, documentation and/or certifications to that point.
In broad strokes, fair use is by no means automatic nor an entitlement, and if a person agrees to the fact that he made copies, then he has to prove that he met the conditions of the exception.
That is, by the definition I understand, not a right. A right
No. "Fair Use" is a defense, and you must demonstrate that you met the "Fair Use" criteria if the prosecution can document that they own the copyrights to the material. If you can't, there will be a judgment against you. You cannot get a summary dismissal because you claim the right to copy something.
Simply put, if you have to prove something, you don't have the right. If you had the right in the first place, there could be no judgment against you, and you could move for a summary dismissal. "Fair Use" is a defense against a charge of infringement, but the charge is still valid.
An example from criminal law: The defense of "self-defense" in battery cases never grants you the right to hit someone. You have the defense of not being found guilty because you were defending yourself.
Simple. It's not a copyright issue. I think it's trademarks, but I'm not sure, I'd have to research the filings.
Point is, it's common knowledge that George Lucas owns all the rights to the Star Wars images: the ship designs, sabers, logos etc. for use as merchandise and promotional material. The fact that you could even find the toys means that you're using something that George Lucas owns the rights to. They couldn't sell you that toy without talking to Lucas first.
The Star Destoyer, the TIE fighter, the Death Star, certainly the lightsaber, and probably even the green laser beams and the triangular pattern coming from the single eye, all of that is potentially actionable. Not under copyright, but because George Lucas owns the marketing/promotional rights. He was very clever about it, and he is very aggressive about protecting and promoting the Star Wars brand experience.
That also extends to the fact that he's usually cool about fan films, and sees them as promoting and leading to greater excitement about Star Wars and its related products. But had you produced something more professional, or competitive to the franchise, or were using it to promote something he disagreed with (slicing up baby seals with a lightsaber, for instance) you would see your day in court for IP infringement.
In fact, in a court, for trademark purposes, putting you on his educational site might well be construed as licensing you, which helps in an abandonment defense. IANAL, so I don't know. I do know that you have to pursue trademark aggressively or you can dilute or even lose your rights. Therefore, if you were to push this claim that you can use HIS promotional rights as YOU see fit, he would HAVE to sue you or perhaps lose his rights.
Don't do it. Discretion is the better part of valor, even amongst Jedi.:^)
You lose. You call Viacom to complain, they call George Lucas, and then launch their own defense. You now have two, count 'em, two lawsuits on your hands, against high-powered, connected, retainered corporate lawyers, and you're running for public office and that hits your town papers.
Good luck.
Also, if you published their interview material, that is their copyright, so yours is the only likely violation as Viacom is almost certainly "fair-use" defensible as a major media organization showing short clips of the local elections on their show.
You need permission to show their stuff, unless you have a "fair-use" defense of your own, but even if you do have one ready, they can still prosecute (and seek an injunction/take down in the meantime) because "fair-use" is a defense, not a right. You have to prove it in a court.
So applying to Slashdot isn't going to help here. File suit and claim "fair-use" and end the take down. Or, quietly count your blessings and stay clear. I know what I'd do.
Slashdot Mirror
If there's a U.S. case, I'm sure prosecution could subpoena the GMail account that was cracked, and I really doubt Google will be complicit in any data destruction. There will be an authentic, date and IP-logged, record for as long as Google keeps such records.
I made a comment a few days ago about my distaste for the way this information was obtained and presented, but if it ultimately results in nailing a bunch of industrial saboteurs on hire by "legitimate" businesses, I would be more than happy to see this end up as a long list of RICO charges in the States. Not to mention the misuse of SSN data, etc.
So please hang onto that account Google, for as long as it takes to apply public pressure to the Attorney General's office. Media Defender's biggest mistake was letting this much incriminating evidence onto someone else's servers.
It's a lesson for every remote network service user on the planet. It is not your space, it is theirs. Don't store anything you wouldn't post on your front door on someone else's hardware.
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Toro
He co-sponsored the amendment, co-authored it, and voted for it.
And this is hardly far flung information. The summary link to the voting record (same link as summary) refers to this as "Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Specter Amdt. No. 2022." (emph. added) Yup. That's the name of one of your so-called "Republican traitors" right there, though I'd guess by the rest of the rolls that he's only being called a traitor by you and the entire Bush Administration.
Hope you enjoy the company.
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Toro
I had already specified that it wasn't always wrong, but in this case, it certainly is.
Simply being a security tester, and cracking an account to show a problem, so long as the information was never made public, is a legitimate use of cracking, sans your nuclear bomb.
But this action violates espionage, privacy, and all manner of security concerns, for the sole end of embarrassing a firm unpopular with the crackers. If there is a suit to be brought, this action complicates the rules of evidence, because anything gained by it is clearly inadmissible.
Had this been done with a warrant, through legitimate channels, for legitimate reasons, all of which would be available in your ridiculous scenario, then I would have no problem with it.
So, I've got more than a few principles to throw around, and see no purported benefit to cracking people's gmail accounts for sabotage or defamation purposes.
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Toro
As much as I might dislike the methods this company was allegedly going to employ against a bunch of people who are breaking the law, I don't think that a smaller, hard-core subset of that group of lawbreakers further breaking the law, by cracking their way into the corporation's emails and violating their privacy, is something to cheer about.
/. should be jumping for joy at the hacking of a gmail account. I know a lot of people with gmail accounts. So do you.
I don't believe anyone on
Let's all be consistent in affirming that black hat behavior, for criminal ends, is wrong, no matter who the target is.
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Toro
QUBITS?! What's a qubit?!
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Toro
(If you don't get the joke, as someone about Cosby's "Noah's Ark" sketch)
We've all seen a million reviews like this, and those of us that don't trust them, because of the buzz on the Internet and Usenet, some of which is nonsense, but most of which is based on facts about the game, are not going to suddenly trust yours, because you're Zonk.
Just what are you trying to add to the debate? A testimonial? Are you giving free testimonials for 2k now?
Because that's what your review really adds up to. You should ask for compensation from their advertising department.
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Toro
Ahh. The first baby steps onto the upgrade treadmill. 60,000,000 customers and they'll *all* be upgrading. Do you want fries with that?
They even got the "supersizing" into the upgrade act, with countless gigs of bloat. Add any groundbreaking new functionality? No. Instead, add minor incremental improvements, don't support modern hardware in the old version, subsume third party add-ons (or outright rip them off), and leave enough flaws in the product to keep 'em coming for more.
In other words, over salt those fries (the upgrade) so they'll buy a second drink (your other products).
Now you understand the MS business model. The class in this video is "Defective by Design 101." It's very interesting to hear it sold in terms of "fast" food. It's very telling to see it so obviously pimped off to the reseller channel like this.
It'll be interesting to see if they broke the cardinal rule of upgrade 101 and did "too" good a job with XP, and whether they'll put automatic updates into the channel to slow it down or outright break applications to get people back on the treadmill.
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Toro
In Soviet Skype, Trojans wear you!
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Toro
South Park already did that joke. ;^)
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Toro
Clearly, I said exactly that later on. We were talking to an "average Joe," remember? The question was meant to spark thought about the power of distributed computing in an infinite time frame, not to frighten anyone.
Formerly insoluble problems are now soluble through these methods, including generating the large prime numbers for future crypto. I'm talking about monkeys and typewriters here, not completely breaking SHA-256.
This isn't useful to crackers, because you can't arbitrarily break any specific crypto problem with brute force, and so the industry itself is completely secure, because there is no solution that is reliable, discrete, specific and practical. You can't target anyone, and so phishing is easier, and more profitable, for the time being.
But dumb luck? Just going at it for an infinite period of time with unknown resources and seeing what shakes out? Freak occurrences are another matter entirely, and playing a long game with a distributed computing network is one (highly tedious, and by current assumptions and methods, fruitless) way to get at these problems.
Don't underestimate the power of dumb luck and persistence, and don't forget that assumptions can radically change. The former is the way most things get done, and the latter is a fact of a fallible human existence.
Truly, the question was meant to fuel imagination, not highlight a cause for alarm. As I later said, it's unlikely any of this has happened yet. I'll make that more emphatic: the likelihood is infinitesimal. There's no current threat, at least not in our current understanding of mathematics, and with competent folks versed in cryptography (e.g.: NSA) making recommendations about cypher strength.
But in my experience, while you can bank on not being outsmarted, dumb luck and persistence are never to be underestimated. While there is no threat, there is a danger.
I'm not willing to be Grand Moff Tarkin in his "moment of triumph."
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Toro
This article is a good place to start.
You could also introduce him to the theory behind Bittorrent, which is a good demonstration of how many computers each doing a small task, given modest bandwidth, can add up to massive distribution and publication power in short order.
Now, what if some distributed network decided to siphon a gig of illegal or embarrassing materials onto a compromised target machine. Perhaps a politician that is voting the wrong way?
Then ask him, not if the entire banking industry is safe, but if an individual's information (SHA hash collision or private key, but that's not "average Joe" speak) could be subject to a distributed brute force attack.
With the growing power of computers making tiny pieces of malware harder and harder to notice (that 1% of processor time is more and more powerful), and malware being able to literally hide files from the user until such time that it chooses to reveal them, it seems like it's only a matter of time before someone with a large enough botnet, and enough imagination, could start attacking individuals and/or siphoning off their money. How you do this is not something I care to discuss, but the black hats (both the actual criminals and the security experts, as an exercise) already have ideas and are working on it. That's why you'll see them periodically calling for stronger encryption (more bits in the keys). If there was no possible threat, they wouldn't be creating and suggesting longer keys. Rootkits would not be a concern, if files hidden from the user were always benign (most are).
But all it takes is the wrong person to have the right idea, a breakthrough that changes the assumptions, especially in cryptography. Show him the movie "Sneakers" if you want to fuel some imagination regarding that. It's crap, but it's also fun and sizes the problem for the average Joe. Assuming that only ethical people work in cryptography is somewhat naive. Assuming that unethical people are not watching the progress of ethical individuals in the field is stupid.
There's nothing to say such solutions and attacks haven't occurred already, but it seems, as your son suggests, unlikely. You can bet if a criminal has figured it out, a little bit of money siphoned off here and there would be almost impossible to detect, especially in an environment where people are unwilling to believe it's even possible. Believe me, if the idea has hit Hollywood, it's old hat. That's exactly how such a criminal would proceed if they had found a way to leverage such distributed computing applications. They would target a distributed network of accounts, one by one, in a way that looked like banking errors (which are numerous and automatically corrected by the bank) and slowly siphon money from the banking industry itself, through compromised individual accounts. No individual would suffer, because of correction processes in the banks, the world's capital reserves would.
Then ask what that money could buy in terms of influence, weapons, elections?
Any compromised machine is a liability to its user. Botnets are a menace to society, and we're lucky all they're (hopefully) being used for is "penis enlargement" ads and DDoS attacks. That's barely scraping the surface of their potential.
If he wants to go on believing that his safety and security are a given, without any effort on his own part, there's little you can do, but anyone with any imagination, who is not in flat out denial, can demonstrate that distributed computing applications have a great deal of power, and that basic security is everyone's concern. It is definitely not good that these ne
You know, though I dislike MS, I honestly don't care who filed first, so long as a bunch of litigation doesn't sink another piece of innovative, if superfluous, technology.
(BTW, part of the process of filing a patent is establishing "proof of concept." For technologies such as this, that usually means physically producing at least a scripted demonstration model before you can even complete your application. A true prototype is often far in excess of what is needed to file, though, and you certainly don't need a shipping product to establish a patent filing.)
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Toro
Sorry guys, we know your suffering a DDoS attack right now, but we just thought we'd publish links to your sites on Slashdot to compound the issue. Think of it as an experiment to see what effect a massive storm of legitimate traffic will have on an ongoing DDoS attack.
;^)
What? Your data center is a molten slag?! Eureka! We'll stop by with marshmallows and weenies.
This is one case where publishing the hyperlinks might have been a bad idea. I wonder how many people are hitting their refresh buttons right now.
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Toro
Is MS licensing Grumman on this one? Who owns the patents on this sort of system? In a litigious age where the entire industry for force feedback joysticks for gaming collapsed over IP issues, who owns the IP becomes a critical issue.
If the future really is a big ass table, then the question of who owns the rights to license that future are going to be a big deal.
Can anyone help me find the relevant filings on this technology? Is there a cross-licensing agreement between Grumman and MS?
This is actually getting quite interesting. I had only heard about the MS product prior to this.
-- ToroUnless, of course, this task force is a training group enrolled in a ROTC program.
The use of the term "coed" dates the author in the first place. At this point, even the Citadel is "coed," the term has been obsolete for about a decade as there are no all-male schools worth mentioning, and this guy really needs to upgrade his vocabulary to a more current version.
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Toro
For now they are the "good guys," but DHS is the KGB in America if we do not maintain vigilance.
Expecting all government agencies to accept full oversight and have court approval, even if it's a secret court, for any and all domestic spying is just and reasonable. Expecting unpopular surveillance programs, such as TIA, to remain scrapped when the public demands they be scrapped, instead of split up and farmed to less scrutinized agencies is simply government accountability, not paranoia.
These people are the good guys until they become the bad guys, and if we let them get that far, then we've given them too long of a leash, and it's too damned late.
They should be watched like a hawk by Congress and by citizen groups alike. It isn't good enough, in today's data mining age, to trust the "good guys" to secure our safety. We have to be protected from the protectors as well. Demand greater Congressional oversight and procedures for this relatively new, power hungry department. It's the duty of every American to secure his own freedom through participatory democracy, not trust.
Or, if you prefer: "Trust, but verify."
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Toro
scrapped - adj. - Broken up into smaller pieces and leveraged across different layers of the bureaucracy. As in: Building a new prototype from scrapped metal.
I guarantee there will be barely-to-marginally recognizable chunks of ADVISE in some other, less scrutinized department soon.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There is no complete victory over this sort of thing.
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Toro
My wife has a law degree, but isn't a practicing lawyer, and we often argue about whether submitting a case to the courts is an act of faith, that these are good men and women who have an interest in seeing justice and should be trusted, or an act of cause and effect, where you can expect your claim to be handled objectively according to a regular set of rules and expectations.
I tend to believe that it is far more a case of the former, with just enough of the latter to require training. It's possible we'd do just as well applying to a set of priests as we would a court. Think of the Supreme Court as a set of high priests, then read a few of their more arbitrary rulings, and see if we haven't made a religion of Law in this country.
And just as any other religion, it is hardly infallible, and frequently unjust. Good luck.
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Toro
Well, you see, it's all based on litmus paper. Girls are more acidic and therefore when dipped in liquefied girl, the paper stays pink. Boys are acerbic, so when dipped in liquefied boy, the paper turns blue.
Brings a whole new dimension to "pH+ balanced for a woman," eh?
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Toro
I am not a lawyer. I have had conversations with law professors about these issues, but I may easily have misunderstood. I'm not using formal law language, this is all in lay terms.
First off, of course, "not having done it" is a defense to battery, and in the U.S., innocence is assumed with the burden of proof falling to the prosecution. If I seemed to disagree with that, then I did a poor job of expressing myself.
But a "self-defense" defense means that you've admitted to the court that you hit somebody. If you admit you so much as threw a wad of paper at someone, you can be found guilty of battery, at least in my state. In self-defense, the defendant is claiming is that he did so because he had reasonable cause to believe that the other person was going to cause him harm.
Therefore, there is a presumption of fact in employing the defense, which means that one is no longer presumed innocent; one must prove they were justified. This is usually when there are significant witnesses to the event and there is no way to dispute the contact. Otherwise, it's much easier to fall back on the presumption of innocence.
But this defense doesn't translate into a right to beat on anyone you think may harm you. There are people who, for instance, think anyone of a certain race is bent on harm. It doesn't give them the right to go beating on people of that race, no matter that they fear for their life, if it isn't "reasonable." Certain, but not all, defenses must be proven in court, and presume certain facts, usually based around the legal fiction of the "reasonable person."
That's why they talk about being found "not guilty," in a court, as opposed to being found "innocent." It's not up to the court to determine innocence, they determine guilt, or in civil cases, make a ruling and order a judgment against the losing party.
I hope that seems clearer and more consistent regarding self-defense.
I think we have different concepts of what the word "right" means, so I'll be more specific.
In my understanding, an individual right means that you have an intrinsic, legally binding ability (an entitlement) to perform in a certain manner, without qualification. These rights may be abridged only by other rights.
Therefore, you have a right to say whatever you want (freedom of speech), but not to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater because that would violate the rights of the other patrons to not be harmed in a riot, and that right legally outweighs your right to free speech. This is a case of one right abridging another. Only stronger rights can abridge another right.
"Fair use" refers to both the provision in copyright law, and the defense. It is a legal exception to a right, therefore can't be a right of its own. But if the question of copy itself is in dispute, there is no need for a fair use defense at all! You didn't make the copy.
Otherwise, such exceptions are often based around your own rights (such as self-defense, where it is reserving your right to defend yourself from be harm), but often also for the public good, as in fair use. There is no actual individual right involved with fair use. Fair use is for the good of the community, as is, supposedly, copyright.
There is no actual right to copy when a person uses fair use as a defense. The rights holder and his licensees are the only holders of that right. If the rights holder decides to make a stink about your purported fair use, and the fact is established that you indeed made copies, you have to prove it met the exceptions. You are not presumed to be entitled to copyright because you are a teacher and it was "for your class," for instance. You have to produce evidence, documentation and/or certifications to that point.
In broad strokes, fair use is by no means automatic nor an entitlement, and if a person agrees to the fact that he made copies, then he has to prove that he met the conditions of the exception.
That is, by the definition I understand, not a right. A right
No. "Fair Use" is a defense, and you must demonstrate that you met the "Fair Use" criteria if the prosecution can document that they own the copyrights to the material. If you can't, there will be a judgment against you. You cannot get a summary dismissal because you claim the right to copy something.
Simply put, if you have to prove something, you don't have the right. If you had the right in the first place, there could be no judgment against you, and you could move for a summary dismissal. "Fair Use" is a defense against a charge of infringement, but the charge is still valid.
An example from criminal law: The defense of "self-defense" in battery cases never grants you the right to hit someone. You have the defense of not being found guilty because you were defending yourself.
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Toro
Thompson To Run For President
(Oh sure, it's Fred Thompson, but it's about as honest as the summary title.)
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Toro
(*Uninstalls Bioshock DRM with tools like regdelnull, and NTFS-3g for the undeleteable files*)
;^)
I never thought I'd say this, but "Go get 'em Jack!" I hope they go up in a big mushroom cloud together.
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Toro
Simple. It's not a copyright issue. I think it's trademarks, but I'm not sure, I'd have to research the filings.
:^)
Point is, it's common knowledge that George Lucas owns all the rights to the Star Wars images: the ship designs, sabers, logos etc. for use as merchandise and promotional material. The fact that you could even find the toys means that you're using something that George Lucas owns the rights to. They couldn't sell you that toy without talking to Lucas first.
The Star Destoyer, the TIE fighter, the Death Star, certainly the lightsaber, and probably even the green laser beams and the triangular pattern coming from the single eye, all of that is potentially actionable. Not under copyright, but because George Lucas owns the marketing/promotional rights. He was very clever about it, and he is very aggressive about protecting and promoting the Star Wars brand experience.
That also extends to the fact that he's usually cool about fan films, and sees them as promoting and leading to greater excitement about Star Wars and its related products. But had you produced something more professional, or competitive to the franchise, or were using it to promote something he disagreed with (slicing up baby seals with a lightsaber, for instance) you would see your day in court for IP infringement.
In fact, in a court, for trademark purposes, putting you on his educational site might well be construed as licensing you, which helps in an abandonment defense. IANAL, so I don't know. I do know that you have to pursue trademark aggressively or you can dilute or even lose your rights. Therefore, if you were to push this claim that you can use HIS promotional rights as YOU see fit, he would HAVE to sue you or perhaps lose his rights.
Don't do it. Discretion is the better part of valor, even amongst Jedi.
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Toro
You lose. You call Viacom to complain, they call George Lucas, and then launch their own defense. You now have two, count 'em, two lawsuits on your hands, against high-powered, connected, retainered corporate lawyers, and you're running for public office and that hits your town papers.
Good luck.
Also, if you published their interview material, that is their copyright, so yours is the only likely violation as Viacom is almost certainly "fair-use" defensible as a major media organization showing short clips of the local elections on their show.
You need permission to show their stuff, unless you have a "fair-use" defense of your own, but even if you do have one ready, they can still prosecute (and seek an injunction/take down in the meantime) because "fair-use" is a defense, not a right. You have to prove it in a court.
So applying to Slashdot isn't going to help here. File suit and claim "fair-use" and end the take down. Or, quietly count your blessings and stay clear. I know what I'd do.
Might I add, nice General Crix Madine haircut.
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Toro