Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
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Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2
They (used to) make their money by licensing their search engine software to other people.
They still are (licensing the software, not sure about the making money part:). Check the main page, second news item; Inktomi just inked a large deal with a swath of government organizations. Interestingly, the press release lists a whack of others... but not DoD. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that DoD wouldn't let as much info out about their operations, whatever they may be.
Re:Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2
Inktomi of course is a search-engine [inktomi.com].
I really don't see what the big deal is.
Inktomi also provides custom search and indexing solutions to customers. This would include indexing spiders that could be tailored to look for specific types of information.
The big deal is that the hits I'm noticing aren't being referred by an Inktomi Search portal; they're hits from an Inktomi indexing agent, once a day, for at least the past month. If the DoD were simply spidering entire sites for caching and internal search purposes, I'd just ignore it - but the nature of the indexing is too targeted, IMO, to be coincidence. I'm not the only person to notice this, either. Why in hell are DoD computers being used to index sites on digital copyright issues? Why not DoJustice machines?
I don't suspect some great conspiracy behind this (yet); it just seems... bizarre.
Department of Defense getting in on the fun?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I guess I'll take this opportunity to link to this entry in my Smokedot diary. I encourage webmasters to read it, because I'd like some assistance.
The short version: if you're a webmaster, and have pages on your site related to digital copyright issues - especially Sklyarov's case - check your logs for hits from the 198.25.0.0 - 198.26.255.255 netblock, which is controlled by NIPR (DoD Network Operations - a quick whois of 198.25.0.0@whois.arin.net will confirm this) containing a user agent of "Inktomi Search". A pair of machines at Kelly AFB in Texas with that user-agent have been the source of regular hits to my page on Sklyarov, about once a day. The hits are regular and targeted enough to convince me it's not a case of kiddiez spoofing, and I've had at least one report of very similar behaviour toward another site; targeted hits from a couple DoD boxen using a web spider. I'm doing some light investigation of the activity, and would be very interested in any logs documenting this type of behaviour.
If nothing else, I'd love to know why DoD machines are being used to search for copyright-related pages.
Side-note: some of the information I've gathered on NIPR implies that the group has constructed a firewall around the DoD workstations and servers; hence, any hits from NIPR.mil addresses may be the firewall/border routers and not the actual boxes performing the searches. However, at some point, DoD boxes are involved, and I'd like to know just what they're up to.
If Excite@Home Australia is going to randomly snoop on downloads for copyright-infringing downloads, on the reason that they're trying to comply with the law, can I then assume they're also occasionally snooping to determine if someone is downloading or uploading child pornography to/from IP addresses they control?
If not, why does Excite claim it can take responsibility for actively halting one illegal activity while allowing another to continue? Or does Excite Australia decide to take action based on "pressure"?
Since we're playing the software analogy game... if an "open-source" drug company lets their bugs all hang out... then a "closed-source" drug company has the same bugs, only not publicized, and people don't get anything but the major releases... and if there are bugs in those releases, too bad, use this upgrade or wait for the next one.
It's times like this I'm glad analogies are never entirely accurate... though how close to the target I'm hitting here, I don't want to know. Yet.
Point being, the simple, nearly moron-proof system used in Canada just plain worked. The system you propose is even better, integrity-wise.
Anything is better than punchcard butterfly ballots that might be lined up properly being hit by a machine that might be working with candidates lined up in something resembling an organized fashion that hopefully won't be confused by most people.
It had nothing to do with the way the votes were taken, but it had everything to do with how close the election was.
Incorrect; it had partly to do with the closeness, partly to do with how the votes were taken. The fact that the "dimpled/hanging chad" business took place at all shows the machines being used in that particular area were, well, crap. The tightness of the vote didn't help one iota, but using a voting system slightly less prone to ambiguity or confusion (I must repeat, the layout of the ballots in question was far more complicated than it had any right to be) might have aided the count and led to slightly less controversy. Hell, the perception that Bush was "chosen" by the Supreme Court, a perception with a bit of basis in reality, might not exist had the ballots and voting machines not been so badly designed as to force counters to waste time looking at the ballots seven ways from Sunday to determine the silly crap Republicrats were asking them to look for.
If the Canadian election had come down to a single riding, with only a few hundreds of votes making a difference, as the U.S. election eventually came down to a close result in a single state, do you really think that the close precincts wouldn't have been contested?
Oh, I'm sure there would be contested precincts. I'm also pretty sure the mess wouldn't have dragged on for over a month, and it wouldn't have become utterly absurd to any and all observers, partly thanks to the ballot and machine design. Determining whether a circle on one side of a ballot is marked seems to be a far less complicated process than trying to guess whether an indentation in a piece of cardpaper indicates "voter intent". In fact, the instructions given to voters here were clear, simple, and provided in large print for the nearsighted (guilty):
Take the ballot to the voting booth
Pick up the pencil
Candidates are on the left, circles on the right
Mark the circle that indicates your choice with an X
Fold the ballot (actually, this might not have been a step, but it's made pretty darn clear at the polling station what you're supposed to do)
Return the ballot to the ballot box and drop it in.
No muss, no fuss. Sure, an unscrupulous poll worker could somehow break into the ballot box after polls close, but I'm pretty sure Elections Canada employees hang over their shoulders from the time the polls close to the time the last ballot is counted, whenever that is.
What happened in Florida was a disaster, about as bad as it gets. What makes it worse is that the disaster could have been prevented had the people who chose that type of ballot begged for something a little less prone to error. Or even, - *gasp* - a consistent, simple system was decided upon across an entire state.
Yes, I'm pretty bitter about the whole mess. It was just plain jaw-dropping, and the way it was concluded probably wasn't the best solution, or even one of the better ones.
Simple solution: Next time, do it right. As another poster (or two, or three) have mentioned: KISS.
You obviously didn't pay attention to our last election.
No, but he might have paid attention to the Canadian election that took place in a single night, Nov. 27, while the US was still trying to decide what a dimpled chad signified, and whether a full recount was really worth it.
In my opinion (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway:), every vote should have been counted, and if there was any ambiguity in the vote, toss it. Lesson learned; don't use overly complicated voting systems. Seriously, what's the problem with having the names lined up on one side, and the marking points on the other? Who the drizzling shit came up with those 50 000 different voting systems, anyway? Doesn't anyone take that shit seriously enough to think that maybe, just maybe, voting systems should be consistent?
Sorry for the rant; I just can't figure out how the country that's supposed to be a model of democracy gets itself in such a stupid mess in the first place.
The boondocks by Aaron McGruder is some of the funniest stuff i've read in a long time.
And guess what? That's about it. Beyond Dilbert, which in a good number of the papers I run across is shoved into a completely different section, there are no funny, inspired, socially relevant comics out there. Even Fox Trot can't get me to open the so-called funny pages anymore.
The comic pages have become rather like sitcoms; rare, spectacular brilliance surrounded by the same mass-market, regurgitated crap served five hundred ways.
RosettaBooks(orwhateveritis) offers an Agatha Christie novel at $1 per 10 hours of reading time on a computer of some sort.
The copy of 1984 on my shelf cost a bit over $8, and provides me with unlimited reading time, not to mention portability, no need for a battery or external power sources, and I can store it damn near anywhere. Best part is, no one can take away my right to read the book; I've paid for it, it's my copy, I can read it or resell it as I wish.
Really, who's going to pay $1 per reading session - because you just know there will be people who can't/won't finish the book in one sitting - when you can buy the book or read it at a library and take all the time you want...without needing a computer? I had a serious lesson in getting along without the magic glowing box after it decided to suicide during a room rearrangement two weeks ago. Got it running, but not for four days. Guess what? I lived.
Back to the topic - the problem facing Rosetta's model here is the same problem that contributed to the death of the Divx movies-on-disc format. Instead of the illusion of outright owning the content you purchase, being able to use it at your leisure, you're stuck into a time-limited PPV model. Rather difficult to use if you have bad credit, no credit, you have less time available per day than is necessary to read the e-book in timely fashion, and anything else I forgot. I highly, highly doubt this type of e-book will become anywhere near common, despite what some publishers are probably desperately hoping for (much like some studios hoped for with Divx).
It occurs to me that if Dolby wants to force NetBSD not to link to ac3dec on patent grounds, why haven't we heard anything about potential or real legal actions taken against the ac3dec team itself? Technically, they're the people violating any patents Dolby has on AC-3 encoding and decoding, unless Dolby left open a gaping hole one could drive a truck through.
For now, NetBSD should - as others have suggested - ask Dolby Labs exactly which patents are being violated. After that, they should only do what a court orders them to do; the ball is in Dolby's court, and NetBSD shouldn't be their target. They must know the project does not belong to NetBSD, and it's really an issue that should be taken up with the proper people.
I really hope this doesn't result in Dolby acting like complete ogres - the ac3dec team isn't trying to make moolah off their decoding implementation or purposefully try to rip Dolby off or something evil. OTOH, if Dolby has patents on the implementation, they have the right under US and WIPO regulations to protect said patent. OYAH (yet another hand), does this mean people can be prevented from tinkering and programming with their computers if it might mean infringing on a patent?
I suspect IP laws will have to undergo a rather complicated change dealing with different uses of patents on non-physical objects and processes in order to preserve the ability of individuals to tinker with their computers and create free software availabe to all who can use it (a group that, based on my personal experiences, is far smaller than anyone is willing to admit), while still allowing another individual or corporation to protect their patents from being used by profit-oriented competitiors without proper compensation for any profits earned.
*aside*
I feel rather dirty after typing that for some reason, possibly because I'm starting to think the current system of patents, and much of IP law, is rather anachronistic. Might have worked fine in 1883, might have worked fine in 1953, might even have worked fine in 1973. Then the Information Revolution hit. At this point, I'd rather try to put a new, fresh IP structure in place, instead of try to put fixes on a rotting structure that's about to collapse under its own weight and is being twisted from its original purposes not to promote innovation and development, but to protect profit and moneymaking at any cost.
Now, what to replace the current structure with...will take a lot of thought, trial and error. But hey, change is never easy.
Please route all accusations of communist leanings to/dev/null. Thank you.
and is not part of whatever the hell that international convention on IP is called.
You're probably thinking of the Berne Convention, signed by most nations, that pretty much says the rights of copyright holders must be respected in other signatory nations, to the point that a work produced in one nation, which is violated in a second country, can be protected under the first country's laws. This is quite possible, and has recent precedent. iCraveTV comes to mind; a Canada-based operation, it was first attacked in US court under US law. However, I don't think patents fall under the Berne Convention; the word doesn't even appear in the text.
There are two WIPO treaties that explicity deal with patents; the Paris Convention (aka the Patent Cooperation Treaty) and the Patent Law Treaty of 2000.
It's worth poking through the collection of treaties at WIPO.org to get an idea of what modern intellecutal property law is based on.
I'm doing both. Voting with your feet and with your mouth at the same time is quite possible, and I think in this case, necessary to change LT for the better.
On Aug. 1, my cable modem-based site registered 7 hits from Code Red-infected machines.
On Aug. 2, there were 32 hits.
As of 8:37 AM EDT on Aug. 3, there have been 19 hits - more than half of yesterday's total in just over 1/3 of the time.
Average time between hits (eyeball guess) is 0.5 hours, and will probably decrease by the day.
I'm going away for the weekend. I wonder what those hit totals will look like come Monday night.
Code Red may not cause any trouble to the White House, but I don't think many people will be laughing in, say, 1.5 weeks if hit counts (and, by extension, infections) continue to increase at their current rate, or on the 21st when it tries launching another DDoS.
Sony Music begged them not to release it, but the hardware div didn't give a damn and released it anyways. Sony Music was pretty pissed off of course, but there was nothing they could do about it.
Irony; this poster was about 20 meters from a trio of computers in the staff cafeteria for browsing.
Greater irony; several people at Sony that day ripped on the record industry for helping to hold back high-end audio formats by demanding "better" encryption (CSS2) and watermarking (for SACD) schemes. Nice job, shitheads.
ObOnTopicComment: If I ever run across a CD that I can't rip into.mp3s/.oggs for my listening pleasure, I will return it to the place I bought it from and get my money back. Simple as that. And if it destroys equipment I own, without any clear, large-print warning about that possibility, there will be liability suits to repay the cost of said equipment. Can you say "class action?" I knew you could!
WT News: Chinese cyber-bullet is a dud
NYT News: Web worm misses target
WT Ed: Online threats, foreign and domestic
NYT Ed: Cyber-attack should be a wake-up call
I posted above before reaching this particular post... if LT staff were astroturfing their own site, the question would have to be "why?" Would it be to create the impression LT has a larger, more involved readership than it really does? To generate conversation? Boredom on the part of the staff (insert "idle hands" comment here)?
I don't post to LT all that often; usually only if something pops into my head, or a Mozilla article (I'm a rather vocal Moz advocate there:). If it turns out some of the comments I saw, or even possibly replied to, were made by staff for less-than-admirable purposes, I'd probably stop posting there for sure, and possibly stop reading the site. I won't tolerate or support underhanded tactics from a site I trust to not manipulate forums on the articles posted.
Now, Slashdot is another matter; I'm nearly positive that a few of the authors are well-known trolls, and manipulation/correction of posted articles is common, so shit-disturbing by the authors wouldn't surprise me. I'd certainly be a little surprised, and more than a little miffed, to discover that LT wasn't being completely honest with its treatment of stories and comments.
Interesting side note; I think it was Reichard that posted an article a while back outing the IP of an anonymous person who submitted an article highlighting a circumstance where Windows bested Linux in some real-world situation. It was an M$ IP, which Reichard apparently "took offense" to. He was soundly lambasted in the comments, and the article disappeared from the site hours later. So I suppose I shouldn't be entirely surprised to discover some other less-than-angelic actions have been taking place there... but it would be very disappointing to have that confirmed.
Man. I dunno. As I type this, LT hasn't posted anything regarding the charges, but I imagine Kevin's doing some fast typing, and possibly e-mailing, right about now.
...but it would have been better if Barr had actually provided the evidence linking Reichard with the "George Tirebiter", "Tom Dooley" and "Will Smith" aliases, instead of just making the claims and leaving it at that. I dunno if Barr is protecting his source by not presenting any evidence yet, or if he's giving Reichard a chance to fess up.
'Course, the whole thing could be based on unfounded rumour or flimsy, weak "evidence," but we won't really know until LT speaks up, now will we?
Last time I threw up a quick mirror in response to a Slashdot story I ended up as a "J.Doe" on the DVDCCA case in California.
DAMN YOU! I wanted to be a J. Doe, and they never even bothered with me!
Maybe I can get Adobe on my ass now... here's my mirror page, and direct links to the presentation and program if you don't feel like reading my plebe-directed rant.
This completely did not occur to me when I made my earlier post on the problems preventing DVD-A from becoming part of PC DVD drives. At first I figured the decryption would take place in a decoder card...until I recalled that CSS/CSS2 do nothing to prevent copying, only access. Feed an encrypted file through the decoder, hello clean digital audio bitstream, goodbye MPAA argument about CSS being a "copy control".
This was a major sore point among some engineers at a conference I attended. During a panel discussion in the last hour, a couple engineers took time to poke at the record industry's paranoia, with one guy going off on a 5-minute rant about how the content providers were doing seemingly everything possible to piss off audiophiles and hurt the acceptance of high-end audio in order to protect their property from any form of copying at any cost. The bit about "no digital audio outputs" was especially galling, in the face of attempts to preserve the quality of the audio itself at every opportunity. The feeling I got was that the labels were making it almost worthless for studios to take time making tracks as crystal-clear as possible if the whole effect would be tanked by a cheap builtin DAC.
IMO, the record industry has really dropped the ball on promoting either SACD or DVD-A. The studios got behind DVD-V and hyped it to the heavens, enough that a lot of people didn't take notice of the access and pricing controls until they started to bite people in the ass. The RIAA is raking it in on CD sales, which most people are happy with (or even less, thank you MP3:), I guess they figure it isn't worth their time/money to cater to audiophiles' wants and needs, even if the tech may trickle down to Joe Average Home Theatre Owner.
Side note: I met a couple recording engineers at a nearby studio last week. They lamented the fact that what was once considered "midrange" facilities (in their case, a 56-channel analog board, nice 24-track analog reel-to-reels, 48-track digital recorders, Pro Tools, a $30 000 Sony digital board, all the fixins) is now considered "high-end" - the standards have apparently receded in the past five years. I guess no one is an audio junkie anymore...bad news for my future:)
prefs.js contains a comment at the top saying it is a generated file. What causes the file to be generated? Am I going to have to add this line again each time I change preferences from the edit menu? (I presume there is a user interface coming soon.)
Any changes to prefs.js are written, as far as I can tell, to the file when the browser is closed normally. You need to edit the file when Mozilla isn't running, but once the additional lines are in, they stay even through future prefs changes.
My prefs.js file is in a subdirectory under my ~/.mozilla/ directory that seems to have no meaningful name. (It is apparently a random 8.3 filename.) Did I edit the right file? What gives with this directory?
Yep, you got it. The 8.3 dir has been there since soon after M17 (I think). It was added to prevent easy attacks on preference and control files stored in the profile directory by not giving attackers a known path to call. For example, an attacker might wish to edit.mozilla/$profile/chrome/userChrome.css, through some Javascript in a page, to do "rm -rf/" every time you click on "File". By adding the randomly-named directory, the attacker would either need to brute-force the name or know precisely how and when it was created.
Galeon seems to implement UI for the no-popups function; you may want to grab it, as it's quite functional, and you still get Gecko goodness.
Slashdot Mirror
They (used to) make their money by licensing their search engine software to other people.
They still are (licensing the software, not sure about the making money part:). Check the main page, second news item; Inktomi just inked a large deal with a swath of government organizations. Interestingly, the press release lists a whack of others... but not DoD. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that DoD wouldn't let as much info out about their operations, whatever they may be.
Inktomi of course is a search-engine [inktomi.com].
I really don't see what the big deal is.
Inktomi also provides custom search and indexing solutions to customers. This would include indexing spiders that could be tailored to look for specific types of information.
The big deal is that the hits I'm noticing aren't being referred by an Inktomi Search portal; they're hits from an Inktomi indexing agent, once a day, for at least the past month. If the DoD were simply spidering entire sites for caching and internal search purposes, I'd just ignore it - but the nature of the indexing is too targeted, IMO, to be coincidence. I'm not the only person to notice this, either. Why in hell are DoD computers being used to index sites on digital copyright issues? Why not DoJustice machines?
I don't suspect some great conspiracy behind this (yet); it just seems... bizarre.
I guess I'll take this opportunity to link to this entry in my Smokedot diary. I encourage webmasters to read it, because I'd like some assistance.
The short version: if you're a webmaster, and have pages on your site related to digital copyright issues - especially Sklyarov's case - check your logs for hits from the 198.25.0.0 - 198.26.255.255 netblock, which is controlled by NIPR (DoD Network Operations - a quick whois of 198.25.0.0@whois.arin.net will confirm this) containing a user agent of "Inktomi Search". A pair of machines at Kelly AFB in Texas with that user-agent have been the source of regular hits to my page on Sklyarov, about once a day. The hits are regular and targeted enough to convince me it's not a case of kiddiez spoofing, and I've had at least one report of very similar behaviour toward another site; targeted hits from a couple DoD boxen using a web spider. I'm doing some light investigation of the activity, and would be very interested in any logs documenting this type of behaviour.
If nothing else, I'd love to know why DoD machines are being used to search for copyright-related pages.
Side-note: some of the information I've gathered on NIPR implies that the group has constructed a firewall around the DoD workstations and servers; hence, any hits from NIPR.mil addresses may be the firewall/border routers and not the actual boxes performing the searches. However, at some point, DoD boxes are involved, and I'd like to know just what they're up to.
If Excite@Home Australia is going to randomly snoop on downloads for copyright-infringing downloads, on the reason that they're trying to comply with the law, can I then assume they're also occasionally snooping to determine if someone is downloading or uploading child pornography to/from IP addresses they control?
If not, why does Excite claim it can take responsibility for actively halting one illegal activity while allowing another to continue? Or does Excite Australia decide to take action based on "pressure"?
Since we're playing the software analogy game... if an "open-source" drug company lets their bugs all hang out... then a "closed-source" drug company has the same bugs, only not publicized, and people don't get anything but the major releases... and if there are bugs in those releases, too bad, use this upgrade or wait for the next one.
It's times like this I'm glad analogies are never entirely accurate... though how close to the target I'm hitting here, I don't want to know. Yet.
Jesus, slashcode is broken.
Back to Slash 2.0 while things get debugged... wasn't that the purpose of Banjo?
Point being, the simple, nearly moron-proof system used in Canada just plain worked. The system you propose is even better, integrity-wise.
Anything is better than punchcard butterfly ballots that might be lined up properly being hit by a machine that might be working with candidates lined up in something resembling an organized fashion that hopefully won't be confused by most people.
*goes to shake head once again*
Incorrect; it had partly to do with the closeness, partly to do with how the votes were taken. The fact that the "dimpled/hanging chad" business took place at all shows the machines being used in that particular area were, well, crap. The tightness of the vote didn't help one iota, but using a voting system slightly less prone to ambiguity or confusion (I must repeat, the layout of the ballots in question was far more complicated than it had any right to be) might have aided the count and led to slightly less controversy. Hell, the perception that Bush was "chosen" by the Supreme Court, a perception with a bit of basis in reality, might not exist had the ballots and voting machines not been so badly designed as to force counters to waste time looking at the ballots seven ways from Sunday to determine the silly crap Republicrats were asking them to look for.
If the Canadian election had come down to a single riding, with only a few hundreds of votes making a difference, as the U.S. election eventually came down to a close result in a single state, do you really think that the close precincts wouldn't have been contested?
Oh, I'm sure there would be contested precincts. I'm also pretty sure the mess wouldn't have dragged on for over a month, and it wouldn't have become utterly absurd to any and all observers, partly thanks to the ballot and machine design. Determining whether a circle on one side of a ballot is marked seems to be a far less complicated process than trying to guess whether an indentation in a piece of cardpaper indicates "voter intent". In fact, the instructions given to voters here were clear, simple, and provided in large print for the nearsighted (guilty):
No muss, no fuss. Sure, an unscrupulous poll worker could somehow break into the ballot box after polls close, but I'm pretty sure Elections Canada employees hang over their shoulders from the time the polls close to the time the last ballot is counted, whenever that is.
What happened in Florida was a disaster, about as bad as it gets. What makes it worse is that the disaster could have been prevented had the people who chose that type of ballot begged for something a little less prone to error. Or even, - *gasp* - a consistent, simple system was decided upon across an entire state.
Yes, I'm pretty bitter about the whole mess. It was just plain jaw-dropping, and the way it was concluded probably wasn't the best solution, or even one of the better ones.
Simple solution: Next time, do it right. As another poster (or two, or three) have mentioned: KISS.
You obviously didn't pay attention to our last election.
No, but he might have paid attention to the Canadian election that took place in a single night, Nov. 27, while the US was still trying to decide what a dimpled chad signified, and whether a full recount was really worth it.
In my opinion (you didn't ask, but you're getting it anyway:), every vote should have been counted, and if there was any ambiguity in the vote, toss it. Lesson learned; don't use overly complicated voting systems. Seriously, what's the problem with having the names lined up on one side, and the marking points on the other? Who the drizzling shit came up with those 50 000 different voting systems, anyway? Doesn't anyone take that shit seriously enough to think that maybe, just maybe, voting systems should be consistent?
Sorry for the rant; I just can't figure out how the country that's supposed to be a model of democracy gets itself in such a stupid mess in the first place.
*walks away shaking head*
The boondocks by Aaron McGruder is some of the funniest stuff i've read in a long time.
And guess what? That's about it. Beyond Dilbert, which in a good number of the papers I run across is shoved into a completely different section, there are no funny, inspired, socially relevant comics out there. Even Fox Trot can't get me to open the so-called funny pages anymore.
The comic pages have become rather like sitcoms; rare, spectacular brilliance surrounded by the same mass-market, regurgitated crap served five hundred ways.
RosettaBooks(orwhateveritis) offers an Agatha Christie novel at $1 per 10 hours of reading time on a computer of some sort.
The copy of 1984 on my shelf cost a bit over $8, and provides me with unlimited reading time, not to mention portability, no need for a battery or external power sources, and I can store it damn near anywhere. Best part is, no one can take away my right to read the book; I've paid for it, it's my copy, I can read it or resell it as I wish.
Really, who's going to pay $1 per reading session - because you just know there will be people who can't/won't finish the book in one sitting - when you can buy the book or read it at a library and take all the time you want...without needing a computer? I had a serious lesson in getting along without the magic glowing box after it decided to suicide during a room rearrangement two weeks ago. Got it running, but not for four days. Guess what? I lived.
Back to the topic - the problem facing Rosetta's model here is the same problem that contributed to the death of the Divx movies-on-disc format. Instead of the illusion of outright owning the content you purchase, being able to use it at your leisure, you're stuck into a time-limited PPV model. Rather difficult to use if you have bad credit, no credit, you have less time available per day than is necessary to read the e-book in timely fashion, and anything else I forgot. I highly, highly doubt this type of e-book will become anywhere near common, despite what some publishers are probably desperately hoping for (much like some studios hoped for with Divx).
It occurs to me that if Dolby wants to force NetBSD not to link to ac3dec on patent grounds, why haven't we heard anything about potential or real legal actions taken against the ac3dec team itself? Technically, they're the people violating any patents Dolby has on AC-3 encoding and decoding, unless Dolby left open a gaping hole one could drive a truck through.
/dev/null. Thank you.
For now, NetBSD should - as others have suggested - ask Dolby Labs exactly which patents are being violated. After that, they should only do what a court orders them to do; the ball is in Dolby's court, and NetBSD shouldn't be their target. They must know the project does not belong to NetBSD, and it's really an issue that should be taken up with the proper people.
I really hope this doesn't result in Dolby acting like complete ogres - the ac3dec team isn't trying to make moolah off their decoding implementation or purposefully try to rip Dolby off or something evil. OTOH, if Dolby has patents on the implementation, they have the right under US and WIPO regulations to protect said patent. OYAH (yet another hand), does this mean people can be prevented from tinkering and programming with their computers if it might mean infringing on a patent?
I suspect IP laws will have to undergo a rather complicated change dealing with different uses of patents on non-physical objects and processes in order to preserve the ability of individuals to tinker with their computers and create free software availabe to all who can use it (a group that, based on my personal experiences, is far smaller than anyone is willing to admit), while still allowing another individual or corporation to protect their patents from being used by profit-oriented competitiors without proper compensation for any profits earned.
*aside*
I feel rather dirty after typing that for some reason, possibly because I'm starting to think the current system of patents, and much of IP law, is rather anachronistic. Might have worked fine in 1883, might have worked fine in 1953, might even have worked fine in 1973. Then the Information Revolution hit. At this point, I'd rather try to put a new, fresh IP structure in place, instead of try to put fixes on a rotting structure that's about to collapse under its own weight and is being twisted from its original purposes not to promote innovation and development, but to protect profit and moneymaking at any cost.
Now, what to replace the current structure with...will take a lot of thought, trial and error. But hey, change is never easy.
Please route all accusations of communist leanings to
*/aside*
and is not part of whatever the hell that international convention on IP is called.
You're probably thinking of the Berne Convention, signed by most nations, that pretty much says the rights of copyright holders must be respected in other signatory nations, to the point that a work produced in one nation, which is violated in a second country, can be protected under the first country's laws. This is quite possible, and has recent precedent. iCraveTV comes to mind; a Canada-based operation, it was first attacked in US court under US law. However, I don't think patents fall under the Berne Convention; the word doesn't even appear in the text.
There are two WIPO treaties that explicity deal with patents; the Paris Convention (aka the Patent Cooperation Treaty) and the Patent Law Treaty of 2000.
It's worth poking through the collection of treaties at WIPO.org to get an idea of what modern intellecutal property law is based on.
I'm doing both. Voting with your feet and with your mouth at the same time is quite possible, and I think in this case, necessary to change LT for the better.
On Aug. 1, my cable modem-based site registered 7 hits from Code Red-infected machines.
On Aug. 2, there were 32 hits.
As of 8:37 AM EDT on Aug. 3, there have been 19 hits - more than half of yesterday's total in just over 1/3 of the time.
Average time between hits (eyeball guess) is 0.5 hours, and will probably decrease by the day.
I'm going away for the weekend. I wonder what those hit totals will look like come Monday night.
Code Red may not cause any trouble to the White House, but I don't think many people will be laughing in, say, 1.5 weeks if hit counts (and, by extension, infections) continue to increase at their current rate, or on the 21st when it tries launching another DDoS.
Sony Music begged them not to release it, but the hardware div didn't give a damn and released it anyways. Sony Music was pretty pissed off of course, but there was nothing they could do about it.
.mp3s/.oggs for my listening pleasure, I will return it to the place I bought it from and get my money back. Simple as that. And if it destroys equipment I own, without any clear, large-print warning about that possibility, there will be liability suits to repay the cost of said equipment. Can you say "class action?" I knew you could!
Seen in a Sony Music Canada complex in Toronto: this famous poster.
Irony; this poster was about 20 meters from a trio of computers in the staff cafeteria for browsing.
Greater irony; several people at Sony that day ripped on the record industry for helping to hold back high-end audio formats by demanding "better" encryption (CSS2) and watermarking (for SACD) schemes. Nice job, shitheads.
ObOnTopicComment: If I ever run across a CD that I can't rip into
WT News: Chinese cyber-bullet is a dud
NYT News: Web worm misses target
WT Ed: Online threats, foreign and domestic
NYT Ed: Cyber-attack should be a wake-up call
bah...
Oh boy.
I posted above before reaching this particular post... if LT staff were astroturfing their own site, the question would have to be "why?" Would it be to create the impression LT has a larger, more involved readership than it really does? To generate conversation? Boredom on the part of the staff (insert "idle hands" comment here)?
I don't post to LT all that often; usually only if something pops into my head, or a Mozilla article (I'm a rather vocal Moz advocate there:). If it turns out some of the comments I saw, or even possibly replied to, were made by staff for less-than-admirable purposes, I'd probably stop posting there for sure, and possibly stop reading the site. I won't tolerate or support underhanded tactics from a site I trust to not manipulate forums on the articles posted.
Now, Slashdot is another matter; I'm nearly positive that a few of the authors are well-known trolls, and manipulation/correction of posted articles is common, so shit-disturbing by the authors wouldn't surprise me. I'd certainly be a little surprised, and more than a little miffed, to discover that LT wasn't being completely honest with its treatment of stories and comments.
Interesting side note; I think it was Reichard that posted an article a while back outing the IP of an anonymous person who submitted an article highlighting a circumstance where Windows bested Linux in some real-world situation. It was an M$ IP, which Reichard apparently "took offense" to. He was soundly lambasted in the comments, and the article disappeared from the site hours later. So I suppose I shouldn't be entirely surprised to discover some other less-than-angelic actions have been taking place there... but it would be very disappointing to have that confirmed.
Man. I dunno. As I type this, LT hasn't posted anything regarding the charges, but I imagine Kevin's doing some fast typing, and possibly e-mailing, right about now.
...but it would have been better if Barr had actually provided the evidence linking Reichard with the "George Tirebiter", "Tom Dooley" and "Will Smith" aliases, instead of just making the claims and leaving it at that. I dunno if Barr is protecting his source by not presenting any evidence yet, or if he's giving Reichard a chance to fess up.
'Course, the whole thing could be based on unfounded rumour or flimsy, weak "evidence," but we won't really know until LT speaks up, now will we?
Last time I threw up a quick mirror in response to a Slashdot story I ended up as a "J.Doe" on the DVDCCA case in California.
DAMN YOU! I wanted to be a J. Doe, and they never even bothered with me!
Maybe I can get Adobe on my ass now... here's my mirror page, and direct links to the presentation and program if you don't feel like reading my plebe-directed rant.
*paints a bullseye on self*
that legal professional answering your questions about criminal law? Maybe he's a 15-year-old too.
Sounds like a certain website I know...
Argh, find me /any/ programmer that has the capacity to document their work! Something other than
// increment i
i++;
and then have no comments when they use some complicated algorithm!
How about:
/* You are not expected to understand this. */
...how much will Dubya's revival of Star Wars cost, and will there be a 100% guarantee that nuclear weapons will not touch American soil as a result?
*wham* (head smacks off table)
This completely did not occur to me when I made my earlier post on the problems preventing DVD-A from becoming part of PC DVD drives. At first I figured the decryption would take place in a decoder card...until I recalled that CSS/CSS2 do nothing to prevent copying, only access. Feed an encrypted file through the decoder, hello clean digital audio bitstream, goodbye MPAA argument about CSS being a "copy control".
This was a major sore point among some engineers at a conference I attended. During a panel discussion in the last hour, a couple engineers took time to poke at the record industry's paranoia, with one guy going off on a 5-minute rant about how the content providers were doing seemingly everything possible to piss off audiophiles and hurt the acceptance of high-end audio in order to protect their property from any form of copying at any cost. The bit about "no digital audio outputs" was especially galling, in the face of attempts to preserve the quality of the audio itself at every opportunity. The feeling I got was that the labels were making it almost worthless for studios to take time making tracks as crystal-clear as possible if the whole effect would be tanked by a cheap builtin DAC.
IMO, the record industry has really dropped the ball on promoting either SACD or DVD-A. The studios got behind DVD-V and hyped it to the heavens, enough that a lot of people didn't take notice of the access and pricing controls until they started to bite people in the ass. The RIAA is raking it in on CD sales, which most people are happy with (or even less, thank you MP3:), I guess they figure it isn't worth their time/money to cater to audiophiles' wants and needs, even if the tech may trickle down to Joe Average Home Theatre Owner.
Side note: I met a couple recording engineers at a nearby studio last week. They lamented the fact that what was once considered "midrange" facilities (in their case, a 56-channel analog board, nice 24-track analog reel-to-reels, 48-track digital recorders, Pro Tools, a $30 000 Sony digital board, all the fixins) is now considered "high-end" - the standards have apparently receded in the past five years. I guess no one is an audio junkie anymore...bad news for my future:)
prefs.js contains a comment at the top saying it is a generated file. What causes the file to be generated? Am I going to have to add this line again each time I change preferences from the edit menu? (I presume there is a user interface coming soon.)
.mozilla/$profile/chrome/userChrome.css, through some Javascript in a page, to do "rm -rf /" every time you click on "File". By adding the randomly-named directory, the attacker would either need to brute-force the name or know precisely how and when it was created.
Any changes to prefs.js are written, as far as I can tell, to the file when the browser is closed normally. You need to edit the file when Mozilla isn't running, but once the additional lines are in, they stay even through future prefs changes.
My prefs.js file is in a subdirectory under my ~/.mozilla/ directory that seems to have no meaningful name. (It is apparently a random 8.3 filename.) Did I edit the right file? What gives with this directory?
Yep, you got it. The 8.3 dir has been there since soon after M17 (I think). It was added to prevent easy attacks on preference and control files stored in the profile directory by not giving attackers a known path to call. For example, an attacker might wish to edit
Galeon seems to implement UI for the no-popups function; you may want to grab it, as it's quite functional, and you still get Gecko goodness.