The ballot counting in Germany is still done by hand (which is good, see US elections), so no software at all (opensource or whatever) is involved. You either trust the results, or you don't
One thing parts of the US have not caught on to is the concept of one ballot paper per election. IIRC some of the voting in the US involves multiple elections on the same physical ballot paper. Which greatly complicates the issue of recounts, there was talk about needing software to work out which ballots were needed for a recount. As opposed to something like "sort out the blue ones".
You need the raw data to verify the system, again regardless of the software used. Now IF you
have the raw data, the you can verify the system, because the algorithem used is public domain. Regardless of open or closed source.
But if you don't have the source you can't formally verify that it follows the algorithm. You could end up with something which will give the same results the vast majority of the time.
It mucks with windows's networking too. Win98 doesnt think TCP/IP exists, which is a little sucky. It means that IE can't do SSL
Must be set up incorrectly. Since MSIE under Win4Lin will most definitly work correctly with https URLs. It's important that the Netraverse version of winsock.dll is installed.
It also means any network drives are implemented in Linux NFS rather than with windows, all very well, except windows doesnt know they are network drives.
Which actually has some advantages like network drives having a recycle bin and not having to cope with the Windows profile mess.
Since MS has fostered IE APIs as "standard windows", then these DLLs should be removed from IE and made part of Windows.
Especially any APIs they contain which have no obvious conection to rendering HTML anyway. There much be some of these, since there are programs which require IE to be present to either install or run. Even though they have no web browsing capability at all.
I contend that any "obscure API" that is installed on however many hundreds of millions of copies of windows is not at all obscure.
Especially since there is no way in which that API can cease to exist after a certain date. "Security by obscurity" is only really much use where whatever is being kept secret will have no value after a certain time.
The fact that online news sites can quickly change mistakes, update stories as information arrives, etc., seems to make it a better medium for accurate news than traditional print media.
Assuming that those are the only reasons why a story might be ammended. There are plenty of less honourable motivations for people to use this power.
If Slashdot would occasionally patch up one of their erroneous stories, I think we'd all consider it A Good Thing
Slashdot does ammend stories, typically by adding a postscript and leaving the original version intact.
I can understand why CNN thinks this is no big deal. CNN was (and is) primarily a TV news station. On TV news, there is no archive or changelog for writethroughs: the copy gets rewritten, and the reporter or anchor reads it on the air.
I'd be very suprised if CNN did not archive their broadcasts. (As well as any footage they took, but didn't broadcast.) Both to protect their people from claims of liability over something they said and if they happen to witness a criminal act.
In news reporting, an initial story may have inaccuracies. One hopes that with each revision, the reported story becomes closer and closer to the actual truth. It is fairly unlikely that the original story is better than the revised one.
There is a difference between rewriting a story and adding some corrections/ammendments.
Most consumers of news aren't interested in older and less-accurate versions of a story.
It depends if the newer version is more accurate. Or if it is simply more PC (or even more censored). But no news media would want to make it too obvious that a reporter didn't follow the "party line". Remember that there is no such thing as an unbiased news organisation.
And considering the BSA, software audits, etc. I think it would be fair to characterize them as a racketeering organization.
In addition you have volume licence agreements where people are expected to pay Microsoft a licence fee even for machines which don't even run their software.
Don't count on it. The BSA is in the business of busting software "pirates" not copyright violaters.
There isn't much difference.
Besides, the BSA can audit you because the click-wrap EULA you agreed to allows it. Microsoft never agreed to anything like that.
I doubt that this is needed, otherwise only software "pirates" who have agreeed to such an EULA could ever be charged. Which self evidently is not the case.
Suppose it was not a myth and MS really did "borrow" some code from BSD or GPLed software...
They can borrow from BSD as much as they like, there isn't that much difference between BSD licenced code and code in the public domain. Where it becomes an issue is if they borrow from GPL code. In order to do anything about this you'd need to bring a court case somewhere with strong copyright law, but minimal "corporatism".
how would one try to prove it, without access to source code? Even then, I really think they would have gone to the trouble of obfuscating that piece of code one way or another...
Depends if attempting to hide copyright infringement is considered more serious that simple copyright infringment. Since one of Microsoft's methods of obfuscating code is to spread it around they could be making their infringment even worst...
Except that they don't say "Free Software", they say "Virally licensed software", which is a term right out of the BSDL Advocacy book of Brett Glass and others.
It's also highly ironic since Microsoft are masters of viral licencing. Write software with GCC and you can licence it how you like, if you use a Microsoft compiler you may well find you can't. Maybe Microsoft will claim next claim copyright ownership over something you produce in MS Office.
Doesn't matter. My point is that with MS beating the drum, saying "If your licenses aren't 100% squeaky-clean, we'll sic men with shotguns on you, you low-life pirate!" Many cases of "piracy" in business is simply an inattention to the site license.
Or even licencing so complicated that it's virtually impossible to comply with the exact letter. But with enough intimidation they can probably get people to cough up even when they'd lose in court. (Especially in the US where, IIRC, plaintiffs tend not wind up paying all costs resulting from bogus lawsuits.)
.in other words, a violated licensing agreement.
What happened here is an actual court judgment.
And yes, if that Peruvian senator is for real,
This phrase has cropped up quite a bit, never with respect to any US politicans though
not only would I like him as a US senator (hmm--need to check the Constitution on how long he needs to be a citizen first), but I would actually support his campaign.
Why would he want to in the first place? Maybe the US (to use the current PC term) needs a "regime change" instead...
Now, explain to me why Hollywood keeps doping films with gratuitous sex, violence & language that does nothing to advance the story. My guess is that they're more interested in impressing their party-friends and pushing a social agenda than making decent films. I believe Walt Disney used to say he made family films because "Why sell two tickets when you can sell four?" Hollywood - sheesh.
Disney's reasoning only makes sense if the vast majority of people wanting to go see the films are families (also children tend to get reduced price tickets anyway). On the other hand the vast majority of the population are adults and adults who arn't with children probably don't want to go and see "kids' movies".
How come the large software companies get away with stealing stuff all the time but when a little Russian company like Elcomsoft does something people go ape shit and try to throw them in prison.
Except they didn't throw the company in jail they (illegaly) threw an employee, who wasn't even on the sales staff, in jail.
You don't see anyone trying to throw Bill in prison like they did to Dmitry Sklyarov.
It would make far more sense to jail Mr Gates over the conduct of Microsoft. Since he is an executive director, who has control over what the organisation does. AFAIK Mr Sklyarov did not set Elcomsoft's sales policy.
Ok, now we're on the slippery slope, because now we can encrypt any digital content without preventing fair use. The judge is speaking about electronic books, but this argument applies to audio, video, and so on...
The point which the US judiciary appears to be missing is that the special catagory of "digital content" has been invented out of thin air. The US Congress simply does not have the authority to make a law which treats copyrighted material differently depending on media. About the only permitted variation would be different terms for different times of works, so long as terms are limited.
Singapore had every right to enforce its laws, and probably should have given them all eight lashes. What I don't understand is why (as in the Singapore case) the US doesn't like other countries enforcing their laws on US citizens while (as in the Sklyarov/Elcomsoft case) it is so zealous about enforcing its own laws on citizens/corporations from other countries.
Basically appears to be that the US likes to consider itself superior and look down on other nations. Rather than seeing them as peers. Also Sklyarov is not Elcomsoft. Whilst there might be a case against, the actions taken against Sklyarov basically amount to kidnapping.
One thing I don't understand about this case is the fact that Elcomsoft is based in Russia. What gives the US the authority to prosecute a foreign company under US law?
The US has a very long history of simply ignoring the concept of something outside their borders being outside of the jurisdiction on any US court. About the only notable exception is where US people and corporations stand accused of violating human rights.
2. People are generally caught offguard with Linux if they're used to Windows, and won't even think of hunting down gnutella and such. "There are games for Linux?"
Also even if they do find any it's rather hard to ensure that they can install these without winding up with their "fingerprints" (or rather UID) on the relevent files.
If ever a circumstance called for some BOFH TLC, it would be this...
"Hi... my KaZaA isn't working."
"Well, let me take care of that... what's your password?"
Why on Earth would any true BOFH ask for a password, rather than a username?
at my institute of higher learning *cough* we tried a program called centurian guard. (that spelling is probably wrong) Long story short it introduced more problems than it was worth. not being able to save an item to the hard drive is a total waste.
Which shouldn't be an issue, because users should be saving into their user area in the first place...
Okay, I AM a K-12 teacher, and one of the problems is we have heavy-handed network admins shutting off random ports and websites without ever asking what they are being used for. For instance, I teach my econ. kids about napster and p2p and the concerns that raises to copyright laws. Then we go and experiment with it.
Maybe you should actually explain that this is legitimate usage.
I teach my computer class about yahoo, hotmail, and other services that they can access from comptuers once they leave the school.
There is a very good reason to block these, since they can be easily abused to send difficult to trace abusive messages. As for the other bit it's not hard to set up a mail system with a web interface, check out www.courier-mta.org
It seems like the author understands how to stop teachers from using the programs, but doesn't have the authority to do so. The problem seems social, not technical.
In which case maybe a social solution, such as querying exactly what authority these staff had to go installing this software on the machines in the first place. Of course if they had no authority (and quite possibly breached an AUP, their conditions of employment or criminal statutes) they probably should be thankful if all that happens is that the software simply ceases to work.
Slashdot Mirror
The ballot counting in Germany is still done by hand (which is good, see US elections), so no software at all (opensource or whatever) is involved. You either trust the results, or you don't
One thing parts of the US have not caught on to is the concept of one ballot paper per election. IIRC some of the voting in the US involves multiple elections on the same physical ballot paper. Which greatly complicates the issue of recounts, there was talk about needing software to work out which ballots were needed for a recount. As opposed to something like "sort out the blue ones".
You need the raw data to verify the system, again regardless of the software used. Now IF you have the raw data, the you can verify the system, because the algorithem used is public domain. Regardless of open or closed source.
But if you don't have the source you can't formally verify that it follows the algorithm. You could end up with something which will give the same results the vast majority of the time.
It mucks with windows's networking too. Win98 doesnt think TCP/IP exists, which is a little sucky. It means that IE can't do SSL
Must be set up incorrectly. Since MSIE under Win4Lin will most definitly work correctly with https URLs. It's important that the Netraverse version of winsock.dll is installed.
It also means any network drives are implemented in Linux NFS rather than with windows, all very well, except windows doesnt know they are network drives.
Which actually has some advantages like network drives having a recycle bin and not having to cope with the Windows profile mess.
Since MS has fostered IE APIs as "standard windows", then these DLLs should be removed from IE and made part of Windows.
Especially any APIs they contain which have no obvious conection to rendering HTML anyway. There much be some of these, since there are programs which require IE to be present to either install or run. Even though they have no web browsing capability at all.
I contend that any "obscure API" that is installed on however many hundreds of millions of copies of windows is not at all obscure.
Especially since there is no way in which that API can cease to exist after a certain date.
"Security by obscurity" is only really much use where whatever is being kept secret will have no value after a certain time.
The fact that online news sites can quickly change mistakes, update stories as information arrives, etc., seems to make it a better medium for accurate news than traditional print media.
Assuming that those are the only reasons why a story might be ammended. There are plenty of less honourable motivations for people to use this power.
If Slashdot would occasionally patch up one of their erroneous stories, I think we'd all consider it A Good Thing
Slashdot does ammend stories, typically by adding a postscript and leaving the original version intact.
I can understand why CNN thinks this is no big deal. CNN was (and is) primarily a TV news station. On TV news, there is no archive or changelog for writethroughs: the copy gets rewritten, and the reporter or anchor reads it on the air.
I'd be very suprised if CNN did not archive their broadcasts. (As well as any footage they took, but didn't broadcast.) Both to protect their people from claims of liability over something they said and if they happen to witness a criminal act.
In news reporting, an initial story may have inaccuracies. One hopes that with each revision, the reported story becomes closer and closer to the actual truth. It is fairly unlikely that the original story is better than the revised one.
There is a difference between rewriting a story and adding some corrections/ammendments.
Most consumers of news aren't interested in older and less-accurate versions of a story.
It depends if the newer version is more accurate. Or if it is simply more PC (or even more censored). But no news media would want to make it too obvious that a reporter didn't follow the "party line". Remember that there is no such thing as an unbiased news organisation.
Now they say they can't turn over their secret APIs which they denied existed for security reasons?
You can certainly be sure that, now Microsoft has kicked up this fuss, there will be plenty of black hats looking for these APIs.
And considering the BSA, software audits, etc. I think it would be fair to characterize them as a racketeering organization.
In addition you have volume licence agreements where people are expected to pay Microsoft a licence fee even for machines which don't even run their software.
So if the laws were really enforced equally
If they were even enforced at all...
Don't count on it. The BSA is in the business of busting software "pirates" not copyright violaters.
There isn't much difference.
Besides, the BSA can audit you because the click-wrap EULA you agreed to allows it. Microsoft never agreed to anything like that.
I doubt that this is needed, otherwise only software "pirates" who have agreeed to such an EULA could ever be charged. Which self evidently is not the case.
Suppose it was not a myth and MS really did "borrow" some code from BSD or GPLed software...
They can borrow from BSD as much as they like, there isn't that much difference between BSD licenced code and code in the public domain. Where it becomes an issue is if they borrow from GPL code. In order to do anything about this you'd need to bring a court case somewhere with strong copyright law, but minimal "corporatism".
how would one try to prove it, without access to source code? Even then, I really think they would have gone to the trouble of obfuscating that piece of code one way or another...
Depends if attempting to hide copyright infringement is considered more serious that simple copyright infringment. Since one of Microsoft's methods of obfuscating code is to spread it around they could be making their infringment even worst...
Except that they don't say "Free Software", they say "Virally licensed software", which is a term right out of the BSDL Advocacy book of Brett Glass and others.
It's also highly ironic since Microsoft are masters of viral licencing. Write software with GCC and you can licence it how you like, if you use a Microsoft compiler you may well find you can't. Maybe Microsoft will claim next claim copyright ownership over something you produce in MS Office.
Doesn't matter. My point is that with MS beating the drum, saying "If your licenses aren't 100% squeaky-clean, we'll sic men with shotguns on you, you low-life pirate!" Many cases of "piracy" in business is simply an inattention to the site license.
.in other words, a violated licensing agreement.
Or even licencing so complicated that it's virtually impossible to comply with the exact letter. But with enough intimidation they can probably get people to cough up even when they'd lose in court. (Especially in the US where, IIRC, plaintiffs tend not wind up paying all costs resulting from bogus lawsuits.)
What happened here is an actual court judgment.
And yes, if that Peruvian senator is for real,
This phrase has cropped up quite a bit, never with respect to any US politicans though
not only would I like him as a US senator (hmm--need to check the Constitution on how long he needs to be a citizen first), but I would actually support his campaign.
Why would he want to in the first place? Maybe the US (to use the current PC term) needs a "regime change" instead...
Now, explain to me why Hollywood keeps doping films with gratuitous sex, violence & language that does nothing to advance the story. My guess is that they're more interested in impressing their party-friends and pushing a social agenda than making decent films. I believe Walt Disney used to say he made family films because "Why sell two tickets when you can sell four?" Hollywood - sheesh.
Disney's reasoning only makes sense if the vast majority of people wanting to go see the films are families (also children tend to get reduced price tickets anyway). On the other hand the vast majority of the population are adults and adults who arn't with children probably don't want to go and see "kids' movies".
How come the large software companies get away with stealing stuff all the time but when a little Russian company like Elcomsoft does something people go ape shit and try to throw them in prison.
Except they didn't throw the company in jail they (illegaly) threw an employee, who wasn't even on the sales staff, in jail.
You don't see anyone trying to throw Bill in prison like they did to Dmitry Sklyarov.
It would make far more sense to jail Mr Gates over the conduct of Microsoft. Since he is an executive director, who has control over what the organisation does. AFAIK Mr Sklyarov did not set Elcomsoft's sales policy.
Ok, now we're on the slippery slope, because now we can encrypt any digital content without preventing fair use. The judge is speaking about electronic books, but this argument applies to audio, video, and so on...
The point which the US judiciary appears to be missing is that the special catagory of "digital content" has been invented out of thin air.
The US Congress simply does not have the authority to make a law which treats copyrighted material differently depending on media. About the only permitted variation would be different terms for different times of works, so long as terms are limited.
Singapore had every right to enforce its laws, and probably should have given them all eight lashes. What I don't understand is why (as in the Singapore case) the US doesn't like other countries enforcing their laws on US citizens while (as in the Sklyarov/Elcomsoft case) it is so zealous about enforcing its own laws on citizens/corporations from other countries.
Basically appears to be that the US likes to consider itself superior and look down on other nations. Rather than seeing them as peers.
Also Sklyarov is not Elcomsoft. Whilst there might be a case against, the actions taken against Sklyarov basically amount to kidnapping.
One thing I don't understand about this case is the fact that Elcomsoft is based in Russia. What gives the US the authority to prosecute a foreign company under US law?
The US has a very long history of simply ignoring the concept of something outside their borders being outside of the jurisdiction on any US court. About the only notable exception is where US people and corporations stand accused of violating human rights.
I know a number of folks who work at Microsoft. It's an awesome place to work, and MS employees are good people.
No doubt there are plenty of gangsters who are the nicest people in the world. But that dosn't excuse the activities of the organisation.
2. People are generally caught offguard with Linux if they're used to Windows, and won't even think of hunting down gnutella and such. "There are games for Linux?"
Also even if they do find any it's rather hard to ensure that they can install these without winding up with their "fingerprints" (or rather UID) on the relevent files.
I don't think I have to say much more about this. Do a security sweep for trojans, viruses and backdoors.
Probably wouldn't hurt to mention that much P2P software itself has trojan issues.
If ever a circumstance called for some BOFH TLC, it would be this...
"Hi... my KaZaA isn't working."
"Well, let me take care of that... what's your password?"
Why on Earth would any true BOFH ask for a password, rather than a username?
at my institute of higher learning *cough* we tried a program called centurian guard. (that spelling is probably wrong) Long story short it introduced more problems than it was worth. not being able to save an item to the hard drive is a total waste.
Which shouldn't be an issue, because users should be saving into their user area in the first place...
Okay, I AM a K-12 teacher, and one of the problems is we have heavy-handed network admins shutting off random ports and websites without ever asking what they are being used for.
For instance, I teach my econ. kids about napster and p2p and the concerns that raises to copyright laws. Then we go and experiment with it.
Maybe you should actually explain that this is legitimate usage.
I teach my computer class about yahoo, hotmail, and other services that they can access from comptuers once they leave the school.
There is a very good reason to block these, since they can be easily abused to send difficult to trace abusive messages.
As for the other bit it's not hard to set up a mail system with a web interface, check out www.courier-mta.org
It seems like the author understands how to stop teachers from using the programs, but doesn't have the authority to do so. The problem seems social, not technical.
In which case maybe a social solution, such as querying exactly what authority these staff had to go installing this software on the machines in the first place.
Of course if they had no authority (and quite possibly breached an AUP, their conditions of employment or criminal statutes) they probably should be thankful if all that happens is that the software simply ceases to work.