Mitnick has a clear right to refuse to turn over his key to the Feds, since that would violate his Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination.
On the other hand, this case presents interesting points. To put it in Fourth Amendment terms, suppose you were arrested for a crime. You had in your possession a briefcase. The Feds, believing that this briefcase contained incriminating evidence, seized it and got a search warrant. But they can't open the briefcase! So, they demand the key from you and you tell them to jump in the lake.
What can they do? They can't get into the briefcase - do they have the right to refuse to return it to you? Can they destroy the briefcase? Can they hold it forever?
I think the USSC is going to have to hear this one eventually - and it will undoubtedly make some interesting case law...
What's the big deal about some Linux hacker playing a DVD on his PC? I mean, to do it, you've got to buy the DVD player (which is produced under license, as I understand it) to play a DVD, it's economically impractical to copy a DVD (you can buy them much cheaper than copying them), so what's the rub?
The only objection that I can see is that one can play a DVD without having to have the player, but that seems a bit extreme to me. In order to do so, one would have to download an entire DVD onto their hard drive from the net, no small feat even at T-1 or better speeds. I'd much rather just go out and buy a DVD player (they're getting cheaper by the day) and play a DVD on my Linux box.
Again, I am entirely missing the point of the nonsense that the MPAA and the DVD industry is putting out. They derive their money from the sale of players and DVDs, right? How many people are going to download pirated movies off the net? Not many - they're just too big! So, people are going to continue to buy players and DVDs and watch them on their Linux boxes. Where does the DVD industry lose money? I just don't get it.
I do a fair bit of VB consulting. This past weekend, I got so tired of IE crashing and taking all other instances out that I said "screw it" and installed RH 6.1 on both my desktop and laptop. I'll lose a client or two, but what the hell.
I was one of the early authors in the Linux arena, porting code back before Christmas of 1991. Sure feels good to have a real OS on all of my machines:) With Star Office and Netscape loaded, there's not a whole lot I can't do (except write VB, but that will come!)
Seems to me the best way to avoid getting sued by legions of corporate lawyers is to avoid being a target. Wasn't it Sun Tzu who made the comment about water, being soft, overcoming the hard? We need to be more like water.
For the uninitiated, have you ever tried hitting water? It just sort of moves out of your way, then engulfs your hand. We need to be the same way.
Don't give the corporate fatcats a target to aim their lawyers at. That's what anonymizers, stego, MixMasters, and all those other crypto tools are out there for. Why not do a MixMaster for web servers?
Tim May and the other folks on Cypherpunks were wrong about the target, but right about the reasons - the target isn't the government but corporations. I don't fear the government, who at least nominally has the Constitution and the criminal justice system to provide at least a bare minimum of restraint, I fear the corporations, who have nothing but civil sanctions holding them back, and who cares about a fine of a million dollars a day when your corporate illegalities are making you 20, 30 or even 50 times more than that per day? And you can put an individual in jail, but when's the last time you've seen a corporation behind bars?
I have a real problem with a bunch of folks who started to jump on the bandwagon, trying to snap up domain names before anyone else, without a clue about Linux other than they saw $$$ in it. I personally think that if you aren't running an Open Source project or haven't been involved in Linux since the beginning or haven't made a significant contribution to the OS (like writing a journaling file system, hint, hint!) then you shouldn't be allowed to own a domain name with "linux" in it.
The contention that DeCSS is "just like unauthorized copying of the keys to the local department store" is almost so ludicrous as to be self-obvious. DeCSS is more like inventing a pizza cutter so you can fit the pizza into your smaller microwave oven instead of having to heat it in your old, energy-hog-of-an electric oven. The pizza owners guild and the electric oven guild is trying to outlaw pizza cutters!
What really needs to happen is a couple of aggressive, smart lawyers need to get together and convince the Feds to file a RICO or SLAPP suit against these folks, to stop them from this nonsense.
The problem is, the genie's out of the bottle. What are you going to do, retroactively ban MP3? And as more and more people migrate from 56K and under dialup connections to cable modems and ADSL, we're going to see more and more of this stuff. It's a never-ending war - the folks who want to make as much cash as possible versus the people who want to rip them off because of some leftist agenda. And the little guy, you and me, are stuck in the middle. We *ll* get punished because of the extremists on both sides of the issue. As for taking cash out of the pockets of a company, that's all well and good to "rip off the greedy corporate bastards", until they lay *you* off because they can't afford your salary because their business is going down the toilet because they're getting ripped off.
I find Bill Joy's remarks about why they don't go completely open source rather hypocritical, since SunOS was derived from BSD - open source software helped Sun make a whole lot of $$$.
Oh, nonsense. Microsoft - one of America's best companies? In whose eyes? Microsoft uses its competetive edge to slam other companies, to lock out competition, and to monopolize the desktop software industry. And you find this a good thing? You're the one who is sick.
1. The software is specifically designed to hide from ctrl-alt-del, but it would be simple to write a registry scaner to ferret it out - the docs say that it removes registry entries, implying that it *does* make them.
2. The real technological protection against your employer spying on you is to use decent encryption - PGP for email, SSH or free-ssh or stelnet for telnet sessions, etc. Be sure to kick that keystroke monitoring crap off your machine first.
3. I'd really like to find someone that has it on their machine. What traces does it leave? Is there really a program called w3iuninstall.exe or similar? It should be simple to write a small program taht would warn a user if this kind of monitoring software is installed on their machine.
I don't have a big problem with employers monitoring what I do with their machine on their time - as long as they tell me! That's why I have a laptop with Linux on it and a wireless modem - that way, no one but me can read my email that I read at work.:)
I use the MySQL database, with time card and invoicing software written in C (using MyC). Works great, and it's a lot faster than perl:-P
Re:This should be in the SPAM category, not Red Ha
on
Red Hat IPO Surprise
·
· Score: 1
I've contributed to Linux since 1991, and I didn't get an invite. I guess it's just for the people who yell loud enough and beat their chest about all the stuff they've done.
Funny, I didn't notice Bob Young's name on the mailing list when Fred van Kempen and Alan Cox and Remy Card and all the rest were trashing machines in the early days...
I don't have a debian.org address, so I guess I'm out of luck. I guess I'll just have to produce my own distribution (like I did back in 1995) and do a better job of it (not particularly hard).
The only real problem I have with this whole thing is that it seems most of the utilities outside of the OS itself is composed of ports from copylefted software, yet Be is expecting us to pay for giving us back our own software! I think that's patently unfair to take from the free software community, repackage it, then try and sell it back to us at an absurd price. I can see paying $40 for RedHat on CD-ROM with a manual, I can't see paying $100 for what is essentially even less of an OS than Linux is (right now, at least).
I think it's good that Red Hat is getting some competition. Too many people are getting the idea that Red Hat = Linux. Sounds like Micro$oft all over again. Is Bob Young trying to build another empire or what? Yuck.
Keep Linux free - keep those releases coming, everyone!
I thihnk it's good that Red Hat is getting some competition. Too many people are getting the idea that Red Hat = Linux. Sounds like Micro$oft all over again. Is Bob Young trying to build another empire or what? Yuck.
Keep Linux free - keep those releases coming, everyone!
Slashdot Mirror
Mitnick has a clear right to refuse to turn over his key to the Feds, since that would violate his Fifth Amendment right to self-incrimination.
On the other hand, this case presents interesting points. To put it in Fourth Amendment terms, suppose you were arrested for a crime. You had in your possession a briefcase. The Feds, believing that this briefcase contained incriminating evidence, seized it and got a search warrant. But they can't open the briefcase! So, they demand the key from you and you tell them to jump in the lake.
What can they do? They can't get into the briefcase - do they have the right to refuse to return it to you? Can they destroy the briefcase? Can they hold it forever?
I think the USSC is going to have to hear this one eventually - and it will undoubtedly make some interesting case law...
What's the big deal about some Linux hacker playing a DVD on his PC?
I mean, to do it, you've got to buy the DVD player (which is produced
under license, as I understand it) to play a DVD, it's economically
impractical to copy a DVD (you can buy them much cheaper than copying
them), so what's the rub?
The only objection that I can see is that one can play a DVD without
having to have the player, but that seems a bit extreme to me. In order
to do so, one would have to download an entire DVD onto their hard drive
from the net, no small feat even at T-1 or better speeds. I'd much
rather just go out and buy a DVD player (they're getting cheaper by the
day) and play a DVD on my Linux box.
Again, I am entirely missing the point of the nonsense that the MPAA and
the DVD industry is putting out. They derive their money from the sale
of players and DVDs, right? How many people are going to download
pirated movies off the net? Not many - they're just too big! So,
people are going to continue to buy players and DVDs and watch them on
their Linux boxes. Where does the DVD industry lose money? I just
don't get it.
I do a fair bit of VB consulting. This past weekend, I got so tired of IE crashing and taking all other instances out that I said "screw it" and installed RH 6.1 on both my desktop and laptop. I'll lose a client or two, but what the hell.
:) With Star Office and Netscape loaded, there's not a whole lot I can't do (except write VB, but that will come!)
I was one of the early authors in the Linux arena, porting code back before Christmas of 1991. Sure feels good to have a real OS on all of my machines
Seems to me the best way to avoid getting sued by legions of corporate lawyers is to avoid being a target. Wasn't it Sun Tzu who made the comment about water, being soft, overcoming the hard? We need to be more like water.
For the uninitiated, have you ever tried hitting water? It just sort of moves out of your way, then engulfs your hand. We need to be the same way.
Don't give the corporate fatcats a target to aim their lawyers at. That's what anonymizers, stego, MixMasters, and all those other crypto tools are out there for. Why not do a MixMaster for web servers?
Tim May and the other folks on Cypherpunks were wrong about the target, but right about the reasons - the target isn't the government but corporations. I don't fear the government, who at least nominally has the Constitution and the criminal justice system to provide at least a bare minimum of restraint, I fear the corporations, who have nothing but civil sanctions holding them back, and who cares about a fine of a million dollars a day when your corporate illegalities are making you 20, 30 or even 50 times more than that per day? And you can put an individual in jail, but when's the last time you've seen a corporation behind bars?
I have a real problem with a bunch of folks who started to jump on the bandwagon, trying to snap up domain names before anyone else, without a clue about Linux other than they saw $$$ in it. I personally think that if you aren't running an Open Source project or haven't been involved in Linux since the beginning or haven't made a significant contribution to the OS (like writing a journaling file system, hint, hint!) then you shouldn't be allowed to own a domain name with "linux" in it.
The contention that DeCSS is "just like unauthorized copying of the keys to the local department store" is almost so ludicrous as to be self-obvious. DeCSS is more like inventing a pizza cutter so you can fit the pizza into your smaller microwave oven instead of having to heat it in your old, energy-hog-of-an electric oven. The pizza owners guild and the electric oven guild is trying to outlaw pizza cutters!
What really needs to happen is a couple of aggressive, smart lawyers need to get together and convince the Feds to file a RICO or SLAPP suit against these folks, to stop them from this nonsense.
The problem is, the genie's out of the bottle. What are you going to do, retroactively ban MP3? And as more and more people migrate from 56K and under dialup connections to cable modems and ADSL, we're going to see more and more of this stuff.
It's a never-ending war - the folks who want to make as much cash as possible versus the people who want to rip them off because of some leftist agenda. And the little guy, you and me, are stuck in the middle. We *ll* get punished because of the extremists on both sides of the issue.
As for taking cash out of the pockets of a company, that's all well and good to "rip off the greedy corporate bastards", until they lay *you* off because they can't afford your salary because their business is going down the toilet because they're getting ripped off.
Come the millennium, month 12 The village idiot will come forth To be acclaimed the leader.-Hoaxtradamus
Sounds like what Al Gore tried to do...
This is why Java sucks. And people want to use it for mission-critical apps? They're nuts...
I find Bill Joy's remarks about why they don't go completely open source rather hypocritical, since SunOS was derived from BSD - open source software helped Sun make a whole lot of $$$.
Oh, nonsense. Microsoft - one of America's best companies? In whose eyes? Microsoft uses its competetive edge to slam other companies, to lock out competition, and to monopolize the desktop software industry. And you find this a good thing? You're the one who is sick.
1. The software is specifically designed to hide from ctrl-alt-del, but it would be simple to write a registry scaner to ferret it out - the docs say that it removes registry entries, implying that it *does* make them.
:)
2. The real technological protection against your employer spying on you is to use decent encryption - PGP for email, SSH or free-ssh or stelnet for telnet sessions, etc. Be sure to kick that keystroke monitoring crap off your machine first.
3. I'd really like to find someone that has it on their machine. What traces does it leave? Is there really a program called w3iuninstall.exe or similar? It should be simple to write a small program taht would warn a user if this kind of monitoring software is installed on their machine.
I don't have a big problem with employers monitoring what I do with their machine on their time - as long as they tell me! That's why I have a laptop with Linux on it and a wireless modem - that way, no one but me can read my email that I read at work.
I use the MySQL database, with time card and invoicing software written in C (using MyC). Works great, and it's a lot faster than perl :-P
I've contributed to Linux since 1991, and I didn't get an invite. I guess it's just for the people who yell loud enough and beat their chest about all the stuff they've done.
Funny, I didn't notice Bob Young's name on the mailing list when Fred van Kempen and Alan Cox and Remy Card and all the rest were trashing machines in the early days...
I don't have a debian.org address, so I guess I'm out of luck. I guess I'll just have to produce my own distribution (like I did back in 1995) and do a better job of it (not particularly hard).
The only real problem I have with this whole thing is that it seems most of the utilities outside of the OS itself is composed of ports from copylefted software, yet Be is expecting us to pay for giving us back our own software! I think that's patently unfair to take from the free software community, repackage it, then try and sell it back to us at an absurd price. I can see paying $40 for RedHat on CD-ROM with a manual, I can't see paying $100 for what is essentially even less of an OS than Linux is (right now, at least).
I think it's good that Red Hat is getting some competition. Too many people are getting the idea that Red Hat = Linux. Sounds like Micro$oft all over again. Is Bob Young trying to build another empire or what? Yuck.
Keep Linux free - keep those releases coming, everyone!
-Ed Carp, http://www.pobox.com/~erc, erc@pobox.com
I thihnk it's good that Red Hat is getting some competition. Too many people are getting the idea that Red Hat = Linux. Sounds like Micro$oft all over again. Is Bob Young trying to build another empire or what? Yuck.
Keep Linux free - keep those releases coming, everyone!
-Ed Carp, http://www.pobox.com/~erc, erc@pobox.com