Re:But, we're boycotting WC3 this week, right?
on
Warcraft III Expansion
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· Score: 4, Interesting
>(Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)
EXACTLY, and who gets the lion's share of the money from my purchase if I buy a Blizzard game? Why, Vivendi, of course!
No, I don't hold Blizzard blameless in the bnetd fiasco. If they really wanted Vivendi to 'let it be', they could, because they have absolutely no financial reason to attack bnetd. It's purely a control issue; one which they never had to begin with, and the bnetd folks pointed out so ardently.
Please, don't bother reciting about the piracy issue; it isn't one and never was.
Contrary to the subject, I do not intend to question your credentials, but there is no mention of your participation on the Board of Directors in Tech Corps Georgia. It looks like the web page might be in need of a little update.
Just figure I'd point this out and send you a little wave from a fellow Georgian (Canton).
I wonder what maxed-out karma/. accounts are going for on e-bay? Move over, EQ/AC/UO!/. accounts for sale!
Yeah, yeah; off-topic. I think it goes without saying that MS needs a good thrashing about the face and neck over crap like this. Worst part is, if someone writes a server that follows network specs 100% and takes no crap from non-compliant (read: MS) clients, causing them to fail to connect to said server, then would Microsoft have succeeded in their quest to "embrace and extend"?
The question is, who will stop them? How many kludges are already in server programs like Apache that had to be put in to cope with Microsoft's shenanigans?
The first Tolkien book I read was the Silmarillion. It was... a wonderful read, for me. There was beauty. There was ugliness. There was tragedy. There was triumph. There was absolute glory and utter defeat. Not only on human scales, but cosmic ones as well. I think, of all the "stories" about the mythical creation of a universe, I find it the most real and most beautiful.
The sub-creation of a universe is no easy task. I think Tolkien is one of the few people who understood what was necessary to make a believable one, and was able to exceute it so well.
While the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are awesome stories, knowing the true setting of the world that they partake in makes them that much more real and entertaining. The immersion is really, in my experience, an order of magnitude higher than if I had not read the Silmarillion first.
Of course, not everyone will share that view; that's OK. Some people don't like fantasy, period, either. To each his/her own.
OK. Fair enough. I think that it could be read either way, though, which you have already alluded to. With a switch, you don't usually see lots and lots of "packets flying around" because the only ones should be unicast packets and the odd broadcast (ARP/DHCP), but the latter should be fairly rare. Thus, the confusion when reading your original message.
With Adelphia, there are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of broadcasts per minute, many of which are not even FOR your subnet. I also still get a number of misdirected unicast packets and the occasional directed broadcast packet.
Actually, IGMP is Interior Gateway Management Protocol, which is probablu what Adelphia is using to communicate between their routers. You shouldn't be seeing those, as the UBRs should be filtering them out for you (unless there is another one of their routers on the customer side of your UBR). The one I am connected to seems to filter it out.
If you are seeing the packets on your own private network, then your broadband router is also passing them, and maybe you should filter it out.
No, what the article is referring to is the potential for spoofing responses to ARP and BOOTP/DHCP queries to setup man-in-the-middle attacks. You won't see these inside on your private LAN segment, but if you can somehow run a sniffer on the public side, you will see TUNS of ARPs / BOOTP requests.
While I wouldn't necessarily call you a dumbass for making a simple mistake in word choice, I think you need to do a little more investigation on exactly what a SWITCH is versus a HUB.
With a SWITCH, Ethernet frames go from the source node to the destination node directly; no other node connected to the SWITCH can ever see the packets unless they are broadcast/multicast packets.
With a HUB, ALL Ethernet frames that are sent through the hub from any particular node also go to ALL of the other nodes.
THUS, what I think you mean to say is HUB, not SWITCH. However, I am willing to concede that your anecdote about being able to sniff a private non-broadcast conversation between two nodes from a third is making you think about the problem incorrectly, since it means that a) you don't REALLY have a SWITCH, but instead have a HUB, or b) your SWITCH is broken, as another user suggested. I have several switches here and have installed plenty elsewhere. On none of them can a third party sniff and capture directed non-broadcast packets from the network segment.
ARP cache poisoning can be fixed by forcing the UVRs into "ARP proxy" mode, since the UVRs already by default have the MAC addresses of all the nodes they serve anyway. There's no reason for a UVR to EVER do an ARP/RARP broadcast on its own private segment. It assigns the addresses, thus it can resolve them.
The only ARP problem you are going to have is when one of the nodes requests an ARP/RARP resolution for an address in the same private subnet, which should be rare, ESPECIALLY since you guys are doing port-blocking (like http/80, for example).
Yeah, in case no one knew already (hard to believe) Adelphia is doing incoming port 80 blocking; welcome to the censored net. Don't give me that "well, you shouldn't be running servers off of your cable modem" crap argument, either, and I won't give you my lecture on how to run your ISP business properly so that it doesn't matter (and would be more profitable!).
Well, I can tell you that, before Adelphia bought out my local cable company, Prestige, I NEVER had so much as a single BOOTP packet outside of my own. Now, about 10% of the traffic I see is CONSTANT BOOTP requests from other customers all over the country. It is painfully obvious that Adelphia operates their network in HUB mode, when Prestige operated theirs in SWITCHED mode. You DO know what that means, right?
BOOTP traffic should never leave the private UVR segment; period. In fact NO broadcast traffic of ANY sort should be allowed to leave the private network segment at all.
So, don't give me that "it's an non-issue because it is TCP/IP" crap. It is an architectural issue that YOU guys need to clean up on your own network, otherwise, someone needs to do some network technician house-cleaning (all the way up to the CIO, if necessary) and send some people back to flipping burgers at McDonald's.
While we are on the subject of security, why aren't you guys doing something about all the sequential IP scans that are going on in your network right now? Why isn't someone cleaning up THAT mess. Let's see, according to the firewall, I have 4 different scans going on right now; it has been as high as 12.
That, and I have been having fits with your mail server (and, no, this isn't the first time, either; it happens so often, I just switch over to my own until you guys eventually finish reading your sendmail HOWTO and get it fixed).
I realize that with Adelphia being more or less in bankruptcy right now, customer support is not very high on your list of things to take care of (just like network engineering), but don't come in here and tell us that it is a fundamental problem outside of your control when it is NOT. Get control of your network and stop making excuses.
While I support what you say 100%, in this case, all one has to do is look at the CATEGORY of patent we are talking about here. It's a "business method" patent.
I don't care if it IS 100% original, new, and novel, the FACT remains that "business methods" should NEVER have been allowed to be patented in the first place. Why? Because ALL of them are OBVIOUS and TRIVIAL. No matter how convoluted BMPs can be written, they can EASILY be deduced by ANYONE. They require no real skill to think up, and cost the filer little to nothing to create and implement and, thus, do NOT deserve patent protection in any way, shape, or form. People have been coming up with new and novel ways to make a living for MILLENNIA. Actually, I tend to think that the vast majority of these things have most likely been thought up probably HUNDREDS of times before in human history. The ONLY thing that makes the ones that are granted "patents" today versus the ones that were thought up and put in to use previously is the medium employed to effect them. Such is NOT a valid criteria for "patentability".
So, NO, I DON'T always need to read all the gory details of any particular patent to KNOW that it is abusive of a broken system. In fact, many of the patent abstracts I have read DELIBERATELY use obfuscation and subterfuge in the wording of their claims to befuddle anyone into thinking that they are indeed new and novel, when they clearly are not. Given the current climate in the system (the chief of the patent office sells the USPTO as a "revenue" center, how improper is that?) and the sheer numbers of patents that SHOULD be looked at closely and carefully, but aren't due to limited examiner resources, this kind of travesty has been ripe for the picking by those unscrupulous enough to foster and/or abuse it.
I could go on and on, but I have work to do, and there are many more better than me at explaining what is wrong and what needs to be done about it. In the meantime, I will continue speaking out against it and those who abuse it.
Well, along the lines of TANSTAAFL, "no free ride lasts forever".
Eventually, the shareholders WILL stop funding a losing proposition and it will go away. Finally.
The amount of time until then is shortened by a finite, albeit small, amount everytime someone says "no, I am not going to buy from here, as they do not support my core values", and takes his/her business elsewhere.
If it matters to you, or indeed, anyone who reads these messages, be that someone.
Like another poster stated, though; educate yourself. Don't run away from Amazon into the arms of another company who is also an abuser or just simply does not support your core values, either.
Hey, I'm just a member of the choir here. I'm not paid to preach.:P
I didn't have a lot of time when I saw this article, and I've been in the activist seat plenty of times before on this and similar topics. Besides, this is Slashdot. Everyone here (that gives a crap, anyway) should be aware of the issues and of the many ways of making a positive difference.
BTW, I am not boycotting Amazon for the purposes of patent reform; I am spanking them for not having any character or the balls to resist abusing a broken system. I do spend a lot of time explaining such things to many people, both online and off, as I find the time. The REAL problem is that the patent system is pretty much "above the law" (well, it IS the law, but I digress). What I mean by that is that it is at least one level further removed from my control than many things the government does, so a change in it and the overall bad situation is a lot less likely to happen.
So, while I am fighting the war on the government representative front, I am also fighting it on the "abuser" front. While we wait for the (even slower in the case of the PTO and WIPO) wheels of reform to correct this gross manifest travesty, we might as well also punish those who abuse the existing broken system and fail to be responsible corporate citizens and help clean up the mess. Being part of the problem and not part of the solution is as unforgivable as causing the problem in the first place. Especially since many of those abusing the system are supporting its continued existence for their own selfish ends.
As a result, those on the wrong side of the fence in this issue deserve no quarter, and I am not about to give them any.
At any rate, I agree 100% with your list of suggestions; I knew someone would come through where I came up short.
Actually, I liked the way Polymer City was going before the recent change. Yeah, the story is long and drawn-out. So? I enjoyed every episode. What is really cool is going back to the beginning of the current story arc and reading it forward. It's like a graphic novel.
I don't have any problem with stating that I want MS to win this one, with prejudice.
I dislike (read: not HATE) Microsoft as much as anyone, but software and business model patents MUST GO AWAY - PERIOD. I don't wish them on Microsoft, my worst enemy, Stalin, Hitler, ANYONE. I don't think they are fair means of attack when in the hands of small companies OR large companies. They are fundamentally flawed and wrong, as is the organization that issues them, utilizing the biggest and most sinister blindfold-and-rubber-stamp process in history.
You see, Microsoft will (yes, it will, trust me) eventually be beaten. I can have a hand in the success of effecting their downfall. HOWEVER, with patents, there seems to be little to no hope. There is NOTHING I can do directly to effect that change. I have to rely on my "elected representatives", which I wouldn't trust to write their own name 1 out of 3 times, let alone fix the greatest intellectual scourge in recent history (hasn't quite beat out the burning of Alexandria, or the Inquisition yet, but the century is young). Microsoft has nothing over me; I can fight them toe-to-toe. I can't fight the government; they have guns to back up their insanity, and can take (and have effectively taken, for the most part) mine away, so there is no way to fight them directly.
So, I have no conflict here. Microsoft can win this one, AS LONG AS, the effects ripple back to Washington, D.C., and cause the USPTO and its supporters to fall into the chasm caused by the complete and utter stomping of Eolas in this case, HOPEFULLY NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.. EVER!
It's not a matter of choosing sides, it is a matter of setting your priorities. Lest I remind everyone that the GOVERNMENT is also responsible for letting Microsoft off the hook COMPLETELY.
We can all band together and overthrow Microsoft by cutting off its oxygen supply long enough for it to die or relent to becoming a responsible corporate citizen, but we stand a SLIM to NIL chance of overthrowing the US Government to fix the travesty it has created in the USPTO, and is now fostering (foisting?) overseas as a result.
Go ahead, though. For what it is worth, write your Congresspeople; I am. Demonstrate peacefully; get in the face of each and every one of them and make your voice heard. Boycott companies who use the "ugly stick" rather than real innovation and competition. Doing something is better than nothing, ultimately. For me, I already have low expectations of truly fixing the Patent situation. However, I still have very high expectations of kicking Microsoft's nards up into their throat at some point, and succeeding.
At this point, some people would suggest only fight the battles you have any chance of winning; I'll say fight 'em all anyway. It's cheap, easy, and it makes ya feel good inside. I'm actually looking forward to my next face-to-face encounter with my "elected reps" (no, I didn't vote for the winners.. again). It's invigorating watching them stare, dumbfounded, like deer in headlights, while you run them down with information overload on the subject. Yeah, with just one of me coming to them, they write me off as a crackpot, but with 10-30 of us going to them, bringing them the same message, but with ORIGINAL presentations, I think they may sit up and take notice.
OK. OK. I'm getting off the soapbox now; no need to be rude...:P
Airplanes are considered "private property", hence the 2nd amendment does not apply.
If I tell you to leave your gun at home when you come to visit me, don't respond with shock and offense when I send you away because you came packin' heat.
In reality, of course, I don't discourage such a thing, because it means that there is one more tool to defend me and my property, as well as our lives, if trouble comes a-knockin'.
I support someone trained both physically and psychologically in responsible weapon use being present on EVERY airplane. Also, the cockpit needs a door that can't be kicked in so easily, and the pilots need to be trained and packing as well.
Georgia voting process issues
on
Indecision 2002
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· Score: 2, Informative
I went and voted earlier, and it went pretty smoothly. The machines were made by Diebold (go figure). However, I must say that I am not comfortable putting my vote in the hands of a completely unaccountable corporation.
However, much worse than that was what happened after I finished voting. The machine used a smart card, that was locked into the machine while I was voting. After I was done, it was ejected, and one of the nice volunteers took it from me -- by hand -- while another handed me an "I voted" sticker.
It appears that the smart card does nothing more than "enable" the voting machine, and the votes are stored in the machine until read out. The question is, I have no info on how that process works, so I have no idea if my vote is even being counted properly. Further, I don't think that the State is very forthcoming on all the gory details of the process, for fear of someone finding a weakness and exploiting it. So, again, no accountability.
While I do understand and appreciate the need to replace the tedious and often error-prone manual processes in our voting systems, I am still uncomfortable with trusting in methods and equipment which have ZERO accountability anywhere in the chain.
I predict the obvious here.. lots of lawsuits by angry losers contesting the election and the new processes utilitized in it.
This person posted the EXACT SAME response to my previous endorsement of OpenNIC. It's mainly a "chicken little" rebuttal, most of which is nothing more than a cadre of strawman issues. He does have a few minor points, but nothing which would make switching to an alternative root anything like the disaster he prognosticates.
I've got a nice, long rebuttal to Gendou's rebuttal, but I have to finish cleaning it up first; the first version was a little, ah, "hot".
There are already a number of ways to get OpenNIC set up to resolve. All you really have to do is to change your DNS servers (your resolvers, in resolv.conf, for you Linux geeks). There are already a BUNCH of 2nd-tier name resolvers you can point to listed at OpenNIC. They also resolve regular ICANN domains, so you don't have to do anything funky to get access to OpenNIC domains as well as ICANN domains.
For those of you behind a proxy, you can still get out to the OpenNIC domains via a proxy they have set up. It's a little awkward (as I think it is a host-name hack, which may not work if the site uses absolute URIs to itself), but only as long as you are forced to use an ISP who makes it awkward; email your ISP and ask them to include OpenNIC in their DNS forwarders/servers. If enough people bug them about it, they will eventually cave to the pressure and just do it. It is FAR too easy to set up for anyone to complain about that.
For those with name servers, they have a simple set of instructions on their site for the most popular DNS resolver software (BIND 4/8/9, Windows NT/2000 DNS, etc) to get your name server set up in a hurry. It literally will take only about 5-10 minutes to set up, and most of that is testing. YOu only have to edit one to four lines in your named.conf file, restart named, and you're surfin'!
I would offer my name server up for access, but they already have plenty of official 1st/2nd tier name servers in several countries, and I am not quite ready to go official with mine yet. Of course, it isn't hard to guess what it is, but I would ask that people use it sparingly; it is for my customers, and if it gets choked, it will stop serving opennic (if I can't pay for it because of loss of customers to abuse, then it will go away anyway).
Well, maybe it is time to move over to OpenNIC. It is pretty small, but since the Titanic seems to have hit the iceberg, I think it is time to make a break for the lifeboats.
I joined and set up my primary NS to resolve their domains for me, as well as the normal ones. Took about 15 minutes to get working (forgot the forwarders, so it took 10 minutes longer than expected:P).
Yeah, I know; I have heard it all before. "But nobody else uses it, so it's worthless!". Not. Everything, and I mean EVERY DAMN THING starts out SMALL. That's not a reason to ignore it or otherwise dismiss it out-of-hand. It's even democratic right out of the box, so it is exactly what *we* want it to be.
Join it now. If you are an ISP, set it up for your customers. Help out. Set it up for your friends and family members. Make it a REAL alternative to the monopolized mess that the US Gov't has made of the current DNS system.
You get a copyright over a work of your intellect. Under a previous (and, to me, quite reasonable) version of copyright, you have 14 years to capitalize on it. If you die within that term, then your legal heirs/beneficiaries have the remainder of that term to capitalize on it. Otherwise, the rest of society will be able to capitalize on it or otherwise benefit from it after the term expires.
After we are gone, isn't that the best we could ever hope for in the first place? I mean, isn't that what having a "legacy" is all about?
Slashdot Mirror
>(Besides, it's Vivendi you're after..)
EXACTLY, and who gets the lion's share of the money from my purchase if I buy a Blizzard game? Why, Vivendi, of course!
No, I don't hold Blizzard blameless in the bnetd fiasco. If they really wanted Vivendi to 'let it be', they could, because they have absolutely no financial reason to attack bnetd. It's purely a control issue; one which they never had to begin with, and the bnetd folks pointed out so ardently.
Please, don't bother reciting about the piracy issue; it isn't one and never was.
No... in SOVIET RUSSIA, my gangrenous left testicle bites YOU!
:OP
Jeez... if you're gonna troll the funnies, at least get them right.
Brian,
Contrary to the subject, I do not intend to question your credentials, but there is no mention of your participation on the Board of Directors in Tech Corps Georgia. It looks like the web page might be in need of a little update.
Just figure I'd point this out and send you a little wave from a fellow Georgian (Canton).
As a Turbo Pascal and now Delphi developer, I have used TurboPower components off and on for many moons.
I hate it that they are leaving the retail scene, but I am glad that they are leaving behind one of the best libraries Turbo Pascal/Delphi ever had.
My hat's off to them for this bold move. Now if we could just get an open-source Delphi-compliant compiler on Linux, I'd be happy. Yeah Free Pascal is pretty good; I use it, but it is not yet up to the level of Delphi under Windows in terms of features and libraries.
I wonder what maxed-out karma /. accounts are going for on e-bay? Move over, EQ/AC/UO! /. accounts for sale!
Yeah, yeah; off-topic. I think it goes without saying that MS needs a good thrashing about the face and neck over crap like this. Worst part is, if someone writes a server that follows network specs 100% and takes no crap from non-compliant (read: MS) clients, causing them to fail to connect to said server, then would Microsoft have succeeded in their quest to "embrace and extend"?
The question is, who will stop them? How many kludges are already in server programs like Apache that had to be put in to cope with Microsoft's shenanigans?
Absolutely.
The first Tolkien book I read was the Silmarillion. It was... a wonderful read, for me. There was beauty. There was ugliness. There was tragedy. There was triumph. There was absolute glory and utter defeat. Not only on human scales, but cosmic ones as well. I think, of all the "stories" about the mythical creation of a universe, I find it the most real and most beautiful.
The sub-creation of a universe is no easy task. I think Tolkien is one of the few people who understood what was necessary to make a believable one, and was able to exceute it so well.
While the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are awesome stories, knowing the true setting of the world that they partake in makes them that much more real and entertaining. The immersion is really, in my experience, an order of magnitude higher than if I had not read the Silmarillion first.
Of course, not everyone will share that view; that's OK. Some people don't like fantasy, period, either. To each his/her own.
OK. Fair enough. I think that it could be read either way, though, which you have already alluded to. With a switch, you don't usually see lots and lots of "packets flying around" because the only ones should be unicast packets and the odd broadcast (ARP/DHCP), but the latter should be fairly rare. Thus, the confusion when reading your original message.
With Adelphia, there are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of broadcasts per minute, many of which are not even FOR your subnet. I also still get a number of misdirected unicast packets and the occasional directed broadcast packet.
You WILL see ARP packets on your own private subnet, but these are your own and are OK.
You WILL see BOOTP/DHCP packets if you are using dynamic addressing, but again these are your own and are OK.
"These are not the packets you are looking for..."
Actually, IGMP is Interior Gateway Management Protocol, which is probablu what Adelphia is using to communicate between their routers. You shouldn't be seeing those, as the UBRs should be filtering them out for you (unless there is another one of their routers on the customer side of your UBR). The one I am connected to seems to filter it out.
If you are seeing the packets on your own private network, then your broadband router is also passing them, and maybe you should filter it out.
No, what the article is referring to is the potential for spoofing responses to ARP and BOOTP/DHCP queries to setup man-in-the-middle attacks. You won't see these inside on your private LAN segment, but if you can somehow run a sniffer on the public side, you will see TUNS of ARPs / BOOTP requests.
While I wouldn't necessarily call you a dumbass for making a simple mistake in word choice, I think you need to do a little more investigation on exactly what a SWITCH is versus a HUB.
With a SWITCH, Ethernet frames go from the source node to the destination node directly; no other node connected to the SWITCH can ever see the packets unless they are broadcast/multicast packets.
With a HUB, ALL Ethernet frames that are sent through the hub from any particular node also go to ALL of the other nodes.
THUS, what I think you mean to say is HUB, not SWITCH. However, I am willing to concede that your anecdote about being able to sniff a private non-broadcast conversation between two nodes from a third is making you think about the problem incorrectly, since it means that a) you don't REALLY have a SWITCH, but instead have a HUB, or b) your SWITCH is broken, as another user suggested. I have several switches here and have installed plenty elsewhere. On none of them can a third party sniff and capture directed non-broadcast packets from the network segment.
Elflord1999,
.
Apologies, I mistakenly lumped your response in with one of those who replied to you; brain fart, old age, not enough sleep,
Also,it is UBR (Universal Broadband Router), not UVR. I'm getting my acronyms confused, again.
ARP cache poisoning can be fixed by forcing the UVRs into "ARP proxy" mode, since the UVRs already by default have the MAC addresses of all the nodes they serve anyway. There's no reason for a UVR to EVER do an ARP/RARP broadcast on its own private segment. It assigns the addresses, thus it can resolve them.
The only ARP problem you are going to have is when one of the nodes requests an ARP/RARP resolution for an address in the same private subnet, which should be rare, ESPECIALLY since you guys are doing port-blocking (like http/80, for example).
Yeah, in case no one knew already (hard to believe) Adelphia is doing incoming port 80 blocking; welcome to the censored net. Don't give me that "well, you shouldn't be running servers off of your cable modem" crap argument, either, and I won't give you my lecture on how to run your ISP business properly so that it doesn't matter (and would be more profitable!).
Well, I can tell you that, before Adelphia bought out my local cable company, Prestige, I NEVER had so much as a single BOOTP packet outside of my own. Now, about 10% of the traffic I see is CONSTANT BOOTP requests from other customers all over the country. It is painfully obvious that Adelphia operates their network in HUB mode, when Prestige operated theirs in SWITCHED mode. You DO know what that means, right?
BOOTP traffic should never leave the private UVR segment; period. In fact NO broadcast traffic of ANY sort should be allowed to leave the private network segment at all.
So, don't give me that "it's an non-issue because it is TCP/IP" crap. It is an architectural issue that YOU guys need to clean up on your own network, otherwise, someone needs to do some network technician house-cleaning (all the way up to the CIO, if necessary) and send some people back to flipping burgers at McDonald's.
While we are on the subject of security, why aren't you guys doing something about all the sequential IP scans that are going on in your network right now? Why isn't someone cleaning up THAT mess. Let's see, according to the firewall, I have 4 different scans going on right now; it has been as high as 12.
That, and I have been having fits with your mail server (and, no, this isn't the first time, either; it happens so often, I just switch over to my own until you guys eventually finish reading your sendmail HOWTO and get it fixed).
I realize that with Adelphia being more or less in bankruptcy right now, customer support is not very high on your list of things to take care of (just like network engineering), but don't come in here and tell us that it is a fundamental problem outside of your control when it is NOT. Get control of your network and stop making excuses.
While I support what you say 100%, in this case, all one has to do is look at the CATEGORY of patent we are talking about here. It's a "business method" patent.
I don't care if it IS 100% original, new, and novel, the FACT remains that "business methods" should NEVER have been allowed to be patented in the first place. Why? Because ALL of them are OBVIOUS and TRIVIAL. No matter how convoluted BMPs can be written, they can EASILY be deduced by ANYONE. They require no real skill to think up, and cost the filer little to nothing to create and implement and, thus, do NOT deserve patent protection in any way, shape, or form. People have been coming up with new and novel ways to make a living for MILLENNIA. Actually, I tend to think that the vast majority of these things have most likely been thought up probably HUNDREDS of times before in human history. The ONLY thing that makes the ones that are granted "patents" today versus the ones that were thought up and put in to use previously is the medium employed to effect them. Such is NOT a valid criteria for "patentability".
So, NO, I DON'T always need to read all the gory details of any particular patent to KNOW that it is abusive of a broken system. In fact, many of the patent abstracts I have read DELIBERATELY use obfuscation and subterfuge in the wording of their claims to befuddle anyone into thinking that they are indeed new and novel, when they clearly are not. Given the current climate in the system (the chief of the patent office sells the USPTO as a "revenue" center, how improper is that?) and the sheer numbers of patents that SHOULD be looked at closely and carefully, but aren't due to limited examiner resources, this kind of travesty has been ripe for the picking by those unscrupulous enough to foster and/or abuse it.
I could go on and on, but I have work to do, and there are many more better than me at explaining what is wrong and what needs to be done about it. In the meantime, I will continue speaking out against it and those who abuse it.
Well, along the lines of TANSTAAFL, "no free ride lasts forever".
Eventually, the shareholders WILL stop funding a losing proposition and it will go away. Finally.
The amount of time until then is shortened by a finite, albeit small, amount everytime someone says "no, I am not going to buy from here, as they do not support my core values", and takes his/her business elsewhere.
If it matters to you, or indeed, anyone who reads these messages, be that someone.
Like another poster stated, though; educate yourself. Don't run away from Amazon into the arms of another company who is also an abuser or just simply does not support your core values, either.
Hey, I'm just a member of the choir here. I'm not paid to preach. :P
I didn't have a lot of time when I saw this article, and I've been in the activist seat plenty of times before on this and similar topics. Besides, this is Slashdot. Everyone here (that gives a crap, anyway) should be aware of the issues and of the many ways of making a positive difference.
BTW, I am not boycotting Amazon for the purposes of patent reform; I am spanking them for not having any character or the balls to resist abusing a broken system. I do spend a lot of time explaining such things to many people, both online and off, as I find the time. The REAL problem is that the patent system is pretty much "above the law" (well, it IS the law, but I digress). What I mean by that is that it is at least one level further removed from my control than many things the government does, so a change in it and the overall bad situation is a lot less likely to happen.
So, while I am fighting the war on the government representative front, I am also fighting it on the "abuser" front. While we wait for the (even slower in the case of the PTO and WIPO) wheels of reform to correct this gross manifest travesty, we might as well also punish those who abuse the existing broken system and fail to be responsible corporate citizens and help clean up the mess. Being part of the problem and not part of the solution is as unforgivable as causing the problem in the first place. Especially since many of those abusing the system are supporting its continued existence for their own selfish ends.
As a result, those on the wrong side of the fence in this issue deserve no quarter, and I am not about to give them any.
At any rate, I agree 100% with your list of suggestions; I knew someone would come through where I came up short.
Thanks again,
Amazon has already proven that it has no intentions to resist patent abuse in its own camp.
Continue the boycott. Spread it to your neighbors and friends. That's the only currency Bezos and other megacorp CEOs understand; the bottom line.
Actually, I liked the way Polymer City was going before the recent change. Yeah, the story is long and drawn-out. So? I enjoyed every episode. What is really cool is going back to the beginning of the current story arc and reading it forward. It's like a graphic novel.
Oh well. To each his own, I guess.
I don't have any problem with stating that I want MS to win this one, with prejudice.
.. EVER!
:P
I dislike (read: not HATE) Microsoft as much as anyone, but software and business model patents MUST GO AWAY - PERIOD. I don't wish them on Microsoft, my worst enemy, Stalin, Hitler, ANYONE. I don't think they are fair means of attack when in the hands of small companies OR large companies. They are fundamentally flawed and wrong, as is the organization that issues them, utilizing the biggest and most sinister blindfold-and-rubber-stamp process in history.
You see, Microsoft will (yes, it will, trust me) eventually be beaten. I can have a hand in the success of effecting their downfall. HOWEVER, with patents, there seems to be little to no hope. There is NOTHING I can do directly to effect that change. I have to rely on my "elected representatives", which I wouldn't trust to write their own name 1 out of 3 times, let alone fix the greatest intellectual scourge in recent history (hasn't quite beat out the burning of Alexandria, or the Inquisition yet, but the century is young). Microsoft has nothing over me; I can fight them toe-to-toe. I can't fight the government; they have guns to back up their insanity, and can take (and have effectively taken, for the most part) mine away, so there is no way to fight them directly.
So, I have no conflict here. Microsoft can win this one, AS LONG AS, the effects ripple back to Washington, D.C., and cause the USPTO and its supporters to fall into the chasm caused by the complete and utter stomping of Eolas in this case, HOPEFULLY NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN
It's not a matter of choosing sides, it is a matter of setting your priorities. Lest I remind everyone that the GOVERNMENT is also responsible for letting Microsoft off the hook COMPLETELY.
We can all band together and overthrow Microsoft by cutting off its oxygen supply long enough for it to die or relent to becoming a responsible corporate citizen, but we stand a SLIM to NIL chance of overthrowing the US Government to fix the travesty it has created in the USPTO, and is now fostering (foisting?) overseas as a result.
Go ahead, though. For what it is worth, write your Congresspeople; I am. Demonstrate peacefully; get in the face of each and every one of them and make your voice heard. Boycott companies who use the "ugly stick" rather than real innovation and competition. Doing something is better than nothing, ultimately. For me, I already have low expectations of truly fixing the Patent situation. However, I still have very high expectations of kicking Microsoft's nards up into their throat at some point, and succeeding.
At this point, some people would suggest only fight the battles you have any chance of winning; I'll say fight 'em all anyway. It's cheap, easy, and it makes ya feel good inside. I'm actually looking forward to my next face-to-face encounter with my "elected reps" (no, I didn't vote for the winners.. again). It's invigorating watching them stare, dumbfounded, like deer in headlights, while you run them down with information overload on the subject. Yeah, with just one of me coming to them, they write me off as a crackpot, but with 10-30 of us going to them, bringing them the same message, but with ORIGINAL presentations, I think they may sit up and take notice.
OK. OK. I'm getting off the soapbox now; no need to be rude...
Also:
Airplanes are considered "private property", hence the 2nd amendment does not apply.
If I tell you to leave your gun at home when you come to visit me, don't respond with shock and offense when I send you away because you came packin' heat.
In reality, of course, I don't discourage such a thing, because it means that there is one more tool to defend me and my property, as well as our lives, if trouble comes a-knockin'.
I support someone trained both physically and psychologically in responsible weapon use being present on EVERY airplane. Also, the cockpit needs a door that can't be kicked in so easily, and the pilots need to be trained and packing as well.
I went and voted earlier, and it went pretty smoothly. The machines were made by Diebold (go figure). However, I must say that I am not comfortable putting my vote in the hands of a completely unaccountable corporation.
However, much worse than that was what happened after I finished voting. The machine used a smart card, that was locked into the machine while I was voting. After I was done, it was ejected, and one of the nice volunteers took it from me -- by hand -- while another handed me an "I voted" sticker.
It appears that the smart card does nothing more than "enable" the voting machine, and the votes are stored in the machine until read out. The question is, I have no info on how that process works, so I have no idea if my vote is even being counted properly. Further, I don't think that the State is very forthcoming on all the gory details of the process, for fear of someone finding a weakness and exploiting it. So, again, no accountability.
While I do understand and appreciate the need to replace the tedious and often error-prone manual processes in our voting systems, I am still uncomfortable with trusting in methods and equipment which have ZERO accountability anywhere in the chain.
I predict the obvious here.. lots of lawsuits by angry losers contesting the election and the new processes utilitized in it.
Oh well.. such is the way of "progress".
This person posted the EXACT SAME response to my previous endorsement of OpenNIC. It's mainly a "chicken little" rebuttal, most of which is nothing more than a cadre of strawman issues. He does have a few minor points, but nothing which would make switching to an alternative root anything like the disaster he prognosticates.
I've got a nice, long rebuttal to Gendou's rebuttal, but I have to finish cleaning it up first; the first version was a little, ah, "hot".
There are already a number of ways to get OpenNIC set up to resolve. All you really have to do is to change your DNS servers (your resolvers, in resolv.conf, for you Linux geeks). There are already a BUNCH of 2nd-tier name resolvers you can point to listed at OpenNIC. They also resolve regular ICANN domains, so you don't have to do anything funky to get access to OpenNIC domains as well as ICANN domains.
For those of you behind a proxy, you can still get out to the OpenNIC domains via a proxy they have set up. It's a little awkward (as I think it is a host-name hack, which may not work if the site uses absolute URIs to itself), but only as long as you are forced to use an ISP who makes it awkward; email your ISP and ask them to include OpenNIC in their DNS forwarders/servers. If enough people bug them about it, they will eventually cave to the pressure and just do it. It is FAR too easy to set up for anyone to complain about that.
For those with name servers, they have a simple set of instructions on their site for the most popular DNS resolver software (BIND 4/8/9, Windows NT/2000 DNS, etc) to get your name server set up in a hurry. It literally will take only about 5-10 minutes to set up, and most of that is testing. YOu only have to edit one to four lines in your named.conf file, restart named, and you're surfin'!
I would offer my name server up for access, but they already have plenty of official 1st/2nd tier name servers in several countries, and I am not quite ready to go official with mine yet. Of course, it isn't hard to guess what it is, but I would ask that people use it sparingly; it is for my customers, and if it gets choked, it will stop serving opennic (if I can't pay for it because of loss of customers to abuse, then it will go away anyway).
Well, maybe it is time to move over to OpenNIC. It is pretty small, but since the Titanic seems to have hit the iceberg, I think it is time to make a break for the lifeboats.
:P).
I joined and set up my primary NS to resolve their domains for me, as well as the normal ones. Took about 15 minutes to get working (forgot the forwarders, so it took 10 minutes longer than expected
Yeah, I know; I have heard it all before. "But nobody else uses it, so it's worthless!". Not. Everything, and I mean EVERY DAMN THING starts out SMALL. That's not a reason to ignore it or otherwise dismiss it out-of-hand. It's even democratic right out of the box, so it is exactly what *we* want it to be.
Join it now. If you are an ISP, set it up for your customers. Help out. Set it up for your friends and family members. Make it a REAL alternative to the monopolized mess that the US Gov't has made of the current DNS system.
Don't argue. Just do it. It CANNOT HURT!
Well, I look at it this way...
You get a copyright over a work of your intellect. Under a previous (and, to me, quite reasonable) version of copyright, you have 14 years to capitalize on it. If you die within that term, then your legal heirs/beneficiaries have the remainder of that term to capitalize on it. Otherwise, the rest of society will be able to capitalize on it or otherwise benefit from it after the term expires.
After we are gone, isn't that the best we could ever hope for in the first place? I mean, isn't that what having a "legacy" is all about?