She (Laura Buddine) said the code was originally written by a WebTV employee as a means of tracking people who visited the site but has since turned into a tool for ne'er-do-wells.
They wrote the code that is creating the problem... This is not the first time that an (soon to be ex if not already)-employee has created a major problem for his company. Still I think most security holes (about 98%) are not created by the company that makes the product.
This also is not new.
According to Laura Buddine of Iacta.com, the parent company of Net4TV, the code was first made known to the hacker community in September, but has become widespread during the last week.
It just has become widespread, I wonder why they didn't do anything about it when it was discovered last september? Hmmm... if this was not Microsoft, the problem would have been fixed right away, but given that it is, it probably will take years for a working fix to be released.
And lastly...
Malicious programmers have been embedding the HTML of Web pages...
That makes it sound far more of a webpage problem than a newsgroup problem, and they say not to visit a SINGLE newsgroup? IQ Test Plz....
1) Will slashdot readers that have accounts - be receiving a letter in their mail informing them about the IPO and how it is going to effect them, and will the letter offer them the same options as the letter RedHat sent out?
2) Will user data stay the same?
3) Will moderation change in any way, shape or form?
4) What restrictions do you business guys have?
5) Will Slash 0.4 be released?
6) Will the posting ability of AC change?
7) How well is Meta-Moderation working?
8) Will this change/.'s position as a member of the press/ or effect its standing as an open source/ editorial site?
"The new script came in at 167 pages, which was way too long. But I decided to write a full version and then let producers Lynn Hendee and Ted Ravinett help me find things that could be cut. They did so, and between us we were able to get the length down to 136 pages, which, while longer than the two-hour target length, is still reasonable. (Because of several montages, the running time of this script is probably just under two and a half hours.)"
He is unable to have subplots and still get it into the allocated time limit. I think he would add them if he could. Given that this version of the script is not new... he may have changed his mind on this. I'm sure that he would not close all doors for sequels.
I do not think when Card wrote Ender's Game he had a movie in mind, had he done so, I think the book would have been far different. That is another reason why he is having trouble fitting all the material in the book in.
Ender's Game is a book that I have treasured for years, I look forward to seeing it be made in a movie, but still wish that he would stick to the plot of the book as much as possible.
I'd assume so. Even if he could not (use a telephone), he probably could sign up for one of those Net2Phone services so he could call places off his computer.
This is not that big of an event, a guy in japan lived in an apartment for 3 months off stuff that he won in mail order contests a while back. He will do his event and probably get his name in some record book, but all in all it is a waste of time...
I have a worse one. Relative calls at 6 AM asking if phones and power are working. My response: I hung up. Then he calls back at 8 to see if everything is okay, saying that he had trouble getting hold of me earlier. Oh well, stupidity always rears its ugly head.
Microsoft already has a new name for thier products after 2000. In a press release (I cannot find link) Microsoft announced the merger of the NT and Win95 lines with 2000 partialy and a full merger in there next OS (which they said would be called Nextel).
I am amazed that many people think Microsoft will make Windows 2000. NO, they will change the name because Windows is getting a fair amount of Negative publicity and it is time they start a new product line (even though it will be based on the old product) They also have been pushing NT a fair amount, because NT is more stable than Win95 (98 also) and overall is a better OS. Even though you can upgrade a Win98 machine to a 2000 machine, they push it as the upgrade for NT. This should tip people off that they are going to eliminate the Win95 (98) based line of OS's and go with an entirely new one that is based on NT and has version numbers like NT.
For those of us that had to work Dec 31, y2k is real.
In the sense that: All phones now forward to bosses office. For somewierd reason random computers had thier bios changed to longer recognize the hard drive. You now have the best chair in the office. Various settings on computers are screwed up. You have uninstalled solitare on bosses computer (going to enjoy him debating wether to ask tech to reinstall just so he play game and look like a fool or just sit there) Quake III is now what loads if you click on any shortcut (in WinNT) The clocks are all an hour slow. People have random meetings scheduled in there planners that they left on the desks. Backgrounds on monitors show the boss and his secretery... involved in a rare act that his wife would kill to find out.
So bosses out there... the lowly computer programmers you made work Dec 31 - New Years Day... Have gotten thier revenge... muahahhahahhaha (currently figuring out to change building security code)
There is no ideal Geek city on the earth at this time.
However, if a Matrix (or something like it were to be created) where data is fed to peoples brains, an ideal Geek city could be created, Geeks could interact with other Geeks inside the city, they would all have different views of it however.
Also - the internet, in many ways is an ideal geek city (or community) depending on your view.
How many times is a big corperation (the #3 holiday toy seller) true to its word? Very rarely...
Of course eToys will continue to attack eToy. The reasoning behind that statement is simple - The Calendar. eToys, does not want eToy active during the Holiday season because newbies on the internet may acidentally go there... So they will try and shut it down once and for all rather than just knock it out during every big sale period.
Geekdom is broad enough. Most geeks have a lot in common. Most geeks are liberal people also. Making a party would simply require organizational time and effort (Something Geeks only have periodically). Issues could range from export encryption (forgien policy) sales tax on CD's (IRS) Chips in humans (pro-life/pro-choice issue)... and many more.
The problem is that geeks are not organized. Yes we meet here on/. and even show up to the DVD protest, but are we willing to do that for politics... heck no.
And so we come to/. and post and whine about the nations leadership and vote for millions of 3rd party canidates each year rather than try to group together and have an effect...
If American elections are a circus and democracy is old, then why don't we become communist? I think sometimes that even though we hate our system, it is better than China where crackers get sentanced to death.
To all the people that mistakenlt thought that my earlier post was serious.... see subject.
I am not that much of an idiot to run for public office (from what I hear it is not alot of fun to be pres.)
However if you choose to take my candicy seriously... post name and e-mail. Will send you address where you can send me $$$ for campaign... certain canidates job is running for pres...
Your resume is interesting but... its missing a couple of important things.
What distro do you run? And what type of a geek are you? (When did you become a geek?) (Early - before 1980) (Middle Age - 1980-1990) (Fairly Late - 1990-1995) (Newbie - 1995 to Present)
One reason why presidential canidates do not target geeks that much (at least mainstream ones like Gore and Bush) is that they are not mainstream in their beliefs. Many idiots out there oppose open source for instance. There simply are not enough geeks to make get a non-major canidate elected anyways. What we should do if we desire to have a significant impact on elections is band together pick a major canidate and all vote for him. That way if the major canidate should win by a small margin, he owes us a small percentage of his vote (say 5%). That would make us get noticed.
Other than that... I will be my own canidate. (Write In on the Ballot)
I hereby nominate myself as the Offical Canidate of the Geek or/. Party. I should be elected because:
I am a geek - and all geeks are superior to other types of humans. I run Linux. (Distro is kept secret for fear of alienating geek voters) I can code C,C++,Pascal,Basic,Visual Basic, HTML and have a rudimentary (very poor) knowledge of Perl.
If elected: I will destroy Windows - and open the WinNT source. I will destroy etoys.com amazon.com and any other.com that is annoying and stupid. I will let DeCSS go to the stars (tell DVD guys to go to hell) I will make the stupids slaves. (This should attract voters.)
Note: The above presentation assumes that only smart people vote. Sadly (I am in Minnesota USA) that is not the case - our gov is Jesse "The Body" Ventura (an ex-pro wrestler whos iq ranges from 1 to 5). While literacy tests and like should not be reinstituted how about making a geeks vote count for 2.
Yes, I vote... but rarely does the canidate of choice get elected.
Thanx for the info. I don't use a Mac (unless at parents house) so I am a little clueless about them. Mainly I run NT (at work). As I work a computer programmer for Honeywell we only upgrade after a patch has been out for at least a couple months (so the patches for the patches are out - for ex. we only just recently got Office 97) only our coding software is up to date. But one of my parents has a G4 - I work on it sometimes.
Having to use Win based systems, generally I don't trust patches because they are always faulty... but the post clears the issue up.
Description OT Tuner 1.0 switches off an option in Open Transport that would cause a Macintosh to respond to certain small network packets with a large Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packet. This update prevents Macintosh computers from being the cause of certain types of Denial of Service (DOS) issues.
It appears that dling and intstalling the patch would prevent the Mac from being able to do a DOS. That function could come in useful someday... unless it closes a security hole in the Mac, why bother to get it. It simply limits the capabilities of the Mac (while running OS 9).
Hmmm... patches like this are somewhat useless unless: A: The patch protects the Mac from getting attacked by a DOS. B: People are stupid enough to dl them.
Am I missing something? This does not make sense why someone would want to prevent there computer from being able to do a DOS - most people want their computer to be safe from DOS - they don't care if it can do one or not.
Santa getting assulted is not new. By kids yes but he gets mugged at least a couple times every christmas and last year in St. Paul MN, a santa ringing a salvation army bell was jumped and had the money stolen by a couple of teenagers. (I can't find the article)
Santa or what he stands for is not prevailent in all parts of the world also because not everyone is religous or celebrates Christmas. It is possible that these kids did not know what Santa stood for given the fact they were in a 3rd world country. Also Y is this on/.?
Doubtless that cheaters will come. Cheaters are like vultures to a carcass. They will appear but given the fact that many people prefer Q3 over U.T. and U.T is fairly new, it should take a fair amount of time for them to have a real effect.
I myself prefer U.T. over Q3. (I am lucky enough to have gotten both for Christmas)
On October 11, 1996, President Clinton signed "The Economic Espionage Act of 1996" into law. The theft of trade secrets is now a federal criminal offense. This is a major development in the law of trade secrets in the United States and internationally. The Department of Justice now has sweeping authority to prosecute trade secret theft whether it is in the United States, via the Internet, or outside the United States.
Section 1832 of the Act makes it a federal criminal act for any person to convert a trade secret to his own benefit or the benefit of others intending or knowing that the offense will injure any owner of the trade secret. The conversion of a trade secret is defined broadly to cover every conceivable act of trade secret misappropriation including theft, appropriation without authorization, concealment, fraud artifice, deception, copying without authorization, duplication, sketches, drawings, photographs, downloads, uploads, alterations, destruction, photocopies, transmissions, deliveries, mail, communications, or other transfers or conveyances of such trade secrets without authorization. The Act also makes it a federal criminal offense to receive, buy or possess the trade secret information of another person knowing the same to have been stolen, appropriated, obtained or converted without the trade secret owner's authorization.The definition of a "trade secret" in the Act generally tracks the definition of a trade secret in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act but expands the definition of a trade secret to include the new technological ways that trade secrets are created and stored. The term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by the public.
I am not a lawyer and have no plans to be one, but reading the above and doing some research seems to me that the DVD makers can screw the defendants that are in the US partially. Yes, DVD is wrong on this, but they can still kill the people that tried to make Linux support for DVD.
IMO DVD is going to lose a lot of potential customers and hopefully get bad publicity. What should be done is someone that knows a columist/newsman at a major station is to give this case publicity. If CNN were to get the info for a story on this from us rather than the DVD people they might actually get thier story right (see etoy vs etoys fiasco)
We also ought to patent the decrypter programs or GPL them if they are not already. DVD does not have a patent on its encryption algorithm as far as I am aware. Could some one reply with the feasibility of this option. As for me, I will be busy distributing the decoder via Hotline (www.bigredh.com - if its warez, its hotline) and uploading it to every webserver I find. (I have a far amount of spare time on my hands... so alot of people gonna get deCSS). While/. could orgranize a protest and some smart people are trying to do so, the date is far too late for anything major to be planned. I only can hope that they lose this case...
Hmm... While Apaches rise is rapid, MS is catching up according to the graphs, though it is interesting to note that Apache is increasing at a rate more than double Microsofts. I wonder (and hope) that the report has a negitive effect on Microsoft's stock and BGates.
On another note, Has anyone seen Doonesbury in the newspapers for the last week (the website is a week behind). The comic ran a feature on MS and Web-related businesses...
The hubbles computer runs off a 486 Intel CPU. I am aware that the CPU had to meet certian standards like radiation shielding and emp resistant. But aren't there better CPU's out there that meet those standards? It seems to me that NASA (which can spend billions on failed mars missions) might have the money to pay for a better type of CPU (should one exist).
This is nothing new. For almost every game there is some cheaters that exist. The problem with people cheating is not new. Blizzard has this problem with their battlenet servers (for diablo). A closed source or blessed client fix is not always the right option. Either fix can be gotten around if someone has enough time on thier hands. The article does not say cheating at Q.1 is anything new. It just simply states that it is easier for the average gamer to do.
On another note: Will this effect Q.3 - Yes. Diablo II was effected quite a bit by all the lamers that used trainers on battlenet and blizzard has said they added code to stop trainers from being used. When the Q.3 source is released there probably be a patch to prevent hacked clients or clients that are modified.
An ez solution would simply to have a little bit of code in the server that makes sure that the clients have not been edited yet and require people to use non-edited clients - they can always have another on their comp to use if they do not want to always comply with the rule.
The lawsuit was bound to happen. Ever since I discovered Napster I quit buying CD's. RIAA - backed by large music companies, probably will win some kind of injunction against Napster or force them to change thier programming so that they have some sort of copy protection program. This lawsuit sounds familiar to the one that sony has filed against the Rio... I wonder is the results will be the same.
I must say that they fit a large percentage of the geek population (including myself). However I disagree with them for several reasons. Many of the people that go and do shootings may have some of those characteristics but far more people with those characteristics do not do harm to the human race. People that are going to go off the deep end and pull a Columbine generally exhibit some other major warning characteristics - like posting a list of people they are going to kill somewhere or extreme depression. What the FBI should be spending its time doing is finding out how to catch people that don't exhibit those warning characteristics - like Ted Bundy for example. Geeks as a whole (generally) are not a threat to society even though they possess information that could harm society. The FBI needs to find a better use for its time I think. (If a geek conquered the world - wouldn't he make stupid people slaves rather than kill them anyway?)
Slashdot Mirror
She (Laura Buddine) said the code was originally written by a WebTV employee as a means of tracking people who visited the site but has since turned into a tool for ne'er-do-wells.
They wrote the code that is creating the problem... This is not the first time that an (soon to be ex if not already)-employee has created a major problem for his company. Still I think most security holes (about 98%) are not created by the company that makes the product.
This also is not new.
According to Laura Buddine of Iacta.com, the parent company of Net4TV, the code was first made known to the hacker community in September, but has become widespread during the last week.
It just has become widespread, I wonder why they didn't do anything about it when it was discovered last september? Hmmm... if this was not Microsoft, the problem would have been fixed right away, but given that it is, it probably will take years for a working fix to be released.
And lastly...
Malicious programmers have been embedding the HTML of Web pages...
That makes it sound far more of a webpage problem than a newsgroup problem, and they say not to visit a SINGLE newsgroup? IQ Test Plz....
1) Will slashdot readers that have accounts - be receiving a letter in their mail informing them about the IPO and how it is going to effect them, and will the letter offer them the same options as the letter RedHat sent out?
/.'s position as a member of the press/ or effect its standing as an open source/ editorial site?
2) Will user data stay the same?
3) Will moderation change in any way, shape or form?
4) What restrictions do you business guys have?
5) Will Slash 0.4 be released?
6) Will the posting ability of AC change?
7) How well is Meta-Moderation working?
8) Will this change
Card says:
"The new script came in at 167 pages, which was way too long. But I decided to write a full version and then let producers Lynn Hendee and Ted Ravinett help me find things that could be cut. They did so, and between us we were able to get the length down to 136 pages, which, while longer than the two-hour target length, is still reasonable. (Because of several montages, the running time of this script is probably just under two and a half hours.)"
He is unable to have subplots and still get it into the allocated time limit. I think he would add them if he could. Given that this version of the script is not new... he may have changed his mind on this. I'm sure that he would not close all doors for sequels.
I do not think when Card wrote Ender's Game he had a movie in mind, had he done so, I think the book would have been far different. That is another reason why he is having trouble fitting all the material in the book in.
Ender's Game is a book that I have treasured for years, I look forward to seeing it be made in a movie, but still wish that he would stick to the plot of the book as much as possible.
I'd assume so. Even if he could not (use a telephone), he probably could sign up for one of those Net2Phone services so he could call places off his computer.
This is not that big of an event, a guy in japan lived in an apartment for 3 months off stuff that he won in mail order contests a while back. He will do his event and probably get his name in some record book, but all in all it is a waste of time...
I have a worse one. Relative calls at 6 AM asking if phones and power are working. My response: I hung up. Then he calls back at 8 to see if everything is okay, saying that he had trouble getting hold of me earlier. Oh well, stupidity always rears its ugly head.
Microsoft already has a new name for thier products after 2000. In a press release (I cannot find link) Microsoft announced the merger of the NT and Win95 lines with 2000 partialy and a full merger in there next OS (which they said would be called Nextel).
I am amazed that many people think Microsoft will make Windows 2000. NO, they will change the name because Windows is getting a fair amount of Negative publicity and it is time they start a new product line (even though it will be based on the old product) They also have been pushing NT a fair amount, because NT is more stable than Win95 (98 also) and overall is a better OS. Even though you can upgrade a Win98 machine to a 2000 machine, they push it as the upgrade for NT. This should tip people off that they are going to eliminate the Win95 (98) based line of OS's and go with an entirely new one that is based on NT and has version numbers like NT.
For those of us that had to work Dec 31, y2k is real.
In the sense that:
All phones now forward to bosses office.
For somewierd reason random computers had thier bios changed to longer recognize the hard drive.
You now have the best chair in the office.
Various settings on computers are screwed up.
You have uninstalled solitare on bosses computer (going to enjoy him debating wether to ask tech to reinstall just so he play game and look like a fool or just sit there)
Quake III is now what loads if you click on any shortcut (in WinNT)
The clocks are all an hour slow.
People have random meetings scheduled in there planners that they left on the desks.
Backgrounds on monitors show the boss and his secretery... involved in a rare act that his wife would kill to find out.
So bosses out there... the lowly computer programmers you made work Dec 31 - New Years Day... Have gotten thier revenge... muahahhahahhaha
(currently figuring out to change building security code)
There is no ideal Geek city on the earth at this time.
However, if a Matrix (or something like it were to be created) where data is fed to peoples brains, an ideal Geek city could be created, Geeks could interact with other Geeks inside the city, they would all have different views of it however.
Also - the internet, in many ways is an ideal geek city (or community) depending on your view.
How many times is a big corperation (the #3 holiday toy seller) true to its word? Very rarely...
Of course eToys will continue to attack eToy. The reasoning behind that statement is simple - The Calendar. eToys, does not want eToy active during the Holiday season because newbies on the internet may acidentally go there... So they will try and shut it down once and for all rather than just knock it out during every big sale period.
Am I missing something?
Geekdom is broad enough. Most geeks have a lot in common. Most geeks are liberal people also. Making a party would simply require organizational time and effort (Something Geeks only have periodically). Issues could range from export encryption (forgien policy) sales tax on CD's (IRS) Chips in humans (pro-life/pro-choice issue)... and many more.
/. and even show up to the DVD protest, but are we willing to do that for politics... heck no.
/. and post and whine about the nations leadership and vote for millions of 3rd party canidates each year rather than try to group together and have an effect...
The problem is that geeks are not organized. Yes we meet here on
And so we come to
Sad isn't it? But hey, we're geeks.
If American elections are a circus and democracy is old, then why don't we become communist? I think sometimes that even though we hate our system, it is better than China where crackers get sentanced to death.
Precisely why we should:
1. Research all the Canidates
2. All go out and vote
3. Vote for a third party rather than try fusion.
To all the people that mistakenlt thought that my earlier post was serious.... see subject.
I am not that much of an idiot to run for public office (from what I hear it is not alot of fun to be pres.)
However if you choose to take my candicy seriously... post name and e-mail. Will send you address where you can send me $$$ for campaign... certain canidates job is running for pres...
Your resume is interesting but... its missing a couple of important things.
What distro do you run?
And what type of a geek are you? (When did you become a geek?)
(Early - before 1980)
(Middle Age - 1980-1990)
(Fairly Late - 1990-1995)
(Newbie - 1995 to Present)
One reason why presidential canidates do not target geeks that much (at least mainstream ones like Gore and Bush) is that they are not mainstream in their beliefs. Many idiots out there oppose open source for instance. There simply are not enough geeks to make get a non-major canidate elected anyways. What we should do if we desire to have a significant impact on elections is band together pick a major canidate and all vote for him. That way if the major canidate should win by a small margin, he owes us a small percentage of his vote (say 5%). That would make us get noticed.
Other than that... I will be my own canidate. (Write In on the Ballot)
Q.? Can a political party exist soley on the Net?
/. Party. I should be elected because:
.com that is annoying and stupid.
I hereby nominate myself as the Offical Canidate of the Geek or
I am a geek - and all geeks are superior to other types of humans.
I run Linux. (Distro is kept secret for fear of alienating geek voters)
I can code C,C++,Pascal,Basic,Visual Basic, HTML and have a rudimentary (very poor) knowledge of Perl.
If elected:
I will destroy Windows - and open the WinNT source.
I will destroy etoys.com amazon.com and any other
I will let DeCSS go to the stars (tell DVD guys to go to hell)
I will make the stupids slaves. (This should attract voters.)
Note: The above presentation assumes that only smart people vote. Sadly (I am in Minnesota USA) that is not the case - our gov is Jesse "The Body" Ventura (an ex-pro wrestler whos iq ranges from 1 to 5). While literacy tests and like should not be reinstituted how about making a geeks vote count for 2.
Yes, I vote... but rarely does the canidate of choice get elected.
Thanx for the info. I don't use a Mac (unless at parents house) so I am a little clueless about them. Mainly I run NT (at work). As I work a computer programmer for Honeywell we only upgrade after a patch has been out for at least a couple months (so the patches for the patches are out - for ex. we only just recently got Office 97) only our coding software is up to date. But one of my parents has a G4 - I work on it sometimes.
Having to use Win based systems, generally I don't trust patches because they are always faulty... but the post clears the issue up.
At Apples Website:
Description
OT Tuner 1.0 switches off an option in Open Transport that would cause a Macintosh to respond to certain small network packets with a large Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packet. This update prevents Macintosh computers from being the cause of certain types of Denial of Service (DOS)
issues.
It appears that dling and intstalling the patch would prevent the Mac from being able to do a DOS. That function could come in useful someday... unless it closes a security hole in the Mac, why bother to get it. It simply limits the capabilities of the Mac (while running OS 9).
Hmmm... patches like this are somewhat useless unless:
A: The patch protects the Mac from getting attacked by a DOS.
B: People are stupid enough to dl them.
Am I missing something? This does not make sense why someone would want to prevent there computer from being able to do a DOS - most people want their computer to be safe from DOS - they don't care if it can do one or not.
Santa getting assulted is not new. By kids yes but he gets mugged at least a couple times every christmas and last year in St. Paul MN, a santa ringing a salvation army bell was jumped and had the money stolen by a couple of teenagers. (I can't find the article)
/.?
Santa or what he stands for is not prevailent in all parts of the world also because not everyone is religous or celebrates Christmas. It is possible that these kids did not know what Santa stood for given the fact they were in a 3rd world country. Also Y is this on
Doubtless that cheaters will come. Cheaters are like vultures to a carcass. They will appear but given the fact that many people prefer Q3 over U.T. and U.T is fairly new, it should take a fair amount of time for them to have a real effect.
I myself prefer U.T. over Q3. (I am lucky enough to have gotten both for Christmas)
On October 11, 1996, President Clinton signed "The Economic Espionage Act of 1996" into law. The theft of trade secrets is now a federal criminal offense. This is a major development in the law of trade secrets in the United States and internationally. The Department of Justice now has sweeping authority to prosecute trade secret theft whether it is in the United States, via the Internet, or outside the United States.
/. could orgranize a protest and some smart people are trying to do so, the date is far too late for anything major to be planned. I only can hope that they lose this case...
Section 1832 of the Act makes it a federal criminal act for any person to convert a trade secret to his own benefit or the benefit of others intending or knowing that the offense will injure any owner of the trade secret. The conversion of a trade secret is defined broadly to cover every conceivable act of trade secret misappropriation including theft, appropriation without authorization, concealment, fraud artifice, deception, copying without authorization, duplication, sketches, drawings, photographs, downloads, uploads, alterations, destruction, photocopies, transmissions, deliveries, mail, communications, or other transfers or conveyances of such trade secrets without authorization.
The Act also makes it a federal criminal offense to receive, buy or possess the trade secret information of another person knowing the same to have been stolen, appropriated, obtained or converted without the trade secret owner's authorization.The definition of a "trade secret" in the Act generally tracks the definition of a trade secret in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act but expands the definition of a trade secret to include the new technological ways that trade secrets are created and stored.
The term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by the public.
I am not a lawyer and have no plans to be one, but reading the above and doing some research seems to me that the DVD makers can screw the defendants that are in the US partially. Yes, DVD is wrong on this, but they can still kill the people that tried to make Linux support for DVD.
IMO DVD is going to lose a lot of potential customers and hopefully get bad publicity. What should be done is someone that knows a columist/newsman at a major station is to give this case publicity. If CNN were to get the info for a story on this from us rather than the DVD people they might actually get thier story right (see etoy vs etoys fiasco)
We also ought to patent the decrypter programs or GPL them if they are not already. DVD does not have a patent on its encryption algorithm as far as I am aware. Could some one reply with the feasibility of this option. As for me, I will be busy distributing the decoder via Hotline (www.bigredh.com - if its warez, its hotline) and uploading it to every webserver I find. (I have a far amount of spare time on my hands... so alot of people gonna get deCSS). While
Once I was a drone - Now I am an Engineer
Hmm... While Apaches rise is rapid, MS is catching up according to the graphs, though it is interesting to note that Apache is increasing at a rate more than double Microsofts. I wonder (and hope) that the report has a negitive effect on Microsoft's stock and BGates.
On another note,
Has anyone seen Doonesbury in the newspapers for the last week (the website is a week behind). The comic ran a feature on MS and Web-related businesses...
The hubbles computer runs off a 486 Intel CPU. I am aware that the CPU had to meet certian standards like radiation shielding and emp resistant. But aren't there better CPU's out there that meet those standards? It seems to me that NASA (which can spend billions on failed mars missions) might have the money to pay for a better type of CPU (should one exist).
This is nothing new. For almost every game there is some cheaters that exist. The problem with people cheating is not new. Blizzard has this problem with their battlenet servers (for diablo). A closed source or blessed client fix is not always the right option. Either fix can be gotten around if someone has enough time on thier hands. The article does not say cheating at Q.1 is anything new. It just simply states that it is easier for the average gamer to do.
On another note: Will this effect Q.3 - Yes. Diablo II was effected quite a bit by all the lamers that used trainers on battlenet and blizzard has said they added code to stop trainers from being used. When the Q.3 source is released there probably be a patch to prevent hacked clients or clients that are modified.
An ez solution would simply to have a little bit of code in the server that makes sure that the clients have not been edited yet and require people to use non-edited clients - they can always have another on their comp to use if they do not want to always comply with the rule.
The lawsuit was bound to happen. Ever since I discovered Napster I quit buying CD's. RIAA - backed by large music companies, probably will win some kind of injunction against Napster or force them to change thier programming so that they have some sort of copy protection program. This lawsuit sounds familiar to the one that sony has filed against the Rio... I wonder is the results will be the same.
Interesting opinions by the FBI.
I must say that they fit a large percentage of the geek population (including myself). However I disagree with them for several reasons. Many of the people that go and do shootings may have some of those characteristics but far more people with those characteristics do not do harm to the human race. People that are going to go off the deep end and pull a Columbine generally exhibit some other major warning characteristics - like posting a list of people they are going to kill somewhere or extreme depression. What the FBI should be spending its time doing is finding out how to catch people that don't exhibit those warning characteristics - like Ted Bundy for example. Geeks as a whole (generally) are not a threat to society even though they possess information that could harm society. The FBI needs to find a better use for its time I think. (If a geek conquered the world - wouldn't he make stupid people slaves rather than kill them anyway?)