Great. So if the government were to pass a law saying "Jim Nolan's house is now forfeit", you wouldn't consider that to be theft?
(Yes, I know it's a bill of attainder. The point still stands.)
Trusting the law to make determinations of right and wrong is like trusting Charles Manson to be a sane and lucid human being. It's not just wrong, it's entirely opposed to history.
Trusting the law to provide a moral framework, so that we can say "theft is the unlawful taking of property", is foolish. Immoral laws are passed all the time.
Remember that, at one point, you could just as easily say "voting rights are held by all those Americans permitted by law to vote", and exclude women, the non-landed, minorities, some religious sects, etc.
It is a civilized government that provides a safety net for its citizens.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much a pipe dream. Government nets are made by the lowest bidder, which means it's not going to be a quality net.
I have my own safety net called insurance. I get to choose the quality of my net, and that's not something I'm willing to give up.
And yes--I have needed such a net in the past, and I know plenty of people who've needed one as well. Guess what? The nets we made for ourselves worked just fine.
Government is not the place to look for solutions to our social needs. We need to look to ourselves first. You'd be surprised at how many "government functions" you can take care of yourself, if you only have a little bit of gumption, a touch of creativity, and the willingness to work like hell.
My father grew up dirt poor in the Depression. He worked constantly, doing back-breaking labor for low pay working on road crews. He saved his pennies, went to the cheapest college he could find, and applied himself.
After he graduated with honors, he applied to every law school he could find. He wound up attending GWU in DC; he attended night classes while spending days working in a men's clothing store. He worked his fingers to the bone and then some. Three years later, he received his JD in law and a few years after that, he was a successful lawyer.
My own story was a little different. I went to college on a four-year full-ride scholarship. I worked like hell in high school and blew away the PSAT/NMSQTs; I had nine different offers for four-year full-rides, just because I worked like hell.
Today I'm a college graduate, a software engineer, doing pretty well for myself.
How does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?
The answer is mind-bogglingly simple. You work like hell, and that makes opportunities happen for you.
I know, I know, this entire "if you work hard and apply yourself, you can succeed in life" sounds like it came out of a Horatio Hornblower novel. However, it happens to be right, and that's something you haven't quite seemed to comprehend yet.
Gift: When one person takes something from another, with the another's permission.
Theft: When one person takes something from another, permission be damned.
To quote Ronald Unreasonable, "I did not ask for, did not receive, and will not pay for, Item 21, `Tax', on your invoice."
All taxation is the moral equivalent of theft. I never gave my government permission to take almost 40% of my paycheck. In fact, the government never even asked if they could take 40% of my paycheck. Now, they might have very good purposes in mind and undoubtedly a lot of that taxation goes to very good purposes--but it doesn't change the fact that, through taxation, the government is taking what does not belong to them and they are doing it regardless of whether I give them my permission or not.
That's theft, clear and simple.
What makes taxation legal is that the right of the people to enjoy certain government services outweighs my right as an individual to not have 40% of my paycheck taken away. This is a balancing act of liberties.
Taxation is legal, and oftentimes taxation is right.
It just so happens that I have a paper napkin right here at my desk, leftover from lunch. I put it down on my desk: lo and behold, it's a plane.
I then unfolded the paper napkin--and keep in mind that unfolding is really just folding in reverse. Lo and behold, it was four layers of thin paper atop each other; unfolded, it had a substantially larger perimeter.
So the simple answer: unfold the damn napkin.:)
(Extra credit will be given to those who figure out a way to increase the perimeter of an already unfolded napkin!)
Lawyer ought to know better. :)
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As one Federal judge told me, the Constitution grants no rights at all. (I think the legal ref is Cruickshank, but don't quote me on it.) Rights exist a priori of the Constitution itself. What the Constitution does is recognize the existence of these rights, not grant them to people.
I know, you probably already know this very well and I'm not telling you anything new.;) Take it in the spirit of a good-natured needle, if you can.
Anonymous speech is not NECESSARILY a right.
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First, despite what the Slashdot article says, no court has determined that anonymous speech is not a right. This would be absurd and totally at odds with the American tradition of government. Rather, a court has found that in one particular instance anonymous speech is not a right.
The Federalist Papers--and if you're interested in American government, you really ought to read them--were published anonymously in newspapers (New York City, I think). During the American Revolution, anonymous pamphlets were circulated detailing the crimes of King George III. It was instances like these which helped lead to the overthrow of British rule in the Americas, and the writers of the Constitution wanted to make sure it would be available to us if we decided that our new government ever needed to be overthrown.
Anonymous political speech has a long and distinguished history from pre-Revolutionary times through the Civil War to Vietnam to the Gulf War. There isn't a court in the nation which is crazy enough to overturn 300 years of precedent (yes, the precedents precede the United States itself) in order to say there is no Constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously.
However, commercial or civil speech is (for better or ill) judged differently than political speech. If I post a message saying "Signal11 is a child-eating babyrapist!" anonymously, ought I be able to hide behind anonymity in order to evade a slander/libel suit? Does my right to anonymous speech outweigh Sig's right to defend his good name in a socially-proscribed manner (namely, challenging me to prove my assertion in court)?
No. My right to anonymity can't trample on Sig's right to not be slandered. Thus, I have no right to anonymity because Sig's right to not be slandered is greater.
Now, let's say I were to anonymously post a message saying "Al Gore is a child-eating babyrapist!" Could I then hide behind anonymity? Depends on how good Gore's lawyer is--but my suspicion is the court would say absolutely. Gore is a political figure which makes my speech politically-motivated, and my right to anonymous political speech outweighs Gore's right, as an individual, not to be slandered.
There's a careful calculus of liberty which goes on in the courts. So let's not get our shorts in a bunch by screaming that anonymous speech is a right--of course it is, and the courts are well aware of it. All liberties are balancing acts, though, and in this one case the right to speak anonymously was held to be inferior to another person's right.
He did a fine job of answering questions which were, for the most part, irate, hostile and defensive. I'd like to applaud his reasoned response.
Something to keep in mind: just his willingness to field questions about his Carnivore review says something about his commitment to an open process. He could have just told Slashdot to go away; instead, he chose to answer questions and bear the thousands of flames by people who really didn't think things through. For that, Mr. Perrit has my thanks and my commendations.
Now, on to a dissection of your flame:
This is a dodge--he was asked to address why the secrescy [sic] about the functioning of the device, not its actual in-operation placement. Let "regular" people see the source--the system is effective by its placement not by its function.
First, he did answer the question. The answer to the secrecy question is that the US Government is using this software in sensitive investigations which pertain to the national security of the United States. It is possible that Carnivore has some extremely cool technology inside of it (I doubt it, but it's possible) that the US Government doesn't want to see in private hands, for fear that it will launch a new generation of information-warfare tools.
Please note that for about eight years I was constantly violating ITAR and export restrictions. I am extremely skeptical of national-security claims when applied to technology. Just because ITAR was a steaming load of excrement, though, doesn't automatically mean Carnivore is. It also doesn't mean it isn't.
What Mr. Perrit said was, essentially, "the Government feels it is a national security interest to keep the Carnivore source closed." Frankly, I disagree with the Government's position--but I don't disagree with Mr. Perrit. Why should I disagree with him? He wasn't the one who declared Carnivore a national-security issue; that was the Department of Justice.
Carnivore's closed-source status, as well as the not-quite-open status of the technical review, are both political decisions made by political animals. Don't flame Mr. Perrit for it; his job is only to conduct a technical review, not to make political decisions.
What you're doing here is shooting the messenger for the message he brings. Better to shoot the politicians who wrote the damn message. (US Secret Service, take note--this is a figure of speech, not an incitement to violence.)
Yes, we know that about sniffer... Dont [sic] talk down to us, we probably know more than you do!
Statistically, I find that doubtful. The overwhelming majority of Slashdotters know very little about crypto, about network security, about the interaction of technology and politics. There are eight people here whose opinions I give a lot of weight to. You aren't one of them.:)
Mr. Perrit did not get to his current position by being an idiot. It is hardly seemly for someone to accuse him of being an intellectual inferior without first reading his academic papers, talking to his past students, or maybe (just maybe) waiting for the Carnivore review to come out and then dissecting it paragraph-by-paragraph.
[W]e probably know more than you do!
What do you base this probability on? Please, enlighten me. The "we" you're talking about is all of Slashdot--and I've got to tell you, most of Slashdot is composed of morons. Richard Feynman was reviewing school textbooks a few decades ago, and one of the most egregious ones had been approved by the sixty-five engineers of some corporation or another. "Ah," said Feynman, "so that's why it's so lousy. If only three or four had approved it, it might have been worthwhile--but of sixty-five engineers, you can be assured most of them are crap."
(I'm putting words in Feynman's mouth here, but that's the general gist. See Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! for his account of the matter.)
After reading his evasive and non-responsive answers, its [sic] pretty obvious that Mr Perrit (or should I say "Mr Parrot") appears to be a shill, a disengenuous [sic] legal weasel, and is quite obviously comfortable at being kept firmly in the government's pocket.
Grow up and stop flaming. Real hackers argue on the merits of something, not devolve into ad-hominem attacks.
I don't think the iButton is supported under Linux, though. Check out Schlumberger (here, here or here)smart cards; apparently, they have a Linux SDK out somewhere. Pretty slick cards, too--support CRYPTOKI (PKCS-11) pretty well, nice form factor (same size as my credit card), ISO-7816 interface. Getting them set up is a little bondage-and-discipline, but once you get past that they're sweetness and light.
No, I don't work for Schlumberger. I've just been doing some dev work on them (for Win32) and have been moderately impressed with them. They're the best crypto tokens I've used so far.
Level of encryption is really a nonissue. Honestly. Far more important is the level of paranoia in the system, which isn't the same as the paranoia level in the encryption algorithm.
For instance, if you just want to keep Marketroids away from your PC, an algorithm like DES works fine--at 56 bits of key, it's enough. But more modern algorithms, like Blowfish or AES/Rijndael, provide more security (up to 448 bits for Blowfish, 256 for AES) and faster performance--so there's absolutely no reason to use DES when AES is available.
The level of encryption is not the same thing as the level of the system. Always use the best encryption you can get; usually, you'll see performance improvements as well as increased security. It's the other stuff that goes into the system which bears more scrutiny--how is entropy collected? How are keys generated? How is authentication handled? How fault-tolerant is it? How tamper-resistant is it?
All of these questions are very, very hard to answer. I can't think of the last time a major in-use cipher was broken by classical cryptanalytic means. I can think of lots of times in recent history when systems were broken by exploiting problems in areas other than the cipher.
There is no race condition--in most encrypting systems memory is reserved for use by the swap system, just so that endless cycle doesn't get kicked off in the first place.
The real reason is performance. I haven't used encrypting swap partitions myself, but I've seen academic papers on encrypted swap partitions which lose about 30% of their speed due to the overhead of encryption. This number should not be depended upon, however--a fast cipher (AES/Rijndael) will minimize the performance hit, as will an optimized implementation, as will a proper method of cipher operation (CFB/OFB are bad ideas), etc. There's room for a lot of optimizations.
Still, there's going to be an unavoidable performance hit involved with encrypting your swap partition. If you really want to do it, I'd suggest saving your pennies for a few weeks, buying another 256Mb of RAM, and getting rid of your swap entirely.
Another thing to take into account is that you only need to encrypt data, not binaries. Encrypting/usr only gives an attacker more known plaintext to try to crack the key with.
Slightly off. Encrypting/usr only gives an attacker more known ciphertext. A good encrypting FS will encrypt the filenames, the directory structure, the whole nine yards. They'd have a lot of known-ciphertext and a lot of cribs ("we can predict there will be an/sbin directory off the/usr directory"), but that's not the same as a known-plaintext. Like I said, you're just slightly off, but I'm so anal-retentive about these things that I have to be fastidious about correcting.:)
Even were it to be a known-plaintext attack, cryptanalysis of any modern, strong cipher is mind-wrackingly difficult. I'd feel safe encrypting my entire HD with 3DES (three independent subkeys) and turning a copy of the contents over to my business competitors, the Feds, organized crime, you name it. (Wouldn't turn the originals over--scanning electron microscopes can pick up the most amazing things off hard drives, including cleartext that was recently erased and low-leveled.)
I don't think they could do it. If any of the above really want to know what's on my HD, they're not going to cryptanalyze my drive, they're going to cryptanalyze me.
They might Van Eck my monitor, they might grab me in the parking lot and have a fellow named Guido talk to my kneecaps, they might blackmail me, they might... etc.
Using strong ciphers in strong configurations, you can raise the difficulty of a cryptanalytic attack so high that it's by far more efficient to cryptanalyze the person instead.
Consider that Red Hat do engage is a policy of encouraging proprietary vendors to release their software "for Red Hat Linux" offering binary products only.
This only appears correct; it's not. Red Hat engages in a policy of encouraging proprietary vendors to release their software for Red Hat Linux, yes--but I suspect they also encourage people to consider releasing the source to their software as well, if not going the full open-source route.
The real incorrectness comes from the implication, that Red Hat encourages vendors of proprietary software to only ship for Red Hat Linux. Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Hat encourages vendors to make sure that their software works with Red Hat, which is pretty sane business advice--Red Hat has an extremely large market share.
Vendors will (often) choose only to officially support one distro, because QA testing is a long and costly process. Making sure that their software also works on Debian will cost them a small fortune, and the Debian market is small in comparison to the Red Hat market.
If you want to blame anyone for contributing to the non-support of non-RH distros, blame the software vendors and not Red Hat. Red Hat only encourages vendors to support Red Hat (a policy which is as unobjectionable as it is eminently sensible); they don't encourage vendors to get locked into a Red Hat solution (a policy as objectionable as it is monopolistic).
The former is the Red Hat way of doing things; the latter is the Microsoft way of doing things.
Oh, and by the way--I run Debian, and I still like Red Hat a heck of a lot. There's an awful lot of software on my Debian system which came from Red Hat, and one of the books on my shelf is Linux Application Development, written by some Red Hat guys.
I bought the Deluxe version of Red Hat 7.0, even though I'm a Debian user, just to say "thank you" to Red Hat for the software they've contributed to my Debian system.
I agree that with "aftermarket add-ons" you can get reasonable performance and compliance from egcs. I object to needing to do it in the first place. I'm saying egcs is pretty broken, out-of-the-box, and requires me to find my own solutions to its shortcomings. (I missed at() enough that I wrote my own derived class from vector to handle range checking, for instance--only about 20 lines of code, including the class definition.)
Re: Kai C++
Insofar as other parts of the standard which Kai C++ supports better than egcs, I'm not totally sure. All I've seen are the sales brochures, which I'm naturally skeptical of. Remember that I've never used Kai C++.
Kai C++'s sales brochures say the export keyword is supported. Don't know for a fact, though, since I've never used Kai C++. Seriously considering buying a copy, though, if it supports templates any better than egcs does.
Let's not even get into the STL implementation in egcs. When I can't use at() on an STL vector, I get deeply annoyed. Admittedly, it's a trivial thing to fix, but there are things like that all over in egcs--things which ought to be fixed, things which are trivial to fix, but which, for reasons unknown to me, aren't fixed.
Yep, answers, a dime apiece, guaranteed to be worth less than what you paid for 'em...:)
Warning: I am a C++ programmer. A pretty good one on the whole, I think. C++ is my favorite language to use and develop in, but I'm not a C++ zealot; I also use (and enjoy) Java, C, LISP and Pascal. (Yes, I like Pascal. Get over it.)
I do not understand why c++ is shunned by so many c programmers.
Usually because they're not very good programmers. That's the answer, point blank and simple. No language--emphasis, no language--is a universal win; every language has tradeoffs and balances. People who harp about how faulty C++ is have probably never opened their eyes enough to take a look at how faulty their favorite systems are.
There used to be a guy where I work who ragged on me day and night about how stupid I was to like C++, or how "bloated" C++ was, or... etc. All he wanted to do was rag on C++ and harp on C. One day I got to take a look at his C code: and let me tell you, the guy couldn't code his way out of a paper bag, even if I gave him a hand grenade.
You see the exact same thing happen with C++ zealots who scream that Java is stupid. They rant, they rave, they scale the walls... and they do this, I've usually found, because they're bad programmers. This is not limited to C and C++ holy wars: in almost any holy war, you'll find the people who are speaking the loudest are the people who know the least.
If you want to know why C++ is shunned by so many C programmers, there's really only one way for you to find out. It's a two-step process.
1. Become a C++ hacker.
2. Become a C hacker.
Once you do that, you'll see that a lot of the holy wars between C and C++ are completely bogus. Computer languages are just tools; a hacker learns how to use lots of different tools, and then uses the right tool for the job. That's all.
egcs still doesn't support the export keyword when applied to templates. That's a fairly significant shortcoming. The compiler is not fine, and those of us who do C++ development for a living are painfully aware of it.
#include <iostream>
template <class T>
class example
{
public:
T data;
example(T stuff);
};
template <class T>
example::example(T stuff)
{
data = stuff;
cerr << data << endl;
}
int main(void)
{
example<int>(10);
}
... Now take the above code and separate it into three files. Put the template declaration into a header file, the template definition into a source file, and main() into a third file. Try and compile it.
It won't. Why? Because you didn't use the export keyword. Ooops. What, that's not supported in egcs? Say it ain't so.
It's in Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition, but it sure as heck isn't supported in egcs.
I didn't mean to turn it into a gun control debate; if that's what you read my message as, please, accept my apologies.
While I agree that ESR does use his visibility to promote his own personal agenda (but then again, doesn't anyone who has high visibility?), my comment was merely to point out that those people who were grievously offended by ESR's definition of hoplophobia are probably missing the point altogether--the issue I was raising isn't about the myth that's called Freudian analysis, but about otherwise rational people holding irrational fears of inanimate objects, and the dangers that can arise from these irrational fears.
Let me just say that I think your American gun laws are plain and simply crazy and that these laws are the main reason why I do not want to live in the US.
Point accepted without complaint. Everyone has the right to come to their own decision on these matters. I disagree with you, but that's not earth-shattering. Reasonable men and women are allowed (I'd even say expected) to disagree in a genteel, friendly fashion.
I find it to be for the most part accurate, although I'd have skipped the Freud quote--Freud thought everything was a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity, so his opinion on hoplophobia doesn't carry much weight.
It is as irrational to fear a gun as it is to fear a hammer. What is often rational is to fear people with guns. Personally, I fear two kinds of people with guns: people with guns who are intent on hurting me, and people with guns who themselves fear guns.
In college, I once had a debate with a gun-control advocate named Trina. I disagreed with her calmly and on Constitutional grounds; her arguments were emotional and passionate about how guns were inherently tools of killing and thus ought to be outlawed. Okay, fine, a reasonable difference of opinion. The Constitution protects our right to have differences, and we were both mature enough not to let our difference of opinion devolve into personal hostility.
A couple of weeks later I went to a stage play in which Trina had a lead role. A.357 Magnum was a necessary prop, loaded up with blank cartridges for some gunplay in later scenes. I watched in horror as Trina melodramatically thumbed the hammer back for effect and put the gun to her temple in a dramatic scene. (No, she didn't pull the trigger, which was a good thing: at point blank range, a blank to the temple will cause the inside of your skull to spall off and lacerate your brain. A promising actor of the '80s, Jon-Erik Hexum, died in exactly that way.)
After the play was over I took Trina aside and explained to her that with the hammer back, her finger on the trigger and a.357 blank at her temple, she was literally gambling with her life. Turns out that the director didn't bother to have a proper armorer (person who's responsible for teaching actors how to safely use weapons) for the production; they all just assumed that since only blanks were being used, the gun was harmless.
In their defense, once the risks were explained to them they changed the scene for the next night's performance. I've got to commend them for that.
If you don't like guns, that's just fine with me; I understand why many people don't like guns. But please don't fear guns--not only is it irrational, but it leads to ignorance about guns and gun safety, and that can get you killed.
The side which is calling the shots is the side which sits on the bench, wears shorts and T-shirts underneath their blisteringly hot robes, and gets called "Your Honor".:)
Remember that: no matter what lawyers say, the judges are the ones who are ultimately controlling everything. Judges also have better sense than to hold press conferences during the time when a trial is underway (don't even mention Lance Ito to me; good grief, he was an embarassment to the legal system).
Lawyers serve two purposes. The first is to represent their client's interests in court, and the second is to represent their client's interests outside of court. Every time an attorney gives a press conference, they're going to do everything in their power to convey that their side is the one that's winning in the courtroom, that they're calling all of the shots. The reality is they are both presenting arguments to a judge (or judges, in the case of appellate work), and the judges are the ones who call the shots; and the judges are so good at calling the shots that they only have to call them once, when the verdict is handed down.:)
During US v Microsoft, Microsoft lawyers were holding daily press conferences saying how much ass they were kicking in the courtroom. It was totally laughable, given how badly they lost, but they still did it anyway. They're attorneys. They represent their client's interests, and it's in their client's interests to look good to the media.
Check the US Constitution. Especially that bit where it says that no fact, once determined by a court, can ever be judged by a second court. This is not some bit of legal procedure: this is a Constitutional safeguard against judge-shopping.
The standard is not clear error; it is egregious error, error so profound that it violated the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. If you have a reference where a court has merely overturned "clear error" in a Finding, I invite you to post it here.
Keep in mind that preparations increase to the square of the level of the court. Microsoft blew it big-time at the trial level; they have a massive undertaking ahead of them. The Findings of Fact are especially devastating, especially because barring the most extreme circumstances, Findings of Fact cannot be overturned.
(There's a colorful bit of caselaw about overturning FoFs: according to caselaw, the sheer magnitude of the error must offend the senses like a three-day-old fish in order for it to be overturned.)
Unfortunately for Microsoft, Judge Jackson gave the government almost everything they could have asked for in his Findings of Fact. He also detailed, at length, the legal reasoning behind each of his findings. Even if the Appellate Court disagrees with Jackson's Findings of Fact (which is very likely), the Appellate Court will not be able to overturn them unless Jackson's FoF fails the three-day-old fish test.
Microsoft's number one job right now is to figure out how to make the FoF fail the fish test. This is going to be an uphill battle for them, and probably doomed to failure.
Then the Findings of Law (FoL) has to be scrutinized. This is where the Appellate Court has the most opportunity to hand it back to Jackson. The Findings of Law are where Jackson says "this is what the law reads, and this is what it means"; the Appellate Court can say "well, Thomas, we like you a lot and all, but you need to talk to your dealer about the purity of your rock." That's going to be Microsoft's second target. Unfortunately, Jackson's FoL was very well researched; this, too, is going to be an uphill battle.
If I were Microsoft, I'd be begging for a full year for the appeal process.
Next, compare this to other large appeals, like the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. That one bounced around the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals for the better part of a year. (The TRA involved just about every long-distance carrier in the country, and a lot of the local carriers. While it didn't have the cachet of the Microsoft case, it had a comparable amount of legal wrangling going on in it.) While the TRA appeal lasted a lot longer than people would have liked, it does show that five months for an appeal of a case of this size isn't entirely unreasonable.
The wheels of law move excruciatingly slow; but, on the plus side, they grind things up excruciatingly well.
Finally, keep in mind that this is what Microsoft is requesting. It's not what the government is going to request, nor is it going to be what the appellate court finally grants. The appellate court may well decide to grant more than five months' time; remember, the judges have dozens of other cases to hear as well, and their schedule may be so overfull as to require US v Microsoft to be pushed back.
Denial of cert means the lower court decision stands, yes. However, it doesn't mean the Court agrees with the lower court's decision.
If the Court agrees with something, then the Court's opinion becomes the law of the land, from Washington DC to Guam and Puerto Rico. If the court disagrees with something, the Court's opinion applies over the same region. If the Court takes notice of anything, it affects the entire nation.
Appellate courts only affect regions of the country, not the country itself. The Court of Appeals which supported Connectix has defined caselaw, but only for that region.
If the Court agreed with the lower court, then the Connectix case would be caselaw for the entire country. Similarly if the court disagreed. Since the Court denied cert, that means the Court is saying "this isn't worth our limited time".
What often happens in matters such as these is that the Court will wait for another, similar case to be decided differently in another circuit. If the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decides a case one way, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decides a similar case another way, then that creates an inconsistency in how the law is applied. The Court will then step in and declare one of the two interpretations to be correct, thus removing the inconsistency.
Wait for another reverse-engineering suit to be filed in another circuit, and wait for it to be decided differently. Then the Court will grant cert, and we'll finally have definitive SCOTUS guidance on the reverse engineering issue.
"By not even listening to the case, and by extention, not challenging the lower court's ruling, they are giving their tacit agreement."
Give me just one example of a case which has had cert denied, which the Court has later agreed with. There are none. Denial of cert means nothing, and various Supreme Court justices over the years have lamented how many people seem to think denial of cert is meaningful.
"The ruling stands through the action of the higher court, even if the action in question is refusing to take action."
No; the action in question was not the refusal to take action, it was a refusal to review the case. The Court cannot give their tacit agreement to something they haven't even heard. All the Court did was say no; everything more than that, you're writing into it.
If you like, do a Google! search for Supreme Court quotations. You'll find a lot of references to cert in it, and their frustration with people who think denial of cert is meaningful.
Slashdot Mirror
If you violate the GPL, your license to the software terminates.
:)
Where do you get "license termination clauses are 100% non-free"?
Either you're pretty confused on the issue, or else I am.
Great. So if the government were to pass a law saying "Jim Nolan's house is now forfeit", you wouldn't consider that to be theft?
(Yes, I know it's a bill of attainder. The point still stands.)
Trusting the law to make determinations of right and wrong is like trusting Charles Manson to be a sane and lucid human being. It's not just wrong, it's entirely opposed to history.
Trusting the law to provide a moral framework, so that we can say "theft is the unlawful taking of property", is foolish. Immoral laws are passed all the time.
Remember that, at one point, you could just as easily say "voting rights are held by all those Americans permitted by law to vote", and exclude women, the non-landed, minorities, some religious sects, etc.
Your definition of theft needs a lot of work.
It is a civilized government that provides a safety net for its citizens.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much a pipe dream. Government nets are made by the lowest bidder, which means it's not going to be a quality net.
I have my own safety net called insurance. I get to choose the quality of my net, and that's not something I'm willing to give up.
And yes--I have needed such a net in the past, and I know plenty of people who've needed one as well. Guess what? The nets we made for ourselves worked just fine.
Government is not the place to look for solutions to our social needs. We need to look to ourselves first. You'd be surprised at how many "government functions" you can take care of yourself, if you only have a little bit of gumption, a touch of creativity, and the willingness to work like hell.
My father grew up dirt poor in the Depression. He worked constantly, doing back-breaking labor for low pay working on road crews. He saved his pennies, went to the cheapest college he could find, and applied himself.
After he graduated with honors, he applied to every law school he could find. He wound up attending GWU in DC; he attended night classes while spending days working in a men's clothing store. He worked his fingers to the bone and then some. Three years later, he received his JD in law and a few years after that, he was a successful lawyer.
My own story was a little different. I went to college on a four-year full-ride scholarship. I worked like hell in high school and blew away the PSAT/NMSQTs; I had nine different offers for four-year full-rides, just because I worked like hell.
Today I'm a college graduate, a software engineer, doing pretty well for myself.
How does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?
The answer is mind-bogglingly simple. You work like hell, and that makes opportunities happen for you.
I know, I know, this entire "if you work hard and apply yourself, you can succeed in life" sounds like it came out of a Horatio Hornblower novel. However, it happens to be right, and that's something you haven't quite seemed to comprehend yet.
Gift: When one person takes something from another, with the another's permission.
Theft: When one person takes something from another, permission be damned.
To quote Ronald Unreasonable, "I did not ask for, did not receive, and will not pay for, Item 21, `Tax', on your invoice."
All taxation is the moral equivalent of theft. I never gave my government permission to take almost 40% of my paycheck. In fact, the government never even asked if they could take 40% of my paycheck. Now, they might have very good purposes in mind and undoubtedly a lot of that taxation goes to very good purposes--but it doesn't change the fact that, through taxation, the government is taking what does not belong to them and they are doing it regardless of whether I give them my permission or not.
That's theft, clear and simple.
What makes taxation legal is that the right of the people to enjoy certain government services outweighs my right as an individual to not have 40% of my paycheck taken away. This is a balancing act of liberties.
Taxation is legal, and oftentimes taxation is right.
That doesn't mean it's not theft.
It just so happens that I have a paper napkin right here at my desk, leftover from lunch. I put it down on my desk: lo and behold, it's a plane.
:)
I then unfolded the paper napkin--and keep in mind that unfolding is really just folding in reverse. Lo and behold, it was four layers of thin paper atop each other; unfolded, it had a substantially larger perimeter.
So the simple answer: unfold the damn napkin.
(Extra credit will be given to those who figure out a way to increase the perimeter of an already unfolded napkin!)
As one Federal judge told me, the Constitution grants no rights at all. (I think the legal ref is Cruickshank, but don't quote me on it.) Rights exist a priori of the Constitution itself. What the Constitution does is recognize the existence of these rights, not grant them to people.
;) Take it in the spirit of a good-natured needle, if you can.
I know, you probably already know this very well and I'm not telling you anything new.
First, despite what the Slashdot article says, no court has determined that anonymous speech is not a right. This would be absurd and totally at odds with the American tradition of government. Rather, a court has found that in one particular instance anonymous speech is not a right.
The Federalist Papers--and if you're interested in American government, you really ought to read them--were published anonymously in newspapers (New York City, I think). During the American Revolution, anonymous pamphlets were circulated detailing the crimes of King George III. It was instances like these which helped lead to the overthrow of British rule in the Americas, and the writers of the Constitution wanted to make sure it would be available to us if we decided that our new government ever needed to be overthrown.
Anonymous political speech has a long and distinguished history from pre-Revolutionary times through the Civil War to Vietnam to the Gulf War. There isn't a court in the nation which is crazy enough to overturn 300 years of precedent (yes, the precedents precede the United States itself) in order to say there is no Constitutionally protected right to speak anonymously.
However, commercial or civil speech is (for better or ill) judged differently than political speech. If I post a message saying "Signal11 is a child-eating babyrapist!" anonymously, ought I be able to hide behind anonymity in order to evade a slander/libel suit? Does my right to anonymous speech outweigh Sig's right to defend his good name in a socially-proscribed manner (namely, challenging me to prove my assertion in court)?
No. My right to anonymity can't trample on Sig's right to not be slandered. Thus, I have no right to anonymity because Sig's right to not be slandered is greater.
Now, let's say I were to anonymously post a message saying "Al Gore is a child-eating babyrapist!" Could I then hide behind anonymity? Depends on how good Gore's lawyer is--but my suspicion is the court would say absolutely. Gore is a political figure which makes my speech politically-motivated, and my right to anonymous political speech outweighs Gore's right, as an individual, not to be slandered.
There's a careful calculus of liberty which goes on in the courts. So let's not get our shorts in a bunch by screaming that anonymous speech is a right--of course it is, and the courts are well aware of it. All liberties are balancing acts, though, and in this one case the right to speak anonymously was held to be inferior to another person's right.
He did a fine job of answering questions which were, for the most part, irate, hostile and defensive. I'd like to applaud his reasoned response.
... Dont [sic] talk down to us, we probably know more than you do!
:)
Something to keep in mind: just his willingness to field questions about his Carnivore review says something about his commitment to an open process. He could have just told Slashdot to go away; instead, he chose to answer questions and bear the thousands of flames by people who really didn't think things through. For that, Mr. Perrit has my thanks and my commendations.
Now, on to a dissection of your flame:
This is a dodge--he was asked to address why the secrescy [sic] about the functioning of the device, not its actual in-operation placement. Let "regular" people see the source--the system is effective by its placement not by its function.
First, he did answer the question. The answer to the secrecy question is that the US Government is using this software in sensitive investigations which pertain to the national security of the United States. It is possible that Carnivore has some extremely cool technology inside of it (I doubt it, but it's possible) that the US Government doesn't want to see in private hands, for fear that it will launch a new generation of information-warfare tools.
Please note that for about eight years I was constantly violating ITAR and export restrictions. I am extremely skeptical of national-security claims when applied to technology. Just because ITAR was a steaming load of excrement, though, doesn't automatically mean Carnivore is. It also doesn't mean it isn't.
What Mr. Perrit said was, essentially, "the Government feels it is a national security interest to keep the Carnivore source closed." Frankly, I disagree with the Government's position--but I don't disagree with Mr. Perrit. Why should I disagree with him? He wasn't the one who declared Carnivore a national-security issue; that was the Department of Justice.
Carnivore's closed-source status, as well as the not-quite-open status of the technical review, are both political decisions made by political animals. Don't flame Mr. Perrit for it; his job is only to conduct a technical review, not to make political decisions.
What you're doing here is shooting the messenger for the message he brings. Better to shoot the politicians who wrote the damn message. (US Secret Service, take note--this is a figure of speech, not an incitement to violence.)
Yes, we know that about sniffer
Statistically, I find that doubtful. The overwhelming majority of Slashdotters know very little about crypto, about network security, about the interaction of technology and politics. There are eight people here whose opinions I give a lot of weight to. You aren't one of them.
Mr. Perrit did not get to his current position by being an idiot. It is hardly seemly for someone to accuse him of being an intellectual inferior without first reading his academic papers, talking to his past students, or maybe (just maybe) waiting for the Carnivore review to come out and then dissecting it paragraph-by-paragraph.
[W]e probably know more than you do!
What do you base this probability on? Please, enlighten me. The "we" you're talking about is all of Slashdot--and I've got to tell you, most of Slashdot is composed of morons. Richard Feynman was reviewing school textbooks a few decades ago, and one of the most egregious ones had been approved by the sixty-five engineers of some corporation or another. "Ah," said Feynman, "so that's why it's so lousy. If only three or four had approved it, it might have been worthwhile--but of sixty-five engineers, you can be assured most of them are crap."
(I'm putting words in Feynman's mouth here, but that's the general gist. See Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! for his account of the matter.)
After reading his evasive and non-responsive answers, its [sic] pretty obvious that Mr Perrit (or should I say "Mr Parrot") appears to be a shill, a disengenuous [sic] legal weasel, and is quite obviously comfortable at being kept firmly in the government's pocket.
Grow up and stop flaming. Real hackers argue on the merits of something, not devolve into ad-hominem attacks.
I don't think the iButton is supported under Linux, though. Check out Schlumberger (here, here or here)smart cards; apparently, they have a Linux SDK out somewhere. Pretty slick cards, too--support CRYPTOKI (PKCS-11) pretty well, nice form factor (same size as my credit card), ISO-7816 interface. Getting them set up is a little bondage-and-discipline, but once you get past that they're sweetness and light.
No, I don't work for Schlumberger. I've just been doing some dev work on them (for Win32) and have been moderately impressed with them. They're the best crypto tokens I've used so far.
Level of encryption is really a nonissue. Honestly. Far more important is the level of paranoia in the system, which isn't the same as the paranoia level in the encryption algorithm.
For instance, if you just want to keep Marketroids away from your PC, an algorithm like DES works fine--at 56 bits of key, it's enough. But more modern algorithms, like Blowfish or AES/Rijndael, provide more security (up to 448 bits for Blowfish, 256 for AES) and faster performance--so there's absolutely no reason to use DES when AES is available.
The level of encryption is not the same thing as the level of the system. Always use the best encryption you can get; usually, you'll see performance improvements as well as increased security. It's the other stuff that goes into the system which bears more scrutiny--how is entropy collected? How are keys generated? How is authentication handled? How fault-tolerant is it? How tamper-resistant is it?
All of these questions are very, very hard to answer. I can't think of the last time a major in-use cipher was broken by classical cryptanalytic means. I can think of lots of times in recent history when systems were broken by exploiting problems in areas other than the cipher.
There is no race condition--in most encrypting systems memory is reserved for use by the swap system, just so that endless cycle doesn't get kicked off in the first place.
The real reason is performance. I haven't used encrypting swap partitions myself, but I've seen academic papers on encrypted swap partitions which lose about 30% of their speed due to the overhead of encryption. This number should not be depended upon, however--a fast cipher (AES/Rijndael) will minimize the performance hit, as will an optimized implementation, as will a proper method of cipher operation (CFB/OFB are bad ideas), etc. There's room for a lot of optimizations.
Still, there's going to be an unavoidable performance hit involved with encrypting your swap partition. If you really want to do it, I'd suggest saving your pennies for a few weeks, buying another 256Mb of RAM, and getting rid of your swap entirely.
Another thing to take into account is that you only need to encrypt data, not binaries. Encrypting /usr only gives an attacker more known plaintext to try to crack the key with.
/usr only gives an attacker more known ciphertext. A good encrypting FS will encrypt the filenames, the directory structure, the whole nine yards. They'd have a lot of known-ciphertext and a lot of cribs ("we can predict there will be an /sbin directory off the /usr directory"), but that's not the same as a known-plaintext. Like I said, you're just slightly off, but I'm so anal-retentive about these things that I have to be fastidious about correcting. :)
Slightly off. Encrypting
Even were it to be a known-plaintext attack, cryptanalysis of any modern, strong cipher is mind-wrackingly difficult. I'd feel safe encrypting my entire HD with 3DES (three independent subkeys) and turning a copy of the contents over to my business competitors, the Feds, organized crime, you name it. (Wouldn't turn the originals over--scanning electron microscopes can pick up the most amazing things off hard drives, including cleartext that was recently erased and low-leveled.)
I don't think they could do it. If any of the above really want to know what's on my HD, they're not going to cryptanalyze my drive, they're going to cryptanalyze me.
They might Van Eck my monitor, they might grab me in the parking lot and have a fellow named Guido talk to my kneecaps, they might blackmail me, they might... etc.
Using strong ciphers in strong configurations, you can raise the difficulty of a cryptanalytic attack so high that it's by far more efficient to cryptanalyze the person instead.
Consider that Red Hat do engage is a policy of encouraging proprietary vendors to release their software "for Red Hat Linux" offering binary products only.
This only appears correct; it's not. Red Hat engages in a policy of encouraging proprietary vendors to release their software for Red Hat Linux, yes--but I suspect they also encourage people to consider releasing the source to their software as well, if not going the full open-source route.
The real incorrectness comes from the implication, that Red Hat encourages vendors of proprietary software to only ship for Red Hat Linux. Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Hat encourages vendors to make sure that their software works with Red Hat, which is pretty sane business advice--Red Hat has an extremely large market share.
Vendors will (often) choose only to officially support one distro, because QA testing is a long and costly process. Making sure that their software also works on Debian will cost them a small fortune, and the Debian market is small in comparison to the Red Hat market.
If you want to blame anyone for contributing to the non-support of non-RH distros, blame the software vendors and not Red Hat. Red Hat only encourages vendors to support Red Hat (a policy which is as unobjectionable as it is eminently sensible); they don't encourage vendors to get locked into a Red Hat solution (a policy as objectionable as it is monopolistic).
The former is the Red Hat way of doing things; the latter is the Microsoft way of doing things.
Oh, and by the way--I run Debian, and I still like Red Hat a heck of a lot. There's an awful lot of software on my Debian system which came from Red Hat, and one of the books on my shelf is Linux Application Development, written by some Red Hat guys.
I bought the Deluxe version of Red Hat 7.0, even though I'm a Debian user, just to say "thank you" to Red Hat for the software they've contributed to my Debian system.
Re: STLPort
I agree that with "aftermarket add-ons" you can get reasonable performance and compliance from egcs. I object to needing to do it in the first place. I'm saying egcs is pretty broken, out-of-the-box, and requires me to find my own solutions to its shortcomings. (I missed at() enough that I wrote my own derived class from vector to handle range checking, for instance--only about 20 lines of code, including the class definition.)
Re: Kai C++
Insofar as other parts of the standard which Kai C++ supports better than egcs, I'm not totally sure. All I've seen are the sales brochures, which I'm naturally skeptical of. Remember that I've never used Kai C++.
Kai C++'s sales brochures say the export keyword is supported. Don't know for a fact, though, since I've never used Kai C++. Seriously considering buying a copy, though, if it supports templates any better than egcs does.
Let's not even get into the STL implementation in egcs. When I can't use at() on an STL vector, I get deeply annoyed. Admittedly, it's a trivial thing to fix, but there are things like that all over in egcs--things which ought to be fixed, things which are trivial to fix, but which, for reasons unknown to me, aren't fixed.
Yep, answers, a dime apiece, guaranteed to be worth less than what you paid for 'em... :)
Warning: I am a C++ programmer. A pretty good one on the whole, I think. C++ is my favorite language to use and develop in, but I'm not a C++ zealot; I also use (and enjoy) Java, C, LISP and Pascal. (Yes, I like Pascal. Get over it.)
I do not understand why c++ is shunned by so many c programmers.
Usually because they're not very good programmers. That's the answer, point blank and simple. No language--emphasis, no language--is a universal win; every language has tradeoffs and balances. People who harp about how faulty C++ is have probably never opened their eyes enough to take a look at how faulty their favorite systems are.
There used to be a guy where I work who ragged on me day and night about how stupid I was to like C++, or how "bloated" C++ was, or... etc. All he wanted to do was rag on C++ and harp on C. One day I got to take a look at his C code: and let me tell you, the guy couldn't code his way out of a paper bag, even if I gave him a hand grenade.
You see the exact same thing happen with C++ zealots who scream that Java is stupid. They rant, they rave, they scale the walls... and they do this, I've usually found, because they're bad programmers. This is not limited to C and C++ holy wars: in almost any holy war, you'll find the people who are speaking the loudest are the people who know the least.
If you want to know why C++ is shunned by so many C programmers, there's really only one way for you to find out. It's a two-step process.
1. Become a C++ hacker.
2. Become a C hacker.
Once you do that, you'll see that a lot of the holy wars between C and C++ are completely bogus. Computer languages are just tools; a hacker learns how to use lots of different tools, and then uses the right tool for the job. That's all.
egcs still doesn't support the export keyword when applied to templates. That's a fairly significant shortcoming. The compiler is not fine, and those of us who do C++ development for a living are painfully aware of it.
#include <iostream>
template <class T>
class example
{
public:
T data;
example(T stuff);
};
template <class T>
example::example(T stuff)
{
data = stuff;
cerr << data << endl;
}
int main(void)
{
example<int>(10);
}
... Now take the above code and separate it into three files. Put the template declaration into a header file, the template definition into a source file, and main() into a third file. Try and compile it.
It won't. Why? Because you didn't use the export keyword. Ooops. What, that's not supported in egcs? Say it ain't so.
It's in Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition, but it sure as heck isn't supported in egcs.
I didn't mean to turn it into a gun control debate; if that's what you read my message as, please, accept my apologies.
While I agree that ESR does use his visibility to promote his own personal agenda (but then again, doesn't anyone who has high visibility?), my comment was merely to point out that those people who were grievously offended by ESR's definition of hoplophobia are probably missing the point altogether--the issue I was raising isn't about the myth that's called Freudian analysis, but about otherwise rational people holding irrational fears of inanimate objects, and the dangers that can arise from these irrational fears.
Let me just say that I think your American gun laws are plain and simply crazy and that these laws are the main reason why I do not want to live in the US.
Point accepted without complaint. Everyone has the right to come to their own decision on these matters. I disagree with you, but that's not earth-shattering. Reasonable men and women are allowed (I'd even say expected) to disagree in a genteel, friendly fashion.
I find it to be for the most part accurate, although I'd have skipped the Freud quote--Freud thought everything was a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity, so his opinion on hoplophobia doesn't carry much weight.
.357 Magnum was a necessary prop, loaded up with blank cartridges for some gunplay in later scenes. I watched in horror as Trina melodramatically thumbed the hammer back for effect and put the gun to her temple in a dramatic scene. (No, she didn't pull the trigger, which was a good thing: at point blank range, a blank to the temple will cause the inside of your skull to spall off and lacerate your brain. A promising actor of the '80s, Jon-Erik Hexum, died in exactly that way.)
.357 blank at her temple, she was literally gambling with her life. Turns out that the director didn't bother to have a proper armorer (person who's responsible for teaching actors how to safely use weapons) for the production; they all just assumed that since only blanks were being used, the gun was harmless.
It is as irrational to fear a gun as it is to fear a hammer. What is often rational is to fear people with guns. Personally, I fear two kinds of people with guns: people with guns who are intent on hurting me, and people with guns who themselves fear guns.
In college, I once had a debate with a gun-control advocate named Trina. I disagreed with her calmly and on Constitutional grounds; her arguments were emotional and passionate about how guns were inherently tools of killing and thus ought to be outlawed. Okay, fine, a reasonable difference of opinion. The Constitution protects our right to have differences, and we were both mature enough not to let our difference of opinion devolve into personal hostility.
A couple of weeks later I went to a stage play in which Trina had a lead role. A
After the play was over I took Trina aside and explained to her that with the hammer back, her finger on the trigger and a
In their defense, once the risks were explained to them they changed the scene for the next night's performance. I've got to commend them for that.
If you don't like guns, that's just fine with me; I understand why many people don't like guns. But please don't fear guns--not only is it irrational, but it leads to ignorance about guns and gun safety, and that can get you killed.
The side which is calling the shots is the side which sits on the bench, wears shorts and T-shirts underneath their blisteringly hot robes, and gets called "Your Honor". :)
:)
Remember that: no matter what lawyers say, the judges are the ones who are ultimately controlling everything. Judges also have better sense than to hold press conferences during the time when a trial is underway (don't even mention Lance Ito to me; good grief, he was an embarassment to the legal system).
Lawyers serve two purposes. The first is to represent their client's interests in court, and the second is to represent their client's interests outside of court. Every time an attorney gives a press conference, they're going to do everything in their power to convey that their side is the one that's winning in the courtroom, that they're calling all of the shots. The reality is they are both presenting arguments to a judge (or judges, in the case of appellate work), and the judges are the ones who call the shots; and the judges are so good at calling the shots that they only have to call them once, when the verdict is handed down.
During US v Microsoft, Microsoft lawyers were holding daily press conferences saying how much ass they were kicking in the courtroom. It was totally laughable, given how badly they lost, but they still did it anyway. They're attorneys. They represent their client's interests, and it's in their client's interests to look good to the media.
Check the US Constitution. Especially that bit where it says that no fact, once determined by a court, can ever be judged by a second court. This is not some bit of legal procedure: this is a Constitutional safeguard against judge-shopping.
The standard is not clear error; it is egregious error, error so profound that it violated the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. If you have a reference where a court has merely overturned "clear error" in a Finding, I invite you to post it here.
Keep in mind that preparations increase to the square of the level of the court. Microsoft blew it big-time at the trial level; they have a massive undertaking ahead of them. The Findings of Fact are especially devastating, especially because barring the most extreme circumstances, Findings of Fact cannot be overturned.
(There's a colorful bit of caselaw about overturning FoFs: according to caselaw, the sheer magnitude of the error must offend the senses like a three-day-old fish in order for it to be overturned.)
Unfortunately for Microsoft, Judge Jackson gave the government almost everything they could have asked for in his Findings of Fact. He also detailed, at length, the legal reasoning behind each of his findings. Even if the Appellate Court disagrees with Jackson's Findings of Fact (which is very likely), the Appellate Court will not be able to overturn them unless Jackson's FoF fails the three-day-old fish test.
Microsoft's number one job right now is to figure out how to make the FoF fail the fish test. This is going to be an uphill battle for them, and probably doomed to failure.
Then the Findings of Law (FoL) has to be scrutinized. This is where the Appellate Court has the most opportunity to hand it back to Jackson. The Findings of Law are where Jackson says "this is what the law reads, and this is what it means"; the Appellate Court can say "well, Thomas, we like you a lot and all, but you need to talk to your dealer about the purity of your rock." That's going to be Microsoft's second target. Unfortunately, Jackson's FoL was very well researched; this, too, is going to be an uphill battle.
If I were Microsoft, I'd be begging for a full year for the appeal process.
Next, compare this to other large appeals, like the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. That one bounced around the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals for the better part of a year. (The TRA involved just about every long-distance carrier in the country, and a lot of the local carriers. While it didn't have the cachet of the Microsoft case, it had a comparable amount of legal wrangling going on in it.) While the TRA appeal lasted a lot longer than people would have liked, it does show that five months for an appeal of a case of this size isn't entirely unreasonable.
The wheels of law move excruciatingly slow; but, on the plus side, they grind things up excruciatingly well.
Finally, keep in mind that this is what Microsoft is requesting. It's not what the government is going to request, nor is it going to be what the appellate court finally grants. The appellate court may well decide to grant more than five months' time; remember, the judges have dozens of other cases to hear as well, and their schedule may be so overfull as to require US v Microsoft to be pushed back.
Denial of cert means the lower court decision stands, yes. However, it doesn't mean the Court agrees with the lower court's decision.
If the Court agrees with something, then the Court's opinion becomes the law of the land, from Washington DC to Guam and Puerto Rico. If the court disagrees with something, the Court's opinion applies over the same region. If the Court takes notice of anything, it affects the entire nation.
Appellate courts only affect regions of the country, not the country itself. The Court of Appeals which supported Connectix has defined caselaw, but only for that region.
If the Court agreed with the lower court, then the Connectix case would be caselaw for the entire country. Similarly if the court disagreed. Since the Court denied cert, that means the Court is saying "this isn't worth our limited time".
What often happens in matters such as these is that the Court will wait for another, similar case to be decided differently in another circuit. If the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decides a case one way, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decides a similar case another way, then that creates an inconsistency in how the law is applied. The Court will then step in and declare one of the two interpretations to be correct, thus removing the inconsistency.
Wait for another reverse-engineering suit to be filed in another circuit, and wait for it to be decided differently. Then the Court will grant cert, and we'll finally have definitive SCOTUS guidance on the reverse engineering issue.
Denial of cert means nothing .
"By not even listening to the case, and by extention, not challenging the lower court's ruling, they are giving their tacit agreement."
Give me just one example of a case which has had cert denied, which the Court has later agreed with. There are none. Denial of cert means nothing, and various Supreme Court justices over the years have lamented how many people seem to think denial of cert is meaningful.
"The ruling stands through the action of the higher court, even if the action in question is refusing to take action."
No; the action in question was not the refusal to take action, it was a refusal to review the case. The Court cannot give their tacit agreement to something they haven't even heard. All the Court did was say no; everything more than that, you're writing into it.
If you like, do a Google! search for Supreme Court quotations. You'll find a lot of references to cert in it, and their frustration with people who think denial of cert is meaningful.