Too bad the circumvention came before the protection scheme.
You've latched onto something important. Everybody is focusing on how idiotic suing someone over the shift key is, but they haven't read the original paper. The paper is chock full of an explanations about how to defeat the copy protection scheme. Prime fodder for trial by DMCA. However, since the copy-protection scheme relies on a mechanism within windows that has historically been frequently disabled by many users, the history of such may be used in defense of the author. The author did not actually do anything to disable the copy protection. He merely pointed out that protection method wouldn't work on a significant number of machines right out of the box.
The Audio Home Recording Act was designed explicitly to prevent that. Criminal prosecution is, by law, only for commercial infringement.
Yes, but if you look at the language which was added by the No Electronic Theft Act, you see that if the monetary value of infringement is high enough, even acts of infringement for non-commercial purposes can be prosecuted. According to the language, if I ripped one track off of one of my CD's and put it in the public directory for Kazaa or another P2P utility, it's possible that sufficient downloads of that song by others could result in monetary damages high enough to trigger criminal charges. However, I agree with you that this probably isn't the intent of the law, and that any judge with a shred of intelligence would probably throw such charges out of court.
Uh, you might want to check again. Titles 17 and 18 (referred to in title 17), as well as ammendments in the No Electronic Theft Act provide for criminal fines and imprisonment. Granted, these seem to be aimed more at the commercial pirate, but could be easily applied (or mis-applied) to serious downloaders or even somebody who shared a single song with enough people. At present, our lawmakers are discussing new laws with sharper teeth.
Why are they always suing in civil proceedings rather than prosecuting with a criminal trial?
The answer is obvious. It's all about money. There is far more money to be made in a civil proceeding. The fact that the RIAA pursues the matter this way clearly indicates their real motive. It's not just about stopping piracy. It's about seeing what kind of income they can make while stopping the piracy.
The lack of focus follows mouse bugged me and there's no virtual desktops.
You know what really bugs me about this?
About 10 years ago, I used to use Unix + X-Windows all the time, and I really liked the focus following the mouse. Everytime I had to use Windows, the lack of it bugged me. Now I'm forced to use Windows by the place I currently work at, and since I have to do without this feature most of the time, I actually have trouble adjusting to it when I manage to sit down in front of X-Windows again. I usually end up turning it off because I just can't get used to it in the little amount of time I'll have. Sad, eh?
Not to mention the major health risk - if you boil water with it it leaves a residue that is apparently more toxic than cyanide, so you have to scrub the kettle clean after each cup... no thanks. I can't risk dying because someone forgot to scrub the kettle out.
While I'm not saying that there is no truth to this statement, I have a hard time believing it's as bad as it sounds. We've been living in the United States for years and have almost always had fluoride in our water. My wife frequently boils water for tea and only cleans the pot about once a week. We've never had any trouble with it, so although it may be more toxic than cyanide, it must be at a really low concentration.
Nevertheless, for those who are sensitive to fluorine and any molecules it participates in, the UK government should be held responsible. If they are going to force everybody to have fluoride in their water, they should pay for bottled water for those who have medically proven problems with the fluoride.
First, how is it a "windows virus" when users are the ones running the attachments?
Well, the latest round of viruses could CERTAINLY be called Windows Viruses. They had nothing to do with e-mail and opening of attachments....
But, if you want to get specific, the attachment based viruses COULD be called "Outlook Viruses," but they use components delivered with Windows to read and display the attachments, and therefore calling them "Windows Viruses" is appropriate.
Two, what does your inbox have to do with an ATM?
What does your inbox have to do with an RPC exploit?
I'm so sick of anti-Windows FUD. A lot of Linux users do exactly what they preach against
I'm sorry you feel that this is FUD, but I honestly wouldn't use any software produced by Microsoft for a mission critical system. I've always said that Microsoft makes good user interfaces and great programming tools, but stability and security have taken second place on their priority list.
I personally regard the real culprit as the people who put the copy protection in in the first place, and then have laws passed to make its removal illegal.
Sorry for the late reply -- I was on vacation. You make a good point, and I think I agree with you.
And not something you get by default and then have to opt-out of - something you get offered and must opt-into. I don't care if port X of all the clueless people's machines get abused, if I want to use port X, I'm going to.
I'm not sure if I agree with myself, but shouldn't it be opt-in by default, and presumably the people with a clue will know how to opt out? After all, the clueless in the world won't even figure out that they SHOULD opt in. Since the infected machines of the clueless mess up the internet experience for pretty much everyone, this makes sense to me. Of course, there should be some prominent notification so that those of us who know what we are doing can opt-out if we so choose.
By your rationale, we should start caning graffiti artists in the US because that would be "something of a deterrent."
I don't think the parent poster made any comments about WHAT the punishment should be, so please don't start citing rather harsh treatments to make your argument look more interesting. You could have just as easily made the statement, "By your rationale, we should start putting graffiti artists in jail for a month because that would be 'something of a deterrent.'".
Anyway, consider the fact that even though this guy only modified an existing virus, his crimes are EXACTLY the same as those of the original programmer. Writing a virus isn't a crime. Unleashing it and causing damage (economic or physical) to the property of others IS a crime. By modifying the virus, he created a new pattern that virus scanners would not recognize and thus was able to create similar damage as that of the original virus. Please explain to me how this isn't as bad as what the original author did.
My argument, by the way, is similar to ones made against the DMCA. The DMCA is being used to prosecute people who construct devices that CAN by used to circumvent copy protection. However, I think most of us agree that the real culprits are those that use it for such. In the case of viruses, if I construct a new virus, but never let it loose, am I guilty? If you manage to swipe a copy of the virus while you're at a LAN party at my house and then let it loose, aren't you the guilty one? If both of us unleash copies of the virus, aren't we both guilty?
Sadly, while playing a SPECIFIC video game might increase hearing ability...
Actually, I've found that MOST video games improve my son's hearing ability... or rather the selectivity of it. You can ask him direct questions really loudly and he will ignore you. Mutter a side comment to someone else about turning off the video game, and he's all ears.
I guess they just can't be retrofitted to an existing road network.
Sure they can. It's the already existing drivers to which they can't be retrofitted. It didn't take me long to adapt to them while driving in England, but then again I knew in advance to look out for them. Adding one in some place like New Jersey requires getting all the drivers to come for training or at least pay attention to some sort of directions, which is almost impossible to do. The best thing that could be done is to station a police officer beside each roundabout for a full year and have them pull every single person who screws it up. Word of mouth will eventually take care of the rest. The chances of something like that happening? Nill.
In my company (the US arm of a Swedish firm), August is big for vacations, particularly for the Swedes.
The same is true in Germany. Plus, many people in the US will take the last couple weeks of August through Labor day this year (since Labor day is 1-Sep).
It doesnt matter what OS is being used, there is no excuse for not updating your systems...
Well, yeah there is, although it's a little lame. If this is a "critical" system that has to be running all the time, they are probably loathe to update it until a scheduled maintenance downtime. They can't have automatic updates running on a critical system like this, as an update itself might crash the system.
Why is this argument lame? Well, they should have (maybe they do) a backup system. They should have been able to switch to backup long enough to perform the upgrade and test it.
I though we wanted them to be more conscious of security.
We'd like them to be more conscious of it in their own code first. Since that hasn't yet happened, accusations from Microsoft against lack of security in third-party code that they probably haven't even seen can hardly be considered plausible. Furthermore, since it should technically be possible for anybody to "fake" an MS Messenger client and thus do all kinds of damage, perhaps they should instead concentrate on making their servers secure so that the client is unimportant.
I feel distributors of faulty OS's are truely to blame.
Here's what really got me. Microsoft had an information page about the virus and how to update your system to make it invulnerable. Then, for those that already had the virus, they had links to the vendors of virus protection software for removal of the virus. My question is, if it was so darn important, and if they really cared, why didn't they just provide a simple removal tool right there for download? I think anybody running Windows on the Internet without a virus scanner is an idiot, but for those who fall into that category, wouldn't it have been better to just provide a removal tool?
Another argument [made by many others] is the FSF is all about the free speech issues. Removing support for political reasons sets a dangerous precedent.
Yeah, but this is sort of a Catch-22 issue. In this case, SCO is endangering the very beliefs held by the FSF. If they do nothing, their own freedoms may be lost. If they do something, they violate their own principles.
Let's just hope that IBM pounds the heck out of SCO and nobody has to worry about this kind of stuff.
GCC has enough problems on its own to work out. Adding the extra trouble of removing and adding SCO support isn't something they should add to the pile of things to fix.
I'd never suggest that they do this. Just dropping support (without making special changes to do so) would be good enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, as mentioned earlier, TV sets. A much greater possibility I would think.
You've latched onto something important. Everybody is focusing on how idiotic suing someone over the shift key is, but they haven't read the original paper. The paper is chock full of an explanations about how to defeat the copy protection scheme. Prime fodder for trial by DMCA. However, since the copy-protection scheme relies on a mechanism within windows that has historically been frequently disabled by many users, the history of such may be used in defense of the author. The author did not actually do anything to disable the copy protection. He merely pointed out that protection method wouldn't work on a significant number of machines right out of the box.
Which, IMHO is a heck of a lot better than "Star Trek: Voyager" ever was.
Yes, but if you look at the language which was added by the No Electronic Theft Act, you see that if the monetary value of infringement is high enough, even acts of infringement for non-commercial purposes can be prosecuted. According to the language, if I ripped one track off of one of my CD's and put it in the public directory for Kazaa or another P2P utility, it's possible that sufficient downloads of that song by others could result in monetary damages high enough to trigger criminal charges. However, I agree with you that this probably isn't the intent of the law, and that any judge with a shred of intelligence would probably throw such charges out of court.
Uh, you might want to check again. Titles 17 and 18 (referred to in title 17), as well as ammendments in the No Electronic Theft Act provide for criminal fines and imprisonment. Granted, these seem to be aimed more at the commercial pirate, but could be easily applied (or mis-applied) to serious downloaders or even somebody who shared a single song with enough people. At present, our lawmakers are discussing new laws with sharper teeth.
Do you want to borrow my hat? :-)
The answer is obvious. It's all about money. There is far more money to be made in a civil proceeding. The fact that the RIAA pursues the matter this way clearly indicates their real motive. It's not just about stopping piracy. It's about seeing what kind of income they can make while stopping the piracy.
Yeah, I know. Part of the humor was in waiting to see how long it would take somebody to "bite" the bait. :-)
You know what really bugs me about this? About 10 years ago, I used to use Unix + X-Windows all the time, and I really liked the focus following the mouse. Everytime I had to use Windows, the lack of it bugged me. Now I'm forced to use Windows by the place I currently work at, and since I have to do without this feature most of the time, I actually have trouble adjusting to it when I manage to sit down in front of X-Windows again. I usually end up turning it off because I just can't get used to it in the little amount of time I'll have. Sad, eh?
While I'm not saying that there is no truth to this statement, I have a hard time believing it's as bad as it sounds. We've been living in the United States for years and have almost always had fluoride in our water. My wife frequently boils water for tea and only cleans the pot about once a week. We've never had any trouble with it, so although it may be more toxic than cyanide, it must be at a really low concentration.
Nevertheless, for those who are sensitive to fluorine and any molecules it participates in, the UK government should be held responsible. If they are going to force everybody to have fluoride in their water, they should pay for bottled water for those who have medically proven problems with the fluoride.
Sorry...can't resist...
Source Code for Prevayler V1.0
No, we can't get any fatter. If we do, the couch won't recognize us.
Well, the latest round of viruses could CERTAINLY be called Windows Viruses. They had nothing to do with e-mail and opening of attachments....
But, if you want to get specific, the attachment based viruses COULD be called "Outlook Viruses," but they use components delivered with Windows to read and display the attachments, and therefore calling them "Windows Viruses" is appropriate.
Two, what does your inbox have to do with an ATM?
What does your inbox have to do with an RPC exploit?
I'm so sick of anti-Windows FUD. A lot of Linux users do exactly what they preach against
I'm sorry you feel that this is FUD, but I honestly wouldn't use any software produced by Microsoft for a mission critical system. I've always said that Microsoft makes good user interfaces and great programming tools, but stability and security have taken second place on their priority list.
Sorry for the late reply -- I was on vacation. You make a good point, and I think I agree with you.
I'm not sure if I agree with myself, but shouldn't it be opt-in by default, and presumably the people with a clue will know how to opt out? After all, the clueless in the world won't even figure out that they SHOULD opt in. Since the infected machines of the clueless mess up the internet experience for pretty much everyone, this makes sense to me. Of course, there should be some prominent notification so that those of us who know what we are doing can opt-out if we so choose.
I don't think the parent poster made any comments about WHAT the punishment should be, so please don't start citing rather harsh treatments to make your argument look more interesting. You could have just as easily made the statement, "By your rationale, we should start putting graffiti artists in jail for a month because that would be 'something of a deterrent.'".
Anyway, consider the fact that even though this guy only modified an existing virus, his crimes are EXACTLY the same as those of the original programmer. Writing a virus isn't a crime. Unleashing it and causing damage (economic or physical) to the property of others IS a crime. By modifying the virus, he created a new pattern that virus scanners would not recognize and thus was able to create similar damage as that of the original virus. Please explain to me how this isn't as bad as what the original author did.
My argument, by the way, is similar to ones made against the DMCA. The DMCA is being used to prosecute people who construct devices that CAN by used to circumvent copy protection. However, I think most of us agree that the real culprits are those that use it for such. In the case of viruses, if I construct a new virus, but never let it loose, am I guilty? If you manage to swipe a copy of the virus while you're at a LAN party at my house and then let it loose, aren't you the guilty one? If both of us unleash copies of the virus, aren't we both guilty?
Actually, I've found that MOST video games improve my son's hearing ability... or rather the selectivity of it. You can ask him direct questions really loudly and he will ignore you. Mutter a side comment to someone else about turning off the video game, and he's all ears.
Sure they can. It's the already existing drivers to which they can't be retrofitted. It didn't take me long to adapt to them while driving in England, but then again I knew in advance to look out for them. Adding one in some place like New Jersey requires getting all the drivers to come for training or at least pay attention to some sort of directions, which is almost impossible to do. The best thing that could be done is to station a police officer beside each roundabout for a full year and have them pull every single person who screws it up. Word of mouth will eventually take care of the rest. The chances of something like that happening? Nill.
You probably know it as a "traffic circle."
The same is true in Germany. Plus, many people in the US will take the last couple weeks of August through Labor day this year (since Labor day is 1-Sep).
Well, yeah there is, although it's a little lame. If this is a "critical" system that has to be running all the time, they are probably loathe to update it until a scheduled maintenance downtime. They can't have automatic updates running on a critical system like this, as an update itself might crash the system.
Why is this argument lame? Well, they should have (maybe they do) a backup system. They should have been able to switch to backup long enough to perform the upgrade and test it.
We'd like them to be more conscious of it in their own code first. Since that hasn't yet happened, accusations from Microsoft against lack of security in third-party code that they probably haven't even seen can hardly be considered plausible. Furthermore, since it should technically be possible for anybody to "fake" an MS Messenger client and thus do all kinds of damage, perhaps they should instead concentrate on making their servers secure so that the client is unimportant.
Here's what really got me. Microsoft had an information page about the virus and how to update your system to make it invulnerable. Then, for those that already had the virus, they had links to the vendors of virus protection software for removal of the virus. My question is, if it was so darn important, and if they really cared, why didn't they just provide a simple removal tool right there for download? I think anybody running Windows on the Internet without a virus scanner is an idiot, but for those who fall into that category, wouldn't it have been better to just provide a removal tool?
That would be my interpretation too. It makes sense because uninfected machines with port 135 open can soon become infected machines.
Yeah, but this is sort of a Catch-22 issue. In this case, SCO is endangering the very beliefs held by the FSF. If they do nothing, their own freedoms may be lost. If they do something, they violate their own principles.
Let's just hope that IBM pounds the heck out of SCO and nobody has to worry about this kind of stuff.
I'd never suggest that they do this. Just dropping support (without making special changes to do so) would be good enough.