On the other hand, I have to point out that the OBVIOUS solution is to start charging by bandwidth.
Yes, that is what I am arguing for. No, I'm not happy about it, since I probably belong to the group of people who are using more than they pay for from the broadband account. But there is no sane option.
I think most people get turned off by metered services because of companies have been using them as an excuse for exorbitant prices in the past - but it doesn't have to be that way. It does mean that the end of these sort of wireless connection sharing schemes, as well as all the filesharing networks, but that is what micropayments are for (no I don't advocate micropayments on a user layer, but on an infrasturcture layer, like Mojonation are trying to do).
it would force me to be worrying all the time "am I downloading something here that's too big? Will I be billed for this?"
By that same logic, shouldn't you be worrying about what it costed you every time you eat a little food as it is? We are adults, we are supposed to be able to budget ourselves, and supposed to be able to handle costs, even when they are incremental.
I'd rather pay a little extra for the convenience of the flat fee.
Though you complimented my analogy, you really didn't understand it. Maybe I would prefer the All You Can Eat Supermarket model, even if it meant a little inconvenience, and even if it was actually more expensive for me (just like you with the ISP). Maybe I would even be a good citizen and respect the TOS. Maybe there are many people like me. Does that mean that the All You Can Eat Supermarket works? NO, because there would still be enough people who were going to abuse that it would be driven out of business - and trying to actually enforce the TOS would mean a loss of freedom for everybody - even those who don't even shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket. Society cannot protect businesses that try to base their income on unenforcable contracts at the cost of freedom to everybody - even if the business seems like a good idea to both customer and seller alike. That goes for food stores, ISPs, and (though we won't discuss that today) copyright holders.
Having seen the wonderful success that the "all you can eat" model has had in buffé resturaunts, I started the All You Can Eat Supermarket (tm). The model is simple, people come in to the store every day, and for a low price, they can take as much food as they wish to eat that day.
Of course, on entering, you have to sign the "Terms of Shopping" agreements, that by which you promise not to:
- Take food and then decide not to eat it.
- Share food with others.
- Save your food for another day.
- Eat more than three meals a day.
- Puke after ingesting the food.
If somebody signs these agreements, then they should stick to them, shouldn't they? If they aren't, then they are STEALING from me. If they don't like the terms, they don't have to shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket (R) at all.
Well, it turns out that there is actually a large population (an you believe it!) of lowlife scum, who come to the All You Can Eat Supermarkey (TM), and then go home and feed their entire families with the food, or refrigerate leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day! If that is allowed to continue, then I will loose business, and people will loose their jobs!
Therefore, I am on my way to Washington to lobby for the passing of strict laws that allow monitoring of all food consumption of all people, so that this wholesale stealing of food cannot be done. So maybe that might hurt peoples privacy, integrity, and freedom - but how will business survive without it?
I refer to Free Software as a philosophy and as a development model. I don't care about whatever loopholes you can find to the GPL: personally, I think we should get rid of copyright all together, including the portions of the GPL that depend on it (that would be the source code requirement, the rest is automatically fullfilled).
USERS have the right to change how websites are displayed on their computers. Other companies don't.
Other companies have a right to do it if the user condones it, and if you read my comment to the end, you would see that that is exactly what I said. But read a lot of the other posts in this discussion and the previous one on this issue, that is not what they are saying.
There is a problem here, but it is completely orthoganol to what these programs do once they are installed - and that is that they are sneaking their way into peoples computers. It is possible that having them do so is criminal - but it is a crime against the USER, and the USER ONLY: if we start to drag in the website publishers then we are supporting the notion that programs are somehow responsible to somebody else then the person using them, just as the ??AA want it.
And regarding the problem with these programs being installed, IMHO people who use non-Free software have it coming. All the programs they use are by definition written to the advantage of somebody other then the user - why should they be surprised that more often then not this works by fucking the user over in one way or another?
I see a concerning tendency in these discussions for people who normally seem to understand that the other people cannot be allowed to dictate how we run our computers, to suddenly label this sort of software as evil.
Just like I will not allow the movie industry to be in control over my computer when I watch a DVD, and the Publishing industry cannot be in control of my computer/palmtop when I read a book, the Internet's website publishers have NO right to demand that I view their sites in any particular manner. Software that replaces adds with others, or software that adds links to websites, has as much a right to exist as any other software. If I choose to run it, then it is my freedom to do so - if you do not like people being able to read your documents while replacing the adds, I would suggest you stop putting your content on the web in the first place - not that you demand that web browsers should suddenly serve you rather than the person browsing.
User agents must serve the user and only the user. Demanding that browsers serve the interests and expectations of website publishers is in no way different from demanding that DVD players serve the interests and expectations of the MPAA, and that MP3 player serve the interests and expectations of the RIAA. The concept that of these "User Hostile" agents is the basis for the future that those who are attacking Freedom on the Internet are planning. If we value freedom and self determination in the information age, we cannot in any case condone and support an attitude that preaches that software is responsible to anybody except the person using it - even when it is the form of sleazy marketing.
That said, there is of course a more sinister angle to what these programs are doing - that is that they sneak their way into peoples computers without people realizing it. That we should not condone - but let us face it, it will be impossible to get away from as long as people are using software written without the intentions of the user in mind. We already have the solution to that problem, it is called Free Software, and there is enough of it to cover every computing need. When was last time you got a piece of spyware off apt-get?
So in closing, do not confuse the issues here:
- Programs installing functionality the user didn't ask for or want = BAD
- Programs doing what they (and presumable the user, given the previous) wants rather than what the website owner/music company/film company/book publisher/etc wants = GOOD
It obvious why. It's because you never see the ones that get modded down.
I have been reading Slashdot at threshold -1 for the last 2 years, and I have never seen one either. The truth is that whining about Linux' usibility is the predominant opinion around here - yet all the whiners seem to get off on thinking they are doing good by challenging everybody with their revelations (that we have heard a million times before). I wonder what it would take for these arrogant pricks to realize that the reason their "brilliant" (read: obvious) ideas haven't been pursued in the past is because nobody has coded them, not because nobody has thought of them.
Of course, it would probably be an improvement around here if the whiners _did_ get moderated down to -1, even if that meant the goatsex trolls made it to +5....
I think most scholars read 666 as the number resulting from the reading of Nero Caesar's name as a number - thus "the number of the name" (and also why it is sometimes 616, which is what you get if you use Nero in latin rather than hebrew).
Of course, using a more modern way of turning a name into a number (glorious ASCII) does bring it into line with with the MS passport theory...
Honestly, I don't think you want players that are updatable (the Philips site says that Rush, their solid state player, is), because you'll never know when they'll try to sneak down the latest User Hostile fuckware with an upgrade, being the slaves of the evil industry that they are (no, they probably wouldn't make a player suddenly stop reading MP3s for some encrypted format, but they could stop reading files with certain watermarks (the SDMI plan)).
Forget hardware players - they are too easy targets for control by the powers of evil. Liberation lies in software players on generic handhelds - which can play OGG files without having to go begging to some company like Windows users...
It's used to differentiate between the very strange english homonym for "without price" and "having freedom" (and the other 17 meanings .
If you get "free beer" that would imply that you got without cost, not that beer was liberated from servitude. So if something is "free as in beer", then it has no cost.
OTOH if have "free speech" that you have freedom to speak as you will, not that you don't have to put a coin in the slot every time you feel like talking.
IANAL (l=linguist) but to me English seems to be pretty alone in having this confusion, as most European languages seem to use words derived from latin gratis for no cost (cf 'gratitude') and liber for freedom (cf 'liberated').
Maybe says something about the cultural mentality...
They are not comparable. With Freenet, we are trying to achieve a very specific task - publishing data and making it available in a manner that disassociates with any physical location. The Freenet protocol works for this task, and this task only - it would not be possible to implement anything like jxta over Freenet, and nor would it be (regardless of what people who do not understand the technology may say) possible to implement Freenet, or anything like it, within jxta.
From what I understand, and while I'll disclaim that I could be wrong I did read through the specifications, jxta is basically a generalized Gnutella. To begin with, the idea seems nice enough: Why is Gnutella limited to searching for string matches, wouldn't it be nicer if messages could carry arbitrary queries so that one could use the same network to ask for "Porn jpgs matching \BIG BOOBIES\" and "2 billion computer cycles to render BIG_BOOBIES.3ds"?
Yes, it would be nicer, but then, the limitation of searches is not really Gnutella biggest problem , is it? Gnutella's biggest problem is scalability and performance, and - this is what people don't seem to want to hear - by generalizing the queries completely, you have closed the door on trying to make this any better (for searching to work without broadcast you need either sorting or (centralized) indexing - arbitrary queries are neither sortable nor indexable). And for that reason you cannot implement and network like Freenet, or Oceanstore, or Chord, or anything that even attempts to optimize routing beyond the everybody-screams-at-the-top-of-their-voice approach, on top of Jxta.
The interoperability bug that has caught certain people in regards to the group of programs called "P2" is misguided. It is like "standards" and "interoperability" has become such a holy cow in many circles that people will simply not hear the physical arguments for why interoperable fire and water simply isn't a very good idea for either.Not that it really matters - all the people I have met who are actually doing anything worthwhile in this are seem to understand this very well.
For those who don't get what Jxta is good for, don't worry, it took me a while too, but I think I have it.
Jxta is an attempt to combine XML, Java, and Gnutella. Obviously, this unholy hybrid can have only one purpose - to make a computer program so slow time runs backwards!
I'm guessing that they would probably get in trouble with NYTs legal department if they did. For a while the registration free server was called "partners" making it quite clear that only NYT partners were allowed to link to it.
Yes, it is stupid as fuck to put pages on the web and tell people they can't link to them, and yes it is ironic as hell when it is regarding an about sanity in Internet laws, but you can never overestimate the the level of hyporcrisy possible from corporations...
It _is_ quite benign.
on
Code Redux
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Besides the load of the spread (which is probably made signficantly better by having the worm mostly scanning on it's own subnet) CodeRed2 is quite benign.
Yes, it does open a remote root exploit, but the servers that got infected were already wide open due to the default.ida hole. Sure, it's easier now, but since there are simple exploits for default.ida already, any script-kiddie worth the name could already have walked straight into these computers.
In truth, I figure that the people who have made most use of this exploit has been geeks who would ordinarily never break into systems, but have been made curious about where the worms are coming from (of course, _I_ would never do such a thing... really...)
in crypto circles this "secret number" is called the "key". do you really expect them to give you the key to their encryption scheme??
If my computer is encrypting and decrypting things with that key, then fucking hell yes I expect to have access to it. For all the talk of property rights, the FUCKware proponents are quick to forget who the terminals belong to...
If somebody is keeping me from steeling by locking MY door so I cannot go outside I damn well have cause to complain. Under certain conditions it may well be justified, it may well be justified to do so (it is called being thrown jail), but threshhold before my freedoms are removed in such a manner must be large (which is why before we throw people in jail, we have courts, reasonable doubt, and inocent until proven guilty).
IBMs technology proposes to lock everybody's digital doors, guilty or not, and give the keys to corporations who can let us out only when they are sure they will be able control us. You may submit yourself to a collective jailing of the entire population of the Internet because you believe that the potential to share an MP3 is such a heinious crime, but I sure as hell will not.
I think it is a little poor style on behalf of the Slashdot editors to
accept that 9/10ths of my question was cut off. I could rightfully claim
that the first sentence of my question was taken out of context by
excluding the rest of it, and even if IBM don't feel like responding my
later points, Slashdot could have re-added them before publishing the
responses.
I really think these are two entirely separate issues. Our support of
the Open Source movement is based on the belief that with certain
technologies, such as Linux, innovation can be spurred through
collaboration and the free exchange of ideas. Open Source works on the
basic premise of constant change, evolution and improvement of the code
by the community.
It is interesting to note that IBM does not believe that collaboration
and free exchange of ideas are good ideas in general (especially in
light of image they are trying to uphold), but that being beside the
point so I won't linger on it.
On the other hand, our involvement with efforts such as CPRM and SDMI
respects the right that some content providers have to protect their
intellectual assets if they choose to do so. Technical protection
measures are an important way to provide that protection. The content
that would be protected here -- most likely music, video and other art
forms -- is unlike open source code in that it was is not designed to be
modified by the masses or freely distributed.
Regardless of goal at hand, CPRM and SDMI are both software mesaures.
They function by the software on my computer acting against my interest
on behalf of a copyright holder. Software that is open for the user to
study and change, and software that acts against him in order to control
his actions, are contradicitory and not the slightest bit independent.
CPRM and SDMI act to "respect the rights" of some "cotent providers" by
suppressing the very freedoms that Free and open software grant, and
suppress the effects of innovation that those freedoms grant us. IBM
must know that it is total bullshit to claim that they are seperate or
can coexist as philosophies.
(By the way, CPRM is open
-- the cipher and algorithms, along with sample code -- are
published.)
Oh, so you mean that should I buy a computer that has been infected with
IBM CPRM technology, I will be able to modify to my own liking the CPRM
code in it. I'm so sorry I didn't understand that [/deep
dripping sarcasm].
For us, what it comes down to is supporting the rights of all content
creators to make their own choice. If you want to distribute your
intellectual property openly and freely, that's great and we'll support
you. As you know, not every software vendor is willing to make that
commitment. And if you're an individual or organization that wants or
needs to protect your digital content, we will develop solutions that
work for you while offering maximum value and ease of use to consumers
and helping to create an environment where all Internet content
providers coexist peacefully.
Except that the people to whoom you are pushing the computers
implementing the "solutions that offer the maximum value for [content
providers]" are not individuals and organisations that want it, but
those who you are trying ensnare by binding this technology to hardware
standards that they do not know to, and often cannot, avoid.
The question is whether IBM is committed to, via free and open software,
allow users to regain the freedom of control over their own computers
that have been robbed of them at the hands of Microsoft, or if IBM is
committed to finally and irrevocably take away that control in order to
befenfite those who would seek gain the maximum value from your
consumers. In a way, I feel you just answered it.
It seems that it is not uncommon to have English-named programs in foriegn countries. For some reason, it doesn't work the other way quite as well, though. I can't think of any foreign-titled shows in the U.S.
Yeah, like those US search engines that never use german names for their statistics...
I doubt it. I think it's more likely that most porn searchers are actually so lame they don't know about Google but use whatever comes up when they press "search" on their browsers...
Most people who are clued in enough to use a decent search engine are also know that searching for porn only leads to javascript traps.
The guy in the interview is a marketing director. IBM is marketing itself as a company that supports Free software and open computing while their actions show that they are willing to take the center-stage in technological movements out to do the exact opposite. If that is not hipocrisy, then what it?
Would you defend an oil company marketing itself as environmentally friendly while in truth not giving a shit about nature on the same grounds?
No doubt there are people at IBM with different opinions on these issues, but I am asking for the position of IBM as a corporate entity. Large as it may be, IBM is still a single corporate entity, and cannot escape from the label of hipocrisy if it practices are inreconciable with what it preaches.
How can IBM reconcile it's spoken commitment to Linux and Free software software with it's center-stage activity in projects like CPRM on harddisks and SDMI for music?
Even if IBM does not recognize that these user hostile technologies are at 180 degrees to the ethics and values on which the society in which they wish to parktake are based, how do they believe that these technologies, which rely on laws to keep the user from working around them, can possibly made compatible with an open software model?
Does IBM believe that they continue to use the Linux and Free software message of Freedom and cooperation ("Peace, love, linux") as a corporate image while working on technologies whose only purpose is the control users and take away their natural freedoms?
How does IBM as a corporation stand in regard to the American DMCA and similiar acts internationally within the WIPO treaties, which many Free software developers consider a threat to our movement?
I didn't say that there wasn't any content, just that all the content is built on top of a model where the only two actions are putting something in, and taking it out again (I mean requesting, not removing). The same thing goes for all of the various more advanced protocols. Also that we are loosing a lot data from the network at the moment, which is true, but I am hopeful that I will be able to improve that by the end of the summer.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, I have to point out that the OBVIOUS solution is to start charging by bandwidth.
Yes, that is what I am arguing for. No, I'm not happy about it, since I probably belong to the group of people who are using more than they pay for from the broadband account. But there is no sane option.
I think most people get turned off by metered services because of companies have been using them as an excuse for exorbitant prices in the past - but it doesn't have to be that way. It does mean that the end of these sort of wireless connection sharing schemes, as well as all the filesharing networks, but that is what micropayments are for (no I don't advocate micropayments on a user layer, but on an infrasturcture layer, like Mojonation are trying to do).
it would force me to be worrying all the time "am I downloading something here that's too big? Will I be billed for this?"
By that same logic, shouldn't you be worrying about what it costed you every time you eat a little food as it is? We are adults, we are supposed to be able to budget ourselves, and supposed to be able to handle costs, even when they are incremental.
I'd rather pay a little extra for the convenience of the flat fee.
Though you complimented my analogy, you really didn't understand it. Maybe I would prefer the All You Can Eat Supermarket model, even if it meant a little inconvenience, and even if it was actually more expensive for me (just like you with the ISP). Maybe I would even be a good citizen and respect the TOS. Maybe there are many people like me. Does that mean that the All You Can Eat Supermarket works? NO, because there would still be enough people who were going to abuse that it would be driven out of business - and trying to actually enforce the TOS would mean a loss of freedom for everybody - even those who don't even shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket. Society cannot protect businesses that try to base their income on unenforcable contracts at the cost of freedom to everybody - even if the business seems like a good idea to both customer and seller alike. That goes for food stores, ISPs, and (though we won't discuss that today) copyright holders.
Having seen the wonderful success that the "all you can eat" model has had in buffé resturaunts, I started the All You Can Eat Supermarket (tm). The model is simple, people come in to the store every day, and for a low price, they can take as much food as they wish to eat that day.
Of course, on entering, you have to sign the "Terms of Shopping" agreements, that by which you promise not to:
- Take food and then decide not to eat it.
- Share food with others.
- Save your food for another day.
- Eat more than three meals a day.
- Puke after ingesting the food.
If somebody signs these agreements, then they should stick to them, shouldn't they? If they aren't, then they are STEALING from me. If they don't like the terms, they don't have to shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket (R) at all.
Well, it turns out that there is actually a large population (an you believe it!) of lowlife scum, who come to the All You Can Eat Supermarkey (TM), and then go home and feed their entire families with the food, or refrigerate leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day! If that is allowed to continue, then I will loose business, and people will loose their jobs!
Therefore, I am on my way to Washington to lobby for the passing of strict laws that allow monitoring of all food consumption of all people, so that this wholesale stealing of food cannot be done. So maybe that might hurt peoples privacy, integrity, and freedom - but how will business survive without it?
I refer to Free Software as a philosophy and as a development model. I don't care about whatever loopholes you can find to the GPL: personally, I think we should get rid of copyright all together, including the portions of the GPL that depend on it (that would be the source code requirement, the rest is automatically fullfilled).
USERS have the right to change how websites are displayed on their computers. Other companies don't.
Other companies have a right to do it if the user condones it, and if you read my comment to the end, you would see that that is exactly what I said. But read a lot of the other posts in this discussion and the previous one on this issue, that is not what they are saying.
There is a problem here, but it is completely orthoganol to what these programs do once they are installed - and that is that they are sneaking their way into peoples computers. It is possible that having them do so is criminal - but it is a crime against the USER, and the USER ONLY: if we start to drag in the website publishers then we are supporting the notion that programs are somehow responsible to somebody else then the person using them, just as the ??AA want it.
And regarding the problem with these programs being installed, IMHO people who use non-Free software have it coming. All the programs they use are by definition written to the advantage of somebody other then the user - why should they be surprised that more often then not this works by fucking the user over in one way or another?
I see a concerning tendency in these discussions for people who normally seem to understand that the other people cannot be allowed to dictate how we run our computers, to suddenly label this sort of software as evil.
Just like I will not allow the movie industry to be in control over my computer when I watch a DVD, and the Publishing industry cannot be in control of my computer/palmtop when I read a book, the Internet's website publishers have NO right to demand that I view their sites in any particular manner. Software that replaces adds with others, or software that adds links to websites, has as much a right to exist as any other software. If I choose to run it, then it is my freedom to do so - if you do not like people being able to read your documents while replacing the adds, I would suggest you stop putting your content on the web in the first place - not that you demand that web browsers should suddenly serve you rather than the person browsing.
User agents must serve the user and only the user. Demanding that browsers serve the interests and expectations of website publishers is in no way different from demanding that DVD players serve the interests and expectations of the MPAA, and that MP3 player serve the interests and expectations of the RIAA. The concept that of these "User Hostile" agents is the basis for the future that those who are attacking Freedom on the Internet are planning. If we value freedom and self determination in the information age, we cannot in any case condone and support an attitude that preaches that software is responsible to anybody except the person using it - even when it is the form of sleazy marketing.
That said, there is of course a more sinister angle to what these programs are doing - that is that they sneak their way into peoples computers without people realizing it. That we should not condone - but let us face it, it will be impossible to get away from as long as people are using software written without the intentions of the user in mind. We already have the solution to that problem, it is called Free Software, and there is enough of it to cover every computing need. When was last time you got a piece of spyware off apt-get?
So in closing, do not confuse the issues here:
- Programs installing functionality the user didn't ask for or want = BAD
- Programs doing what they (and presumable the user, given the previous) wants rather than what the website owner/music company/film company/book publisher/etc wants = GOOD
It obvious why. It's because you never see the ones that get modded down.
I have been reading Slashdot at threshold -1 for the last 2 years, and I have never seen one either. The truth is that whining about Linux' usibility is the predominant opinion around here - yet all the whiners seem to get off on thinking they are doing good by challenging everybody with their revelations (that we have heard a million times before). I wonder what it would take for these arrogant pricks to realize that the reason their "brilliant" (read: obvious) ideas haven't been pursued in the past is because nobody has coded them, not because nobody has thought of them.
Of course, it would probably be an improvement around here if the whiners _did_ get moderated down to -1, even if that meant the goatsex trolls made it to +5....
I think most scholars read 666 as the number resulting from the reading of Nero Caesar's name as a number - thus "the number of the name" (and also why it is sometimes 616, which is what you get if you use Nero in latin rather than hebrew).
Of course, using a more modern way of turning a name into a number (glorious ASCII) does bring it into line with with the MS passport theory...
(just testing, I'm sure the troll won't mind)
Honestly, I don't think you want players that are updatable (the Philips site says that Rush, their solid state player, is), because you'll never know when they'll try to sneak down the latest User Hostile fuckware with an upgrade, being the slaves of the evil industry that they are (no, they probably wouldn't make a player suddenly stop reading MP3s for some encrypted format, but they could stop reading files with certain watermarks (the SDMI plan)).
Forget hardware players - they are too easy targets for control by the powers of evil. Liberation lies in software players on generic handhelds - which can play OGG files without having to go begging to some company like Windows users...
It's used to differentiate between the very strange english homonym for "without price" and "having freedom" (and the other 17 meanings .
If you get "free beer" that would imply that you got without cost, not that beer was liberated from servitude. So if something is "free as in beer", then it has no cost.
OTOH if have "free speech" that you have freedom to speak as you will, not that you don't have to put a coin in the slot every time you feel like talking.
IANAL (l=linguist) but to me English seems to be pretty alone in having this confusion, as most European languages seem to use words derived from latin gratis for no cost (cf 'gratitude') and liber for freedom (cf 'liberated').
Maybe says something about the cultural mentality...
If you require that the queries have a certain characteristic, then they are no longer arbitrary.
They are not comparable. With Freenet, we are trying to achieve a very specific task - publishing data and making it available in a manner that disassociates with any physical location. The Freenet protocol works for this task, and this task only - it would not be possible to implement anything like jxta over Freenet, and nor would it be (regardless of what people who do not understand the technology may say) possible to implement Freenet, or anything like it, within jxta.
From what I understand, and while I'll disclaim that I could be wrong I did read through the specifications, jxta is basically a generalized Gnutella. To begin with, the idea seems nice enough: Why is Gnutella limited to searching for string matches, wouldn't it be nicer if messages could carry arbitrary queries so that one could use the same network to ask for "Porn jpgs matching \BIG BOOBIES\" and "2 billion computer cycles to render BIG_BOOBIES.3ds"?
Yes, it would be nicer, but then, the limitation of searches is not really Gnutella biggest problem , is it? Gnutella's biggest problem is scalability and performance, and - this is what people don't seem to want to hear - by generalizing the queries completely, you have closed the door on trying to make this any better (for searching to work without broadcast you need either sorting or (centralized) indexing - arbitrary queries are neither sortable nor indexable). And for that reason you cannot implement and network like Freenet, or Oceanstore, or Chord, or anything that even attempts to optimize routing beyond the everybody-screams-at-the-top-of-their-voice approach, on top of Jxta.
The interoperability bug that has caught certain people in regards to the group of programs called "P2" is misguided. It is like "standards" and "interoperability" has become such a holy cow in many circles that people will simply not hear the physical arguments for why interoperable fire and water simply isn't a very good idea for either.Not that it really matters - all the people I have met who are actually doing anything worthwhile in this are seem to understand this very well.
For those who don't get what Jxta is good for, don't worry, it took me a while too, but I think I have it.
Jxta is an attempt to combine XML, Java, and Gnutella. Obviously, this unholy hybrid can have only one purpose - to make a computer program so slow time runs backwards!
I'm guessing that they would probably get in trouble with NYTs legal department if they did. For a while the registration free server was called "partners" making it quite clear that only NYT partners were allowed to link to it.
Yes, it is stupid as fuck to put pages on the web and tell people they can't link to them, and yes it is ironic as hell when it is regarding an about sanity in Internet laws, but you can never overestimate the the level of hyporcrisy possible from corporations...
Besides the load of the spread (which is probably made signficantly better by having the worm mostly scanning on it's own subnet) CodeRed2 is quite benign.
Yes, it does open a remote root exploit, but the servers that got infected were already wide open due to the default.ida hole. Sure, it's easier now, but since there are simple exploits for default.ida already, any script-kiddie worth the name could already have walked straight into these computers.
In truth, I figure that the people who have made most use of this exploit has been geeks who would ordinarily never break into systems, but have been made curious about where the worms are coming from (of course, _I_ would never do such a thing... really...)
in crypto circles this "secret number" is called the "key". do you really expect them to give you the key to their encryption scheme??
If my computer is encrypting and decrypting things with that key, then fucking hell yes I expect to have access to it. For all the talk of property rights, the FUCKware proponents are quick to forget who the terminals belong to...
If somebody is keeping me from steeling by locking MY door so I cannot go outside I damn well have cause to complain. Under certain conditions it may well be justified, it may well be justified to do so (it is called being thrown jail), but threshhold before my freedoms are removed in such a manner must be large (which is why before we throw people in jail, we have courts, reasonable doubt, and inocent until proven guilty).
IBMs technology proposes to lock everybody's digital doors, guilty or not, and give the keys to corporations who can let us out only when they are sure they will be able control us. You may submit yourself to a collective jailing of the entire population of the Internet because you believe that the potential to share an MP3 is such a heinious crime, but I sure as hell will not.
I think it is a little poor style on behalf of the Slashdot editors to accept that 9/10ths of my question was cut off. I could rightfully claim that the first sentence of my question was taken out of context by excluding the rest of it, and even if IBM don't feel like responding my later points, Slashdot could have re-added them before publishing the responses.
I really think these are two entirely separate issues. Our support of the Open Source movement is based on the belief that with certain technologies, such as Linux, innovation can be spurred through collaboration and the free exchange of ideas. Open Source works on the basic premise of constant change, evolution and improvement of the code by the community.
It is interesting to note that IBM does not believe that collaboration and free exchange of ideas are good ideas in general (especially in light of image they are trying to uphold), but that being beside the point so I won't linger on it.
On the other hand, our involvement with efforts such as CPRM and SDMI respects the right that some content providers have to protect their intellectual assets if they choose to do so. Technical protection measures are an important way to provide that protection. The content that would be protected here -- most likely music, video and other art forms -- is unlike open source code in that it was is not designed to be modified by the masses or freely distributed.
Regardless of goal at hand, CPRM and SDMI are both software mesaures. They function by the software on my computer acting against my interest on behalf of a copyright holder. Software that is open for the user to study and change, and software that acts against him in order to control his actions, are contradicitory and not the slightest bit independent.
CPRM and SDMI act to "respect the rights" of some "cotent providers" by suppressing the very freedoms that Free and open software grant, and suppress the effects of innovation that those freedoms grant us. IBM must know that it is total bullshit to claim that they are seperate or can coexist as philosophies.
(By the way, CPRM is open -- the cipher and algorithms, along with sample code -- are published.)
Oh, so you mean that should I buy a computer that has been infected with IBM CPRM technology, I will be able to modify to my own liking the CPRM code in it. I'm so sorry I didn't understand that [/deep dripping sarcasm].
For us, what it comes down to is supporting the rights of all content creators to make their own choice. If you want to distribute your intellectual property openly and freely, that's great and we'll support you. As you know, not every software vendor is willing to make that commitment. And if you're an individual or organization that wants or needs to protect your digital content, we will develop solutions that work for you while offering maximum value and ease of use to consumers and helping to create an environment where all Internet content providers coexist peacefully.
Except that the people to whoom you are pushing the computers implementing the "solutions that offer the maximum value for [content providers]" are not individuals and organisations that want it, but those who you are trying ensnare by binding this technology to hardware standards that they do not know to, and often cannot, avoid.
The question is whether IBM is committed to, via free and open software, allow users to regain the freedom of control over their own computers that have been robbed of them at the hands of Microsoft, or if IBM is committed to finally and irrevocably take away that control in order to befenfite those who would seek gain the maximum value from your consumers. In a way, I feel you just answered it.
It seems that it is not uncommon to have English-named programs in foriegn countries. For some reason, it doesn't work the other way quite as well, though. I can't think of any foreign-titled shows in the U.S.
Yeah, like those US search engines that never use german names for their statistics...
I doubt it. I think it's more likely that most porn searchers are actually so lame they don't know about Google but use whatever comes up when they press "search" on their browsers...
Most people who are clued in enough to use a decent search engine are also know that searching for porn only leads to javascript traps.
If that is so, please outline an open source implementation of such a technology...
The guy in the interview is a marketing director. IBM is marketing itself as a company that supports Free software and open computing while their actions show that they are willing to take the center-stage in technological movements out to do the exact opposite. If that is not hipocrisy, then what it?
Would you defend an oil company marketing itself as environmentally friendly while in truth not giving a shit about nature on the same grounds?
No doubt there are people at IBM with different opinions on these issues, but I am asking for the position of IBM as a corporate entity. Large as it may be, IBM is still a single corporate entity, and cannot escape from the label of hipocrisy if it practices are inreconciable with what it preaches.
How can IBM reconcile it's spoken commitment to Linux and Free software software with it's center-stage activity in projects like CPRM on harddisks and SDMI for music?
Even if IBM does not recognize that these user hostile technologies are at 180 degrees to the ethics and values on which the society in which they wish to parktake are based, how do they believe that these technologies, which rely on laws to keep the user from working around them, can possibly made compatible with an open software model?
Does IBM believe that they continue to use the Linux and Free software message of Freedom and cooperation ("Peace, love, linux") as a corporate image while working on technologies whose only purpose is the control users and take away their natural freedoms?
How does IBM as a corporation stand in regard to the American DMCA and similiar acts internationally within the WIPO treaties, which many Free software developers consider a threat to our movement?
&& Oskar Sandberg
I didn't say that there wasn't any content, just that all the content is built on top of a model where the only two actions are putting something in, and taking it out again (I mean requesting, not removing). The same thing goes for all of the various more advanced protocols. Also that we are loosing a lot data from the network at the moment, which is true, but I am hopeful that I will be able to improve that by the end of the summer.
&& oskar