So Turner notes that there's a Forbes article in the works. And he is inclined to guess that it won't be favorable to the Linux community.
There seems to be an interesting amount of media attention. And an interesting spin. Is this simply dust kicked up from an interesting incident? Or is it being driven by someone's PR firm?
There was a recent Slashdot article noting how the vast majority of news stories (outside of events like disasters, etc) are driven by PR firms. One example given was the "suits are back" stories being ultimately PR fodder for the Men's Warehouse. The author notes that in any story that goes beyond simple facts, the reader should follow the money.
I was suprised that your letter was even included. It seemed to be little more than a concerned reader pointing out their dislike of the article to the media company and its advertisers. Hardly the same calibre as the previous example given.
Thanks for noting how Mr Kircaali really behaves when he's not trying to play the wounded victom. It dovetails nicely with the interview.
A black market for running tapes will not arise because people are too busy working 50 hours a week to put food on their tables.
And yet... people still watch TV, movies, selecting new ringtones and backgrounds for their phone, finding music for their iPod, burning DvDs of their wedding. They're working 50 hour weeks to put food on the table. And they're also buying nifty gadgets that had been cool little projects only available to tech-heads a few years back.
This country has been run on consumerism for quite a while. Corporate influence is nothing new. It's the flow of data that's new to average lives. And as specific interests try to tighten control on that flow, it will generate a market for more transportable data. That means either turning to alternative markets that are willing to offer data in acceptable formats, or turning to a black market that strips restrictions from mainstream market data.
If someone steals a master key from GM, he goes to jail; he isn't charge just with petty theft, even if he doesn't attempt to use the key himself. The authorities (police and lawmakers) don't want that kind of information (how to make a master key) getting out. They don't blame GM for having a common exploit available in a large range of vehicles: they blame the guy who tried to obtain the forbidden knowledge.
I would hope our network kit doesn't come with a master key preset from the factory. The industry tends to frown on things like backdoors.
Similarly, they arrested a boy who gained forbidden knowledge that could be used to damage Cisco routers, if those routers aren't secure.
No - they arested the boy you gained access to systems in major private and government networks. The key here is the word "government". You can toy with business networks and have a chance of slipping away if chasing you is going to cost too much; there's that bottom line to think about. The Government tends to ignore cost and focus entirely on the legal (among other factors) side of things.
The automotive industry hasn't dealt with this problem by manufacturing significantly more secure vehicles. Instead, it relies upon the police to enforce the laws against people who would take advantage of these exploits.
And things like factory installed alarms, Lowjak, OnStar... those are just flashy lights. Nothing to do with offering security.
Within the computer industry, some programmers seem shocked that security is a low concern: and yet, they go home to places with breakable glass in the windows. There's an exploit for that, too: it's called a "flying brick attack", and it's nastier than your average DDOS...
At work, I see over 150 - 200 thousand debatably hostile connections a day (considering we can't safely differentiate curiosity from more sinistar motives). My home sees less than 5 strangers passing on the street a day. Work sees around 20,000 actual attacks a day (probably due to worms - ignoring spyware and any virus outbreak in our network). I've seen no evidence of any attempts to break in to my home. If your home was instantly available to a world-wide population of faceless bodies, including those with bad intent... you might be a bit more concerned about that glass.
Furthermore, the functional difference in a high security environment is considerably different than a high security one in brick-and-morter space. Likewise, the expense is considerable even without trying to regain some degree of the lost functionality. Not so in the electronic world. Good code, good encryption, good protocols... these all have comparitively little cost to implement considering the alternatives.
Incidently, safety IS important in the physical world too. If GM put out a car that had a faulty design that caused a danger to the public, we would expect them to foot the bill for a recall and refit to solve the problem.
Or AdBlock. The reason I have that preference is the quick-and-easy interface AdBlock offers to blocking offensive content. Granted - this could simply be my ignorance with Privoxy. Having said that, AdBlock gives me tabs and even a button to pop up a listing of potential elements. Between the two, I'm able to pick off the offending parties and leave the unoffensive ads alone. Since this is rather quick and painless to do, I generate a better blocking list without throwing up my hands and blocking it all.
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I agree. These spots were worth a smirk. But then, so much web multimedia humor that gets spread around is in that category. I can't say that GoDaddy's ad was any better.
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Such teasers can work in some industries, but not in the computer industry.. "woa! is this some new software?! I better click this and download it!!".. most people would get this in their email (or whatever) and be like "this might be software, I better not click anything.. DELETE! DELETE!"
...and yet self-installed spyware and other malware continues to proliferate. Huh. How odd.;)
Why don't I just use adblock then? Because I like web ads. I like the fact that I get all sorts of cool stuff supported by minimalistic advertising. (I have animated gifs turned off, too.) I like getting Slashdot and others for free, as long as the ads don't try to convince my eyes that they're more important than the content.
Oddly enough, I use Adblock for exactly the same reasons. I generally don't block ads. But once a Flash or simularly annoying ad pops up, Adblock lets me block that and simular ads from that source (or the entire source if they're annoying enough). The vast majority of my Adblock config looks like "*.addomain.net/ads/*.swf*".
I see a large number of ads. And they don't annoy me.
My previous solution was using Privoxy and default definitions that targeted every known ad server.
Cisco has to be finding itself in a rather uncomfortable situation. After all, Open Source is insecure by nature due to the availablity of code to malicious eyes... right? It is according to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Couple that claim without the counter "many eyes" claim... and it wouldn't be suprising if Cisco's been flooded with anxious calls from various IT managers.
Whether the concern is legitimate or not is a different issue.
Dude. Don't you know they just route the firewall and then hack your proxy? A firewall isn't gonna do anything for you. It's the self-defending network you gotta have.
One thing that bugs the hell out of me with proprietary software is the lack of user input - some of the tools we used were klunky and broken, but they were the only tools that would work with a particular vendor. New features were useless, while good features were left out. Upgrades were often painful.
What bugs me is paying permium fees and getting all that. It's one thing to be handed the package and knowing I'm on my own. It's another thing to be paying good money for "support" only to still find out I'm on my own.
Well, how about this... She is a paralegal working for some number of years in an area where 90% of the jobs are tied to IBM in some way. Suddenly, when the SCO/IBM case hits she appears with a website and a fully formed opinion of the ethics of open vs. closed source. A couple of mentions around the web (including/.), and Groklaw becomes a pretty popular place to get info.
Before Groklaw, I was thinking to myself "what we need is a clearinghouse for SCO case information." It was obvious. It was going to happen. And in many ways, I'm glad I didn't manage to kick it off (not that I was in any special position to do so myself).
If I had moved quicker, my site would have come complete with a fully formed opinion on the ethics of closed vs. open source. It's not so hard to form one.
I live in an area that tends to be linked to aerospace and NASA. Or boating. I suppose that would imply my site was possibly being funded by the US Government, Aerospace concerns, or the pleasure boating industry. Or maybe IBM. They've had a presence in this area too (serving said NASA and aerospace industry).
If I would have been able to offer a stable site that collected good information, I probably would have attracted a following of other like-minded folks clammering for SCO case information. That community would have helped feed my site, which would only have made it more popular as people sought that information. Maybe I might have attracted some people familiar with legal issues and that would have provided the niche PJ apparently works.
I would have been a focus for information that SCO has had a hard time refuting.
I would have been a target for constant personal and professional attacks.
Whew. Dodged that bullet.
What you've described is a lot of interesting little "what ifs" that, frankly, mean nothing. It could have been anyone else. Even me.
When you ignore ugly facts, you open yourself up to a wide world of imagination! I think hers involved puffy clouds, unicorns, and happy little SCO trees.
But let's face it; most people here weren't old enough to be movie critics when the original trilogy came out, so they don't really have much perspective. Now that it's fashionable to be jaded, they just can't bring themselves to admit that they actually liked TPM and AotC.
Ahhh yes - the same old nostalgia excuse Lucas is so fond of. It's not that the new movies suck - it's that people grew up.
Bull.
I'm prone to nostalgia too. But I'm not blinded by it. Awhile ago, I started catching eposiodes of favorite shows from my childhood. One of those was the A-Team. My father couldn't understand why I enjoyed the show so much when I was a kid. Now I can not only understand his point of view, but I tend to agree. I enjoy the show for nostalgia's sake. But I do it now with different perspective.
I also watched the first 3 Star Wars films again. I'm not a rabid Star Wars fanboi. I go for years without watching the trilogy. But when I do catch them - I really do enjoy the movies. Maybe I catch flaws that I didn't see in childhood... but the overall work survives adulthood better than so many of my old childhood favorites.
And so I watched the newest Star Wars films a couple times. They're disappointing. They lack the spirit of the origional trilogy. I'm not entirely sure why... and I honestly haven't spent the time agonizing over it, myself. But none the less, the new films are simply flat.
It's fine if you enjoy the the new films; more power to you. But just because you find favor with them, doesn't mean others do.
What's interesting is the legislation the article mentioned in passing. I would guess that it wasn't going to get any traction... but it's interesting that this is seen as a serious step to take to some. Meanwhile, the apparent feeding of bogus, corrupt files in to the popular P2P networks only further fuel fears over industry-sponsored virus attacks.
Hold a sec. Your first tin foil ball is representing lossy compression. And then you're talking about my "lossless crappy Grateful Dead bootlegs in FLAC". Which are we talking about here? A lossy compression format like MP3 or one variation of AAC? Or lossless compression like FLAC? If we're talking a lossy compression technique - then you have a very good point (now if you could only manage to note that AAC and MP3 aren't the same thing - lossy or not). If it's a lossless compression technique, then my understanding is that you're completely wrong. From the FLAC features page:
Suitable for archiving: FLAC is an open format, and there is no generation loss if you need to convert your data to another format in the future. In addition to the frame CRCs and MD5 signature, flac has a verify option that decodes the encoded stream in parallel with the encoding process and compares the result to the original, aborting with an error if there is a mismatch.
If this is wrong, please feel free to point out references that debunk this claim. Failing that... AAC does have a lossless mode too. I would imagine AAC Lossless would be simular to FLAC. Whether iTunes offers lossless tracks or not may be an entirely different matter.
We'll just go ahead and ignore the whole argument that quality, to include the single generation loss for that initial transfer between two lossy techniques, doesn't deter "piracy".
Incidently, I noticed you managed to be civil. You almost avoided name calling. And lo and beyond... some intelligence made it in to your post. Congratulations.
Exactly. It's about behavior. Microsoft doesn't get this attention because they're popular or a market leader.
If the point is a link between Apple's and Microsoft's behavior, I wish someone would make it instead of running around trying to slip in the hypocrit card.
Look, dipshit, mp3s are popular because they're small. Fuck FLAC they're about half the size of an uncompressed wav file and you may as well just trade that.
And that's the point. It isn't about quality. If it were, we would see more use of lossless compression. The scene has shown that they will take a hit on quality if they can get the file.
Don't gimmie some holier-than-thou "Oh, it's AAC not mp3 I have a dildo up my butt" kind of speech either - compression is compression, regardless of the nature of it, and if you do converting from CD to whatever back to CD over and over it's gonna sound like el poopo del crapo.
Again with the name calling. Are you capable of being civil? Or would that weaken your argument?
AAC is available with lossless compression. That makes it different from an MP3 right there. Ya know - other than it NOT being an MP3 to begin with.
But perhapse you're right. Maybe there is an hit in quality converting from a "lossless" compression to a lossy one. Maybe it's even noticeable. But then - we've already seen that quality isn't the issue... as you already pointed out yourself (despite that apparently being your origional point).
Apple has succeeded in stopping Internet music piracy. And frankly everybody's pissed at them for keeping it to themselves. But really, can you blame them? They're making money hand over fist here.
So essentially, there's a watermark? Why bother with all the DRM shennanigans?
Apple has succeeded in stopping Internet music piracy. And frankly everybody's pissed at them for keeping it to themselves. But really, can you blame them? They're making money hand over fist here.
Well - they've provided a popular alternative. It's a bit early to claim "piracy" has stopped.
It isn't watermarking, it that fact that mp3 > cd > mp3 > conversion sounds like crap. Dipshit.
It's great when someone calls you names and they're wrong. "Dipshit" indeed. It's not mp3 to CD. It's AAC to CD. Now the question is whether that AAC file was lossless or not. Such a thing is possible. But I don't know if iTunes offers them. If they don't - then you would have had a point if you either knew what you were talking about or took the time to make an intelligent reply.
Of course, if quality was an issue... MP3 "piracy" wouldn't be so popular (MonkeyAudio or FLAC would be leaders). And keep in mind that the parent's point was AAC is somehow killing piracy.
Actually, I do agree with Miss Rosen in that I think if we have to have DRM, it should be an open standard DRM that is not owned by MS or Apple.
I missed the part where Rosen criticised Microsoft's DRM scheme and then called for an open standard.
That's the issue here. This is a call for openess from an individual who's best known for her work against openess. And to add insult to injury, her call seems to be little more than simply trading in one lock-in for another.
You make a fair point (even if I ultimately disagree with it - there is no need for DRM). It's a shame you don't have the same soapbox as Rosen.
b. Locking iTunes has basically eliminated illegal music distribution... of iTunes files. The files that are being passed around illegally are the ones that didn't come from iTunes. The industry sees this.
1) Buy iTunes track. Burn to CD. Rip CD. Distribute. Did I miss a watermark or something there?
2) Buy iTunes track. Download latest iTunes cracker. Rip. Distribute. Same question - what did I miss?
Perhaps she's complaining because she doesn't follow the party line that permeates your world - namely that customer lock-in and DRM are bad only when they come from Microsoft or someone else, but A-OK when they come from Apple.
No - apparently she's pushing the other party line; it's not customer lock-in if the DRM comes from Microsoft. Apparently Apple doing the same thing is bad.
Slashdot Mirror
So Turner notes that there's a Forbes article in the works. And he is inclined to guess that it won't be favorable to the Linux community.
There seems to be an interesting amount of media attention. And an interesting spin. Is this simply dust kicked up from an interesting incident? Or is it being driven by someone's PR firm?
There was a recent Slashdot article noting how the vast majority of news stories (outside of events like disasters, etc) are driven by PR firms. One example given was the "suits are back" stories being ultimately PR fodder for the Men's Warehouse. The author notes that in any story that goes beyond simple facts, the reader should follow the money.
I was suprised that your letter was even included. It seemed to be little more than a concerned reader pointing out their dislike of the article to the media company and its advertisers. Hardly the same calibre as the previous example given.
Thanks for noting how Mr Kircaali really behaves when he's not trying to play the wounded victom. It dovetails nicely with the interview.
And yet... people still watch TV, movies, selecting new ringtones and backgrounds for their phone, finding music for their iPod, burning DvDs of their wedding. They're working 50 hour weeks to put food on the table. And they're also buying nifty gadgets that had been cool little projects only available to tech-heads a few years back.
This country has been run on consumerism for quite a while. Corporate influence is nothing new. It's the flow of data that's new to average lives. And as specific interests try to tighten control on that flow, it will generate a market for more transportable data. That means either turning to alternative markets that are willing to offer data in acceptable formats, or turning to a black market that strips restrictions from mainstream market data.
If you don't have a legal leg to stand on... buy another leg!
I would hope our network kit doesn't come with a master key preset from the factory. The industry tends to frown on things like backdoors.
No - they arested the boy you gained access to systems in major private and government networks. The key here is the word "government". You can toy with business networks and have a chance of slipping away if chasing you is going to cost too much; there's that bottom line to think about. The Government tends to ignore cost and focus entirely on the legal (among other factors) side of things.
And things like factory installed alarms, Lowjak, OnStar... those are just flashy lights. Nothing to do with offering security.
At work, I see over 150 - 200 thousand debatably hostile connections a day (considering we can't safely differentiate curiosity from more sinistar motives). My home sees less than 5 strangers passing on the street a day. Work sees around 20,000 actual attacks a day (probably due to worms - ignoring spyware and any virus outbreak in our network). I've seen no evidence of any attempts to break in to my home. If your home was instantly available to a world-wide population of faceless bodies, including those with bad intent... you might be a bit more concerned about that glass.
Furthermore, the functional difference in a high security environment is considerably different than a high security one in brick-and-morter space. Likewise, the expense is considerable even without trying to regain some degree of the lost functionality. Not so in the electronic world. Good code, good encryption, good protocols... these all have comparitively little cost to implement considering the alternatives.
Incidently, safety IS important in the physical world too. If GM put out a car that had a faulty design that caused a danger to the public, we would expect them to foot the bill for a recall and refit to solve the problem.
Or AdBlock. The reason I have that preference is the quick-and-easy interface AdBlock offers to blocking offensive content. Granted - this could simply be my ignorance with Privoxy. Having said that, AdBlock gives me tabs and even a button to pop up a listing of potential elements. Between the two, I'm able to pick off the offending parties and leave the unoffensive ads alone. Since this is rather quick and painless to do, I generate a better blocking list without throwing up my hands and blocking it all.
I agree. These spots were worth a smirk. But then, so much web multimedia humor that gets spread around is in that category. I can't say that GoDaddy's ad was any better.
Oddly enough, I use Adblock for exactly the same reasons. I generally don't block ads. But once a Flash or simularly annoying ad pops up, Adblock lets me block that and simular ads from that source (or the entire source if they're annoying enough). The vast majority of my Adblock config looks like "*.addomain.net/ads/*.swf*".
I see a large number of ads. And they don't annoy me.
My previous solution was using Privoxy and default definitions that targeted every known ad server.
Cisco has to be finding itself in a rather uncomfortable situation. After all, Open Source is insecure by nature due to the availablity of code to malicious eyes... right? It is according to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Couple that claim without the counter "many eyes" claim... and it wouldn't be suprising if Cisco's been flooded with anxious calls from various IT managers.
Whether the concern is legitimate or not is a different issue.
Dude. Don't you know they just route the firewall and then hack your proxy? A firewall isn't gonna do anything for you. It's the self-defending network you gotta have.
What bugs me is paying permium fees and getting all that. It's one thing to be handed the package and knowing I'm on my own. It's another thing to be paying good money for "support" only to still find out I'm on my own.
Yep. You can tell all that by the fact that only 20% picked cost over all other options.
Before Groklaw, I was thinking to myself "what we need is a clearinghouse for SCO case information." It was obvious. It was going to happen. And in many ways, I'm glad I didn't manage to kick it off (not that I was in any special position to do so myself).
If I had moved quicker, my site would have come complete with a fully formed opinion on the ethics of closed vs. open source. It's not so hard to form one.
I live in an area that tends to be linked to aerospace and NASA. Or boating. I suppose that would imply my site was possibly being funded by the US Government, Aerospace concerns, or the pleasure boating industry. Or maybe IBM. They've had a presence in this area too (serving said NASA and aerospace industry).
If I would have been able to offer a stable site that collected good information, I probably would have attracted a following of other like-minded folks clammering for SCO case information. That community would have helped feed my site, which would only have made it more popular as people sought that information. Maybe I might have attracted some people familiar with legal issues and that would have provided the niche PJ apparently works.
I would have been a focus for information that SCO has had a hard time refuting.
I would have been a target for constant personal and professional attacks.
Whew. Dodged that bullet.
What you've described is a lot of interesting little "what ifs" that, frankly, mean nothing. It could have been anyone else. Even me.
When you ignore ugly facts, you open yourself up to a wide world of imagination! I think hers involved puffy clouds, unicorns, and happy little SCO trees.
Ahhh yes - the same old nostalgia excuse Lucas is so fond of. It's not that the new movies suck - it's that people grew up.
Bull.
I'm prone to nostalgia too. But I'm not blinded by it. Awhile ago, I started catching eposiodes of favorite shows from my childhood. One of those was the A-Team. My father couldn't understand why I enjoyed the show so much when I was a kid. Now I can not only understand his point of view, but I tend to agree. I enjoy the show for nostalgia's sake. But I do it now with different perspective.
I also watched the first 3 Star Wars films again. I'm not a rabid Star Wars fanboi. I go for years without watching the trilogy. But when I do catch them - I really do enjoy the movies. Maybe I catch flaws that I didn't see in childhood... but the overall work survives adulthood better than so many of my old childhood favorites.
And so I watched the newest Star Wars films a couple times. They're disappointing. They lack the spirit of the origional trilogy. I'm not entirely sure why... and I honestly haven't spent the time agonizing over it, myself. But none the less, the new films are simply flat.
It's fine if you enjoy the the new films; more power to you. But just because you find favor with them, doesn't mean others do.
What's interesting is the legislation the article mentioned in passing. I would guess that it wasn't going to get any traction... but it's interesting that this is seen as a serious step to take to some. Meanwhile, the apparent feeding of bogus, corrupt files in to the popular P2P networks only further fuel fears over industry-sponsored virus attacks.
If this is wrong, please feel free to point out references that debunk this claim. Failing that... AAC does have a lossless mode too. I would imagine AAC Lossless would be simular to FLAC. Whether iTunes offers lossless tracks or not may be an entirely different matter.
We'll just go ahead and ignore the whole argument that quality, to include the single generation loss for that initial transfer between two lossy techniques, doesn't deter "piracy".
Incidently, I noticed you managed to be civil. You almost avoided name calling. And lo and beyond... some intelligence made it in to your post. Congratulations.
Exactly. It's about behavior. Microsoft doesn't get this attention because they're popular or a market leader.
If the point is a link between Apple's and Microsoft's behavior, I wish someone would make it instead of running around trying to slip in the hypocrit card.
And that's the point. It isn't about quality. If it were, we would see more use of lossless compression. The scene has shown that they will take a hit on quality if they can get the file.
Again with the name calling. Are you capable of being civil? Or would that weaken your argument?
AAC is available with lossless compression. That makes it different from an MP3 right there. Ya know - other than it NOT being an MP3 to begin with.
But perhapse you're right. Maybe there is an hit in quality converting from a "lossless" compression to a lossy one. Maybe it's even noticeable. But then - we've already seen that quality isn't the issue... as you already pointed out yourself (despite that apparently being your origional point).
So essentially, there's a watermark? Why bother with all the DRM shennanigans?
Well - they've provided a popular alternative. It's a bit early to claim "piracy" has stopped.
It's great when someone calls you names and they're wrong. "Dipshit" indeed. It's not mp3 to CD. It's AAC to CD. Now the question is whether that AAC file was lossless or not. Such a thing is possible. But I don't know if iTunes offers them. If they don't - then you would have had a point if you either knew what you were talking about or took the time to make an intelligent reply.
Of course, if quality was an issue... MP3 "piracy" wouldn't be so popular (MonkeyAudio or FLAC would be leaders). And keep in mind that the parent's point was AAC is somehow killing piracy.
I missed the part where Rosen criticised Microsoft's DRM scheme and then called for an open standard.
That's the issue here. This is a call for openess from an individual who's best known for her work against openess. And to add insult to injury, her call seems to be little more than simply trading in one lock-in for another.
You make a fair point (even if I ultimately disagree with it - there is no need for DRM). It's a shame you don't have the same soapbox as Rosen.
1) Buy iTunes track. Burn to CD. Rip CD. Distribute. Did I miss a watermark or something there?
2) Buy iTunes track. Download latest iTunes cracker. Rip. Distribute. Same question - what did I miss?
No - apparently she's pushing the other party line; it's not customer lock-in if the DRM comes from Microsoft. Apparently Apple doing the same thing is bad.