The proposed protocol favors only the vendors and those that work closely with them. This does nothing whatsoever for independent security reporters or the actual customers who remain unknowingly exposed to exploits because they aren't being reported.
Reporting should be public and immediate. Someone who discovers an exploit in a particular piece of software is under no obligation whatsoever to protect that vendors image; in fact, using that as a reason *not* to release an alert is just plain brain-dead. If the vendor releases buggy code and customers migrate to another product - hey, that's capitalism, straight from Adam Smith! The consumer makes an informed choice based on actual facts - which is how the market is supposed to work if people aren't colluding to keep secrets or misinform the consumer.
Vendors have no right to non-disclosure. Vendors have no right to have their 'image' or 'reputation' protected. If the company is that concerned it's up to *them* to invest the time and energy tracking down the bugs and repairing them. If we find them then we have every right to circulate them publicly for review, pointing out the flaws for all to see. This gives the consumer - you and me - the option to abandon the software in favor of a competitor's product, or to disable whatever part of that software is causing the problem until the vendor can be bothered to put out a patch.
Incidentally, it also allows us to determine who makes the shittiest software and avoid future purchases of their products. Now why does my cynicism kick in when I consider the fact that the people who put together this proposal are sucking away at the Microsoft tit?
For those who keep saying "if you have just two flies...."
Refer to basic biology and evolution, which should have been taught in high school. In general, if a population falls below a certain critical number the survivors will eventually die out due to inbreeding. There are exceptions (e.g., the California Condor) and prime examples (e.g., the Florida Panther). Exceptions require rather good luck in that all the surviving members must be genetically diverse and lacking any duplication of damaging defects.
But the likelihood of the species surviving in any local area if just two oppposite-sex members survive is quite low. The multiplication of defects in future generations will almost certainly destroy that population even if they manage to find each other and mate amidst all those sterile males.
The whole 'Adam and Eve' thing makes for a nice fairy tale - but that's all. It's a good bet that the flies are doomed.
As part of downloading the information about songs and movies from the Web site, the program also transmits an identifier number unique to each user on the computer. That creates the possibility that user habits could be tracked and sold for marketing purposes.
The same company that assigns you a unique number for the downloads you make also has the database you were required to register with in order to activate your WindowsXP. Manipulated properly it would be a rather simple task to match a real name and address with what you watch on media player - especially if this 'unique number' and the registration number for XP were one and the same.
And note that Microsoft hasn't ruled out using the data for marketing purposes. Imagine the look on your spouse's face when you suddenly start getting free trial issues of Spanking Teen Cheerleaders! . Or the look on your face when the FBI comes crashing through the door because an 'anonymous tip' from a 'reputable source' claims that you were watching illegal porn videos.
Unfortunately it seems to be the nature of the game. Of the organizations I've worked for and consulted for I've yet to run into a management team that was more than barely competent, at best. Most of the time management at all levels was truly pathetic. The larger the corporation, the more likely I was to discover an army of brain-dead morons at the rudder of the corporate ship.
Of course, nothing beat government. Even Symantec wasn't as bad as government. I learned over time that government is where management went when they were too stupid to hack it in the real world. The corporate world often reflects Dilbert to a startling, and disheartening, degree; the government world makes Dilbert look *reasonable*.
(Aside: vast personal experience with management has convinced me that conspiracy theories a la X-Files are a complete crock of shit. You add one managerial-type to your conspiracy and you might as well shoot yourself.)
What I've noticed about management is that it tends to attract people interested in wielding power over others. People like this get into a managerial position because they're willing to do the things that professionals find annoying (e.g., coordinate schedules, do payroll, sell to clients, etc.). Once one of these boys has his foot in the door he works overtime to get more of his kind into the company; after a certain critical mass is reached you no longer have a prayer of reversing the trend. The PHB's outnumber the normal folks who originally took up the position because no one else wanted it, and they maneuver to get rid of competence in favor of people who're more like them.
And then, of course, they sit around playing power games with one another and with their employees, wasting valuable resources trying to impress themselves and everyone else with just how important they are.
In my experience - and this is completely, utterly anecdotal - a corporation is always somewhat inefficient. This inefficiency grows with size. But the inefficiency is *compounded* by managerial fools whose primary role is to gather resources around them like one massive penis enlargement pill, so that when they whip it out in meetings everyone else will say "ah!". In effect, these 'managers' are nothing more than balding frat boys, counting budgets and personnel for prestige points rather than the number of women they've bedded during the last semester.
I'm sure there are exceptions. There has to be, somewhere. I've just never run into them in the for-profit or government arenas. The only time I've seen something in management approaching an actual concern with the efficiency of the organization is in non-profits. The most efficient organizations I've ever seen have all been open-source projects with project leaders who do their best *not* to manage. But the latter are hobbies and money has been taken out of the equation, so they don't qualify as models for business.
Having painted that depressing picture, what do you do? Not a whole lot. That's just the way things are and if you want to keep a job playing 'outraged revolutionary' is an incredibly naive thing to do. The people who tell you "if you don't like it then quit" are the ones who've never gone hungry in their lives, or don't have families to support - generally the young and stupid who've yet to be bitch-slapped by life, or who can run home to mommy and daddy if they think the world is treating them unfairly.
For the rest of us, who know what it's like to miss a meal or three, or who've had times in a bad economy when the checking account is low and the panic over the rent starts to set in, being young and stupid isn't an option. You kick back and make the best of a poor situation because the alternative is much, much worse than the shitheads you have to put up with at work.
In an effort to end this rambling rant, your job is pretty typical. What you're experiencing is the norm. Cultivate cynicism now and avoid the rush.
I've purchased virtually every game Blizzard has ever put out, and was really looking forward to Warcraft III. I won't be buying it now.
Y'all might think about sending a nasty letter to Blizzard telling them what you think of them (include root@ and sales@; piracy@ might just be a dumping ground for vents), as I did. I doubt they give a shit if one pissed-off customer tells them to go to hell, but if five or ten thousand did that's a fair chunk of change....
Jesus Christ, if he wanted to bang a fifteen-year-old so bad why not just buy himself a teen hooker? Got knows there are enough of 'em roaming about his home city looking for johns to please.
Either that or he could've taken a jaunt to Europe. In quite a few countries there it's completely legal to have sex with someone under 18. Assuming you can convince them to sleep with you, of course.
Sure they could. You point the guns at the lawmakers and top execs of the corporations and you pull the triggers until you empty the clip. I *guarrantee* you that if enough people did this within a short span of time some pretty hefty changes would follow.
If you doubt this, I refer you to an incident which took place in the U.S. around 1776....
What's perplexing is that some of the folks posting here seem to think that blocking beyond individual addresses is somehow morally reprehensible. How they come to this conclusion is beyond rational analysis, for one very simple reason:
My machines are *my* machines. They aren't *your* machines. Once you've grasped the basic idea behind 'property', followed by the qualifier that 'my property' *is not* 'your property', then perhaps the naysayers will begin to clue in on the fact that whatever rules I set up for the use of my machines are perfectly acceptable no matter how different they are from the rules these folks have set up on their machines. There's no moral argument to be had here, and no high ground to take.
I've blocked aol.com for years, and over time have added hotmail.com and other repositories of clueless idiots and spammers. Soon I'll be moving from a 'blacklist' approach to a 'whitelist' approach, based on the idea that if I don't know you I really don't want to hear from you. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. If larger companies wish to ban entire blocks then that's their business; if their customers don't like it then those customers can either try to get the company to change their minds or use some other mail account. There are so many different free webmail services out there that there's no reason that someone who objects to an ISP mail policy can't use webmail instead. Hell, get a hotmail account and you're assured that *nothing* will be blocked, ever.
Sometimes it seems that some of the people here can't get a solid grasp on the idea of 'property'. Just a couple of days ago it was the concept of 'wasted cpu cycles', now it's 'shame on you for banning Asian email'. Communists.
ICQ is not Napster is not filesharing. Your argument is a strawman, thus not worthy of attention.
As for the rest of it your assertions are called 'anecdotal', and anecdotal evidence is useless - especially anecdotal evidence which has nothing to do with the original argument, e.g., the number of people using file-sharing software. If you have difficulty parsing the word 'anecdotal' I suggest you look it up.
You've provided no cites whatsoever concerning the number of people actively filesharing. Your only cite is non-empirical evidence regarding ICU, which has nothing to do with Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, Morpheus, or any filesharing program.
In other words, you're an idiot who wouldn't know 'empirical' if he was bitch-slapped by it. Try taking a statistics or basic methodology class while you're wasting your money at college.
60 million registered users - probably half as many active.
I assume you have cites for your assertion. Or are you just blowing this out of your ass?
Actually, how about mostly students between the ages of 14 and 21 (which it was).
I see. So you are just blowing these claims out of your ass. No need for cites when you can make the shit up as you go, eh?
I can assure you that most people did not pick up that Nelly single after hearing it on Napster. Lost sales.
There is a correlation between Napster use and rising CD sales. There is a correlation between decreasing Napster use and decreasing CD sales. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that Napster use resulted in lost sales. If you have some, then list an empirical cite to that effect that we can check out for ourselves.
see what their views are on stealing music.
Actually, it's copyright violation, not theft. But given the level of sophistication of your post it isn't surprising you don't know the difference.
It's fairly apparent, thought, that you feel incapable of actually defending your argument. Hence the strawmen towards the end of your rant. Perhaps you might want to think about this a bit further before making a complete fool of yourself in front of a quarter-million strangers.
Or perhaps not. Those that egotistically place themselves on the moral high ground are rarely interested in anything but hearing themselves talk.
And a massive revamping is what's required. No matter how many laws are passed neither the RIAA nor any of the whining moralists are going to be able to turn back the clock on file sharing. The future isn't something anyone can derail by pissing and moaning about how what's happening here, right now, isn't like how it was before, and therefore is wrong because it represents change.
And that's what it is: change. People who argue against change are either a) making a buck off the current system and want to keep making that same, tired old buck; or b) afraid that they can't adapt to what's coming. Well, it's clear that how music is sold right now doesn't work anymore and that a new system needs to be put into place; trying to prop up the old system is goddamned silly.
So a revamping is what's required. File sharing won't stop; certainly piracy won't when so many people (the 45 million in the U.S. alone can't all be cheapskate amoral college students, no matter what any slashdotter might claim) feel justified in engaging in these 'illegal' acts. When the number of people who blatantly violate the law reaches such a high proportion, that's an indication that the laws are considered to be foolish or that the current system rips people off who obey the law, or both. Those who try to demonify these folks are just exposing their own greed, or absolute idiocy.
If the artist is to be compensated fairly the system must change. That's a plain and simple fact. Until the system does, and in a way that satisfies both artists *and* customers, then normally law-abiding people will feel entirely justified in violating a system which they think is giving them the shaft.
The artists are caught in the crossfire, and that's too bad. But the 21st century is here and until the recording industry decides to play catch-up that's the way the situation will remain. Or until the artists come up with an alternative themselves.
This strikes me as theft, plain and simple, if the folks doing it don't ask for your permission first. What I would want is a utility which detects these intrusions and then sends back fifty megabytes of bogus data over my cable connection...see how long the theft lasts when they continually get slammed with garbage.
Although it seems rather silly to point this out, government is not a neutral entity that will impartially issue you permits and provide information no matter what group or interest you represent. Having worked for government I saw countless examples of information getting 'lost' until it was too late to be useful, permits denied for a variety of reasons (e.g., lost the paperwork, paperwork incomplete, 'anonymous threats', etc.), peaceful gatherings raided by police using the quite illegal 'hold and release' tactic, intimidation by forming up riot lines against a rally (somewhat amusing when there are more police than folks at the rally), documents destroyed or altered against all records laws when said documents might lead to problems, etc. etc.
The list of abuses I personally witnessed is a long one. Very few people in government at *any* level give a rats ass about the law; if you think otherwise I suggest you stop deluding yourself. Government is interested only in furthering its own goals (whatever they might be) and the law doesn't amount to a hill of beans if it interferes with the pursuit of those goals. The average citizen, especially a citizen that objects to government action, is held in utter contempt.
The playing field isn't at all level and nothing about it is fair. Censorship in the U.S. is quite real and happens regularly, even if you, the guy on the street, has no idea it's happening. It isn't what's going on in China, but it's alot worse than what you might think.
Contrary to your claim, there is no better use for 'free cycles' than what I decide to use them for. My computer, my decision - I own the machine and I don't owe it to anyone to dedicate my 'free cycles' to any project other than those that I choose. If I want to give them to SETI@Home, who's to gainsay me?
Now, do I believe that there's intelligent life out there just yearning to have it's radio signals read? Nope, I don't; although I think it's silly to believe that humans are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, I do believe that intelligence is so rare that in all likelihood our nearest neighbors are too far away to communicate with. So why allow SETI to suck up my extra cycles? Because although I think the project has zero chance of discovering intelligent life, the work and the hopes of all of these dedicated folks appeals to me. I let them use my cycles so they can get closer to answering the question near and dear to their hearts, even though ultimately I don't think they'll like what the find (i.e., silence).
Still, it doesn't matter if anyone else thinks I'm 'wasting' my cycles. They're mine to waste as I please.
Try SuSe 7.3. I've installed it on a number of systems and it's amazingly slick; far faster than Windows, didn't once ask for a driver disk, doesn't have to reboot, and comes with all the software the average user might need.
The issue of games is the only reason I still have a dual boot. I'm a gaming fan and have a Windows partition because of that, but that's the only thing I still use Windows for.
As for documentation, I find the Windows equivalent to be equally incomprehensible for the computer illiterate. This isn't a problem with Linux but with the documentation itself, as well as the people who write the utilities not having a firm grasp of what the average person is capable of understanding (the Control Panel is well beyond the 'average user', in my experience).
Although if we wait ten years this won't be much of a problem. The next generation seems to have an intuitive grasp of computers that older generations lack. Working with middle school kids I found that the problem with understanding the machines is primarily one of age - my students had no difficulties with Linux whatsoever and preferred to to Windows because they could do so much more with it (sometimes to my dismay).
In a few years no one will have to worry much about the online child molestor types. Given the advances in graphics technology fans of this sort of crap will be able to create 'virtual' children and have them run through any perversion they please, without harming any real children in the process.
As for the dogs, are you referring to the four-legged kind or the college-boy kind?
Max
Re:Could this be my saviour?
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Geez, given that they own the machines and can implement whatever policies they please, maybe you should:
a) buy your own computer, and
b) subscribe to an ISP
In any event, unless you waste university resources by downloading porn mpegs or ripped movies, 500 megs is more than enough for any serious work.
Max
Re:Good for some, nightmare for others
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Not that I particularly care for the surfing policies of most corporations (porn on the lunch break? who cares?), but the bank owns the machines and can make up whatever silly rules it wants with regards to their use.
However, I'm kinda curious: isn't this a waste of your time and talents as security manager? Shouldn't this be handed off to some clueless MCSE who doesn't have anything better to do? I dunno, but I'd be annoyed if I was Chief of Security and had to waste my time chasing lunch-hour porn-meisters when somebody more expendable could be doing the job.
Also, what do you do when it's one of the managers violated the Terms of Use policy? In one administrator job I had it was made clear to me that only the proles were subject to the policy; the managers all had BearShare, Limewire, etc. installed on their machines and spent an inordinate amount of time downloading music, as well as pornographic movies and pictures. It got so bad that the network actually started to choke on the traffic, which led to management demanding a 'crackdown' on the proles (who weren't doing the downloading), resulting in a presentation of the traffic results by machine and yours truly being transferred to a different branch of the company.:-)
Just wondering what you do when you find out that management is the cause of the problem.
It's painfully clear from the list that the guy can't be a serious scientist of any kind. Seems that most of these folks (even the ones with a "Ph.D" in front of their name) don't have a basic grasp of what real science is all about - they read something in an SF novel or watch one too many episodes of "Star Trek" and thereafter yet another crazy notion is incorporated into their lists.
Take the AI example. Not only is the timeline waaaay off base, obvious to anyone who follows the field, but like any non-scientist the gent assumes that an AI would be just like a human being, only composed of different materials. There is no evidence whatsoever to support such an assumption and a great deal of evidence (from the field of psychology, which is beginning to posit that human beings are fundamentally different from one another even at the level of sensory processing) that points to just the opposite. In all likelihood an AI (whatever that means) would experience the universe in a completely different way than a human being, leading to similarly different ways of thinking. It would be a minor miracle if an AI could communicate in a coherent fashion with a human being on anything but the most discrete of topics (e.g., mathematics).
Of course, we can't let little things like this interfere with popular perceptions of future technologies, especially if the popular view is expressed through a common framework inherent to most off-the-shelf SF and TV programs. According to fiction, either AI's are just like us or are trying to be like us, or they're undeniably evil and out to snuff the human race. Most likely scenario is that humans and any possible AI won't have much to say to one another, even if they cooperate towards common goals (e.g., information or resource gathering).
People don't like to hear these sorts of things, which is why these silly predictions are always so popular, I guess. They want a quantifiable future which, although different on the surface, is just like everything they know now on any deeper level. The truth is that the future will probably be unlike anything they can imagine, moving ever faster along the increasing slope of technological advancement towards an world we'd consider alien.
The futurists offer security. According to them the 'fun' advancements are just around the corner and they'll be just like what we've read about in our favorite pieces of fiction, or watched on TV. The things that might not be so fun are a long ways off, so no need to worry. In effect they say "don't worry, nothing will really change, everything will be the same except that we'll have neater toys".
Here's my prediction: what our grandchildren take for granted in the year 2050 will be things we can't even begin to guess at. Any one of us would be utterly lost if plucked from our world today and dropped into that world of tomorrow. Some of us would adapt, and some of us wouldn't; but for most of us the process wouldn't be at all pleasant as the root fundamentals of what we take to be 'absolutes' in the fantasy world constructed by our minds are completely dashed to pieces by the reality of the future.
As for AI? Maybe by 2050, assuming that it's possible at all - it might not be. But if it is I think there'll be just one AI. In fact, I don't think it'll be feasible to have more than one, unless such a being is completely isolated from the outside world. Points to anyone who can figure out why.
Slashdot Mirror
The proposed protocol favors only the vendors and those that work closely with them. This does nothing whatsoever for independent security reporters or the actual customers who remain unknowingly exposed to exploits because they aren't being reported.
Reporting should be public and immediate. Someone who discovers an exploit in a particular piece of software is under no obligation whatsoever to protect that vendors image; in fact, using that as a reason *not* to release an alert is just plain brain-dead. If the vendor releases buggy code and customers migrate to another product - hey, that's capitalism, straight from Adam Smith! The consumer makes an informed choice based on actual facts - which is how the market is supposed to work if people aren't colluding to keep secrets or misinform the consumer.
Vendors have no right to non-disclosure. Vendors have no right to have their 'image' or 'reputation' protected. If the company is that concerned it's up to *them* to invest the time and energy tracking down the bugs and repairing them. If we find them then we have every right to circulate them publicly for review, pointing out the flaws for all to see. This gives the consumer - you and me - the option to abandon the software in favor of a competitor's product, or to disable whatever part of that software is causing the problem until the vendor can be bothered to put out a patch.
Incidentally, it also allows us to determine who makes the shittiest software and avoid future purchases of their products. Now why does my cynicism kick in when I consider the fact that the people who put together this proposal are sucking away at the Microsoft tit?
Max
For those who keep saying "if you have just two flies...."
Refer to basic biology and evolution, which should have been taught in high school. In general, if a population falls below a certain critical number the survivors will eventually die out due to inbreeding. There are exceptions (e.g., the California Condor) and prime examples (e.g., the Florida Panther). Exceptions require rather good luck in that all the surviving members must be genetically diverse and lacking any duplication of damaging defects.
But the likelihood of the species surviving in any local area if just two oppposite-sex members survive is quite low. The multiplication of defects in future generations will almost certainly destroy that population even if they manage to find each other and mate amidst all those sterile males.
The whole 'Adam and Eve' thing makes for a nice fairy tale - but that's all. It's a good bet that the flies are doomed.
Max
As part of downloading the information about songs and movies from the Web site, the program also transmits an identifier number unique to each user on the computer. That creates the possibility that user habits could be tracked and sold for marketing purposes.
The same company that assigns you a unique number for the downloads you make also has the database you were required to register with in order to activate your WindowsXP. Manipulated properly it would be a rather simple task to match a real name and address with what you watch on media player - especially if this 'unique number' and the registration number for XP were one and the same.
And note that Microsoft hasn't ruled out using the data for marketing purposes. Imagine the look on your spouse's face when you suddenly start getting free trial issues of Spanking Teen Cheerleaders! . Or the look on your face when the FBI comes crashing through the door because an 'anonymous tip' from a 'reputable source' claims that you were watching illegal porn videos.
Max
Maybe it's just me but I honestly don't care if some site logs that I viewed porn from so and so site for so many minutes. Why should I?
You don't. I do. I don't need a reason to want to keep people out of my personal life. Rather, they need a good reason to butt into it.
Max
Unfortunately it seems to be the nature of the game. Of the organizations I've worked for and consulted for I've yet to run into a management team that was more than barely competent, at best. Most of the time management at all levels was truly pathetic. The larger the corporation, the more likely I was to discover an army of brain-dead morons at the rudder of the corporate ship.
Of course, nothing beat government. Even Symantec wasn't as bad as government. I learned over time that government is where management went when they were too stupid to hack it in the real world. The corporate world often reflects Dilbert to a startling, and disheartening, degree; the government world makes Dilbert look *reasonable*.
(Aside: vast personal experience with management has convinced me that conspiracy theories a la X-Files are a complete crock of shit. You add one managerial-type to your conspiracy and you might as well shoot yourself.)
What I've noticed about management is that it tends to attract people interested in wielding power over others. People like this get into a managerial position because they're willing to do the things that professionals find annoying (e.g., coordinate schedules, do payroll, sell to clients, etc.). Once one of these boys has his foot in the door he works overtime to get more of his kind into the company; after a certain critical mass is reached you no longer have a prayer of reversing the trend. The PHB's outnumber the normal folks who originally took up the position because no one else wanted it, and they maneuver to get rid of competence in favor of people who're more like them.
And then, of course, they sit around playing power games with one another and with their employees, wasting valuable resources trying to impress themselves and everyone else with just how important they are.
In my experience - and this is completely, utterly anecdotal - a corporation is always somewhat inefficient. This inefficiency grows with size. But the inefficiency is *compounded* by managerial fools whose primary role is to gather resources around them like one massive penis enlargement pill, so that when they whip it out in meetings everyone else will say "ah!". In effect, these 'managers' are nothing more than balding frat boys, counting budgets and personnel for prestige points rather than the number of women they've bedded during the last semester.
I'm sure there are exceptions. There has to be, somewhere. I've just never run into them in the for-profit or government arenas. The only time I've seen something in management approaching an actual concern with the efficiency of the organization is in non-profits. The most efficient organizations I've ever seen have all been open-source projects with project leaders who do their best *not* to manage. But the latter are hobbies and money has been taken out of the equation, so they don't qualify as models for business.
Having painted that depressing picture, what do you do? Not a whole lot. That's just the way things are and if you want to keep a job playing 'outraged revolutionary' is an incredibly naive thing to do. The people who tell you "if you don't like it then quit" are the ones who've never gone hungry in their lives, or don't have families to support - generally the young and stupid who've yet to be bitch-slapped by life, or who can run home to mommy and daddy if they think the world is treating them unfairly.
For the rest of us, who know what it's like to miss a meal or three, or who've had times in a bad economy when the checking account is low and the panic over the rent starts to set in, being young and stupid isn't an option. You kick back and make the best of a poor situation because the alternative is much, much worse than the shitheads you have to put up with at work.
In an effort to end this rambling rant, your job is pretty typical. What you're experiencing is the norm. Cultivate cynicism now and avoid the rush.
Max
I've purchased virtually every game Blizzard has ever put out, and was really looking forward to Warcraft III. I won't be buying it now.
Y'all might think about sending a nasty letter to Blizzard telling them what you think of them (include root@ and sales@; piracy@ might just be a dumping ground for vents), as I did. I doubt they give a shit if one pissed-off customer tells them to go to hell, but if five or ten thousand did that's a fair chunk of change....
Max
This isn't stealing. It's copyright infringement. If you don't know the difference then look it up. The two aren't even close.
Max
Jesus Christ, if he wanted to bang a fifteen-year-old so bad why not just buy himself a teen hooker? Got knows there are enough of 'em roaming about his home city looking for johns to please.
Either that or he could've taken a jaunt to Europe. In quite a few countries there it's completely legal to have sex with someone under 18. Assuming you can convince them to sleep with you, of course.
This boy sounds like an idiot to me.
Max
...this wouldn't be a crime. Alas, that I do not live in Sweden....
Max
Sure they could. You point the guns at the lawmakers and top execs of the corporations and you pull the triggers until you empty the clip. I *guarrantee* you that if enough people did this within a short span of time some pretty hefty changes would follow.
If you doubt this, I refer you to an incident which took place in the U.S. around 1776....
Max
What's perplexing is that some of the folks posting here seem to think that blocking beyond individual addresses is somehow morally reprehensible. How they come to this conclusion is beyond rational analysis, for one very simple reason:
My machines are *my* machines. They aren't *your* machines. Once you've grasped the basic idea behind 'property', followed by the qualifier that 'my property' *is not* 'your property', then perhaps the naysayers will begin to clue in on the fact that whatever rules I set up for the use of my machines are perfectly acceptable no matter how different they are from the rules these folks have set up on their machines. There's no moral argument to be had here, and no high ground to take.
I've blocked aol.com for years, and over time have added hotmail.com and other repositories of clueless idiots and spammers. Soon I'll be moving from a 'blacklist' approach to a 'whitelist' approach, based on the idea that if I don't know you I really don't want to hear from you. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. If larger companies wish to ban entire blocks then that's their business; if their customers don't like it then those customers can either try to get the company to change their minds or use some other mail account. There are so many different free webmail services out there that there's no reason that someone who objects to an ISP mail policy can't use webmail instead. Hell, get a hotmail account and you're assured that *nothing* will be blocked, ever.
Sometimes it seems that some of the people here can't get a solid grasp on the idea of 'property'. Just a couple of days ago it was the concept of 'wasted cpu cycles', now it's 'shame on you for banning Asian email'. Communists.
Max
ICQ is not Napster is not filesharing. Your argument is a strawman, thus not worthy of attention.
As for the rest of it your assertions are called 'anecdotal', and anecdotal evidence is useless - especially anecdotal evidence which has nothing to do with the original argument, e.g., the number of people using file-sharing software. If you have difficulty parsing the word 'anecdotal' I suggest you look it up.
You've provided no cites whatsoever concerning the number of people actively filesharing. Your only cite is non-empirical evidence regarding ICU, which has nothing to do with Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, Morpheus, or any filesharing program.
In other words, you're an idiot who wouldn't know 'empirical' if he was bitch-slapped by it. Try taking a statistics or basic methodology class while you're wasting your money at college.
Max
60 million registered users - probably half as many active.
I assume you have cites for your assertion. Or are you just blowing this out of your ass?
Actually, how about mostly students between the ages of 14 and 21 (which it was).
I see. So you are just blowing these claims out of your ass. No need for cites when you can make the shit up as you go, eh?
I can assure you that most people did not pick up that Nelly single after hearing it on Napster. Lost sales.
There is a correlation between Napster use and rising CD sales. There is a correlation between decreasing Napster use and decreasing CD sales. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that Napster use resulted in lost sales. If you have some, then list an empirical cite to that effect that we can check out for ourselves.
see what their views are on stealing music.
Actually, it's copyright violation, not theft. But given the level of sophistication of your post it isn't surprising you don't know the difference.
It's fairly apparent, thought, that you feel incapable of actually defending your argument. Hence the strawmen towards the end of your rant. Perhaps you might want to think about this a bit further before making a complete fool of yourself in front of a quarter-million strangers.
Or perhaps not. Those that egotistically place themselves on the moral high ground are rarely interested in anything but hearing themselves talk.
Max
And a massive revamping is what's required. No matter how many laws are passed neither the RIAA nor any of the whining moralists are going to be able to turn back the clock on file sharing. The future isn't something anyone can derail by pissing and moaning about how what's happening here, right now, isn't like how it was before, and therefore is wrong because it represents change.
And that's what it is: change. People who argue against change are either a) making a buck off the current system and want to keep making that same, tired old buck; or b) afraid that they can't adapt to what's coming. Well, it's clear that how music is sold right now doesn't work anymore and that a new system needs to be put into place; trying to prop up the old system is goddamned silly.
So a revamping is what's required. File sharing won't stop; certainly piracy won't when so many people (the 45 million in the U.S. alone can't all be cheapskate amoral college students, no matter what any slashdotter might claim) feel justified in engaging in these 'illegal' acts. When the number of people who blatantly violate the law reaches such a high proportion, that's an indication that the laws are considered to be foolish or that the current system rips people off who obey the law, or both. Those who try to demonify these folks are just exposing their own greed, or absolute idiocy.
If the artist is to be compensated fairly the system must change. That's a plain and simple fact. Until the system does, and in a way that satisfies both artists *and* customers, then normally law-abiding people will feel entirely justified in violating a system which they think is giving them the shaft.
The artists are caught in the crossfire, and that's too bad. But the 21st century is here and until the recording industry decides to play catch-up that's the way the situation will remain. Or until the artists come up with an alternative themselves.
Max
This strikes me as theft, plain and simple, if the folks doing it don't ask for your permission first. What I would want is a utility which detects these intrusions and then sends back fifty megabytes of bogus data over my cable connection...see how long the theft lasts when they continually get slammed with garbage.
Max
Although it seems rather silly to point this out, government is not a neutral entity that will impartially issue you permits and provide information no matter what group or interest you represent. Having worked for government I saw countless examples of information getting 'lost' until it was too late to be useful, permits denied for a variety of reasons (e.g., lost the paperwork, paperwork incomplete, 'anonymous threats', etc.), peaceful gatherings raided by police using the quite illegal 'hold and release' tactic, intimidation by forming up riot lines against a rally (somewhat amusing when there are more police than folks at the rally), documents destroyed or altered against all records laws when said documents might lead to problems, etc. etc.
The list of abuses I personally witnessed is a long one. Very few people in government at *any* level give a rats ass about the law; if you think otherwise I suggest you stop deluding yourself. Government is interested only in furthering its own goals (whatever they might be) and the law doesn't amount to a hill of beans if it interferes with the pursuit of those goals. The average citizen, especially a citizen that objects to government action, is held in utter contempt.
The playing field isn't at all level and nothing about it is fair. Censorship in the U.S. is quite real and happens regularly, even if you, the guy on the street, has no idea it's happening. It isn't what's going on in China, but it's alot worse than what you might think.
Max
Contrary to your claim, there is no better use for 'free cycles' than what I decide to use them for. My computer, my decision - I own the machine and I don't owe it to anyone to dedicate my 'free cycles' to any project other than those that I choose. If I want to give them to SETI@Home, who's to gainsay me?
Now, do I believe that there's intelligent life out there just yearning to have it's radio signals read? Nope, I don't; although I think it's silly to believe that humans are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, I do believe that intelligence is so rare that in all likelihood our nearest neighbors are too far away to communicate with. So why allow SETI to suck up my extra cycles? Because although I think the project has zero chance of discovering intelligent life, the work and the hopes of all of these dedicated folks appeals to me. I let them use my cycles so they can get closer to answering the question near and dear to their hearts, even though ultimately I don't think they'll like what the find (i.e., silence).
Still, it doesn't matter if anyone else thinks I'm 'wasting' my cycles. They're mine to waste as I please.
Max
Try SuSe 7.3. I've installed it on a number of systems and it's amazingly slick; far faster than Windows, didn't once ask for a driver disk, doesn't have to reboot, and comes with all the software the average user might need.
The issue of games is the only reason I still have a dual boot. I'm a gaming fan and have a Windows partition because of that, but that's the only thing I still use Windows for.
As for documentation, I find the Windows equivalent to be equally incomprehensible for the computer illiterate. This isn't a problem with Linux but with the documentation itself, as well as the people who write the utilities not having a firm grasp of what the average person is capable of understanding (the Control Panel is well beyond the 'average user', in my experience).
Although if we wait ten years this won't be much of a problem. The next generation seems to have an intuitive grasp of computers that older generations lack. Working with middle school kids I found that the problem with understanding the machines is primarily one of age - my students had no difficulties with Linux whatsoever and preferred to to Windows because they could do so much more with it (sometimes to my dismay).
Max
Well, perhaps if the casual user is *you* then yes. Making proclamations for other 'casual users' is damned silly.
Max
What precisely does it lack? Specifics please, and quite a few given that you specified "too much".
Max
In a few years no one will have to worry much about the online child molestor types. Given the advances in graphics technology fans of this sort of crap will be able to create 'virtual' children and have them run through any perversion they please, without harming any real children in the process.
As for the dogs, are you referring to the four-legged kind or the college-boy kind?
Max
Geez, given that they own the machines and can implement whatever policies they please, maybe you should:
a) buy your own computer, and
b) subscribe to an ISP
In any event, unless you waste university resources by downloading porn mpegs or ripped movies, 500 megs is more than enough for any serious work.
Max
Not that I particularly care for the surfing policies of most corporations (porn on the lunch break? who cares?), but the bank owns the machines and can make up whatever silly rules it wants with regards to their use.
:-)
However, I'm kinda curious: isn't this a waste of your time and talents as security manager? Shouldn't this be handed off to some clueless MCSE who doesn't have anything better to do? I dunno, but I'd be annoyed if I was Chief of Security and had to waste my time chasing lunch-hour porn-meisters when somebody more expendable could be doing the job.
Also, what do you do when it's one of the managers violated the Terms of Use policy? In one administrator job I had it was made clear to me that only the proles were subject to the policy; the managers all had BearShare, Limewire, etc. installed on their machines and spent an inordinate amount of time downloading music, as well as pornographic movies and pictures. It got so bad that the network actually started to choke on the traffic, which led to management demanding a 'crackdown' on the proles (who weren't doing the downloading), resulting in a presentation of the traffic results by machine and yours truly being transferred to a different branch of the company.
Just wondering what you do when you find out that management is the cause of the problem.
Max
It's painfully clear from the list that the guy can't be a serious scientist of any kind. Seems that most of these folks (even the ones with a "Ph.D" in front of their name) don't have a basic grasp of what real science is all about - they read something in an SF novel or watch one too many episodes of "Star Trek" and thereafter yet another crazy notion is incorporated into their lists.
Take the AI example. Not only is the timeline waaaay off base, obvious to anyone who follows the field, but like any non-scientist the gent assumes that an AI would be just like a human being, only composed of different materials. There is no evidence whatsoever to support such an assumption and a great deal of evidence (from the field of psychology, which is beginning to posit that human beings are fundamentally different from one another even at the level of sensory processing) that points to just the opposite. In all likelihood an AI (whatever that means) would experience the universe in a completely different way than a human being, leading to similarly different ways of thinking. It would be a minor miracle if an AI could communicate in a coherent fashion with a human being on anything but the most discrete of topics (e.g., mathematics).
Of course, we can't let little things like this interfere with popular perceptions of future technologies, especially if the popular view is expressed through a common framework inherent to most off-the-shelf SF and TV programs. According to fiction, either AI's are just like us or are trying to be like us, or they're undeniably evil and out to snuff the human race. Most likely scenario is that humans and any possible AI won't have much to say to one another, even if they cooperate towards common goals (e.g., information or resource gathering).
People don't like to hear these sorts of things, which is why these silly predictions are always so popular, I guess. They want a quantifiable future which, although different on the surface, is just like everything they know now on any deeper level. The truth is that the future will probably be unlike anything they can imagine, moving ever faster along the increasing slope of technological advancement towards an world we'd consider alien.
The futurists offer security. According to them the 'fun' advancements are just around the corner and they'll be just like what we've read about in our favorite pieces of fiction, or watched on TV. The things that might not be so fun are a long ways off, so no need to worry. In effect they say "don't worry, nothing will really change, everything will be the same except that we'll have neater toys".
Here's my prediction: what our grandchildren take for granted in the year 2050 will be things we can't even begin to guess at. Any one of us would be utterly lost if plucked from our world today and dropped into that world of tomorrow. Some of us would adapt, and some of us wouldn't; but for most of us the process wouldn't be at all pleasant as the root fundamentals of what we take to be 'absolutes' in the fantasy world constructed by our minds are completely dashed to pieces by the reality of the future.
As for AI? Maybe by 2050, assuming that it's possible at all - it might not be. But if it is I think there'll be just one AI. In fact, I don't think it'll be feasible to have more than one, unless such a being is completely isolated from the outside world. Points to anyone who can figure out why.
Max
Flying cars? www.moller.com.
Of course, we'll never be able to buy one given the recent terrorism scare....
Max