You mean this? "This vulnerability requires the attacker to create or modify certain Apache configuration files, and is not a remote hole. " How is this as bad as many of the exploits plaguing IIS and other Microsoft products? Up until a few years ago, Microsoft wasn't paying much attention to local exploits at all.
So, where are all the worms who exploit this vulnerability? When did they hose the internet? Are these pings I keep getting from this imaginary worm, or are they from the real worm which has been infecting Microsoft systems for months?
Just because a project has a vulnerability doesn't mean it is as poorly managed as Microsoft. I hate stupid extremist thinking. "If it isn't completely secure, it must be completely insecure!"
I honestly think this has got to be one of the most pointless stories I've seen on Slashdot for some time.
Maybe not so pointless. Read the submission carefully:
It even strips images that are not advertising banners, but simply images that link to an external site!
Their ad blocking is defective. So, if I have two sites with different domains, and I link between them using images, then users running Norton's ad blocker won't see my links. They'll never even know the links existed. Hmmm....maybe I'll do this just to screw over people who use broken ad blocking...
And once we're on the net, we've got the infrastructure and the processing power to really tailor advertising in a very personalized way.
So you are saying advertisers should gather information about you and track you. Are you sure you want this? I don't.
That any software ads I'd see would be for Linux or Mac software, and not Windows.
Ummm...careful there. SCO just might send you an "invoice" for the money you "owe" them for your usage of Linux, and with their "advertisers" tracking you, you'll be easy to find.
I want an "ergonomic (i.e. split) USB keyboard, with additional USB ports on the back, with plenty of multimedia keys and made by someone other than Microsoft."
That sounds like a very specific list of features. Are you sure such a keyboard even exists? Ergonomic seems more for business users, and multimedia keys for home lusers. Keyboard manufacturers may not see a big enough user base to put both features in one keyboard--at least not with all the other features you mention.
I admit I didn't look very hard, but the closest I could come were: Zippy WK801 (not ergonomic) and Kinesis Advantage Pro USB (no multimedia keys). You won't be able to find something which doesn't exist. Perhaps someday there will be a service where you can custom order a product to your specific spec, but not today.
Though there has to be some sort of product search engine similar to the one described by you, but it is probably buried in the internet. I know of a few who search by the lowest price...
There should be no place in school for industry-sponsored propaganda, whether it is true or not.
That's the problem with public schools. Not only are they subject to propaganda and stupid policies (because parents can't easily move their children into a competitor's school to escape the crap), but they are run by corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats who are willing to take bribes and always need more money for operating the school due to mismanagement.
I don't agree with copyright infringement, but removing our fair use rights is worse than allowing some level of piracy.
Fair use? How about free speech. Don't come crying to me when the MPAA makes it so you can have "fair use" of their crap, but you'll be hard pressed to publish anything (text, audio, video) electronically or communicate without the DRM cartel's approval and a huge "licensing" fee.
If you think that's harsh, you should read the part about seizing and destroying property suspected of having been used for copyright infringement. Yay! Now the RIAA will have the same ability as the DEA for stealing property. Don't you love the United States Soviet Union? Soon there will be a guard at every copy machine to make sure you "use it properly."
A second possible option for Article 4.3 is even more extreme. It would give all judicial authorities the power to seize goods suspected of infringement and any materials and implements suspected to be used in the commission of the offense, as well as any traceable asset.
...
Article 4.4 grants judges the authority to order the forfeiture of any personal assets traceable to unlawful activity and the forfeiture or destruction of all infringing goods. It would also require judges to order the forfeiture or destruction of any materials or implements used in the commission of copyright infringement. Judges would be permitted to order such forfeiture and destruction of related materials and implements for other infringements of intellectual property as well.
Maybe everyone who owns a computer will have to buy machine guns and set traps to protect themselves. Consumer electronics salesmen will sell their wares out on the streets asking "What do you need? Want a camcorder to record you son's birthday? Only a thousand bucks!"
You are displaying your ignorance of how the court system is abused. Any idiot can file a lawsuit against anyone for any reason. The RIAA will just file lawsuits random people because their Freenet node happened to transmit a mp3 file. Even though their case may have no merit, they will offer to settle out of court for less than their victim's lawyer fees with an "easy" payment plan, and many people will take the offer because they can't afford the lawyers in the first place.
The ones who don't settle, the RIAA sue and drag out the court case as long as possible--perhaps winning on some minor technicality or because their victim ran out of money for lawyers. All the while saying in the press "we'll sue every 'pirate' Freenet user because their nodes transmit music files." Have you not been paying any attention for the past few years? They want to harrass every P2P network out of operation. They don't even care if a P2P user isn't breaking the law, they'll label the bloke a criminal anyway.
The RIAA can't track down the users of freenet or various other anonymous P2P networks. Too bad! You're shit out of luck!
Ummmm....do you know anything about how the internet and Freenet works? There is this thing called an IP address. Others need to have it so they can send you packets. In fact, last time I checked, Freenet uses TCP which guarantees the IP address can't be spoofed for an active connnection, and you have to have an active connection to send data. So at bare minimum they can find out who is running nodes.
It shouldn't be too hard to find out if a node is routing unlicensed mp3s. All they have to do is figure out which keys apply to the cartel's music, and start requesting those keys. The RIAA will then attempt to sue anyone who routes the crap, and the average user won't be able to keep their node from routing such content.
Firewall blocks against RIAA and known collaborators may work some, but it's not as if they're going to reveal what IP addresses they're using to investigate. They can just run a connection through a residential cable modem or DSL line.
I doubt a case against a Freenet user assisting copyright infringement in this manner would be thrown out immediately. The RIAA may even win. The Aimster case was similar, and they lost.
There are also potential holes in the anonymity of Freenet users. From their FAQ:
Freenet does not offer true anonymity in the way that the Mixmaster and cypherpunk remailers do. Most of the non-trivial attacks (advanced traffic analysis, compromising any given majority of the nodes, etc.) that these were designed to counter would probably be successful in identifying someone making requests on Freenet.
On Freenet, whatever you do, your identity is still revealed to the first Freenet Node you talk to, and even if you limit yourself to talk only to trusted nodes (a feature that will be implemented in the future), they will have to talk to the rest of the network at some time or another. The anonymity that Freenet offers is really just obscurity in the fact that it is hard to prove that your node wasn't proxying the request for or insert of data on behalf of somebody else (who might also just have been proxying it).
The problem is that the only way that you can offer true anonymity is if the client can directly control the routing of data, and thus encrypt it with a series of keys of the nodes it will pass through (a la Mixmaster). Freenet's dynamic routing cannot offer that, so to attain true anonymity you have to send the message through an external network of anonymous remailers first (a future SMTP->Freenet bridge would make this possible). There are also plans for doing mixmaster-style injection of requests over the "standard" protocol, however this probably won't be implemented
They will probably decide to sue everyone on Freenet, and we can thank you for it. Why don't you post some child pr0n and plan terr0r attacks using Freenet as well. Then you can make sure the fascist regimes will hunt every Freenet user down. The RIAA doesn't care if they sue or screw over innocent people, so broadcasting their crap on Freenet will just end up screwing everyone on the entire network.
Freenet works if the users are just criticizing politicians/companies or doing things which are considered mildly unacceptable, but when many users go into things which are blatantly illegal or does things which pisses off an entire government or factional group, then the network is screwed. They'll just track down every Freenet user and mow them down--at least within countries they operate.
The "entertainment" cartel is smoking some serious SCO crack. They are so bad, for a minute, I thought this story was real. At this point, it wouldn't be suprizing if the story was true.
Yeah, and if the disk looks like a normal audio CD but isn't--it installs a virus during autorun, then you just hosed your computer.
I especially like the CD burning programs which add an autorun program to attempt to start up Windows Media Player. My roommate has one like that. He couldn't figure out why the CD wouldn't open his chosen program. Sometimes it would do some wierd wanky things like give a GPF dialog or crash his computer, or sometimes nothing at all.
Why do you need meta data to identify a file type? Just use the file's header. It's part of the file (the first few bytes), so no matter where you copy the file, it's still there.
it could easily be implemented on Linux
It is. It's called the file command. Type "file filename" at a command prompt and it says what kind of file you have.
Ummm....the parent poster was talking about data in the file header. The vast majority of file types have unique identifying information in the header, as they should. That way file identification isn't reliant upon any meta-data which can be lost or altered easily. How many times have you seen a file renamed with a wrong extension or no extension?
Go to any OS with the "file" command (such as FreeBSD, Linux, many others), and type file then a filename. Whoa! What's that? It tells what the type of the file. Sometimes it even says more information about the file--like the sample rate of.wav files.
Rename the file with a different extension. Try it again. Hey! It still gives the same answer! Uuencode the file. Take off the file extension and verify there is no meta data attached to the uuencoded file--yeah you'll have file permissions, just change them to 777--you'll notice the rest of the file is garbage looking crap which is the encoded body of the file. Send the data to another machine. Decode it. Try file again. Whoa! The file command still works! All this without a Microsoft innovation!
Then they present this ill-concieved technology to their clients and shareholders as some sort of panacea, knowing all the while that it is utterly ineffective. This is what is known as "fraud".
To top off their audacity, they then threaten a lawsuit against the researcher who alerted the public to this fraud.
Doesn't sound very different from the SMDI and Adobe e-book cases.
...running Windows AND has autorun turned on...
This is one of countless reasons why so many consider Windows insecure. Autorun is not only enabled by default, but why do they have this "feature" in the first place? It is a huge security risk. If someone can get you to insert a CD into your drive, they can run or install any program they want onto your computer.
I really find it very amusing that good old American fear of thoughtcrime makes people say fsck and pr0n even in this very thread.
"Fear of thoughtcrime"? How about fear of real actions.
Read the user agreement to just about any US-based ISP/web host and you will see why they do this. The companies have vague clauses about "offensive" words and material. Take a look at the censorware put into libraries and workplaces--if you trigger it, you'll get in trouble. Look at some of the crazy US laws like COPPA/CIPA and the resulting harassment from police. Some places in the US even consider pictures of women in bikinis, kissing, or lesbians (even if they just hold hands) "pr0n". This kind of jack-booted Taliban attitude is common in the US.
If you had a significant risk you may be booted off your ISP, your website taken down, sued, or perhaps even arrested for using a word, you'd use euphemisms too.
Yeah, sure. The gay ones living in their parent's basement. The ones who are big fat sweaty geeks and never shower. The ones who want to spray grits all over Natalie Portman's petrified ass in Soviet Russia.
Why is it that technical fields are intimidating to women?
Technical fields are intimidating to just about everyone, except the truly gifted, and there are about as many gifted women in IT as there are gifted men.
So the root of the problem must be social.
The root of the problem is social.
Extremists gather in groups to tell women there is a vast conspiracy to keep women away from computers. Then when a woman encounters a troll who attacks anyone and will use anything they can think of as an insult, she thinks: "they are right. Everyone is out to get me. I give up." The problem when you train people to play a victime, they become one and don't even try. No matter who a person is, no matter where a person goes, no matter what they do, there are people who will shit on them. One has to learn to deal with these wackos, not cave in.
Then their is the fact that most men are stripped of their emotions. From childhood, they are taught they shouldn't have any. No wonder most of them become obsessed with machines. Women tend to be more normal. "most of those females I know who program and use *NIX as much as I do don't obsessively do so. On the contrary, most men I know who program and use *NIX do so all night long, sustaining themselves on Jolt and Oreos."
The same argument "women dont want to enter the field" was used for most fields that were predominatly men,
Well, if all these women want to enter the field so much, why don't I see many women's names in open source projects? All they need is a computer, some books, and a webpage. No "boys club" conspiracy can stop them from doing it. Do you think SourceForge and Freshmeat delete projects because they are run by women?
Congradulations, you found the know it all wannabes! They look for people they think can be easily impressed and try to show off their "knowledge." When they were kids, their parents would reward them for their accomplishments. "You scribbled on a peice of paper? Yay! Have a cookie!" "You tied your shoes? Yay! Have a cookie!" "You wet your bed? Yay! Have a cookie!"
I doubt most of these guys you talk about wanted to date you. Unless you patronized them, then they'd say: "she's just like mommy. I wuv my mommy. I wuv her now tuo." Once you patronize them, you never hear the end of it. "Look mommy, I made a brown stain in my pants!" Just hope your instructor isn't one of these people. Solve a problem better than they can, instant F.
The women I was talking about did need help. One was a waitress from a small town and started the class in the middle of the semester. About half the class worked together to help her get caught up. There was no "Look at me, mommy! You are cute. will you go out on a date?" crap. They left the women who knew what they were doing alone. Except for the really gifted one--I'm afraid when you're too good, some people will bug you for the answers, male or female.
You have a good point. Looking at their site, StarOffice was created by a company(?) called StarDivision. It appears you are correct. I can't tell, but is OpenOffice a fork of StarOffice or what?
He's influential because News Corp is the main company pushing DRM. If the DRM cartel succeeds, they'll have total control over all computer technology.
Want to create some hardware? You will have to get your drivers signed by the cartel (while paying them some huge fee no doubt). If they don't like your device, it won't get it's drivers signed, and therefore won't work on most computers as they will mostly be DRM machines. Want to write some software? Same deal.
Want to publish some sort of digital work (movie, music, web page, etc)? Well, maybe they won't require the work be signed directly by them, but to "combat piracy", you'll have to get a digial certificate from them and sign your works with it. If they don't like your work--maybe it's critical of the MPAA, then they will revoke your certificate, and no one can view your works anymore.
"Boy's club mentality"??? Maybe there are few women on the list because few women choose to enter technical fields. In all my electronics and computer science classes, there were a very small percentage of women, and there was no "boy's club mentality" either. In fact, most of the guys would go out of their way to help the women.
Your argument is crap. If you had been paying any attention to the stories for the entire past year, you'd know the RIAA will file a complaint about any file which has a filename containing any words in a artist's name or a song name. I could have the right to download, upload, and burn the file on a disk then crap on it. I could even own the copyright to that file. Yet the RIAA would still file a complaint. They don't care. They want to stop the flow of information on the internet no matter if they own the rights to that information or not.
So you are saying no one has the right to distribute files which have words such as "Christina", "Madonna" (Whoa! I didn't know the RIAA owned an inn!) or "love"? There are many other words which would be banned too. In fact, probably every word in your post, so if you don't want to "infringe" on "copyrights", you will have to stop posting on Slashdot and everywhere else on the internet.
Interesting story. So where they only checking for Kazaa or were they actually bothering to check for copyright infringement? If it's the former, then it just shows how fascist the system has become. What's next? Police searching for the "pirating" program called Apache? It is insane to make a method of communication illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree. Sony products are crap. Just about everything I've bought from them has fallen apart in some way.
So that's how you make one work! The best I could come up with was balancing a heavy book on just the right place--helped a little, but not much.
You mean this? "This vulnerability requires the attacker to create or modify certain Apache configuration files, and is not a remote hole. " How is this as bad as many of the exploits plaguing IIS and other Microsoft products? Up until a few years ago, Microsoft wasn't paying much attention to local exploits at all.
So, where are all the worms who exploit this vulnerability? When did they hose the internet? Are these pings I keep getting from this imaginary worm, or are they from the real worm which has been infecting Microsoft systems for months?
Just because a project has a vulnerability doesn't mean it is as poorly managed as Microsoft. I hate stupid extremist thinking. "If it isn't completely secure, it must be completely insecure!"
Maybe not so pointless. Read the submission carefully:
Their ad blocking is defective. So, if I have two sites with different domains, and I link between them using images, then users running Norton's ad blocker won't see my links. They'll never even know the links existed. Hmmm....maybe I'll do this just to screw over people who use broken ad blocking...
So you are saying advertisers should gather information about you and track you. Are you sure you want this? I don't.
Ummm...careful there. SCO just might send you an "invoice" for the money you "owe" them for your usage of Linux, and with their "advertisers" tracking you, you'll be easy to find.
That sounds like a very specific list of features. Are you sure such a keyboard even exists? Ergonomic seems more for business users, and multimedia keys for home lusers. Keyboard manufacturers may not see a big enough user base to put both features in one keyboard--at least not with all the other features you mention.
I admit I didn't look very hard, but the closest I could come were: Zippy WK801 (not ergonomic) and Kinesis Advantage Pro USB (no multimedia keys). You won't be able to find something which doesn't exist. Perhaps someday there will be a service where you can custom order a product to your specific spec, but not today.
Though there has to be some sort of product search engine similar to the one described by you, but it is probably buried in the internet. I know of a few who search by the lowest price...
That's the problem with public schools. Not only are they subject to propaganda and stupid policies (because parents can't easily move their children into a competitor's school to escape the crap), but they are run by corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats who are willing to take bribes and always need more money for operating the school due to mismanagement.
Fair use? How about free speech. Don't come crying to me when the MPAA makes it so you can have "fair use" of their crap, but you'll be hard pressed to publish anything (text, audio, video) electronically or communicate without the DRM cartel's approval and a huge "licensing" fee.
If you think that's harsh, you should read the part about seizing and destroying property suspected of having been used for copyright infringement. Yay! Now the RIAA will have the same ability as the DEA for stealing property. Don't you love the United States Soviet Union? Soon there will be a guard at every copy machine to make sure you "use it properly."
Maybe everyone who owns a computer will have to buy machine guns and set traps to protect themselves. Consumer electronics salesmen will sell their wares out on the streets asking "What do you need? Want a camcorder to record you son's birthday? Only a thousand bucks!"
You are displaying your ignorance of how the court system is abused. Any idiot can file a lawsuit against anyone for any reason. The RIAA will just file lawsuits random people because their Freenet node happened to transmit a mp3 file. Even though their case may have no merit, they will offer to settle out of court for less than their victim's lawyer fees with an "easy" payment plan, and many people will take the offer because they can't afford the lawyers in the first place.
The ones who don't settle, the RIAA sue and drag out the court case as long as possible--perhaps winning on some minor technicality or because their victim ran out of money for lawyers. All the while saying in the press "we'll sue every 'pirate' Freenet user because their nodes transmit music files." Have you not been paying any attention for the past few years? They want to harrass every P2P network out of operation. They don't even care if a P2P user isn't breaking the law, they'll label the bloke a criminal anyway.
Ummmm....do you know anything about how the internet and Freenet works? There is this thing called an IP address. Others need to have it so they can send you packets. In fact, last time I checked, Freenet uses TCP which guarantees the IP address can't be spoofed for an active connnection, and you have to have an active connection to send data. So at bare minimum they can find out who is running nodes.
It shouldn't be too hard to find out if a node is routing unlicensed mp3s. All they have to do is figure out which keys apply to the cartel's music, and start requesting those keys. The RIAA will then attempt to sue anyone who routes the crap, and the average user won't be able to keep their node from routing such content.
Firewall blocks against RIAA and known collaborators may work some, but it's not as if they're going to reveal what IP addresses they're using to investigate. They can just run a connection through a residential cable modem or DSL line.
I doubt a case against a Freenet user assisting copyright infringement in this manner would be thrown out immediately. The RIAA may even win. The Aimster case was similar, and they lost.
There are also potential holes in the anonymity of Freenet users. From their FAQ:
They will probably decide to sue everyone on Freenet, and we can thank you for it. Why don't you post some child pr0n and plan terr0r attacks using Freenet as well. Then you can make sure the fascist regimes will hunt every Freenet user down. The RIAA doesn't care if they sue or screw over innocent people, so broadcasting their crap on Freenet will just end up screwing everyone on the entire network.
Freenet works if the users are just criticizing politicians/companies or doing things which are considered mildly unacceptable, but when many users go into things which are blatantly illegal or does things which pisses off an entire government or factional group, then the network is screwed. They'll just track down every Freenet user and mow them down--at least within countries they operate.
The "entertainment" cartel is smoking some serious SCO crack. They are so bad, for a minute, I thought this story was real. At this point, it wouldn't be suprizing if the story was true.
Yeah, and if the disk looks like a normal audio CD but isn't--it installs a virus during autorun, then you just hosed your computer.
I especially like the CD burning programs which add an autorun program to attempt to start up Windows Media Player. My roommate has one like that. He couldn't figure out why the CD wouldn't open his chosen program. Sometimes it would do some wierd wanky things like give a GPF dialog or crash his computer, or sometimes nothing at all.
Why do you need meta data to identify a file type? Just use the file's header. It's part of the file (the first few bytes), so no matter where you copy the file, it's still there.
It is. It's called the file command. Type "file filename" at a command prompt and it says what kind of file you have.
Ummm....the parent poster was talking about data in the file header. The vast majority of file types have unique identifying information in the header, as they should. That way file identification isn't reliant upon any meta-data which can be lost or altered easily. How many times have you seen a file renamed with a wrong extension or no extension?
Go to any OS with the "file" command (such as FreeBSD, Linux, many others), and type file then a filename. Whoa! What's that? It tells what the type of the file. Sometimes it even says more information about the file--like the sample rate of .wav files.
Rename the file with a different extension. Try it again. Hey! It still gives the same answer! Uuencode the file. Take off the file extension and verify there is no meta data attached to the uuencoded file--yeah you'll have file permissions, just change them to 777--you'll notice the rest of the file is garbage looking crap which is the encoded body of the file. Send the data to another machine. Decode it. Try file again. Whoa! The file command still works! All this without a Microsoft innovation!
Doesn't sound very different from the SMDI and Adobe e-book cases.
This is one of countless reasons why so many consider Windows insecure. Autorun is not only enabled by default, but why do they have this "feature" in the first place? It is a huge security risk. If someone can get you to insert a CD into your drive, they can run or install any program they want onto your computer.
"Fear of thoughtcrime"? How about fear of real actions.
Read the user agreement to just about any US-based ISP/web host and you will see why they do this. The companies have vague clauses about "offensive" words and material. Take a look at the censorware put into libraries and workplaces--if you trigger it, you'll get in trouble. Look at some of the crazy US laws like COPPA/CIPA and the resulting harassment from police. Some places in the US even consider pictures of women in bikinis, kissing, or lesbians (even if they just hold hands) "pr0n". This kind of jack-booted Taliban attitude is common in the US.
If you had a significant risk you may be booted off your ISP, your website taken down, sued, or perhaps even arrested for using a word, you'd use euphemisms too.
Yeah, sure. The gay ones living in their parent's basement. The ones who are big fat sweaty geeks and never shower. The ones who want to spray grits all over Natalie Portman's petrified ass in Soviet Russia.
Technical fields are intimidating to just about everyone, except the truly gifted, and there are about as many gifted women in IT as there are gifted men.
The root of the problem is social.
Extremists gather in groups to tell women there is a vast conspiracy to keep women away from computers. Then when a woman encounters a troll who attacks anyone and will use anything they can think of as an insult, she thinks: "they are right. Everyone is out to get me. I give up." The problem when you train people to play a victime, they become one and don't even try. No matter who a person is, no matter where a person goes, no matter what they do, there are people who will shit on them. One has to learn to deal with these wackos, not cave in.
Then their is the fact that most men are stripped of their emotions. From childhood, they are taught they shouldn't have any. No wonder most of them become obsessed with machines. Women tend to be more normal. "most of those females I know who program and use *NIX as much as I do don't obsessively do so. On the contrary, most men I know who program and use *NIX do so all night long, sustaining themselves on Jolt and Oreos."
Well, if all these women want to enter the field so much, why don't I see many women's names in open source projects? All they need is a computer, some books, and a webpage. No "boys club" conspiracy can stop them from doing it. Do you think SourceForge and Freshmeat delete projects because they are run by women?
Well, what a lame fuck you are. Some people have a life.
Congradulations, you found the know it all wannabes! They look for people they think can be easily impressed and try to show off their "knowledge." When they were kids, their parents would reward them for their accomplishments. "You scribbled on a peice of paper? Yay! Have a cookie!" "You tied your shoes? Yay! Have a cookie!" "You wet your bed? Yay! Have a cookie!"
I doubt most of these guys you talk about wanted to date you. Unless you patronized them, then they'd say: "she's just like mommy. I wuv my mommy. I wuv her now tuo." Once you patronize them, you never hear the end of it. "Look mommy, I made a brown stain in my pants!" Just hope your instructor isn't one of these people. Solve a problem better than they can, instant F.
The women I was talking about did need help. One was a waitress from a small town and started the class in the middle of the semester. About half the class worked together to help her get caught up. There was no "Look at me, mommy! You are cute. will you go out on a date?" crap. They left the women who knew what they were doing alone. Except for the really gifted one--I'm afraid when you're too good, some people will bug you for the answers, male or female.
Where is Richard Stallman (GNU/FSF)?
You have a good point. Looking at their site, StarOffice was created by a company(?) called StarDivision. It appears you are correct. I can't tell, but is OpenOffice a fork of StarOffice or what?
He's influential because News Corp is the main company pushing DRM. If the DRM cartel succeeds, they'll have total control over all computer technology.
Want to create some hardware? You will have to get your drivers signed by the cartel (while paying them some huge fee no doubt). If they don't like your device, it won't get it's drivers signed, and therefore won't work on most computers as they will mostly be DRM machines. Want to write some software? Same deal.
Want to publish some sort of digital work (movie, music, web page, etc)? Well, maybe they won't require the work be signed directly by them, but to "combat piracy", you'll have to get a digial certificate from them and sign your works with it. If they don't like your work--maybe it's critical of the MPAA, then they will revoke your certificate, and no one can view your works anymore.
"Boy's club mentality"??? Maybe there are few women on the list because few women choose to enter technical fields. In all my electronics and computer science classes, there were a very small percentage of women, and there was no "boy's club mentality" either. In fact, most of the guys would go out of their way to help the women.
Since when has OpenOffice.org been a GNU project? I thought they were started by Sun?
Your argument is crap. If you had been paying any attention to the stories for the entire past year, you'd know the RIAA will file a complaint about any file which has a filename containing any words in a artist's name or a song name. I could have the right to download, upload, and burn the file on a disk then crap on it. I could even own the copyright to that file. Yet the RIAA would still file a complaint. They don't care. They want to stop the flow of information on the internet no matter if they own the rights to that information or not.
So you are saying no one has the right to distribute files which have words such as "Christina", "Madonna" (Whoa! I didn't know the RIAA owned an inn!) or "love"? There are many other words which would be banned too. In fact, probably every word in your post, so if you don't want to "infringe" on "copyrights", you will have to stop posting on Slashdot and everywhere else on the internet.
Interesting story. So where they only checking for Kazaa or were they actually bothering to check for copyright infringement? If it's the former, then it just shows how fascist the system has become. What's next? Police searching for the "pirating" program called Apache? It is insane to make a method of communication illegal.
Your complaints seem to be about GNU projects. They do some strange things. Not all of it is incompetence either. Some of it is politics.
That's why you have to take an active stance in avoiding script kiddie projects like GNOME or KDE. Just say no to crap!