...are the people who want to control the internet.
Media companies wanting to shut down distribution of content not authorized by them (not just illegally copied content but content created and shared under licenses that specifically ALLOW sharing)
News organizations and governments wanting to continue to maintain control over what news we read, view and listen to so they can make sure that the "sheeple" stay "sheeple" and dont actually try to CHANGE their lot in life
Telecommunications providers (including providers of cellular telecommunications) who want to maintain profits for services THEY control and not allow the growth of alternatives to the telco-provided services
Churches and other groups opposed to pornography, gambling and other "vices" who want to be able to ban such content (or if thats not possible, at least control it to the point where its effectively banned)
Manufacturers, distributors and retailers who want to control your abillity to buy stuff to keep bricks & mortar stores alive or to keep people from buying stuff from a country where its cheaper than their own (for example, here in australia, a number of online stores were selling Panasonic DVD recorders really cheap due to the low overheads of those stores. Bricks & Mortar electrical stores complained since they couldn't sell at the price the online guys were selling at and actually make any money. So Panasonic stopped selling the DVD recorders to the online stores)
Governments and spy agencies who want to control the internet so that its easier to spy on the people and look for people who might "rock the boat" or that want to use internet control as a way to hang on to power (look at what happened recently in Burma for example where the government restricted internet access to try to stop the world from finding out how many innocent civilians were being hurt and killed in the name of keeping the dictatorship in power)
They used filters and monitors and logging to spy on all traffic passing through key peering nodes on the say-so of the white house and the intelligence agencies even though such spying was illegal at the time it happened. I say we should hang AT&T, Verizon and the others out to dry for what they did. If it means they make less profit this year, tough, its their own fault for following the directions of G.W.Bush and his cronies instead of following the law (and demanding warrants for the spying)
If what the science says is true and this aircraft could fly at high mach numbers, it could slash journey times on long haul routes (especially routes over the ocean where the sonic booms wouldn't matter)
I am sure there are quite a few people (corporate executives for example) who would be happy to pay more to slash journey times that much.
If my ISP (TPG Internet) did this, I would drop them so fast even if it meant paying more to get the same service with someone else. But my ISP (unlike Rogers) doesn't do this kind of crap.
I am surprised that the file traders haven't just picked DIVX/XVID with MP3 or AAC audio inside an AVI container. That setup seems to be widely supported in hardware (all the hardware media players out there plus all the DVD players that play that same format off a burned disk) and software (windows will play this out of the box IIRC and if it wont, making it do so is trivial)
And its not like all this fancy new stuff is going to make the files noticeably smaller or easier to share out. OTOH, it does make it harder for automated "find all the video files" script that the MPAA might try to use to track down anyone sharing video (after all, anyone sharing video is a pirate until its shown otherwise as per the MPAA propaganda)
Its amazing to think that what was then considered "the Internet" (as opposed to individual networks at NCSA, NSF etc etc) was able to be controlled from one place.
These days the Internet is so large that no one person or organization can control it (despite attempts to do so by many different groups)
They need to define a standardized format/codec for audio and video for the same reasons as they declared GIF, JPG and PNG as standard formats for images.
By defining a standardized codec and format, they can ensure that every browser supporting the new audio and video tags can play the content.
The official unlock involves a piece of data that is stored on the phone and likely also stored on a server at apple. When you unlock it, iTunes reads stuff from the iPhone, sends it to apples server which looks it up in the database. If the phone is marked "ok to unlock", apples server sends back further data (which is unique to the phone) and iTunes sends it to the iPhone to unlock it.
So short of some kind of hack attack or raid on apples data center (both of which are 100% illegal and will probably get you thrown into federal pound me in the ass prison) you cant find a way to unlock the iPhone the same way as Apple does. You MIGHT be able to brute-force the unlock data for one specific iPhone but that wont help unlock other iPhones.
What is so bad about a company like AMD coming right out and saying "processor model x, clock speed y, stepping z has bug abc and this is the workaround for it". Assuming BIOS vendors and others are going to be deploying the fix anyway, how does it hurt AMD if everyone knows of the fix?
Some comments on your comments (and on the OP posting the definition of what should and shouldn't be allowed) Under section 1, add Exception: Traffic may be altered where such alteration is required to deliver the traffic to the intended destination.
This exception would cover modifications to TCP/IP headers such as TTL and hop count, conversion to different protocols (e.g. converting from Ethernet to ATM to DSL to frame relay etc) plus modifications made by email servers (e.g. if an email passes through multiple hops, those intermediate hops may change the packet) as well as changes made to web data in the normal operation of transparent web proxies.
Delete "b) It is generated by a program running without the consent of, and against the wishes of, the owner of the sending computer, if the sender is a customer of the ISP." (since that requires the ISP to read peoples minds to know if the copy of "w32/nastyworm.5.6.7" or whatever is something the user actually wants on their PC or not)
Change "a) It is intended to interfere with the correct operation and control of the recipient's equipment, if the recipient of the traffic is a customer of the ISP. This includes, but is not limited to, denial-of-service traffic and exploit attempts. However, an ISP must honor a request in writing by a customer to cease filtering inbound malicious traffic to them." to also malicious traffic sent out by customers of the ISP (i.e. worms/DDOS bots running inside the ISP network etc)
This allows the ISP to block worms, DOS attacks and other such things coming from inside their network.
After "c) Such traffic consists of unsolicited commercial email, and the customer has requested that the ISP filter inbound email to remove spam." add "d) Such traffic consists of unsolicited commercial email which is being sent by a customer of the ISP to another machine".
This allows ISPs to block Unsolicited Commercial Email being sent out from computers on their network. Defining "SPAM" is hard. Defining "Unsolicited Commercial Email" is easier (and has been done for other laws IIRC)
Also, add this "e) It is intended to interfere with the correct operation and control of the internet service providers equipment and network. This includes, but is not limited to, denial-of-service traffic and exploit attempts."
This means that ISPs can block direct attacks (such as exploits and DOS attacks) on their routers, email servers, web servers etc without needing to care one way or the other if there are customers who actually want to get infected with "w32/nastyworm.5.6.7" or whatever)
As for the definition of "ISP", it should be like this: If you access the internet via WiFi in a coffee shop, Starbucks is the ISP. If you and your roommate share internet access through Comcast, Comcast is the ISP. If you are in a college dorm room with internet access, the ISP is the college. (or possibly the company the college buys access from) If you work for IBM and access the internet through a peering point between IBM and AT&T, AT&T is the ISP. If you go to school and the school accesses the internet through DSL, the ISP is the DSL company
Also, add this exception to the rules: Exception: If the holder of the account being used to access the internet wishes to have filtering or blocking installed, the ISP may (if it chooses) do so upon receipt of a written request from the holder of the account. If the holder of the account being used to access the internet is also an ISP themselves, then this exception does not apply.
the "holder of the account being used to access the internet" means the person paying the ISP bill if the ISP is a commercial entity. If the ISP is provided for free (e.g. city-wide internet, co-op, "free with ads") then there will still be someone who is listed as the account holder.
This rule means that schools, libraries, airlines, employers and others can block traffic from their networks if they choose. But it prevents anyone who is labeled an "ISP" from requesting filtering from their upstream provider.
Aussies who want it can always buy it from a site like www.dvdpacific.com:) But yes, I do agree that its stupid that the studios dont make this stuff available to the people willing to pay perfectly good money for it.
And they wonder why people download this stuff from p2p or buy from import shops like DVDPacific.
The Barbie games (and other crap) in the list probably got BC almost for free because they used the same core game engine as . That or there were enough games on the same engine to justify the BC work for that engine.
Why laws like this need to cover an email address or a chat handle. I can understand not wanting age, phone number, address or photo to be disclosed (because those can be used to identify someone) but how does collecting, using, storing or disclosing an email address or a chat handle violate someones privacy? (most forums I know of collect but do not display email addresses)
Basically, if allowed Amazon or Apple to sell an e-book of cheaper than the paperback is sold at, all the bricks and mortar bookstores who are selling the paperback will complain.
Its the same reason why buying games on Steam doesn't cost less than buying them from GameStop or Wal-Mart, if it did, GameStop and Wal-Mart would be a lot less willing to carry the game.
I was actually referring to email servers that run their own virus scanners similar to what my ISP, TPG Internet does. Anytime a mail gets sent to my address with a virus, the mail server drops the mail. And periodically I get a little "we stopped x number of viruses in the past 2 weeks" mail telling me that they stopped x copies of virus y from reaching my mailbox.
Works great and if more ISPs (and others who run mail servers) would do it, email-borne viruses wouldn't be such a huge problem.
If someone steals my TV set, thats theft. However, the law says that I have to choose to press charges against the thief.
The same should be true with open WiFi. Unless the owner of the WiFi router or device chooses to press charges, the police should not be able to charge them (i.e. what happened in the UK)
My understanding is that virus blocking is done either by wholesale port blocks (e.g. blocking port 80 to stop all the IIS worms which many ISPs did or blocking port 25 to stop spam zombies) or (in the case of email viruses) is done via scanners that scan each email message looking for viruses and stripping the content or message)
The difference between blocking SPAM and what Comcast are doing is that SPAM blocking doesn't involve sending messages from one IP address crafted to look like they are coming from a totally different IP address. That is the core of the problem with what Comcast are doing, they are sending network packets from one IP address (the Sandvine blocking and detection box) but where the IP datagram contains a totally different source address (that of the BitTorrent user).
This forging of packets probably violates several RFCs and standards documents and (as several have said before) may actually be considered fraud.
But unlike TV, sending electricity over long distances requires big huge high-voltage cables and wires. Evidence from some of the large blackouts of recent history suggests that they spread because more electricity was flowing down high voltage lines than they could handle and they failed which lead to further cascade failures and so on.
You dont have that problem with TV or internet content.
The downside to the electricity market being the way that it is is that the generators are not located where the consumers are. So you have to have miles of high voltage transmission lines to get the electricity from the producer to the consumer. (which leads to blackouts). Thankfully that would not be the case with cable TV.
Slashdot Mirror
...are the people who want to control the internet.
Media companies wanting to shut down distribution of content not authorized by them (not just illegally copied content but content created and shared under licenses that specifically ALLOW sharing)
News organizations and governments wanting to continue to maintain control over what news we read, view and listen to so they can make sure that the "sheeple" stay "sheeple" and dont actually try to CHANGE their lot in life
Telecommunications providers (including providers of cellular telecommunications) who want to maintain profits for services THEY control and not allow the growth of alternatives to the telco-provided services
Churches and other groups opposed to pornography, gambling and other "vices" who want to be able to ban such content (or if thats not possible, at least control it to the point where its effectively banned)
Manufacturers, distributors and retailers who want to control your abillity to buy stuff to keep bricks & mortar stores alive or to keep people from buying stuff from a country where its cheaper than their own (for example, here in australia, a number of online stores were selling Panasonic DVD recorders really cheap due to the low overheads of those stores. Bricks & Mortar electrical stores complained since they couldn't sell at the price the online guys were selling at and actually make any money. So Panasonic stopped selling the DVD recorders to the online stores)
Governments and spy agencies who want to control the internet so that its easier to spy on the people and look for people who might "rock the boat" or that want to use internet control as a way to hang on to power (look at what happened recently in Burma for example where the government restricted internet access to try to stop the world from finding out how many innocent civilians were being hurt and killed in the name of keeping the dictatorship in power)
They used filters and monitors and logging to spy on all traffic passing through key peering nodes on the say-so of the white house and the intelligence agencies even though such spying was illegal at the time it happened. I say we should hang AT&T, Verizon and the others out to dry for what they did. If it means they make less profit this year, tough, its their own fault for following the directions of G.W.Bush and his cronies instead of following the law (and demanding warrants for the spying)
If what the science says is true and this aircraft could fly at high mach numbers, it could slash journey times on long haul routes (especially routes over the ocean where the sonic booms wouldn't matter)
I am sure there are quite a few people (corporate executives for example) who would be happy to pay more to slash journey times that much.
If my ISP (TPG Internet) did this, I would drop them so fast even if it meant paying more to get the same service with someone else. But my ISP (unlike Rogers) doesn't do this kind of crap.
I am surprised that the file traders haven't just picked DIVX/XVID with MP3 or AAC audio inside an AVI container. That setup seems to be widely supported in hardware (all the hardware media players out there plus all the DVD players that play that same format off a burned disk) and software (windows will play this out of the box IIRC and if it wont, making it do so is trivial)
And its not like all this fancy new stuff is going to make the files noticeably smaller or easier to share out. OTOH, it does make it harder for automated "find all the video files" script that the MPAA might try to use to track down anyone sharing video (after all, anyone sharing video is a pirate until its shown otherwise as per the MPAA propaganda)
Its amazing to think that what was then considered "the Internet" (as opposed to individual networks at NCSA, NSF etc etc) was able to be controlled from one place.
These days the Internet is so large that no one person or organization can control it (despite attempts to do so by many different groups)
They need to define a standardized format/codec for audio and video for the same reasons as they declared GIF, JPG and PNG as standard formats for images.
By defining a standardized codec and format, they can ensure that every browser supporting the new audio and video tags can play the content.
I doubt Russia has had ANY fair elections at all since the fall of communism.
The official unlock involves a piece of data that is stored on the phone and likely also stored on a server at apple. When you unlock it, iTunes reads stuff from the iPhone, sends it to apples server which looks it up in the database. If the phone is marked "ok to unlock", apples server sends back further data (which is unique to the phone) and iTunes sends it to the iPhone to unlock it.
So short of some kind of hack attack or raid on apples data center (both of which are 100% illegal and will probably get you thrown into federal pound me in the ass prison) you cant find a way to unlock the iPhone the same way as Apple does. You MIGHT be able to brute-force the unlock data for one specific iPhone but that wont help unlock other iPhones.
What is so bad about a company like AMD coming right out and saying "processor model x, clock speed y, stepping z has bug abc and this is the workaround for it". Assuming BIOS vendors and others are going to be deploying the fix anyway, how does it hurt AMD if everyone knows of the fix?
Some comments on your comments (and on the OP posting the definition of what should and shouldn't be allowed)
Under section 1, add
Exception:
Traffic may be altered where such alteration is required to deliver the traffic to the intended destination.
This exception would cover modifications to TCP/IP headers such as TTL and hop count, conversion to different protocols (e.g. converting from Ethernet to ATM to DSL to frame relay etc) plus modifications made by email servers (e.g. if an email passes through multiple hops, those intermediate hops may change the packet) as well as changes made to web data in the normal operation of transparent web proxies.
Delete "b) It is generated by a program running without the consent of, and against the wishes of, the owner of the sending computer, if the sender is a customer of the ISP." (since that requires the ISP to read peoples minds to know if the copy of "w32/nastyworm.5.6.7" or whatever is something the user actually wants on their PC or not)
Change "a) It is intended to interfere with the correct operation and control of the recipient's equipment, if the recipient of the traffic is a customer of the ISP. This includes, but is not limited to, denial-of-service traffic and exploit attempts. However, an ISP must honor a request in writing by a customer to cease filtering inbound malicious traffic to them." to also malicious traffic sent out by customers of the ISP (i.e. worms/DDOS bots running inside the ISP network etc)
This allows the ISP to block worms, DOS attacks and other such things coming from inside their network.
After "c) Such traffic consists of unsolicited commercial email, and the customer has requested that the ISP filter inbound email to remove spam." add "d) Such traffic consists of unsolicited commercial email which is being sent by a customer of the ISP to another machine".
This allows ISPs to block Unsolicited Commercial Email being sent out from computers on their network. Defining "SPAM" is hard. Defining "Unsolicited Commercial Email" is easier (and has been done for other laws IIRC)
Also, add this "e) It is intended to interfere with the correct operation and control of the internet service providers equipment and network. This includes, but is not limited to, denial-of-service traffic and exploit attempts."
This means that ISPs can block direct attacks (such as exploits and DOS attacks) on their routers, email servers, web servers etc without needing to care one way or the other if there are customers who actually want to get infected with "w32/nastyworm.5.6.7" or whatever)
As for the definition of "ISP", it should be like this:
If you access the internet via WiFi in a coffee shop, Starbucks is the ISP. If you and your roommate share internet access through Comcast, Comcast is the ISP. If you are in a college dorm room with internet access, the ISP is the college. (or possibly the company the college buys access from) If you work for IBM and access the internet through a peering point between IBM and AT&T, AT&T is the ISP. If you go to school and the school accesses the internet through DSL, the ISP is the DSL company
Also, add this exception to the rules:
Exception: If the holder of the account being used to access the internet wishes to have filtering or blocking installed, the ISP may (if it chooses) do so upon receipt of a written request from the holder of the account. If the holder of the account being used to access the internet is also an ISP themselves, then this exception does not apply.
the "holder of the account being used to access the internet" means the person paying the ISP bill if the ISP is a commercial entity. If the ISP is provided for free (e.g. city-wide internet, co-op, "free with ads") then there will still be someone who is listed as the account holder.
This rule means that schools, libraries, airlines, employers and others can block traffic from their networks if they choose. But it prevents anyone who is labeled an "ISP" from requesting filtering from their upstream provider.
Aussies who want it can always buy it from a site like www.dvdpacific.com :)
But yes, I do agree that its stupid that the studios dont make this stuff available to the people willing to pay perfectly good money for it.
And they wonder why people download this stuff from p2p or buy from import shops like DVDPacific.
The Barbie games (and other crap) in the list probably got BC almost for free because they used the same core game engine as .
That or there were enough games on the same engine to justify the BC work for that engine.
Perhaps whoever modified madwifi obtained specification documents from the manufacturer of the WiFi chipset under NDA.
Why laws like this need to cover an email address or a chat handle.
I can understand not wanting age, phone number, address or photo to be disclosed (because those can be used to identify someone) but how does collecting, using, storing or disclosing an email address or a chat handle violate someones privacy? (most forums I know of collect but do not display email addresses)
One issue is that, without knowing the size of the external image, you cant render a space for it.
Basically, if allowed Amazon or Apple to sell an e-book of cheaper than the paperback is sold at, all the bricks and mortar bookstores who are selling the paperback will complain.
Its the same reason why buying games on Steam doesn't cost less than buying them from GameStop or Wal-Mart, if it did, GameStop and Wal-Mart would be a lot less willing to carry the game.
Thats if "terrorism" and "9/11" hasn't forced companies like that to stop giving tours...
I was actually referring to email servers that run their own virus scanners similar to what my ISP, TPG Internet does. Anytime a mail gets sent to my address with a virus, the mail server drops the mail. And periodically I get a little "we stopped x number of viruses in the past 2 weeks" mail telling me that they stopped x copies of virus y from reaching my mailbox.
Works great and if more ISPs (and others who run mail servers) would do it, email-borne viruses wouldn't be such a huge problem.
If someone steals my TV set, thats theft. However, the law says that I have to choose to press charges against the thief.
The same should be true with open WiFi. Unless the owner of the WiFi router or device chooses to press charges, the police should not be able to charge them (i.e. what happened in the UK)
My understanding is that virus blocking is done either by wholesale port blocks (e.g. blocking port 80 to stop all the IIS worms which many ISPs did or blocking port 25 to stop spam zombies) or (in the case of email viruses) is done via scanners that scan each email message looking for viruses and stripping the content or message)
The difference between blocking SPAM and what Comcast are doing is that SPAM blocking doesn't involve sending messages from one IP address crafted to look like they are coming from a totally different IP address. That is the core of the problem with what Comcast are doing, they are sending network packets from one IP address (the Sandvine blocking and detection box) but where the IP datagram contains a totally different source address (that of the BitTorrent user).
This forging of packets probably violates several RFCs and standards documents and (as several have said before) may actually be considered fraud.
I suspect that even if you could tunnel BitTorrent over SSL Comcast would still find ways to shut you down.
But unlike TV, sending electricity over long distances requires big huge high-voltage cables and wires. Evidence from some of the large blackouts of recent history suggests that they spread because more electricity was flowing down high voltage lines than they could handle and they failed which lead to further cascade failures and so on.
You dont have that problem with TV or internet content.
The downside to the electricity market being the way that it is is that the generators are not located where the consumers are. So you have to have miles of high voltage transmission lines to get the electricity from the producer to the consumer. (which leads to blackouts). Thankfully that would not be the case with cable TV.