Well, the 9th Circuit (which issued this ruling) is a very liberal court, which routinely sides with privacy, individual rights, and personal liberties, and does not err on the side of the state. So you can rest assured that any appropriate protections afforded Heckencamp were more than duly considered.
Once a court determines that the special needs doctrine applies to a search, it must "assess the constitutionality of the search by balancing the need to search against the intrusiveness of the search." Henderson, 305 F.3d at 1059 (citing Ferguson, 532 U.S. at 78). The factors considered are the subject of the search's privacy interest, the government's interests in performing the search, and the scope of the intrusion. See id. at 1059-60.
[...]
The district court did not err in denying the motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the remote search of the computer.
[...]
Here, even without the evidence gathered through the allegedly improper search, there is sufficient information in the affidavit to establish probable cause. The affidavit recited evidence that the server intrusion had been tracked "to a campus dormitory room computer belonging to Jerome T. Heckenkamp"; that "[t]he computer is in Room 107, Noyes House, Adams Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison"; and that "Heckenkamp previously had a disciplinary action in the past for unauthorized computer access to a University of Wisconsin system." This was sufficient evidence to obtain the warrant to search "Room 107, Noyes House, Adams Hall."
So, the search warrant exemption applied, and even without the information in question, there was, regardless, already sufficient information for a search warrant.
The University was not acting as law enforcement, as an agent of law enforcement, or at the behest of law enforcement, and thus is expressly and explicitly not covered by, or even related to, the Fourth Amendment.
The University acted to mitigate and prevent further intrusions, the scale of which were as yet unknown, into critical University servers and infrastructure upon which tens of thousands of people and many diverse University functions depend.
If you hack University servers from your computer (or even if the computer is being used a zombie), and then take steps to hide your identity or otherwise conceal your activities, your network access will be removed, such removal will be actively enforced and verified, and any immediate actions required to protect the security and integrity of the University network and computing resources will be taken.
Academic, legal, and possible criminal action will then follow, as warranted. These were exigent circumstances, and not done under the guise of law enforcement, but rather the protection of critical university resources from activities clearly and explicitly disallowed by numerous University information technology, housing, academic, and general policies (not to mention various federal and state laws).
Also, while we're on this topic, if the situation were reversed, I can imagine slashdotters would hardly call the equivalent situation a "hack" (i.e., "the university hacked into his Linux box"). Using the typical logic, he apparently didn't protect his machine well enough, so it's okay, right? Oh, but he's on the malicious side, so he's right, and the University trying to protect itself, from someone violating just about every University policy with no expectation of privacy on the network of a public research university, is wrong?
Let me know when you people get your stories straight.
And please, RTFA:
Here, Savoy provided extensive testimony that he was acting to secure the Mail2 server, and that his actions were not motivated by a need to collect evidence for law enforcement purposes or at the request of law enforcement agents.... The integrity and security of the campus e-mail system was in jeopardy. Although Savoy was aware that the FBI was also investigating the use of a computer on the university network to hack into the Qualcomm system, his actions were not taken for law enforcement purposes. Not only is there no evidence that Savoy was acting at the behest of law enforcement, but also the record indicates that Savoy was acting contrary to law enforcement requests that he delay action.
Under these circumstances, a search warrant was not necessary because Savoy was acting purely within the scope of his role as a system administrator. Under the university's policies, to which Heckenkamp assented when he connected his computer to the university's network, Savoy was authorized to "rectif[y] emergency situations that threaten the integrity of campus computer or communication systems[,] provided that use of accessed files is limited solely to maintaining or safeguarding the system." Savoy discovered through his examination of the network logs, in which Heckenkamp had no reasonable expectation of privacy, that the computer that he had earlier blocked from the network was now operating from a different IP address, which itself was a violation of the university's network policies.
This discovery, together with Savoy's earlier discovery that the computer had gained root access to the university's Mail2 server, created a situation in which Savoy needed to act immediately to protect the system. Although he was aware that the FBI was already seeking a warrant to search Heckenkamp's computer in order to serve the FBI's law enforcement needs, Savoy believed that the university's separate security interests required immediate action. Just as requiring a warrant to investigate potential student drug use would disrupt operation of a high school... requiring a warran
How do you get from the parent's posting that that's why there's "debate" on this?
Cellphones do work on planes, period, especially at lower altitudes. The also work at higher altitudes just fine over particular geographies/metopolitan areas/service areas, etc. This is easily proven, and if you're so inclined, you can even place a call yourself next time you're on a plane (of course, don't place the handset to your ear; call, e.g., your voice mail for a few minutes and you can definitely confirm that the call does indeed go through). (Cue conspiracy theorists saying "No, we can't try that because we'll get arrested and sent to Gitmo, and this FCC ban is part of the conspiracy because they want to hide the fact that cell phones don't work on planes!@!@@" Wrong. It's easy to non-chalantly place a call on a plane, and no one will be the wiser - just don't put the phone to your ear, don't use the speakerphone, don't act like you're really placing a call, etc. The point is it is EXTREMELY easy to verify that cellphone do indeed work on planes, and this is no surprise at all to anyone with a brain.)
Cell phones work under a wide variety of conditions on commercial aircraft, and always have, especially at lower altitudes. There is no "debate" about this except in the deluded ramblings of people who think all the calls on 9/11 were staged, done with CIA mind control or voice changing technology, etc.
The Mac mini is more capable... but lacks a few things that the aTV has. Most notably is HDMI and component video output. Add that to the cost of the mini in your example.
Oh yeah, I agree. But the Mac mini does have DVI and digital/optical audio out, and that's the same as what's included in HDMI (DVI video + digital audio).
And if you need component, yeah, there's no easy way to add that to a mini.
There is no way anyone will by the aTV to use for desktop use, but for connecting to their TV as the frontend for mythtv server it's perfect!
I do think *some* people might be willing to use AppleTV as a desktop, and I do agree that for some hobbyists, being able to run a full AppleTV and still using it as a media center would be very attractive. I'm just saying there's a small jump from a legally-configured AppleTV (i.e., with a purchased Leopard license) and a Mac mini.
Apple does not consider that to be Mac OS X, the product, period.
"Mac OS X" is not supported on AppleTV. The fact that it is running a custom Mac OS X variant is irrelevant. It is an appliance, and "Mac OS X", in the form we know it on conventional desktop computers is not supported from an end-user technical, support, legal, or business perspective on AppleTV.
Now, knowing that the AppleTV is essentially running Mac OS X gives us some comfort that AppleTV is indeed basically a little Mac, and being able to run a slightly modified full Mac OS X installation on it proves it. It also bodes well for the future of this little hobbyist/experimenter area. Which is what it will remain, because "Mac OS X" is not supported on AppleTV.
Being able to do something != supported
"Support" doesn't just mean it's possible in the context of talking about what a vendor does and doesn't support.
The license agreement specifies that Mac OS X can only be run on an Apple-labeled computer. " What if Apple says its not a Computer?
That's why the last sentence of my post says:
[...] one very interesting question might be, does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that is what the Mac OS X license agreement explicitly states?
I know slashdot folks don't read the articles, but are we now also not reading the posts we reply to?
First of all, I haven't followed all these Slashdot comments to which you are referring and I certainly never wrote any of them. Still, here I am replying to your message. I'm not here to "eat my words", as you say. Nor will anyone else respond to do so. The reason is that, given the facts at hand, some of the above opinions were reasonable ones at the time. They may or may not turn out to be wrong (after all, the non-DRM content is not yet available), but that doesn't make them unreasonable, except in retrospect.
But the comments were absolutely unreasonable. To say that Jobs' statement was nothing more than a PR conspiracy and that it "didn't really want" to remove DRM was foolish.
For those who thought Jobs' statement wasn't accompanied by any tangible "action", to not understand that the statement itself WAS the "action" was also foolish.
When Jobs made this shot across the bow of the major media companies, as one of the most powerful people in online media sales, and a board member of a major media company no less, this wasn't some complicated disinformation stunt to deflect criticism from Apple. It was exactly what it was: the most significant pressure on the major media companies to remove DRM, to explain why DRM doesn't and will never work, to show that DRM hurts and confuses only honest customers, and that it will always be able to be defeated.
That's why the statement was met with such vitriol from some major media execs and folks at the RIAA.
Except Apple's plan is working. It has enough clout, and labels like EMI which were teetering on the verge of their own decisions have now been pushed over. These things don't just happen overnight, as many expected them to, but now Apple and EMI will be the first to, in any meaningful way, sell major label content on an online media store, legally, with no DRM.
And that's huge, and exactly what Jobs intended to occur when the statement was made.
Yet here you are, shouting about how you were right and everyone else was wrong. All this demonstrates is that you may have been right this once, and the tone of your message seems to indicate an unhealthy trust in Apple.
Haha. "Unhealthy trust in Apple." What does that even mean?
Anyway, it isn't hard to look at Apple's track record of innovation and forcing change in the industry - first computer, and now online media. To ignore Apple's massive contributions to computing and innovation (even if it didn't "invent" the technology/item in question) and pretend it hasn't been significant is to be utterly and willfully ignorant.
Can I predict the future? No. But it was clear exactly what Apple was trying to do, and in fact was doing, when it made that statement, and this EMI announcement is but the first of the fruits of that effort.
Do you think that every action Microsoft makes is evil, simply because it's Microsoft, and all of Google's actions are good because it's Google?
Nope, neither. Next?
Do us a favor. Learn to think and get back when you're not such an arrogant ass.
Touché.
Also, while you're at it (and just to poke some wounds): If Apple didn't want the DRM at all, then why is it that iTunes wasn't originally designed to distribute DRM and non-DRM music for those labels that didn't want DRM?
Haha. Yeah, "poke some wounds". Ouch.:~(
The answers to your questions are of course simple ones, they're just not the ones you want to hear.
To directly quote myself:
[...] the business processes that go into rolling something like this out are probably far more complex than the technical processes. This actually speaks to my point: technically, sure, it may be that "2-3 day" operation people think it should be. From a business and support perspective, it's not. There may even be legal issues in one or m
Yeah, this is another common thing people bring up.
While it may get you around your own personal moral qualms (and isn't a bad argument, frankly), Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) and Mac OS X 10.4.x (PowerPC) are simply not the same product, and you can't juggle licenses between them. Your family pack license is for Mac OS X 10.4.x (PowerPC) only.
There already is standing precedent for this: Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (PowerPC) and Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 (Universal) are not the same product, and have different part numbers, and the license for the former does not entitle you to the latter: it is a separate product that must be repurchased.
Let me reiterate I don't think the argument is fundamentally a bad one! I'm sure that people with family packs will feel they're well within the "spirit" of things if they then pirate or otherwise obtain Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) for their AppleTV.
The only product I can see, right now, today, that could theoretically be purchased and run legally on AppleTV is Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 (Universal). In the future, of course, Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) gets added to the mix.
The final question, though, still stands: if legal push came to shove, would Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that's what the license agreement specifies? It's exactly that kind of legal gray area, lack of support, and the fact that it currently requires using a hacked kernel (making OS updates difficult, etc.), that will keep this to the hobbyist/hacker/experimenter crowd, and out of any kind of mainstream/business/institutional applications.
I will agree it's very interesting, though: AppleTV's basically just a little Mac!
I'm saying that the warranty is effectively void while Mac OS X is installed on it: Mac OS X is not supported in any way, shape, or form on AppleTV; so, if you need warranty service, it's obviously not going to be able to be serviced by Apple if it doesn't even have its own OS on it, will it? Even if the problem is not OS related, Apple still will likely need to test/boot/etc. the unit, and I can't imagine a scenario where Apple would be amenable to stock Mac OS X being on it, in the context of warranty service. So the point is that AppleTV's own OS would need to be restored to it for service.
Not a big deal for those who want to do this; just something to consider, and yet another element that will keep putting Mac OS X on AppleTVs well out of the mainstream and limited to hacker/hobbyist circles, along with my other points.
The point is that right now, there is NO way to buy Mac OS X (Intel) separately at all, license agreement or not.
If people want to make ridiculous arguments like "what if I just dropped four grand on a Mac Pro, but now suddenly only want to run Windows Vista on it, but I still want to use the OS X license on my Sony Vaio," more power to them. They can make their own moral/ethical determinations. If they want to ask if it's "legal", the answer in many jurisdictions is still, "probably not", because of what the EULA says.
The other consideration is that Apple is a hardware company and prices Mac OS X accordingly. They're also the ones who put hundreds of thousands of manhours and billions of dollars, collectively, into R&D and support of the product. If there are legal frameworks that allow them to specify that Mac OS X is intended only to be used on Apple computers, they're within their rights to use such frameworks, and you're certainly within your own personal rights to choose to ignore them.
Consider, though, that one major selling point for Mac OS X is its ease of use and how well things are seamlessly integrated with hardware, That's one of the reasons why people like, and want, Mac OS X. When it's all of a sudden run on random commodity hardware, that predictability quickly goes away. That may be Microsoft's model, but it's not Apple's. Mac OS X is also be priced under the assumption that it will be installed on existing Apple hardware.
You're certainly welcome to ignore all of this, but if you do, Mac OS X and the beloved PaintCo paint - which is presumably much better than the alternatives, thus why it's desirable - may not continue to be around. (Yes, that's an extreme argument, but it's no more extreme than your analogy is a stretch.)
Please direct me to the other major label music or media stores legally selling major label content online without DRM.
Thanks!
(Believe it or not, some people want major label content.)
And the restrictions are there because they needed to be. Apple is now using its power and clout to slowly remove them, because DRM is worthless for all the reasons we already knew, including the reasons Jobs, in his statement, articulated. If EMI was teetering, Jobs statement pushed them over the edge.
Like all things Apple does, no, they weren't "the first" and may not have "invented" said concept, but, as usual, they're the first to do it right, do it with tools (or content) people actually use, and do it en masse. Like it or not, this is huge, and just like all of the other things Apple didn't invent but actually took mass-market and made easy to use, like the mouse, the GUI, desktop publishing (LaserWriter), 802.11 (AirPort), a usable online music/media store (iTunes), etc. and so on, this will stand as a major shift in online media.
No, Apple isn't some kind of savior. But give credit where credit's due.
The OS X lincense states that you can only run OS X on Apple hardware. Guess what? The AppleTV is Apple hardware!
Devil's advocate on this one: the license agreement says an Apple-labled computer. If push comes to shove, does Apple consider the AppleTV a computer (aside from the fact that it obviously is - but keep in mind that you can consider nearly anything with a microprocessor a "computer" - the point is does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", or an appliance?).
There is no way at this time to buy a boxed copy of OS X x86 at a store, because... they don't sell it in stores! Right now all the boxed copies of OS X are PPC-only. When Leopard comes out, then things should start to get interesting.
I agree things start to get a little interesting. But a much, much more powerful (and supported!) Mac mini ($599) is still only $171 more. I suppose $171 may be a lot of money to some folks. And at academic pricing on the Mac mini ($579) and Mac OS X ($69), the gulf increases to $240. For some hobbyists and hackers for whom the AppleTV is appropriate hardware AND have the resources to open it, do all the imaging of disks and so on, have another Mac to do all of this at their disposal, etc., it does get somewhat interesting after Leopard comes out...
People have jumped through a lot of hoops to attempt to justify to themselves running the hacked Mac OS X on non-Apple systems, coming up with ridiculous sophistries like "What if I have an Intel iMac, but want to only run Linux on it, and then want to use that same OS X license on my Gateway laptop???"
...
AppleTV is an interesting case, because it is an "Apple-labeled" product, which is what the Mac OS X license agreement stipulates. And that's the key.
The license agreement specifies that Mac OS X can only be run on an Apple-labeled computer. And that is Apple's right. Now, you can ignore it, or ignore legal frameworks that may (or may not) enforce license agreements within certain countries/jurisdictions, and so on, but that's why running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is "illegal". There are NO prohibitions to doing things like hacking the kernel, etc. It's open source, and you can do with it what you wish regardless.
But there are still some interesting considerations:
- There is no way to legally get a standalone, retail copy of Mac OS X (Intel) for AppleTV, unless you make arguments about transferring an abandoned license from another Intel-based Mac. (And no, there is no conventional Mac OS X license that comes with AppleTV, either explicitly or implicitly.)
- Technically, you could purchase and run Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (Universal) and legally run it on AppleTV - there would be no prohibitions to this.
- Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) will be the first version of Mac OS X to have a legally purchasable standalone retail Intel version (actually, Leopard will be Universal).
But there are some other things to think about:
- Even when Leopard ships, at retail pricing, it's still $299 + $129 for AppleTV + Mac OS X. It's $171 more for a much more capable Mac mini. However, $171 may be enough to get people to consider this.
- This will really be interesting if Leopard can run unmodified on AppleTV (i.e., without a hacked kernel).
- This will still be relegated to the hobbyist/experimenter/hacker crowd, as you need to disassemble AppleTV in order to do this, image drives, have another Mac handy, and so on, not to mention that the warranty is likely void while OS X is installed on the machine (which of course is reversible, etc.)
So while this is all very interesting, please consider the fact that there are no legal ways to get Mac OS X for it currently.
This post is obviously not for people who think EULAs are BS, or that since it's an Apple product "it's okay", or that since it has some stripped down OS X on it already, "it's okay" to also install OS X from their friend's iMac, etc.
I'm simply raising the legitimate concerns surrounding licensing on AppleTV, some of which get interesting with Leopard since it is, indeed, and Apple-labeled computer, and Leopard will be available standalone.
There are also no prohibitions on using a modified kernel, but one very interesting question might be, does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that is what the Mac OS X license agreement explicitly states?
To all the people who thought Jobs' statement was PR bullshit to deflect criticism and that it "never really intended" to remove any DRM from any of its tracks, will you now go back and eat your words?
All the folks who erroneously expected/thought that Apple should have been able to do this in "2-3 days, tops" on a massive service and infrastructure like iTunes, will you now go back and eat your words?
To all of the people who think Apple can just "flip a switch" for indies, utterly ignoring the fact that there may be other binding legal or contract obligations that need to be ironed out, will you now go back and eat your words?
For the people who ignorantly don't realize that there is a massive support operation behind iTunes, and Apple doesn't want to break things or confuse customers, and wanted to do it right, and wanted to force the labels' hands such that a big one would jump first, will you now go back and eat your words?
I'm willing to wait at least for the official announcement, but since Reuters and the WSJ have already independently reported this, all you naysayers who kept on saying this was just a big PR conspiracy by Apple and they really were oh-so-in-love with DRM and iTunes/iPod lock-in that they'd never remove DRM, you're welcome to use this thread for your apologies.
This, if all the reports really are true (and no, it isn't the result of an April Fool's joke for anyone who still thinks it is), represents the biggest shift in online media since online media itself: the biggest online store, actively willing to sell content without DRM, proving that Apple isn't interested in DRM and did only apply it because of studio demands.
And then, pragmatically getting ALL of the major studios onboard into online sales, working in countless countries and jurisdictions with different legal systems, doing something that no other company had done before, and just biding its time and dropping the no-DRM bombshell in the form of Jobs' statement.
I know people probably won't thank Apple for this, especially the folks who love to hate Apple. But for all of the people who ask "what Apple ever does", or "how do they innovate", here's yet another answer.
So it's not running in "big" enterprises. Then, in all seriousness, where is it running these days?
Well, are "big" enterprises all that exist? The answer should be hopefully obvious.
For our part, which is that of a large public research university, we have probably about 100 Mac OS X Server systems on campus here, and about 35 in our primary datacenter, not counting systems in compute clusters, which probably adds another 100 or so. (We have about 16000 Macs in general on campus, nearly all on Mac OS X.) Most are used for tasks where an Apple server is required or desired, like AppleShare file service, QuickTime Streaming Server, managing Mac OS X clients, etc. And yes, things like AFP and QTSS can be done on other platforms in various ways, but sometimes you want a seamless commercial-vendor-supported solution. The remainder are used as light to medium duty departmental/workgroup UNIX servers. In the latter case, they're usually picked because they're a lot easier for some folks to run than Windows Server 2003 or Linux; it's sometimes the difference between a small department or workgroup actually being able to reasonably run a server, or not. Some are deployed in departments with many skilled sysadmins who manage hundreds of Mac OS X clients, and use Mac OS X Server-specific functionality to do so.
Uh, CALEA mandates technical mechanisms for providing information to law enforcement when required by a court order, so that things like wiretaps of VoIP phones or intercepting electronic communications can, you know, actually be done when necessitated by a court order.
It was also passed in 1994 (i.e., not under Bush), and isn't new (though the deadline for compliance is May 2007).
Apparently you couldn't read the text on the original "test" site.
The "test" wasn't to "prove" Mac OS X was "secure". It was to quickly disprove the flurry of articles going around saying it was possible to hack any network-connected Mac in 30 minutes or less, when the original article forgot to point out that the test system in that scenario allowed ANYONE remote ssh access, and someone used a local root exploit (still a serious issue, but hardly close to the articles essentially saying any network-connected Mac OS X machine can now be easily hacked remotely, which was the implication of all of the articles covering the rapidly spreading story). That was the quickest and highest profile way to prove the stories false, and it did just that. The AP and other large outlets were looking at picking up the original false story, which would in turn have been carried by thousands of local papers and news outlets. But they didn't after they saw this "test" and its commentary.
I also said that there are serious security handling concerns on Mac OS X that need to be addressed, and that it seemed that intelligent and serious discourse on the topic of Mac OS X security is necessary, instead of sky-is-falling sensational stories every time there is any kind of security issue, real or perceived, on Mac OS X. I also said, specifically, that the test didn't really "prove" anything other than that the default configurations of apache httpd and OpenSSH as shipped by Apple on Mac OS X are at least marginally secure from a network perspective. So what does it "prove"? Nothing, except that there is no purpose to scare people into believing that any Mac OS X machine connected to any network can be hacked into at will, which was literally the main point of the article and most of the headlines coming out of the original ZDnet australia story.
Yeah, guess that makes me an "idiot Mac zealot"!
To the AC's below: I didn't stop posting on slashdot, and anyone who thinks they know the story and purports to be affiliated with UW, you're welcome to come to my office and say something to my face. Thanks.
Here is the original text of the site:
Mac OS X Security Test
Tue 7 March 2006 11:59 PM CST (8 March 2006 0559 GMT)
The testing period is now closed.
- The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point. - Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps. - Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus. - The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up. - The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations. - There were no successful access attempts of any kind, including during the 38 hour duration of the test period, nor have their been any claims of success. The host is still the same host and configuration used for the test.
Some snippets from 7 March 2006:
- The site received almost a half a million requests via the web. - There were over 4000 login attempts via ssh. - The ipfw log grew at 40MB/hour and contains 6 million events logged. - Several social engineering attempts were received, including one purporting to be from the government of Sweden, which apparently uses GMail.;-) - More test results and information will be published here at a future date.
Mon 6 March 2006 10:00 AM CST
In response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, a Mac OS X Security Test has been launched. (Test is now concluded.)
The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it
The only place where someone can bomb a University building, killing a postdoc getting ready to go on vacation with his wife and three children, and then come back to the city to open a popular deli in the heart of the city, blocks away from his murder, and be welcomed back with good reviews and a healthy patronage. The Radical Rye, as it was called, was displaced by the $200M Overture Center for the Arts, but he still has a juice cart called Loose Juice that you can patronize. A this 4-out-of-5 reviewer notes, even though he "bombed the Physics building called Sterling Hall, killing a young graduate student who was unfortunately doing research in the building" it's apparently okay because it was to "protest against military research done at the school". Oh, the postdoc wasn't involved with military research? "Oops!" Hey, this guy even had a beer with him! As this reviewer notes, "you should go by and have a smoothie at Carl's stand." One of the other bombers, still at large, was a writer for the campus paper.
Come to think of it, there must be a die-in somewhere on campus I can go to today...all I need is a unicycle, maybe a pig's head to use as a mask, some fake blood, and some artful montages of Bush and Hitler intertwined.
Because someone can't buy a cd now and rip it to mp3 or w/e format they wish and try to sell it?
...
That's not the same physical original product. And people did do that (e.g., allofmp3).
In digital sales, a music file without DRM is the same as a copy of said file. It is no different from the original. Note I mean this in a *product* sense, not a musical reproduction technical sense. The analogy would be being able to "clone" a CD - the disc itself, the printing, its packaging, etc. - for virtually no cost, with no real legal way to prohibit that. DRM is just such a prohibition.
Or perhaps this is a pre-canned comment you keep ready to drop on someone who says something anti-ITMS?
Or perhaps I specifically and directly said it was a response to a previous similar statement, and even linked to that very response in my post, since it was directly on-topic and there was no reason to retype it all?
Anyway, I'll reply to the bit that did seem to intersect my comment
Actually, the entire response is on-topic, because it speaks to why Apple isn't necessarily already doing no-DRM for the comparatively very small number of artists with legal standing to request this.
Artists have been asking for DRM free ITMS music for months. If Jobs was as concerned about DRM being imposed on him as his little blog makes out, don't you think Apple should lead by example and become the first label (let's face it, that's what they are now) to offer DRM free tunes.
I spoke to that too in my response. And for what it's worth, I agree, if only to quiet all the people who think Jobs' statement isn't genuine, and/or stupidly believes that Jobs' statement isn't the gentleman's equivalent, in the corporate media and business world, of Jobs walking into a boardroom with both middle fingers raised high.
Further, Apple may NEVER do this until it can be 100% across the board, like it or not, and we also don't know if one or more of the other major label contracts mandates that all music sold via the same store/mechanisms share the same controls. Even if the latter isn't the case, the former is still by far a legitimate enough reason for Jobs to not want to do it (e.g., why do some tracks I bought play on my Zune and others won't?). I know that a lot of people don't buy that argument, but frankly, it's perfectly legitimate.
Oh, I agree with you. I have a pretty good devil's advocate myself: in a world where electronic distribution becomes the norm, without DRM, how can content owners control releases and pricing in different market? For example, if a label feels that it needs to sell something in Fooistan for US3 that sells for US$18 in the United States, because that's what the market bears and that's how they've chosen to price it - which is their right - without some of the controls of DRM, how can the $3 version be restricted to Fooistan? When it's physical product, the answer is simple. When it's electronic, why can't I just buy it from Fooistan's store? Some people will say that import regulations and taxes could still prevent that, but then what enforces that? Something like DRM. What if content owners want to control release schedules in different markets, as is, like it or not, their right, as the duly recognized legal "owners" of the content? Now we have various controls (such as region codes on DVDs) that support this, in addition to sales price disparities, and so on. Without DRM, that process falls apart. Some people might say, "Hey, that's globalization for you. You wanted free markets, right?" Yes, but not so that it harms developing economies. The prices can't equalize overnight, and it's not fair to force prices down to a lowest common denominator. There are difficult questions in the no-DRM panacea. A lot of the answers will revolve around information wanting to be free and "old business models" dying (a lot of which is BS). The fact is that different markets bear different prices for the same products. You can't just remove the only controls, with their associated legal extensions, and expect everything to go along fine. Enterprising folks will set up stores in the "cheapest" nations or locales and sell globally. If there are no rights management or (enforceable) legal prohibitions to doing so, everyone will gravitate to the lowest price.
That's what DRM is about. It's not about not being able to be defeated. It will ALWAYS be defeated. It's about having a control that has legal extensions that prevent people from, or punish people for, circumventing it. This means you can't legally then buy music from the Fooistan online store. You need to buy it from the US store, at the prices the content bears in the US, at the times the content owners choose to release it in our market. Even if you take out all middlemen and we have a magical scenario where artists all get 100% of the proceeds from their creations, you have to allow for the idea that they are the people who get to determine how their content is sold, where it's sold, when it's sold, and for how much it's sold. This means THEY may even decide it's best to sell it for $5 in Fooistan and $25 in Canada. Why is that not their right? You might say, "Well, it is, but I think I still get to buy it from Fooistan even though I live in Canada." How does that help? We can go in and out of all sorts of global and legal and political and philosophical arguments. But that's really what the general copyright and rights management issues come down to: control.
And, ultimately, the owner/originator/creator/assignee of the content SHOULD fundamentally be allowed some control. That's not to say that the prevailing system is great, or even good. But the opposite situation where everything has no restrictions or licenses doesn't work either: What's to stop anyone from buying one copy of something and making X more copies? If there are no controls to enforce that; essentially, to create an artificial "scarcity" as some like to call it, what is to legally stop anyone from doing that? You can say there can still be a "law" against it, and so on. No, that won't fly. Sure, there can be a law. But you can never (easily) prove anything was circumvented, copied, sold, "stolen", or paid for when such a system is the status quo.
Yes, there are a million exceptions people can nitpick about what I've said here. But the fact is, the issues are a lot more complex, again, than most people would like to believe.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the 9th Circuit (which issued this ruling) is a very liberal court, which routinely sides with privacy, individual rights, and personal liberties, and does not err on the side of the state. So you can rest assured that any appropriate protections afforded Heckencamp were more than duly considered.
You may be interested in reading the entire ruling.
The applicable bit:
Once a court determines that the special needs doctrine
applies to a search, it must "assess the constitutionality of the
search by balancing the need to search against the intrusiveness
of the search." Henderson, 305 F.3d at 1059 (citing Ferguson,
532 U.S. at 78). The factors considered are the subject
of the search's privacy interest, the government's interests in
performing the search, and the scope of the intrusion. See id.
at 1059-60.
[...]
The district court did not err in denying the motion to
suppress the evidence obtained through the remote search of
the computer.
[...]
Here, even without the evidence gathered through the
allegedly improper search, there is sufficient information in
the affidavit to establish probable cause. The affidavit recited
evidence that the server intrusion had been tracked "to a campus
dormitory room computer belonging to Jerome T. Heckenkamp";
that "[t]he computer is in Room 107, Noyes House,
Adams Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison"; and
that "Heckenkamp previously had a disciplinary action in the
past for unauthorized computer access to a University of Wisconsin
system." This was sufficient evidence to obtain the
warrant to search "Room 107, Noyes House, Adams Hall."
So, the search warrant exemption applied, and even without the information in question, there was, regardless, already sufficient information for a search warrant.
Except for the fact that the University of Wisconsin isn't cooperating with the RIAA in its latest efforts:
1 6
a _no_way.php
8 12
University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/20/01512
UW to RIAA: No way
http://badgerherald.com/news/2007/03/21/uw_to_ria
It may be illegal...
http://www.doit.wisc.edu/news/story.asp?filename=
The University was not acting as law enforcement, as an agent of law enforcement, or at the behest of law enforcement, and thus is expressly and explicitly not covered by, or even related to, the Fourth Amendment.
... The integrity and security of the campus e-mail system was in jeopardy. Although Savoy was aware that the FBI was also investigating the use of a computer on the university network to hack into the Qualcomm system, his actions were not taken for law enforcement purposes. Not only is there no evidence that Savoy was acting at the behest of law enforcement, but also the record indicates that Savoy was acting contrary to law enforcement requests that he delay action.
... requiring a warran
The University acted to mitigate and prevent further intrusions, the scale of which were as yet unknown, into critical University servers and infrastructure upon which tens of thousands of people and many diverse University functions depend.
If you hack University servers from your computer (or even if the computer is being used a zombie), and then take steps to hide your identity or otherwise conceal your activities, your network access will be removed, such removal will be actively enforced and verified, and any immediate actions required to protect the security and integrity of the University network and computing resources will be taken.
Academic, legal, and possible criminal action will then follow, as warranted. These were exigent circumstances, and not done under the guise of law enforcement, but rather the protection of critical university resources from activities clearly and explicitly disallowed by numerous University information technology, housing, academic, and general policies (not to mention various federal and state laws).
Also, while we're on this topic, if the situation were reversed, I can imagine slashdotters would hardly call the equivalent situation a "hack" (i.e., "the university hacked into his Linux box"). Using the typical logic, he apparently didn't protect his machine well enough, so it's okay, right? Oh, but he's on the malicious side, so he's right, and the University trying to protect itself, from someone violating just about every University policy with no expectation of privacy on the network of a public research university, is wrong?
Let me know when you people get your stories straight.
And please, RTFA:
Here, Savoy provided extensive testimony that he was acting to secure the Mail2 server, and that his actions were not motivated by a need to collect evidence for law enforcement purposes or at the request of law enforcement agents.
Under these circumstances, a search warrant was not necessary because Savoy was acting purely within the scope of his role as a system administrator. Under the university's policies, to which Heckenkamp assented when he connected his computer to the university's network, Savoy was authorized to "rectif[y] emergency situations that threaten the integrity of campus computer or communication systems[,] provided that use of accessed files is limited solely to maintaining or safeguarding the system." Savoy discovered through his examination of the network logs, in which Heckenkamp had no reasonable expectation of privacy, that the computer that he had earlier blocked from the network was now operating from a different IP address, which itself was a violation of the university's network policies.
This discovery, together with Savoy's earlier discovery that the computer had gained root access to the university's Mail2 server, created a situation in which Savoy needed to act immediately to protect the system. Although he was aware that the FBI was already seeking a warrant to search Heckenkamp's computer in order to serve the FBI's law enforcement needs, Savoy believed that the university's separate security interests required immediate action. Just as requiring a warrant to investigate potential student drug use would disrupt operation of a high school
How do you get from the parent's posting that that's why there's "debate" on this?
Cellphones do work on planes, period, especially at lower altitudes. The also work at higher altitudes just fine over particular geographies/metopolitan areas/service areas, etc. This is easily proven, and if you're so inclined, you can even place a call yourself next time you're on a plane (of course, don't place the handset to your ear; call, e.g., your voice mail for a few minutes and you can definitely confirm that the call does indeed go through). (Cue conspiracy theorists saying "No, we can't try that because we'll get arrested and sent to Gitmo, and this FCC ban is part of the conspiracy because they want to hide the fact that cell phones don't work on planes!@!@@" Wrong. It's easy to non-chalantly place a call on a plane, and no one will be the wiser - just don't put the phone to your ear, don't use the speakerphone, don't act like you're really placing a call, etc. The point is it is EXTREMELY easy to verify that cellphone do indeed work on planes, and this is no surprise at all to anyone with a brain.)
Cell phones work under a wide variety of conditions on commercial aircraft, and always have, especially at lower altitudes. There is no "debate" about this except in the deluded ramblings of people who think all the calls on 9/11 were staged, done with CIA mind control or voice changing technology, etc.
The Mac mini is more capable... but lacks a few things that the aTV has. Most notably is HDMI and component video output. Add that to the cost of the mini in your example.
Oh yeah, I agree. But the Mac mini does have DVI and digital/optical audio out, and that's the same as what's included in HDMI (DVI video + digital audio).
And if you need component, yeah, there's no easy way to add that to a mini.
There is no way anyone will by the aTV to use for desktop use, but for connecting to their TV as the frontend for mythtv server it's perfect!
I do think *some* people might be willing to use AppleTV as a desktop, and I do agree that for some hobbyists, being able to run a full AppleTV and still using it as a media center would be very attractive. I'm just saying there's a small jump from a legally-configured AppleTV (i.e., with a purchased Leopard license) and a Mac mini.
I'm well aware of what AppleTV is running.
Apple does not consider that to be Mac OS X, the product, period.
"Mac OS X" is not supported on AppleTV. The fact that it is running a custom Mac OS X variant is irrelevant. It is an appliance, and "Mac OS X", in the form we know it on conventional desktop computers is not supported from an end-user technical, support, legal, or business perspective on AppleTV.
Now, knowing that the AppleTV is essentially running Mac OS X gives us some comfort that AppleTV is indeed basically a little Mac, and being able to run a slightly modified full Mac OS X installation on it proves it. It also bodes well for the future of this little hobbyist/experimenter area. Which is what it will remain, because "Mac OS X" is not supported on AppleTV.
Being able to do something != supported
"Support" doesn't just mean it's possible in the context of talking about what a vendor does and doesn't support.
The license agreement specifies that Mac OS X can only be run on an Apple-labeled computer. " What if Apple says its not a Computer?
That's why the last sentence of my post says:
[...] one very interesting question might be, does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that is what the Mac OS X license agreement explicitly states?
I know slashdot folks don't read the articles, but are we now also not reading the posts we reply to?
First of all, I haven't followed all these Slashdot comments to which you are referring and I certainly never wrote any of them. Still, here I am replying to your message. I'm not here to "eat my words", as you say. Nor will anyone else respond to do so. The reason is that, given the facts at hand, some of the above opinions were reasonable ones at the time. They may or may not turn out to be wrong (after all, the non-DRM content is not yet available), but that doesn't make them unreasonable, except in retrospect.
:~(
Well, it is indeed true: http://www.emigroup.com/Press/2007/press18.htm
But the comments were absolutely unreasonable. To say that Jobs' statement was nothing more than a PR conspiracy and that it "didn't really want" to remove DRM was foolish.
For those who thought Jobs' statement wasn't accompanied by any tangible "action", to not understand that the statement itself WAS the "action" was also foolish.
When Jobs made this shot across the bow of the major media companies, as one of the most powerful people in online media sales, and a board member of a major media company no less, this wasn't some complicated disinformation stunt to deflect criticism from Apple. It was exactly what it was: the most significant pressure on the major media companies to remove DRM, to explain why DRM doesn't and will never work, to show that DRM hurts and confuses only honest customers, and that it will always be able to be defeated.
That's why the statement was met with such vitriol from some major media execs and folks at the RIAA.
Except Apple's plan is working. It has enough clout, and labels like EMI which were teetering on the verge of their own decisions have now been pushed over. These things don't just happen overnight, as many expected them to, but now Apple and EMI will be the first to, in any meaningful way, sell major label content on an online media store, legally, with no DRM.
And that's huge, and exactly what Jobs intended to occur when the statement was made.
Yet here you are, shouting about how you were right and everyone else was wrong. All this demonstrates is that you may have been right this once, and the tone of your message seems to indicate an unhealthy trust in Apple.
Haha. "Unhealthy trust in Apple." What does that even mean?
Anyway, it isn't hard to look at Apple's track record of innovation and forcing change in the industry - first computer, and now online media. To ignore Apple's massive contributions to computing and innovation (even if it didn't "invent" the technology/item in question) and pretend it hasn't been significant is to be utterly and willfully ignorant.
Can I predict the future? No. But it was clear exactly what Apple was trying to do, and in fact was doing, when it made that statement, and this EMI announcement is but the first of the fruits of that effort.
Do you think that every action Microsoft makes is evil, simply because it's Microsoft, and all of Google's actions are good because it's Google?
Nope, neither. Next?
Do us a favor. Learn to think and get back when you're not such an arrogant ass.
Touché.
Also, while you're at it (and just to poke some wounds): If Apple didn't want the DRM at all, then why is it that iTunes wasn't originally designed to distribute DRM and non-DRM music for those labels that didn't want DRM?
Haha. Yeah, "poke some wounds". Ouch.
The answers to your questions are of course simple ones, they're just not the ones you want to hear.
To directly quote myself:
[...] the business processes that go into rolling something like this out are probably far more complex than the technical processes. This actually speaks to my point: technically, sure, it may be that "2-3 day" operation people think it should be. From a business and support perspective, it's not. There may even be legal issues in one or m
Yeah, this is another common thing people bring up.
While it may get you around your own personal moral qualms (and isn't a bad argument, frankly), Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) and Mac OS X 10.4.x (PowerPC) are simply not the same product, and you can't juggle licenses between them. Your family pack license is for Mac OS X 10.4.x (PowerPC) only.
There already is standing precedent for this: Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (PowerPC) and Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 (Universal) are not the same product, and have different part numbers, and the license for the former does not entitle you to the latter: it is a separate product that must be repurchased.
Let me reiterate I don't think the argument is fundamentally a bad one! I'm sure that people with family packs will feel they're well within the "spirit" of things if they then pirate or otherwise obtain Mac OS X 10.4.x (Intel) for their AppleTV.
The only product I can see, right now, today, that could theoretically be purchased and run legally on AppleTV is Mac OS X Server 10.4.7 (Universal). In the future, of course, Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) gets added to the mix.
The final question, though, still stands: if legal push came to shove, would Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that's what the license agreement specifies? It's exactly that kind of legal gray area, lack of support, and the fact that it currently requires using a hacked kernel (making OS updates difficult, etc.), that will keep this to the hobbyist/hacker/experimenter crowd, and out of any kind of mainstream/business/institutional applications.
I will agree it's very interesting, though: AppleTV's basically just a little Mac!
I'm not saying opening it voids the warranty.
I'm saying that the warranty is effectively void while Mac OS X is installed on it: Mac OS X is not supported in any way, shape, or form on AppleTV; so, if you need warranty service, it's obviously not going to be able to be serviced by Apple if it doesn't even have its own OS on it, will it? Even if the problem is not OS related, Apple still will likely need to test/boot/etc. the unit, and I can't imagine a scenario where Apple would be amenable to stock Mac OS X being on it, in the context of warranty service. So the point is that AppleTV's own OS would need to be restored to it for service.
Not a big deal for those who want to do this; just something to consider, and yet another element that will keep putting Mac OS X on AppleTVs well out of the mainstream and limited to hacker/hobbyist circles, along with my other points.
The point is that right now, there is NO way to buy Mac OS X (Intel) separately at all, license agreement or not.
If people want to make ridiculous arguments like "what if I just dropped four grand on a Mac Pro, but now suddenly only want to run Windows Vista on it, but I still want to use the OS X license on my Sony Vaio," more power to them. They can make their own moral/ethical determinations. If they want to ask if it's "legal", the answer in many jurisdictions is still, "probably not", because of what the EULA says.
The other consideration is that Apple is a hardware company and prices Mac OS X accordingly. They're also the ones who put hundreds of thousands of manhours and billions of dollars, collectively, into R&D and support of the product. If there are legal frameworks that allow them to specify that Mac OS X is intended only to be used on Apple computers, they're within their rights to use such frameworks, and you're certainly within your own personal rights to choose to ignore them.
Consider, though, that one major selling point for Mac OS X is its ease of use and how well things are seamlessly integrated with hardware, That's one of the reasons why people like, and want, Mac OS X. When it's all of a sudden run on random commodity hardware, that predictability quickly goes away. That may be Microsoft's model, but it's not Apple's. Mac OS X is also be priced under the assumption that it will be installed on existing Apple hardware.
You're certainly welcome to ignore all of this, but if you do, Mac OS X and the beloved PaintCo paint - which is presumably much better than the alternatives, thus why it's desirable - may not continue to be around. (Yes, that's an extreme argument, but it's no more extreme than your analogy is a stretch.)
Please direct me to the other major label music or media stores legally selling major label content online without DRM.
Thanks!
(Believe it or not, some people want major label content.)
And the restrictions are there because they needed to be. Apple is now using its power and clout to slowly remove them, because DRM is worthless for all the reasons we already knew, including the reasons Jobs, in his statement, articulated. If EMI was teetering, Jobs statement pushed them over the edge.
Like all things Apple does, no, they weren't "the first" and may not have "invented" said concept, but, as usual, they're the first to do it right, do it with tools (or content) people actually use, and do it en masse. Like it or not, this is huge, and just like all of the other things Apple didn't invent but actually took mass-market and made easy to use, like the mouse, the GUI, desktop publishing (LaserWriter), 802.11 (AirPort), a usable online music/media store (iTunes), etc. and so on, this will stand as a major shift in online media.
No, Apple isn't some kind of savior. But give credit where credit's due.
The OS X lincense states that you can only run OS X on Apple hardware. Guess what? The AppleTV is Apple hardware!
Devil's advocate on this one: the license agreement says an Apple-labled computer. If push comes to shove, does Apple consider the AppleTV a computer (aside from the fact that it obviously is - but keep in mind that you can consider nearly anything with a microprocessor a "computer" - the point is does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", or an appliance?).
There is no way at this time to buy a boxed copy of OS X x86 at a store, because... they don't sell it in stores! Right now all the boxed copies of OS X are PPC-only. When Leopard comes out, then things should start to get interesting.
I agree things start to get a little interesting. But a much, much more powerful (and supported!) Mac mini ($599) is still only $171 more. I suppose $171 may be a lot of money to some folks. And at academic pricing on the Mac mini ($579) and Mac OS X ($69), the gulf increases to $240. For some hobbyists and hackers for whom the AppleTV is appropriate hardware AND have the resources to open it, do all the imaging of disks and so on, have another Mac to do all of this at their disposal, etc., it does get somewhat interesting after Leopard comes out...
...
AppleTV is an interesting case, because it is an "Apple-labeled" product, which is what the Mac OS X license agreement stipulates. And that's the key.
The license agreement specifies that Mac OS X can only be run on an Apple-labeled computer. And that is Apple's right. Now, you can ignore it, or ignore legal frameworks that may (or may not) enforce license agreements within certain countries/jurisdictions, and so on, but that's why running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware is "illegal". There are NO prohibitions to doing things like hacking the kernel, etc. It's open source, and you can do with it what you wish regardless.
But there are still some interesting considerations:
- There is no way to legally get a standalone, retail copy of Mac OS X (Intel) for AppleTV, unless you make arguments about transferring an abandoned license from another Intel-based Mac. (And no, there is no conventional Mac OS X license that comes with AppleTV, either explicitly or implicitly.)
- Technically, you could purchase and run Mac OS X Server 10.4.x (Universal) and legally run it on AppleTV - there would be no prohibitions to this.
- Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) will be the first version of Mac OS X to have a legally purchasable standalone retail Intel version (actually, Leopard will be Universal).
But there are some other things to think about:
- Even when Leopard ships, at retail pricing, it's still $299 + $129 for AppleTV + Mac OS X. It's $171 more for a much more capable Mac mini. However, $171 may be enough to get people to consider this.
- This will really be interesting if Leopard can run unmodified on AppleTV (i.e., without a hacked kernel).
- This will still be relegated to the hobbyist/experimenter/hacker crowd, as you need to disassemble AppleTV in order to do this, image drives, have another Mac handy, and so on, not to mention that the warranty is likely void while OS X is installed on the machine (which of course is reversible, etc.)
So while this is all very interesting, please consider the fact that there are no legal ways to get Mac OS X for it currently.
This post is obviously not for people who think EULAs are BS, or that since it's an Apple product "it's okay", or that since it has some stripped down OS X on it already, "it's okay" to also install OS X from their friend's iMac, etc.
I'm simply raising the legitimate concerns surrounding licensing on AppleTV, some of which get interesting with Leopard since it is, indeed, and Apple-labeled computer, and Leopard will be available standalone.
There are also no prohibitions on using a modified kernel, but one very interesting question might be, does Apple consider AppleTV a "computer", since that is what the Mac OS X license agreement explicitly states?
To all the people who thought Jobs' statement was PR bullshit to deflect criticism and that it "never really intended" to remove any DRM from any of its tracks, will you now go back and eat your words?
All the folks who erroneously expected/thought that Apple should have been able to do this in "2-3 days, tops" on a massive service and infrastructure like iTunes, will you now go back and eat your words?
To all of the people who think Apple can just "flip a switch" for indies, utterly ignoring the fact that there may be other binding legal or contract obligations that need to be ironed out, will you now go back and eat your words?
For the people who ignorantly don't realize that there is a massive support operation behind iTunes, and Apple doesn't want to break things or confuse customers, and wanted to do it right, and wanted to force the labels' hands such that a big one would jump first, will you now go back and eat your words?
I'm willing to wait at least for the official announcement, but since Reuters and the WSJ have already independently reported this, all you naysayers who kept on saying this was just a big PR conspiracy by Apple and they really were oh-so-in-love with DRM and iTunes/iPod lock-in that they'd never remove DRM, you're welcome to use this thread for your apologies.
This, if all the reports really are true (and no, it isn't the result of an April Fool's joke for anyone who still thinks it is), represents the biggest shift in online media since online media itself: the biggest online store, actively willing to sell content without DRM, proving that Apple isn't interested in DRM and did only apply it because of studio demands.
And then, pragmatically getting ALL of the major studios onboard into online sales, working in countless countries and jurisdictions with different legal systems, doing something that no other company had done before, and just biding its time and dropping the no-DRM bombshell in the form of Jobs' statement.
I know people probably won't thank Apple for this, especially the folks who love to hate Apple. But for all of the people who ask "what Apple ever does", or "how do they innovate", here's yet another answer.
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are already reporting it.
So it's not running in "big" enterprises. Then, in all seriousness, where is it running these days?
Well, are "big" enterprises all that exist? The answer should be hopefully obvious.
For our part, which is that of a large public research university, we have probably about 100 Mac OS X Server systems on campus here, and about 35 in our primary datacenter, not counting systems in compute clusters, which probably adds another 100 or so. (We have about 16000 Macs in general on campus, nearly all on Mac OS X.) Most are used for tasks where an Apple server is required or desired, like AppleShare file service, QuickTime Streaming Server, managing Mac OS X clients, etc. And yes, things like AFP and QTSS can be done on other platforms in various ways, but sometimes you want a seamless commercial-vendor-supported solution. The remainder are used as light to medium duty departmental/workgroup UNIX servers. In the latter case, they're usually picked because they're a lot easier for some folks to run than Windows Server 2003 or Linux; it's sometimes the difference between a small department or workgroup actually being able to reasonably run a server, or not. Some are deployed in departments with many skilled sysadmins who manage hundreds of Mac OS X clients, and use Mac OS X Server-specific functionality to do so.
Uh, CALEA mandates technical mechanisms for providing information to law enforcement when required by a court order, so that things like wiretaps of VoIP phones or intercepting electronic communications can, you know, actually be done when necessitated by a court order.
It was also passed in 1994 (i.e., not under Bush), and isn't new (though the deadline for compliance is May 2007).
I love how paranoid speculation like this is always marked "Insightful".
How about this: what if such "federal legislation" is, in fact, not "coming soon"?
Hi.
;-)
Apparently you couldn't read the text on the original "test" site.
The "test" wasn't to "prove" Mac OS X was "secure". It was to quickly disprove the flurry of articles going around saying it was possible to hack any network-connected Mac in 30 minutes or less, when the original article forgot to point out that the test system in that scenario allowed ANYONE remote ssh access, and someone used a local root exploit (still a serious issue, but hardly close to the articles essentially saying any network-connected Mac OS X machine can now be easily hacked remotely, which was the implication of all of the articles covering the rapidly spreading story). That was the quickest and highest profile way to prove the stories false, and it did just that. The AP and other large outlets were looking at picking up the original false story, which would in turn have been carried by thousands of local papers and news outlets. But they didn't after they saw this "test" and its commentary.
I also said that there are serious security handling concerns on Mac OS X that need to be addressed, and that it seemed that intelligent and serious discourse on the topic of Mac OS X security is necessary, instead of sky-is-falling sensational stories every time there is any kind of security issue, real or perceived, on Mac OS X. I also said, specifically, that the test didn't really "prove" anything other than that the default configurations of apache httpd and OpenSSH as shipped by Apple on Mac OS X are at least marginally secure from a network perspective. So what does it "prove"? Nothing, except that there is no purpose to scare people into believing that any Mac OS X machine connected to any network can be hacked into at will, which was literally the main point of the article and most of the headlines coming out of the original ZDnet australia story.
Yeah, guess that makes me an "idiot Mac zealot"!
To the AC's below: I didn't stop posting on slashdot, and anyone who thinks they know the story and purports to be affiliated with UW, you're welcome to come to my office and say something to my face. Thanks.
Here is the original text of the site:
Mac OS X Security Test
Tue 7 March 2006 11:59 PM CST (8 March 2006 0559 GMT)
The testing period is now closed.
- The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point.
- Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps.
- Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus.
- The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up.
- The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations.
- There were no successful access attempts of any kind, including during the 38 hour duration of the test period, nor have their been any claims of success. The host is still the same host and configuration used for the test.
Some snippets from 7 March 2006:
- The site received almost a half a million requests via the web.
- There were over 4000 login attempts via ssh.
- The ipfw log grew at 40MB/hour and contains 6 million events logged.
- Several social engineering attempts were received, including one purporting to be from the government of Sweden, which apparently uses GMail.
- More test results and information will be published here at a future date.
Mon 6 March 2006 10:00 AM CST
In response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, a Mac OS X Security Test has been launched. (Test is now concluded.)
The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it
Ahh, Madison.
The only place where someone can bomb a University building, killing a postdoc getting ready to go on vacation with his wife and three children, and then come back to the city to open a popular deli in the heart of the city, blocks away from his murder, and be welcomed back with good reviews and a healthy patronage. The Radical Rye, as it was called, was displaced by the $200M Overture Center for the Arts, but he still has a juice cart called Loose Juice that you can patronize. A this 4-out-of-5 reviewer notes, even though he "bombed the Physics building called Sterling Hall, killing a young graduate student who was unfortunately doing research in the building" it's apparently okay because it was to "protest against military research done at the school". Oh, the postdoc wasn't involved with military research? "Oops!" Hey, this guy even had a beer with him! As this reviewer notes, "you should go by and have a smoothie at Carl's stand." One of the other bombers, still at large, was a writer for the campus paper.
Come to think of it, there must be a die-in somewhere on campus I can go to today...all I need is a unicycle, maybe a pig's head to use as a mask, some fake blood, and some artful montages of Bush and Hitler intertwined.
FYI, the Stone Hearth isn't around anymore, but Cheap Trick, among others, played at the Nitty Gritty, too.
The countries censoring the internet in this way don't want people to have free speech or those freedoms you speak of.
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That's not the same physical original product. And people did do that (e.g., allofmp3).
In digital sales, a music file without DRM is the same as a copy of said file. It is no different from the original. Note I mean this in a *product* sense, not a musical reproduction technical sense. The analogy would be being able to "clone" a CD - the disc itself, the printing, its packaging, etc. - for virtually no cost, with no real legal way to prohibit that. DRM is just such a prohibition.
You appear to have replied to the wrong comment?
Um, no?
Or perhaps this is a pre-canned comment you keep ready to drop on someone who says something anti-ITMS?
Or perhaps I specifically and directly said it was a response to a previous similar statement, and even linked to that very response in my post, since it was directly on-topic and there was no reason to retype it all?
Anyway, I'll reply to the bit that did seem to intersect my comment
Actually, the entire response is on-topic, because it speaks to why Apple isn't necessarily already doing no-DRM for the comparatively very small number of artists with legal standing to request this.
Artists have been asking for DRM free ITMS music for months. If Jobs was as concerned about DRM being imposed on him as his little blog makes out, don't you think Apple should lead by example and become the first label (let's face it, that's what they are now) to offer DRM free tunes.
I spoke to that too in my response. And for what it's worth, I agree, if only to quiet all the people who think Jobs' statement isn't genuine, and/or stupidly believes that Jobs' statement isn't the gentleman's equivalent, in the corporate media and business world, of Jobs walking into a boardroom with both middle fingers raised high.
Further, Apple may NEVER do this until it can be 100% across the board, like it or not, and we also don't know if one or more of the other major label contracts mandates that all music sold via the same store/mechanisms share the same controls. Even if the latter isn't the case, the former is still by far a legitimate enough reason for Jobs to not want to do it (e.g., why do some tracks I bought play on my Zune and others won't?). I know that a lot of people don't buy that argument, but frankly, it's perfectly legitimate.
Oh, I agree with you. I have a pretty good devil's advocate myself: in a world where electronic distribution becomes the norm, without DRM, how can content owners control releases and pricing in different market? For example, if a label feels that it needs to sell something in Fooistan for US3 that sells for US$18 in the United States, because that's what the market bears and that's how they've chosen to price it - which is their right - without some of the controls of DRM, how can the $3 version be restricted to Fooistan? When it's physical product, the answer is simple. When it's electronic, why can't I just buy it from Fooistan's store? Some people will say that import regulations and taxes could still prevent that, but then what enforces that? Something like DRM. What if content owners want to control release schedules in different markets, as is, like it or not, their right, as the duly recognized legal "owners" of the content? Now we have various controls (such as region codes on DVDs) that support this, in addition to sales price disparities, and so on. Without DRM, that process falls apart. Some people might say, "Hey, that's globalization for you. You wanted free markets, right?" Yes, but not so that it harms developing economies. The prices can't equalize overnight, and it's not fair to force prices down to a lowest common denominator. There are difficult questions in the no-DRM panacea. A lot of the answers will revolve around information wanting to be free and "old business models" dying (a lot of which is BS). The fact is that different markets bear different prices for the same products. You can't just remove the only controls, with their associated legal extensions, and expect everything to go along fine. Enterprising folks will set up stores in the "cheapest" nations or locales and sell globally. If there are no rights management or (enforceable) legal prohibitions to doing so, everyone will gravitate to the lowest price.
That's what DRM is about. It's not about not being able to be defeated. It will ALWAYS be defeated. It's about having a control that has legal extensions that prevent people from, or punish people for, circumventing it. This means you can't legally then buy music from the Fooistan online store. You need to buy it from the US store, at the prices the content bears in the US, at the times the content owners choose to release it in our market. Even if you take out all middlemen and we have a magical scenario where artists all get 100% of the proceeds from their creations, you have to allow for the idea that they are the people who get to determine how their content is sold, where it's sold, when it's sold, and for how much it's sold. This means THEY may even decide it's best to sell it for $5 in Fooistan and $25 in Canada. Why is that not their right? You might say, "Well, it is, but I think I still get to buy it from Fooistan even though I live in Canada." How does that help? We can go in and out of all sorts of global and legal and political and philosophical arguments. But that's really what the general copyright and rights management issues come down to: control.
And, ultimately, the owner/originator/creator/assignee of the content SHOULD fundamentally be allowed some control. That's not to say that the prevailing system is great, or even good. But the opposite situation where everything has no restrictions or licenses doesn't work either: What's to stop anyone from buying one copy of something and making X more copies? If there are no controls to enforce that; essentially, to create an artificial "scarcity" as some like to call it, what is to legally stop anyone from doing that? You can say there can still be a "law" against it, and so on. No, that won't fly. Sure, there can be a law. But you can never (easily) prove anything was circumvented, copied, sold, "stolen", or paid for when such a system is the status quo.
Yes, there are a million exceptions people can nitpick about what I've said here. But the fact is, the issues are a lot more complex, again, than most people would like to believe.