I played around for aobut two hours last night. I have to say that running around shooting my parter was more fun that is probably healthy. Does it replace Doom3? No. Is it fun while you're in SL? Yes. The sword fighting was even more fun, but be sure to use a purple-hilted v3 sword. The slingshot was also a lot of fun. I had to try it half a dozen times to see if I could make it over both pirate ships.
There's also a lot of scenery that adds to the ambience. Look for aligators and a treehouse. Even though it was simple, I enjoy sitting on a swing hung from a tree. There's room for two for lovers. And if you want a kiss, get a silver kiss and present it to others.
So what's not hot? The rollar coaster. It has the potential to be the best thing in the park, but when I tried it, the resources were not sufficient to support it. I don't know if it was my video card, the Linden servers, the programming, or the network lag, but it was slow (a SLOW rollar coaster?) and would stop at akward positions. You don't fall out, but it might be better if you did. SL uses a realistic physics engine from the same company that supports Half-Life 2, but clearly, the technology in SL can't support the fast-pacing of a FPS or modern video game.
Author Vernor Vinge predicts releasing networked, dust-sized cameras throughout an entire planet that wirelessly report back to their user. Someone with read access to the network can basically see and hear anything where the speck of dust happens to be. Honestly, I don't think it will be too long before this is technically feasible. The trick will be convincing the powers that be that everyone should have read access to the system, not just the powers that be. I'd much rather everyone be omniscient than just our beloved leaders.
If you want to read a world where nanites with audio/video form a supercomping net that anyone can access to invade anyone else's privacy, then you need to read this book. This is really searching reality. Frighteningly, the technology for this is probably less than a few decades away.
Essential: Build the machine and software from the ground up starting with the proposition that you will have to recount the votes. All other considerations are secondary.
Parallel testing. On the day of election, randomly select a machine, pull it out, and run a simulated voting process on it. Compare the results with what they should be. Video the entire process. If the results are wrong, go back and investigate the video tape. It should be done for each polling place. This is expensive. The machines cost $3,000-$5,000.
Test before, during, and after elections.
California requires mandatory recounting for a random 1% sample of all ballots. This was introduced after optical scan ballots. This should be a national law.
New Hamphire allows any candidate to demand a recount for up to a 3% margin. Experts know how to count.
Florida did not know how to count votes correctly like many other states.
Issues like blind access are important to the blind, but remember our priorities! Recounts are the essential priority!
Ways to Cheat
Don't activate the cheating until after the election starts.
Only cheat with a few machines. Only a margin is required to swing a close election.
No verifiable audit trial. Design a paperless machine that counts votes and is not voter verifiable.
Get access to the machine before or after the election. The machines are almost always kept in insecure storage and shipped via insecure delivery.
Randomly change a number of votes each way each time you check the results. Change some votes for Kerry and some votes for Bush. Just weigh the cheating for your candidate. This way, you can't tell whether the cheating is a bug or malicious code.
OK, the mechanics of the process isn't all that secret. It begins by using a provision of the US Code under 18 USC 1030(f) that requests the ISP to save information about a certain user (or IP address, or account, or whatever) in a pending criminal investigation. Section 1030(f) does not require that the ISP give the government a single byte of info, only save data that might otherwise be destroyed in the normal course of business, so that the government can take its time to get real authorization via a subpoena or warrant.
Personally, if I'm using Overstock, but another company can provide me the same service for a lower price, I'd like to know about it. Sure, many of the ad-ware advertisers are scum, but this law appears to cut off a valuable service that can benefit consumers.
That said, I always use Mozilla and have Pop-up ad blocking. Still, the law should not ban ads if consumers WANT the pop-ups from competitors to services that they are visiting. Overstock risks crossing the line and acting uncompetitively in a way that harms consumers and increases prices for everyone.
Technology has reduced the value of a content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures by applying basic economic principles such as transaction costs, supply, and demand to the existing business model for content such as songs and movies. It concludes by suggesting new strategies that are economically efficient in the new marketplace shaped by technological changes.
Traditionally Sony Music and other members of the content oligarchy provided essential services in the marketplace. They efficiently produced, filtered, and distributed content, providing consumers value. Advancements in technology no longer allow large-scale, commercial content production companies to serve these roles efficiently.
A content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures has a variety of responses to these changes. At one extreme the company may allow its business model to evolve congruent with technology. Conversely, the company may attempt to contort law and social norms to their outdated business plan. If the company chooses this latter approach and resists technology, fights will doubtless arise with technology businesses such as Sony Electronics.
The conflict between content and electronics is somewhat analogous to the balance underlying the U.S. Constitution's Copyright Clause, weighing rights of consumers to use content against incentives for copyright holders to produce more content. As progress in technology moves this balance in favor of consumers, copyright holders threaten to overreact with artificial technological burdens and new legal sanctions that can harm consumers and subsequent authors. Such a strategy would likely result in a net loss of social benefits.
Sony Corporation reflects the tension between the content and electronics manufacturing industries. At Sony's heart is a consumer electronics company, but Sony has expanded one way into computer equipment and another direction into music, movies, and television production.
Advances in technology are driving the cost of producing content to nominal levels for all factors except the author's time. Inexpensive software like Apple's Garage Band and iMovie replace equipment and professional labor that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars in the previous decade. Personal computers are replacing the expensive studios, editors, and engineers of professional production houses. Apple has always pursued authors, seeking to be the platform of choice for publishing, graphic design, music composition, and video editing.
By contrast, Sony's focus has seemed to be providing content consumers a platform for watching or listening to content. This explains its purchases of Columbia TriStar Films and CBS Records. Sony, as an electronics manufacturer, wants to guarantee that it cannot be held hostage to the content industry by producing content itself.
Meanwhile, the supply of musicians already exceeds demand. Compounding this oversupply, authors are able to produce content without using an expensive production company. The job outlook for musicians and singers belittles the production justification that the music industry offers for its continued existence. Therefore, additional incentives for production of music (such as increased copyright protection) would seem to be a waste of economic resources that are better used elsewhere. With so many authors supplying more content than the market demands, one might suppose that the old content industry can provide value-added services other than production such as filtering.
Video content is more complicated, but even the costs of video production will ultimately plummet to nominal levels as computers allow authors to manipulate virtual landscapes and virtual actors limited only by an author's imagination. Landscapes and crowd scenes are already commonly rendered using only computer-generated images.
When Sony bought CBS Records, there was some concern that it would not filter the good songs from the bad. Traditionally, the content industry oligar
Under U.S. Copyright law, fair use allows reverse engineering of funcational components because they are ideas (or facts) not expression. However, a provisions from our friend the DMCA (17 U.S.C. 1201) makes it illegal to bypass an overt technological protection that restricts (a) access or (b) protects the rights of the author. Think of this as breaking open a safe (illegal) to get to something inside that you're allowed to copy (legal).
As for intruding on a private network, the network is composed primarily of users, if I'm not mistaken. Still, companies like E-bay have been successful in using trespass (to chattles) to keep people off their servers if they make it clear that they don't want them on there.
You can tell Wal-mart is subsidizing this and losing a few cents each song (unlike Apple) because the cost is about $0.96 per song. Guess who gets the biggest piece? Not the big bad publishing companies, not the RIAA, not the song writers, artists, performers, or web site.
The credit card transaction costs about $0.35. This is the largest piece. Until there's a cost effective way to reduce the transaction costs with micro payments, songs are going to continue to be about a buck each under this business model. Unless you use P2P of course.
Populism is back! Really, this is great for democracy. Rather than have a bunch of rich people who can afford to give $2000 per candidate per election (really $4000 = $2k for the primary and $2k for the general elections), candidates really can gain substantial funding (and therefore electability) by collecting from millions of people, the pool of whom is much larger if you're only asking for $200 rather than $2000.
Really, how many people do you know who can afford to give $4000 every election cycle? The Republicans loved the results of the most recent campaign finance reform because they have lots of contributors who can afford $4000, whereas the Democrats only have uber-rich contributors, now shut out from giving their millions in a futile attempt to reach the same stratospheric levels as the Republicans.
I'm irked that the NYT didn't realize that only users of phones running BREW have to Pay $$$ for their games. Phones that use JAVA instead have plenty of free games.
I'm also irked that Verizon (my carrier) chose BREW rather than JAVA for its phones. Right now I use a Palm Pilot/phone, so there is open source and freeware for my particular solution now, but this might now always be the case. Apparently, developers have to pay to have their software "signed" before it will run on BREW, and the payments can be hefty. JAVA, of course, will run on anything.
Just another reason open source is better than closed.
The FBI is going to ignore anything unless you allege that you lost $5,000. In the real world, unless you see some fraud on your credit card after theives stole your number off your computer, they probably aren't going to care. Also, if someone uses your computer to attack and damage other computers (or even deface) that might get their attention. Here's the main collection of federal laws that apply to computer crime.
http://www.cybercrime.gov/cclaws.html
And here's the primary criminal law that applies:
18 USC 1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever--
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y.[(y)] of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 [42 USCS Â 2014(y)], with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains--
(A) information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in section 1602(n) of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.);
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or
(C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $ 5,000 in any 1-year period;
(5) (A) (i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)--
(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $ 5,000 in value;
I ran a hodgepodge of about 50 servers for an enterprise of around 60,000 users. I convinced management to standardize on Red Hat Linux for all my servers and completed the mirgration. My motives were that it was the cheapest and most secure solution. We got two new racks of Dell servers running Linux. It included the support from Red Hat. When Sendmail had its series of vulnerability notices a few months ago, we didn't have to download, recompile, or do anything other than click-click. Red Hat had done all the work and posted the patches. No mess, no fuss.
Arguing that copyright protection vioates the US Code would be a great argument. I suspect that it would fail, though. Unless it's in the Constitution, Congress can do anything it wants. In this case, Congress has allowed copy-protection schemes and enforces their integrity through the DMCA, also part of the US Code. Maybe there's room for an argument that some copyright protection schemes whose integrity is protected by the DMCA also violate the fair use provision - if fair use is indeed in the US Code.
The ACLU is concerned that one of the leaders of the Iran Contra affair now having access to every database in America. The government wants to know where and when you pass through a toll booth, make phone calls, e-mail, surf the web, and anything else. And they want it without having to get a warrent. Has anyone read the Constitution who's passing this lesgislation?
Their lawyer, KATHLEEN M. WALKER, graduated form Creighton University Law School, ranked 116 out of 164 law schools in the country. It's ranked betwen the University of Montana and Louisiana State law schools. Apparently they don't stress ethics there. This is what happens when you have too many lawyers and forget to teach ethics.
You can't count on Verizon to provide accurate time. They're off by 55 seconds. Also, I don't know if this matters, but the towers claim to be on Atlantic Time while they're really located in the Eastern region.
I did a little search on usenet. It revealed what to block for any firewall admins out there. Does anyone have better information? We tested the blocking, but had a few problems. The client keeps finding ways to connect.
That is not enough. It could still be access through an open proxy, on
ports 23, 1080, 8000, or 12001. You need to also route stuff through a
SOCKS proxy, and have your proxy block out the following ranges of
IP addresses, and that should stop AOL instant messenger
I am about to make my impentrable filtering system even better, by
putting in a second computer, that works as a firewall and proxy server, and
running either XP or 2000. Since all the filtering is done at the server
level, instead of at the client level, there is no POSSIBLE way that my
"home-brew" system could be compromised. Windows 2000 and Windows
XP have security that cannot POSSIBLY be penetrated, and since everything
runs in "stealth" mode, there is no POSSIBLE way someone could be able
to figure out how to circumvent my NEW AND IMPROVED "home brew"
system I am about to build. Basically, all the blocking software on my
computer now, would be transferred to another computer, which would act
as a proxy server and firewall.
Windows XP and 2000 have security that even the most computer saavy
youngster could not defeat. As I have mentioned before, I have had problems
inthe past with housekeepers who bring kids with them, and said kids having
tried to access my computer.
Even the best hackers in the world would not be able to get through
thekind of "home brew" filtering system I am planning right now. As the old
addage goes, "What cannot be seen cannot be hacked". Since XP works like 2000,
it will put an END to virtually nearly all computer viruses. Every virus out
there runs on either DOS, or Windows 9x. Windows NT/XP/2000 has
security a virus could not get through. That is why UNIX is still used in
some
places, UNIX is not vulnerable to viruses, like DOS and Win9X are.
Server-based filtering cannot be circumvented, if requests to ports
80,1080,3128, and 8080 are blocked. They block 99.9 percent of all the
known open proxy servers in the world. The ONLY way you can POSSIBLY
circumvent a served-based filtering system is to use an outside proxy
server.
That is why served based filtering has become more popular. Server-based
solutions are 100 PERCENT *IMPOSSIBLE* to circumvent. Also, as I
have just said, Windows XP and 2000 cannot be hacked, becuase of the
security measures in place on those two operatingh systems.
Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-
I want to block AOL Instant Messenger what port does it use? How Can I Block
It?
>
> I recall seeing the port number when my daughter was IMing her "buddies".
>
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers lists several numbers as AOL
> port numbers.
>
> aol 5190/tcp America-Online
> aol 5190/udp America-Online
> aol-1 5191/tcp AmericaOnline1
> aol-1 5191/udp AmericaOnline1
> aol-2 5192/tcp AmericaOnline2
> aol-2 5192/udp AmericaOnline2
> aol-3 5193/tcp AmericaOnline3
> aol-3 5193/udp AmericaOnline3
>
> I'm pretty sure that I saw the 5190 in use when my daughter was IMing.
Cheap geographical redundancy, not $$$ gimmicks
on
Escape from Data Alcatraz
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
When I worked the overnight shift at one of Qwest's many hosting centers, I loved to give early-morining tours. We'd impress everyone with all our layers of redundancy. The more expensive a system, the more impressed our tourists would be with it. Still, having three different diesal engines - each the the size of a locamotive, or having triple UPS protection, or dry localized fire-retardent, or triple redundant air conditioning and filtering, or three different OC-48 lines isn't the most important thing about redundancy.
By far, the cheapest and most effective method of redundant systems is to just safe your money and not buy fancy equipment for one place, but to spend it on cheap equipment is several places. That way, who cares if someone takes out an entire hosting center, leaving only a 100 ft dep crater. You still have servers running in California and Asia.
The Domain Name System doesn't rely on a huge Fort Knox-like system. It simply has 13 (?) different places throughout the world where amazingly cheap (for its importance) equipment resides. Even if North America sinks to the bottom of the Ocean, DNS should still happily resolve.
Expensive (but impressive) measures are not the answer to reliability. Geographic diversity of cheap systems is the answer most most applications. Today, we have incremental transfer protocols such as rsync that will even transfer massive databases back and forth by only sending the changes. It's largely marketing, unwarrented by technical considerations, that make companies spend so much money on these extra sigmas of reliability.
The most significant impact for me will be next generation instant messaging.
I love Peer-to-Peer networking, and it only makes sense for IRC to evolve to instant messaging to evolve to peer-to-peer. What frightens me is the security implications given the convergance of several factors. First, the click and drool crowd will soon have unlimited access to other click and droolers. Second, AOL is going out of its way to try to give users the power to install and use its product despite measures such as blocking ports at the firewall. Third, traditional virus protections currently have been designed for an e-mail architecture - they also do not appear to apply the same scrutiny to quiet back doors or grappling hooks as they do to louder, cruder viruses.
What options does the administrator of a large collection of LANs have when he doesn't have any direct control of the policies of how each LAN sets up their users and workstations. What policies can he apply to the network at its internet perimeter?
Perhaps there is no adequate answer. It may be that the network must remain stupid, end-to-end, and the only security possible is at the desktop. Does this mean that we must require every person who has a computer to attend two weeks of security training every year? The option choice appears to be to suffer back doors, malicious keyboard stroke loggers, and routine virus outbreaks.
Re:A classic case for a public-service website.
on
Adcritic Shuts Down
·
· Score: 1
Is it really a public service to have archived advertisements? I think the Ad Council, the industry's umbrella group, already does levy membership fees (although I don't think they're mandatory). Their mission is to "identify a select number of significant public issues and stimulate action on those issues through communications programs that make a measurable difference in our society."
In short, they product public service campaigns. Among the real public services they provide is producing
public service campaigns of the "Save the children" variety. Memorable campaigns include "Take a Bite out of Crime" and the McGruff crime dog, The UNCF "Mind is a terrible thing to waste" and my favorite, the Crash Test Dummies.
To what areas in the legal arena may techies make critical contributions? As an established techie who also has completed his LSAT and law school applications for next year, what areas would you recommend for the greatest focus? What does the legal system most need from the lawyers who also have experience programming, building UNIX servers, and trouble-shooting wide area networks?
Do we distribute a HOWTO on amicus curie briefs so the techies can engage in denial-of-service attacks on the courts? (just kidding) Do we start a Litigate for America corps of motivated, lawyer-programmers? Should someone persuade Scott McNealy that he should endow his own law school to build an army of lawyers to combat vested interests that hold back progress?
A previous poster had an excellent point: the current cases will build the precedent for the next few decades. Therefore, it's crucial that articulate, techo-savvy lawyers exist and are engaged in the law that judges are deciding now and in the years to come. What can techie lawyers do to best find a fulcrum in the balance between corporate interests and progress?
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a lot of scenery that adds to the ambience. Look for aligators and a treehouse. Even though it was simple, I enjoy sitting on a swing hung from a tree. There's room for two for lovers. And if you want a kiss, get a silver kiss and present it to others.
So what's not hot? The rollar coaster. It has the potential to be the best thing in the park, but when I tried it, the resources were not sufficient to support it. I don't know if it was my video card, the Linden servers, the programming, or the network lag, but it was slow (a SLOW rollar coaster?) and would stop at akward positions. You don't fall out, but it might be better if you did. SL uses a realistic physics engine from the same company that supports Half-Life 2, but clearly, the technology in SL can't support the fast-pacing of a FPS or modern video game.
Author Vernor Vinge predicts releasing networked, dust-sized cameras throughout an entire planet that wirelessly report back to their user. Someone with read access to the network can basically see and hear anything where the speck of dust happens to be. Honestly, I don't think it will be too long before this is technically feasible. The trick will be convincing the powers that be that everyone should have read access to the system, not just the powers that be. I'd much rather everyone be omniscient than just our beloved leaders.
If you want to read a world where nanites with audio/video form a supercomping net that anyone can access to invade anyone else's privacy, then you need to read this book. This is really searching reality. Frighteningly, the technology for this is probably less than a few decades away.
Essential: Build the machine and software from the ground up starting with the proposition that you will have to recount the votes. All other considerations are secondary.
Parallel testing. On the day of election, randomly select a machine, pull it out, and run a simulated voting process on it. Compare the results with what they should be. Video the entire process. If the results are wrong, go back and investigate the video tape. It should be done for each polling place. This is expensive. The machines cost $3,000-$5,000.
Test before, during, and after elections.
California requires mandatory recounting for a random 1% sample of all ballots. This was introduced after optical scan ballots. This should be a national law.
New Hamphire allows any candidate to demand a recount for up to a 3% margin. Experts know how to count.
Florida did not know how to count votes correctly like many other states.
Issues like blind access are important to the blind, but remember our priorities! Recounts are the essential priority!
Ways to Cheat
Don't activate the cheating until after the election starts.
Only cheat with a few machines. Only a margin is required to swing a close election.
No verifiable audit trial. Design a paperless machine that counts votes and is not voter verifiable.
Get access to the machine before or after the election. The machines are almost always kept in insecure storage and shipped via insecure delivery.
Randomly change a number of votes each way each time you check the results. Change some votes for Kerry and some votes for Bush. Just weigh the cheating for your candidate. This way, you can't tell whether the cheating is a bug or malicious code.
OK, the mechanics of the process isn't all that secret. It begins by using a provision of the US Code under 18 USC 1030(f) that requests the ISP to save information about a certain user (or IP address, or account, or whatever) in a pending criminal investigation. Section 1030(f) does not require that the ISP give the government a single byte of info, only save data that might otherwise be destroyed in the normal course of business, so that the government can take its time to get real authorization via a subpoena or warrant.
That said, I always use Mozilla and have Pop-up ad blocking. Still, the law should not ban ads if consumers WANT the pop-ups from competitors to services that they are visiting. Overstock risks crossing the line and acting uncompetitively in a way that harms consumers and increases prices for everyone.
Technology has reduced the value of a content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures by applying basic economic principles such as transaction costs, supply, and demand to the existing business model for content such as songs and movies. It concludes by suggesting new strategies that are economically efficient in the new marketplace shaped by technological changes.
Traditionally Sony Music and other members of the content oligarchy provided essential services in the marketplace. They efficiently produced, filtered, and distributed content, providing consumers value. Advancements in technology no longer allow large-scale, commercial content production companies to serve these roles efficiently.
A content business such as Sony Music or Sony Pictures has a variety of responses to these changes. At one extreme the company may allow its business model to evolve congruent with technology. Conversely, the company may attempt to contort law and social norms to their outdated business plan. If the company chooses this latter approach and resists technology, fights will doubtless arise with technology businesses such as Sony Electronics.
The conflict between content and electronics is somewhat analogous to the balance underlying the U.S. Constitution's Copyright Clause, weighing rights of consumers to use content against incentives for copyright holders to produce more content. As progress in technology moves this balance in favor of consumers, copyright holders threaten to overreact with artificial technological burdens and new legal sanctions that can harm consumers and subsequent authors. Such a strategy would likely result in a net loss of social benefits.
Sony Corporation reflects the tension between the content and electronics manufacturing industries. At Sony's heart is a consumer electronics company, but Sony has expanded one way into computer equipment and another direction into music, movies, and television production.
Advances in technology are driving the cost of producing content to nominal levels for all factors except the author's time. Inexpensive software like Apple's Garage Band and iMovie replace equipment and professional labor that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars in the previous decade. Personal computers are replacing the expensive studios, editors, and engineers of professional production houses. Apple has always pursued authors, seeking to be the platform of choice for publishing, graphic design, music composition, and video editing.
By contrast, Sony's focus has seemed to be providing content consumers a platform for watching or listening to content. This explains its purchases of Columbia TriStar Films and CBS Records. Sony, as an electronics manufacturer, wants to guarantee that it cannot be held hostage to the content industry by producing content itself.
Meanwhile, the supply of musicians already exceeds demand. Compounding this oversupply, authors are able to produce content without using an expensive production company. The job outlook for musicians and singers belittles the production justification that the music industry offers for its continued existence. Therefore, additional incentives for production of music (such as increased copyright protection) would seem to be a waste of economic resources that are better used elsewhere. With so many authors supplying more content than the market demands, one might suppose that the old content industry can provide value-added services other than production such as filtering.
Video content is more complicated, but even the costs of video production will ultimately plummet to nominal levels as computers allow authors to manipulate virtual landscapes and virtual actors limited only by an author's imagination. Landscapes and crowd scenes are already commonly rendered using only computer-generated images.
When Sony bought CBS Records, there was some concern that it would not filter the good songs from the bad. Traditionally, the content industry oligar
As for intruding on a private network, the network is composed primarily of users, if I'm not mistaken. Still, companies like E-bay have been successful in using trespass (to chattles) to keep people off their servers if they make it clear that they don't want them on there.
The credit card transaction costs about $0.35. This is the largest piece. Until there's a cost effective way to reduce the transaction costs with micro payments, songs are going to continue to be about a buck each under this business model. Unless you use P2P of course.
Of the various advocacy orgs out there, which are most deserving of our hard-earned cash, and how do their various missions differ?
Really, how many people do you know who can afford to give $4000 every election cycle? The Republicans loved the results of the most recent campaign finance reform because they have lots of contributors who can afford $4000, whereas the Democrats only have uber-rich contributors, now shut out from giving their millions in a futile attempt to reach the same stratospheric levels as the Republicans.
Also available at Wash Post
I'm irked that the NYT didn't realize that only users of phones running BREW have to Pay $$$ for their games. Phones that use JAVA instead have plenty of free games.
I'm also irked that Verizon (my carrier) chose BREW rather than JAVA for its phones. Right now I use a Palm Pilot/phone, so there is open source and freeware for my particular solution now, but this might now always be the case. Apparently, developers have to pay to have their software "signed" before it will run on BREW, and the payments can be hefty. JAVA, of course, will run on anything.
Just another reason open source is better than closed.
The FBI is going to ignore anything unless you allege that you lost $5,000. In the real world, unless you see some fraud on your credit card after theives stole your number off your computer, they probably aren't going to care. Also, if someone uses your computer to attack and damage other computers (or even deface) that might get their attention. Here's the main collection of federal laws that apply to computer crime.
http://www.cybercrime.gov/cclaws.html
And here's the primary criminal law that applies:
18 USC 1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever--
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y.[(y)] of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 [42 USCS Â 2014(y)], with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains--
(A) information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in section 1602(n) of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.);
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or
(C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $ 5,000 in any 1-year period;
(5) (A) (i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)--
(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $ 5,000 in value;
I ran a hodgepodge of about 50 servers for an enterprise of around 60,000 users. I convinced management to standardize on Red Hat Linux for all my servers and completed the mirgration. My motives were that it was the cheapest and most secure solution. We got two new racks of Dell servers running Linux. It included the support from Red Hat. When Sendmail had its series of vulnerability notices a few months ago, we didn't have to download, recompile, or do anything other than click-click. Red Hat had done all the work and posted the patches. No mess, no fuss.
Arguing that copyright protection vioates the US Code would be a great argument. I suspect that it would fail, though. Unless it's in the Constitution, Congress can do anything it wants. In this case, Congress has allowed copy-protection schemes and enforces their integrity through the DMCA, also part of the US Code. Maybe there's room for an argument that some copyright protection schemes whose integrity is protected by the DMCA also violate the fair use provision - if fair use is indeed in the US Code.
Here's the yet not-updated NASA site for mission STS-107.
The ACLU is concerned that one of the leaders of the Iran Contra affair now having access to every database in America. The government wants to know where and when you pass through a toll booth, make phone calls, e-mail, surf the web, and anything else. And they want it without having to get a warrent. Has anyone read the Constitution who's passing this lesgislation?
Their lawyer, KATHLEEN M. WALKER, graduated form Creighton University Law School, ranked 116 out of 164 law schools in the country. It's ranked betwen the University of Montana and Louisiana State law schools. Apparently they don't stress ethics there. This is what happens when you have too many lawyers and forget to teach ethics.
You can't count on Verizon to provide accurate time. They're off by 55 seconds. Also, I don't know if this matters, but the towers claim to be on Atlantic Time while they're really located in the Eastern region.
I did a little search on usenet. It revealed what to block for any firewall admins out there. Does anyone have better information? We tested the blocking, but had a few problems. The client keeps finding ways to connect.
From: Charles Newman (newmanc6619 @ softhome.net)
Subject: Re: block AOL instant messenger
Newsgroups: comp.security.firewalls
Date: 2001-10-28 12:16:00 PST
That is not enough. It could still be access through an open proxy, on
ports 23, 1080, 8000, or 12001. You need to also route stuff through a
SOCKS proxy, and have your proxy block out the following ranges of
IP addresses, and that should stop AOL instant messenger
205.187.7.*
205.187.8.*
64.12.24.*
64.12.25.*
152.163.241.*
I am about to make my impentrable filtering system even better, by
putting in a second computer, that works as a firewall and proxy server, and
running either XP or 2000. Since all the filtering is done at the server
level, instead of at the client level, there is no POSSIBLE way that my
"home-brew" system could be compromised. Windows 2000 and Windows
XP have security that cannot POSSIBLY be penetrated, and since everything
runs in "stealth" mode, there is no POSSIBLE way someone could be able
to figure out how to circumvent my NEW AND IMPROVED "home brew"
system I am about to build. Basically, all the blocking software on my
computer now, would be transferred to another computer, which would act
as a proxy server and firewall.
Windows XP and 2000 have security that even the most computer saavy
youngster could not defeat. As I have mentioned before, I have had problems
inthe past with housekeepers who bring kids with them, and said kids having
tried to access my computer.
Even the best hackers in the world would not be able to get through
thekind of "home brew" filtering system I am planning right now. As the old
addage goes, "What cannot be seen cannot be hacked". Since XP works like 2000,
it will put an END to virtually nearly all computer viruses. Every virus out
there runs on either DOS, or Windows 9x. Windows NT/XP/2000 has
security a virus could not get through. That is why UNIX is still used in
some
places, UNIX is not vulnerable to viruses, like DOS and Win9X are.
Server-based filtering cannot be circumvented, if requests to ports
80,1080,3128, and 8080 are blocked. They block 99.9 percent of all the
known open proxy servers in the world. The ONLY way you can POSSIBLY
circumvent a served-based filtering system is to use an outside proxy
server.
That is why served based filtering has become more popular. Server-based
solutions are 100 PERCENT *IMPOSSIBLE* to circumvent. Also, as I
have just said, Windows XP and 2000 cannot be hacked, becuase of the
security measures in place on those two operatingh systems.
Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-
I want to block AOL Instant Messenger what port does it use? How Can I Block
It?
>
> I recall seeing the port number when my daughter was IMing her "buddies".
>
> http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers lists several numbers as AOL
> port numbers.
>
> aol 5190/tcp America-Online
> aol 5190/udp America-Online
> aol-1 5191/tcp AmericaOnline1
> aol-1 5191/udp AmericaOnline1
> aol-2 5192/tcp AmericaOnline2
> aol-2 5192/udp AmericaOnline2
> aol-3 5193/tcp AmericaOnline3
> aol-3 5193/udp AmericaOnline3
>
> I'm pretty sure that I saw the 5190 in use when my daughter was IMing.
By far, the cheapest and most effective method of redundant systems is to just safe your money and not buy fancy equipment for one place, but to spend it on cheap equipment is several places. That way, who cares if someone takes out an entire hosting center, leaving only a 100 ft dep crater. You still have servers running in California and Asia.
The Domain Name System doesn't rely on a huge Fort Knox-like system. It simply has 13 (?) different places throughout the world where amazingly cheap (for its importance) equipment resides. Even if North America sinks to the bottom of the Ocean, DNS should still happily resolve.
Expensive (but impressive) measures are not the answer to reliability. Geographic diversity of cheap systems is the answer most most applications. Today, we have incremental transfer protocols such as rsync that will even transfer massive databases back and forth by only sending the changes. It's largely marketing, unwarrented by technical considerations, that make companies spend so much money on these extra sigmas of reliability.
I love Peer-to-Peer networking, and it only makes sense for IRC to evolve to instant messaging to evolve to peer-to-peer. What frightens me is the security implications given the convergance of several factors. First, the click and drool crowd will soon have unlimited access to other click and droolers. Second, AOL is going out of its way to try to give users the power to install and use its product despite measures such as blocking ports at the firewall. Third, traditional virus protections currently have been designed for an e-mail architecture - they also do not appear to apply the same scrutiny to quiet back doors or grappling hooks as they do to louder, cruder viruses.
What options does the administrator of a large collection of LANs have when he doesn't have any direct control of the policies of how each LAN sets up their users and workstations. What policies can he apply to the network at its internet perimeter?
Perhaps there is no adequate answer. It may be that the network must remain stupid, end-to-end, and the only security possible is at the desktop. Does this mean that we must require every person who has a computer to attend two weeks of security training every year? The option choice appears to be to suffer back doors, malicious keyboard stroke loggers, and routine virus outbreaks.
In short, they product public service campaigns. Among the real public services they provide is producing public service campaigns of the "Save the children" variety. Memorable campaigns include "Take a Bite out of Crime" and the McGruff crime dog, The UNCF "Mind is a terrible thing to waste" and my favorite, the Crash Test Dummies.
Do we distribute a HOWTO on amicus curie briefs so the techies can engage in denial-of-service attacks on the courts? (just kidding) Do we start a Litigate for America corps of motivated, lawyer-programmers? Should someone persuade Scott McNealy that he should endow his own law school to build an army of lawyers to combat vested interests that hold back progress?
A previous poster had an excellent point: the current cases will build the precedent for the next few decades. Therefore, it's crucial that articulate, techo-savvy lawyers exist and are engaged in the law that judges are deciding now and in the years to come. What can techie lawyers do to best find a fulcrum in the balance between corporate interests and progress?