And all the disclaimers in the world won't help you if a case can be made for malicious code being deliberately released - your company would still be accountable.
Legally sound, but immoral and practically insane. The same argument could be made for preventing you from doing almost anything you don't have to do, regardless of how public spirited.
And in particular, when in the history of this world, has "malicious code [been] deliberately released" as part of an OSS?
The upside for the company is an increase of good will, which transates into sales.
I wonder what the over all numbers are, gross numbers of books shipped, versus gross numbers sold and not sold/stripped.
50% or less of most paperbacks are sold through to shops. The rest are destroyed, or maybe sold (legitimately) to a remainder dealer (at maybe 90% discount), though the average mass market paperback is just pulped.
ee the argument on stripped books, the sale of which is ILLEGAL. It's the same thing - an unlicensed, illegitimate copy of something being sold. They're both illegal. You can argue that it shouldn't be that way, but it is. Do a search on "stripped books" if you don't believe me.
OK, I did a Google search on "stripped books" and looked at every one of the 50 or so hits. A couple did state that it was "illegal", but there were no citations or references to which supposed law was being broken. So unless you can do that, I will continue to believe this is just one of those things that publishers wish was a law.
the common practice in publishing where the discarded magazine is frequently distributed pro-bono to the public.
Though this may not be "legal" does it not also reflect the lack of interest in the material (on the part of the publisher) to assure destruction of the material. Doesn't this imply "abandonment" on their part as well?
Because the value of a magazine when the next issue is on sale (the old one will not be gven away while it's till current) this is rather different than things that are not so time sensitive, like books or sewing patterns.
And so you throw your CDs in a recycle bin, trusting that they'll be destroyed. But then some college students dig through your recycle bin and salvage the CDs, the CDs that someone else already paid for, the CDs that you have made a comittment to destroy. That is piracy, at that point.
No it's not. The guy trashing the CDs has the obligation to see they're destroyed, if anyone is at fault it's him. The scavengers have no direct obligation to the other parties. They might have trouble related to trespass or however they gained access to the CDs, but that's another matter.
There are services you can use that will make sure confidential papers and whatnot are really destroyed. You have no right to expect the trash collection system to fulfil your obligation to destroy.
it still doesn't justify piracy simply because the software companies know this and if they wanted to make sales based on this approach they could release their programs as shareware.
No, becasue then they'd lose sales to "honest" people. Also, it costs nothing to distribute or support pirated software -- the pirates do that. And they don't have any erosion of retail price.
Example, consider developing countries, where close to 100% of software is bootleg (I hate the word "pirate" -- no one is being killed on the high seas, they're copying bits), MS has virtually 100% market penetration. Similarly for other big names, like Adobe Photoshop. No one even considers using cheaper (at retail) software, becasue everything is the same price, about $1/disk.
A few years later, companies come to depend on MS software, designers on Photoshop, and now the US govt starts to pressure the local govt to crack down on piracy. Within a few years at least half the previous users of bootleg software have gone legit, and are on the upgrade treadmill. Notice that lower priced, even locallly produced software never gets a chance to compete.
If they can build ICBMs and are well on the way to making atomic bombs, supporting some ninja hackers is not a problem.
The country is desperately poor, but the military is one of the largest in the world (not unrelated facts). I think it quite likely they do have military hackers, after all all you need are some generic PCs and a dial up connection.
Whether "cyberwar" is actually any use at all in the real world is another question. They'd probably focus on defensive measures, protecting their own assets from US penetration.
"Whenever the name of me is used in an argument in a linear discussion of many people, the interesting content of that discussion will be at an end." - A. Hitler
I'd love to see a source for this. (Aside from Godwin.)
You miss the point. They drop, let's say 500 carefully targeted 50 kilo rocks. After this, we HAVE no launch capability.
These rocks all hit target perfectly and simultaneously? All the missile subs at sea? And bombers in the air? And aircraft carriers -- and again, it takes a couple of days to go from the moon to the earth, so how do they target the mobile platforms? Isn't the US military observing the lunar base and noticing 500 rocks being launched and tracks them? (Yes, it's hard to track rocks in space, but there is radar, and they will have ahad a few years warning while the base is being built to prepare countermeasures.)
after all it's a way of attacking more or less free from retribution.
???????
Chinese lunar base drops bombs/rocks on the US.
US sinks Chinese navy/nukes Beijing/destroys or occupies lunar base/ etc.
If more recent events don't convince you, go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK said : "it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."
I think I'd be more concerned with Dr Evil's lunar base tahn your rogue Chinese one. Why would China do that? This is starting to remind me of Dr Strangelove:
General Jack D. Ripper: Your Commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own.
Dr. Strangelove: Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.
Yes, China could nuke the US. Thing is.... we can shoot back. A chinese colony on the moon? Is out of range by a hell of a long way.
The retaliation would be against China, Beijing or Shanghai say (preferably not Hong Kong, since I live there). As for the moon being out of range, no. A nuclear warhead is pretty small, and easily delivered to the moon. The Pentagon would have that worked out as soon as any kind of Chinese base was actually started.
Whether the subs could launch before they were destroyed is a question I doubt either of us is qualified to answer. But I wouldn't bet on getting them all.
I don't think Chinese subs attacking the US mainland is something we have to worry about.
You don't, because you'd nuke Beijing and they know it.
They do have some Submarine base missiles but that would be tracked/destroyed by the vastly superior US Navy.
The subs would be destroyed, but they could get off a missile or two (MIRVed?) before then. Then it is goodbye New York/Washington/LA.
And of course, every day thousand of containers arrive in US ports from China. It would be trivial to deliver one that way, and difficult to track back after.
Further, the natural Chinese economic advantage (lots of cheap labor), is of little value in the aerospace realm. Sure, you can have folks using picks and shovels on a dam along side modern construction equipment. But on a Saturn V/N-1 type rocket? Not likely.
They alrady have ICBMs. They have access to US and Russian proven hardware and experience (they could just subcontract most of it to the Russians, for that matter). It will be much easier and cheaper now than in the 60s. (Perhaps you may have noticed that almost all the innards of the PC in front of you was actually manufactured in China?)
Heinlein was a starry-eyed optimist to think it could ever happen on Earth
He didn't, TMIAHM was all about the anarchist/libertarian (not sure how to classify it...) Lunies breaking away from the over-regulated Terran government. Most of his other SF actually had earth society going through a long authoritarian (or at best paternalistic) phase (such as in Starship Tropers), while various space colonies evolved into free societies.
I'm worried about a lunar rock being dropped on New York from a mass driver.
China has nukes and ICBMs. They could nuke New York tomorrow. They would suffer the same response whichever method they used.
Also, it takes a few days to travel from the Moon to Earth, so there would be plenty of time for countermeasures (the Pentagon would surely have lunar observation satellites in place long before).
A simple thing like FTP for example, to update our websites. Normally I would expect this to be part of the OS, but no. Windows ftp client is a very simple useless piece of software. I have to spend days hunting the web for something suitable. When I do find one, WSFTP or CuteFTP for example, I can only use it for 30 days then I have to pay.
There are any number of freeware ftp clients. Go to a site like freewareweb and find several.
Personally, I use the ftp client built in to Far, which is shareware, but doesn't expire. (I guess the Win version of Midnight Commander has it too, if you use that on Linux.)
Want to write a PDF file? People in my office needed to, asked me to find something free online. After spending a couple of hours looking for something for windows, I ended up giving them a knoppix cd.
Or you could have used Ghostscript, i.e. the same app as in Knoppix.
And trust me, paying for software is far more abhorrent to these co-workers of mine than any piracy issues. In fact my boss always makes a joke every time someone comes in to get some software, "but you still have to pay the software company for the license to use the software". Heh.
Well, just go to Astalavista for all your serialz and crackz.
I hate Windows myself, but I stick with it for most of my work exactly because I can find just about any app I need, free (as in beer). There are many cool apps, it's the OS that sucks.
I use Kazaa to download and watch episodes of Friends, West Wing and about 3 or 4 other TV shows which are not easily available here in Hong Kong.
??? In Hong Kong this week on TVB, Friends is on Sunday 8pm,West Wing Thursday, 10:30 pm; though both run almost a year later than their US showings. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that isn't -- the last series of B5, Buffie, Third Rock,... not to mention hardly any UK stuff, aside from David Attenborough documentaries. But since you can get bootleg DVDs from Shenzhen for HK$6 of any recent movie, the trade off isn't bad.
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I meant "you" when at work, in which case your employer could theoretically be liable.
Legally sound, but immoral and practically insane. The same argument could be made for preventing you from doing almost anything you don't have to do, regardless of how public spirited.
And in particular, when in the history of this world, has "malicious code [been] deliberately released" as part of an OSS?
The upside for the company is an increase of good will, which transates into sales.
It doesn't, and wasn't intended to. Read the post in context.
50% or less of most paperbacks are sold through to shops. The rest are destroyed, or maybe sold (legitimately) to a remainder dealer (at maybe 90% discount), though the average mass market paperback is just pulped.
There's another one...
OK, I did a Google search on "stripped books" and looked at every one of the 50 or so hits. A couple did state that it was "illegal", but there were no citations or references to which supposed law was being broken. So unless you can do that, I will continue to believe this is just one of those things that publishers wish was a law.
Though this may not be "legal" does it not also reflect the lack of interest in the material (on the part of the publisher) to assure destruction of the material. Doesn't this imply "abandonment" on their part as well?
Because the value of a magazine when the next issue is on sale (the old one will not be gven away while it's till current) this is rather different than things that are not so time sensitive, like books or sewing patterns.
No it's not. The guy trashing the CDs has the obligation to see they're destroyed, if anyone is at fault it's him. The scavengers have no direct obligation to the other parties. They might have trouble related to trespass or however they gained access to the CDs, but that's another matter.
There are services you can use that will make sure confidential papers and whatnot are really destroyed. You have no right to expect the trash collection system to fulfil your obligation to destroy.
No, becasue then they'd lose sales to "honest" people. Also, it costs nothing to distribute or support pirated software -- the pirates do that. And they don't have any erosion of retail price.
Example, consider developing countries, where close to 100% of software is bootleg (I hate the word "pirate" -- no one is being killed on the high seas, they're copying bits), MS has virtually 100% market penetration. Similarly for other big names, like Adobe Photoshop. No one even considers using cheaper (at retail) software, becasue everything is the same price, about $1/disk.
A few years later, companies come to depend on MS software, designers on Photoshop, and now the US govt starts to pressure the local govt to crack down on piracy. Within a few years at least half the previous users of bootleg software have gone legit, and are on the upgrade treadmill. Notice that lower priced, even locallly produced software never gets a chance to compete.
The country is desperately poor, but the military is one of the largest in the world (not unrelated facts). I think it quite likely they do have military hackers, after all all you need are some generic PCs and a dial up connection.
Whether "cyberwar" is actually any use at all in the real world is another question. They'd probably focus on defensive measures, protecting their own assets from US penetration.
It's almost acceptable to use "media" as a singular, but completely and utterly wrong to use "mediums", unless you're discussing gypsy fortunetellers.
I'd love to see a source for this. (Aside from Godwin.)
These rocks all hit target perfectly and simultaneously? All the missile subs at sea? And bombers in the air? And aircraft carriers -- and again, it takes a couple of days to go from the moon to the earth, so how do they target the mobile platforms? Isn't the US military observing the lunar base and noticing 500 rocks being launched and tracks them? (Yes, it's hard to track rocks in space, but there is radar, and they will have ahad a few years warning while the base is being built to prepare countermeasures.)
Sorry, it won't work.
???????
Chinese lunar base drops bombs/rocks on the US. US sinks Chinese navy/nukes Beijing/destroys or occupies lunar base/ etc.
If more recent events don't convince you, go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK said : "it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."
The retaliation would be against China, Beijing or Shanghai say (preferably not Hong Kong, since I live there). As for the moon being out of range, no. A nuclear warhead is pretty small, and easily delivered to the moon. The Pentagon would have that worked out as soon as any kind of Chinese base was actually started.
I don't think Chinese subs attacking the US mainland is something we have to worry about.
You don't, because you'd nuke Beijing and they know it.
They do have some Submarine base missiles but that would be tracked/destroyed by the vastly superior US Navy.
The subs would be destroyed, but they could get off a missile or two (MIRVed?) before then. Then it is goodbye New York/Washington/LA.
And of course, every day thousand of containers arrive in US ports from China. It would be trivial to deliver one that way, and difficult to track back after.
They alrady have ICBMs. They have access to US and Russian proven hardware and experience (they could just subcontract most of it to the Russians, for that matter). It will be much easier and cheaper now than in the 60s. (Perhaps you may have noticed that almost all the innards of the PC in front of you was actually manufactured in China?)
He didn't, TMIAHM was all about the anarchist/libertarian (not sure how to classify it...) Lunies breaking away from the over-regulated Terran government. Most of his other SF actually had earth society going through a long authoritarian (or at best paternalistic) phase (such as in Starship Tropers), while various space colonies evolved into free societies.
China has nukes and ICBMs. They could nuke New York tomorrow. They would suffer the same response whichever method they used.
Also, it takes a few days to travel from the Moon to Earth, so there would be plenty of time for countermeasures (the Pentagon would surely have lunar observation satellites in place long before).
There are any number of freeware ftp clients. Go to a site like freewareweb and find several.
Personally, I use the ftp client built in to Far, which is shareware, but doesn't expire. (I guess the Win version of Midnight Commander has it too, if you use that on Linux.)
Want to write a PDF file? People in my office needed to, asked me to find something free online. After spending a couple of hours looking for something for windows, I ended up giving them a knoppix cd.
Or you could have used Ghostscript, i.e. the same app as in Knoppix.
And trust me, paying for software is far more abhorrent to these co-workers of mine than any piracy issues. In fact my boss always makes a joke every time someone comes in to get some software, "but you still have to pay the software company for the license to use the software". Heh.
Well, just go to Astalavista for all your serialz and crackz.
I hate Windows myself, but I stick with it for most of my work exactly because I can find just about any app I need, free (as in beer). There are many cool apps, it's the OS that sucks.
??? In Hong Kong this week on TVB, Friends is on Sunday 8pm, West Wing Thursday, 10:30 pm; though both run almost a year later than their US showings. Of course, there's a lot of stuff that isn't -- the last series of B5, Buffie, Third Rock, ... not to mention hardly any UK stuff, aside from David Attenborough documentaries. But since you can get bootleg DVDs from Shenzhen for HK$6 of any recent movie, the trade off isn't bad.
No, you still need to register for those. Otherwise you are redirected to a big "Authorization Required" message page.
When you say "rented by the hour" the implication is you're talking about prostitutes.