So if you want to be pissed about this, on whose shoulders do you properly place the blame?
Regardless of who takes the blame, what are the consequences?
Blame
Law enforcement? Maybe. On one hand, Law enforcement officials have the responsibility of enforcing the law. They do not write the laws, judge the validity of the laws, or assign punishment to those convicted of violating the laws.
On the other hand, federal law enforcement is an hierarchy subject to political pressure. A gentleman with whom I occasionally work is an undercover federal agent originally tasked to fight against child endangerment. His focus was online child baiting. He was very good at this, and brought some serious slime-bags to justice. It felt good to help.
Now, this same person is fighting terrorism. I support the move, because despite the fact that I think that child predators need to be stopped, it won't do the kids much good if they are blown up by some pseudo-religious maniac filled with unjustifiable hatred against all life.
Bottom line: Do I personally think that the priorities are what they should be, in an ideal world? Hell no. Do I think someone in the organization rolled over and kissed ass? Hell yes.
Do we blame the software/record companies? Yes, in large part. They should charge a fair price for a good product. I was in a business years ago. My former partner and his wife imbezzled a lot of money from me. This was hard cash- not "potential profit." We had hard evidence, but little money in pocket for legal fees. Did the FBI rush to our aid? Not as such. People will rip you off. Move on, learn to cope and take steps to decrease the frequency and severity in the future.
Consequences
We live in a fundamentally capitalistic world. People are money/reward motivated. The idea is simple: I work hard. I do something clever. I get quantifiable material rewards. A lot of people do amazing things under this system. "Gosh those 65-80 hour weeks really paid off!" Take away the reward, and you lose much of the work. I know there are exceptions to this. I use Linux. My current company contributes to a couple GPL'd projects in addition to writing closed-source software. If a potentially paying client stole some of our software, you can bet I'd be pissed. I have however looked the other way when our software was copied and used without permission or payment. It is free publicity under the right circumstances.
One final thought- what is the consequence of the current arms race between copyright holders and the illegal copiers and/or distributors of their intellectual property? Virtually any Slashdot reader is most likely convinced that file sharing is not going away. Most are also equally convinced that those opposed to file sharing are not going to change their mind. A very likely outcome I would argue, is the development of Cell networked and encrypted protocols that borrow from time-honored practices of the intelligence community. Now what scares me in this scenario is the probable secondary users of such networks- both terrorists and organized crime.
Not all off-hour work needs to be tech related. Sometimes you can get a wonderful sanity break by doing something unrelated to bit-twiddling.
My wife and I are both geeks. Both of us do AI work and manage a couple of computer networks. We are also both hard core horse geeks. In her case, she makes some money teaching riders on the side. I spend my time training the horses.
The irony of it is given the mindnumbing nature of the math I have to slog through on a regular basis, the relaxation of the barn (dodging flying hooves, etc...) actually helps me to relax. The net result is an increase in productivity in my day job when I end up producing algorithms while wearing poop on my boots. Go figure.
I'm going to drift off topic for just a second, and then get to the point- please bear with me.
1- Some associations formed between organized crime and specific terrorist organizations during the time in which heroin began to be distributed by the mob in the United States- most notably in the last two decades.
2- Organized crime does help back some of the virus and worm writers; in part at the behest and urging of their clients and business associates. This allows for the creation of a "Chinese Wall" of traceability between the money sources and the receipients- two layers of laundering rather than one.
3- One of their primary associates in this affair is the cluster of cells collectively known as al Queda. This known terrorist organization has a vested interest in learning how to disrupt the infrastructure that helps to track them.
4- The ties alleged above are highly defensible, even without resorting to the publication of classified materials. The issues and relevance are both a matter of common knowledge. Therefore it may be said that any authors would be acting with full knowledge of the consequences, both potential and material, of their actions.
5- Those acting as authors of such disruptive tools are acting in the interests of known mass murderers. They are aiding and abetting one of the worst and most virulent lines of humaniform disease ever to stain the human race. All authors of such software must therefore be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law- as terrorists.
I administer a network of about 25 linux
boxen used largely for file service. For such work, I must say that with 9,000 users and about 30 groups, I consisder ACLs a necessity. I've been
using the "Bestbits" ext2 acl patch with great
luck (acl.bestbits.at). I've heard that a cousin to this patch can be applied to ext3, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm drawn to XFS for its maturity, durability, and of course its ACL support.
The XFS command line utilities seem to be less effective than the Bestbits patches & utils, and the Samba 2.2.1a support seems to be a bit off with its handling of recursive descents and inheritance. To be fair on both counts, I'm still learning the file system, and the problems could be all mine.
I'd thought about ReiserFS, but I really need those ACLs.
Just some thoughts. Any errors are all mine. Please feel free to correct. I have no pride.
Slashdot Mirror
As an author, I like the options that Creative Commons offers me. I can share while retaining different kinds of rights.
Regardless of who takes the blame, what are the consequences?
Blame
Law enforcement? Maybe. On one hand, Law enforcement officials have the responsibility of enforcing the law. They do not write the laws, judge the validity of the laws, or assign punishment to those convicted of violating the laws.On the other hand, federal law enforcement is an hierarchy subject to political pressure. A gentleman with whom I occasionally work is an undercover federal agent originally tasked to fight against child endangerment. His focus was online child baiting. He was very good at this, and brought some serious slime-bags to justice. It felt good to help.
Now, this same person is fighting terrorism. I support the move, because despite the fact that I think that child predators need to be stopped, it won't do the kids much good if they are blown up by some pseudo-religious maniac filled with unjustifiable hatred against all life.
Bottom line: Do I personally think that the priorities are what they should be, in an ideal world? Hell no. Do I think someone in the organization rolled over and kissed ass? Hell yes.
Do we blame the software/record companies? Yes, in large part. They should charge a fair price for a good product. I was in a business years ago. My former partner and his wife imbezzled a lot of money from me. This was hard cash- not "potential profit." We had hard evidence, but little money in pocket for legal fees. Did the FBI rush to our aid? Not as such. People will rip you off. Move on, learn to cope and take steps to decrease the frequency and severity in the future.
Consequences
We live in a fundamentally capitalistic world. People are money/reward motivated. The idea is simple: I work hard. I do something clever. I get quantifiable material rewards. A lot of people do amazing things under this system. "Gosh those 65-80 hour weeks really paid off!" Take away the reward, and you lose much of the work. I know there are exceptions to this. I use Linux. My current company contributes to a couple GPL'd projects in addition to writing closed-source software. If a potentially paying client stole some of our software, you can bet I'd be pissed. I have however looked the other way when our software was copied and used without permission or payment. It is free publicity under the right circumstances.One final thought- what is the consequence of the current arms race between copyright holders and the illegal copiers and/or distributors of their intellectual property? Virtually any Slashdot reader is most likely convinced that file sharing is not going away. Most are also equally convinced that those opposed to file sharing are not going to change their mind. A very likely outcome I would argue, is the development of Cell networked and encrypted protocols that borrow from time-honored practices of the intelligence community. Now what scares me in this scenario is the probable secondary users of such networks- both terrorists and organized crime.
My wife and I are both geeks. Both of us do AI work and manage a couple of computer networks. We are also both hard core horse geeks. In her case, she makes some money teaching riders on the side. I spend my time training the horses.
The irony of it is given the mindnumbing nature of the math I have to slog through on a regular basis, the relaxation of the barn (dodging flying hooves, etc...) actually helps me to relax. The net result is an increase in productivity in my day job when I end up producing algorithms while wearing poop on my boots. Go figure.
1- Some associations formed between organized crime and specific terrorist organizations during the time in which heroin began to be distributed by the mob in the United States- most notably in the last two decades.
2- Organized crime does help back some of the virus and worm writers; in part at the behest and urging of their clients and business associates. This allows for the creation of a "Chinese Wall" of traceability between the money sources and the receipients- two layers of laundering rather than one.
3- One of their primary associates in this affair is the cluster of cells collectively known as al Queda. This known terrorist organization has a vested interest in learning how to disrupt the infrastructure that helps to track them.
4- The ties alleged above are highly defensible, even without resorting to the publication of classified materials. The issues and relevance are both a matter of common knowledge. Therefore it may be said that any authors would be acting with full knowledge of the consequences, both potential and material, of their actions.
5- Those acting as authors of such disruptive tools are acting in the interests of known mass murderers. They are aiding and abetting one of the worst and most virulent lines of humaniform disease ever to stain the human race. All authors of such software must therefore be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law- as terrorists.
Just my opinion.
The XFS command line utilities seem to be less effective than the Bestbits patches & utils, and the Samba 2.2.1a support seems to be a bit off with its handling of recursive descents and inheritance. To be fair on both counts, I'm still learning the file system, and the problems could be all mine.
I'd thought about ReiserFS, but I really need those ACLs.
Just some thoughts. Any errors are all mine. Please feel free to correct. I have no pride.