I've got it figured out. SCO is trying to throw out so many baseless accusitions, and fill the air with so much nonesense, that we simply become numb, unable to deal with it, or respond in a coherent manner.
It's like a two year old that keeps arguing that the sky is, in fact, green, and that he'll never grow up to be a basketball player if you don't let him eat cookies for breakfast. It's cute the first couple of times, then becomes slightly annoying, but eventually you are so baffled by the shear stupidity that you stop tyring to correct him, stop trying to prove your point, and simply say 'yes, dear.'
That, my friends, is SCO; Litigation through Temper Tantrum.
I ran Windows Update, and this patch was not on the list; I had to download and install it manually, and walk a number of people through the same process.
Which has only been labled 'critical' very recently, and, as far as I can tell, isn't on the suggested list of patches when Windows Update runs. I spent a good part of last night putting together a web page for my friends telling them what was wrong and how to fix it.
The fact is, quite simply, that they should have been running a *nix. It amazes me how much MS can get away with; debit cards weren't working at the local Price Chopper today because of this, some guy posted that at least one ATM in the UK was down, which suggests that a lot more followed suit, the DMV, the IRS, etc, etc. Yes, the people responsible for this virus are to blame, and yes, the people that left their boxes exposed and flapping in the breeze are to blame, but the Windows culture also has a big part to play in it. Need a computer? Toss up a windows box, and you're all set.
I think a big part of it is just that people expect Unix administration ot be tough, and hire someone competent, whereas the Windows boxes get Joe MSCE.
I think a good faith effort should involve a little more than lame pattern matching.
Lame pattern matching would be something like pac.*man.*. This is more like "yep, it hac 'P', 'A', 'C', 'M', 'A', and 'N' somewhere in the title, must be ours!" The only way they could get worse would be to look for filenames containing letters.
Uh, what if the recipient wants to disseminate the information?
IANAL, and I Am Not A Postmaster General, but from my understanding, when something is mailed to you, you can do whatever you want with it. Copyright law still applies, but since this is a legal notice, I don't think it can be coyrighted. Distribute as you like.
They don't have any legal claim for licensing revenues now. As has been repeatedly pointed out, a customer is not liable. If the NY Times prints a chapter from Harry Potter and gets sued for doing so, the people who have subscriptions to the NYT can't also be sued and forced to pay for the book. It doesn't work that way.
So if Joe Blow posts Windows Server 2000 (or whatever) on Kazaa, and I download it, am I free to use it in a production environment?
Buy stock in them, since if the government isn't allowed to collect and analyze the data, they will simply outsource the analysis to the private companies who aren't subject to the new law.
Well, this isn't one of my areas of study, but considering how we can now ship power about a quarter of the way across the United States, I wuld guess that, no, there aren't any places, or at least not very many, that could not use solar, hydroelectric, wind, or geothermal power. 25% of a continent is a lot of space to cover without finding sun, wind, water, or vents, especially if there are people there,
Places like Antarctica and Siberia would probably pose the biggest problems, but there's nothing but penguins there, anyway.;-)
We don't really need lines carrying solar power from sunny areas to the rest of the world. There are plenty of environment-friendly ways to generate power; solar in the sunny areas, hydro-electric in areas with lots of waterfalls, etc, windmills in the plains...
Availability of methods isn't slowing down alternative fule sources; people just see no reason to invest the necessary capital to change over, when burning dead dinosaurs is working quite happily.
It is good to see, that people are realizing that this is mostly smoke and bluster. In the end, however, it doesn't matter. What matters, the only thing that will really matter, is when the US government either says "You're right, here's your blank check" or "You're wrong, now shut the hell up." And compensation for all the trouble they've caused would be nice, too.
It amazes me that a company can do as much dammage as SCO, even if it is at the time being only damage to a reputation, without having to offer some sort of proof. The government is supposed to hold people blameless until they can prove otherwise, but corporations can throw accusations around all they please. We can learn a lot from Germany and australia in this regard.
In every court except tax court (gee, shocking), the burden of proof is on the accusing party. The level of evidence, though, is much higher in criminal court than in civil court; one must be shown guilty "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal court, while a mere "perponderance of the evidence" is sufficient in civil court.
Therefore, there are many cases, where there is not enough evidence for a criminal conviction, but is enough for a civil judgment.
Reading this kind of story (and others like it) causes me to wonder why it is that Republicans continue to push (with much success, btw) the lie that their party represents freedom from government intrusion. How much more intrusive can you get? Punishment without a trial. Big Brother would be proud of Sen. Hatch. Where is the outcry from all the conservatives and fellow Republicans about this suggestion?
I'm a conservative Christian, registered Republican, and I just sent off my letter of protest. We're not all evil. Well, ok, we probably are, but not on this issue.
I was under the impression that the bad one went this way:
_
|_|_
_| |
And the good one went this way:
_
_|_|
| |_
"Good and bad" aren't really the right words; "positive and negative," "light and dark," "male and female," etc are closer to the original meaning.
These things are hindu or budhhist symboly, roughtly equivilent to the yin/yang you used to see all over the place. The swastica corresponds to the dark half, which is what caught Hitler's attention. In it's original context, it was just one half of the balancing forces in nature.
For years, we complained about Microsoft because of their stability, ease-of-use, etc. Now, security is still a problem, but with XP, they have, by and large, fixed the stability issues with Windows. I've had boxes up for weeks without rebooting, and when I brought them down, it was usually because I didn't want my PowerSuck 2000 running up my electric bill while I slept. I don't have any experience running XP as a server, but from what I hear, it it a fairly solid OS, if you keep it patched.
Microsoft, though, seems determined to win the "Most Evil Computer Company" award for the billionth consecutive year. If technological problems won't do it for them, they'll start dropping in draconian EULAs.
That's why I finally made the switch to Red Hat. I can do pretty much everything I was already doing on XP, I have the development environment I am accustomed to from work, and I don't have to worry about which part of my soul is on lease to a large corporation.
Being on the lower tier of hackers, I'm not really into kernel hacking; out of curiosity, if XP's EULA was more agreeable, but still not OS/FS-compliant, would any of you consider using it?
Remarkable. Most companies would have gone after SuSe to build precident, Red Hat to gain momentum, and then worked out some sort of deal with IBM. That, sadly, is the American way. These guys, though, just walked right up to the 800lb gorilla, punched it in the mouth, and tried to take its bananna.
This is incredibly rude. How *dare* you? Who the fuck are you to decide the parameters of this "contract"? Your "emotional contract of marriage" is whatever the two people involved decide it is. Where is the moral imperative? You're the type of biggot that would object to my brothers wedding to another man.
I'm simply giving my oppinion. I honestly don't see how a healthy marriage can include recieving sexual gratification from outside sources. Marriage has, for hundreds of years, been a commitment between a husband and wife. I believe it is dangerous to alter that. I've given reasons why. What are your reasons for holding the opposite view?
My moral imperative, such as it is, comes from the fact that I think I know the truth, and that this is a discussion board. It comes from talking with people who have been abused, raped, and had marriages dammaged by unfaithfulness, even unfaithfulness of the eyes.
Boot Knoppix or something seems pretty easy. Use a java based browser. If you are right about it sending automatic email just kill your SMTP service (for example deliberately mess up your outgoing mail password). Use an anomizer with an unsupported browser so that everything is just one long shttp session. I can think 100 things that don't require much knowledge. (And before anyone comments, yes I agree Joe average user isn't going to think any of those on the spot in a moment of temptation).
The programs I have heard about work on the socket level, so they would know what IPs you were hitting no matter what browser you used. The program then contact the main server, does a reverse-dns lookup, and emails the report to your accountability partner; you don't need an SMTP server on your machine. These things are designed for Windows, folks.
As far as I can tell, there are only three ways around this:
1. Boot to another OS, a la knoppix
2. Replace the hacked socket library with your own, or
3. Use some sort of a proxy that can hide the requests you are making from your own machine's socket layer.
All of these are fairly easy to do, if you know how, but the fact is, this is all above the heads of the vast majority of users.
Actually, I think you will find a number of church officials requiering that those in their employ install such software. You see that's where this goes from being a voluntery self help thing to being an attack on freedom. Employment is trading labor for money, oppression is trading freedom for welfare maintance. I hope the employees feel quite right in subverting this.
Hardly. One of the qualifications for being a religious leader is a set of morals. Given the state of the varius churches today, I would suggest that a little accountability is in order...
Who needs grace when you have legalism -- especially automated-legalism.
Grace is not a substitute for morality. The bible quite clearly tells the believers to hold themselves accountable to one another, to confess their sins to one another, to judge one another and help each other grow. Iron sharpens iron, and all that.
My church isn't the type to requier you to do anything, but they would encourage this type of software. If you don't want their help or input, they tend not to give it. I don't know if I'd stay at a church that behaved otherwise.
Actually, I think you will find a number of church officials requiering that those in their employ install such software One word: Knoppix [knopper.net].
Hmm... my list of pastors that know what linux is, much less a bootable floppy or live file system, is rather short. Yours?
Slashdot Mirror
I've got it figured out. SCO is trying to throw out so many baseless accusitions, and fill the air with so much nonesense, that we simply become numb, unable to deal with it, or respond in a coherent manner.
It's like a two year old that keeps arguing that the sky is, in fact, green, and that he'll never grow up to be a basketball player if you don't let him eat cookies for breakfast. It's cute the first couple of times, then becomes slightly annoying, but eventually you are so baffled by the shear stupidity that you stop tyring to correct him, stop trying to prove your point, and simply say 'yes, dear.'
That, my friends, is SCO; Litigation through Temper Tantrum.
I ran Windows Update, and this patch was not on the list; I had to download and install it manually, and walk a number of people through the same process.
Which has only been labled 'critical' very recently, and, as far as I can tell, isn't on the suggested list of patches when Windows Update runs. I spent a good part of last night putting together a web page for my friends telling them what was wrong and how to fix it.
The fact is, quite simply, that they should have been running a *nix. It amazes me how much MS can get away with; debit cards weren't working at the local Price Chopper today because of this, some guy posted that at least one ATM in the UK was down, which suggests that a lot more followed suit, the DMV, the IRS, etc, etc. Yes, the people responsible for this virus are to blame, and yes, the people that left their boxes exposed and flapping in the breeze are to blame, but the Windows culture also has a big part to play in it. Need a computer? Toss up a windows box, and you're all set.
I think a big part of it is just that people expect Unix administration ot be tough, and hire someone competent, whereas the Windows boxes get Joe MSCE.
I think a good faith effort should involve a little more than lame pattern matching.
Lame pattern matching would be something like pac.*man.*. This is more like "yep, it hac 'P', 'A', 'C', 'M', 'A', and 'N' somewhere in the title, must be ours!" The only way they could get worse would be to look for filenames containing letters.
Uh, what if the recipient wants to disseminate the information?
IANAL, and I Am Not A Postmaster General, but from my understanding, when something is mailed to you, you can do whatever you want with it. Copyright law still applies, but since this is a legal notice, I don't think it can be coyrighted. Distribute as you like.
They don't have any legal claim for licensing revenues now. As has been repeatedly pointed out, a customer is not liable. If the NY Times prints a chapter from Harry Potter and gets sued for doing so, the people who have subscriptions to the NYT can't also be sued and forced to pay for the book. It doesn't work that way.
So if Joe Blow posts Windows Server 2000 (or whatever) on Kazaa, and I download it, am I free to use it in a production environment?
Either way, this book should contain nothing but the words "Back the hell away from the machine, and call your sys admin."
Buy stock in them, since if the government isn't allowed to collect and analyze the data, they will simply outsource the analysis to the private companies who aren't subject to the new law.
That's just depressing. Dammit.
This is a good start. Now, what can we do about all of the non-government entites that are doing the same thing?
Well, this isn't one of my areas of study, but considering how we can now ship power about a quarter of the way across the United States, I wuld guess that, no, there aren't any places, or at least not very many, that could not use solar, hydroelectric, wind, or geothermal power. 25% of a continent is a lot of space to cover without finding sun, wind, water, or vents, especially if there are people there,
;-)
Places like Antarctica and Siberia would probably pose the biggest problems, but there's nothing but penguins there, anyway.
We don't really need lines carrying solar power from sunny areas to the rest of the world. There are plenty of environment-friendly ways to generate power; solar in the sunny areas, hydro-electric in areas with lots of waterfalls, etc, windmills in the plains...
Availability of methods isn't slowing down alternative fule sources; people just see no reason to invest the necessary capital to change over, when burning dead dinosaurs is working quite happily.
Well, at least we have a reason to say that something has been "Lone Gunmened" again.
It is good to see, that people are realizing that this is mostly smoke and bluster. In the end, however, it doesn't matter. What matters, the only thing that will really matter, is when the US government either says "You're right, here's your blank check" or "You're wrong, now shut the hell up." And compensation for all the trouble they've caused would be nice, too.
It amazes me that a company can do as much dammage as SCO, even if it is at the time being only damage to a reputation, without having to offer some sort of proof. The government is supposed to hold people blameless until they can prove otherwise, but corporations can throw accusations around all they please. We can learn a lot from Germany and australia in this regard.
A la Oswald Cobblepot: "All it takes is a little bit of tape, and a whole lot of patience."
Christopher Walken (Max Schreck, IIRC), was right; when you're done shredding the eviden... er, papers, burn them.
IANAL, but:
In every court except tax court (gee, shocking), the burden of proof is on the accusing party. The level of evidence, though, is much higher in criminal court than in civil court; one must be shown guilty "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal court, while a mere "perponderance of the evidence" is sufficient in civil court.
Therefore, there are many cases, where there is not enough evidence for a criminal conviction, but is enough for a civil judgment.
Reading this kind of story (and others like it) causes me to wonder why it is that Republicans continue to push (with much success, btw) the lie that their party represents freedom from government intrusion. How much more intrusive can you get? Punishment without a trial. Big Brother would be proud of Sen. Hatch. Where is the outcry from all the conservatives and fellow Republicans about this suggestion?
I'm a conservative Christian, registered Republican, and I just sent off my letter of protest. We're not all evil. Well, ok, we probably are, but not on this issue.
I was under the impression that the bad one went this way:
_
|_|_
_| |
And the good one went this way:
_
_|_|
| |_
"Good and bad" aren't really the right words; "positive and negative," "light and dark," "male and female," etc are closer to the original meaning.
These things are hindu or budhhist symboly, roughtly equivilent to the yin/yang you used to see all over the place. The swastica corresponds to the dark half, which is what caught Hitler's attention. In it's original context, it was just one half of the balancing forces in nature.
And a third is documentation, at least on the personal edition.
For years, we complained about Microsoft because of their stability, ease-of-use, etc. Now, security is still a problem, but with XP, they have, by and large, fixed the stability issues with Windows. I've had boxes up for weeks without rebooting, and when I brought them down, it was usually because I didn't want my PowerSuck 2000 running up my electric bill while I slept. I don't have any experience running XP as a server, but from what I hear, it it a fairly solid OS, if you keep it patched.
Microsoft, though, seems determined to win the "Most Evil Computer Company" award for the billionth consecutive year. If technological problems won't do it for them, they'll start dropping in draconian EULAs.
That's why I finally made the switch to Red Hat. I can do pretty much everything I was already doing on XP, I have the development environment I am accustomed to from work, and I don't have to worry about which part of my soul is on lease to a large corporation.
Being on the lower tier of hackers, I'm not really into kernel hacking; out of curiosity, if XP's EULA was more agreeable, but still not OS/FS-compliant, would any of you consider using it?
Remarkable. Most companies would have gone after SuSe to build precident, Red Hat to gain momentum, and then worked out some sort of deal with IBM. That, sadly, is the American way. These guys, though, just walked right up to the 800lb gorilla, punched it in the mouth, and tried to take its bananna.
This should be amusing.
it violates the emotional contract of marriage
This is incredibly rude. How *dare* you? Who the fuck are you to decide the parameters of this "contract"? Your "emotional contract of marriage" is whatever the two people involved decide it is. Where is the moral imperative? You're the type of biggot that would object to my brothers wedding to another man.
I'm simply giving my oppinion. I honestly don't see how a healthy marriage can include recieving sexual gratification from outside sources. Marriage has, for hundreds of years, been a commitment between a husband and wife. I believe it is dangerous to alter that. I've given reasons why. What are your reasons for holding the opposite view?
My moral imperative, such as it is, comes from the fact that I think I know the truth, and that this is a discussion board. It comes from talking with people who have been abused, raped, and had marriages dammaged by unfaithfulness, even unfaithfulness of the eyes.
Boot Knoppix or something seems pretty easy. Use a java based browser. If you are right about it sending automatic email just kill your SMTP service (for example deliberately mess up your outgoing mail password). Use an anomizer with an unsupported browser so that everything is just one long shttp session. I can think 100 things that don't require much knowledge.
(And before anyone comments, yes I agree Joe average user isn't going to think any of those on the spot in a moment of temptation).
The programs I have heard about work on the socket level, so they would know what IPs you were hitting no matter what browser you used. The program then contact the main server, does a reverse-dns lookup, and emails the report to your accountability partner; you don't need an SMTP server on your machine. These things are designed for Windows, folks.
As far as I can tell, there are only three ways around this:
1. Boot to another OS, a la knoppix
2. Replace the hacked socket library with your own, or
3. Use some sort of a proxy that can hide the requests you are making from your own machine's socket layer.
All of these are fairly easy to do, if you know how, but the fact is, this is all above the heads of the vast majority of users.
Actually, I think you will find a number of church officials requiering that those in their employ install such software.
You see that's where this goes from being a voluntery self help thing to being an attack on freedom. Employment is trading labor for money, oppression is trading freedom for welfare maintance. I hope the employees feel quite right in subverting this.
Hardly. One of the qualifications for being a religious leader is a set of morals. Given the state of the varius churches today, I would suggest that a little accountability is in order...
Maybe if your priests jacked off to porn more often they wouldn't feel the need to rape little boys.
Or perhaps if they got married, the way God intended...
Who needs grace when you have legalism -- especially automated-legalism.
Grace is not a substitute for morality. The bible quite clearly tells the believers to hold themselves accountable to one another, to confess their sins to one another, to judge one another and help each other grow. Iron sharpens iron, and all that.
My church isn't the type to requier you to do anything, but they would encourage this type of software. If you don't want their help or input, they tend not to give it. I don't know if I'd stay at a church that behaved otherwise.
Actually, I think you will find a number of church officials requiering that those in their employ install such software
One word: Knoppix [knopper.net].
Hmm... my list of pastors that know what linux is, much less a bootable floppy or live file system, is rather short. Yours?