This thread is totally on the money on Edison. There's an ironic twist to the Edison story that bears interestingly in this discussion.
It seems that Edison owned several patents on the technology behind filmmaking, and exacted brutal licensing on virtually every aspect of the industry. The pressure was so unreasonable that the burgeoning movie industry of the early 20th century was forced out of what was then the center of filmmaking - the east coast. They needed a place to shoot their pirate criminal outlaw movies that was far away from Edison and his patent police. Also important was that they be close to the Mexican border so that they could take their copyright criminal tools out of the country should Edison's goons show up.
The result? Hollywood, CA. A litle fact I like to remember when they hurl hypocrisy about IP criminals.
How could one go about doing a batch hex search of all his... files... for a specific hex signature? I've been using hexcurses to try to find the shellcode from the exploit, but I can't look at more than one file at a time.
Alan Cox picked up an overrated mod which was clearly an emotional reaction to his contreversial post! We need these chickenshit overrated mods in the M2 queue so i can weed the bastards out.
I make a comment, modded up to 3, kicking off an on topic discussion of over 20 following posts. Well after the discussion got rolling, I pick up two overrated mods. Now, I don't really care about the Karma, but I was just wondering, from a standpoint of understanding the mind of a moderator, how the moderation of this post is anything other than "I don't agree with you." If it really was overrated, would 20 some-odd people take the time to reply?
Well, I agree that we're seeing the beginnings of the American Empire. Asymmetric threats give rise to a local police state and a foreign policy of overt gunboat diplomacy, which is analogous to the rise of the Roman Empire.
The core of the empire will be commercial, exactly like the British Empire was, but where Britain dealt in a monopoly of commodity, the American Empire will be about the monopoly of intellectual property. How far would we have to go from banning Linux due to (imagined) patent infringement to bombing other countries to enforce our patent law?
I'm afraid that history does not support your predictions about the fall of America. I say that with not the slightest pride. I honestly hope you are right. (Though I have more confidence in a resurgent Europe being the world's next major power) I'm personally not at all concerned about power and influence. I want freedom. And because the U.S. is set to create an Empire of Information, we stand to be the greatest threat to freedom the world has ever known. I cannot and will not support that Empire.
Actually, defacing a web site is nowhere near the same category of crime as breaking into a bank. If you actually disagree, I hope you don't wind up on any juries or elect any judges.
Defacing a web site is exactly analogous, in terms of malicious intent and likely age of the offender, to painting graffiti on the outside of the building. If some kid painted on the side of a Wal-Mart, which subsequently dissolved critical structural components causing the entire building to collapse, the culpability of the kid would pale in comnparison to the sheer public irresponsibility of putting up so flimsy a building. The idea of Wal-Mart going after the kid at all would send shockwaves through the community, to say nothing of putting him in prison for 10 years and banning him from the use of spray paint for the rest of his life due to popular mindless terror of building dissolving vandals.
My point is that the security being implemented by large commercial web sites is so woefully poor that it causes, in my opinion, a serious social problem. The way we are dealing with the problem right now is reactionary terror, which results in absurd prison sentences, and laws making it illegal to discuss some aspects of computer security. I just can't personally justify what happened to Mitnick and others because of the organizational intertia of the fortune 500 to put up secure web servers.
If you spraypaint the outside of wal-mart, people can still go in and shop. If you hack walmart.com and replace it with "shout outz" then wal-mart will probably lose hundreds of sales per hour to their competitors.
Ah, I get it. So, if I put a front wall on my shop that is so flimsy that graffiti brings about its collapse, I can hold the punks responsible for the poor construction.
The IBM legal team supposedly showed up with a pile of hundreds of patents that Windows infringed on, and that was the end of that.
The mechanics of American business are defined by meetings such as this. IBM is standing in the gap for the moment, but I am afraid that Linux's nebulousness will result in its being banned in the U.S., simply because no one will be around to go to the closed door meetings you describe.
We could of course, organize protests, and these might be well attended and done with heroic emphasis, but those of us who understand the very concept of electronic freedom are in a hopeless minority. Most computer users are perfectly happy with Windows, AOL, IE, etc., and are actively hostile to those sufficiently aware of the open source world to be concerned about these issues.
I have a two pronged approach to this problem. On the one hand, I am doing everything I can to evangelize for electronic freedom. If enough Americans understand the sheer tyranny megacorps exert over how we use information, we might be able to change things. I'm not optimistic, however, so plan B is finding another country to live in. I have to say that I've never imagined leaving the United States in search of freedom.
Tell me, how would you feel if you had been told you couldn't join a sporting team because you were a christian?
I can't speak to that, because I've never wanted to be part of a sports team. But, I have had the experience of persecution from the hacking/Linux/IT/Slashdot community based on my religious beliefs. Does that count?
Gnutella fits your criteria quite nicely, but due to spam and interference from the RIAA, the network transacts a hell of a lot more traffic than it has to.
Freenet is cool because it's anonymous, but it's more like an underground www than a file sharing network. You can't search for anything.
Gnunet seems to be The Way. It's anonymity, at least in theory, is better even than freenet, and it's searchable. In freenet, your only option for controlling what your node does is to turn it on or off. If you run freenet, you have to deal with the possibility that your computer could be used to store plans for the next terrorist attack, or for child pornography. With Gnunet, you have control over whether you want to donate space to the "anonymous collective".
The idea behind the anonymous collective is to provide you with deniability with regard to ownership of the data on your system should it be searched by jack-booted thugs. I fear, however, that the legal world will interpret this along the lines of a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, and therefore declare the very use of something like freenet as inherently illegal.
I think, however, that freenet will survive legal pressure longer than gnunet, because it's going to be a lot harder to shut down via ISP filtering.
Slashdot Mirror
This thread is totally on the money on Edison. There's an ironic twist to the Edison story that bears interestingly in this discussion.
It seems that Edison owned several patents on the technology behind filmmaking, and exacted brutal licensing on virtually every aspect of the industry. The pressure was so unreasonable that the burgeoning movie industry of the early 20th century was forced out of what was then the center of filmmaking - the east coast. They needed a place to shoot their pirate criminal outlaw movies that was far away from Edison and his patent police. Also important was that they be close to the Mexican border so that they could take their copyright criminal tools out of the country should Edison's goons show up.
The result? Hollywood, CA. A litle fact I like to remember when they hurl hypocrisy about IP criminals.
Of course the RIAA would deny it!
I'm off to put tinfoil hats on my mp3 collection.
Seriously, though, if I'm the RIAA, I no comment this one - just for the sheer fun of it.
Hey, look - it's the other /. ren and stimpy fan!
How could one go about doing a batch hex search of all his... files ... for a specific hex signature? I've been using hexcurses to try to find the shellcode from the exploit, but I can't look at more than one file at a time.
"The only 'intuitive interface' is the nipple. EVERYTHING else is learned."
A fact which i earnestly hope is not further expanded upon in a discussion of intuitive PDAs.
Did you learn to type to use the computer?
Supporting your point is the fact that the qwerty keyboard was deliberately designed to be hard to use.
When *consumers* have to learn a new language just to be able to use a consumer device, that's just downright brain-damaged.
Noble concept, but I kick much more ass in vi than I ever did in notepad.
Wow, your comment perfectly complemented your nick. I hope that never never happens to me.
ntill the goverment MAKES people do something about their waste - People will do nothing
And I suppose the fortunate transition from coal gas was the result of such governmental control, or because it was expensive, dirty, and dangerous?
Ah, so the familiar motion of going for the horn might produce either a burst of acceleration or a sudden stop. Is the horn on the floor?
oh. sorry. I suck.
s/\[Insert make believe deity here\]/Krom!/g
was Boise, who clobbered MS rather badly
I'm not aware of the situation you referenced. Could you provide more details?
Alan Cox picked up an overrated mod which was clearly an emotional reaction to his contreversial post! We need these chickenshit overrated mods in the M2 queue so i can weed the bastards out.
Okay, so explain something to me.
I make a comment, modded up to 3, kicking off an on topic discussion of over 20 following posts. Well after the discussion got rolling, I pick up two overrated mods. Now, I don't really care about the Karma, but I was just wondering, from a standpoint of understanding the mind of a moderator, how the moderation of this post is anything other than "I don't agree with you." If it really was overrated, would 20 some-odd people take the time to reply?
Well, I agree that we're seeing the beginnings of the American Empire. Asymmetric threats give rise to a local police state and a foreign policy of overt gunboat diplomacy, which is analogous to the rise of the Roman Empire.
The core of the empire will be commercial, exactly like the British Empire was, but where Britain dealt in a monopoly of commodity, the American Empire will be about the monopoly of intellectual property. How far would we have to go from banning Linux due to (imagined) patent infringement to bombing other countries to enforce our patent law?
I'm afraid that history does not support your predictions about the fall of America. I say that with not the slightest pride. I honestly hope you are right. (Though I have more confidence in a resurgent Europe being the world's next major power) I'm personally not at all concerned about power and influence. I want freedom. And because the U.S. is set to create an Empire of Information, we stand to be the greatest threat to freedom the world has ever known. I cannot and will not support that Empire.
Actually, defacing a web site is nowhere near the same category of crime as breaking into a bank. If you actually disagree, I hope you don't wind up on any juries or elect any judges.
Defacing a web site is exactly analogous, in terms of malicious intent and likely age of the offender, to painting graffiti on the outside of the building. If some kid painted on the side of a Wal-Mart, which subsequently dissolved critical structural components causing the entire building to collapse, the culpability of the kid would pale in comnparison to the sheer public irresponsibility of putting up so flimsy a building. The idea of Wal-Mart going after the kid at all would send shockwaves through the community, to say nothing of putting him in prison for 10 years and banning him from the use of spray paint for the rest of his life due to popular mindless terror of building dissolving vandals.
My point is that the security being implemented by large commercial web sites is so woefully poor that it causes, in my opinion, a serious social problem. The way we are dealing with the problem right now is reactionary terror, which results in absurd prison sentences, and laws making it illegal to discuss some aspects of computer security. I just can't personally justify what happened to Mitnick and others because of the organizational intertia of the fortune 500 to put up secure web servers.
If you spraypaint the outside of wal-mart, people can still go in and shop. If you hack walmart.com and replace it with "shout outz" then wal-mart will probably lose hundreds of sales per hour to their competitors.
Ah, I get it. So, if I put a front wall on my shop that is so flimsy that graffiti brings about its collapse, I can hold the punks responsible for the poor construction.
The IBM legal team supposedly showed up with a pile of hundreds of patents that Windows infringed on, and that was the end of that.
The mechanics of American business are defined by meetings such as this. IBM is standing in the gap for the moment, but I am afraid that Linux's nebulousness will result in its being banned in the U.S., simply because no one will be around to go to the closed door meetings you describe.
We could of course, organize protests, and these might be well attended and done with heroic emphasis, but those of us who understand the very concept of electronic freedom are in a hopeless minority. Most computer users are perfectly happy with Windows, AOL, IE, etc., and are actively hostile to those sufficiently aware of the open source world to be concerned about these issues.
I have a two pronged approach to this problem. On the one hand, I am doing everything I can to evangelize for electronic freedom. If enough Americans understand the sheer tyranny megacorps exert over how we use information, we might be able to change things. I'm not optimistic, however, so plan B is finding another country to live in. I have to say that I've never imagined leaving the United States in search of freedom.
Tell me, how would you feel if you had been told you couldn't join a sporting team because you were a christian?
I can't speak to that, because I've never wanted to be part of a sports team. But, I have had the experience of persecution from the hacking/Linux/IT/Slashdot community based on my religious beliefs. Does that count?
Get off the cross, someone needs the wood.
Interesting comment, considering that those putting forth affirmative action as a solution to this are on your side of the argument.
Perhaps you're letting your position on religion distort your view of this issue.
- Convert institutions of learning into institutions of conformity and political correctness.
- Socially engineer maleness as a disease, which must be punished and medicated.
- Institute affirmative action for men.
Ok, stop the machine, I want to get off.Gnutella fits your criteria quite nicely, but due to spam and interference from the RIAA, the network transacts a hell of a lot more traffic than it has to.
Freenet is cool because it's anonymous, but it's more like an underground www than a file sharing network. You can't search for anything.
Gnunet seems to be The Way. It's anonymity, at least in theory, is better even than freenet, and it's searchable. In freenet, your only option for controlling what your node does is to turn it on or off. If you run freenet, you have to deal with the possibility that your computer could be used to store plans for the next terrorist attack, or for child pornography. With Gnunet, you have control over whether you want to donate space to the "anonymous collective".
The idea behind the anonymous collective is to provide you with deniability with regard to ownership of the data on your system should it be searched by jack-booted thugs. I fear, however, that the legal world will interpret this along the lines of a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, and therefore declare the very use of something like freenet as inherently illegal.
I think, however, that freenet will survive legal pressure longer than gnunet, because it's going to be a lot harder to shut down via ISP filtering.
Now they're selling failed aeronautical projects to the public! When can I get my Lockheed F-23?
hehe. well done.