Well, I guess my problem is why that could ever be a violation to begin with. You see, if it's coming over the air, I don't think it should be a "violation" no matter what. I could *barely* see it if it were Pay-Per View or something, but for freely accessible things, I don't think it should be *possible* to violate copyright law merely by tuning in. And I really don't give a damn if someone manages to make a buck or two off of that by providing folks with a nice, big TV to watch it on. It's the TV they're paying for, after all, NOT the TV show.
Just more expectation setting, I guess. They won't rake us over the coals, just one coal, and it will only be red hot, not white hot. As if that's some kind of consolation, when they shouldn't be raking people over the coal(s) at all...
IANAL, but this came up last year, too. They have a law written to forbid this, as stupid as it might be. If I could direct your attention to USC 17 110 (5) (B) (i) (II) or however you cite something buried that deeply in copyright law:
(II) if the performance or display is by audiovisual means, any visual portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a total of not more than 4 audiovisual devices, of which not more than 1 audiovisual device is located in any 1 room, and no such audiovisual device has a diagonal screen size greater than 55 inches, and any audio portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a total of not more than 6 loudspeakers, of which not more than 4 loudspeakers are located in any 1 room or adjoining outdoor space;
(emphasis added)
They're correctly reading the law, as sad as it might be. Now, the law here is ridiculous, there's NO question in my mind about that. There are plenty of other ridiculous provisions in there just like this one. Alas, we have the best laws money can buy:-(
I see myself voting for Obama because I *like* him over any other likely candidate. I can only see myself voting for the 'lesser of two evils' with anyone else getting the nomination. Maybe it's a very-outdated 'R' on my voter registration card talking, but it'll be hard to see her as the lesser evil, even with some of the prospective matches out there. Possible, perhaps, but hard.
I feel like Obama understands (or tries to understand) the issues. Like you, I feel like Hillary just wants to win at any cost, all other considerations be damned. I mean look at Michigan, which she "won", probably because she thought that it would give "momentum" and get people to report her as the victor of a one-woman race which everyone with more principle dropped out of. Then Nevada where you have the rules set months in advance, but the second it looks like she'll be at any kind of disadvantage, up pops an "unaffiliated" group with a lawsuit.
The sad thing is that I fear she might win thanks to those things, but it's too close to call. I feel like this will only lead to the kind of 'us vs. them' nonsense we had after Bush got elected that keeps us from moving forward on anything important because people are too busy fighting. I know that Hillary is good at fighting. But that's why I don't think I can vote for her. Heck, I may just put him in as a write-in even if he doesn't win the nomination. There's no one else out there that I can muster any enthusiasm for, not even a little. And that includes Ron Paul, where I love half of his positions and hate the other half.
Because TFA mentions an update that disables the 'multimedia time warping' bit:
Last, and perhaps most troubling for Dish, the company faces the very real possibility that it will be barred from selling DVRs and forced to disable the functionality on devices already in customers' homes.
Beware of that. They have a special way of spotting their own spoofs that we know about thanks to the Media Defender leaks. Specifically, Media-Defender spoofs had hashes that were divisible by 137, while MediaSentry had file sizes that were divisible by some large prime (for multi-file archives, though, only the last file was made divisible). I'm sure that they've changed some parts of their scheme after the leak (it's been very well known for a long time now and I've seen all this info brought up before), but I don't doubt that they still have sneaky tricks they use to identify their own fakes.
Still, you have a point that they haven't tested the files very well. Especially because of the way MediaSentry/SafeNet modified only the LAST file of multiple file sets, well, who knows? But they probably do have a database with all the hashes of all the spoofs they ever made. What would be more fun, though, would be to ask them how they know they're not someone *else's* spoofs. After all, that same archive I linked to mentions that SafeNet & MediaDefender had trouble interfering with each other at times...
Maybe I'm mistaking you with Wraith as to having a blog, but I'm quite sure that I've seen more than a few comments critical of ODF and supporting OOXML over on Rob Weir's blog and I'm pretty sure I've read your comments.
They DO take a while to get through moderation, though. I've never seen him reject one of my comments, not even the one where I asked about why raspberries weren't technically "berries" (they're "aggregates" apparently).
The OOXML extensions for SharePoint aren't in the OOXML standard submitted to the ISO per my understanding, so it feels like we're at "extend" now and "extinguish" comes later.
Maybe, but I didn't make it. They exclude the (10%?) most and least active folks from moderation, not to mention anyone who has too high a UID (lowest 60%? 80%? I don't recall, but I read about it in the FAQs somewhere).
I didn't get a single mod point for years, even when my UID became "low" compared to the new ones. But then I stopped logging in so much, posting and submitting stories anonymously from work, only logging in once in a while to check on things. After a while, I started getting mod points all the time. This was before tags, so I think I've almost always been able to add and edit tags. I actually find them useful even if you find them annoying. They summarize the comments for me nicely, even if I disagree with them.
As for the new discussion system, yeah, it's pretty badly broken. I like the old one much better, although collapsing entire worthless threads can be nice. Then again, the old one helped you find the interesting tidbits in those worthless threads. At least you can still turn it off, though. Especially if you spend enough time logged in.
My advice? Don't log in so much. It's way more satisfying to see your comment go up to +5 when you're a lowly AC:] Oh, and read the FAQs sometime. You've had 10 years. Oh well, at least you didn't submit your question as an "Ask Slashdot"...:]
It's interesting to see an OOXML proponent (I've seen your blog & you sure get around to everywhere people are talking about OOXML) admitting that OOXML has the "same" software patent problems. But I'm afraid that all software has this problem thanks to the ridiculousness of software patents.
Anyhow, IANAL, but I think there's one thing you're neglecting: Sun is a participant. Take a look at the FTC's recent slapdown of that patent troll who bought patents relating to the Ethernet specification. Basically, at least in the US (the only country that _has_ software patents for the time being), it just got harder to troll patents against a standardized process. Groklaw put up a good legal analysis a while ago of how that precedent changes things, too.
In other words, yeah, I agree with you that Microsoft could create a SCO 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I don't think it would actually accomplish anything except to get them in even more anti-trust trouble.
It's probably because you're in the "too active" segment of the Slashdot population. Do most of your browsing while logged out and let many of your comments stay anon and after a long enough "retirement" you'll probably slip into the mod pool like I eventually did.
Of course, being as active as you are, I don't know how long that'll take...
Haven't they "leaked" that the next version will be out early for... ummm... every version, or close to that? And don't they usually take a few extra years of "it'll be done _real_ soon now" before they actually release anything?
I guess I should take that as meaning that they're up to the same old tricks, so they'll probably be fine. Still, I do think their business will wane a little, mostly due to EU and standardization pressures, but I'm sure they'll fight tooth and nail to keep their lock-ins. Then again, without Bill who disparages "finite greed" (presumably in favor of the infinite sort), I'm guessing that not having Bill come up with ways to force the market to bend for them will catch up to Microsoft over time.
> Your security ends up unaffected, but only as a result of a transfer of the damage to time and money.
But then SOMEBODY ends up affected. There's no "board" here to transfer all the losses to, so somebody has to bear them. If anything, you point out how the costs are borne by society as a whole.
That there's no correlation is just not true at all. There are plenty of things people can do with enough information about you, including but not limited to scams, manipulation, and impersonation. I hope it's obvious to you that each of those causes you to lose security, and that every individual's loss of security is, in general, a loss of security for society as a whole. All individuals, obviously, cannot be disconnected from society or there would be no society to speak of. The gains may not be as connected, but it's not too hard to find a correlation between the two.
Now, that they don't equal some fixed sum is probably correct. I'm not really convinced that we could even assign meaningful numbers to such things at all.
> Classic example of a question that can't be properly answered by a yes or no: "Do you still beat your wife?" Intelligence goes beyond simple logic.
Why not go for the direct Godel question? "Is "no" the answer to this question?"
In the mean time, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the one mentioned in the article as being on that forum taunting him as he committed suicide, whether he was a kook or not. I wonder if that will make any impression upon them? Doubtful. Deaths that aren't close to you seem to get processed as if they're not actually real. So the death of a friend is more significant than the deaths of thousands in some far away country on the news.
Well, they have a huge spy network paid for by Uncle Sam and meant to wiretap everybody all the time. I doubt they can store it, so it probably just filters out whatever they're interested in today, but still.
My guess is that they thought "we have this huge spy infrastructure and everyone knows about it now, why don't we monetize it?"
No, I'm not kidding. What I'd do is post a comment to the torrent with that software saying that if people liked it, they can support you at http://www.caravelgames.com/ You might be surprised, I imagine some people would support you as a result. Those who won't wouldn't anyhow.
So, you're blaming Ars and Slashdot for not being able to read and argue with the story, rather than the analyst group who put up that registration bit? Besides, Ars isn't the only source reporting that the study touted OOXML over ODF. There aren't really any good arguments that'll do that, so why should it be so hard to believe that they used bad ones? Weren't we warned earlier with that ODF roadmap that Microsoft was preparing a pro-OOXML media campaign?
Finally, if their arguments are so great, you'd think that they wouldn't be hiding them behind some wacky registration link, wouldn't you?
If you read more about the GPL, you'll find that RMS accounted for the possibility of copyright being reformed or removed and thinks that it is a virtue of the GPL that as copyright gets weaker, so does the GPL, because the GPL becomes less necessary the weaker copyright is.
Granted, not everyone shares that view, but it's not some new argument considering that it was among the things that went into consideration in how the GPL was drafted, long before any sort of meaningful copyright reform was even on the map.
Ironically, perhaps, the GPL exists to recreate the environment of respectful sharing that RMS once found at MIT, before everyone went copyright-crazy.
> Seriously though, WTF? That's a rootkit technique.
Rootkits use a lot of techniques that are also used by legitimate software. Yes, that patcher (and its patch) does get detected by a few anti-virus programs because worms, like torrents, benefit from being able to connect to more peers. It's not a virus in or of itself, though, plenty of people have checked it out.
> Changes of this nature should be made to source code, not binaries. It's way more maintainable and sustainable that way.
I fully agree, but it's kinda hard to get the source for Microsoft programs. Last I heard, you had to be a big university, pay tons of money, sign NDAs, etc. Besides, this limitation wasn't an accident. It was a deliberate "feature" they put in because they thought it would slow down worms. They're not going to fix it just because people ask.
Actually, there's one more comparison they've screwed up. Anyone who has installed the Event ID 4226 patch to increase the allowed number of half-open connections so their BitTorrent speeds don't suck ass just had that patch undone by this new version of TCPIP.SYS.
The only good thing is that, while the page hasn't been updated since 2006, the patch seems to work on the new TCPIP.SYS (I just tested it on my own machine).
I realize I'm sort of hijacking the first post, but given how many of us are probably downloading Linux ISOs right now, I figured it's important enough that people wouldn't mind a reminder...:-] Oh, and I'll add one more detail not mentioned here. According to F-Secure, there haven't been any exploits for this found in the wild--yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I guess my problem is why that could ever be a violation to begin with. You see, if it's coming over the air, I don't think it should be a "violation" no matter what. I could *barely* see it if it were Pay-Per View or something, but for freely accessible things, I don't think it should be *possible* to violate copyright law merely by tuning in. And I really don't give a damn if someone manages to make a buck or two off of that by providing folks with a nice, big TV to watch it on. It's the TV they're paying for, after all, NOT the TV show.
Just more expectation setting, I guess. They won't rake us over the coals, just one coal, and it will only be red hot, not white hot. As if that's some kind of consolation, when they shouldn't be raking people over the coal(s) at all...
(emphasis added)
They're correctly reading the law, as sad as it might be. Now, the law here is ridiculous, there's NO question in my mind about that. There are plenty of other ridiculous provisions in there just like this one. Alas, we have the best laws money can buy
I see myself voting for Obama because I *like* him over any other likely candidate. I can only see myself voting for the 'lesser of two evils' with anyone else getting the nomination. Maybe it's a very-outdated 'R' on my voter registration card talking, but it'll be hard to see her as the lesser evil, even with some of the prospective matches out there. Possible, perhaps, but hard.
I feel like Obama understands (or tries to understand) the issues. Like you, I feel like Hillary just wants to win at any cost, all other considerations be damned. I mean look at Michigan, which she "won", probably because she thought that it would give "momentum" and get people to report her as the victor of a one-woman race which everyone with more principle dropped out of. Then Nevada where you have the rules set months in advance, but the second it looks like she'll be at any kind of disadvantage, up pops an "unaffiliated" group with a lawsuit.
The sad thing is that I fear she might win thanks to those things, but it's too close to call. I feel like this will only lead to the kind of 'us vs. them' nonsense we had after Bush got elected that keeps us from moving forward on anything important because people are too busy fighting. I know that Hillary is good at fighting. But that's why I don't think I can vote for her. Heck, I may just put him in as a write-in even if he doesn't win the nomination. There's no one else out there that I can muster any enthusiasm for, not even a little. And that includes Ron Paul, where I love half of his positions and hate the other half.
(emphasis added)
Beware of that. They have a special way of spotting their own spoofs that we know about thanks to the Media Defender leaks. Specifically, Media-Defender spoofs had hashes that were divisible by 137, while MediaSentry had file sizes that were divisible by some large prime (for multi-file archives, though, only the last file was made divisible). I'm sure that they've changed some parts of their scheme after the leak (it's been very well known for a long time now and I've seen all this info brought up before), but I don't doubt that they still have sneaky tricks they use to identify their own fakes.
Still, you have a point that they haven't tested the files very well. Especially because of the way MediaSentry/SafeNet modified only the LAST file of multiple file sets, well, who knows? But they probably do have a database with all the hashes of all the spoofs they ever made. What would be more fun, though, would be to ask them how they know they're not someone *else's* spoofs. After all, that same archive I linked to mentions that SafeNet & MediaDefender had trouble interfering with each other at times...
Maybe I'm mistaking you with Wraith as to having a blog, but I'm quite sure that I've seen more than a few comments critical of ODF and supporting OOXML over on Rob Weir's blog and I'm pretty sure I've read your comments.
They DO take a while to get through moderation, though. I've never seen him reject one of my comments, not even the one where I asked about why raspberries weren't technically "berries" (they're "aggregates" apparently).
The OOXML extensions for SharePoint aren't in the OOXML standard submitted to the ISO per my understanding, so it feels like we're at "extend" now and "extinguish" comes later.
At least, that's my take on it.
You should publish that data somewhere. It would be interesting to see who owns whom in congress...
Maybe, but I didn't make it. They exclude the (10%?) most and least active folks from moderation, not to mention anyone who has too high a UID (lowest 60%? 80%? I don't recall, but I read about it in the FAQs somewhere).
:] Oh, and read the FAQs sometime. You've had 10 years. Oh well, at least you didn't submit your question as an "Ask Slashdot" ... :]
I didn't get a single mod point for years, even when my UID became "low" compared to the new ones. But then I stopped logging in so much, posting and submitting stories anonymously from work, only logging in once in a while to check on things. After a while, I started getting mod points all the time. This was before tags, so I think I've almost always been able to add and edit tags. I actually find them useful even if you find them annoying. They summarize the comments for me nicely, even if I disagree with them.
As for the new discussion system, yeah, it's pretty badly broken. I like the old one much better, although collapsing entire worthless threads can be nice. Then again, the old one helped you find the interesting tidbits in those worthless threads. At least you can still turn it off, though. Especially if you spend enough time logged in.
My advice? Don't log in so much. It's way more satisfying to see your comment go up to +5 when you're a lowly AC
It's interesting to see an OOXML proponent (I've seen your blog & you sure get around to everywhere people are talking about OOXML) admitting that OOXML has the "same" software patent problems. But I'm afraid that all software has this problem thanks to the ridiculousness of software patents.
Anyhow, IANAL, but I think there's one thing you're neglecting: Sun is a participant. Take a look at the FTC's recent slapdown of that patent troll who bought patents relating to the Ethernet specification. Basically, at least in the US (the only country that _has_ software patents for the time being), it just got harder to troll patents against a standardized process. Groklaw put up a good legal analysis a while ago of how that precedent changes things, too.
In other words, yeah, I agree with you that Microsoft could create a SCO 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I don't think it would actually accomplish anything except to get them in even more anti-trust trouble.
It's probably because you're in the "too active" segment of the Slashdot population. Do most of your browsing while logged out and let many of your comments stay anon and after a long enough "retirement" you'll probably slip into the mod pool like I eventually did.
Of course, being as active as you are, I don't know how long that'll take...
Haven't they "leaked" that the next version will be out early for... ummm... every version, or close to that? And don't they usually take a few extra years of "it'll be done _real_ soon now" before they actually release anything?
I guess I should take that as meaning that they're up to the same old tricks, so they'll probably be fine. Still, I do think their business will wane a little, mostly due to EU and standardization pressures, but I'm sure they'll fight tooth and nail to keep their lock-ins. Then again, without Bill who disparages "finite greed" (presumably in favor of the infinite sort), I'm guessing that not having Bill come up with ways to force the market to bend for them will catch up to Microsoft over time.
Why don't they use SM, given that it's a servicemark, not a trademark?
I'd think that "cyber" lawyers ought to know the difference... right?
> Your security ends up unaffected, but only as a result of a transfer of the damage to time and money.
But then SOMEBODY ends up affected. There's no "board" here to transfer all the losses to, so somebody has to bear them. If anything, you point out how the costs are borne by society as a whole.
That there's no correlation is just not true at all. There are plenty of things people can do with enough information about you, including but not limited to scams, manipulation, and impersonation. I hope it's obvious to you that each of those causes you to lose security, and that every individual's loss of security is, in general, a loss of security for society as a whole. All individuals, obviously, cannot be disconnected from society or there would be no society to speak of. The gains may not be as connected, but it's not too hard to find a correlation between the two.
Now, that they don't equal some fixed sum is probably correct. I'm not really convinced that we could even assign meaningful numbers to such things at all.
No, the OP should NOT have posted a link to RIAA.org, that could cause it to be Slashdotted. :]
> Classic example of a question that can't be properly answered by a yes or no: "Do you still beat your wife?" Intelligence goes beyond simple logic.
Why not go for the direct Godel question?
"Is "no" the answer to this question?"
In the mean time, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the one mentioned in the article as being on that forum taunting him as he committed suicide, whether he was a kook or not. I wonder if that will make any impression upon them? Doubtful. Deaths that aren't close to you seem to get processed as if they're not actually real. So the death of a friend is more significant than the deaths of thousands in some far away country on the news.
Well, they have a huge spy network paid for by Uncle Sam and meant to wiretap everybody all the time. I doubt they can store it, so it probably just filters out whatever they're interested in today, but still.
My guess is that they thought "we have this huge spy infrastructure and everyone knows about it now, why don't we monetize it?"
It's just about what I'd expect from them.
Have you tried asking nicely?
No, I'm not kidding. What I'd do is post a comment to the torrent with that software saying that if people liked it, they can support you at http://www.caravelgames.com/ You might be surprised, I imagine some people would support you as a result. Those who won't wouldn't anyhow.
So, you're blaming Ars and Slashdot for not being able to read and argue with the story, rather than the analyst group who put up that registration bit? Besides, Ars isn't the only source reporting that the study touted OOXML over ODF. There aren't really any good arguments that'll do that, so why should it be so hard to believe that they used bad ones? Weren't we warned earlier with that ODF roadmap that Microsoft was preparing a pro-OOXML media campaign?
Finally, if their arguments are so great, you'd think that they wouldn't be hiding them behind some wacky registration link, wouldn't you?
If you read more about the GPL, you'll find that RMS accounted for the possibility of copyright being reformed or removed and thinks that it is a virtue of the GPL that as copyright gets weaker, so does the GPL, because the GPL becomes less necessary the weaker copyright is.
Granted, not everyone shares that view, but it's not some new argument considering that it was among the things that went into consideration in how the GPL was drafted, long before any sort of meaningful copyright reform was even on the map.
Ironically, perhaps, the GPL exists to recreate the environment of respectful sharing that RMS once found at MIT, before everyone went copyright-crazy.
> Seriously though, WTF? That's a rootkit technique.
Rootkits use a lot of techniques that are also used by legitimate software. Yes, that patcher (and its patch) does get detected by a few anti-virus programs because worms, like torrents, benefit from being able to connect to more peers. It's not a virus in or of itself, though, plenty of people have checked it out.
> Changes of this nature should be made to source code, not binaries. It's way more maintainable and sustainable that way.
I fully agree, but it's kinda hard to get the source for Microsoft programs. Last I heard, you had to be a big university, pay tons of money, sign NDAs, etc. Besides, this limitation wasn't an accident. It was a deliberate "feature" they put in because they thought it would slow down worms. They're not going to fix it just because people ask.
Actually, there's one more comparison they've screwed up. Anyone who has installed the Event ID 4226 patch to increase the allowed number of half-open connections so their BitTorrent speeds don't suck ass just had that patch undone by this new version of TCPIP.SYS.
:-] Oh, and I'll add one more detail not mentioned here. According to F-Secure, there haven't been any exploits for this found in the wild--yet.
The only good thing is that, while the page hasn't been updated since 2006, the patch seems to work on the new TCPIP.SYS (I just tested it on my own machine).
I realize I'm sort of hijacking the first post, but given how many of us are probably downloading Linux ISOs right now, I figured it's important enough that people wouldn't mind a reminder...
> A shame nobody bothered to inform the manufacturers and proponents of this system about this particular wisdom.
You don't get people to pay you $11 billion by telling them that your product is a waste of time and money.
That said, I'm impressed that someone in law enforcement had the guts to be honest like that on TV. I wish we had some of them.
> little more verbosituous (is there an actual term that means the same as this awkward neologism?)
:]
You might try the word "verbose"--it's a lot easier to say, too.
And I agree that someone should try it. But when I say "someone" I mean "someone else" because I'm too lazy