Innovation is still out there...
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Maybe the Big 5 will learn from people like Ani Difranco - new, original, heartfelt music. She has her own label, Rightease Babe and is doing quite well in both CD sales and profits.
She even does things like put *full* sample tracks on her website. *gasp*
Perhaps because putting linux on would have been putting in a competing OS. FreeDOS is certainly no competitor to Windows. Sounds to me like Dell wanted to keep the option open, but not step into the grounds of overtly opposing Microsoft. Sort of taking the middle ground.
As for the price being about the same, and only being available to corporate customers (or at least more readily available to them) it all begins to sound like Dell isn't so much offering an alternative to Microsoft as offering a way to avoid having duplicate (and useless) Microsoft software licenses lying around.
Or it drops itself in the all user's startup folder, to run silently... Then each time someone logs on it tries to copy itself out to their Domain Controller. Won't work for normal users, but next time someone with Domain Admin priveledges logs in... bam. Now they have your network.
Scripts to drop in a Domain Admin's startup folder and own a Domain are already preset in the wild. The tough part is putting them there, because you already have to own the box... using this, it's not bad.
Put those two together, along with the tunneling trick we saw in an earlier article, and suddenly you're tunneled in to a corporation's domain controller as a Domain Admin... and from there the sky is the limit.
Raritan has some nice CAT5 based KVM solutions, that work terribly well in scaling between small and large environments. However I think the price may be a bit higher then you were hoping.
To only have connectivity on actively used network drops, and keep all switches in secure closets?
To plug in an unknown machine in our office you would have to unplug a known one, and someone's gonna at least notice their computer stopped working. Wouldn't take long after that to discover the switch had taken place.
That could easily be circumvented with a machine acting like a silent proxy, but still makes it a tad more difficult.
Don't other companies practice similar procedures?
Don't know about you, but when I go on a two week vacation I take my laptop with me. A stack of 20 floppies (which fit nicely in my camera case) gives me plenty of pictures for a day, and I can just transfer them to the laptop at night.
As for the time it takes to do it, I wrote a nifty perl script that does the copying, renaming, and deleting for me. All I have to do is pop in a new disc every once in a while and it happens automagically.
If I could afford one of the cameras with the mini-cd I'd gladly go to that for the extra capacity, but for now floppies work just fine.
I use a Sony Mavica digital camera - it saves all its pictures directly to 3.5" floppy in JPEG format. Floppies are great for storing pictures, because they're so damned cheap. Sure, I can only get between 4 and 8 pictures of decent resolution (1024x768 or above). But when you can drive over to the nearest best buy and get a package of 100 floppies for $2.50 after rebate, it's worth it.
Now instead of needing a special cable (usb or otherwise), special software, special drivers, or certain proprietary operating systems, all I need to be able to view the images is a machine with a floppy drive... so my NeXT cube or my new Dell, it doesn't matter. I can still see the pictures, email them, whatever.
Wait, I thought we were mad at Microsoft for saying you can't run competing products on their OS? (ie. XDM on XP, GPL code on DRM machines)
So now we're mad at them for letting us run competing products until they can integrate something of their own then make us switch (demolish it, as you say)?
HP had a choice here - continue to let Dell offer their printers and keep getting revenue, or stop selling to Dell immediately in order to show their position on Dell offering their own printers.
Dell is offering the printers either way, HP withdrawing their line only cost them a customer. If HP were confident its printers truly were better it would not fear Dell's customers opting for a Dell printer over theirs.
What the hell is that? Anything can be broken. Sure, it might take a lot of time now - but computers in 5 years will do it in a matter of minutes, while serving web pages and mp3's in the background. Come on, nothing is forever.
Is that something from Katz, or from the book?
I'd have a hard time drawing insight from a source that must exaggerate the multi-billion dollor gaming industry by using such a childish word.
To all those questioning why use netscape instead of Mozilla... Netscape isn't targetted towards you. It's targetted towards the masses of people for whom their first online experience WAS netscape. They'll hear Netscape is back with a shiny new version, with new features, and give it a try. Or at least that's the idea.
AOL didn't buy netscape purely because Mozilla is a great product, they bought it because the Netscape name has a huge amount of recognition.
So yeah, Mozilla's better... but who's heard of it? Not joe-sheep user.
Yes, Verant Interactive made the game, Sony provided the cash. However, most of the directives that squashed the fan-stories, etc came from Sony, in an effort to keep their name from being associated with material they didn't like.
Sony didn't do so well with allowing people in Eq to be creative and unique, so if that's any guage I'm scared to see what they will turn the Sims online into.
With Eq they squashed numerous fan-story sites, as well as many, many in-game control-hungry stompings of players creativity. They turned the game from what could have been a great RPing platform into a service provided that catered to the "l33+ dewd" player, giving power to those who had the most time/money, not those who tried to be creative.
Think they'll change that much to help those of us who love to customize and be creative with the Sims? I somehow doubt it.
To stand in front of not only a customer, but your Government, and declare that your product is so dangerously flawed that it could cost lives.
If it happened in any other industry (auto, aviation, train, commerce, weaponry, etc) the Government would drop their product like a dead rat (and more probably force the manufacturer into a recall). Yet Microsoft is willing to use it as a defense?
Is that they now have the Napstar name. When you mention "MP3" or "Music Online" the majority of sheep think of Napster. So now a major corporation (one of those that oppressed Napster to the point of death) now owns that name.
Any publicity is good publicity...
And the whole lawsuit thing was a whole lot of publicity where Napster was seen as the underdog by most people. Now BMG not only owns Napster, but owns that image they helped to create.
What will they do with it? I dunno, but you can bet it will involve them trying to make a profit. Don't go lookin for freebies.
As a note, I'm typing this on IE, in windows XP. I don't think they're all evil. But I do think that making things *too* automated can lead to the sheep of the world being fleeced quite easily. With the rise of DSL, and PCs becoming as powerful as they are... people now have the power and bandwidth to do damage. And no knowledge of how to protect it.
But the duped site would not run via the activeX control. Just standard download with no digital signature needed. Sure, the process would look different, but with a decent CGI you could fool most people./shrug
Maybe I'm missing something here. But so far as I can tell, v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com is just a standard website with an activeX control. Copy the format, make a CGI that flashes a few boxes that look the same, and con the user into clicking "open"
Later you could drop the DNS hack, and they'd never know it happened.
So you're saying I click "windows update" on my start menu. It opens v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
If someone has entered a faulty DNS entry that points me to a page that looks just like the Windows Update site, and I click the "scan for updates" and it says I have one new critical update. So I click "install now"... at this point the digital signature will stop it?
No... what will happen is just like any download from any website, a question box will come up and ask me if I trust that site. That question box could be totally bogues, and read (to a casual user anyway) as if it's from Microsoft. So they click "yes" and bam, hacked.
Would it be a lot of work to do it and make it look good? Yes. But could it be done? Yes. Maybe not well enough to fool someone who knows what they're doing. But what about the other 85% of the users out there?
As for someone hacking my box via DNS entry in/etc/hosts, I use FreeBSD, and set my download sites for cvsup by which region the workstation/server in question is in. Using some common tools it's easy enough (to me) to verify the files recieved. Could someone still do it? Probably. Do I know enough to notice if they tried... you bet your ass.
Until someone hacks yours (or your ISPs) DNS server, and adds a line to the hosts file that points windows update to their box. Then you're running their code with full trust... automatically.
While you're at it, I'm offering a service where I'll monitor your checking account and pay your bills automatically each month for you. Please forward me your Credit card number and a copy of your drivers license and social security card at your convenience.
To try college. For two years as a CS major. It didn't work for me (at the time) so I dropped out. Now I'm a junior admin in a company where I have the potential to move up in time.
Here's my take on it...
The two years I spent in college taught me more then programming, they taught me how to "think". Not the everyday thought, but in depth problem solving I couldn't have learned on my own. I was also exposed to a huge variety of Computing environments which I would never have encountered otherwise. That exposure has been invaluable.
As for my choice to drop out... I shouldn't have. But I approached college in the wrong way. I majored in CS, minored in Medieval Studies. I should have switched that. I enjoyed medieval studies, but CS bored me (I did not want to be a programmer either, I wanted to be a sysadmin). I worked for the Physics computer network while I was a student. That was the best choice.
Had I taken a major I enjoyed, a minor of CS to get some exposure, and worked in the PCN to get experience I would have walked out with all the knowledge I needed, and a piece of paper. Without that piece of paper I can never move into a management position. My salary cap is already set. So go, get a degree in something you're interested in (you do have other interests, don't you?) Minor in CS, it's good for you. Work for the IS staff at the university.
In the end, it will be the best way to use your time and youth.
I'm not big on law info, so I must raise the following question...
Tom wrote "embed" in 1997, as stated in his emails. DMCA went into the books in 1998. So he wrote the program before the law even existed... How can you break a law before it's a law?
This guy has some really good points, this just appears to be another case of a corporation using the vaguely worded DMCA to try and push someone around. How's that saying go? "If you can't make a good product, sue someone that has"?
Slashdot Mirror
She even does things like put *full* sample tracks on her website. *gasp*
And her sales and profits climb...
And her music continues to be her own...
And her music continues to kick ass.
Are you reading, RIAA?
As for the price being about the same, and only being available to corporate customers (or at least more readily available to them) it all begins to sound like Dell isn't so much offering an alternative to Microsoft as offering a way to avoid having duplicate (and useless) Microsoft software licenses lying around.
Scripts to drop in a Domain Admin's startup folder and own a Domain are already preset in the wild. The tough part is putting them there, because you already have to own the box... using this, it's not bad.
Put those two together, along with the tunneling trick we saw in an earlier article, and suddenly you're tunneled in to a corporation's domain controller as a Domain Admin... and from there the sky is the limit.
Raritan has some nice CAT5 based KVM solutions, that work terribly well in scaling between small and large environments. However I think the price may be a bit higher then you were hoping.
To only have connectivity on actively used network drops, and keep all switches in secure closets? To plug in an unknown machine in our office you would have to unplug a known one, and someone's gonna at least notice their computer stopped working. Wouldn't take long after that to discover the switch had taken place. That could easily be circumvented with a machine acting like a silent proxy, but still makes it a tad more difficult. Don't other companies practice similar procedures?
As for the time it takes to do it, I wrote a nifty perl script that does the copying, renaming, and deleting for me. All I have to do is pop in a new disc every once in a while and it happens automagically.
If I could afford one of the cameras with the mini-cd I'd gladly go to that for the extra capacity, but for now floppies work just fine.
If they're planning on fencing a stolen phone anyway, will one more law stop them? They've already broken one law by stealing the phone.
Now instead of needing a special cable (usb or otherwise), special software, special drivers, or certain proprietary operating systems, all I need to be able to view the images is a machine with a floppy drive... so my NeXT cube or my new Dell, it doesn't matter. I can still see the pictures, email them, whatever.
So now we're mad at them for letting us run competing products until they can integrate something of their own then make us switch (demolish it, as you say)?
HP had a choice here - continue to let Dell offer their printers and keep getting revenue, or stop selling to Dell immediately in order to show their position on Dell offering their own printers.
Dell is offering the printers either way, HP withdrawing their line only cost them a customer. If HP were confident its printers truly were better it would not fear Dell's customers opting for a Dell printer over theirs.
What the hell is that? Anything can be broken. Sure, it might take a lot of time now - but computers in 5 years will do it in a matter of minutes, while serving web pages and mp3's in the background. Come on, nothing is forever.
Is that something from Katz, or from the book? I'd have a hard time drawing insight from a source that must exaggerate the multi-billion dollor gaming industry by using such a childish word.
Are you sure you're talking about perl and not M$ Word?
AOL didn't buy netscape purely because Mozilla is a great product, they bought it because the Netscape name has a huge amount of recognition.
So yeah, Mozilla's better... but who's heard of it? Not joe-sheep user.
Yes, Verant Interactive made the game, Sony provided the cash. However, most of the directives that squashed the fan-stories, etc came from Sony, in an effort to keep their name from being associated with material they didn't like.
With Eq they squashed numerous fan-story sites, as well as many, many in-game control-hungry stompings of players creativity. They turned the game from what could have been a great RPing platform into a service provided that catered to the "l33+ dewd" player, giving power to those who had the most time/money, not those who tried to be creative.
Think they'll change that much to help those of us who love to customize and be creative with the Sims? I somehow doubt it.
If it happened in any other industry (auto, aviation, train, commerce, weaponry, etc) the Government would drop their product like a dead rat (and more probably force the manufacturer into a recall). Yet Microsoft is willing to use it as a defense?
Any publicity is good publicity...
And the whole lawsuit thing was a whole lot of publicity where Napster was seen as the underdog by most people. Now BMG not only owns Napster, but owns that image they helped to create.
What will they do with it? I dunno, but you can bet it will involve them trying to make a profit. Don't go lookin for freebies.
As a note, I'm typing this on IE, in windows XP. I don't think they're all evil. But I do think that making things *too* automated can lead to the sheep of the world being fleeced quite easily. With the rise of DSL, and PCs becoming as powerful as they are... people now have the power and bandwidth to do damage. And no knowledge of how to protect it.
But the duped site would not run via the activeX control. Just standard download with no digital signature needed. Sure, the process would look different, but with a decent CGI you could fool most people. /shrug
Maybe I'm missing something here. But so far as I can tell, v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com is just a standard website with an activeX control. Copy the format, make a CGI that flashes a few boxes that look the same, and con the user into clicking "open"
Later you could drop the DNS hack, and they'd never know it happened.
If someone has entered a faulty DNS entry that points me to a page that looks just like the Windows Update site, and I click the "scan for updates" and it says I have one new critical update. So I click "install now"... at this point the digital signature will stop it?
No... what will happen is just like any download from any website, a question box will come up and ask me if I trust that site. That question box could be totally bogues, and read (to a casual user anyway) as if it's from Microsoft. So they click "yes" and bam, hacked.
Would it be a lot of work to do it and make it look good? Yes. But could it be done? Yes. Maybe not well enough to fool someone who knows what they're doing. But what about the other 85% of the users out there?
As for someone hacking my box via DNS entry in /etc/hosts, I use FreeBSD, and set my download sites for cvsup by which region the workstation/server in question is in. Using some common tools it's easy enough (to me) to verify the files recieved. Could someone still do it? Probably. Do I know enough to notice if they tried... you bet your ass.
While you're at it, I'm offering a service where I'll monitor your checking account and pay your bills automatically each month for you. Please forward me your Credit card number and a copy of your drivers license and social security card at your convenience.
Here's my take on it...
The two years I spent in college taught me more then programming, they taught me how to "think". Not the everyday thought, but in depth problem solving I couldn't have learned on my own. I was also exposed to a huge variety of Computing environments which I would never have encountered otherwise. That exposure has been invaluable.
As for my choice to drop out... I shouldn't have. But I approached college in the wrong way. I majored in CS, minored in Medieval Studies. I should have switched that. I enjoyed medieval studies, but CS bored me (I did not want to be a programmer either, I wanted to be a sysadmin). I worked for the Physics computer network while I was a student. That was the best choice.
Had I taken a major I enjoyed, a minor of CS to get some exposure, and worked in the PCN to get experience I would have walked out with all the knowledge I needed, and a piece of paper. Without that piece of paper I can never move into a management position. My salary cap is already set. So go, get a degree in something you're interested in (you do have other interests, don't you?) Minor in CS, it's good for you. Work for the IS staff at the university.
In the end, it will be the best way to use your time and youth.
Can't forget The Force or Troops in an article like this. Also, the Theater page has plenty of great links.
Tom wrote "embed" in 1997, as stated in his emails. DMCA went into the books in 1998. So he wrote the program before the law even existed... How can you break a law before it's a law?
This guy has some really good points, this just appears to be another case of a corporation using the vaguely worded DMCA to try and push someone around. How's that saying go? "If you can't make a good product, sue someone that has"?