Wow, I was about to post nearly this exact commentary on that inane quote. "We're going to cripple our products' functionality, which will increase demand"...umm, yeah, sounds like a plan.
Re:The NSA is very concerned about computer securi
on
NSA Inside?
·
· Score: 2
The current state of security on the net is pathetic. Maybe, just maybe, they're trying to do something about it.
That would be nice, considering they are largely responsible for the current lack of security. Without their opposition, encryption would be near-universal by now. Instead, you have to do quite a bit of work to set up PGP or an equivalent, have difficulty communicating with others who don't use it, and be looked on with suspicion because "obviously" anyone who goes to that trouble has something to hide.
A current example: Mac OS X doesn't ship with ssh. Even though the encryption regulations have been weakened, you still have to send in forms to the NSA to be able to distribute encryption software, and some flunky at Apple didn't get them in on time. Of course you can easily build ssh (http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/2001-0 3-21.01.html), but many people will not. Because of the NSA's support of immoral and unconstitutional encryption laws, thousands of OS X machines will not be as secure as they should be.
login: brian
Password:
Welcome to Darwin!
[capsize:~] brian% java -version
java version "1.3.0"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.0, mixed mode)
It's a full 1.3 VM, and it comes with javac and the other command line tools. At my company we have a team of developers working on a complex Swing app using lots of Java 2 features. Last week we installed it on my Powerbook with OS X as a test (we got the developer release early) and it worked perfectly, including rendering the Swing widgets in Aqua.
Until Mac OS X, MacOS has always been behind the Java boat, so we always have to be limited by the version of VM MacOS supports, and bend over backwards to accomodate any idiosynchrasies. If modern Java support on Mac OS is finally now non-vapor, Mac clients have immediately jumped from the end of the pack, straight to the top, in being both Unix, *and* Mac.
Exactly. Remember, classic Mac OS has a terrible architecture; I was impressed that Apple could get Java working on it at all. With OS X's Unix foundation Java support will be an order of magnitude better.
And even this friendly Unix is not really Apple's work, it's just NeXtStep's child.
Wrong. Mac OS X Server (released two years ago) was basically NeXTStep 5.0 (not that that's bad), but Apple has made huge improvements for Mac OS X. There's a new vector imaging model (Quartz), the Carbon API to let existing Mac apps run natively in X with minimal changes, a full JDK 1.3 environment, a rewritten Finder, kickass development tools (included free), and the spiffy Aqua effects that you may laugh it, but that will sell Macs. And I'm probably leaving out a bunch of stuff.
Last, it may be useful to remind everyone out there that Apple has achieved this so-colled user-friendliness by hiding as much as it could the Unix tools: their flexibility and their powers are buried as deep as can be.
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal. Not exactly "buried". Unix is there if you want it, and it's not if you don't. This is not a bad thing.
True, but Apple has said CD-R and DVD support will be added in an update in a few months. There's no reason to hold up the entire OS because a few features aren't ready yet.
They have done it for the clams, and now it will be pretty hard to convince the MPAA's and the Microsofts of the world why the clams intellectual property deserves protection, while somehow theirs doesn't.
That may be true, but if Slashdot really is picking their battles I'd much rather see them take on the MPAA than Scientology. First, they'd have a better chance of success against the MPAA; the portion of the DMCA that requires them to remove allegedly infringing material is not as blatantly unconstitional as the portion used to censor code or links to code as a "circumvention device". Second, the legislation that the MPAA has bought restricts the freedom of everyone, while the Church of Scientology primarily takes money from rich stupid people.
Why are you willing to force artists into accepting your payment conditions, when you can't accept them either?
Huh? I don't want to force artists to do anything; if they want to sell in the regular manner, that's fine; but I will strongly oppose their attempts to get the government to pass draconian laws that unreasonably limit what I can do with products I have legally bought. I also don't want to force taxpayers to pay for art that they don't want to, especially if it goes against their political, religious, or moral beliefs.
Are you willing to do programming - which according to some is a form of expression - for micropayments?
Personally all software I've publicly released is BSD-licensed, but there are quite a few shareware authors that do pretty well.
That's not really how the Street Performer Protocol works. When I make a payment, it's not a "tip" for the work just released, it's a contribution to the "bounty" amount for the next release. And since I will get my money back if the total raised is not enough, I'll be willing to put up whatever I believe it will be worth to me.
I'm not positive it would work, but I think it's worth a shot before resorting to increasingly intrusive copyright laws or compelling taxpayers to pay for art they have no interest in or may even find offensive.
The alternatives to me are either 1. a draconian system of increasingly invasive copyright enforcement as new technologies make redistribution even easier all the time, or 2. artists starve, or worse, stop making art.
3. A system where artists can be voluntarily compensated by their fans without any copyright enforcement, such as the Street Performer Protocol.
We live in a capitalist system. The sioal goal in such a society is to maximise income. What customers want is irrelevant if one can arrange the market to deny customers choice
While that is exactly what the entertainment industry is trying to do, capitalism is not the problem. The only way the MPAA and RIAA can "arrange the market" to bring about their controlled-content/rent-everything/produce-nothing dystopia is to use government power to eliminate their competition. In a real capitalist marketplace the crippled hardware they're trying to foist on us would never survive.
If I go to the store, purchase a copy of the program, and install it without agreeing to the EULA, I can still legally run it (MS has been compensated; there's a provision in 17 USC that excludes the running of software from infringement)
That's very interesting, and appears to be correct (see http://www.cybercrime.gov/ipmanual/03ipma.htm, "Statutory exceptions" section). I was under the impression that the entire EULA mess started because a clueless and/or bought judge ruled that loading a program into RAM constituted making a copy. Under that (il)logic, the EULA grants you the right to run the software which you would not otherwise have, and in exchange strips you of fair use rights. But based on 17 USC, you already have the right to run the software, so the EULA removes your fair use rights in exchange for nothing. IANAL, but I thought that a contract without "consideration" was invalid. So even if a EULA is a contract (highly questionable, given there's no communication between you and the manufacturer and no way to prove you actually read and agreed to the terms), it shouldn't be enforceable. Can anybody clear this up?
I'd like to see the EFF take up the EULA issue, of course only after they've finished sending the DMCA back to the bowels of hell from whence it came.
Apple representatives have already confirmed that the initial release will not support DVD playback. It will read DVD filesystems just fine, so we're talking about a single application not being ready. Also, it's worth pointing out that were it not for the DMCA's criminalization of decrypting DVD content without a license, this situation would not exist.
The more serious allegations of lacking SMP support and graphics acceleration are completely false.
Limited support for MP, and broken graphics acceleration for the Radeon, which is over a year old now.
Pure FUD. The Public Beta already has SMP support in the kernel. See this forum where an ATI engineer confirms that Radeon 2d and 3d acceleration is in place.
It is legal for me to lend a CD to a friend and let
him make a copy for his own use. However, it is not legal
for me to make a copy and give it to him - he has to actively
create the copy for himself.
Isn't that only the case in Canada? It seems far too rational a solution to have gotten through the U.S. Congress.
Things like this are disruptive of public education. Even if they take place off campus.
So you believe that a school (a government agency, remember) has unlimited power to censor any expression they feel is disruptive. Suppose a student writes a letter to a newspaper supporting legalization of drugs? Supporting drug use is clearly disruptive to the educational process, better get rid of him.
Comparison: suppose the kid had got on television and published this stuff? Or a newspaper?
Then nothing, if it's done outside of school and does not constitute libel or slander. Refer again to the Bill of Rights.
The problem that I want to solve is: public disrespect (especially in such a degrading manner) of authority figures undermines their authority at school. Undermined authority makes education harder. What do you do about the problem?
Obviously, punish all who dare to express dissenting opinions. That's a surefire way to win the respect and admiration of your subjects. It's worked well in China...
I'm talking about things like... well, distributing pictures of the principal having sex with Marge Simpson. Repeatedly talking about their penis in the classroom. Making a hobby of reducing a girl in the room to tears.
I agree, none of that should be tolerated. But the difference is that those incidents happened on school grounds and directly interfere with teaching. The student here did not use school time or equipment, and while the pricipal may not like it, I can't see how he has any authority to censor off-campus expression.
Accepting and not questioning punishment for expressing a controversial opinion is going to help "the spirit of the constitution" sink in? What Constitution are you talking about? The one I'm familiar with says that everyone has free expression rights, even if you don't like what they say, and even if they're jerks.
Government-regulated crony capitalism is the problem, where the government either steals taxes to enforce laws which would not exist in a free market (e.g. against people who choose to make their own DVD players without signing the DVD consortium agreements), and to raise the price of entry to a market so that competitors cannot afford to enter.
Moderate this up. I am still amazed by those who believe that government is the solution to corporate abuses, when these abuses are only possible because the government rewrites the law to favor itself and certain businesses at the expense of consumers. Region coding and CSS would be non-issues if they weren't legally enforceable with the DMCA. Many privacy concerns today would not exist if the US government had not prevented the widespread use of encryption. Then there's the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the Communications Decency Act, Echelon, and the list goes on. The government and both major parties have a very poor record of protecting our rights, and giving them more power is the last thing I would do.
I think one of the most egregious parts of the new APSL is the clause preventing you from making modifications for your own use without sending them in to Apple.
From my reading of the APSL this is incorrect. Section 2.2c states you must release the source to any "deployed" modifications, and the definition of "deploy" in section 1.4 specifically excludes personal use. So I don't see any problem with tweaking Darwin for your own purposes and not notifying anyone. Of course IANAL, so I may be missing something.
Well, with subscription, you *can* afford it so what's the problem?
Actually I expect subscription software to be more expensive. First, there's the infrastructure needed to support subscriptions (bandwidth, databases, employees) the cost of which will have to be recovered. Second, it will likely take advantage of most people's inability to to do math. ("Well, you could pay $200 for this software, but with our new E-Z-Save subscription plan it's only $10 a month! (forever).")
Don't complain just because it's Microsoft that is doing it.
I'm complaining because in most cases it's a bad idea, whether it's done by Microsoft, Apple, or RedHat. Subscriptions make sense when there is an ongoing service that the vendor is providing. Cable TV and ISPs fall into this category; software does not. (Upgrades don't count, those are discrete events.) What I see Microsoft doing with.NET is introducing an unnecessary dependency on the network so that they can claim to be offering services (i.e. the 'service' of not revoking your license) that they expect you will be happy to pay for in perpetuity.
If I have to choose between a sweatshop and starvation, that really isn't much of a choice, now, is it?
No it's not, which means it's a good thing that the sweatshop is there. If you were in fact in that situation, and the sweatshop was removed by well-meaning liberals, then your only choice would be starvation.
There is a law that says failure to respond to any question is punishable by a $100 fine. As others have pointed out, that's on rather shaky legal ground since the Constitution requires and allows only an "actual enumeration", which is fulfilled by the question "how many people live at your residence?" More practically, I'm pretty sure I recall Census officials saying they were not going to enforce the fines. I answered the first question, left the rest blank, and was never bothered (although that's probably because I moved shortly afterwards).
Good arguments, but surprisingly enough I disagree:)
In fact, you are not asserting a right to life in your argument, but a right not to be killed. For example, if you were subject to an act of nature (let's say getting struck by lightning) and thus were hurt to the point that your recovery needed the aid of others, would they have to help you? In your society, they would not.
Correct. If they do not help me then they're probably not very nice people, but I don't believe they should be thrown in prison.
Who, if we take your society to the extreme, would leave you there to die, since, of course, they would receive no compensation for the act of helping you.
I doubt that. Have you ever donated any money or time to charity? If so, why? You certainly aren't compelled to, you do it because you think it's right and it probably makes you feel good. I'm absolutely not saying that it's wrong to help others, only that the choice should be yours and not forced by someone pointing a gun at you.
If we use your definition of right to life, there would be no hospital care except for the wealthy, no care for the elderly
Again, I don't believe this follows. Many charities provide food, shelter, and medical care, and function completely on voluntary donations. In fact, they tend to be more effective than the much more expensive government programs.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, I was about to post nearly this exact commentary on that inane quote. "We're going to cripple our products' functionality, which will increase demand"...umm, yeah, sounds like a plan.
That would be nice, considering they are largely responsible for the current lack of security. Without their opposition, encryption would be near-universal by now. Instead, you have to do quite a bit of work to set up PGP or an equivalent, have difficulty communicating with others who don't use it, and be looked on with suspicion because "obviously" anyone who goes to that trouble has something to hide.
A current example: Mac OS X doesn't ship with ssh. Even though the encryption regulations have been weakened, you still have to send in forms to the NSA to be able to distribute encryption software, and some flunky at Apple didn't get them in on time. Of course you can easily build ssh (http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/2001-0 3-21.01.html), but many people will not. Because of the NSA's support of immoral and unconstitutional encryption laws, thousands of OS X machines will not be as secure as they should be.
Until Mac OS X, MacOS has always been behind the Java boat, so we always have to be limited by the version of VM MacOS supports, and bend over backwards to accomodate any idiosynchrasies. If modern Java support on Mac OS is finally now non-vapor, Mac clients have immediately jumped from the end of the pack, straight to the top, in being both Unix, *and* Mac.
Exactly. Remember, classic Mac OS has a terrible architecture; I was impressed that Apple could get Java working on it at all. With OS X's Unix foundation Java support will be an order of magnitude better.
Wrong. Mac OS X Server (released two years ago) was basically NeXTStep 5.0 (not that that's bad), but Apple has made huge improvements for Mac OS X. There's a new vector imaging model (Quartz), the Carbon API to let existing Mac apps run natively in X with minimal changes, a full JDK 1.3 environment, a rewritten Finder, kickass development tools (included free), and the spiffy Aqua effects that you may laugh it, but that will sell Macs. And I'm probably leaving out a bunch of stuff.
Last, it may be useful to remind everyone out there that Apple has achieved this so-colled user-friendliness by hiding as much as it could the Unix tools: their flexibility and their powers are buried as deep as can be.
True, but Apple has said CD-R and DVD support will be added in an update in a few months. There's no reason to hold up the entire OS because a few features aren't ready yet.
That may be true, but if Slashdot really is picking their battles I'd much rather see them take on the MPAA than Scientology. First, they'd have a better chance of success against the MPAA; the portion of the DMCA that requires them to remove allegedly infringing material is not as blatantly unconstitional as the portion used to censor code or links to code as a "circumvention device". Second, the legislation that the MPAA has bought restricts the freedom of everyone, while the Church of Scientology primarily takes money from rich stupid people.
Check out "Permutation City" by Greg Egan; it deals with a very similar scenario, among other ai-related topics.
Huh? I don't want to force artists to do anything; if they want to sell in the regular manner, that's fine; but I will strongly oppose their attempts to get the government to pass draconian laws that unreasonably limit what I can do with products I have legally bought. I also don't want to force taxpayers to pay for art that they don't want to, especially if it goes against their political, religious, or moral beliefs.
Are you willing to do programming - which according to some is a form of expression - for micropayments?
Personally all software I've publicly released is BSD-licensed, but there are quite a few shareware authors that do pretty well.
I'm not positive it would work, but I think it's worth a shot before resorting to increasingly intrusive copyright laws or compelling taxpayers to pay for art they have no interest in or may even find offensive.
3. A system where artists can be voluntarily compensated by their fans without any copyright enforcement, such as the Street Performer Protocol.
While that is exactly what the entertainment industry is trying to do, capitalism is not the problem. The only way the MPAA and RIAA can "arrange the market" to bring about their controlled-content/rent-everything/produce-nothing dystopia is to use government power to eliminate their competition. In a real capitalist marketplace the crippled hardware they're trying to foist on us would never survive.
That's very interesting, and appears to be correct (see http://www.cybercrime.gov/ipmanual/03ipma.htm, "Statutory exceptions" section). I was under the impression that the entire EULA mess started because a clueless and/or bought judge ruled that loading a program into RAM constituted making a copy. Under that (il)logic, the EULA grants you the right to run the software which you would not otherwise have, and in exchange strips you of fair use rights. But based on 17 USC, you already have the right to run the software, so the EULA removes your fair use rights in exchange for nothing. IANAL, but I thought that a contract without "consideration" was invalid. So even if a EULA is a contract (highly questionable, given there's no communication between you and the manufacturer and no way to prove you actually read and agreed to the terms), it shouldn't be enforceable. Can anybody clear this up?
I'd like to see the EFF take up the EULA issue, of course only after they've finished sending the DMCA back to the bowels of hell from whence it came.
The more serious allegations of lacking SMP support and graphics acceleration are completely false.
Pure FUD. The Public Beta already has SMP support in the kernel. See this forum where an ATI engineer confirms that Radeon 2d and 3d acceleration is in place.
Isn't that only the case in Canada? It seems far too rational a solution to have gotten through the U.S. Congress.
So you believe that a school (a government agency, remember) has unlimited power to censor any expression they feel is disruptive. Suppose a student writes a letter to a newspaper supporting legalization of drugs? Supporting drug use is clearly disruptive to the educational process, better get rid of him.
Comparison: suppose the kid had got on television and published this stuff? Or a newspaper?
Then nothing, if it's done outside of school and does not constitute libel or slander. Refer again to the Bill of Rights.
The problem that I want to solve is: public disrespect (especially in such a degrading manner) of authority figures undermines their authority at school. Undermined authority makes education harder. What do you do about the problem?
Obviously, punish all who dare to express dissenting opinions. That's a surefire way to win the respect and admiration of your subjects. It's worked well in China...
I agree, none of that should be tolerated. But the difference is that those incidents happened on school grounds and directly interfere with teaching. The student here did not use school time or equipment, and while the pricipal may not like it, I can't see how he has any authority to censor off-campus expression.
Accepting and not questioning punishment for expressing a controversial opinion is going to help "the spirit of the constitution" sink in? What Constitution are you talking about? The one I'm familiar with says that everyone has free expression rights, even if you don't like what they say, and even if they're jerks.
Six syllables in
last line; try replacing with
"MPAA pissed"
Moderate this up. I am still amazed by those who believe that government is the solution to corporate abuses, when these abuses are only possible because the government rewrites the law to favor itself and certain businesses at the expense of consumers. Region coding and CSS would be non-issues if they weren't legally enforceable with the DMCA. Many privacy concerns today would not exist if the US government had not prevented the widespread use of encryption. Then there's the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, the Communications Decency Act, Echelon, and the list goes on. The government and both major parties have a very poor record of protecting our rights, and giving them more power is the last thing I would do.
From my reading of the APSL this is incorrect. Section 2.2c states you must release the source to any "deployed" modifications, and the definition of "deploy" in section 1.4 specifically excludes personal use. So I don't see any problem with tweaking Darwin for your own purposes and not notifying anyone. Of course IANAL, so I may be missing something.
Actually I expect subscription software to be more expensive. First, there's the infrastructure needed to support subscriptions (bandwidth, databases, employees) the cost of which will have to be recovered. Second, it will likely take advantage of most people's inability to to do math. ("Well, you could pay $200 for this software, but with our new E-Z-Save subscription plan it's only $10 a month! (forever).")
Don't complain just because it's Microsoft that is doing it.
I'm complaining because in most cases it's a bad idea, whether it's done by Microsoft, Apple, or RedHat. Subscriptions make sense when there is an ongoing service that the vendor is providing. Cable TV and ISPs fall into this category; software does not. (Upgrades don't count, those are discrete events.) What I see Microsoft doing with .NET is introducing an unnecessary dependency on the network so that they can claim to be offering services (i.e. the 'service' of not revoking your license) that they expect you will be happy to pay for in perpetuity.
No it's not, which means it's a good thing that the sweatshop is there. If you were in fact in that situation, and the sweatshop was removed by well-meaning liberals, then your only choice would be starvation.
There is a law that says failure to respond to any question is punishable by a $100 fine. As others have pointed out, that's on rather shaky legal ground since the Constitution requires and allows only an "actual enumeration", which is fulfilled by the question "how many people live at your residence?" More practically, I'm pretty sure I recall Census officials saying they were not going to enforce the fines. I answered the first question, left the rest blank, and was never bothered (although that's probably because I moved shortly afterwards).
In fact, you are not asserting a right to life in your argument, but a right not to be killed. For example, if you were subject to an act of nature (let's say getting struck by lightning) and thus were hurt to the point that your recovery needed the aid of others, would they have to help you? In your society, they would not.
Correct. If they do not help me then they're probably not very nice people, but I don't believe they should be thrown in prison.
Who, if we take your society to the extreme, would leave you there to die, since, of course, they would receive no compensation for the act of helping you.
I doubt that. Have you ever donated any money or time to charity? If so, why? You certainly aren't compelled to, you do it because you think it's right and it probably makes you feel good. I'm absolutely not saying that it's wrong to help others, only that the choice should be yours and not forced by someone pointing a gun at you.
If we use your definition of right to life, there would be no hospital care except for the wealthy, no care for the elderly
Again, I don't believe this follows. Many charities provide food, shelter, and medical care, and function completely on voluntary donations. In fact, they tend to be more effective than the much more expensive government programs.