Why not? If you also modify slashdot's codebase so that it automatically converts link to the CoralCache equivalents, that'd probably be quite an improvement in browsing experience.
You know, what actually worries me more than the FBI's asking for server logs is the fact that (seemingly) every time something like this happens, a "gag order" is placed on the affected parties. It's a serious breach of the constitutional rights people enjoy; not only the right to free speech is affected, but also things like due process. A state which gathers evidence in secret is well on its way to a state that holds trials in secret, and THAT certainly is something none of us (here on Slashdot, anyway) want, no matter how we may disagree on other matters.
And of course, there is the fact that (like always) there does not even seem to be a good reason to place a gag order, short of "people aren't gonna like this and we want to avoid bad press"; I can see why the FBI wants to err on the (for them) "safe" side, but I think it's a dangerous path to take, for the reasons described above.
Oh well. I guess it just shows again that as a webmaster, you should not keep logs for longer than is absolutely necessary, and that as a user, you should use Tor or a similar tool to anonymise your browsing if you're visiting political websites (I wonder if Slashdot counts as one).
It actually doesn't even have to be mandatory to be practically impossible to opt out of. Just try doing things like flying or booking a hotel room or similar things without photo ID today - it's hardly possible.
Re:Original file may ONLY play on Macs...
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Apple Easter Egg
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· Score: 1
To be honest, I don't know - I don't know about Macs at all really. The resource fork seems to be in a separate file, though.
Re:POS: format isn't recognized.
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Apple Easter Egg
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Yeah, but you'd think that at least Quicktime would be able to play it, considering it *is* a Quicktime movie...
Re:Original file may ONLY play on Macs...
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Apple Easter Egg
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· Score: 1
Interestingly enough, file(1) does identify it as a Quicktime movie, but Quicktime itself still refuses to open the file, claiming it is "not a file that Quicktime understands".
That just may not be copyrightable, either, depending on how much he wrote. If it's a longer text, yes; a few words or a single sentence, no. (Again, IANAL).
I think Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation is an applicable precedent here; it states that when you have a two-dimensional work of art that is in the public domain, a photography of that work of art cannot be copyrighted, since even if you put a considerable amount of time and energy into getting the photograph right, you still have not created something original.
IANAL, but I assume that scanning court documents is similar - just because you were the one who scanned them does (I'd assume) not mean you have a copyright on those PDFs then. Of course, SCO is claiming copyright on these documents themselves, so that's not entirely unfishy, either, but most likely, neither PJ (of Groklaw) nor Frank of (of Tuxrocks) who scanned those documents have a real case here.
What you don't take into account, though, is that (most) people don't tell lies for the sake of telling lies: they tell lies in order to reach certain goals.
What would Ovid gain by lying about this? Nothing I can think of. Specifically, he certainly doesn't gain any further reputation out of this. On the other hand, what could he possibly lose if the story was not true and he was found out to have been lying? A lot - namely, said reputation.
Of course, that (losing one's reputation) is a risk people are often (?) willing to take, but only when they actually hope to gain something. If you want to look like a war hero instead of like someone who went AWOL for several months after daddy bought them a nice and relaxed job in the Texas national guard, then you at least have a *reason* to lie.:)
It doesn't have to be the Internet, though. I remember that over here, years ago, travel agencies connected to airlines etc. using packet-mode ISDN to check flight availabilities and the like, and I would not be *entirely* surprised if that still was the case (mostly due to "never change a working system").
It would make sense in the case of banks, too, for just the same reason - you just may not want to transfer sensitive data over the (public) Internet (whether that's strictly necessary or just paranoia stemming from a lack of knowledge with regard to how to securely transfer data over public networks is another question, of course).
Well, inexperienced / naive / greedy thieves can't. I think it's a Best Practice (so to speak) among credit card thieves to just use cards once and them get rid of them, no matter how tempting it may be to keep them and use them again; the two mentioned in this story probably didn't keep that in mind since they seemed to have been drug addicts and thus probably were quite desperate for the money.
Of course, using a stolen credit card to order *breakfast* is still just stupidity.
Tell them that if they aren't going to do something about it sometime soon, then you'll be switching to a different bank / CC company. That's something banks usually care about, especially if you've been a long-term customer.
You may live in a part of the world where only true and hardened criminals bear arms. You're certainly lucky for this. Unfortunately, we can't affort this kind of luxury in the US.
That may be true, but you should also ask yourself why that's the case, and I think it's pretty safe to say that most criminals (namely, the random small-time credit card thieves etc., like the ones mentioned in this case) would not have access to firearms if there were strict rules in place governing who can and cannot buy them. Sure, it ain't going to stop Al Capone, but if everyone can just go to Gun*Mart to buy that new pump-action, then chances are that it'll not just be power-tripping rednecks and concerned home-owners, but also the criminals. All of them, theoretically, and a large percentage in practice.
But TPB is located in Sweden, not the USA. Over in Europe, it's usually still possible to defend yourself in court when you're being sued even if you don't have the big bucks (I can't say anything about Sweden in particular, so it may be untrue, but I doubt it is.)
But ThePirateBay not only hosts the.torrent files, they also provide the tracker, don't they? It's still not immediately clear at all whether that should be illegal or not, but it's not the same as merely hosting the.torrents.
I read an insightful comment regarding this on Slashdot after the Columbine incident. According to that comment, the reason (or one of the reasons) is simply that it's a case of competition:
1. News stories are made/broadcast by the massmedia corporations. 2. Massmedia corporations (usually) don't just broadcast news, but also lots of other shows. 3. Those corporations rely on advertising for their revenue, so they have an interest in getting as many people as possible to watch their shows. 4. Video games are direct competitors of TV shows; a kid who plays a video game doesn't watch TV and thus does not create advertising revenue. 5. Thus, it's in the broadcasting corporations' best financial interest to portray video games as the root of all evil; every kid whose parents take away his/her video games is more likely to watch TV and thus create advertising revenue.
The poster back then managed to get this idea across far more elegantly than I can, but I think it's something to think about. It's the same reason why mainstream journalism is usually critical of blogs (when they acknowledge their existence at all; either denouncing them as biased and unreliable, or just plain ridiculing them) - they're direct competitors.
I fail to see how that would have any impact on his likelihood to run amok - outside of, possibly, a negative impact (i.e., making it LESS likely to happen).
It's "Godwin", not "Goodwin". That being said, maybe you should read Godwin's law before trying to invoke it; outside of the fact that the law itself only talks about the probability of comparisons involving nazis, one only loses an argument by means of Godwin's law when a comparison between nazis and those on the other side of the discussion is made (which is what the law itself talks about, too). Saying something like "being interested in the happenings in the Third Reich does not make me a nazi" (which is what I did) does not even fall under Godwin's law.
That being said, even if it did, you can't intentionally use Godwin to end a discussion - look up "Quirk's exception", which states that "intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual."
So there.
To sum it up, that'd be rather slow. Keep in mind that algorithms like AES are not just supposed to run in reasonable time on your latest Pentium-4 PC; they're also supposed to run in reasonable time on that embedded device.
That being said, I kinda have the feeling that you're also thinking of asymmetric algorithms like RSA etc. where keysizes of 1024 or 2048 bits are common; it's important to realize that these cannot directly be compared to the keysizes of symmetric algorithms (like AES).
FYI, Schneier *did* come up with a cipher. Look up "Blowfish" and "Twofish". The latter was even submitted to the NIST AES contest from which Rijndael ultimately emerged as the winner, and it was one of the most serious contenders, too.
OK, if it was just a joke, I apologize - but this is Slashdot, so it's hard to tell whether someone's trying to be funny or genuinely is a blockhead.:)
Outside of that, yes, I *am* interested in ThePirateBay, but so what? I'm also interested in German history, especially the Weimar republic and the Third Reich, but that doesn't make me a nazi (I hope), so why would being interested in TPB make me a pirate?
Oh, yes, I'm a pirate. I be sailin' the seven seas with me crew of scurvy seadogs and lookin' for plunder, me hearty!
Seriously, has it ever occured to you that it's possible to just *look* at a website? I'm not sure whether your post is flamebait or just outright stupid, but in either case (to stay within the "pirate" theme), you're not exactly the brightest gold in the chest, are you?
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? If you also modify slashdot's codebase so that it automatically converts link to the CoralCache equivalents, that'd probably be quite an improvement in browsing experience.
You know, what actually worries me more than the FBI's asking for server logs is the fact that (seemingly) every time something like this happens, a "gag order" is placed on the affected parties. It's a serious breach of the constitutional rights people enjoy; not only the right to free speech is affected, but also things like due process. A state which gathers evidence in secret is well on its way to a state that holds trials in secret, and THAT certainly is something none of us (here on Slashdot, anyway) want, no matter how we may disagree on other matters.
And of course, there is the fact that (like always) there does not even seem to be a good reason to place a gag order, short of "people aren't gonna like this and we want to avoid bad press"; I can see why the FBI wants to err on the (for them) "safe" side, but I think it's a dangerous path to take, for the reasons described above.
Oh well. I guess it just shows again that as a webmaster, you should not keep logs for longer than is absolutely necessary, and that as a user, you should use Tor or a similar tool to anonymise your browsing if you're visiting political websites (I wonder if Slashdot counts as one).
It actually doesn't even have to be mandatory to be practically impossible to opt out of. Just try doing things like flying or booking a hotel room or similar things without photo ID today - it's hardly possible.
To be honest, I don't know - I don't know about Macs at all really. The resource fork seems to be in a separate file, though.
Yeah, but you'd think that at least Quicktime would be able to play it, considering it *is* a Quicktime movie...
Interestingly enough, file(1) does identify it as a Quicktime movie, but Quicktime itself still refuses to open the file, claiming it is "not a file that Quicktime understands".
That just may not be copyrightable, either, depending on how much he wrote. If it's a longer text, yes; a few words or a single sentence, no. (Again, IANAL).
I think Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation is an applicable precedent here; it states that when you have a two-dimensional work of art that is in the public domain, a photography of that work of art cannot be copyrighted, since even if you put a considerable amount of time and energy into getting the photograph right, you still have not created something original.
IANAL, but I assume that scanning court documents is similar - just because you were the one who scanned them does (I'd assume) not mean you have a copyright on those PDFs then. Of course, SCO is claiming copyright on these documents themselves, so that's not entirely unfishy, either, but most likely, neither PJ (of Groklaw) nor Frank of (of Tuxrocks) who scanned those documents have a real case here.
What you don't take into account, though, is that (most) people don't tell lies for the sake of telling lies: they tell lies in order to reach certain goals.
:)
What would Ovid gain by lying about this? Nothing I can think of. Specifically, he certainly doesn't gain any further reputation out of this. On the other hand, what could he possibly lose if the story was not true and he was found out to have been lying? A lot - namely, said reputation.
Of course, that (losing one's reputation) is a risk people are often (?) willing to take, but only when they actually hope to gain something. If you want to look like a war hero instead of like someone who went AWOL for several months after daddy bought them a nice and relaxed job in the Texas national guard, then you at least have a *reason* to lie.
It doesn't have to be the Internet, though. I remember that over here, years ago, travel agencies connected to airlines etc. using packet-mode ISDN to check flight availabilities and the like, and I would not be *entirely* surprised if that still was the case (mostly due to "never change a working system").
It would make sense in the case of banks, too, for just the same reason - you just may not want to transfer sensitive data over the (public) Internet (whether that's strictly necessary or just paranoia stemming from a lack of knowledge with regard to how to securely transfer data over public networks is another question, of course).
Well, inexperienced / naive / greedy thieves can't. I think it's a Best Practice (so to speak) among credit card thieves to just use cards once and them get rid of them, no matter how tempting it may be to keep them and use them again; the two mentioned in this story probably didn't keep that in mind since they seemed to have been drug addicts and thus probably were quite desperate for the money.
Of course, using a stolen credit card to order *breakfast* is still just stupidity.
Tell them that if they aren't going to do something about it sometime soon, then you'll be switching to a different bank / CC company. That's something banks usually care about, especially if you've been a long-term customer.
That may be true, but you should also ask yourself why that's the case, and I think it's pretty safe to say that most criminals (namely, the random small-time credit card thieves etc., like the ones mentioned in this case) would not have access to firearms if there were strict rules in place governing who can and cannot buy them. Sure, it ain't going to stop Al Capone, but if everyone can just go to Gun*Mart to buy that new pump-action, then chances are that it'll not just be power-tripping rednecks and concerned home-owners, but also the criminals. All of them, theoretically, and a large percentage in practice.
In case it wasn't obvious from the smiley (or the comments' contents as such), that was a JOKE. :)
But TPB is located in Sweden, not the USA. Over in Europe, it's usually still possible to defend yourself in court when you're being sued even if you don't have the big bucks (I can't say anything about Sweden in particular, so it may be untrue, but I doubt it is.)
But ThePirateBay not only hosts the .torrent files, they also provide the tracker, don't they? It's still not immediately clear at all whether that should be illegal or not, but it's not the same as merely hosting the .torrents.
I read an insightful comment regarding this on Slashdot after the Columbine incident. According to that comment, the reason (or one of the reasons) is simply that it's a case of competition:
1. News stories are made/broadcast by the massmedia corporations.
2. Massmedia corporations (usually) don't just broadcast news, but also lots of other shows.
3. Those corporations rely on advertising for their revenue, so they have an interest in getting as many people as possible to watch their shows.
4. Video games are direct competitors of TV shows; a kid who plays a video game doesn't watch TV and thus does not create advertising revenue.
5. Thus, it's in the broadcasting corporations' best financial interest to portray video games as the root of all evil; every kid whose parents take away his/her video games is more likely to watch TV and thus create advertising revenue.
The poster back then managed to get this idea across far more elegantly than I can, but I think it's something to think about. It's the same reason why mainstream journalism is usually critical of blogs (when they acknowledge their existence at all; either denouncing them as biased and unreliable, or just plain ridiculing them) - they're direct competitors.
I fail to see how that would have any impact on his likelihood to run amok - outside of, possibly, a negative impact (i.e., making it LESS likely to happen).
It's "Godwin", not "Goodwin". That being said, maybe you should read Godwin's law before trying to invoke it; outside of the fact that the law itself only talks about the probability of comparisons involving nazis, one only loses an argument by means of Godwin's law when a comparison between nazis and those on the other side of the discussion is made (which is what the law itself talks about, too). Saying something like "being interested in the happenings in the Third Reich does not make me a nazi" (which is what I did) does not even fall under Godwin's law. That being said, even if it did, you can't intentionally use Godwin to end a discussion - look up "Quirk's exception", which states that "intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual." So there.
To sum it up, that'd be rather slow. Keep in mind that algorithms like AES are not just supposed to run in reasonable time on your latest Pentium-4 PC; they're also supposed to run in reasonable time on that embedded device.
That being said, I kinda have the feeling that you're also thinking of asymmetric algorithms like RSA etc. where keysizes of 1024 or 2048 bits are common; it's important to realize that these cannot directly be compared to the keysizes of symmetric algorithms (like AES).
FYI, Schneier *did* come up with a cipher. Look up "Blowfish" and "Twofish". The latter was even submitted to the NIST AES contest from which Rijndael ultimately emerged as the winner, and it was one of the most serious contenders, too.
I can see their reasoning:
:)
1. Nobody has broken AES-128 yet.
2. Nobody has broken our algorithm yet.
3. Therefore, the two are comparable in terms of security.
OK, if it was just a joke, I apologize - but this is Slashdot, so it's hard to tell whether someone's trying to be funny or genuinely is a blockhead. :)
Outside of that, yes, I *am* interested in ThePirateBay, but so what? I'm also interested in German history, especially the Weimar republic and the Third Reich, but that doesn't make me a nazi (I hope), so why would being interested in TPB make me a pirate?
Oh, yes, I'm a pirate. I be sailin' the seven seas with me crew of scurvy seadogs and lookin' for plunder, me hearty!
Seriously, has it ever occured to you that it's possible to just *look* at a website? I'm not sure whether your post is flamebait or just outright stupid, but in either case (to stay within the "pirate" theme), you're not exactly the brightest gold in the chest, are you?
Hmmm, yes - the website's back now. I guess that was just a momentarily glitch then (although still an eerily-timed one).
;)
There's still no new "legal threats", though. Pity - I always enjoy reading those (even though I don't use ThePirateBay otherwise).