Sweden does not have the death penalty (in fact, the abolishment of the death penalty is a requirement for becoming a member of the European Union). And fortunately, Sweden's not Australia, either, so there's probably no real chance that this guy (or someone else) will be extradited to the USA to undergo trial there.
In related news, it seems that ThePirateBay (the self-described biggest BitTorrent tracker in the world, which is located in Sweden) is currently down - coincidence?
That's interesting. About 75% (that's a very rough estimate, but it should be between 70 and 80 or so) of the spam I get is Korean; most of the rest is in English, but there is also quite a bit that's Chinese or Russian.
Talking to friends about this has confirmed that it's similar for them, and some have pointed out the pervasiveness of broadband connections in South Korea as an explanation.
So it's quite interesting that most of your spam is targeted at (US-?)Americans. How much do you get per day, on average?
It's simple: I want to be able to exercise *all* my rights and use the content in any way that I am allowed to under the law. To give an example: under German law, it is explicitely permissible to make copies of media for private use, and that specifically includes giving copies to friends, for example. The copyright owners (for lack of a better word) are compensated by a fee that is automatically charged whenever you buy a CD (media), or a blank tape (empty media), or a VCR (appliances that can be used for copying media).
Unfortunately, while it is specifically not illegal to make copies for private use (including for sharing them with friends), the law does not give you an enforcable right to do this, so the industry is free to use technical measures to prevent you from doing this (while still reaping the compensation the law requires).
As such, it's pretty safe to say that for me, no kind of DRM or copy prevention is acceptable as long as with every purchase I make, I automatically compensate the content industry for my right to make copies. For example, I do not and never will buy songs from iTunes; I do not and will not buy CDs that contain copy prevention mechanisms; and I do not and will not buy DVDs or any other media that contain built-in copy prevention mechanisms that are designed to keep me from exercising my fair use rights which I am not only allowed to exercise under law but which I in fact PAY GOOD MONEY FOR.
As such, any DRM is fundamentally unacceptable for me. Period.
Yahoo! games has a version of Scrabble called "Literati". I can't say how it compares to this site (I never played that one at all, and only checked out the former a few times), but if all you want to do is play Scrabble online, it should work.
It can if it's licensed under the variant of the BSD license that does not have the advertising clause - that clause is incompatible with the GPL (since it puts further constraints on what you can/cannot do with the software).
To add some minor nitpicking, you can add GPL'ed code to a *BSD system, too; you just cannot distribute the whole thing under a BSD license then. It would be perfectly possible, however, to fork a BSD-licensed project (*BSD or something else) and distribute the fork under the GPL, as long as the BSD license in question is the one without the advertising clause (something which I'm not sure about as far as the *BSDs are concerned).
First of all, I must commend you and your company for caring about these things - it's definitely nice to see that there are companies who actually care about their customers. ^_~ That being said, here are a few things to get you started:
Release documentation for your hardware. Developers' documentation that is - the stuff that document the interfaces of the actual hardware, the registers, and all that. Basically, everything that's needed to make a driver.
If you already have code lying around, consider releasing that under both the GPL (so it can be incorporated into Linux etc.) and the BSD license (for the *BSD systems). It doesn't matter if it's broken, buggy, unfinished or anything; if you release it under the proper free licenses, the community will take care of that. And even a half-finished buggy driver is a much better starting point than no driver at all.
Realize that the community is important; in particular, talk to people. It helps to set up a website which hosts the relevant information (documentation, code releases and so on); if you don't want to or cannot use your company's webserver, Sourceforge.net is a great place to get all the tools you need (like CVS, mailing lists, webspace, bugtracking and so on).
Do get on the relevant mailing lists, like lkml (for the Linux kernel), OpenBSD's tech list and so on. Also, if there are more specialized lists, get on those, too.
Provide sample hardware for testing. It doesn't have to be much, but do consider that most Linux/*BSD developers are not paid for their work; they can't spend money on all the hardware, so any donations to the developers working on the relevant subsystem/drivers will be GREATLY appreciated.
And finally, work with the community, not against it. You may come across people occasionally who're quite blunt, but don't let that deter you. The vast majority of developers are nice, especially when they feel that you genuinely want to help them. Ideally, it's a win-win situation for both the developers and you/your company.
I regularly get told by cashiers that the signature I put on receipts does not look like the signature on my cards, but so far, noone has actually asked for ID or anything. In fact, Not a single cashier who told me this has even taken it seriously - it's always been a "Oh, those signatures don't look similar, but I'll let you get away with it, wink-wink" thing.
The only time I actually was asked for ID was on a trip to Sweden.
I think it's worth pointing out that the *real* problem (as usual) is not just technical issues, but also the end users. As long as people are naive enough to let themselves get talked into revealing personal details, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs (or whatever) over *any* medium (no matter whether it's email, over the phone, in person or anything else), phishing (and, more generally, fraud) *will* continue to be a problem.
Technical measures may seem like they're helping on a short-term scale, but ultimately, they're just masking the real problem, which can only be solved by educating people and making it clear to them that security is something that does affect them directly.
Your comment really shows quite a bit of confusion - BitTorrent and satellite links are two entirely different things really, and use of one does not mean the other cannot be used, as they operate on different levels in the network stack.
It's obvious why this is doomed to fail: we all know that all good networking-related standards are in the 802.11 range. If we start with 802.15 now, soon enough, we'd actually be able to tell them apart easily some day! And that obviously can't be had - how else are the "experts" going to make money then?:)
Whatever happened to critical journalism? This guy isn't a "search engine optimization expert", he's a spammer trying to make some fast bucks by essentially denying (or attempting to deny, at least) the service search engines provide. He's not a single bit better than those spammers who send me 300-400 email messages a day (yes, I do get that many, these days), or the spammers that have flooded newsgroups I used to follow years ago with similar amounts of spam and essentially killed them completely (when a group gets 50 times as much spam as it does on-topic messages, it doesn't take long for all the regulars to leave for greener pastures).
He's nothing but a parasite, and that's exactly what you should call him.
If you're administering a server with multiple users that are potentially malicious (or at least pranksters), then this is a real issue. If you use Linux on your desktop, then it's mostly theoretical - at worst, it could be an extra puzzle piece that allows another exploit to have a bigger effect.
How the hell is the distro supposed to know what I got?
Well, if you run a Linux distro for the S/390 (or zSeries or whatever it's called now) architecture, it's probably safe to assume that you are not running on an ancient 386 (and vice versa).:) Outside of that, why can't a distro check/proc/cpuinfo on installation and set limits based on that, for example?
Freshmeat does not host things (outside of themes) - it only collects announcements.
That being said, I doubt that a server farm like Google's can be called a "single point of failure", too.:) When was the last time http://www.google.com/ didn't work for you?
Slashdot Mirror
Sweden does not have the death penalty (in fact, the abolishment of the death penalty is a requirement for becoming a member of the European Union). And fortunately, Sweden's not Australia, either, so there's probably no real chance that this guy (or someone else) will be extradited to the USA to undergo trial there.
In related news, it seems that ThePirateBay (the self-described biggest BitTorrent tracker in the world, which is located in Sweden) is currently down - coincidence?
While that basically sounds like a real possibility, it does not explain how the Chicken McNugget got *inside* the bone.
Transmitting power wirelessly is easy. Every signal, be it from a radio station, wifi, a cell phone or whatever, is a transmission of power.
That's interesting. About 75% (that's a very rough estimate, but it should be between 70 and 80 or so) of the spam I get is Korean; most of the rest is in English, but there is also quite a bit that's Chinese or Russian.
Talking to friends about this has confirmed that it's similar for them, and some have pointed out the pervasiveness of broadband connections in South Korea as an explanation.
So it's quite interesting that most of your spam is targeted at (US-?)Americans. How much do you get per day, on average?
It's simple: I want to be able to exercise *all* my rights and use the content in any way that I am allowed to under the law. To give an example: under German law, it is explicitely permissible to make copies of media for private use, and that specifically includes giving copies to friends, for example. The copyright owners (for lack of a better word) are compensated by a fee that is automatically charged whenever you buy a CD (media), or a blank tape (empty media), or a VCR (appliances that can be used for copying media).
Unfortunately, while it is specifically not illegal to make copies for private use (including for sharing them with friends), the law does not give you an enforcable right to do this, so the industry is free to use technical measures to prevent you from doing this (while still reaping the compensation the law requires).
As such, it's pretty safe to say that for me, no kind of DRM or copy prevention is acceptable as long as with every purchase I make, I automatically compensate the content industry for my right to make copies. For example, I do not and never will buy songs from iTunes; I do not and will not buy CDs that contain copy prevention mechanisms; and I do not and will not buy DVDs or any other media that contain built-in copy prevention mechanisms that are designed to keep me from exercising my fair use rights which I am not only allowed to exercise under law but which I in fact PAY GOOD MONEY FOR.
As such, any DRM is fundamentally unacceptable for me. Period.
Amen. One can only hope timothy will get kicked from the editor crew as soon as possible.
Yahoo! games has a version of Scrabble called "Literati". I can't say how it compares to this site (I never played that one at all, and only checked out the former a few times), but if all you want to do is play Scrabble online, it should work.
It can if it's licensed under the variant of the BSD license that does not have the advertising clause - that clause is incompatible with the GPL (since it puts further constraints on what you can/cannot do with the software).
To add some minor nitpicking, you can add GPL'ed code to a *BSD system, too; you just cannot distribute the whole thing under a BSD license then. It would be perfectly possible, however, to fork a BSD-licensed project (*BSD or something else) and distribute the fork under the GPL, as long as the BSD license in question is the one without the advertising clause (something which I'm not sure about as far as the *BSDs are concerned).
As Linus said himself (almost TWO years ago), there is no fundamental incompatibility between DRM and Linux.
First of all, I must commend you and your company for caring about these things - it's definitely nice to see that there are companies who actually care about their customers. ^_~ That being said, here are a few things to get you started:
Hope this helps!
I regularly get told by cashiers that the signature I put on receipts does not look like the signature on my cards, but so far, noone has actually asked for ID or anything. In fact, Not a single cashier who told me this has even taken it seriously - it's always been a "Oh, those signatures don't look similar, but I'll let you get away with it, wink-wink" thing.
The only time I actually was asked for ID was on a trip to Sweden.
That's Hanlon's razor, actually, which (most likely) predates Napoleon.
I think it's worth pointing out that the *real* problem (as usual) is not just technical issues, but also the end users. As long as people are naive enough to let themselves get talked into revealing personal details, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs (or whatever) over *any* medium (no matter whether it's email, over the phone, in person or anything else), phishing (and, more generally, fraud) *will* continue to be a problem.
Technical measures may seem like they're helping on a short-term scale, but ultimately, they're just masking the real problem, which can only be solved by educating people and making it clear to them that security is something that does affect them directly.
Your comment really shows quite a bit of confusion - BitTorrent and satellite links are two entirely different things really, and use of one does not mean the other cannot be used, as they operate on different levels in the network stack.
Why, you're right! Maybe the employees should pay EA for their jobs instead of expecting payment... :)
It's obvious why this is doomed to fail: we all know that all good networking-related standards are in the 802.11 range. If we start with 802.15 now, soon enough, we'd actually be able to tell them apart easily some day! And that obviously can't be had - how else are the "experts" going to make money then? :)
Whatever happened to critical journalism? This guy isn't a "search engine optimization expert", he's a spammer trying to make some fast bucks by essentially denying (or attempting to deny, at least) the service search engines provide. He's not a single bit better than those spammers who send me 300-400 email messages a day (yes, I do get that many, these days), or the spammers that have flooded newsgroups I used to follow years ago with similar amounts of spam and essentially killed them completely (when a group gets 50 times as much spam as it does on-topic messages, it doesn't take long for all the regulars to leave for greener pastures).
He's nothing but a parasite, and that's exactly what you should call him.
It gets worse than that. Have you ever tried running Skype on a PC where SoftICE is installed?
If you're administering a server with multiple users that are potentially malicious (or at least pranksters), then this is a real issue. If you use Linux on your desktop, then it's mostly theoretical - at worst, it could be an extra puzzle piece that allows another exploit to have a bigger effect.
Anything that requires you to have a valid user account on the machine you want to attack is, by definition, not remote.
Well, if you run a Linux distro for the S/390 (or zSeries or whatever it's called now) architecture, it's probably safe to assume that you are not running on an ancient 386 (and vice versa). :) Outside of that, why can't a distro check /proc/cpuinfo on installation and set limits based on that, for example?
I think you're making a slight mistake if you think of the EU as a "small economy", though.
Freshmeat does not host things (outside of themes) - it only collects announcements.
:) When was the last time http://www.google.com/ didn't work for you?
That being said, I doubt that a server farm like Google's can be called a "single point of failure", too.
"Tobias Beechering"? I'm almost scared to ask Google about that... o.o