EULAs are supposed to be used to impose some conditions on the user (reverse engineering) that somehow affect the creators of the tool.
in this case, it does because without such a clause the authors might be help responsible for what the users are doing (by providing a crime-enabling product). the clause is there to prevent that from happening by transferring whatever legal liability they might have to the users.
this is why your car analogy isn't so good. no one's going to say the car company is responsible for the kidnapping, because most people understand the automotive industry well enough to distinguish between a product and its usage. most people (and especially the law) do not understand the software industry that well.
I am against HOWTOs that are distro specific and contain no new or helpful information.
i think i understand your viewpoint; it would certainly be difficult to wade through the list of HOWTOs if there were many superfluous ones. but just because there is little unique information does not mean they are useless. a good HOWTO is likely to be better organized and a gentler and quicker introduction than the full documentation.
i agree that it's better not to have distro-specific documentation, but i'd rather that mean authors try writing documentation that is helpful for all distros, rather than simply not writing about something because it's distro-specific. there are many people using each distro, and there should be useful documentation for them, whether it's helpful to the entire community or just part of it.
Perhaps after you have done your 100th Linux install, you will find that all this tweaking, man pages, compiling kernels and howtos and crap for basic PC operation is an annoyance.
i've installed linux many times on a lot of different machines (generally for friends and friends of friends ever since high school), and have very rarely needed to do any major tweaking just to get things to work. perhaps with obscure hardware sound would be difficult, but at this point major distros seem to get it right. i dont think anyone using those really is forced to read and configure if they dont want to.
when i first put linux on my laptop (back in 1999), i had to read and tweak for an hour or two to get sound to work on the stupid neomagic sound/video card, but once it worked it actually sounded better than it had on win98 (which came with the machine), mostly because the driver for windows had some serious problems. that's when i started to appreciate linux, because with windows there was nothing i could do to fix sound, and after that the amount of work to configure linux seemed trivial.
before claiming that linux isnt ready for the desktop, maybe you should look into it more so you can at least base your decision on personal experience and not on your impression of some/. article.
IANAL, but that seems like a good plan. draft something very simple with a clear purpose (like the parent post's), and see if he'll sign it.
i'd suggest they publish it as their policy (like privacy statements on websites) or maybe have everyone being scanned sign it. this way, anyone else as uncomfortable as you might be reassured.
Is it so bad that The Register makes their takes on stories so obvious, and makes fun of things they believe are amazingly stupid? That's what I've always liked about them; they don't pretend not to have a viewpoint, and it's quite obvious what their views are. It's really easy to read past that, and it's often funny even when I don't agree with them.
Seems to me The Register wouldn't be who they are without ripping on people once in a while (every day), so I'd say you should choose to read them or not, and not worry about things like that.
How 'bout love, happiness, clean air, good food, good music?
it's clear (as you hinted) that you could have too much food (e.g. eating more than your previous body mass)
i'd say too much air could happen, clean or not. you're lungs certainly have a maximum safe volume. and thinking globally, it's possible to have enough clean air, just not at all likely to happen.
would you say it's too much good music if you hear it every second of every day? some people may like that, but i enjoy quiet from time to time.
i certainly agree about love and happiness though.
hide? you mean minimize? I don't think so. Their is the task bar...
internet explorer has an automation interface, and although i've never used it, it looks to have the same properties as M$office apps. Which means it could actually be hidden (not minimized) simply by setting the InternetExplorer object's Visible property to false (which is the default until you navigate somewhere).
there is no reason to demand that the window be redirected with all resources unchanged. unique identifiers must be unique, but could be reassigned.
since we probably just want it to be the same from the user's perspective, there is nothing preventing this and it sounds (to me) just like how I run individual programs from the Solaris machines across my school's network and display them on my personal machines. The only problem I see with X is sending one window to multiple displays, but nothing makes that technically more difficult, it just requires extending the functionality already present in X.
the most elementary checks and data archiving were not done
while they have to trust their employees to some degree, they should have at least verified that > 1 person had seen valid results before announcing success. it sounds like they didn't even ask him for much documentation. i'd say the lab is at fault too, not just the untruthful individual.
i hope they normally work to educate their employees on security. if that's the case, it's a good idea to send reminders from time to time, especially if you know you're a likely target at a specific time.
but if they don't regularly discuss things like social engineering, it's far too late now as most people will likely disregard the notice.
it's good that this case might set precedent to keep authors from getting sued in other jurisdictions representing an unintended audience.
but could this mean that newsgroup posts will be treated more as a formal publications than a public conversation? we should be able to say more in public at the mall or in a newsgroup than we can publish in the local paper.
I'm sure if this were pictures of lovely female lifeguards doing their duty, they primary surfers would be the very gentlemen writing the 'digital rights' law.
while that is probably true to some extent, that is simply changing the 'victim'. in that case those women would likely complain in the same way these men are now.
everyone will complain when it happens to them, but of course won't mind visiting these websites to see others.
just the presence of web ads doesnt mean anything. the real indication of their success is how much advertisers are still willing to pay for them. if they didnt work well, people would still try just like the spammers needing only a few takers to profit, and webmasters would price ads accordingly.
the article does say "an ad sponsored version", so it seems to me that their poll is asking whether users would optionally use this version to support development, with the choice to use the ad-free version as usual. so ad-blockers would be unnecessary.
given that, this might be an easy way to support your favorite OSS projects. an interesting idea at least.
Slashdot Mirror
EULAs are supposed to be used to impose some conditions on the user (reverse engineering) that somehow affect the creators of the tool.
in this case, it does because without such a clause the authors might be help responsible for what the users are doing (by providing a crime-enabling product). the clause is there to prevent that from happening by transferring whatever legal liability they might have to the users.
this is why your car analogy isn't so good. no one's going to say the car company is responsible for the kidnapping, because most people understand the automotive industry well enough to distinguish between a product and its usage. most people (and especially the law) do not understand the software industry that well.
what would you do if windows didnt understand your sound card?
I am against HOWTOs that are distro specific and contain no new or helpful information.
i think i understand your viewpoint; it would certainly be difficult to wade through the list of HOWTOs if there were many superfluous ones. but just because there is little unique information does not mean they are useless. a good HOWTO is likely to be better organized and a gentler and quicker introduction than the full documentation.
i agree that it's better not to have distro-specific documentation, but i'd rather that mean authors try writing documentation that is helpful for all distros, rather than simply not writing about something because it's distro-specific. there are many people using each distro, and there should be useful documentation for them, whether it's helpful to the entire community or just part of it.
Perhaps after you have done your 100th Linux install, you will find that all this tweaking, man pages, compiling kernels and howtos and crap for basic PC operation is an annoyance.
/. article.
i've installed linux many times on a lot of different machines (generally for friends and friends of friends ever since high school), and have very rarely needed to do any major tweaking just to get things to work. perhaps with obscure hardware sound would be difficult, but at this point major distros seem to get it right. i dont think anyone using those really is forced to read and configure if they dont want to.
when i first put linux on my laptop (back in 1999), i had to read and tweak for an hour or two to get sound to work on the stupid neomagic sound/video card, but once it worked it actually sounded better than it had on win98 (which came with the machine), mostly because the driver for windows had some serious problems. that's when i started to appreciate linux, because with windows there was nothing i could do to fix sound, and after that the amount of work to configure linux seemed trivial.
before claiming that linux isnt ready for the desktop, maybe you should look into it more so you can at least base your decision on personal experience and not on your impression of some
IANAL, but that seems like a good plan. draft something very simple with a clear purpose (like the parent post's), and see if he'll sign it.
i'd suggest they publish it as their policy (like privacy statements on websites) or maybe have everyone being scanned sign it. this way, anyone else as uncomfortable as you might be reassured.
The Register should be spanked badly for this.
Is it so bad that The Register makes their takes on stories so obvious, and makes fun of things they believe are amazingly stupid? That's what I've always liked about them; they don't pretend not to have a viewpoint, and it's quite obvious what their views are. It's really easy to read past that, and it's often funny even when I don't agree with them.
Seems to me The Register wouldn't be who they are without ripping on people once in a while (every day), so I'd say you should choose to read them or not, and not worry about things like that.
How 'bout love, happiness, clean air, good food, good music?
it's clear (as you hinted) that you could have too much food (e.g. eating more than your previous body mass)
i'd say too much air could happen, clean or not. you're lungs certainly have a maximum safe volume. and thinking globally, it's possible to have enough clean air, just not at all likely to happen.
would you say it's too much good music if you hear it every second of every day? some people may like that, but i enjoy quiet from time to time.
i certainly agree about love and happiness though.
Or, even more extreme, code during the night and sleep during the day.
... he's a programmer and he's OK, he codes all night and he sleeps all day.
hide? you mean minimize? I don't think so. Their is the task bar...
internet explorer has an automation interface, and although i've never used it, it looks to have the same properties as M$office apps. Which means it could actually be hidden (not minimized) simply by setting the InternetExplorer object's Visible property to false (which is the default until you navigate somewhere).
there is no reason to demand that the window be redirected with all resources unchanged. unique identifiers must be unique, but could be reassigned.
since we probably just want it to be the same from the user's perspective, there is nothing preventing this and it sounds (to me) just like how I run individual programs from the Solaris machines across my school's network and display them on my personal machines. The only problem I see with X is sending one window to multiple displays, but nothing makes that technically more difficult, it just requires extending the functionality already present in X.
it's certainly reasonable to remove all the javascript events; there aren't that many of them and it's worth it to let the message itself get through.
the most elementary checks and data archiving were not done
while they have to trust their employees to some degree, they should have at least verified that > 1 person had seen valid results before announcing success. it sounds like they didn't even ask him for much documentation. i'd say the lab is at fault too, not just the untruthful individual.
i hope they normally work to educate their employees on security. if that's the case, it's a good idea to send reminders from time to time, especially if you know you're a likely target at a specific time.
but if they don't regularly discuss things like social engineering, it's far too late now as most people will likely disregard the notice.
Can't the hackers who read slashdot (probably most of them) just call this number instead now?
i'd hope their "Security Hotline" would know better than to hand out information to anyone who happens to call. but you never know...
it's good that this case might set precedent to keep authors from getting sued in other jurisdictions representing an unintended audience.
but could this mean that newsgroup posts will be treated more as a formal publications than a public conversation? we should be able to say more in public at the mall or in a newsgroup than we can publish in the local paper.
it appears they just commented out the html. seems like a quick hack, but who views source anyway?
c o-store.com/cgi-bin/sgic0101.exe?HKW=CO01DIV01+COD IV=0101+QTY=1+UID=1613471026418266609+ITN=S7074740 ')"><img border="0" src="/images/sw/sw-add-to-cart.gif" alt="Buy from SureSource"></a>-->
<!--<a href="#"onClick="javascript:popUp2('http://www.ac
Lucovsky.ppt[33]: 10am and 10pm full synch and full build
so they build in the night and in the day. twice a day 7 days a week.
that can probably already be prevented, because the photographer has copyright and can protect the image from use by others in this way.
since the presentation to the viewer is the same, it shouldnt matter legally whether the image file is on the same server or not.
I'm sure if this were pictures of lovely female lifeguards doing their duty, they primary surfers would be the very gentlemen writing the 'digital rights' law.
while that is probably true to some extent, that is simply changing the 'victim'. in that case those women would likely complain in the same way these men are now.
everyone will complain when it happens to them, but of course won't mind visiting these websites to see others.
just the presence of web ads doesnt mean anything. the real indication of their success is how much advertisers are still willing to pay for them. if they didnt work well, people would still try just like the spammers needing only a few takers to profit, and webmasters would price ads accordingly.
the article does say "an ad sponsored version", so it seems to me that their poll is asking whether users would optionally use this version to support development, with the choice to use the ad-free version as usual. so ad-blockers would be unnecessary.
given that, this might be an easy way to support your favorite OSS projects. an interesting idea at least.