My server tries to send you an email from XYZ.ORG. Do a reverse DNS and you find that the email domain and server domain match. Do a DNS and you'll find a DNS entry that says said server's IP address is the ONLY address that should be sending mail from XYZ.ORG.
As such, if you try to spoof a user into believing mail coming from your botnet is coming from XYZ.ORG you're going to fail if they do the same checks, since your server isn't an "approved" one, and the only way to approve it is to have access to my DNS records.
So in essence it only does one thing, try to prevent spoofed mail, but that's not an entirely useless thing from my perspective.
So X has spent millions of dollars developing U and fixing bugs and tweaking system performance until it's fast and rock solid. Now Y comes along and rewrites a new version (clone) of U from scratch and calls it L.
And "for all intents and purposes", those two things are identical?
"...and there are so many tutorials and packages out there that make it really easy to learn and deploy open-source systems."
Shudder. Yeah, that's exactly what I want my sysadmins doing. Grabbing some code off the web, reading a five-page tutorial, and then using that "knowledge" to deploy a "solution" that my company is going to depend on.
And if I stay in XP there's no transition. Besides, going from XP to Vista is a relatively minor thing compared to going to Linux. Especially since doing a Linux switch means that in all likelyhood you're going to have to replace every major productivity and office application they've been using as well.
The fact is that some upgrades are more expensive than others. That's not FUD, just the truth.
Think about what you just said. If it takes a commercial enterprise what is that company going to sell when Linux is free? Do it right and you're not going to make money on support, so what's left?
Hardware. Take your hardware and super-streamline Linux on it. Fix all the inconsistancies and hide all of the configuration issues. Make great applications and integrate those too. Of couse, if you do that then you end up with... a Mac.
Linux is a pretty good server platform because the 'Nix priesthood can bless it and baby it. As a desktop platform it's got to go up against both Windows AND OS X. Never going to happen. Why?
Because the priests are never going to get their act together. Take a look at the (literally) hundreds of different distros out there. Everyone is pushing it and pulling it and doing what they want and taking it where they EACH think it needs to go. Can't come to a compromise? Fork it! As a result the whole thing goes everywhere while going nowhere.
From my perspective Linux is not the answer, because in the end it's just another windows-and-a-mouse OS wanabe with no major advantages. Open source? Other than a few geeks how many end users care? Free? Yes and no. Still needs support and transitioning to it can be a major expense. Easier to use? Nope. Dominant platform? Nope. Driver support for everything? Nope. Crashes less? Safer? Well, I guess Saab made a niche there, but it's still a niche. Besides, OS X makes the same claims, and they've got marketing money AND a consistent vision.
Sorry, but if you're going to take out MS and Apple then you're going to need to step out side of the box and invent "the next thing", maybe the Star Trek voice-controlled AI-based tell-it-what-you-want-and-it-does-it interface.
It's really expensive to do for everyone, but start sending large amounts of data back upstream and I think you'll find that it's not so expensive once you've singled yourself out of the crowd.
So it's encrypted? If you're running a torrent system you're sending gigabytes of data packets upstream to hundreds of different IP addresses, and probably from a "home" ISP acount.
The pattern is clear, encrypted, decrypted, port randomized, "common" port, etc.. If you think "encryption" is magically protecting you then you're deluding yourself.
And you're going to hide gigabytes of data packets going upstream to hundreds of different IP addresses from a "home" ISP acount... how? I mean, you can encrypt it and change ports and everything, but ulitmately you have to send a bunch of data to a lot of different people, otherwise the system doesn't work.
It's kind of a catch-22. If you don't upload you're labeled "selfish" by the torrent network and shut down. If you do upload, the pattern is immediately visible to your ISP, and you can be singled out for further analysis and then blocked or shut down for violating your terms of service.
BTW, continually "randomizing" a port is a dead giveaway.
Like I said, it was an excerpt from the article. And if I were a nasty, suspicous type (which I am) I'd examine that sentence carefully. In particular, it states "he never SENT copyrighted music to others", which to me implies DOESN'T imply that he never ran a torrent server that served up requested information, or that he never "shared" his music. The phrasing implies a specific action, like "I sent you the file in an email".
And your last point is a bit on the gray side as well. Just because a "close family member" bought it doesn't mean he was free to copy it. Fair use would allow his sister to loan the CD to him to listen to, but doesn't imply he's free to make his own copy of it.
From the article, "His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs."
Or in other words, "I didn't do, but even if I did they made me do it, and never told me not to, and it was a long time ago, and, like, even if I had it the music was legal because it was someone else's."
Sorry, but it sounds like he's squirming like a little kid caught with his hand the cookie jar, throwing out every excuse and rationalization he can come up with.
No, your cable bill only pays for "some" content. Advertising pays for the rest. Which is exactly what I said. Go back and try to read the post for comprehension this time...
"DRM will fail on its own, because it is anti-consumer, and impossible (cryptographically speaking) to implement securely."
Anti-consumer. Yeah, tell that to Apple and the (currently) 2 billion songs they've sold off iTunes.
As to the later, you miss the point entirely. Take a look at the lesson from VHS and MacroVision. When consumers started copying tapes for friends, the industry implemented MacroVision's copy protection scheme that prevented most recorders from copying commercial tapes. Yes, you could buy a box to "decrypt" the signal and make a recording, but how many people did? As such, the vast majority turned back to buying or renting tapes, and the few that didn't were considered "acceptable" loses.
DRM doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to work most of the time for most of the people to be "successful".
In fact, by and large, I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of the people who have ipods and who've bought songs from iTMS even know there ARE limits, must less experienced them.
No, it means that he provides a list of articles that are as heavily biased as his own. I'd expect a "deep" analysis of the subject to present, as fairly as possible, both sides of the issue. Without it, it's yet another"corporations are evil, DRM is bad" rant.
The DRM probably gets Apple the shows in the first place, as in the current climate the networks aren't going to put all of their content up there unemcumbered, despite its availability elsewhere. And unlike music, they don't have a big enough share of the market to "force" the networks to comply with a different stance. As such, I'm in the "ain't Apple's fault" camp on this one.
No, it doesn't. You may be paying directly for some premium channels, but by and large you're paying for the service, and the vast majority of the content is paid for by advertising.
Now, we could drop the ads and have you pay directly, but do you really want your cable bill at 3x or 4x the current rates?
Apple's sold 500 million of them at that price, so apparently a few people don't share your viewpoint.
And as long as you doing the math with myth you probably should deduct the price of a dedicated PC with tuner cards. With Tivo you should factor in the $15/month service and initial purchase. Heck, even with Comcast's HD DVR box you're adding $9.95 a month.
There's also the fact that a lot of older content on iTMS, that's not currently on TV and available to be recorded. Example, about a month ago I bought the "shimmer" episode of SNL, along with the pilot episode of Land of the Giants. No particluar reason, just nostalgia. If those hadn't been available at $2 each I'd never have gotten them, since I wans't going to pay $40-50 for the set of DVD's. I was interested, but just not THAT interested.
Although, looking at the top seller's on iTMS, it seems that most are popular programming, like Galactica or The Office, which leads me to believe that they don't have myth or a DVR, and probable that many are simply picking up "missed" shows.
No, he's counting on the fact that "thousands" of programs a month are potentially "available". Of course, if you watched TV 24/7 you could only watch 720 hours worth, assuming, of course, you never slept, went to the bathroom, etc..
Apparently he can't do the math either.
Fundamentally, it's yet another "I want it my way at my price" rant, and since the "content providers" don't see it his way, becomes a rationalization for piracy.
So how was the "Real ID" act, pertaining to state driver's licenses, germane to a military spending bill? The fact is that Real ID was tabled several times and couldn't gather enough votes to pass on its own, so it was stuck onto a "must pass" bill that would have suicide for any politician to veto. ("Dean voted AGAINST supporting our troops in Iraq...")
IIRC, the same happened with the latest Bankruptcy "Reform" act. Again, an act and issue that deserved to debated on its own merits, and not submarined through the system.
"They are indeed questioning the constitutionality of the law."
They need to question the constitutionality behind the way the law was passed in the first place. From the article, "A key Republican supporter of the Real ID Act said Thursday that the law was just as necessary now as when it was enacted as part of an $82 billion military spending and tsunami relief bill."
In other words some sleezy congress-critter appended it to a "must pass" spending bill, and we, the people, didn't get a chance to debate it, or determine if it was in fact "necessary" at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's just like the government to try to make laws to keep stupid people from killing themselves."
Stupid people vote as they're told. As such, the government is only trying to protect itself...
My server tries to send you an email from XYZ.ORG. Do a reverse DNS and you find that the email domain and server domain match. Do a DNS and you'll find a DNS entry that says said server's IP address is the ONLY address that should be sending mail from XYZ.ORG.
As such, if you try to spoof a user into believing mail coming from your botnet is coming from XYZ.ORG you're going to fail if they do the same checks, since your server isn't an "approved" one, and the only way to approve it is to have access to my DNS records.
So in essence it only does one thing, try to prevent spoofed mail, but that's not an entirely useless thing from my perspective.
So X has spent millions of dollars developing U and fixing bugs and tweaking system performance until it's fast and rock solid. Now Y comes along and rewrites a new version (clone) of U from scratch and calls it L.
And "for all intents and purposes", those two things are identical?
I don't think so.
"...and there are so many tutorials and packages out there that make it really easy to learn and deploy open-source systems."
Shudder. Yeah, that's exactly what I want my sysadmins doing. Grabbing some code off the web, reading a five-page tutorial, and then using that "knowledge" to deploy a "solution" that my company is going to depend on.
And if the project "team" is one individual who hasn't posted anything new in six months...
Proably could eliminate 70-80% of the projects on SF with this one criteria.
And if I stay in XP there's no transition. Besides, going from XP to Vista is a relatively minor thing compared to going to Linux. Especially since doing a Linux switch means that in all likelyhood you're going to have to replace every major productivity and office application they've been using as well.
The fact is that some upgrades are more expensive than others. That's not FUD, just the truth.
Think about what you just said. If it takes a commercial enterprise what is that company going to sell when Linux is free? Do it right and you're not going to make money on support, so what's left?
Hardware. Take your hardware and super-streamline Linux on it. Fix all the inconsistancies and hide all of the configuration issues. Make great applications and integrate those too. Of couse, if you do that then you end up with... a Mac.
Linux is a pretty good server platform because the 'Nix priesthood can bless it and baby it. As a desktop platform it's got to go up against both Windows AND OS X. Never going to happen. Why?
Because the priests are never going to get their act together. Take a look at the (literally) hundreds of different distros out there. Everyone is pushing it and pulling it and doing what they want and taking it where they EACH think it needs to go. Can't come to a compromise? Fork it! As a result the whole thing goes everywhere while going nowhere.
From my perspective Linux is not the answer, because in the end it's just another windows-and-a-mouse OS wanabe with no major advantages. Open source? Other than a few geeks how many end users care? Free? Yes and no. Still needs support and transitioning to it can be a major expense. Easier to use? Nope. Dominant platform? Nope. Driver support for everything? Nope. Crashes less? Safer? Well, I guess Saab made a niche there, but it's still a niche. Besides, OS X makes the same claims, and they've got marketing money AND a consistent vision.
Sorry, but if you're going to take out MS and Apple then you're going to need to step out side of the box and invent "the next thing", maybe the Star Trek voice-controlled AI-based tell-it-what-you-want-and-it-does-it interface.
'Course, that's just my opinion...
It's really expensive to do for everyone, but start sending large amounts of data back upstream and I think you'll find that it's not so expensive once you've singled yourself out of the crowd.
So it's encrypted? If you're running a torrent system you're sending gigabytes of data packets upstream to hundreds of different IP addresses, and probably from a "home" ISP acount.
The pattern is clear, encrypted, decrypted, port randomized, "common" port, etc.. If you think "encryption" is magically protecting you then you're deluding yourself.
And you're going to hide gigabytes of data packets going upstream to hundreds of different IP addresses from a "home" ISP acount... how? I mean, you can encrypt it and change ports and everything, but ulitmately you have to send a bunch of data to a lot of different people, otherwise the system doesn't work.
It's kind of a catch-22. If you don't upload you're labeled "selfish" by the torrent network and shut down. If you do upload, the pattern is immediately visible to your ISP, and you can be singled out for further analysis and then blocked or shut down for violating your terms of service.
BTW, continually "randomizing" a port is a dead giveaway.
Like I said, it was an excerpt from the article. And if I were a nasty, suspicous type (which I am) I'd examine that sentence carefully. In particular, it states "he never SENT copyrighted music to others", which to me implies DOESN'T imply that he never ran a torrent server that served up requested information, or that he never "shared" his music. The phrasing implies a specific action, like "I sent you the file in an email".
And your last point is a bit on the gray side as well. Just because a "close family member" bought it doesn't mean he was free to copy it. Fair use would allow his sister to loan the CD to him to listen to, but doesn't imply he's free to make his own copy of it.
"The one thing you cannot do is profit from someone else's intellectual property, i.e. sell the artist's songs."
Infringement isn't based soley on profit. US law put that one to rest a long time ago.
Enjoy it while you can, as I suspect many, many people are working on how to track it, throttle it, and eliminate it.
From the article, "His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs."
Or in other words, "I didn't do, but even if I did they made me do it, and never told me not to, and it was a long time ago, and, like, even if I had it the music was legal because it was someone else's."
Sorry, but it sounds like he's squirming like a little kid caught with his hand the cookie jar, throwing out every excuse and rationalization he can come up with.
No, your cable bill only pays for "some" content. Advertising pays for the rest. Which is exactly what I said. Go back and try to read the post for comprehension this time...
The highest resolution images are "not available".
"DRM will fail on its own, because it is anti-consumer, and impossible (cryptographically speaking) to implement securely."
Anti-consumer. Yeah, tell that to Apple and the (currently) 2 billion songs they've sold off iTunes.
As to the later, you miss the point entirely. Take a look at the lesson from VHS and MacroVision. When consumers started copying tapes for friends, the industry implemented MacroVision's copy protection scheme that prevented most recorders from copying commercial tapes. Yes, you could buy a box to "decrypt" the signal and make a recording, but how many people did? As such, the vast majority turned back to buying or renting tapes, and the few that didn't were considered "acceptable" loses.
DRM doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to work most of the time for most of the people to be "successful".
In fact, by and large, I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of the people who have ipods and who've bought songs from iTMS even know there ARE limits, must less experienced them.
No, it means that he provides a list of articles that are as heavily biased as his own. I'd expect a "deep" analysis of the subject to present, as fairly as possible, both sides of the issue. Without it, it's yet another"corporations are evil, DRM is bad" rant.
The DRM probably gets Apple the shows in the first place, as in the current climate the networks aren't going to put all of their content up there unemcumbered, despite its availability elsewhere. And unlike music, they don't have a big enough share of the market to "force" the networks to comply with a different stance. As such, I'm in the "ain't Apple's fault" camp on this one.
No, it doesn't. You may be paying directly for some premium channels, but by and large you're paying for the service, and the vast majority of the content is paid for by advertising.
Now, we could drop the ads and have you pay directly, but do you really want your cable bill at 3x or 4x the current rates?
"$2/show is just way too much."
Apple's sold 500 million of them at that price, so apparently a few people don't share your viewpoint.
And as long as you doing the math with myth you probably should deduct the price of a dedicated PC with tuner cards. With Tivo you should factor in the $15/month service and initial purchase. Heck, even with Comcast's HD DVR box you're adding $9.95 a month.
There's also the fact that a lot of older content on iTMS, that's not currently on TV and available to be recorded. Example, about a month ago I bought the "shimmer" episode of SNL, along with the pilot episode of Land of the Giants. No particluar reason, just nostalgia. If those hadn't been available at $2 each I'd never have gotten them, since I wans't going to pay $40-50 for the set of DVD's. I was interested, but just not THAT interested.
Although, looking at the top seller's on iTMS, it seems that most are popular programming, like Galactica or The Office, which leads me to believe that they don't have myth or a DVR, and probable that many are simply picking up "missed" shows.
How about just not getting any content?
No, he's counting on the fact that "thousands" of programs a month are potentially "available". Of course, if you watched TV 24/7 you could only watch 720 hours worth, assuming, of course, you never slept, went to the bathroom, etc..
Apparently he can't do the math either.
Fundamentally, it's yet another "I want it my way at my price" rant, and since the "content providers" don't see it his way, becomes a rationalization for piracy.
So how was the "Real ID" act, pertaining to state driver's licenses, germane to a military spending bill? The fact is that Real ID was tabled several times and couldn't gather enough votes to pass on its own, so it was stuck onto a "must pass" bill that would have suicide for any politician to veto. ("Dean voted AGAINST supporting our troops in Iraq...")
IIRC, the same happened with the latest Bankruptcy "Reform" act. Again, an act and issue that deserved to debated on its own merits, and not submarined through the system.
"They are indeed questioning the constitutionality of the law."
They need to question the constitutionality behind the way the law was passed in the first place. From the article, "A key Republican supporter of the Real ID Act said Thursday that the law was just as necessary now as when it was enacted as part of an $82 billion military spending and tsunami relief bill."
In other words some sleezy congress-critter appended it to a "must pass" spending bill, and we, the people, didn't get a chance to debate it, or determine if it was in fact "necessary" at all.