It just depends on what kind of information you want. While I agree with your point that there is more useful information overall in a library, there is a whole class of question that tends to be much more answerable on the internet. Many highly detailed, highly focused questions that would be difficult or impossible to find answers to at a library are very easy to Google for. What does <obscure compiler error> mean? What are the bus routes in the city in France I will be visiting? I need a manual for <specific model of an appliance>. What's the local news today in <any largish US city>? Etc.
So while a library is far better for learning about a whole topic, and getting depth and breadth of knowledge, the internet makes a whole new class of questions very easy, instead of very hard, to answer quickly. It by no means replaces a library, but it complements it very nicely.
By "society" I was talking about the developed world... after all, that's what the parent meant, unless you know of any developing countries where everyone has access to cars and heart surgery
You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
No, of course not. That would be anti-competitive behavior abusing their monopoly status.
Oh wait...
But seriously, it's conceivable that they could fold the DRM into the API itself, so that, for example, the API wouldn't function without some token from the DRM component. Now you have to follow the rules to use their API... and of course you can't just spoof the token, becuase even if you figured out how, you'd be violating the DMCA.
It may sound paranoid, but on the other hand I can already hear all the marketing spin.
So has the internet had a chance to shape society? Not yet
You seem to be confusing "totally dominating" and "shaping". Did radio and telephone shape society? Mail still exists. Did TV shape society? Radio still exists.
The internet has not replaced everything, but it has significantly altered many aspects of our society. It has vastly changed the nature of communication (heard of email? IM? A few people use them). It has changed the way we get information (could you get instant answers to very detailed, very obscure questions before the internet? No, because as good as reference librarians are, they don't have the sheer scope of details that Google can provide), the way we shop (Amazon? Ebay?), the way buisiness provide information (How often do you call a chain store vs. going to their website for price information, or to get location/hours), the way we get around (Mapquest)... the list goes on and on. The fact that most of these things are household words is evidence that it has, in fact, shaped our society. Not everyone has email, but almost everyone knows what it is.
I have to laugh at your assertion that the automobile is "vital for life", but that the internet has not shaped society. The automobile allows people to get together more quickly, get what they want more quickly, and generally make the country smaller, and less fragmented into isolated pieces. What does that remind me of? Oh right: the Internet.
The internet is "just another form of media delivery" the same way automobiles are "just another form of people delivery".
It's also a statement. Just like his statement is a fact. It doesn't have to be a one-word example in order to be a fact: "The average US citizen has a higher quality of life than much of the rest of the world." Despite having no concrete examples, it's still true, and it's still a fact (and a statement--this is why people are commonly said to "state facts").
The people that make decisions are worried most about how much it's going to cost.
And you don't think it's conceivable that someone will decide that the cost of losing billions upon billions of dollars when the Windows+TCP/IP+internet connection machines are hacked isn't worth it?
They may not be very security-savvy, but they won't do a massive rollout that will leave them with a nationwide network of completely broken ATMs that divulge money at the drop of a hat. Insider addition of malicious code, while a pain, doesn't even begin to compare cost-wise with complete public access to machines with internet-enabled, free-for-download, no-knowledge-required exploits.
You can catch and arrest a malicious insider if the losses start adding up. You can't just arrest the entire US.
Seriously, I've been using Dvorak for several years, and except for about a month while I was learning, I've been doing it all on unmodified QWERTY keyboards.
The only time it's an annoyance is when playing a mostly mouse-controlled game, with a few keys you need to hit from time to time (DII for example). The rest of the time, it just prevents me from using vision as a crutch, so I'm not at any disadvantage when I switch to Dvorak on a public computer where I don't have the option of moving the keys around.
One thing I'm not sure of is why new searches in the search box from the original URL return a num=0 instead of whatever number you have set as the number of results you wish to see on google
The num=x is an offset; it tells the script how far into the results to index. So the correct way to display the first set of results is to start at result 0 (or skip 0 results, if you want to think of it that way). Num=20 would be the second page of results at 20 per page, since it tell Google which result to start with when displaying the page.
The AHRA doesn't actually say that it's ok (by which I mean legal/non-infringing) to get a mix tape from your cousin... it in fact specifically avoids saying that. What it actually says is that you can't be prosocuted under the act for that behavior, which isn't quite the same thing.
I think you may have meant to reply to the parent, since you critique both of "my" examples, when in fact those were quoted from the parent to show that the arguments were flawed. You'll notice I quoted the whole phrase, including the work "right" (because I don't agree that those are rights).
I agree 100% that those examples are stupid.
However, I don't agree with your examples entirely either. You seem to imply that property ownership has no impact on others, when in fact that's exactly what property ownership is for: to limit others' access to the property. You could just as easily say that having a right to use what you need is a "natural right" and that property ownership is an "artificial right" imposod by the government. It's all a matter of your perspective and definitions--you say that everyone should agree on your list of natural rights, but in fact that is not at all the case. Read Hobbes if you don't believe me.
I fail to see any fundamental distinction between a "right" to health care imposing a demand that doctors provide it (although really, that's not how health care works, since the doctor is still paid; it's actually a demand on society to pay for it with taxes and the like), and a "right" to property ownership, which imposes a demand on everyone else not to use that property.
I'm not saying I don't see any practical distinctions, I'm saying that this whole division of things into different fundamental kinds of rights is entirely arbitrary and subjective, not absolute as many claim. There are cultures and groups that have extremely limited, or non-existant, property rights; they would likely view our system as artifial, and say that everyone has a natural right to use things they need, which we are violating with artificially imposed property rights.
Anyone can of course have their own view point on what rights people should have, but to try to justify them with some made up absolutes is pointless, since there aren't any. There are only places of greater and lesser common agreement.
The problem is that every granted right that is given to one person requires the government to attempt to deprive another person of their natural rights.
This seems to be the center of your entire argument, but it's totally unjustifiable. It makes the fundamentally flawed assumption that "natural rights" and "granted rights" are opposed in some way, but there are countless counter-examples. What natural right does your "right to a single national language" take away? Some imaginary natural right to have other people understand you when you speak your language of choice? What about the "right not to compete agaings foreign labor"? Do you think we have a natural right to have other people hire us if we do the best job?
Without even getting into the fact that you give a list of natural rights that not everyone would agree on, your argument is deeply flawed. Go read some more philosophy of the ideas of rights, then try again.
A quick scan of The Hunting of the Snark yields up most of the numbers from 1-10, 17, 40, 992, and 1000. If you did the same with his other works, would there really be an unusually high incidence of 42?
Also, it's worth noting that, having written Alice in Wonderland, the phrase "Rule 42" was no doubt bouncing around in memory. Given the desire to make up an arbitrary rule again, it seems very likely that he would, either consciously or unconsciously, use the same number again, since the usage is so similar. If he had writted 37 the first time, he likely would have done so again.
Maybe you are right, and he really liked 42, but maybe this is just like so many coincidences in the world: manufactured by our bias in noticing and remembering things.
Seriously, this isn't the equivalent of popping a zit. A much better parallel would be an armed group, going around and popping the zits of everyone they encountered while holding them at gun/knife point.
It's a great reference. I taught myself quite a bit of Python from scratch using only that "book". Very clear, and very comprehensive. The fact that it's free, and downloadable in a variety of forms, just makes it even better.
In response to all the current and future posts talking about how this is too perfect to be accidental: this is a manufactured coincidence, which is not really coincidental at all.
At any given moment, there are many, many people working on a given problem. There are surely advances in science and engineering that could be applied to power grid management on a more or less continuous basis. When do we care? Right after a major failure of the power grid. So a story like this only rises to the top when there's something to interest the average person, creating these "amazing" coincidences.
Go back to your basements and keep working on that bigger and better tin foil hat.
Because they've endgendered a "computing" culture where users are... ignorant about the need for patching
Yeah, curse those bastards for making computers that are usable by people other than us techno-elite snobs.
Many people simply have other things they care about more than patching their computer. If 95% of people used *NIX, would it have a reputation for being mostly secure? No, because people who don't care would still be the vast majority. Most people should know the importance of basic car maintenence: checking oil, tire pressure, anti-freeze, etc. Many, many people don't bother to do so. When they have problems, is it Ford's fault?
Or that if you aren't, you neve work in a security field.
Yeah, you get hit with a virus and the network slows down for a while, but the problem is solved for the future.
For those who actually think that this is a good idea:
First, making any virus/worm that doesn't have unintended sideeffects is basically impossible. Virus writers don't have to care, but software vendors would.
Second, there are laws against distributing viruses; I doubt that MS could slip under the FBI's radar if they released a worm.
Last, as is pointed out every single time there is a story about patching, there are valid reasons to hold off on a patch. I don't think mission-critical windows servers would be much of a viable option if people had to worry about MS forcing potentially unstable patch installs. (Note to trolls: yes it is possible to run a stable, mission-critical windows server in some circumstances if you know what you are doing)
My only conclusion is that there are some hypocrites that post here
No argument there... but comparing a root due to a just-published exploit to comments about Windows compromises--most of which (at least what's posted here) tend to be about old vulnerabilities that people didn't bother to patch, is (IMO) not the best way to make that point.
But I'm all for fewer hypocrites and less ignorance on Slashdot:)
So maybe RTFA isn't the right acronym: how about "WUYHAIBSOATTM" (Wait Until You Have Actual Information Before Shooting Off At The Mouth).
Posting that things like this are hypocritical, and/or that the admin is an idiot, is stupid regardless of whether or not the statement was available yet. I don't see how leaping to unjustified conclusions is defendable regardless of whether it's due to inavailability of actual facts, or just laziness.
Ignorance is ignorance, and wild, ignorant speculation doesn't help any issue.
Sure, this incident demonstrates that the person(s) in charge of the maintenance of ftp.gnu.org is/are incomptent
Given that there wasn't yet a patch available when they were cracked, they in fact did discover the crack, and they in fact do have complete backups, on what basis do you conclude that the admin(s) "is/are incompetent"?
being overworked, underpaid, or anything else is not an excuse for having an unpatched machine
RFTA before critisizing their admin(s):
For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week. Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that week.
Is the lack of a patch an excuse not to be patched?
...The machine appears to have been
cracked in March 2003, but we only very recently discovered the crack.
[snip]
(For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and
a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week.
Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that
week.)
Given the nature of the compromise and the length of time the machine was
compromised, we have spent the last few weeks verifying the integrity of
the GNU source code stored on gnuftp. Most of this work is done, and the
remaining work is primarily for files that were uploaded since early 2003,
as our backups from that period could also theoretically be compromised.
(emphasis added). So in other words, they were cracked in the brief space between the exploit post and the patch, and didn't find it right away. Now, they are carefully vetting all their backups from that period to remove any possibility that a compromised backup could be redistributed.
So, to answer your poorly-researched questions:
They have reliable backups of everything, except for those files which, due to their upload time, cannot possibly be considered secure
They are systematically verifying the reliability of the files where there could be any doubt
Which part of this would you not consider a disaster recovery plan?
This court upheld the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act. BUT, that perpetual copyright coupled with the insane powers the DMCA grats a copyright holder may sway them...
Somebody hasn't been reading their court opinions very carefully: that ruling really has almost nothing to do with this case, and they do not consider it a perpetual copyright. All the opion said was that they were not willing to declare a longer, but still limited, copyright as going outside the constitutional meaning of a "limited duration" copyright. Besides, the Supreme Court's job is not to decide which laws they like or don't like: it's to decide whether laws are constitutional and being interpreted correctly. There's nothing in the constitution that says "corporations shouldn't be too powerful", so the issue of power is not going to sway them unless it's power applied in a way which violates constitutional rights or existing laws.
Since this has nothing to do with copyright duration, the verdict on copyright extension has absolutely no bearing on this case, which seems to be shaping up to be about privacy.
I've always thought that it would be interesting to have a system where people would choose some set number of ballot measures out of all of the measures up for that election, and vote only on those. There would be some sort of formal system set up to learn about those issues in depth (other than wildly biased propaganda campaigns by the two sides), and a way of enforcing basic understanding of the facts on both sides of the issue (a simple test of some kind, probably). There would be a couple of big advantages:
Voters would be much more informed about the things they vote on, so there would be less noise from random guessing polluting the vote.
People would have to decide what was most important to them, so their votes would count more in the areas that matter to them.
Sadly, this system is totally unworkable in our society: it requires relatively equal access to education, an enforced way of making sure everone had time to learn so that those who have to work all the time wouldn't be shafted, a system of making sure "boring" measures were voted on by enough people to matter, etc.
But it's an interesting thought experiment in how to try to avoid the trap of elitism while guaranteeing a certain level of informed decision-making in the voting process
Slashdot Mirror
It just depends on what kind of information you want. While I agree with your point that there is more useful information overall in a library, there is a whole class of question that tends to be much more answerable on the internet. Many highly detailed, highly focused questions that would be difficult or impossible to find answers to at a library are very easy to Google for. What does <obscure compiler error> mean? What are the bus routes in the city in France I will be visiting? I need a manual for <specific model of an appliance>. What's the local news today in <any largish US city>? Etc.
So while a library is far better for learning about a whole topic, and getting depth and breadth of knowledge, the internet makes a whole new class of questions very easy, instead of very hard, to answer quickly. It by no means replaces a library, but it complements it very nicely.
By "society" I was talking about the developed world... after all, that's what the parent meant, unless you know of any developing countries where everyone has access to cars and heart surgery
You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
No, of course not. That would be anti-competitive behavior abusing their monopoly status.
Oh wait...
But seriously, it's conceivable that they could fold the DRM into the API itself, so that, for example, the API wouldn't function without some token from the DRM component. Now you have to follow the rules to use their API... and of course you can't just spoof the token, becuase even if you figured out how, you'd be violating the DMCA.
It may sound paranoid, but on the other hand I can already hear all the marketing spin.
So has the internet had a chance to shape society? Not yet
You seem to be confusing "totally dominating" and "shaping". Did radio and telephone shape society? Mail still exists. Did TV shape society? Radio still exists.
The internet has not replaced everything, but it has significantly altered many aspects of our society. It has vastly changed the nature of communication (heard of email? IM? A few people use them). It has changed the way we get information (could you get instant answers to very detailed, very obscure questions before the internet? No, because as good as reference librarians are, they don't have the sheer scope of details that Google can provide), the way we shop (Amazon? Ebay?), the way buisiness provide information (How often do you call a chain store vs. going to their website for price information, or to get location/hours), the way we get around (Mapquest)... the list goes on and on. The fact that most of these things are household words is evidence that it has, in fact, shaped our society. Not everyone has email, but almost everyone knows what it is.
I have to laugh at your assertion that the automobile is "vital for life", but that the internet has not shaped society. The automobile allows people to get together more quickly, get what they want more quickly, and generally make the country smaller, and less fragmented into isolated pieces. What does that remind me of? Oh right: the Internet.
The internet is "just another form of media delivery" the same way automobiles are "just another form of people delivery".
So the bigwig at the company used to work for apple but the site says that his new appliance will only work with a WinXP machine?
What's that about?
Market share.
That's a fact.
It's also a statement. Just like his statement is a fact. It doesn't have to be a one-word example in order to be a fact: "The average US citizen has a higher quality of life than much of the rest of the world." Despite having no concrete examples, it's still true, and it's still a fact (and a statement--this is why people are commonly said to "state facts").
The people that make decisions are worried most about how much it's going to cost.
And you don't think it's conceivable that someone will decide that the cost of losing billions upon billions of dollars when the Windows+TCP/IP+internet connection machines are hacked isn't worth it?
They may not be very security-savvy, but they won't do a massive rollout that will leave them with a nationwide network of completely broken ATMs that divulge money at the drop of a hat. Insider addition of malicious code, while a pain, doesn't even begin to compare cost-wise with complete public access to machines with internet-enabled, free-for-download, no-knowledge-required exploits.
You can catch and arrest a malicious insider if the losses start adding up. You can't just arrest the entire US.
Seriously, I've been using Dvorak for several years, and except for about a month while I was learning, I've been doing it all on unmodified QWERTY keyboards.
The only time it's an annoyance is when playing a mostly mouse-controlled game, with a few keys you need to hit from time to time (DII for example). The rest of the time, it just prevents me from using vision as a crutch, so I'm not at any disadvantage when I switch to Dvorak on a public computer where I don't have the option of moving the keys around.
One thing I'm not sure of is why new searches in the search box from the original URL return a num=0 instead of whatever number you have set as the number of results you wish to see on google
The num=x is an offset; it tells the script how far into the results to index. So the correct way to display the first set of results is to start at result 0 (or skip 0 results, if you want to think of it that way). Num=20 would be the second page of results at 20 per page, since it tell Google which result to start with when displaying the page.
The AHRA doesn't actually say that it's ok (by which I mean legal/non-infringing) to get a mix tape from your cousin... it in fact specifically avoids saying that. What it actually says is that you can't be prosocuted under the act for that behavior, which isn't quite the same thing.
I think you may have meant to reply to the parent, since you critique both of "my" examples, when in fact those were quoted from the parent to show that the arguments were flawed. You'll notice I quoted the whole phrase, including the work "right" (because I don't agree that those are rights).
I agree 100% that those examples are stupid.
However, I don't agree with your examples entirely either. You seem to imply that property ownership has no impact on others, when in fact that's exactly what property ownership is for: to limit others' access to the property. You could just as easily say that having a right to use what you need is a "natural right" and that property ownership is an "artificial right" imposod by the government. It's all a matter of your perspective and definitions--you say that everyone should agree on your list of natural rights, but in fact that is not at all the case. Read Hobbes if you don't believe me.
I fail to see any fundamental distinction between a "right" to health care imposing a demand that doctors provide it (although really, that's not how health care works, since the doctor is still paid; it's actually a demand on society to pay for it with taxes and the like), and a "right" to property ownership, which imposes a demand on everyone else not to use that property.
I'm not saying I don't see any practical distinctions, I'm saying that this whole division of things into different fundamental kinds of rights is entirely arbitrary and subjective, not absolute as many claim. There are cultures and groups that have extremely limited, or non-existant, property rights; they would likely view our system as artifial, and say that everyone has a natural right to use things they need, which we are violating with artificially imposed property rights.
Anyone can of course have their own view point on what rights people should have, but to try to justify them with some made up absolutes is pointless, since there aren't any. There are only places of greater and lesser common agreement.
The problem is that every granted right that is given to one person requires the government to attempt to deprive another person of their natural rights.
This seems to be the center of your entire argument, but it's totally unjustifiable. It makes the fundamentally flawed assumption that "natural rights" and "granted rights" are opposed in some way, but there are countless counter-examples. What natural right does your "right to a single national language" take away? Some imaginary natural right to have other people understand you when you speak your language of choice? What about the "right not to compete agaings foreign labor"? Do you think we have a natural right to have other people hire us if we do the best job?
Without even getting into the fact that you give a list of natural rights that not everyone would agree on, your argument is deeply flawed. Go read some more philosophy of the ideas of rights, then try again.
Or do you just notice it more because of HGTG?
A quick scan of The Hunting of the Snark yields up most of the numbers from 1-10, 17, 40, 992, and 1000. If you did the same with his other works, would there really be an unusually high incidence of 42?
Also, it's worth noting that, having written Alice in Wonderland, the phrase "Rule 42" was no doubt bouncing around in memory. Given the desire to make up an arbitrary rule again, it seems very likely that he would, either consciously or unconsciously, use the same number again, since the usage is so similar. If he had writted 37 the first time, he likely would have done so again.
Maybe you are right, and he really liked 42, but maybe this is just like so many coincidences in the world: manufactured by our bias in noticing and remembering things.
Seriously, this isn't the equivalent of popping a zit. A much better parallel would be an armed group, going around and popping the zits of everyone they encountered while holding them at gun/knife point.
It's a great reference. I taught myself quite a bit of Python from scratch using only that "book". Very clear, and very comprehensive. The fact that it's free, and downloadable in a variety of forms, just makes it even better.
In response to all the current and future posts talking about how this is too perfect to be accidental: this is a manufactured coincidence, which is not really coincidental at all.
At any given moment, there are many, many people working on a given problem. There are surely advances in science and engineering that could be applied to power grid management on a more or less continuous basis. When do we care? Right after a major failure of the power grid. So a story like this only rises to the top when there's something to interest the average person, creating these "amazing" coincidences.
Go back to your basements and keep working on that bigger and better tin foil hat.
Because they've endgendered a "computing" culture where users are ... ignorant about the need for patching
Yeah, curse those bastards for making computers that are usable by people other than us techno-elite snobs.
Many people simply have other things they care about more than patching their computer. If 95% of people used *NIX, would it have a reputation for being mostly secure? No, because people who don't care would still be the vast majority. Most people should know the importance of basic car maintenence: checking oil, tire pressure, anti-freeze, etc. Many, many people don't bother to do so. When they have problems, is it Ford's fault?
Or that if you aren't, you neve work in a security field.
Yeah, you get hit with a virus and the network slows down for a while, but the problem is solved for the future.
For those who actually think that this is a good idea:
My only conclusion is that there are some hypocrites that post here
No argument there... but comparing a root due to a just-published exploit to comments about Windows compromises--most of which (at least what's posted here) tend to be about old vulnerabilities that people didn't bother to patch, is (IMO) not the best way to make that point.
But I'm all for fewer hypocrites and less ignorance on Slashdot :)
So maybe RTFA isn't the right acronym: how about "WUYHAIBSOATTM" (Wait Until You Have Actual Information Before Shooting Off At The Mouth).
Posting that things like this are hypocritical, and/or that the admin is an idiot, is stupid regardless of whether or not the statement was available yet. I don't see how leaping to unjustified conclusions is defendable regardless of whether it's due to inavailability of actual facts, or just laziness.
Ignorance is ignorance, and wild, ignorant speculation doesn't help any issue.
Sure, this incident demonstrates that the person(s) in charge of the maintenance of ftp.gnu.org is/are incomptent
Given that there wasn't yet a patch available when they were cracked, they in fact did discover the crack, and they in fact do have complete backups, on what basis do you conclude that the admin(s) "is/are incompetent"?
being overworked, underpaid, or anything else is not an excuse for having an unpatched machine
RFTA before critisizing their admin(s):
Is the lack of a patch an excuse not to be patched?
[snip]
(For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week. Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that week.)
Given the nature of the compromise and the length of time the machine was compromised, we have spent the last few weeks verifying the integrity of the GNU source code stored on gnuftp. Most of this work is done, and the remaining work is primarily for files that were uploaded since early 2003, as our backups from that period could also theoretically be compromised.
(emphasis added). So in other words, they were cracked in the brief space between the exploit post and the patch, and didn't find it right away. Now, they are carefully vetting all their backups from that period to remove any possibility that a compromised backup could be redistributed.
So, to answer your poorly-researched questions:
Which part of this would you not consider a disaster recovery plan?
This court upheld the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act. BUT, that perpetual copyright coupled with the insane powers the DMCA grats a copyright holder may sway them...
Somebody hasn't been reading their court opinions very carefully: that ruling really has almost nothing to do with this case, and they do not consider it a perpetual copyright. All the opion said was that they were not willing to declare a longer, but still limited, copyright as going outside the constitutional meaning of a "limited duration" copyright. Besides, the Supreme Court's job is not to decide which laws they like or don't like: it's to decide whether laws are constitutional and being interpreted correctly. There's nothing in the constitution that says "corporations shouldn't be too powerful", so the issue of power is not going to sway them unless it's power applied in a way which violates constitutional rights or existing laws.
Since this has nothing to do with copyright duration, the verdict on copyright extension has absolutely no bearing on this case, which seems to be shaping up to be about privacy.
I've always thought that it would be interesting to have a system where people would choose some set number of ballot measures out of all of the measures up for that election, and vote only on those. There would be some sort of formal system set up to learn about those issues in depth (other than wildly biased propaganda campaigns by the two sides), and a way of enforcing basic understanding of the facts on both sides of the issue (a simple test of some kind, probably). There would be a couple of big advantages:
Sadly, this system is totally unworkable in our society: it requires relatively equal access to education, an enforced way of making sure everone had time to learn so that those who have to work all the time wouldn't be shafted, a system of making sure "boring" measures were voted on by enough people to matter, etc.
But it's an interesting thought experiment in how to try to avoid the trap of elitism while guaranteeing a certain level of informed decision-making in the voting process