I just found the above text at the bottom of all/. pages. Read that again: all pages. Taking all the posts into account, that means there are probably limitless violations right on this site. In fact, I have to admit that this comment uses no technology from Media Rights Technologies to encrypt it. Perhaps I should have posted as an AC.
If bad network traffic couldn't be used to attack computers, no one would bother buying a firewall.
Sounds like a good reason to implement the Evil Bit for all IP traffic from now on. (Of course, if you own stock in a firewall distributor or other security company, better diversify before they implement this RFC.)
That's it: you've hit upon an even better solution right in your proposal. The key to maintaining relationships in space is... this inanimate carbon rod!
It's clear that they didn't bother to find the facts before filing these gag requests. That's entirely consistent with everything we've come to expect from SCO from the very earliest days of the IBM suit. There is no reasoning behind the things that SCO says and does, only gut reaction, and it's amazing how many pundits and lawyers they duped into helping them tilt at their windmills. They were losing market share, and therefore money, to a free OS, and 'felt' cheated, 'felt' that Linux was an illegal derivative of UNIX. So they assumed their 'feelings' would eventually hold up in court. They haven't, and they won't. They 'felt' people were conspiring against them - Groklaw, Linus, the FSF - but this was all a paranoid delusion, just like the delusions upon which the original lawsuit was based. There has been no reason, no research, and no reality to anything that they've alleged. They show woeful ignorance of how copyright licensing works, about how their opponents operate, and even about the contents of their own contracts (like the Novell asset purchase agreement that could blow up in their faces any day now).
I remember when the original suit was filed and first made news, knowing nothing about how SCO operated and guessing that IBM was in big trouble, and Linux users (myself included) would end up having to fork from a pre-tainted version of the kernel, or do some other such drastic thing. I wanted details - the whole OS, or just the kernel? Or another part? Which code was stolen? Then the interviews came, and Darl showed that he didn't even understand the difference between Linux (the kernel) and 'Linux' (the GNU-based OS). This is a company that has a keen sense of smell for money, but not much sense for anything else.
I laughed at this. But then I remembered: sometimes it seems that Red Hat is even worse. I'm not sure what their installer is like these days, bt a couple years ago it was as PowerPoint-esque as a Windows 98 or XP installer.
They could, and you're right that China could change their minds and opt for the MS Office formats. (That the leader of China wanted to meet Bill Gates on his visit to the US is worth noting.) But there are a couple problems. One, MS's office formats can't easily be implemented by third parties, particularly if those third parties want to remain independent of Microsoft (and not licensees). Second, China already has a non-MS office format, so they were thinking of diverging from Microsoft's lock-in model long before now.
Playing the numbers game, if a country as large as China were to adopt ODF (via harmonizing with it), it's game over, and ODF wins. That wouldn't spell the end for Microsoft's XML standard, but it would be a major setback, globally speaking. I wish him luck.
Government announces plan to implement a voting system.
Government devises detailed plan for a system, working with experts in field.
Government runs pre-launch plan for rigorous testing of system reliability. Experts invited to oversee tests.
System implemented, possibly with modifications based upon lessons learned in testing.
How things work in the United States:
Government announces plan to implement a voting system.
Industry lobbyists head to Washington. Meet with lawmakers, attempting to steer business toward their sponsors.
Dinners held, bribes exchanged.
Select lawmakers refuse to give in to lobbyists, are denied funding for upcoming campaigns, lose next election. Most capitulate, are re-elected.
Revised bill reintroduced. Spending increased by a factor of 10.
Experts review bill, criticize flaws, are ignored. Who needs 'em?
Bill to implement system passes. Includes provision allowing NSA to nuke a US city without prior oversight if it finds suspicious activity in said city. Pre-absolves president of guilt for said annihilation. Also includes subsidy of corn processing industry in midwest, tax breaks for plastics industry executives. Last-minute rider added to provide additional funding for superhighway from Mexico to Kansas (now standard in all bills), and provide funding for evangelical law school that advocates a new wars to prevent the coming of the Antichrist.
President signs bill in televised ceremony. Pen used to sign bill is framed.
System implemented with no modifications. Massive failures nationwide.
Experts point out that they predicted failures, are ignored again. Who needs 'em? Industry spokespersons call experts 'communists trying to undermine the free market,' deny there are any problems. Evening news ignores story, focuses on a recent celebrity divorce.
Lawmakers vow to raise new spending bill to correct problems. Lobbyists return to Washington...
Perhaps the answer is a critical mass barrage of open data, targeting document formats specifically. Call it 'Send an OpenDocument Day'. Imagine if tens of thousands of people agreed to send ODF files to friends and colleagues via e-mail, explaining that OOo is required to open the attachments. Now that would be a conversation starter.
Therein is the reasoning that still eludes Sony, even after this event and the rootkit. When the security feature is designed to guard against the customers, and the real security threat can get around the security feature anyway, then we're all wasting time and money. Sony is probably still looking at this as a PR issue, rather than as a bad security and technology decision.
Awaiting arrival of clue... error: clue still absent.
Good point. I'd say they're not cut and dry. They are definitely sci-fi, but there's a clear overlap for all three. And in some might even say bits of 2001 are documentaries.
I quite enjoy both Star Wars and Firefly/Serenity, but in the strictest sense Star Wars is not science fiction. Where's the science? It's not really about humanity and where it's headed, which is usually the theme of sci-fi, and instead replays a mythic story structure with laser swords and laser guns. Very enjoyable, yes, but it's more rightly called a 'space opera', or a fantasy story. Not that these classifications should affect our enjoyment of the film.
Everything else on the top ten in this list are real sci-fi films (Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, Alien, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Back to the Future). All pretty good ones, IMHO. But I agree with the number one ranking of Serenity. I'd be inclined to put 2001 up higher.
I'd consider paying for and downloading DRM-free music, but it sounds pretty risky to me. I know, CDs have no DRM, but we're talking about unprotected digital files here. I think I'm going to need a considerable downpayment to offset the risks, say in the order of a few million US dollars. Anyone else feel they need a downpayment before risking a download? Sounds like Apple's wallet's open.
Come ot think of it, Slashdot explains redundant on the FAQ: Redundant posts are ones which add no new information, but instead take up space with repeating information either in the Slashdot post, the attached links, or lots of previous comments. There were no previous comments on this subject in this post, its links or previous comments, so it was not redundant. Again, if a mod's opinion was that the comment sucked, 'Overrated' would be a valid alternative.
No, by definition it wouldn't, even if it were 'wheels are round'. That's what the 'overrated' mod is for, not what the 'redundant' mod is for. We'd probably disagree on whether the above comment is overrated, but it certainly isn't redundant.
You're quite right, and I've popped Konqueror open on Gnome before. But it doesn't feel as nicely integrated in my experience. So while it's available to anyone with Qt, it's also kept me on KDE.
Wow, that's powerful advice. Apple is going to jump on this, and fast. I'm pressing refresh on Slashdot so I can be the first to read the next TFA linking to the Apple press release. I can see it now: Despite much work on our iPhone during the past five years, including Mac OS re-engineering and hardware design efforts, and despite notable interest on the part of the public, and despite our investments in marketing the product, and in licensing the iPhone's innovative multi-touch interface, and despite and our legally binding exclusive contract with AT&T Wireless, not to mention our legal agreements with Cisco, and despite... oh why go on? Suffice to say we're canning it.
I'm shocked. Deibold generally tries very hard to avoid the appearance of bias or impropriety, and they offer quality e-voting products that they strive to improve in response to much-appreciated constructive criticism from the community. Whenever they fix an issue with their products, like the closed-source software or the easily-copied security key, they are quick to get the updates out and always thank the community for helping them to improve their products. Their recent suit against Massachusetts has given them a serious PR boost with other states. So yes, their response to this move really surprises me.
they'll need to smooth out the theme a bit, and simplify
Hear hear! I've been using KDE for years, and every once in a while I experiment with Gnome. I like it, but the lack of some utility (quick and simple file operations across SFTP / SMB / local filesystems using Konqueror springs immediately to mind here) always sends me back to KDE. But I will give Gnome some credit: their desktop looks extremely nice, and seems particularly suited to new users. Yes, I can't stand the way Nautilus deals with remote filesystems compared to the simple address bar in Konqueror, but Gnome's default themes are smooth and uncluttered. I feel much more comfortable looking at a default Gnome desktop than a KDE one.
The Dolphin screenshot in TFA still looks cluttered to me, like a window with too many panes and toolbars to worry about. A smoother default theme could really remedy that.
When others leech your bandwidth you have to do this sort of thing, unfortunately. Whether you choose a joke like this, or Goatse, or a simple warning is really up to you. It's your image, after all.
I have a lot of reasonably large JPEG images on my site (800x600), and a number of MySpace users started to incorporate them directly into their own sites without having the decency to host them themselves. This is funny, because my CC license would have allowed most of them to use the images without even asking me, and the only real problem was that these JPEGs used a lot of bandwidth because visitors to countless MySpace pages were downloading them constantly. I didn't realize any of this until my site went down due to a bandwidth quota, after which I set up a rule to hand out an alternative image. A dose of Goatse would have been completely justified (and some of my friends were pushing for it), but I decided to make a small, low-quality JPEG containing information about what bandwidth leeching is and why it's rude. (Some people haven't noticed it yet, four months later.)
I've watched plenty of Colbert and other Viacom clips on YouTube, but I think it would still be valuable without them. I frequently view non-Viacom stuff, so saying that YouTube is dependent upon Viacom is an overstatement.
If you've got a bad ISP you should move to a new one who doesn't offend Internet society so badly. That's the free market.
You seem to have reached into your libertarian box for some boilerplate text, found something that doesn't apply well to this article and tossed it into a comment. Congratulations. While I'd agree that the markets are amazing things, they are not as infallible as some might delude themselves to believe. Most free market arguments break down with very little scrutiny, as yours does. How well regulation or deregulation works really depends on the industry and the circumstances.
In this case the market for Internet service isn't free. In most areas there is little competition, often only one broadband choice. Of course I'm talking about the market in the United States, where a lack of competition has prevented the sorts of better ISP services that exist in other countries - like in Great Britain, where I have the choice of a few in my area. Even where there is some limited competition in the US, a problem like the one the poster describes requires a technically savvy person to identify it, so the average person won't migrate to a second ISP even if there is one, and given the lack of competition it is likely enough that any alternative ISP will behave in the same way. Unfortunately regulation is the only thing that will prevent this.
I know what you're going to say. Regulation is wrong, and will stifle the industry. Well, other countries regulate their ISPs successfully, yet still have better ones than the US does, as well as better coverage. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
I just found the above text at the bottom of all /. pages. Read that again: all pages. Taking all the posts into account, that means there are probably limitless violations right on this site. In fact, I have to admit that this comment uses no technology from Media Rights Technologies to encrypt it. Perhaps I should have posted as an AC.
Sounds like a good reason to implement the Evil Bit for all IP traffic from now on. (Of course, if you own stock in a firewall distributor or other security company, better diversify before they implement this RFC.)
That's it: you've hit upon an even better solution right in your proposal. The key to maintaining relationships in space is ... this inanimate carbon rod!
It's clear that they didn't bother to find the facts before filing these gag requests. That's entirely consistent with everything we've come to expect from SCO from the very earliest days of the IBM suit. There is no reasoning behind the things that SCO says and does, only gut reaction, and it's amazing how many pundits and lawyers they duped into helping them tilt at their windmills. They were losing market share, and therefore money, to a free OS, and 'felt' cheated, 'felt' that Linux was an illegal derivative of UNIX. So they assumed their 'feelings' would eventually hold up in court. They haven't, and they won't. They 'felt' people were conspiring against them - Groklaw, Linus, the FSF - but this was all a paranoid delusion, just like the delusions upon which the original lawsuit was based. There has been no reason, no research, and no reality to anything that they've alleged. They show woeful ignorance of how copyright licensing works, about how their opponents operate, and even about the contents of their own contracts (like the Novell asset purchase agreement that could blow up in their faces any day now).
I remember when the original suit was filed and first made news, knowing nothing about how SCO operated and guessing that IBM was in big trouble, and Linux users (myself included) would end up having to fork from a pre-tainted version of the kernel, or do some other such drastic thing. I wanted details - the whole OS, or just the kernel? Or another part? Which code was stolen? Then the interviews came, and Darl showed that he didn't even understand the difference between Linux (the kernel) and 'Linux' (the GNU-based OS). This is a company that has a keen sense of smell for money, but not much sense for anything else.
I laughed at this. But then I remembered: sometimes it seems that Red Hat is even worse. I'm not sure what their installer is like these days, bt a couple years ago it was as PowerPoint-esque as a Windows 98 or XP installer.
They could, and you're right that China could change their minds and opt for the MS Office formats. (That the leader of China wanted to meet Bill Gates on his visit to the US is worth noting.) But there are a couple problems. One, MS's office formats can't easily be implemented by third parties, particularly if those third parties want to remain independent of Microsoft (and not licensees). Second, China already has a non-MS office format, so they were thinking of diverging from Microsoft's lock-in model long before now.
Playing the numbers game, if a country as large as China were to adopt ODF (via harmonizing with it), it's game over, and ODF wins. That wouldn't spell the end for Microsoft's XML standard, but it would be a major setback, globally speaking. I wish him luck.
This makes patent trolling far easier. It "solves" the patent problem by making any legal recourse impossible. I need to get elected dictator.
How things work outside the United States:
How things work in the United States:
Perhaps the answer is a critical mass barrage of open data, targeting document formats specifically. Call it 'Send an OpenDocument Day'. Imagine if tens of thousands of people agreed to send ODF files to friends and colleagues via e-mail, explaining that OOo is required to open the attachments. Now that would be a conversation starter.
Therein is the reasoning that still eludes Sony, even after this event and the rootkit. When the security feature is designed to guard against the customers, and the real security threat can get around the security feature anyway, then we're all wasting time and money. Sony is probably still looking at this as a PR issue, rather than as a bad security and technology decision.
Awaiting arrival of clue ... error: clue still absent.
Good point. I'd say they're not cut and dry. They are definitely sci-fi, but there's a clear overlap for all three. And in some might even say bits of 2001 are documentaries.
I quite enjoy both Star Wars and Firefly/Serenity, but in the strictest sense Star Wars is not science fiction. Where's the science? It's not really about humanity and where it's headed, which is usually the theme of sci-fi, and instead replays a mythic story structure with laser swords and laser guns. Very enjoyable, yes, but it's more rightly called a 'space opera', or a fantasy story. Not that these classifications should affect our enjoyment of the film.
Everything else on the top ten in this list are real sci-fi films (Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, Alien, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Back to the Future). All pretty good ones, IMHO. But I agree with the number one ranking of Serenity. I'd be inclined to put 2001 up higher.
I'd consider paying for and downloading DRM-free music, but it sounds pretty risky to me. I know, CDs have no DRM, but we're talking about unprotected digital files here. I think I'm going to need a considerable downpayment to offset the risks, say in the order of a few million US dollars. Anyone else feel they need a downpayment before risking a download? Sounds like Apple's wallet's open.
Come ot think of it, Slashdot explains redundant on the FAQ: Redundant posts are ones which add no new information, but instead take up space with repeating information either in the Slashdot post, the attached links, or lots of previous comments. There were no previous comments on this subject in this post, its links or previous comments, so it was not redundant. Again, if a mod's opinion was that the comment sucked, 'Overrated' would be a valid alternative.
By the definition of redundant. In English. All of ours.
No, by definition it wouldn't, even if it were 'wheels are round'. That's what the 'overrated' mod is for, not what the 'redundant' mod is for. We'd probably disagree on whether the above comment is overrated, but it certainly isn't redundant.
Parent is far from 'redundant' - I see no other previous comments along this line. Can a competent modder please mod up?
You're quite right, and I've popped Konqueror open on Gnome before. But it doesn't feel as nicely integrated in my experience. So while it's available to anyone with Qt, it's also kept me on KDE.
Wow, that's powerful advice. Apple is going to jump on this, and fast. I'm pressing refresh on Slashdot so I can be the first to read the next TFA linking to the Apple press release. I can see it now: Despite much work on our iPhone during the past five years, including Mac OS re-engineering and hardware design efforts, and despite notable interest on the part of the public, and despite our investments in marketing the product, and in licensing the iPhone's innovative multi-touch interface, and despite and our legally binding exclusive contract with AT&T Wireless, not to mention our legal agreements with Cisco, and despite ... oh why go on? Suffice to say we're canning it.
I'm shocked. Deibold generally tries very hard to avoid the appearance of bias or impropriety, and they offer quality e-voting products that they strive to improve in response to much-appreciated constructive criticism from the community. Whenever they fix an issue with their products, like the closed-source software or the easily-copied security key, they are quick to get the updates out and always thank the community for helping them to improve their products. Their recent suit against Massachusetts has given them a serious PR boost with other states. So yes, their response to this move really surprises me.
(Sorry if your sarcasm gland is asploding.)
Hear hear! I've been using KDE for years, and every once in a while I experiment with Gnome. I like it, but the lack of some utility (quick and simple file operations across SFTP / SMB / local filesystems using Konqueror springs immediately to mind here) always sends me back to KDE. But I will give Gnome some credit: their desktop looks extremely nice, and seems particularly suited to new users. Yes, I can't stand the way Nautilus deals with remote filesystems compared to the simple address bar in Konqueror, but Gnome's default themes are smooth and uncluttered. I feel much more comfortable looking at a default Gnome desktop than a KDE one.
The Dolphin screenshot in TFA still looks cluttered to me, like a window with too many panes and toolbars to worry about. A smoother default theme could really remedy that.
When others leech your bandwidth you have to do this sort of thing, unfortunately. Whether you choose a joke like this, or Goatse, or a simple warning is really up to you. It's your image, after all.
I have a lot of reasonably large JPEG images on my site (800x600), and a number of MySpace users started to incorporate them directly into their own sites without having the decency to host them themselves. This is funny, because my CC license would have allowed most of them to use the images without even asking me, and the only real problem was that these JPEGs used a lot of bandwidth because visitors to countless MySpace pages were downloading them constantly. I didn't realize any of this until my site went down due to a bandwidth quota, after which I set up a rule to hand out an alternative image. A dose of Goatse would have been completely justified (and some of my friends were pushing for it), but I decided to make a small, low-quality JPEG containing information about what bandwidth leeching is and why it's rude. (Some people haven't noticed it yet, four months later.)
I've watched plenty of Colbert and other Viacom clips on YouTube, but I think it would still be valuable without them. I frequently view non-Viacom stuff, so saying that YouTube is dependent upon Viacom is an overstatement.
You seem to have reached into your libertarian box for some boilerplate text, found something that doesn't apply well to this article and tossed it into a comment. Congratulations. While I'd agree that the markets are amazing things, they are not as infallible as some might delude themselves to believe. Most free market arguments break down with very little scrutiny, as yours does. How well regulation or deregulation works really depends on the industry and the circumstances.
In this case the market for Internet service isn't free. In most areas there is little competition, often only one broadband choice. Of course I'm talking about the market in the United States, where a lack of competition has prevented the sorts of better ISP services that exist in other countries - like in Great Britain, where I have the choice of a few in my area. Even where there is some limited competition in the US, a problem like the one the poster describes requires a technically savvy person to identify it, so the average person won't migrate to a second ISP even if there is one, and given the lack of competition it is likely enough that any alternative ISP will behave in the same way. Unfortunately regulation is the only thing that will prevent this.
I know what you're going to say. Regulation is wrong, and will stifle the industry. Well, other countries regulate their ISPs successfully, yet still have better ones than the US does, as well as better coverage. Go figure.