There is *already* a W3C replacement for the proprietary Flash format: Javascript + DOM + SVG
One minor problem, flash is a very open format. There's no reason to replace it with something open, it already is. I would suggest that people's time is better spent coming up with an open source version of the flash content creator.
Yes. Contrary to the Reg's article, I didn't "sign it over to Microsoft", I simply paid their outstanding invoice.
As I explained it to reporters at the time, if I went and made your mortgage payment I wouldn't own your house.
This particular case seems to be different than the passport.com case, though. It looks like the.co.uk domains get tossed back in the pool quicker, and the person actually did buy the domain. Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...
If this is the only way that students are tracked, it's possible to skip a class, or a day, undetected. Just give your tag to someone else. Unless it's implanted in your skin, you have nothing to worry about. Maybe I'm nuts, but I personally would have made a business out of carrying other folks tags around had this happened at my school.
84 per cent of CIOs in a recent survey said it hasn't affected their plans to implement Linux.
I'm still concerned that 16% of cios were gullible enough to fall for this, or at least be worried about it. That's probably enough to warrant a class-action suit by companies like mine against SCO after they lose big to IBM and RH.
What you missed is my sarcasm. The GPL doesn't need to be "tested" anymore than standard copyright law needs to be "tested".
The original authors maintain copyright on the works, without the GPL nobody else has *any* right to copy/distribute that work. Therefore, there's no need to test the GPL.
As I've said in the past, SCO had better hope to God that the GPL is valid, otherwise they have no legitimate way to distribute GPL'd software (Linux, Samba, et al) and are guilty of infringement, statutory damages of $150K/incident.
Lineo was sued last year by MontaVista, a maker of software for specialized computers used in consumer and industrial applications that is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. The MontaVista executives said they had been notified that software their programmers had written and licensed under the GNU General Public License - the license that governs companies that distribute Linux software - had appeared, with copyrights removed, in Lineo's software. The license, which allows for the free distribution of software, still requires that the copyright notices be retained.
For the folks whose misunderstanding of copyright law makes them make dumb statements like "the gpl hasn't been tested in court!", well, it's your lucky day. It's been "tested", and it won.
But most of us already knew that, since it's really basic copyright law...
First, I know about the little black X in Konqueror. They had to put it there because it doesn't work otherwise.
I also know about pasting into the background on a mozilla page. Do it all the time.
What you're missing is that I'm giving the URL example. Forget that it's the web browser, imagine that I want to paste over text in some other place, say the search box in xpdf.
It's *great* that some application designers have decided to create good work arounds for this bug. But that doesn't help me everywhere.
Say what you want, but when I'm on Mac and Windows (and thankfully most Linux apps now) I can use the ctrl-c and ctrl-v to accomplish this the right way. I'm glad that the quick way exists for when it does work, but by itself it's not enough. That the designers of Mozilla and Konqueror have written workarounds for this doesn't invalidate my point, it proves it.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down.
Try this with your "quick" Linux way of doing it. Grab a URL into your clip board. Now, in your web browser, replace the URL in the address bar with the one you just copied. Not so quick now, eh?
Most software designers realize that the act of highlighting text may not be indicative of a will to copy that piece of text. I might just want to delete it, or paste something in its place. It is impossible to paste over in the standard X way of doing it. Thankfully, most modern apps keep a separate clipboard so that I can use the keys, too. But if I'm stuck with a lame system that automatically copies my text to the clipboard when I highlight it, I'm screwed.
A lot of what I read in this is, not surprisingly, the same sort of goofy stuff that I read about people trying to come to Linux from Windows. Rather than think about why something works the way it does, they automatically assume it's stupid because it's not exactly the way they've always done it.
Windows users think Macs are lame because they have only one mouse button. Unix users think both are lame because they don't have three buttons. And yet, oddly, people are able to accomplish tasks on all three.
And I hate to say it, but surely there's a free irc client for Windows. Hell, even Microsoft used to have one (comic chat) that passed as a pretty good irc client (you could disable the comic characters).
I came up with this idea as a rocket propulsion many years ago while pondering the best way to get a rocket up. Go to Huntsville, AL sometime and walk along the Saturn V that's laying down there, and keep in mind that most of the fuel is simply lifting other fuel. By the time you get to the end of it, and realize that the tiny capsule is the payload, you know there's gotta be a better way. Keeping the bulk of the propulsion system ground based would allow you to fly something little bigger than a capsule, and save big time on fuel, labor, and design costs. It makes sense to do it with airplanes, too.
The only downside is that there's not much room between powering the craft and shooting it down:)
When people like Steve Hardigree have done orders of magnitude more damage, are just as easy to find, and have all the evidence ever needed for such an indictment stored at spamhaus.org? It doesn't make sense. Even if you can't get a conviction, which seems unlikely, wouldn't it put a serious dent in the spam problem if some of these worthless spammers were handed an indictment of this size?
I just called Blake Stowell 5 minutes ago and asked. According to him, HP is still a sponsor, but they asked that their name be removed from the web site.
the ability to "automatically forward or send email" without the user actually CLICKING SEND is a flaw in Outlook.
I agree with you that the article is weak in some regards, but we can expand "executable power" to "things only the user should do"
You are absolutely right! I am now petitioning Linus to modify Linux so that only root can make an outbound connection to port 25 on another server. That way, we can make sure that only the user can send email.
Moronic. Programs have no problem sending email on Linux, Unix, or any other OS.
The singular flaw of Outlook/OE, and it's a big one, is that it allows the user to easily execute a program simply by viewing an attachment.
There have also been various bugs, most fixed, that will run executable code simply by having the user view/preview a message, but I believe most of those have been fixed, and most nasty viruses (i.e. Melissa, etc.) have relied on social engineering to get the user to open an attachment.
The idea that when these same users come to Linux they'll all join LUG's and be educated is hilariously stupid.
also... I wanted to mention that the viruses may be more clever than just destroying files. You're totally right that for a desktop computer your home directory is maybe "just as important" but I don't like the idea of someone setting up a backdoor on my computer to distribute kiddie porn.;)
And what does that have to do with elevated privileges?
While I agree with the gist of his article, there are a couple of obvious problems:
Further, due to the strong community around Linux, new users will receive education and encouragement in areas such as email security that are currently lacking in the Windows world
That's unlikely. As Linux takes over corporate desktops, the users are not going to be joining LUG's or mailing lists. This has been mostly true up to this point, but mass acceptance will change the demographic of the user community to be more like that of Windows.
Further, due to the strong separation between normal users and the privileged root user, our Linux user would have to be running as root to really do any damage to the system. He could damage his/home directory, but that's about it.
It's mind-boggling that this stupid line of reasoning is still used. First, my home directory is the part of the system that I'm most concerned about protecting. Holy shit! That's where my files are. The rest of the OS can be downloaded off the internet or from any CD that I have. But what about the files that I have created? A program destroying my home directory is a far larger problem than a program that mucks up executables or something.
Second, the modern worm/virus on Windows doesn't need any elevated privileges. The whole point is to spread, and there is absolutely nothing about that process that needs or uses any elevated privileges. Being root is not terribly relevant for the modern worm.
With all the lost money and productivity over the last decade caused by countless Microsoft-borne viruses and worms, you'd think the company could have changed its procedures in this area, but no.
And it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference for the most destructive email worms. Is the author from another planet? I have to wonder.
Funny you should say that. If you RTFA you would have seen that one of the individuals on the mailing list had a lawyer send a number of increasly nasty letters to Linksys. Linksys ignored him to begin with and then later replied saying "we will look into it." That was in July.
I did RTFA, and it says nothing of the like. I just went back and reread it, and nothing has been added since last time. Perhaps you can point it out to me?
I will say, though, that I don't believe the story, anyway. Had the lawyer sent a proper letter (i.e. "You are violating this particular copyright held by my client, fix the problem now or face statutory damages of $150K/incident") Linksys would have responded after the first one and they would have responded correctly.
I'm afraid that we in the open source world are setting a bad precedent for letting companies like Linksys run roughshod over our copyrights, knowing that they'll get some Mickey Mouse response from some slashdotters, and maybe a vaguely threatening email. Reading the part in there about the Samba team and their "concerns" just bolsters my concerns.
the fact that several attempts at resolution were made before filing suit will work in our favour.
Yeah, "several attempts" meaning "someone sent an email to the public address (opensource@linksys.com or whatever) from the web site". In no way can that be construed as a good-faith effort to resolve the matter. It's unbelievably amateurish to even suggest it.
One of the copyright owners needs to have a lawyer draft a simple letter to them which will be sent by certified mail to the president of the company. While mentioning the GPL is nice, it needs to point out that this is a *copyright violation* (the only thing that's going to get the legal team's attention) and mention the statutory damages ($150K/incident, how much does a router cost again?). It then needs to outline the simple steps needed to remedy the situation, i.e. post the source code or force an update on every single unit ever sold that removes the copyrighted material.
If you think an email from some Alan Cox guy to "opensource@linksys.com" is going to get their attention or make our side look better in court, you're dreaming.
Remember, not harrassment, simply call and let them know that you don't appreciate their efforts. Please read the CNN interview above to see what kind of twits we're dealing with here.
Slashdot Mirror
There is *already* a W3C replacement for the proprietary Flash format: Javascript + DOM + SVG
One minor problem, flash is a very open format. There's no reason to replace it with something open, it already is. I would suggest that people's time is better spent coming up with an open source version of the flash content creator.
They got their name in newspapers and news web sites around the country. $7000 was a bargain for that kind of press.
Yes. Contrary to the Reg's article, I didn't "sign it over to Microsoft", I simply paid their outstanding invoice.
.co.uk domains get tossed back in the pool quicker, and the person actually did buy the domain. Part of the story is that they were trying to contact Microsoft to transfer it back to them and Microsoft wouldn't pay attention. It's difficult to be a good samaritan some days...
As I explained it to reporters at the time, if I went and made your mortgage payment I wouldn't own your house.
This particular case seems to be different than the passport.com case, though. It looks like the
Right up until someone brings a laptop in that's infected. Well-written secure code is the only real way to do it. You know that Bill...
IBM may well buy SCO, but they'll probably wait until after the suit when the market cap is $50 or so, rather than now when it's $250M.
Michael
If this is the only way that students are tracked, it's possible to skip a class, or a day, undetected. Just give your tag to someone else. Unless it's implanted in your skin, you have nothing to worry about. Maybe I'm nuts, but I personally would have made a business out of carrying other folks tags around had this happened at my school.
Is it true that the AMD K9 will be man's best friend?
Might as well start the lame jokes now, I'm guessing the engineers at AMD saw that coming long ago, too.
84 per cent of CIOs in a recent survey said it hasn't affected their plans to implement Linux.
I'm still concerned that 16% of cios were gullible enough to fall for this, or at least be worried about it. That's probably enough to warrant a class-action suit by companies like mine against SCO after they lose big to IBM and RH.
What you missed is my sarcasm. The GPL doesn't need to be "tested" anymore than standard copyright law needs to be "tested".
The original authors maintain copyright on the works, without the GPL nobody else has *any* right to copy/distribute that work. Therefore, there's no need to test the GPL.
As I've said in the past, SCO had better hope to God that the GPL is valid, otherwise they have no legitimate way to distribute GPL'd software (Linux, Samba, et al) and are guilty of infringement, statutory damages of $150K/incident.
Lineo was sued last year by MontaVista, a maker of software for specialized computers used in consumer and industrial applications that is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. The MontaVista executives said they had been notified that software their programmers had written and licensed under the GNU General Public License - the license that governs companies that distribute Linux software - had appeared, with copyrights removed, in Lineo's software. The license, which allows for the free distribution of software, still requires that the copyright notices be retained.
For the folks whose misunderstanding of copyright law makes them make dumb statements like "the gpl hasn't been tested in court!", well, it's your lucky day. It's been "tested", and it won.
But most of us already knew that, since it's really basic copyright law...
And it's hilarious.
First, I know about the little black X in Konqueror. They had to put it there because it doesn't work otherwise.
I also know about pasting into the background on a mozilla page. Do it all the time.
What you're missing is that I'm giving the URL example. Forget that it's the web browser, imagine that I want to paste over text in some other place, say the search box in xpdf.
It's *great* that some application designers have decided to create good work arounds for this bug. But that doesn't help me everywhere.
Say what you want, but when I'm on Mac and Windows (and thankfully most Linux apps now) I can use the ctrl-c and ctrl-v to accomplish this the right way. I'm glad that the quick way exists for when it does work, but by itself it's not enough. That the designers of Mozilla and Konqueror have written workarounds for this doesn't invalidate my point, it proves it.
First, a question: What's up with all this "Ctrl C" and Ctrl V" copy/paste stuff? In almost all Linux programs, when I want to copy a block of text (or a graphic or whatever) I just highlight the original, then click both mouse buttons (or the middle button if I have a 3-button mouse) where I want to paste it. This is fast, easy, and takes little hand motion on my laptop keyboard. All this Ctrl key action slows me down.
Try this with your "quick" Linux way of doing it. Grab a URL into your clip board. Now, in your web browser, replace the URL in the address bar with the one you just copied. Not so quick now, eh?
Most software designers realize that the act of highlighting text may not be indicative of a will to copy that piece of text. I might just want to delete it, or paste something in its place. It is impossible to paste over in the standard X way of doing it. Thankfully, most modern apps keep a separate clipboard so that I can use the keys, too. But if I'm stuck with a lame system that automatically copies my text to the clipboard when I highlight it, I'm screwed.
A lot of what I read in this is, not surprisingly, the same sort of goofy stuff that I read about people trying to come to Linux from Windows. Rather than think about why something works the way it does, they automatically assume it's stupid because it's not exactly the way they've always done it.
Windows users think Macs are lame because they have only one mouse button. Unix users think both are lame because they don't have three buttons. And yet, oddly, people are able to accomplish tasks on all three.
And I hate to say it, but surely there's a free irc client for Windows. Hell, even Microsoft used to have one (comic chat) that passed as a pretty good irc client (you could disable the comic characters).
I came up with this idea as a rocket propulsion many years ago while pondering the best way to get a rocket up. Go to Huntsville, AL sometime and walk along the Saturn V that's laying down there, and keep in mind that most of the fuel is simply lifting other fuel. By the time you get to the end of it, and realize that the tiny capsule is the payload, you know there's gotta be a better way. Keeping the bulk of the propulsion system ground based would allow you to fly something little bigger than a capsule, and save big time on fuel, labor, and design costs. It makes sense to do it with airplanes, too.
:)
The only downside is that there's not much room between powering the craft and shooting it down
to help me buy a copy for Microsoft?
When people like Steve Hardigree have done orders of magnitude more damage, are just as easy to find, and have all the evidence ever needed for such an indictment stored at spamhaus.org? It doesn't make sense. Even if you can't get a conviction, which seems unlikely, wouldn't it put a serious dent in the spam problem if some of these worthless spammers were handed an indictment of this size?
I'm adding this for the historical record.
I just called Blake Stowell 5 minutes ago and asked. According to him, HP is still a sponsor, but they asked that their name be removed from the web site.
But...
the ability to "automatically forward or send email" without the user actually CLICKING SEND is a flaw in Outlook.
I agree with you that the article is weak in some regards, but we can expand "executable power" to "things only the user should do"
You are absolutely right! I am now petitioning Linus to modify Linux so that only root can make an outbound connection to port 25 on another server. That way, we can make sure that only the user can send email.
Moronic. Programs have no problem sending email on Linux, Unix, or any other OS.
The singular flaw of Outlook/OE, and it's a big one, is that it allows the user to easily execute a program simply by viewing an attachment.
There have also been various bugs, most fixed, that will run executable code simply by having the user view/preview a message, but I believe most of those have been fixed, and most nasty viruses (i.e. Melissa, etc.) have relied on social engineering to get the user to open an attachment.
The idea that when these same users come to Linux they'll all join LUG's and be educated is hilariously stupid.
also... I wanted to mention that the viruses may be more clever than just destroying files. You're totally right that for a desktop computer your home directory is maybe "just as important" but I don't like the idea of someone setting up a backdoor on my computer to distribute kiddie porn. ;)
And what does that have to do with elevated privileges?
While I agree with the gist of his article, there are a couple of obvious problems:
Further, due to the strong community around Linux, new users will receive education and encouragement in areas such as email security that are currently lacking in the Windows world
That's unlikely. As Linux takes over corporate desktops, the users are not going to be joining LUG's or mailing lists. This has been mostly true up to this point, but mass acceptance will change the demographic of the user community to be more like that of Windows.
Further, due to the strong separation between normal users and the privileged root user, our Linux user would have to be running as root to really do any damage to the system. He could damage his /home directory, but that's about it.
It's mind-boggling that this stupid line of reasoning is still used. First, my home directory is the part of the system that I'm most concerned about protecting. Holy shit! That's where my files are. The rest of the OS can be downloaded off the internet or from any CD that I have. But what about the files that I have created? A program destroying my home directory is a far larger problem than a program that mucks up executables or something.
Second, the modern worm/virus on Windows doesn't need any elevated privileges. The whole point is to spread, and there is absolutely nothing about that process that needs or uses any elevated privileges. Being root is not terribly relevant for the modern worm.
With all the lost money and productivity over the last decade caused by countless Microsoft-borne viruses and worms, you'd think the company could have changed its procedures in this area, but no.
And it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference for the most destructive email worms. Is the author from another planet? I have to wonder.
Probably not, but hard to say. Check out these two comments posted at groklaw:
Letter to president asking for clarification:0 54352198#c7446
http://www.groklaw.com/article.php?story=20030917
Response from HP ("I took care of that..."):0 72508223#c7287
http://www.groklaw.com/article.php?story=20030919
Funny you should say that. If you RTFA you would have seen that one of the individuals on the mailing list had a lawyer send a number of increasly nasty letters to Linksys. Linksys ignored him to begin with and then later replied saying "we will look into it." That was in July.
I did RTFA, and it says nothing of the like. I just went back and reread it, and nothing has been added since last time. Perhaps you can point it out to me?
I will say, though, that I don't believe the story, anyway. Had the lawyer sent a proper letter (i.e. "You are violating this particular copyright held by my client, fix the problem now or face statutory damages of $150K/incident") Linksys would have responded after the first one and they would have responded correctly.
I'm afraid that we in the open source world are setting a bad precedent for letting companies like Linksys run roughshod over our copyrights, knowing that they'll get some Mickey Mouse response from some slashdotters, and maybe a vaguely threatening email. Reading the part in there about the Samba team and their "concerns" just bolsters my concerns.
the fact that several attempts at resolution were made before filing suit will work in our favour.
Yeah, "several attempts" meaning "someone sent an email to the public address (opensource@linksys.com or whatever) from the web site". In no way can that be construed as a good-faith effort to resolve the matter. It's unbelievably amateurish to even suggest it.
One of the copyright owners needs to have a lawyer draft a simple letter to them which will be sent by certified mail to the president of the company. While mentioning the GPL is nice, it needs to point out that this is a *copyright violation* (the only thing that's going to get the legal team's attention) and mention the statutory damages ($150K/incident, how much does a router cost again?). It then needs to outline the simple steps needed to remedy the situation, i.e. post the source code or force an update on every single unit ever sold that removes the copyrighted material.
If you think an email from some Alan Cox guy to "opensource@linksys.com" is going to get their attention or make our side look better in court, you're dreaming.
Rock and roll!
Now, can we get a home telephone number (or cell) for this nitwit?
Direct marketing exec: FTC overreached with no-call list
Robert Wientzen, president and CEO of Direct Marketing Association
Here's what he thinks of spam:
http://www.the-dma.org/memberguide/tacklingspam.sh tml
I think we need to let him know what we think. Full contact list:
http://www.the-dma.org/aboutdma/contactthedma.shtm l
President's office:
212.768.7277, ext. 1604
Remember, not harrassment, simply call and let them know that you don't appreciate their efforts. Please read the CNN interview above to see what kind of twits we're dealing with here.
Michael
Dear DMA,
FUCK YOU.
Yours truly,
Michael
It's gotta be said, WTF are they doing running important government functions on Microsoft OS's? When are people going to learn?