..too bad it is at 70% of my current salary thanks to the H1-B's.
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many people are sure - because their company hires a bunch of H1Bs, uses their higher-paid US workers to TRAIN them to do jobs equivalent to the US workers', then fires the US workers.
Happens all the time in Silicon Valley - both in big and small companies. Occasionally a large company (Sun was one) gets so blatant about it - dumping whole departments - that they get sued.
Hmmm... which shows more "cluefullness": sending someone a message because you (inaccurately) believe they have a virus, or sending someone a message even though you realise they probably don't?
In my opinion, the first shows forgivable ignorance, the second unforgivable stupidity.
Not really. SOME of the viruses fake the return addres, but many don't.
What he needs is a flag in the database to indicate whether each signature is for a return-address faker. But he's probably getting the database from an external source that doesn't include that information. If so, he's doing the best he can by warning the purported source while noting that his machine MAY be infected or MAY be being spoofed by somebody else.
Interestingly, in the presence of a bunch of OTHER bounces that just accuse you of being infected, the "maybe you're not really infected" reply is handy for newbies.
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade.
Don't forget the upper management who hired and direct them.
It's also counterproductive. You WANT any remaining workers to desert - in protest if nothing else.
Something like:
Any resumes for upper management which includes the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003, or other positions with start dates after September of 2003 [...]
would set up a "touch it and die" situation for new hires without blocking the desertion.
But the other childish aspect is adding this to a "jobs" web page that also says they have no openings but will file your resume. No credibility there. Let's see if it's still up when they have positions that need filling and are begging for talent to consider them.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
Interestingly, the opening of the KGB archive after the fall of the Soviet Union shows that quite a few of McCarthy's accusations were true, (especially about the infiltration of the state department).
The problem is he didn't get his ducks in a row and light a fire under the administrators who hired them and the security agencies to ferret them out. Instead he tried to go after them directly by misusing a different legal process (congressional investigation), and set up a situation where mere accusation would destroy a life, used it on a couple hundred personally, and kicked off a bunch of witch hunters using him as a figurehead who used it on thousands of others. (Fortunately he got swatted before his reign of terror became institutionalized.)
I'm still getting hundreds, sometimes thousands of fscking "Your Details" e-mails every day -- despite the fact that the problem was widely publicized and (supposedly) widely patched.
Heck. I'm running a completely non-microsoft shop and am still getting bogus bounces from mail transfer agents warning me that I might be infected, because the darned worm found my "Rod" address in somebody's address book and is masquerading as me.
(But at least the author of ONE of the darned MTA firewalls had the cluefullness to include mention that it might be somebody masquerading rather than an actual infection.)
That reminds me of two pranks from WCBN - the Campus Broadcasting Network of carrier curren radio stations in the University of Michigan dorms.
One was "silicon monodes". An engineer had visited a semiconductor plant and obtained a number of partially-assembled silicon diodes: Silicon chip on end of a wire with a bit of glass tube around it and melted down around the wire, with the other end open (to receive the other wire with the little spring to contact the far side of the chip).
The "silicon monodes" were kept in a drawer. Several of the pieces of homebrew equipment had several monodes connected to various circuit points - and duly noted with a suitable symbol in the device's circuit diagram. (I think it was either an arrow or a "T" shape on the end of a wire in a circle.)
= = = =
The other was a "station destruct" button they installed in the "combo room" - the control room where the disk jockey also ran his own mixer board.
This was during the Vietnam protests. (Note that UMich was a hotbed of anti-war activity. Both SDS and The Weathermen got started there - part of why UofM was not on the internet until quite late - despite the "fuzzballs" being designed by UofM's own "Doctor Dave" and crew.)
So the engineers started a story about how the protesters were likely to try to occupy the station. And they installed a pair of buttons on the board labeled something like "Station Destruct. Do NOT touch!", allegedly to be used in such a situation.
Of course the morning show disk jockey - whose cluelessness and mishandling of station equipment had negatively impressed said engineers - hadn't been on for more than half an hour when he hit 'em both.
A relay latched up. The monitors all over the station (including the jockey's headphones) went dead. All the lights on the board went out and the VU meter dropped to zero. 48 volts was connected across a two-watt resistor of a rather low value mounted inside the board, causing it to explode with a loud noise and a puff of acrid smoke.
Apparently the only thing still working was the ceiling light and the turntable motors. In fact the station was still on the air. But the panic of the DJ was quite a sight.
At Hackers (the convention) one of the attendees claimed that the first time he heard it used in the "computer cracker/vandal/data thief" sense was in a presentation to executives by a self-proclaimed computer security expert.
He was puzzled at the time by the misuse. But given that the audience was a bunch of CEOs of big companies who had never heard the correct usage (and were definitely not corrected when THEY misused it), he speculates that the misuse may have spread from there, through the business community, to the press and out into general use.
I heard (sorry, no references) that this isn't the only such oopsie from NASA.
- One of the early rockets blew up on the pad because of a slipped decimal place. It didn't have enough thrust to support its own weight.
- One of the Mars probes had a flipped sign in the calculation of its midcourse correction, doubling the error rather than correcting it and causing it to entirely miss the vicinity of the planet.
Case #3: Rats nests inside the computers chewing on cables etc. Big problem at one Texas co-lo. Had to replace all the ethernet cabling.
Willow Run Labs of the University of Michigan (of BOMARC / Sidewinder fame) built their DIANA analog computer (those were the days) in an old bomber-plant hanger. Room with raised floor in giant wooden building built on a slab, in a rural area.
So of course some rats got into the area under the raised floor and started chewing up the cables.
So they got a cat. And they took out a square of raised floor. Cat would go out thorugh the guard station to do his business, then come back in and dive under the floor to do his work.
This being a classified site, there was a 24-hr guard. Everybody had their badge, which was left at the guard station when out, pinned on shirt when inside.
In good military tradition (for instance ship's cats and other working or mascot animals are on the personnel roster and recieve commendations and court-martials for exceptionally good or bad behavior), the cat was taken to the security office, photographed, assigned a number, and had a badge made.
And from then on, when the cat came in he'd stop at the guard station while the guard clipped his badge on his collar before he dived under the floor, and again on the way out for the badge to be removed.
The cat seemed to have no trouble with this procedure. (No doubt because he saw that everybody else had to go through the same thing - except for doing their own badge pinning.)
If the government did such a thing, I'm sure the 5th amendment would be applicable _if_ there was actually any property being taken.
The Supreme Court has recognized the concept of a "partial taking": government action that sucks part of the value out of something by limiting the owner's use.
Classic example was a church camp in the Monterey, CA area. A forest fire demolished the camp. The county decided they wanted the area returned to a more "natural" state and blocked the rebuilding of the camp by zoning changes and permit refusal, leaving the church with the land but without the camp (and unable to sell the land to someone else who could build a similar camp). This reduced the value/potential sale price of the land.
The supreme court recognized that sucking part of the value of the land out in this fashion was a "taking" for a "public purpose" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment and upheld a judgement against the county for the price reduction of the land (including, if I recall correctly, the lost revenue during the time the camp COULD have been up and running but wasn't due to the County's opposition to the rebuild.)
The RIAA could similarly claim that the music in question was theirs / their members', as was their claim for restitution from illicit file traders / infringers. By letting the infringers off the hook (if it were possible), Dubya would have "taken" the "value" of the potential settlement from the RIAA and its members. So the government would be on the hook, constitutionally, to replace that value by paying off the RIAA.
I'm really trying to figure out why the EFF is spending so much time on this. There are a lot of really scary things out there (the DMCA for one), that don't involve helping defend bigtime copyright infringers.
Because the way power groups remove one of your rights is by FIRST going after some scumbag who is using that right for some icky purpose that NOBODY approves of. Then, once they have the precedent set, they go after someone less scummy.
After a few steps they have the machine builit and greased. THEN they go after the people using the right for innocent purposes. (See the Martin Niemoller "First they came for the Communists..." quote.)
Classic example: Going after Kiddie Pornographers as the first step of shutting down free speech and the free press.
So the time to stop them is when the go after that first scumbag.
Let's say Dubya signs a release on behalf of all of us, kinda like Jesus did for all our sins. Should take 10 seconds tops. No sense doing this piecemeal.
Nope. Dubya can only sign such stuff for criminal cases, not civil.
And if he DID do something like that, the RIAA could then bill the GOVERNMENT, claiming they "took private property for a public purpose". Fifth Amendment.
SCO has now made available for your IP pleasure their run-time licenses [...]
And you're a fool if you buy one.
SCO is not suing IBM for misappropriation of their IP. What SCO IS suing IBM for is VIOLATING THE TERMS OF THEIR LICENSE.
Right now you probably don't HAVE a SCO license - shrink-wrap style language and all. This makes you nearly immune to suits from SCO.
But if you buy a license - even one - you are not just out the money. You have also paid them by entering into a contract, with contractual obligations. And if you buy one NOW, after all the publicity over their claims to own UNIX and evertying related to it, you can't claim ignorance of their claims.
If you use linux on one machine, and you pay them a sale price of a couple hundred bux, what are you going to tell the judge when he asks you:
- Why aren't you paying them whatever their latest asking price is for another license for your next two hundred machines.
- Why did you distribute this open-source software that SCO says contains their IP, in violation of your contract with SCO.
After all, if you signed the contract and paid the money. Didn't you just admit that this IP was theirs?
IMHO, anyone who buys a SCO license has just signed away, forever, his right to work on open-source code. As an individual you can't EVER release your work. As a company you can't EVER release your employees' work. (And good luck hiring any new employees with open-source experience.)
No open-source drivers for your products. No folding your fixes back into the mainstream, so you don't have to make them again on every new release of whatever open-source tool you fixed or improved for your critical business process.
So if you're contemplating buying a SCO license, ask yourself: "Is that REALLY what I intended to to?"
Unless the Democrats decide they don't like those appointments, which is why they've been delaying every single one of Bush's nominations to the federal courts.
I don't know what wingnut propaganda outlet you get your news from, but it's obviously rotted your mind. To date, Bush has had 117 federal judicial nominees approved by the Senate.
He's wrong when he talks about "every single one". In face the Senate has approved nearly all of his judicial appointments - to LOWER courts.
But the minority leadership has also imposed an ideological test for UPPER court appointments - appeals and supreme. (These are the courts which interpret the meaning of the law in a binding fashion, rather than merely applying it on a mass-production basis.)
And having done this, they've broken precedent by using the filibuster to block those key appointments, effectively requiring a supermajority vote despite the constitutional prescription that they be approved or rejected by a simple majority.
This is a power-grab, pure and simple. During the term of Democratic presidents - especially recently - what the Rs characterize as "activist judges" who "legislate from the bench" were the bulk of the appointees. These are the people who base their rulings on what they want the law to mean, and redefine words to change the meaning of the law. "The Constitution is a living document." (meaning it can be reinterpreted according to "customs and usage".) "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Or of "right". Or of "the People". Or of "establishment of religion". Or of "welfare". Or of "militia". Or of "necessary and proper".
The Rs approved these appointments without filibustering. They were playing by what they understood the rules to be. They expected to have their own turn to appoint judges, swinging the lower-level judicial bias back in the other direction. They expected the upper courts to keep the lower in check - because the upper courts settle disputes when lower courts interpret the law in differing, or new-and-improved, ways.
And the upper courts turn over more slowly, so the Rs didn't expect them to go too far overboard before they had a turn to appoint. And the Rs tend to appoint "strict constructionists" - people who, despite what their own biases might be, try to interpret the law using the meaning the words had AT THE TIME THE LAW WAS WRITTEN.
But having swung the pendulum to their side, the D's are now using the filibuster to block anyone appointed to the Supreme Court and/or the appeals courts whom they perceve as conservative and characterize as "extreme right-wing" - which means to the right of Karl Marx.
So by blocking a few key appointments they can maintain, and even increase, the leftward swing of the top-level courts which rule the rest - and by extension rule the country - despite being a minority in the Senate. They can afford to let the lower court appointments go through: With the left half the lower court judges reinterpreting the law, and the upper courts overruling the right half when they disagree, the Ds' goal is achieved.
Unfortunately, if the top of the court system goes sour on a systematic basis there are only three ways things can go:
1) The Executive branch goes along with it. And the gone-sour courts rule the country, while the Constitution - especially the Bill of Rights' limits on government - goes out the window.
2) The Executive and Legislative branches combine to turn it around - with appointments and perhaps an occasional impeachment. The Constitution is upheld and strengthened, as was intended. But this is what the filibuster is blocking.
3) The Executive branch to stops enforcing its rulings. Again the Constitution goes out the window. But this time the whole rule of law goes out with it. Once the Executive branch is ignoring the Judicial, why should it obey the Legislative? The Rubicon is crossed, the Republic becomes the Imperium, the President become
ummm, i think you need to look up the definition of literature again...i don't think picture books with some words in balloons quite qualifies as literature.
Are you claiming it's a different form of storytelling, or are you claiming it's in some way inferior?
Words + images:
- Stage plays
- Film/television
- "Comic books"/Ilustrated novels
Seems to me that all have the potential to be great, that all have occasionally realized it.
But of the three, only the last (plus perhaps the scripts of the other two) might also qualify as "literature" by being rendered entirely in a static printed medium.
Seems to me that the way to fight this is to point out (loudly, repeatedly) to business and government customers of PCs that this is SPYWARE being built into the computer itself.
Raise the spectre of their proprietary information being dumped onto the internet, or sucked out through a wireless lan tap. And their systems being cracked and subverted.
And of this happening EVEN IF they've switched to an OS that has been audited and doesn't have ANYTHING to allow it - because it's happening at the firmware layer UNDER the OS.
Then tie "breach of fiduciary duty" to any financial loss their company might suffer as a result of their choice to buy a PC with DRM in the BIOS.
There is an ethical justification in being given no option (by the enemy) to defend yourself in ways other than using unethical means in order to protect yourself and your loved ones. These particular types of enemy tend to be called "truly evil" because they make you break your own morals to fight them.
e.g. having to shoot a person so that he doesn't shoot you.
If your moral/ethical code prevents you from doing onto others what they have done onto you, in situations where such actions can damage or kill, perhaps it's time to consider whether to renew your subscription, do some debugging, or switch to another vendor.
"Turn the other cheek" doesn't cut it with certain types of enemies. They know this, and you know this.
And they have a word for people on whom this technique works.
I'll stand corrected on one item: The US DOES have a crime CALLED "Misprison of Felony".
But I won't stand corrected on the primary point: In the US it is NOT a crime JUST to fail to turn 'em in (as "Misprison of Felony" means in other places, and as the discussion implied we were talking about here).
In the US you MUST ALSO do something EXTRA to try to HIDE them (such as destroying evidence, helping them out, lying to the cops, etc.)
From your own citation:
The elements of misprision of a feloney, both of which must be proved to support conviction, are:
concealment of something, such as suppression of evidence or some other positive act; and
failure to disclose.
Failure to disclose, without active concealment, is not a felony.
"My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america."
I suspect either you or he meant "Americans" (people) and not necessarily "America" (government).
Don't be too sure.
Apparently a VERY large percentage of the Iranian people are in favor of normalizing relations with the US. (Up until recently that couldn't be determined very well, given that the regime was still run by people heavily invested in the immediately-post-Shah anti-American rhetoric. But shortly before the start of Gulf War II some Iranian clerics too well-respected to be suppressed were able to conduct a poll.)
Then Gulf War II resulted in the the liberation of the Iraqui Shiites from Sadam's oppression, resulting in still more support for the US among the Iranian population.
IMHO The US is missing a bet by not immediately making a public offer to normalize relations with Iran, and to assist them in cleaning out any pockets of Hammas/Bath/etc. that are causing them problems.
Such an offer should both give the Iranian government an excuse to drop their anti-American stand and give a big push to destabilizing them if they refuse to do so.
But the offer needs to be made soon. (It really should have been made right after the major fighting was over in Iraq.) The longer we wait, the more opportunity for circumstances (such as screwups between the occupying forces in Iraq and the Shiites there) to jepoardize the pro-American sentiment.
What makes you think that the slashdot effect changes the content of the music?
It wouldn't necessarily change the music itself.
But if enough people hit it to cause major packet drop in the path from the server to the listener, the listener's player will try to fill in the gaps.
A common way to do this is to replay the last buffer. If the outage is long this tends to generate a metallic buzz if the buffer is short and a "Max Headroom"-style stutter if the buffer is long.
You could also get a metallic buzz out of a voder if the updates stopped coming in.
Oops. Accidentally hit Submit rather than Preview before finishing.
The US does NOT require you to turn in your neighbors, your family members, or the local gangsters, if you happen to see them commit what you believe is a crime, and thus become a target of reprisals, defamation suits, and divorce papers. You do NOT need to be a hero, a snitch, or an unpaid government agent.
What IS required is that you not lie, destroy evidence, or otherwise act to conceal or assist a crime. (Serve as an "accessory" - before or after "the fact".)
If the cops come and ask you about it you can refuse to tell them about it. But lying about it IS a crime. If called to testify in court you CAN be compelled to testify - but only in conjunction with a grant of immunity for yourself (because you can't be compelled to testify against yourself - a mechanism to prevent torturing confessions out of those accused of crimes.)
Look it up, amigo. If you know about a felony and you don't report it, you are guilty of cover-up and can serve time for your avoidance of doing the right thing.
And while we're at it, YOU should look it up in the US legal code.
You won't find it.
That's because it's one of the BIG differences between law in the US and, say England.
The US does NOT require you to turn in your neighbors, your family members, or the local gangsters, if you happen to see them commit what you believe is a crime, and thus become a target of reprisals, defamation suits, and divorce papers. You do NOT need to be a hero, a snitch, or an unpaid government agent.
A few individual states try to impose such requirements, but always in connection with providing statutory immunity if you happen to be wrong, with "Good Samaritan" laws. (Originally these were laws requiring doctors to render aid at accident scenes and immunizing them against malpractice suits, but a couple states tried to extend them to reporting crimes.)
WHY is it different? Think about it: The constitution was written by people who JUST REVOLTED AGAINST THEIR LEGAL GOVERNMENT - and thought their descendants should have the same option if the government THEY set up went bad. How would a requirement to fink out anyone committing a "crime" - even if the crime is something you don't believe should be a crime (like opposing the rotten regime) - POSSIBLY be allowed among the web of restraints they built to keep the new government in check?
So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?
Dame Rumor says he implemented. I recall hearing back in '94-'96 or so that he commanded a very hefty hourly rate for consulting, mostly extending emacs and the like for companies that wanted useful tools.
He also sold hardcopy manuals for emacs - first printer output, then paperback.
They were actually a hardcopy of the softcopy manual that was packaged in the distribution. But having a hardcopy was convenient, and a lot of emacs users didn't have a printer and/or had to pay big per-page fees for output in those days - and/or wanted to support Stallman and were willing to contrubte a few bucks.
I think I actually bought one from him in those days. But I didn't end up using emacs, due to RAM limitations on my machines up through the time that I had vi hardwired in my nervous system's firmware. So if I did get one "It's Filed" - in the Ted Nelson sense of buried in the midden. B-)
All three of 'em (and a lot more) gave universities equipment, software, documentation, and/or what-have-you, for free or at steep discounts, in return for both a tax deduction and several years of graduating classes trained on THEIR systems.
They are actually being used at concerts. I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
Is a Moog Synthesizer fake? (I remebmer people griping aobut it, back when it was new.) Are electric guitars fake? How about elecric guitars plus the plethora of modification devices (wah-wah, fuzz box {originally emulating a blown speaker cone}, maybe a dozen others). Should we just abandon rock/punk/metal/etc. music as "fake" and go back to acoustic guitars? (Like the folkies that booed Dylan when he came out for one set with an electric guitar.) And take the seeds out of Sitars while we're at it?
And let's dump the voice modification technology that's been around since before electrical recording - like the little megaphone to give that narrow-band sound to a voice that's been used since at least the '20s for starters. (Think the lead singer on _Winchester Cathedral_) Take that "voice box" hose out of Peter Frampton's throat on _Do You Feel Like We Do?_ What a cheat!
Let's take the mutes out of trumpets, and the fists out of french horns. Jaw harps and kazoos can go on the trash heap.
Dump bagpipes, oboes, clarinets, saxaphones, and the rest of the reed instruments. (Reeds are just fake vocal cords.) Take the valves from trumpets and the slides from trombones. Heck - dump the horns entirely: A mouthpiece to modify your lip buzz to replace your vocal cords and a brass resonator to replace your vocal tract? Totally fake!
Trash those drums, too. If you can't make the sound you want by clapping, stomping, or using your vocal tract it's obviously fake.
Harpsicords have to go - they're "fixing" the striking force. Pianos: Take off the pedals. Take away the resonator. Heck, take away the keyboard and hammer (darned mnemonics anyhow). Stick to a harp.
Take those frets off the guitar - they're a cheat! If you can't finger-tune it like a bass or a violin you don't deserve to perform!
Wait a minute: Strings? Tuned for you? Dump it!
If you don't want "fake", stick to acapella. And try to compete with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Nylons, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
= = = = =
Pop music is about making sounds that please their audience - using as much, or as little, tech as the artist choses to use and the audience choses to accept.
= = = = =
And the tech isn't just a cleanup. Watch it make possible more interesting sounds.
Which has already been done. (Example: the chorus of Cher's _Do you Believe in Life after Love?_, where just such a pitch altering device is used to form note-shifts faster than a human vocal tract can, creating a hint of human/machine convergence and a subtle reference to immortality-by-uploading, reenforcing the message about post-romance depression and overcoming it - in addition to sounding neat.)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many people are sure - because their company hires a bunch of H1Bs, uses their higher-paid US workers to TRAIN them to do jobs equivalent to the US workers', then fires the US workers.
Happens all the time in Silicon Valley - both in big and small companies. Occasionally a large company (Sun was one) gets so blatant about it - dumping whole departments - that they get sued.
Hmmm... which shows more "cluefullness": sending someone a message because you (inaccurately) believe they have a virus, or sending someone a message even though you realise they probably don't?
In my opinion, the first shows forgivable ignorance, the second unforgivable stupidity.
Not really. SOME of the viruses fake the return addres, but many don't.
What he needs is a flag in the database to indicate whether each signature is for a return-address faker. But he's probably getting the database from an external source that doesn't include that information. If so, he's doing the best he can by warning the purported source while noting that his machine MAY be infected or MAY be being spoofed by somebody else.
Interestingly, in the presence of a bunch of OTHER bounces that just accuse you of being infected, the "maybe you're not really infected" reply is handy for newbies.
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.
That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade.
Don't forget the upper management who hired and direct them.
It's also counterproductive. You WANT any remaining workers to desert - in protest if nothing else.
Something like:
Any resumes for upper management which includes the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003, or other positions with start dates after September of 2003 [...]
would set up a "touch it and die" situation for new hires without blocking the desertion.
But the other childish aspect is adding this to a "jobs" web page that also says they have no openings but will file your resume. No credibility there. Let's see if it's still up when they have positions that need filling and are begging for talent to consider them.
Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?
Interestingly, the opening of the KGB archive after the fall of the Soviet Union shows that quite a few of McCarthy's accusations were true, (especially about the infiltration of the state department).
The problem is he didn't get his ducks in a row and light a fire under the administrators who hired them and the security agencies to ferret them out. Instead he tried to go after them directly by misusing a different legal process (congressional investigation), and set up a situation where mere accusation would destroy a life, used it on a couple hundred personally, and kicked off a bunch of witch hunters using him as a figurehead who used it on thousands of others. (Fortunately he got swatted before his reign of terror became institutionalized.)
I'm still getting hundreds, sometimes thousands of fscking "Your Details" e-mails every day -- despite the fact that the problem was widely publicized and (supposedly) widely patched.
Heck. I'm running a completely non-microsoft shop and am still getting bogus bounces from mail transfer agents warning me that I might be infected, because the darned worm found my "Rod" address in somebody's address book and is masquerading as me.
(But at least the author of ONE of the darned MTA firewalls had the cluefullness to include mention that it might be somebody masquerading rather than an actual infection.)
That reminds me of two pranks from WCBN - the Campus Broadcasting Network of carrier curren radio stations in the University of Michigan dorms.
One was "silicon monodes". An engineer had visited a semiconductor plant and obtained a number of partially-assembled silicon diodes: Silicon chip on end of a wire with a bit of glass tube around it and melted down around the wire, with the other end open (to receive the other wire with the little spring to contact the far side of the chip).
The "silicon monodes" were kept in a drawer. Several of the pieces of homebrew equipment had several monodes connected to various circuit points - and duly noted with a suitable symbol in the device's circuit diagram. (I think it was either an arrow or a "T" shape on the end of a wire in a circle.)
= = = =
The other was a "station destruct" button they installed in the "combo room" - the control room where the disk jockey also ran his own mixer board.
This was during the Vietnam protests. (Note that UMich was a hotbed of anti-war activity. Both SDS and The Weathermen got started there - part of why UofM was not on the internet until quite late - despite the "fuzzballs" being designed by UofM's own "Doctor Dave" and crew.)
So the engineers started a story about how the protesters were likely to try to occupy the station. And they installed a pair of buttons on the board labeled something like "Station Destruct. Do NOT touch!", allegedly to be used in such a situation.
Of course the morning show disk jockey - whose cluelessness and mishandling of station equipment had negatively impressed said engineers - hadn't been on for more than half an hour when he hit 'em both.
A relay latched up. The monitors all over the station (including the jockey's headphones) went dead. All the lights on the board went out and the VU meter dropped to zero. 48 volts was connected across a two-watt resistor of a rather low value mounted inside the board, causing it to explode with a loud noise and a puff of acrid smoke.
Apparently the only thing still working was the ceiling light and the turntable motors. In fact the station was still on the air. But the panic of the DJ was quite a sight.
At Hackers (the convention) one of the attendees claimed that the first time he heard it used in the "computer cracker/vandal/data thief" sense was in a presentation to executives by a self-proclaimed computer security expert.
He was puzzled at the time by the misuse. But given that the audience was a bunch of CEOs of big companies who had never heard the correct usage (and were definitely not corrected when THEY misused it), he speculates that the misuse may have spread from there, through the business community, to the press and out into general use.
I heard (sorry, no references) that this isn't the only such oopsie from NASA.
- One of the early rockets blew up on the pad because of a slipped decimal place. It didn't have enough thrust to support its own weight.
- One of the Mars probes had a flipped sign in the calculation of its midcourse correction, doubling the error rather than correcting it and causing it to entirely miss the vicinity of the planet.
Case #3: Rats nests inside the computers chewing on cables etc. Big problem at one Texas co-lo. Had to replace all the ethernet cabling.
Willow Run Labs of the University of Michigan (of BOMARC / Sidewinder fame) built their DIANA analog computer (those were the days) in an old bomber-plant hanger. Room with raised floor in giant wooden building built on a slab, in a rural area.
So of course some rats got into the area under the raised floor and started chewing up the cables.
So they got a cat. And they took out a square of raised floor. Cat would go out thorugh the guard station to do his business, then come back in and dive under the floor to do his work.
This being a classified site, there was a 24-hr guard. Everybody had their badge, which was left at the guard station when out, pinned on shirt when inside.
In good military tradition (for instance ship's cats and other working or mascot animals are on the personnel roster and recieve commendations and court-martials for exceptionally good or bad behavior), the cat was taken to the security office, photographed, assigned a number, and had a badge made.
And from then on, when the cat came in he'd stop at the guard station while the guard clipped his badge on his collar before he dived under the floor, and again on the way out for the badge to be removed.
The cat seemed to have no trouble with this procedure. (No doubt because he saw that everybody else had to go through the same thing - except for doing their own badge pinning.)
If the government did such a thing, I'm sure the 5th amendment would be applicable _if_ there was actually any property being taken.
The Supreme Court has recognized the concept of a "partial taking": government action that sucks part of the value out of something by limiting the owner's use.
Classic example was a church camp in the Monterey, CA area. A forest fire demolished the camp. The county decided they wanted the area returned to a more "natural" state and blocked the rebuilding of the camp by zoning changes and permit refusal, leaving the church with the land but without the camp (and unable to sell the land to someone else who could build a similar camp). This reduced the value/potential sale price of the land.
The supreme court recognized that sucking part of the value of the land out in this fashion was a "taking" for a "public purpose" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment and upheld a judgement against the county for the price reduction of the land (including, if I recall correctly, the lost revenue during the time the camp COULD have been up and running but wasn't due to the County's opposition to the rebuild.)
The RIAA could similarly claim that the music in question was theirs / their members', as was their claim for restitution from illicit file traders / infringers. By letting the infringers off the hook (if it were possible), Dubya would have "taken" the "value" of the potential settlement from the RIAA and its members. So the government would be on the hook, constitutionally, to replace that value by paying off the RIAA.
I'm really trying to figure out why the EFF is spending so much time on this. There are a lot of really scary things out there (the DMCA for one), that don't involve helping defend bigtime copyright infringers.
..." quote.)
Because the way power groups remove one of your rights is by FIRST going after some scumbag who is using that right for some icky purpose that NOBODY approves of. Then, once they have the precedent set, they go after someone less scummy.
After a few steps they have the machine builit and greased. THEN they go after the people using the right for innocent purposes. (See the Martin Niemoller "First they came for the Communists
Classic example: Going after Kiddie Pornographers as the first step of shutting down free speech and the free press.
So the time to stop them is when the go after that first scumbag.
Let's say Dubya signs a release on behalf of all of us, kinda like Jesus did for all our sins. Should take 10 seconds tops. No sense doing this piecemeal.
Nope. Dubya can only sign such stuff for criminal cases, not civil.
And if he DID do something like that, the RIAA could then bill the GOVERNMENT, claiming they "took private property for a public purpose". Fifth Amendment.
SCO has now made available for your IP pleasure their run-time licenses [...]
And you're a fool if you buy one.
SCO is not suing IBM for misappropriation of their IP. What SCO IS suing IBM for is VIOLATING THE TERMS OF THEIR LICENSE.
Right now you probably don't HAVE a SCO license - shrink-wrap style language and all. This makes you nearly immune to suits from SCO.
But if you buy a license - even one - you are not just out the money. You have also paid them by entering into a contract, with contractual obligations. And if you buy one NOW, after all the publicity over their claims to own UNIX and evertying related to it, you can't claim ignorance of their claims.
If you use linux on one machine, and you pay them a sale price of a couple hundred bux, what are you going to tell the judge when he asks you:
- Why aren't you paying them whatever their latest asking price is for another license for your next two hundred machines.
- Why did you distribute this open-source software that SCO says contains their IP, in violation of your contract with SCO.
After all, if you signed the contract and paid the money. Didn't you just admit that this IP was theirs?
IMHO, anyone who buys a SCO license has just signed away, forever, his right to work on open-source code. As an individual you can't EVER release your work. As a company you can't EVER release your employees' work. (And good luck hiring any new employees with open-source experience.)
No open-source drivers for your products. No folding your fixes back into the mainstream, so you don't have to make them again on every new release of whatever open-source tool you fixed or improved for your critical business process.
So if you're contemplating buying a SCO license, ask yourself: "Is that REALLY what I intended to to?"
Unless the Democrats decide they don't like those appointments, which is why they've been delaying every single one of Bush's nominations to the federal courts.
I don't know what wingnut propaganda outlet you get your news from, but it's obviously rotted your mind. To date, Bush has had 117 federal judicial nominees approved by the Senate.
He's wrong when he talks about "every single one". In face the Senate has approved nearly all of his judicial appointments - to LOWER courts.
But the minority leadership has also imposed an ideological test for UPPER court appointments - appeals and supreme. (These are the courts which interpret the meaning of the law in a binding fashion, rather than merely applying it on a mass-production basis.)
And having done this, they've broken precedent by using the filibuster to block those key appointments, effectively requiring a supermajority vote despite the constitutional prescription that they be approved or rejected by a simple majority.
This is a power-grab, pure and simple. During the term of Democratic presidents - especially recently - what the Rs characterize as "activist judges" who "legislate from the bench" were the bulk of the appointees. These are the people who base their rulings on what they want the law to mean, and redefine words to change the meaning of the law. "The Constitution is a living document." (meaning it can be reinterpreted according to "customs and usage".) "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Or of "right". Or of "the People". Or of "establishment of religion". Or of "welfare". Or of "militia". Or of "necessary and proper".
The Rs approved these appointments without filibustering. They were playing by what they understood the rules to be. They expected to have their own turn to appoint judges, swinging the lower-level judicial bias back in the other direction. They expected the upper courts to keep the lower in check - because the upper courts settle disputes when lower courts interpret the law in differing, or new-and-improved, ways.
And the upper courts turn over more slowly, so the Rs didn't expect them to go too far overboard before they had a turn to appoint. And the Rs tend to appoint "strict constructionists" - people who, despite what their own biases might be, try to interpret the law using the meaning the words had AT THE TIME THE LAW WAS WRITTEN.
But having swung the pendulum to their side, the D's are now using the filibuster to block anyone appointed to the Supreme Court and/or the appeals courts whom they perceve as conservative and characterize as "extreme right-wing" - which means to the right of Karl Marx.
So by blocking a few key appointments they can maintain, and even increase, the leftward swing of the top-level courts which rule the rest - and by extension rule the country - despite being a minority in the Senate. They can afford to let the lower court appointments go through: With the left half the lower court judges reinterpreting the law, and the upper courts overruling the right half when they disagree, the Ds' goal is achieved.
Unfortunately, if the top of the court system goes sour on a systematic basis there are only three ways things can go:
1) The Executive branch goes along with it. And the gone-sour courts rule the country, while the Constitution - especially the Bill of Rights' limits on government - goes out the window.
2) The Executive and Legislative branches combine to turn it around - with appointments and perhaps an occasional impeachment. The Constitution is upheld and strengthened, as was intended. But this is what the filibuster is blocking.
3) The Executive branch to stops enforcing its rulings. Again the Constitution goes out the window. But this time the whole rule of law goes out with it. Once the Executive branch is ignoring the Judicial, why should it obey the Legislative? The Rubicon is crossed, the Republic becomes the Imperium, the President become
ummm, i think you need to look up the definition of literature again...i don't think picture books with some words in balloons quite qualifies as literature.
Are you claiming it's a different form of storytelling, or are you claiming it's in some way inferior?
Words + images:
- Stage plays
- Film/television
- "Comic books"/Ilustrated novels
Seems to me that all have the potential to be great, that all have occasionally realized it.
But of the three, only the last (plus perhaps the scripts of the other two) might also qualify as "literature" by being rendered entirely in a static printed medium.
Seems to me that the way to fight this is to point out (loudly, repeatedly) to business and government customers of PCs that this is SPYWARE being built into the computer itself.
Raise the spectre of their proprietary information being dumped onto the internet, or sucked out through a wireless lan tap. And their systems being cracked and subverted.
And of this happening EVEN IF they've switched to an OS that has been audited and doesn't have ANYTHING to allow it - because it's happening at the firmware layer UNDER the OS.
Then tie "breach of fiduciary duty" to any financial loss their company might suffer as a result of their choice to buy a PC with DRM in the BIOS.
That ought to turn a few executive faces pale.
There is an ethical justification in being given no option (by the enemy) to defend yourself in ways other than using unethical means in order to protect yourself and your loved ones. These particular types of enemy tend to be called "truly evil" because they make you break your own morals to fight them.
e.g. having to shoot a person so that he doesn't shoot you.
If your moral/ethical code prevents you from doing onto others what they have done onto you, in situations where such actions can damage or kill, perhaps it's time to consider whether to renew your subscription, do some debugging, or switch to another vendor.
"Turn the other cheek" doesn't cut it with certain types of enemies. They know this, and you know this.
And they have a word for people on whom this technique works.
The word is "sucker".
I'll stand corrected on one item: The US DOES have a crime CALLED "Misprison of Felony".
But I won't stand corrected on the primary point: In the US it is NOT a crime JUST to fail to turn 'em in (as "Misprison of Felony" means in other places, and as the discussion implied we were talking about here).
In the US you MUST ALSO do something EXTRA to try to HIDE them (such as destroying evidence, helping them out, lying to the cops, etc.)
From your own citation:
The elements of misprision of a feloney, both of which must be proved to support conviction, are:
concealment of something, such as suppression of evidence or some other positive act; and
failure to disclose.
Failure to disclose, without active concealment, is not a felony.
"My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america."
I suspect either you or he meant "Americans" (people) and not necessarily "America" (government).
Don't be too sure.
Apparently a VERY large percentage of the Iranian people are in favor of normalizing relations with the US. (Up until recently that couldn't be determined very well, given that the regime was still run by people heavily invested in the immediately-post-Shah anti-American rhetoric. But shortly before the start of Gulf War II some Iranian clerics too well-respected to be suppressed were able to conduct a poll.)
Then Gulf War II resulted in the the liberation of the Iraqui Shiites from Sadam's oppression, resulting in still more support for the US among the Iranian population.
IMHO The US is missing a bet by not immediately making a public offer to normalize relations with Iran, and to assist them in cleaning out any pockets of Hammas/Bath/etc. that are causing them problems.
Such an offer should both give the Iranian government an excuse to drop their anti-American stand and give a big push to destabilizing them if they refuse to do so.
But the offer needs to be made soon. (It really should have been made right after the major fighting was over in Iraq.) The longer we wait, the more opportunity for circumstances (such as screwups between the occupying forces in Iraq and the Shiites there) to jepoardize the pro-American sentiment.
What makes you think that the slashdot effect changes the content of the music?
It wouldn't necessarily change the music itself.
But if enough people hit it to cause major packet drop in the path from the server to the listener, the listener's player will try to fill in the gaps.
A common way to do this is to replay the last buffer. If the outage is long this tends to generate a metallic buzz if the buffer is short and a "Max Headroom"-style stutter if the buffer is long.
You could also get a metallic buzz out of a voder if the updates stopped coming in.
Oops. Accidentally hit Submit rather than Preview before finishing.
The US does NOT require you to turn in your neighbors, your family members, or the local gangsters, if you happen to see them commit what you believe is a crime, and thus become a target of reprisals, defamation suits, and divorce papers. You do NOT need to be a hero, a snitch, or an unpaid government agent.
What IS required is that you not lie, destroy evidence, or otherwise act to conceal or assist a crime. (Serve as an "accessory" - before or after "the fact".)
If the cops come and ask you about it you can refuse to tell them about it. But lying about it IS a crime. If called to testify in court you CAN be compelled to testify - but only in conjunction with a grant of immunity for yourself (because you can't be compelled to testify against yourself - a mechanism to prevent torturing confessions out of those accused of crimes.)
Look it up, amigo. If you know about a felony and you don't report it, you are guilty of cover-up and can serve time for your avoidance of doing the right thing.
And while we're at it, YOU should look it up in the US legal code.
You won't find it.
That's because it's one of the BIG differences between law in the US and, say England.
The US does NOT require you to turn in your neighbors, your family members, or the local gangsters, if you happen to see them commit what you believe is a crime, and thus become a target of reprisals, defamation suits, and divorce papers. You do NOT need to be a hero, a snitch, or an unpaid government agent.
A few individual states try to impose such requirements, but always in connection with providing statutory immunity if you happen to be wrong, with "Good Samaritan" laws. (Originally these were laws requiring doctors to render aid at accident scenes and immunizing them against malpractice suits, but a couple states tried to extend them to reporting crimes.)
WHY is it different? Think about it: The constitution was written by people who JUST REVOLTED AGAINST THEIR LEGAL GOVERNMENT - and thought their descendants should have the same option if the government THEY set up went bad. How would a requirement to fink out anyone committing a "crime" - even if the crime is something you don't believe should be a crime (like opposing the rotten regime) - POSSIBLY be allowed among the web of restraints they built to keep the new government in check?
... the price of a SCO license for a Beowulf cluster of these?
So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?
Dame Rumor says he implemented. I recall hearing back in '94-'96 or so that he commanded a very hefty hourly rate for consulting, mostly extending emacs and the like for companies that wanted useful tools.
He also sold hardcopy manuals for emacs - first printer output, then paperback.
They were actually a hardcopy of the softcopy manual that was packaged in the distribution. But having a hardcopy was convenient, and a lot of emacs users didn't have a printer and/or had to pay big per-page fees for output in those days - and/or wanted to support Stallman and were willing to contrubte a few bucks.
I think I actually bought one from him in those days. But I didn't end up using emacs, due to RAM limitations on my machines up through the time that I had vi hardwired in my nervous system's firmware. So if I did get one "It's Filed" - in the Ted Nelson sense of buried in the midden. B-)
How is this worse than IBM, DEC, or Apple?
All three of 'em (and a lot more) gave universities equipment, software, documentation, and/or what-have-you, for free or at steep discounts, in return for both a tax deduction and several years of graduating classes trained on THEIR systems.
They are actually being used at concerts. I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
Is a Moog Synthesizer fake? (I remebmer people griping aobut it, back when it was new.) Are electric guitars fake? How about elecric guitars plus the plethora of modification devices (wah-wah, fuzz box {originally emulating a blown speaker cone}, maybe a dozen others). Should we just abandon rock/punk/metal/etc. music as "fake" and go back to acoustic guitars? (Like the folkies that booed Dylan when he came out for one set with an electric guitar.) And take the seeds out of Sitars while we're at it?
And let's dump the voice modification technology that's been around since before electrical recording - like the little megaphone to give that narrow-band sound to a voice that's been used since at least the '20s for starters. (Think the lead singer on _Winchester Cathedral_) Take that "voice box" hose out of Peter Frampton's throat on _Do You Feel Like We Do?_ What a cheat!
Let's take the mutes out of trumpets, and the fists out of french horns. Jaw harps and kazoos can go on the trash heap.
Dump bagpipes, oboes, clarinets, saxaphones, and the rest of the reed instruments. (Reeds are just fake vocal cords.) Take the valves from trumpets and the slides from trombones. Heck - dump the horns entirely: A mouthpiece to modify your lip buzz to replace your vocal cords and a brass resonator to replace your vocal tract? Totally fake!
Trash those drums, too. If you can't make the sound you want by clapping, stomping, or using your vocal tract it's obviously fake.
Harpsicords have to go - they're "fixing" the striking force. Pianos: Take off the pedals. Take away the resonator. Heck, take away the keyboard and hammer (darned mnemonics anyhow). Stick to a harp.
Take those frets off the guitar - they're a cheat! If you can't finger-tune it like a bass or a violin you don't deserve to perform!
Wait a minute: Strings? Tuned for you? Dump it!
If you don't want "fake", stick to acapella. And try to compete with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Nylons, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
= = = = =
Pop music is about making sounds that please their audience - using as much, or as little, tech as the artist choses to use and the audience choses to accept.
= = = = =
And the tech isn't just a cleanup. Watch it make possible more interesting sounds.
Which has already been done. (Example: the chorus of Cher's _Do you Believe in Life after Love?_, where just such a pitch altering device is used to form note-shifts faster than a human vocal tract can, creating a hint of human/machine convergence and a subtle reference to immortality-by-uploading, reenforcing the message about post-romance depression and overcoming it - in addition to sounding neat.)