John Gilmore expressed that idea in 1994, a time when no one seemed to own the wires and information really did want to be free.
Well, it looks like the wide-open range has been fenced and platted and farmed, and the content barons don't take kindly to scruffy freedom-loving trappers and injuns and migrants traipsing around on "their" territory. (Of course it's theirs: they have legal exclusive title, signed off by the government and everything!)
It would take an extreme of DIY spirit to "route around" a local monopoly on last-mile infrastructure. If CableCo Inc. is the only internet game in town, you will take what CableCo gives you and you will like it, or you just do without internet.
Competition is probably the best hope for salvation, except that the corporates know that competition is soo much worse for profits than a little quiet collusion.
I saw this crap coming back in '91, when the NSF started permitting commercial content on NSFNET. In almost any arena of interests, commercial interests crowd out all others.
Yes indeed; RedHat with the serial numbers filed off.
My GNU/Linux server experience is pretty much all in the RH family tree, except for a brief fling with SUSE for SPARC in the early '00s. For desktop, though, I have to admit that Kubuntu is pretty sweet. I just haven't had to (or had the chance to) learn the guts like I've had to (or had the opportunity to) learn the ugly white underbelly of server OSs.
But Hell, I come from a SunOS and AIX background, so almost nothing in the GNU/Linux universe can really scare me much.
Although, in the words of a wise man, "The singular of data is not 'anecdote'", I'll cite my own little war story data point. It's trivial, of course, as every story told by a 6-digit/. ID is going to be, but still...
My little bitty household server had been running RH variants from 5.something onwards, surviving numerous hardware transplants and live upgrades all the way up through RH 9.
It was running pretty smooth but I felt like it was getting harder to find RPMs packaged for it, and security updates seemed to be coming more rarely. So I went for one more live update: to Fedora Core 5.
Huge mistake. Damn near bricked the machine. I eventually got minimal useful service running, after $DIETY-only-knows how many RPM removals and replacements to fix broken dependencies and horked up library versions and the like.
As soon as I got the beasty running in limp-along mode, I started scrounging the bits and bobs to replace the box. The new server is live, running slightly newer hardware (most of it from this century, even) and CentOS 5. So far, so good, but no more live upgrades for me.
On the side opposed to software patentability, an eminent Nobel-prize-winning economist.
On the side supporting software patentability, we have Steve Ballmer.
Which side seems more credible to you? I'm going with the Nobel-winner myself. Even if Dancing Monkeyboy meanaces me with chairs while screaming "DEVELOPERS!" at me.
For those not familiar with the moderately bizarre taxation schemes brought into existence by agribusiness, diesel sold to farmers to fuel their power farming equipment is "untaxed" and dyed red at the distributor to distinguish it from "road" diesel, which is taxed as a motor fuel. If you're driving your diesel W Golf down the street and your fuel tank starts leaking red diesel, expect a big retroactive tax bill and maybe a prosecution for tax evasion.
In my home state, pickup trucks belonging to farmers can be registered as farm equipment and, presumably, fueled with farm diesel. (The trucks themselves are also taxed lower than identical "street" trucks, because they're really not trucks, they're farm equipment.)
Signed,
a disgruntled city dweller in an overwhelmingly agricultural US state
Not sure if that was directed at my Oban comment, but in case it was...
I was not meaning to Pooh Pooh his selection, just noting that neophytes to Scotch may find it overpowering.
Yes, I took the phrase "bog water" as "pooh-pooh"ing. After a bit of calm reflection (i.e., about 10 minutes after submitting my comment), I realized what you probably meant. Sigh.
For a lot of neophytes, Scotch in general is overpowering. I'm not gonna claim to be the boldest in the world -- I certainly don't jump into new things with both feet, usually -- but with whisky I still don't know of any "easing into" it. I guess Glenlivet or something. (Which is a fine fine malt, really, and I suppose mild enough to "start" with.)
As to Nam Beist, I will definitely track that down. Sometimes you want a whisky you have to fistfight a bit before settling down with, and that sounds a bit like it.
Not mocking, really; that was an amazingly on-topic typo. Although the Lay of Beren and Luthien predates The Hobbit by millennia, in lore.
Cue copyright fabulists making up allegorical stories about Carcharoth the copyright holder snatching the precious p2p file from the downloader's hand, taking the downloader's hand with it.
Oh, wait, TFA isn't about downloading and the RIAA. Carry on then.
As to whiskies, I recommend Glenmorangie (Highlands) or Lagavulin (Islay). Lagavulin, particularly, depends upon a certain tenacity to muscle past the initial "OMG, I'm drinking creosote!" reaction, but is rewarding by the second dram (IMO).
FWIW, people who pooh-pooh other peoples' whisky preferences are compensating, IMO. The same mindset as audiophiles, as far as I'm concerned.
The latest ruling came in a case arising from a patent application by Stephen Comiskey, a lawyer who wanted to create a system for "mandatory arbitration involving legal documents," such as wills or contracts. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Mr. Comiskey's patent application, as did the agency's board of appeals. Mr. Comiskey took his appeal to court.
Did this guy try to patent lawsuits?
Wow. That takes huge brass ones.
Frankly, I wonder if Mr. Comiskey shouldn't be more worried about his patent being invalidated by the huge body of prior art on Slashdot, every time a patent subject comes up and some bright bulb attempts to create a joke metapatent or something.
Oh, I don't know. From the start, all the promised was Pretty Good Privacy. Not like Fort Knox, more like a combination padlock on an open-backed locker.
I find myself wishing more and more that Phil Zimmerman hadn't sold to NAI.
Does GPG have a full-disk mode? I think I could trust something with open source and reliable software freedom.
<style type="comicbookguy"> I can clearly distinguish an audible difference between these cables, and you can't. Therefore you are clearly an inferior being. Worst. Audio. Customer. Ever. </style>"
Oh, yeah, and my dog can can hear things even you can't. So clearly, you're inferior to Snuffy. And while we're at it, I can recognize a scam when I see it, and you can't. So, who's superior again?
I can't believe you missed that moment in the movie, just after Luke lands and R2 disembarks. Luke reaches into a thigh pocket on his flight suit and the X-Wing's formation lights blink. I think the on-board computer says something like "System armed!".
Maybe that was in the "Greedo shot first" Special Edition.
I'm pretty sure we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvering.
Sheesh, we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvers in hard vacuum. And face it, that's just silly.
That's why I prefer the other "X-Foil" spaceship in pop SF TV canon. At least Babylon 5 came up with apparently realistic physics for spacecraft movement and a feasible rational for the X-style "wings": maximizing rotational moment available from the thrust of the engines for maximum slew rate.
Hmmm... I've got a fever, and the only prescription, is a flying scale model of a Starfury Thunderbolt. Yah. Definitely.
1) They violate your rights against self incrimination. Per the US constitution, I cannot be compelled to testify or offer evidence against myself. What this law says is that I MUST testify against myself, in the form of giving up *knowledge* that I have for the state to use against me.
Well, the specific law being discussed is UK, not US, so the US 5th Amendment doesn't apply.
(Cue snide comments from both sides of the Atlantic: Europeans joking about how Americans want U.S. law applicable universally, U.S. cynics poking at the "weakness" of the UK's traditional legal rights system.)
It appears that the right against self-incrimination is a relative latecomer in UK law (if I can believe Wikipedia). I find it interesting that the 1994 law mentioned in this Wiki article may affect how a jury can official consider aspects of your refusal to incriminate yourself. Is there statute or precedent in the US justice system equivalent?
2) While the warrant may be issued for a small piece of information, it has the potential to lay all your secrets bare. Let's say I am accused of child pornography, and that's what the police are "looking for" in the encrypted directory marked "Private". All of the data in that directory is subject to discovery. So if they find pictures of my infant daughter without her onesie, and figure out that this is simply a divorce case gone bad, the child porn investigation dies. But now they have also seen my financial records, and discover that I've made some questionable tax deductions, and the case now gets referred to the IRS. Or they find money that I've been hiding from my ex-wife, and hand her that info.
I don't think this is a new risk. If an investigation of one alleged misdeed uncovers evidence of others, I think those can spin off other investigations and prosecutions. If this really worries you, and you are carrying our multiple simultaneous criminal acts, I recommend compartmentalization. Different encryption keys for your different criminal enterprises.
Your assessment of the summary is a bit incomplete.
Apple's approach to platform management has, as you rightly point out, always been like this since the Macintosh era. And, as you rightly point out, it's always been about money: controlling the tollbooth into happy happy Macland.
But dismissing "obsessive interest in control" misses an important point. "Obsessive interest in control" is the actual mechanism by which Apple guards the gates so those damn dirty hippy developers don't sneak in and litter the pristine paths and gardens with their own unsanctioned apps. Slackers lacking the necessary obsessive interest in control can't reliably watch the walls, making sure filthy spying bloggers can't sneak out with Apple's precious marketing secrets. If you don't care enough to obsess about controlling the iPhone environment, how are you going to keep renegade users from bolting from your chosen and sanctified service provider (damaging your ability to deliver your promised customer pool)?
But you were right about the "vindictiveness" in the summary being out of line and probably trollish.
Did you really read the exchange? I mean, from a perspective not blurred by a glaze of sympathetic indignation?
makjls's cardinal sin was not asking a question in ignorance. The true error was arguing with knowledgeable people from a position of ignorance.
Alan Cox didn't get snippy until the Peanut Gallery began to presume they understood the rationale for chroot(2) better than he did.
Really, folks, ire is no substitute for understanding. Argue from a false presumption ("chroot is a security tool") and you will always lose, and make everyone involved look like jerks in the process.
I've been there, on the vehement-but-wrong side of the argument. (With Eric Raymond, if you can believe it.) I've had to publicly apologize. It's still out there for all digital eternity, thanks to Google Groups. (No, I'm not citing the URL. I use a pseudo on/. for a reason)
Truly, truly, when you approach acknowledged experts on a subject with a concern, don't get offended if they don't agree with you. Odds are good that they're right, and you might learn something if you listen instead of raising your voice.
Damn these editable sources! How can a decent man win an argument anymore!
Umm.... by editing Wikipedia to support you?
The whole argument in TFA comes from people believing the slogan "Chroot jail your daemons" without understanding (A) chroot isn't the security part of the arrangement (priv separation is more important) and, in this particular argument, (B) chroot's behavior isn't a bug, and "solving" it is solving the wrong problem.
The real problem is treating chroot as a one-stop security tool.
The meta-problem is accepting slogans and one-line advice as a valid substitute for actually understanding the mechanisms involved.
Slashdot Mirror
John Gilmore expressed that idea in 1994, a time when no one seemed to own the wires and information really did want to be free.
Well, it looks like the wide-open range has been fenced and platted and farmed, and the content barons don't take kindly to scruffy freedom-loving trappers and injuns and migrants traipsing around on "their" territory. (Of course it's theirs: they have legal exclusive title, signed off by the government and everything!)
It would take an extreme of DIY spirit to "route around" a local monopoly on last-mile infrastructure. If CableCo Inc. is the only internet game in town, you will take what CableCo gives you and you will like it, or you just do without internet.
Competition is probably the best hope for salvation, except that the corporates know that competition is soo much worse for profits than a little quiet collusion.
I saw this crap coming back in '91, when the NSF started permitting commercial content on NSFNET. In almost any arena of interests, commercial interests crowd out all others.
Yes indeed; RedHat with the serial numbers filed off.
My GNU/Linux server experience is pretty much all in the RH family tree, except for a brief fling with SUSE for SPARC in the early '00s. For desktop, though, I have to admit that Kubuntu is pretty sweet. I just haven't had to (or had the chance to) learn the guts like I've had to (or had the opportunity to) learn the ugly white underbelly of server OSs.
But Hell, I come from a SunOS and AIX background, so almost nothing in the GNU/Linux universe can really scare me much.
Amen.
Although, in the words of a wise man, "The singular of data is not 'anecdote'", I'll cite my own little war story data point. It's trivial, of course, as every story told by a 6-digit /. ID is going to be, but still...
My little bitty household server had been running RH variants from 5.something onwards, surviving numerous hardware transplants and live upgrades all the way up through RH 9.
It was running pretty smooth but I felt like it was getting harder to find RPMs packaged for it, and security updates seemed to be coming more rarely. So I went for one more live update: to Fedora Core 5.
Huge mistake. Damn near bricked the machine. I eventually got minimal useful service running, after $DIETY-only-knows how many RPM removals and replacements to fix broken dependencies and horked up library versions and the like.
As soon as I got the beasty running in limp-along mode, I started scrounging the bits and bobs to replace the box. The new server is live, running slightly newer hardware (most of it from this century, even) and CentOS 5. So far, so good, but no more live upgrades for me.
They wanna take down USENET?
And they're gonna target a single NNTP provider to do it?
OMFG, USENET was P2P before P2P was invented. It's so distributed, diffuse, and attributionless that it's practically untouchable.
Who keeps picking out windmills for RIAA to tilt at? Their legal attack strategist needs to put down the crack pipe and step away from his desk.
Seriously...
If any of the charges applied to the punk were felonies (and I think at least two are), and they stick...
If someone had died because of this "prank", the phrase "felony murder" would be coming up in discussion right now.
On the side opposed to software patentability, an eminent Nobel-prize-winning economist.
On the side supporting software patentability, we have Steve Ballmer.
Which side seems more credible to you? I'm going with the Nobel-winner myself. Even if Dancing Monkeyboy meanaces me with chairs while screaming "DEVELOPERS!" at me.
Kinda like farm diesel?
For those not familiar with the moderately bizarre taxation schemes brought into existence by agribusiness, diesel sold to farmers to fuel their power farming equipment is "untaxed" and dyed red at the distributor to distinguish it from "road" diesel, which is taxed as a motor fuel. If you're driving your diesel W Golf down the street and your fuel tank starts leaking red diesel, expect a big retroactive tax bill and maybe a prosecution for tax evasion.
In my home state, pickup trucks belonging to farmers can be registered as farm equipment and, presumably, fueled with farm diesel. (The trucks themselves are also taxed lower than identical "street" trucks, because they're really not trucks, they're farm equipment.)
Signed,
a disgruntled city dweller in an overwhelmingly agricultural US state
I'm more worried about the little one's health. 14 months old and only 12 pounds!??!
Mebbe Comandante Taco meant "this past August". A 2-month-old can quite reasonably weigh 12 pounds.
Not sure if that was directed at my Oban comment, but in case it was...
I was not meaning to Pooh Pooh his selection, just noting that neophytes to Scotch may find it overpowering.
Yes, I took the phrase "bog water" as "pooh-pooh"ing. After a bit of calm reflection (i.e., about 10 minutes after submitting my comment), I realized what you probably meant. Sigh.
For a lot of neophytes, Scotch in general is overpowering. I'm not gonna claim to be the boldest in the world -- I certainly don't jump into new things with both feet, usually -- but with whisky I still don't know of any "easing into" it. I guess Glenlivet or something. (Which is a fine fine malt, really, and I suppose mild enough to "start" with.)
As to Nam Beist, I will definitely track that down. Sometimes you want a whisky you have to fistfight a bit before settling down with, and that sounds a bit like it.
copyright is extended by the Beren convention
Beren Convention?
Not mocking, really; that was an amazingly on-topic typo. Although the Lay of Beren and Luthien predates The Hobbit by millennia, in lore.
Cue copyright fabulists making up allegorical stories about Carcharoth the copyright holder snatching the precious p2p file from the downloader's hand, taking the downloader's hand with it.
Oh, wait, TFA isn't about downloading and the RIAA. Carry on then.
I don't drink to the point of impairment, either.
As to whiskies, I recommend Glenmorangie (Highlands) or Lagavulin (Islay). Lagavulin, particularly, depends upon a certain tenacity to muscle past the initial "OMG, I'm drinking creosote!" reaction, but is rewarding by the second dram (IMO).
FWIW, people who pooh-pooh other peoples' whisky preferences are compensating, IMO. The same mindset as audiophiles, as far as I'm concerned.
Sir Bedivere: "What do we burn, apart from lithium batteries?"
Peasant: "More lithium batteries!"
Podcast it! Podcast the podcasting podcast podcastily.
Hmmm. Firefox spell check only objects to "podcastily", so podcast can't be used as an adverb. The rest are perfectly cromulent.
Hold it hold it hold it...
The latest ruling came in a case arising from a patent application by Stephen Comiskey, a lawyer who wanted to create a system for "mandatory arbitration involving legal documents," such as wills or contracts. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied Mr. Comiskey's patent application, as did the agency's board of appeals. Mr. Comiskey took his appeal to court.
Did this guy try to patent lawsuits?
Wow. That takes huge brass ones.
Frankly, I wonder if Mr. Comiskey shouldn't be more worried about his patent being invalidated by the huge body of prior art on Slashdot, every time a patent subject comes up and some bright bulb attempts to create a joke metapatent or something.
that MS has dropped the WGA requirement for IE7.
However, I haven't dropped my "software mustn't suck" requirement, so I guess I still can't download it.
At least that explains why Windows automatic update offered me the opportunity to "upgrade" to IE7. Very thoughtful of MS.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Thank you!
i_diot@dhs.gov
They also just lost credibility.
Oh, I don't know. From the start, all the promised was Pretty Good Privacy. Not like Fort Knox, more like a combination padlock on an open-backed locker.
I find myself wishing more and more that Phil Zimmerman hadn't sold to NAI.
Does GPG have a full-disk mode? I think I could trust something with open source and reliable software freedom.
Yeah, I've noticed that in audiosnobs too.
<style type="comicbookguy">
I can clearly distinguish an audible difference between these cables, and you can't. Therefore you are clearly an inferior being. Worst. Audio. Customer. Ever.
</style>"
Oh, yeah, and my dog can can hear things even you can't. So clearly, you're inferior to Snuffy.
And while we're at it, I can recognize a scam when I see it, and you can't. So, who's superior again?
I can't believe you missed that moment in the movie, just after Luke lands and R2 disembarks. Luke reaches into a thigh pocket on his flight suit and the X-Wing's formation lights blink. I think the on-board computer says something like "System armed!".
Maybe that was in the "Greedo shot first" Special Edition.
I'm pretty sure we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvering.
Sheesh, we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvers in hard vacuum. And face it, that's just silly.
That's why I prefer the other "X-Foil" spaceship in pop SF TV canon. At least Babylon 5 came up with apparently realistic physics for spacecraft movement and a feasible rational for the X-style "wings": maximizing rotational moment available from the thrust of the engines for maximum slew rate.
Hmmm... I've got a fever, and the only prescription, is a flying scale model of a Starfury Thunderbolt. Yah. Definitely.
1) They violate your rights against self incrimination. Per the US constitution, I cannot be compelled to testify or offer evidence against myself. What this law says is that I MUST testify against myself, in the form of giving up *knowledge* that I have for the state to use against me.
Well, the specific law being discussed is UK, not US, so the US 5th Amendment doesn't apply.
(Cue snide comments from both sides of the Atlantic: Europeans joking about how Americans want U.S. law applicable universally, U.S. cynics poking at the "weakness" of the UK's traditional legal rights system.)
It appears that the right against self-incrimination is a relative latecomer in UK law (if I can believe Wikipedia). I find it interesting that the 1994 law mentioned in this Wiki article may affect how a jury can official consider aspects of your refusal to incriminate yourself. Is there statute or precedent in the US justice system equivalent?
2) While the warrant may be issued for a small piece of information, it has the potential to lay all your secrets bare. Let's say I am accused of child pornography, and that's what the police are "looking for" in the encrypted directory marked "Private". All of the data in that directory is subject to discovery. So if they find pictures of my infant daughter without her onesie, and figure out that this is simply a divorce case gone bad, the child porn investigation dies. But now they have also seen my financial records, and discover that I've made some questionable tax deductions, and the case now gets referred to the IRS. Or they find money that I've been hiding from my ex-wife, and hand her that info.
I don't think this is a new risk. If an investigation of one alleged misdeed uncovers evidence of others, I think those can spin off other investigations and prosecutions. If this really worries you, and you are carrying our multiple simultaneous criminal acts, I recommend compartmentalization. Different encryption keys for your different criminal enterprises.
Apple's approach to platform management has, as you rightly point out, always been like this since the Macintosh era. And, as you rightly point out, it's always been about money: controlling the tollbooth into happy happy Macland.
But dismissing "obsessive interest in control" misses an important point. "Obsessive interest in control" is the actual mechanism by which Apple guards the gates so those damn dirty hippy developers don't sneak in and litter the pristine paths and gardens with their own unsanctioned apps. Slackers lacking the necessary obsessive interest in control can't reliably watch the walls, making sure filthy spying bloggers can't sneak out with Apple's precious marketing secrets. If you don't care enough to obsess about controlling the iPhone environment, how are you going to keep renegade users from bolting from your chosen and sanctified service provider (damaging your ability to deliver your promised customer pool)?
But you were right about the "vindictiveness" in the summary being out of line and probably trollish.
How 'bout this? They coulda picked a less asshat wireless vendor.
What is it with the fanbois? In the immortal words, "Think Different".
Did you really read the exchange? I mean, from a perspective not blurred by a glaze of sympathetic indignation?
makjls's cardinal sin was not asking a question in ignorance. The true error was arguing with knowledgeable people from a position of ignorance.
Alan Cox didn't get snippy until the Peanut Gallery began to presume they understood the rationale for chroot(2) better than he did.
Really, folks, ire is no substitute for understanding. Argue from a false presumption ("chroot is a security tool") and you will always lose, and make everyone involved look like jerks in the process.
I've been there, on the vehement-but-wrong side of the argument. (With Eric Raymond, if you can believe it.) I've had to publicly apologize. It's still out there for all digital eternity, thanks to Google Groups. (No, I'm not citing the URL. I use a pseudo on /. for a reason)
Truly, truly, when you approach acknowledged experts on a subject with a concern, don't get offended if they don't agree with you. Odds are good that they're right, and you might learn something if you listen instead of raising your voice.
Damn these editable sources! How can a decent man win an argument anymore!
Umm.... by editing Wikipedia to support you?
The whole argument in TFA comes from people believing the slogan "Chroot jail your daemons" without understanding (A) chroot isn't the security part of the arrangement (priv separation is more important) and, in this particular argument, (B) chroot's behavior isn't a bug, and "solving" it is solving the wrong problem.
The real problem is treating chroot as a one-stop security tool.
The meta-problem is accepting slogans and one-line advice as a valid substitute for actually understanding the mechanisms involved.