So long as they can find one (disgrunted former) employee willing to testify under oath that the you have unlicensed software, they can make you do the audit at your own expense.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is only for criminal charges, for a civil case they only need to be able to prove their side better than you can prove yours. One fired loser is a weak hand, but it still beats a zero...
That's not quite true. The PTSN has a limited capacity, and those limits assume that not everybody will pick up the phone all at once. On 9/11/01, in parts of the country far away from Washington and NYC, there was no major failure of any local telephone equipment, yet there were many calls that could not be completed because there was a higher volume of phone calls than the system could handle.
If an infected computer is on a dial-on-demand modem setup, the worm will spew non-stop Internet traffic, and the router will respond by firing up the Internet connection and using the phone line. If overall phone usage goes up a noticiable ammount, that could cause routing that make 911 a "can't get there from here" problem.
But wait, 911 is supposed to be a priority call that should be able to kick other less-important calls off the system to clear the way. So, most communites have nothing to worry about here... then again, if we were in the perfect world, worms wouldn't be a problem at all.
What I think is really interesting is that SARC's own advisory about SQL Slammer says that Norton AntiVirus virus defintion will never be able to detect this threat because it exists only in memory and never tries to write itself to any disk. Simply put, it comes in over an open port, and then uses the exploit to get itself into RAM. Once in RAM, it's too late to do anything, the worm owns the box.
They then proceed to show how this worm can be blocked using Symantec's line firewall products, and offer a free removal tool for people who already know they have an infected machine... but it seems very clear that Norton Antivirus alone is not going to protect you from this threat.
Just because something isn't technically on the Internet, doesn't mean it is on a completely walled-off pipe.
Many stand-alone ATM structures use a satellite connection from Hughes Network Systems to securely connect to their company's network. But that's the same Hughes Network Systems birds that power DirecWay and DirecPC consumer services. So, if for some reason there was a sudden surge in Internet traffic (such as a worm randomly trying to infect IP addresses without caring whether or not there is a machine capable of being infected on the other end) the ATM might not be able to get enough satellite time to complete a transaction without timing out, therefore resulting a "lost my connection" message on the ATM.
Think of it as a VPN tunnel over a network that is used partly for Internet, and partly for other things... if the Internet goes crazy, it affects those other things too.
Taste is very important in determining what is safe to consume. When milk turns sour, it has gone bad and generally is no longer safe to drink. The first bad-tasting drop results in the milk being spit out, and disaster prevented.
Imagine if that milk has been redesigned to taste fresh long after it has already gone bad...
The fact is, NPR has most of their content up on the web available to all comers. There hasn't been any problem with them using the client-server method because there isn't really that much demand.
I still think P2P in the Napster sense exists only as a way to make it harder for copyright owners to figure out who and how to sue to make the outright violations of the law go away.
Slashdot certainly could say "Super Bowl broadcast to contain geek-friendly ads"... but I think Taco was trying to ignore the game as much as possible.
It's simple to fix... require that those who release works with legally-backed copy protection file an unencrypted digital version with at least the quality of the protected version with the Library of Congress, who will place that version on a public web server the moment the 28 years are up.
Re:So let me get this straight...
on
Copyright Rumblings
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· Score: 5, Informative
especially given that 90% of attempted use of such material happens within a few years of its release
I hate having to debate people who use static scoring to argue against things. If the copyrights on modern living authors started expiring one-by-one, their public domain works are more likely to be taught in schools, where presently they're not because a 30 year old copyrighted book is just so expensive to buy, compaired to a fully public domain author such as Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, who has seen most of the use of his work occur long long long after their death.
Kazza might actually have something legal to do if some of the early MTV music videos were in the public domain...
It's amazing how many users will think that just because all of the elements visible on the screen are exactly the same, that nothing has changed when they installed a new OS.
There were worlds of diffence under the hood of Windows ME and Windows 2000... yet they looked almost identical to the common user's eyes.
I, Cringely has never been a source for news developments. "I, Cringely" by its name itself implies it's an opinion column...
Cringely's most famous work has been as a historical storyteller rather than covering developments as they happen. Don't look for him expecting news, that's never been what he's had to sell you.
So yeah, this is a rather far out idea that even he admits in the column is never gonna happen. But, hey, what a conversation starter... he's done is job.
The C:\ prompt within a window has always been an illusionairy thing. Think about this for a second...
In Windows 3.1 you could run DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS... but if you ever tried to run "Win" in that environment, you would get a message that indicated that Windows-atop-DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS just wan't going to happen, you're not at a "real" DOS prompt. You didn't have a full-featured version of DOS there, just the interface level.
If you carry that forward to XP, the "DOS" in XP doesn't directly control the low-level stuff anymore. Some nameless, faceless part of Windows does.
DOS-within-Windows is now just an alturnate wacky skin for Windows Explorer. It's just a familiar text-based way to do things, not a low level OS anymore.
Your talk seems to conflict with the "new agenda" at face value... notice this paragraph from the CNET story.
"Lindows spokeswoman Cheryl Schwartzman said the company wanted to concentrate on desktop Linux for customers who'll use it, not for programmers who'll develop it. "If you want to talk about the Linux kernel, this is not the conference for you," she said. "
There's no way he's going to be able to build a user-centered convention like MacWorld around his operating system at this stage in the game. The object of this whole charade was to get Open Source supporters to book their tickets with the bait of a vendor-neutral conference on his dime, then switch it to a pro-Lindows circus instead.
The thing is, Red Hat cannot make a simple "anybody can walk up to this and know how to use it right away" product as a result of that business model. If everybody understood how to use RedHat straight out of the box, nobody would need to pay for training, certifications, or support. Red Hat Linux will always be complicated as a result.
Nope, one of my packages was included in Lindows, and the President even contacted me personally to ask if I could add a few features. They aren't stealing from open source "programers" - they're complying fully with the GPL.
Did he offer you any money in exchange for giving the features that meet the needs of his for-profit company priority over the features you would have done first otherwise?
This is where the "you're being used" situation sets in. They're not really "stealing" from you, but he's politely asking you to do something that makes him money, and offering only a "Thank you!" (followed by a wisper of "SUCKER!") in return.
Michael Robertson has practiced tech-witchcraft for years, this is just the most recent example.
The basic facts of this story are clear as day... Michael Robertson wanted to hold a conference, but he knew if he held it himself nobody would show up. So, he partners with a Linux news site that prides itself in maintaining indepenace from any specific vendor. That news site demands that they have a say in the control of the agenda if they are going to lend their credibility, and he agress. They draw up an agreed upon agenda... then suddenly Michael Robertson decides he wants to substitute one where he's the keynote. News site is now crying foul play as it pulls out, and several other participants are rethinking their plans as one-by-one others pull out. The only dust left to settle deals with who's still in and who's out.
It might not be illegal, but it's certainly a mean thing to do. He's basically burning his credibilty with some major Open Source supporters all in exchange for the right to be keynote speaker at a trumped-up conference. It shows how little respect he has the Open Source community... and thefore the community doesn't like him much either.
He's soiled his reputation with past bad acts, and this just added to the list.
Lindows is more or less exploiting a security hole in the GPL.
There's simply no way to modify a GPL project and then distribute it without being able to prevent it from falling into Lindow's hands, and there is no way to compell Lindows to give anything back to the community either.
At least Bill Gates bothers to pay his developers...
This guy is very smart at how to play the game the wrong way and come out a winner.
MP3.com made this guy famous and made him lots of money. The myMP3.com service was his fatal mistake, causing the major labels to basically end up owning the site, but in the process he made his money. He doesn't mind breaking the rules so long as the reward for doing so is greater than the penalty for doing so.
He basically made promises to get his show promotion from people who would not go to a show with the present agenda, then turned around and betrayed that trust. He'll still end up with more attendees than if he had launched with this agenda posted in the first place.
Yeah, he burned the Open Source community... but he thinks nothing much bad can come from that. Well, can it?
trying to get me all sympathetic for Joe Webmaster's 'lost' revenue stream, won't work.
Do you have any sympathy for anybody at all?
It's one say to say convicted price-fixers like the RIAA members do not deserve sympathy, but what'd Joe Webmaster do wrong? He was making his affiliate program money fair and square. These spyware programs hijacked links that he did all the work for, and redirected all the money to another place.
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So long as they can find one (disgrunted former) employee willing to testify under oath that the you have unlicensed software, they can make you do the audit at your own expense.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is only for criminal charges, for a civil case they only need to be able to prove their side better than you can prove yours. One fired loser is a weak hand, but it still beats a zero...
That's not quite true. The PTSN has a limited capacity, and those limits assume that not everybody will pick up the phone all at once. On 9/11/01, in parts of the country far away from Washington and NYC, there was no major failure of any local telephone equipment, yet there were many calls that could not be completed because there was a higher volume of phone calls than the system could handle.
If an infected computer is on a dial-on-demand modem setup, the worm will spew non-stop Internet traffic, and the router will respond by firing up the Internet connection and using the phone line. If overall phone usage goes up a noticiable ammount, that could cause routing that make 911 a "can't get there from here" problem.
But wait, 911 is supposed to be a priority call that should be able to kick other less-important calls off the system to clear the way. So, most communites have nothing to worry about here... then again, if we were in the perfect world, worms wouldn't be a problem at all.
What I think is really interesting is that SARC's own advisory about SQL Slammer says that Norton AntiVirus virus defintion will never be able to detect this threat because it exists only in memory and never tries to write itself to any disk. Simply put, it comes in over an open port, and then uses the exploit to get itself into RAM. Once in RAM, it's too late to do anything, the worm owns the box.
They then proceed to show how this worm can be blocked using Symantec's line firewall products, and offer a free removal tool for people who already know they have an infected machine... but it seems very clear that Norton Antivirus alone is not going to protect you from this threat.
Just because something isn't technically on the Internet, doesn't mean it is on a completely walled-off pipe.
Many stand-alone ATM structures use a satellite connection from Hughes Network Systems to securely connect to their company's network. But that's the same Hughes Network Systems birds that power DirecWay and DirecPC consumer services. So, if for some reason there was a sudden surge in Internet traffic (such as a worm randomly trying to infect IP addresses without caring whether or not there is a machine capable of being infected on the other end) the ATM might not be able to get enough satellite time to complete a transaction without timing out, therefore resulting a "lost my connection" message on the ATM.
Think of it as a VPN tunnel over a network that is used partly for Internet, and partly for other things... if the Internet goes crazy, it affects those other things too.
Taste is very important in determining what is safe to consume. When milk turns sour, it has gone bad and generally is no longer safe to drink. The first bad-tasting drop results in the milk being spit out, and disaster prevented.
Imagine if that milk has been redesigned to taste fresh long after it has already gone bad...
Yes, and those fatty chemicals they add go by the names of "salt" and the very high tech "sugar".
From the CNET article linked in the story...
"Web services is currently held up--in my opinion--by things like security and reliability," said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk.
Doesn't that translate to "They won't let us do it because it doesn't work."?
The fact is, NPR has most of their content up on the web available to all comers. There hasn't been any problem with them using the client-server method because there isn't really that much demand.
I still think P2P in the Napster sense exists only as a way to make it harder for copyright owners to figure out who and how to sue to make the outright violations of the law go away.
Slashdot certainly could say "Super Bowl broadcast to contain geek-friendly ads"... but I think Taco was trying to ignore the game as much as possible.
As opposed to the current system where they get 95 (or maybe more) years to do so?
It's simple to fix... require that those who release works with legally-backed copy protection file an unencrypted digital version with at least the quality of the protected version with the Library of Congress, who will place that version on a public web server the moment the 28 years are up.
especially given that 90% of attempted use of such material happens within a few years of its release
I hate having to debate people who use static scoring to argue against things. If the copyrights on modern living authors started expiring one-by-one, their public domain works are more likely to be taught in schools, where presently they're not because a 30 year old copyrighted book is just so expensive to buy, compaired to a fully public domain author such as Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, who has seen most of the use of his work occur long long long after their death.
Kazza might actually have something legal to do if some of the early MTV music videos were in the public domain...
XM isn't gonna save you... ClearChannel invested in the company, and carries much of ClearChannel's network programming.
The problem I have with these anti-deep link policies is that there are multiple ways to prevent a deep link using stupid server tricks.
Why are these people turning to the lawyers to make deep links illegal, why they could just turn to their IT guys to make deep links impossible?
It's amazing how many users will think that just because all of the elements visible on the screen are exactly the same, that nothing has changed when they installed a new OS.
There were worlds of diffence under the hood of Windows ME and Windows 2000... yet they looked almost identical to the common user's eyes.
I, Cringely has never been a source for news developments. "I, Cringely" by its name itself implies it's an opinion column...
Cringely's most famous work has been as a historical storyteller rather than covering developments as they happen. Don't look for him expecting news, that's never been what he's had to sell you.
So yeah, this is a rather far out idea that even he admits in the column is never gonna happen. But, hey, what a conversation starter... he's done is job.
The C:\ prompt within a window has always been an illusionairy thing. Think about this for a second...
In Windows 3.1 you could run DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS... but if you ever tried to run "Win" in that environment, you would get a message that indicated that Windows-atop-DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS just wan't going to happen, you're not at a "real" DOS prompt. You didn't have a full-featured version of DOS there, just the interface level.
If you carry that forward to XP, the "DOS" in XP doesn't directly control the low-level stuff anymore. Some nameless, faceless part of Windows does.
DOS-within-Windows is now just an alturnate wacky skin for Windows Explorer. It's just a familiar text-based way to do things, not a low level OS anymore.
Your talk seems to conflict with the "new agenda" at face value... notice this paragraph from the CNET story.
"Lindows spokeswoman Cheryl Schwartzman said the company wanted to concentrate on desktop Linux for customers who'll use it, not for programmers who'll develop it. "If you want to talk about the Linux kernel, this is not the conference for you," she said. "
There's no way he's going to be able to build a user-centered convention like MacWorld around his operating system at this stage in the game. The object of this whole charade was to get Open Source supporters to book their tickets with the bait of a vendor-neutral conference on his dime, then switch it to a pro-Lindows circus instead.
The thing is, Red Hat cannot make a simple "anybody can walk up to this and know how to use it right away" product as a result of that business model. If everybody understood how to use RedHat straight out of the box, nobody would need to pay for training, certifications, or support. Red Hat Linux will always be complicated as a result.
Nope, one of my packages was included in Lindows, and the President even contacted me personally to ask if I could add a few features. They aren't stealing from open source "programers" - they're complying fully with the GPL.
Did he offer you any money in exchange for giving the features that meet the needs of his for-profit company priority over the features you would have done first otherwise?
This is where the "you're being used" situation sets in. They're not really "stealing" from you, but he's politely asking you to do something that makes him money, and offering only a "Thank you!" (followed by a wisper of "SUCKER!") in return.
Michael Robertson has practiced tech-witchcraft for years, this is just the most recent example.
The basic facts of this story are clear as day... Michael Robertson wanted to hold a conference, but he knew if he held it himself nobody would show up. So, he partners with a Linux news site that prides itself in maintaining indepenace from any specific vendor. That news site demands that they have a say in the control of the agenda if they are going to lend their credibility, and he agress. They draw up an agreed upon agenda... then suddenly Michael Robertson decides he wants to substitute one where he's the keynote. News site is now crying foul play as it pulls out, and several other participants are rethinking their plans as one-by-one others pull out. The only dust left to settle deals with who's still in and who's out.
It might not be illegal, but it's certainly a mean thing to do. He's basically burning his credibilty with some major Open Source supporters all in exchange for the right to be keynote speaker at a trumped-up conference. It shows how little respect he has the Open Source community... and thefore the community doesn't like him much either.
He's soiled his reputation with past bad acts, and this just added to the list.
Lindows is more or less exploiting a security hole in the GPL.
There's simply no way to modify a GPL project and then distribute it without being able to prevent it from falling into Lindow's hands, and there is no way to compell Lindows to give anything back to the community either.
At least Bill Gates bothers to pay his developers...
This guy is very smart at how to play the game the wrong way and come out a winner.
MP3.com made this guy famous and made him lots of money. The myMP3.com service was his fatal mistake, causing the major labels to basically end up owning the site, but in the process he made his money. He doesn't mind breaking the rules so long as the reward for doing so is greater than the penalty for doing so.
He basically made promises to get his show promotion from people who would not go to a show with the present agenda, then turned around and betrayed that trust. He'll still end up with more attendees than if he had launched with this agenda posted in the first place.
Yeah, he burned the Open Source community... but he thinks nothing much bad can come from that. Well, can it?
It seems like the RIAA is trying to throw all of the possible solutions up against the wall to see if any of them will stick.
Wouldn't they get more effective results by picking one solution, and then putting all their efforts behind that?
trying to get me all sympathetic for Joe Webmaster's 'lost' revenue stream, won't work.
Do you have any sympathy for anybody at all?
It's one say to say convicted price-fixers like the RIAA members do not deserve sympathy, but what'd Joe Webmaster do wrong? He was making his affiliate program money fair and square. These spyware programs hijacked links that he did all the work for, and redirected all the money to another place.
If that's not robbery, what is?