The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act introduced by Senator Hollings is a dangerous attempt by a narrow segment of society to regulate the technology sector in order to protect their narrow interests. The Entertainment industry is in the position of horse cart accessory manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century pushing for the right to control the development of automotive technology. Like those manufacturers, Hollywood and Tokyo have the right to be paid for their products: the film and music distribution systems. They ought not to be given the right to control the development of emerging competition to those systems by digital technologies. What seems to them a threat to their inflated profits, looks to me like an exciting new avenue that promises artists and consumers alike a better deal than has heretofore been offered by the plutocrats of pop. I urge you to take a careful look at this legislation before it comes before you in Congress, and to consider carefully where the interests of the majority of your constituents lie with respect to this bill before you cast your vote.
Given the volume of code involved, I doubt attempts at tampering could remove every embarrasing element, even if they started months ago. Also, there's the possibility of compiling portions of the code and comparing them against an installed Windows instance. (I'm not talking about comparing MACs, but functionality.)
In addition to giving the litigating states huge fodder for additional charges, releasing the source code robs Microsoft of the "you're an idiot" defense. Despite the fact that there's no time for extreme non-idiots to fully understand the source code (Microsoft itself, with at least some non-idiots on staff, hasn't acheived this) with the code on the table it's too risky to make statements in court that could be falsified by reading the code.
Word has a very nice spell checking facility.
It also has a rather fascist grammer check.
The spelling and grammer errors are suspicious, but the tone
and content of the email strike me as genuine. If it's a hoax,
it's a damned perceptive one.
.
Seriously, though, Microsoft is a victim of it's own success in at least two ways. It is true, as they so defensively claim, that their position as the number one OS and applications vendor makes them a huge target for hackers. It is also true that their legacy of subordinating software design to world domination has resulted in architectures that are much harder to secure than those that have had less interference from marketing. They may or may not have finally woken up to this truth. But in any event, as you say, it will take many years to recover from the poor design decisions that have resulted in their current security troubles. In the meantime, while they (presumably) work at incorporating security awarness into their design and development processes, and struggle to find ways to patch the holes in their huge installed base, they must work to limit the damage these flaws can inflict on their reputation. Thus we see them trying to muzzle those who publish flaws on full-disclosure lists like bugtraq. (I know the full-disclosure debate is more complicated than that, and so is Microsoft's relationship to the various security communities.) It is helpful to their cause that software design is esoteric and incomprehensible to most folks not directly connected to the industry. However, that was true of the issues in the anti-trust trial, and that didn't save them from a conviction, ultimately.
Unfortunately, turning an entire corporate culture around on a dime is not possible.
Well, now, remember that this is the company that realized that they had missed the Internet phenomenon in 1995, turned on a dime, and crushed Netscape in four years. It doesn't work to underestimate these guys. Besides, getting this security mess cleaned up (or at least improved) will make the World a Better Place (tm). for all of us. (At least all of us sysadmins.)
I am a Computer Systems Administrator with 16 years professional
experience. I write with concern over the revised proposed Final
Judgment of United States v. Microsoft. In particular, I am concerned
with the language of section III(J)(2) of the revised proposed final
Judgment which reads:
"(No provision of this Final Judgment shall:...) Prevent Microsoft
from conditioning any license of any API, Documentation or
Communications Protocol related to anti-piracy systems, anti-virus
technologies, license enforcement mechanisms,
authentication/authorization security, or third party intellectual
property protection mechanisms of any Microsoft product to any person
or entity on the requirement that the licensee: (a) has no history of
software counterfeiting or piracy or willful violation of intellectual
property rights, (b) has a reasonable business need for the API,
Documentation or Communications Protocol for a planned or shipping
product, (c) meets reasonable, objective standards established by
Microsoft for certifying the authenticity and viability of its
business, (d) agrees to submit, at its own expense, any computer
program using such APIs, Documentation or Communication Protocols to
third-party verification, approved by Microsoft, to test for and
ensure verification and compliance with Microsoft specifications for
use of the API or interface, which specifications shall be related to
proper operation and integrity of the systems and mechanisms
identified in this paragraph."
Some background regarding my experience with Microsoft software will help
to clarify my concerns with this language.
For the first five years of my career, I used first the VMS, then the
Unix operating systems exclusively. Microsoft's DOS and Windows
operating systems were not considered by most of my customers
(Scientists and graduate students at the Physics Department of UCSB)
to be suitable for their purposes. In 1991, I got a new job at a
commercial company, Octel Communications in Milpitas California,
supporting their engineers. At Octel, Microsoft's dominance of the
market for PC operating systems was well under way. The engineers
mostly used Unix (Sun's version) but the rest of the company used DOS
and Windows 3.11. For me, as a Unix Systems Administrator, this posed
an immediate problem. The Windows systems were networked together
using a Microsoft protocol called SMB. The details of this protocol
were partly available, and partly kept secret (or at least not
published) by Microsoft. This meant that resources on the Windows
network, such as disks and printers, were unavailable to users on the
Unix network, and vice-versa. This was sub-optimal in a number of
ways. It led to situations in which workgroups would have two
printers, on each for Windows and Unix. Files would be shared using
floppy disks. Searching for a solution, I found a wonderful software
package on the Internet called Samba. This software, written by clever
programmer in Australia, named Andrew Tridgell, implemented
communications between the incompatible Unix and Windows worlds. Using
Samba, I could make my Unix computers and disks available to Windows
users. I could also make Windows printers available to Unix
users. Getting at Windows files from Unix was less well supported, but
it was possible. This was OK because at that time the Windows boxes
tended to be desktop machines, whereas the Unix computers were
generally larger server boxes. This meant most of the disk space we
wanted to share was on Unix, and Samba let us do that very well.
Two points about Samba are relevant in my concern over the language cited
in my first paragraph. First, since the SMB protocol in use on Windows 3.11
differed in important details from the various published specifications,
Andrew Tridgell had to "reverse engineer" the protocol. (When he started
he didn't even know there were any published specs. By the time he got
his hands on them, he had implemented enough on his own to know that certain
details were wrong or missing.) This may have been due to a desire by
Microsoft to keep the details of their implementation secret or commercial
advantage. Most Finance departments in industry look askance at duplicating
resources like printers across an entire organization. At Octel, there
was pressure from Finance to consolidate the computing platforms in use
due to the added expense. Since Finance used Windows, that was the platform
they wanted to standardize on. The second point about Samba is it was developed
by volunteers, and given away for free on the Internet. This model of software
distribution is now more familiar, (It goes by various labels, depending on
who is describing it and on what software license is in use. "Free Software"
and "Open Source Software" are two popular labels. Based on its license, the
former is the proper label for Samba.) but it was novel in the commercial
world in 1991.
Which brings me finally back to the language of Section III(J)(2) of
the revised proposed final Judgment reproduced above. One of the
several criteria for which "No provision of this Final judgment
shall... Prevent Microsoft from conditioning any license..." for its
security related APIs to a "person or entity" is that the entity " meets
reasonable, objective standards established by Microsoft for
certifying the authenticity and viability of its business..." (d).
The problem with this clause as it relates to the current discussion is that
Samba, as related above, does not have a "viable business." Samba is
given away for free by volunteers. It is nonetheless a critical piece of
software in ensuring that computers running Microsoft's OS "play nice" with
rival Operating Systems. If Microsoft is allowed, at its sole discretion,
to withhold APIs from entities it deems to not have a "viable business,"
there is a real danger Microsoft will do so for projects, like Samba,
that tend to soften the power of Microsoft's monopoly in the market for
PC operating systems. The quoted section limits this clause to APIs
".. related to anti-piracy systems, anti-virus technologies, license
enforcement mechanisms, authentication/authorization security, or third party
intellectual property protection mechanisms." However this limitation doesn't
rescue Samba, which must use "authentication/authorization security" mechanisms
to access resources on networks running Microsoft's software.
Based on this concern, I strongly urge you to amend the language in the
Final Judgment to place the decision in the hands of the Technical Committee
set up under section IV (B) of the Final Judgment, rather than Microsoft's
(No provision of this Final Judgement shall...) Prevent Microsoft from conditioning any license of any API, Documentation or Communications Protocol related to anti-piracy systems, anti-virus technologies, license enforcement mechanisms, authentication/authorization security, or third party intellectual property protection mechanisms of any Microsoft product to any person or entity on the requirement that the licensee: (a) has no history of software counterfeiting or piracy or willful violation of intellectual property rights, (b) has a reasonable business need for the API, Documentation or Communications Protocol for a planned or shipping product, (c) meets reasonable, objective standards established by Microsoft for certifying the authenticity and viability of its business, (d) agrees to submit, at its own expense, any computer program using such APIs, Documentation or Communication Protocols to third-party verification, approved by Microsoft, to test for and ensure verification and compliance with Microsoft specifications for use of the API or interface, which specifications shall be related to proper operation and integrity of the systems and mechanisms identified in this paragraph.
So, that does indeed seem to give MS the right to stonewall Free Software projects like Samba, but only on security APIs. However, section III (D) reads:
D. Starting at the earlier of the release of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP or 12 months after the submission of this Final Judgment to the Court, Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, IAPs, ICPs, and OEMs, for the sole purpose of interoperating with a Windows Operating System Product, via the Microsoft Developer Network ("MSDN") or similar mechanisms, the APIs and related Documentation that are used by Microsoft Middleware to interoperate with a Windows Operating System Product. In the case of a new major version of Microsoft Middleware, the disclosures required by this Section III.D shall occur no later than the last major beta test release of that Microsoft Middleware. In the case of a new version of a Windows Operating System Product, the obligations imposed by this Section III.D shall occur in a Timely Manner.
And "ISV" is defined in VI (I) as:
"ISV" means an entity other than Microsoft that is engaged in the development or marketing of software products.
The 'or' doesn't seem to leave much room for MS to define who the section applies to.
It just means @Home didn't pull the plug tonight. The court just allowed them to dump their contracts with the cable companies. That gave them the option to pull the plug, but they weren't required to.
It does sound like shutting down the service is a trump card to get everyone's attention while they thrash through some very tough bargaining. However, we aren't out of the woods yet.
@Home, please please please don't shut off your service until I get a job! I NEED my dice.com!
(And yes, I'm sorry I didn't apply for your senior sysadmin position. You are bankrupt, after all. 8)
Reading farther on, I see that the paper came out around the same time as JINI, or slightly before, So the reason the language sounds familiar to me is probably because I read this paper the first time around. Claim retracted.
That whole section sounds suspiciously like
JINI's way of doing things., In fact, the following quote from the paper:
An administrator sets up a new office network. After connecting the various computers, links, and routers, the network is initially quiescent. The administrator inserts a Millennium installation DVD disk into one of the machines and the system propagates across the network. After evaluating the network topology and hardware resources, Millennium might suggest that one of the more powerful machines (a "server") be moved to a different network location for best performance. At some point, the administrator connects the office network to the Internet, and the office instantiation of the Millennium system merges with the worldwide system.
strongly reminds me of a description in one of Sun's early marketing spiels on JINI in 1999. I can't find it at the moment, despite assiduous googling, so the claim will have to stand or fall unsupported by references.
A poignant and insightful piece from Jon Katz. I generally have strong reactions to his stuff. I usually hate it, but occasionally something he writes hits the spot for me. In this piece, his often (to my taste) overly frothy prose is.slightly muted, and matches his subject perfectly. The shocking irony of one NYC news anchor turning back to his monitor, which a moment before had clearly shown the second airliner approaching the WTC, and wondering about the cause of the explosion was not lost on me. In this Pearl Harbor, we have all been eyewitnesses, with a minimum of filtering.
I doubt that the anger against the probable involvement of fundamentalist muslim terrorism is any more virulent than that aimed at the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, but surely it has arisen more quickly in the age of instant messaging? Another thing that strikes me, not for the first time, but with weightier impact, is the opportunity to hear dissident voices. Among the thousands of posts on Slashdot today are a wide variety of attitudes and opinions about how to approach these events, what the truth may or may not be, and what responses to offer to them. This stuff rarely played out so thoroughly in public before the Internet. It remains to be seen if this airing of reason and emotion will make a difference in the shape of the public response to these events, but it's fascinating to watch the process unfold.
Peace unto you, Jon Katz. I pray to whatever god may be that your friends are safe, or if not, that you can find your way to safety on the other side of your grief.
The invocation of xdm on Debian must be something like:
ssh-agent xdm
Which gives the ssh-add commands something to talk to. Absent that sort of thing, merely doing ssh-agent xdm is only half the battle. I have two scripts. The first, in the best tradition of programmer laziness. just saves me typing one extra word when I start X. I call it ssx:
#!/bin/sh
ssh-agent stx
and stx has:
ssh-add
startx
Still, that keychain thingie sounds interesting. I have a gut reaction that "long lived ssh-agent" processes are a Bad Thing. But so far, I can't think of a specific reason why they would be that doesn't also apply to any other use of ssh-agent.
When Compaq swallowed Digital, I felt weird. You see, I started my career on Vaxen in the 1980s, Having a PC company buy the former #2 computer maker seemed strange. For me, it was as strong an indication of how the world had changed as anything that happened in the 1990's. I know it's irrational, but having HP take over somehow seems more fitting. After all, DEC and HP battled it out with Sun and IBM for the Unix market. DEC lost that battle big time, which was a big contributer to its eventual demise. It's funny, I haven't used VMS in over ten years. I'm completely coverted to Unix and Windows. but I still hold on to these ideas I formed at the beginning of my career. Neither Compaq or HP are the same companies they were in the late 80's.
Yeah, and if you follow the
link in the referenced article that gives details on the implementation, you'll see that they are dynamically adding ipf rules based on their Apache/PHP/SSL app. So they're letting anyone within range of the wireless AP play with an app that can potentialy open that gateway up to all kinds of traffic. The box has three interfaces, one each on the wireless, internal and "commodity internet". Thus the PHP app could potentially be subverted to open access to the internal net from the Internet.
I'm implementing a hardware based VPN for our WLAN. As others have noted, that makes it hard to support multiple OS, though not impossible. I have Free S/WAN interoperation with the VPN using IKE preshared secrets, so that gives me Linux support. Now what we need is integrated IPSEC support from the WLAN vendors.
Maybe she should be heading the Patent Office instead. Her "friends" could help them get a clue.
Re:Except ones with Cirrus "Crystal Audio" chips..
on
Which Laptop To Buy?
·
· Score: 2
Are you dual booting with Windows? I find I have to power down after running Win2K and before booting Linux or else the sound no workee. However if I do a cold start it works every time.
Your core a priori assumption, then, can be shortened to 'Pedophilia is wrong because it disrupts normal human development', an assumption which relies on a deeper assumption, that there is a 'normal human development'. Your closing phrase is itself another assumption, one which resets on the notion of a family, a pervasive notion in the western world.
Incisive analysis. I'd shorten core assumption to "Pedophilia is wrong in those cases where it does damage to the child."
Yup, "damage" is a term freighted with a ton of eurocentric baggage.. However, I'm not really interested in deconstructing it to the point of meaninglessness. I find such exercises damaging;-) to my efforts to come up with practical responses to real world problems. I believe there is such a thing as "normal human development," though it may vary from culture to culture. I'm willing to entertain the idea that a culture that is supportive of pedophilia (let's say between individuals above the normative age of consent and minors younger than 10 or so, culturally adjusted) may produce normatively healthy adults who have participated as children. It's a tad theoretical, however, since we don't live in such a culture. There are norms that exclude pedophilia for a variety of reasons, and children are damaged (in culturally normalized ways, if you insist) by the practice. I therefore call on my culturally inculcated, arbitrary value system, which says "damaging (in culturally normalized fashion) children is evil." For evil substitute whatever vague, culturally overloaded, arbitrary pejorative synonym for "bad" you choose.
"Children have an underdeveloped choice-making capacity"
Pedophilia is wrong
Ergo: Children who choose pedophilia are wrong
That's not what I said. I said that forcing your will on someone has the potential for evil. Not all instances of force are evil in my opinion. In the case of pedophilia, there is a clinical history of psychological trauma in children "forced" (note the quotes) to have sex with adults. Is it unavoidable that such damage should occur in every instance of adult/child sexual intercourse? Of course not. However, it happens often enough so that it has to be a matter of serious concern. Unfortunately, people tend toward hysteria on this and other topics. Extreme measures such as outlawing images that appear to depict adult/child sexual activity get made into law in this country. Pedophilia is held up as the main reason for all sorts of bad proposals to control this or that information source. But don't react by assuming that whatever is being held up as the red herring du jour must actually be good for you! (It may be. But don't assume.)
Out of curiosity, why do you assume that any sex with a person under the legal age is going to be non-consenting?
I made no such blanket assumption. I asserted, without proving it, that children have a limited capacity to choose. This means that I beleive they in general have a limited capacity for consent, in the manner that adults may consent.
There will always be particular cases that contradict general rules like this. Nonetheless I feel that my generalization stands up.
You just made the assumption that such sexual activity is actually damage.
No, I made no such blanket assumption. I assumed that imposing your will on someone without their consent has the potential for damage, and that children, in general, have a limited
capacity to make choices. An unspoken assumption is that the younger the child, the less capacity for consent, the greater the potential damage.
It's my experience that people tend to hold hysterical and extreme views on human sexuality.
Issues surrounding sex also seem to elicit a great deal of black and white thinking. I deliberately couched my comments in non-absolute terms, yet several responders read them that way anyway.
What about parents who force shots on their kids? How traumatic is that yet they are told to be good little boys and girls and endure it. Or force them to eat their vegetables and punish them when they don't?
Please prove you exist without resorting to a priori premises.
My opposition to pedophilia rests on one a priori assumption, which is fairly fundamental to my values: that imposing your will on others carries a high potential for evil. Another relevant assumption I make is that children, in general have underdeveloped choice-making capacity. This is not an a priori assumption, though proving that rhetorically is tedious and demanding. I would beg your indulgance on the point. (In fact, I will ignore you if you challenge me on it, as I have real work to do today. 8)
In the case of pedophilia, the potential evil attendant upon forcing one's will upon a person with limited capacity for choice is the disruption of normal human development caused by the untimly exposure to a powerful human drive that even adults have a hard time coping with psychologically. The potential for damage increases the younger the victim, and the closer the relation of the perpetrator.
In philosophical terms, the above argument has lots of holes. In common-sense terms, I believe it is nearly bullet-proof.
I just read your second paragraph. You can use the name if you want! 8)
And the idea. You don't have to study cryptography. Juse facilitate circumvention and you run afoul of the DMCA. You could bundle other people's freely available code and have a dandy test case.
Good point, but I would feel even better about it
if it were a volunteer risking his/her freedom.
Let's say someone were to write a framework for various pieces of freely available code that circumvent various copy protection schemes. They could call it the Fair Use Codebreaker's Kit, Don't
Make Copies Arbitrarily edition. The claimed purpose of the framework would be to facilitate copying of protected data for fair use, such as backups. The real purpose would be to draw a prosecution under the DMCA.
It's likely that a U. S. citizen with a stable job would make bail after a relatively short time in jail. The EFF and others would certainly help out with the legal defense. The volunteer would have to be willing to risk the very real possibility that they could end up with five years in a federal prison at the end of the process. But a favorable outcome is at least as likely.
Any candidates for civil libertarian martyrdom (and everlasting fame) out there? 8)
My new job is a big (well, little really) Dell shop. We are also primarily a Linux shop both on the server and the desktop. When I started a month ago, they plunked a new Optiplex GX400 on my desk and asked me to install RedHat 7.1 and see how it flew. (I'm their first full-time sysadmin.) Well, it flew just fine, thank you very much, so that box became our standard engineering desktop. The second system we got from Dell had hardware problems with the on-board ethernet. I put it on the shelf and deployed the third box with no problem. When I called Dell support, the tech was incredulous that I had "blown away the factory load." (Windows 98. Cheaper than 2K.) He said he couldn't help me, to which I replied "you're kidding!" He apparantly was, because he next asked me to load the diagnostics. I told him to wait while I wired up the system to the KVM. When I came back on the line, I said "You know, my desktop is running on identical hardware just fine." He was looking for the file he needed to run on the diagnostics, and finally snapped "Fine! I'll ship you a new motherboard!" I wanted to see what Dell diagnostics were like, and I had just gone through the trouble of spinning up the system, so without thinking I said "Wait a miniute, I'd like to.." He started yelling "I've solved your problem! I'll ship you a new motherboard!" This got me a little riled so I said "Oh, can't find the file, huh?" This sent him into orbit. I finally said "Please stop yelling." He screamed "I'm not yelling! If I were yelling you'd know it!" I said "OK, but I'm holding the phone away from my ear because it hurts." He calmed down and took my information. He finally admitted "I don't know anything about Linux."
Now, I doubt (God forbid) that this is typical of Dell service. I think I just caught this guy on a bad day. Also, I can see the logic of not supporting a low-volume (for Dell) OS on newer models. They have to qualify it, which takes time and money. The Optiplex GX400 is a P4 with RDRAM, so it's not just a simple upgrade. Having said that, RH 7.1 really was a slam-dunk install. The 2.4 kernel also has settings for the P4. I rebuilt the kernel with that switched on, but I didn't benchmark it. But today's announcement makes clear that the lack of Linux support wasn't merely a delay, but a hint of things to come. They've decided that Linux sales on the desktop don't justify the additional expense in qualifying the hardware and supporting it post-sale. Is that Dell's fault? Partly, maybe. But I'll bet the decision made sense in cold black, white and red.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers
Slashdot Mirror
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act introduced by Senator Hollings is a dangerous attempt by a narrow segment of society to regulate the technology sector in order to protect their narrow interests. The Entertainment industry is in the position of horse cart accessory manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century pushing for the right to control the development of automotive technology. Like those manufacturers, Hollywood and Tokyo have the right to be paid for their products: the film and music distribution systems. They ought not to be given the right to control the development of emerging competition to those systems by digital technologies. What seems to them a threat to their inflated profits, looks to me like an exciting new avenue that promises artists and consumers alike a better deal than has heretofore been offered by the plutocrats of pop. I urge you to take a careful look at this legislation before it comes before you in Congress, and to consider carefully where the interests of the majority of your constituents lie with respect to this bill before you cast your vote.
Thank you for your attention
The sum on the mirrored copy referenced above matched as of ten minutes ago. (00:30 PST)
In addition to giving the litigating states huge fodder for additional charges, releasing the source code robs Microsoft of the "you're an idiot" defense. Despite the fact that there's no time for extreme non-idiots to fully understand the source code (Microsoft itself, with at least some non-idiots on staff, hasn't acheived this) with the code on the table it's too risky to make statements in court that could be falsified by reading the code.
This is mongo bad news for the Redmondium Empire.
Decisions and briefs aren't being sealed here. We'll still have a window (urp!) into the progress of the suit.
It also has a rather fascist grammer check.
The spelling and grammer errors are suspicious, but the tone
and content of the email strike me as genuine. If it's a hoax,
it's a damned perceptive one.
.
Your list is incomplete:
Seriously, though, Microsoft is a victim of it's own success in at least two ways. It is true, as they so defensively claim, that their position as the number one OS and applications vendor makes them a huge target for hackers. It is also true that their legacy of subordinating software design to world domination has resulted in architectures that are much harder to secure than those that have had less interference from marketing. They may or may not have finally woken up to this truth. But in any event, as you say, it will take many years to recover from the poor design decisions that have resulted in their current security troubles. In the meantime, while they (presumably) work at incorporating security awarness into their design and development processes, and struggle to find ways to patch the holes in their huge installed base, they must work to limit the damage these flaws can inflict on their reputation. Thus we see them trying to muzzle those who publish flaws on full-disclosure lists like bugtraq. (I know the full-disclosure debate is more complicated than that, and so is Microsoft's relationship to the various security communities.) It is helpful to their cause that software design is esoteric and incomprehensible to most folks not directly connected to the industry. However, that was true of the issues in the anti-trust trial, and that didn't save them from a conviction, ultimately.
Unfortunately, turning an entire corporate culture around on a dime is not possible.
Well, now, remember that this is the company that realized that they had missed the Internet phenomenon in 1995, turned on a dime, and crushed Netscape in four years. It doesn't work to underestimate these guys. Besides, getting this security mess cleaned up (or at least improved) will make the World a Better Place (tm). for all of us. (At least all of us sysadmins.)
Section III(J)(2) reads:
So, that does indeed seem to give MS the right to stonewall Free Software projects like Samba, but only on security APIs. However, section III (D) reads:
And "ISV" is defined in VI (I) as:
The 'or' doesn't seem to leave much room for MS to define who the section applies to.
It just means @Home didn't pull the plug tonight. The court just allowed them to dump their contracts with the cable companies. That gave them the option to pull the plug, but they weren't required to.
It does sound like shutting down the service is a trump card to get everyone's attention while they thrash through some very tough bargaining. However, we aren't out of the woods yet.
@Home, please please please don't shut off your service until I get a job! I NEED my dice.com!
(And yes, I'm sorry I didn't apply for your senior sysadmin position. You are bankrupt, after all. 8)
Reading farther on, I see that the paper came out around the same time as JINI, or slightly before, So the reason the language sounds familiar to me is probably because I read this paper the first time around. Claim retracted.
A poignant and insightful piece from Jon Katz. I generally have strong reactions to his stuff. I usually hate it, but occasionally something he writes hits the spot for me. In this piece, his often (to my taste) overly frothy prose is .slightly muted, and matches his subject perfectly. The shocking irony of one NYC news anchor turning back to his monitor, which a moment before had clearly shown the second airliner approaching the WTC, and wondering about the cause of the explosion was not lost on me. In this Pearl Harbor, we have all been eyewitnesses, with a minimum of filtering.
I doubt that the anger against the probable involvement of fundamentalist muslim terrorism is any more virulent than that aimed at the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, but surely it has arisen more quickly in the age of instant messaging? Another thing that strikes me, not for the first time, but with weightier impact, is the opportunity to hear dissident voices. Among the thousands of posts on Slashdot today are a wide variety of attitudes and opinions about how to approach these events, what the truth may or may not be, and what responses to offer to them. This stuff rarely played out so thoroughly in public before the Internet. It remains to be seen if this airing of reason and emotion will make a difference in the shape of the public response to these events, but it's fascinating to watch the process unfold.
Peace unto you, Jon Katz. I pray to whatever god may be that your friends are safe, or if not, that you can find your way to safety on the other side of your grief.
Geeze. Who's being "overly frothy" now? 8)
The invocation of xdm on Debian must be something like:
ssh-agent xdm
Which gives the ssh-add commands something to talk to. Absent that sort of thing, merely doing ssh-agent xdm is only half the battle. I have two scripts. The first, in the best tradition of programmer laziness. just saves me typing one extra word when I start X. I call it ssx:
#!/bin/sh
ssh-agent stx
and stx has:
ssh-add
startx
Still, that keychain thingie sounds interesting. I have a gut reaction that "long lived ssh-agent" processes are a Bad Thing. But so far, I can't think of a specific reason why they would be that doesn't also apply to any other use of ssh-agent.
When Compaq swallowed Digital, I felt weird. You see, I started my career on Vaxen in the 1980s, Having a PC company buy the former #2 computer maker seemed strange. For me, it was as strong an indication of how the world had changed as anything that happened in the 1990's. I know it's irrational, but having HP take over somehow seems more fitting. After all, DEC and HP battled it out with Sun and IBM for the Unix market. DEC lost that battle big time, which was a big contributer to its eventual demise. It's funny, I haven't used VMS in over ten years. I'm completely coverted to Unix and Windows. but I still hold on to these ideas I formed at the beginning of my career. Neither Compaq or HP are the same companies they were in the late 80's.
Enough rambling. I wish them luck.
Yeah, and if you follow the link in the referenced article that gives details on the implementation, you'll see that they are dynamically adding ipf rules based on their Apache/PHP/SSL app. So they're letting anyone within range of the wireless AP play with an app that can potentialy open that gateway up to all kinds of traffic. The box has three interfaces, one each on the wireless, internal and "commodity internet". Thus the PHP app could potentially be subverted to open access to the internal net from the Internet.
I'm implementing a hardware based VPN for our WLAN. As others have noted, that makes it hard to support multiple OS, though not impossible. I have Free S/WAN interoperation with the VPN using IKE preshared secrets, so that gives me Linux support. Now what we need is integrated IPSEC support from the WLAN vendors.
Maybe she should be heading the Patent Office instead. Her "friends" could help them get a clue.
Are you dual booting with Windows? I find I have to power down after running Win2K and before booting Linux or else the sound no workee. However if I do a cold start it works every time.
Your core a priori assumption, then, can be shortened to 'Pedophilia is wrong because it disrupts normal human development', an assumption which relies on a deeper assumption, that there is a 'normal human development'. Your closing phrase is itself another assumption, one which resets on the notion of a family, a pervasive notion in the western world.
;-) to my efforts to come up with practical responses to real world problems. I believe there is such a thing as "normal human development," though it may vary from culture to culture. I'm willing to entertain the idea that a culture that is supportive of pedophilia (let's say between individuals above the normative age of consent and minors younger than 10 or so, culturally adjusted) may produce normatively healthy adults who have participated as children. It's a tad theoretical, however, since we don't live in such a culture. There are norms that exclude pedophilia for a variety of reasons, and children are damaged (in culturally normalized ways, if you insist) by the practice. I therefore call on my culturally inculcated, arbitrary value system, which says "damaging (in culturally normalized fashion) children is evil." For evil substitute whatever vague, culturally overloaded, arbitrary pejorative synonym for "bad" you choose.
Incisive analysis. I'd shorten core assumption to "Pedophilia is wrong in those cases where it does damage to the child."
Yup, "damage" is a term freighted with a ton of eurocentric baggage.. However, I'm not really interested in deconstructing it to the point of meaninglessness. I find such exercises damaging
- "Children have an underdeveloped choice-making capacity"
- Pedophilia is wrong
- Ergo: Children who choose pedophilia are wrong
That's not what I said. I said that forcing your will on someone has the potential for evil. Not all instances of force are evil in my opinion. In the case of pedophilia, there is a clinical history of psychological trauma in children "forced" (note the quotes) to have sex with adults. Is it unavoidable that such damage should occur in every instance of adult/child sexual intercourse? Of course not. However, it happens often enough so that it has to be a matter of serious concern. Unfortunately, people tend toward hysteria on this and other topics. Extreme measures such as outlawing images that appear to depict adult/child sexual activity get made into law in this country. Pedophilia is held up as the main reason for all sorts of bad proposals to control this or that information source. But don't react by assuming that whatever is being held up as the red herring du jour must actually be good for you! (It may be. But don't assume.)Out of curiosity, why do you assume that any sex with a person under the legal age is going to be non-consenting?
I made no such blanket assumption. I asserted, without proving it, that children have a limited capacity to choose. This means that I beleive they in general have a limited capacity for consent, in the manner that adults may consent.
There will always be particular cases that contradict general rules like this. Nonetheless I feel that my generalization stands up.
You just made the assumption that such sexual activity is actually damage.
No, I made no such blanket assumption. I assumed that imposing your will on someone without their consent has the potential for damage, and that children, in general, have a limited capacity to make choices. An unspoken assumption is that the younger the child, the less capacity for consent, the greater the potential damage.
It's my experience that people tend to hold hysterical and extreme views on human sexuality. Issues surrounding sex also seem to elicit a great deal of black and white thinking. I deliberately couched my comments in non-absolute terms, yet several responders read them that way anyway.
What about parents who force shots on their kids? How traumatic is that yet they are told to be good little boys and girls and endure it. Or force them to eat their vegetables and punish them when they don't?
Potential for evil. Next?
Please prove you exist without resorting to a priori premises.
My opposition to pedophilia rests on one a priori assumption, which is fairly fundamental to my values: that imposing your will on others carries a high potential for evil. Another relevant assumption I make is that children, in general have underdeveloped choice-making capacity. This is not an a priori assumption, though proving that rhetorically is tedious and demanding. I would beg your indulgance on the point. (In fact, I will ignore you if you challenge me on it, as I have real work to do today. 8)
In the case of pedophilia, the potential evil attendant upon forcing one's will upon a person with limited capacity for choice is the disruption of normal human development caused by the untimly exposure to a powerful human drive that even adults have a hard time coping with psychologically. The potential for damage increases the younger the victim, and the closer the relation of the perpetrator.
In philosophical terms, the above argument has lots of holes. In common-sense terms, I believe it is nearly bullet-proof.
D'oh!
I just read your second paragraph. You can use the name if you want! 8)
And the idea. You don't have to study cryptography. Juse facilitate circumvention and you run afoul of the DMCA. You could bundle other people's freely available code and have a dandy test case.
Good point, but I would feel even better about it if it were a volunteer risking his/her freedom.
Let's say someone were to write a framework for various pieces of freely available code that circumvent various copy protection schemes. They could call it the Fair Use Codebreaker's Kit, Don't Make Copies Arbitrarily edition. The claimed purpose of the framework would be to facilitate copying of protected data for fair use, such as backups. The real purpose would be to draw a prosecution under the DMCA.
It's likely that a U. S. citizen with a stable job would make bail after a relatively short time in jail. The EFF and others would certainly help out with the legal defense. The volunteer would have to be willing to risk the very real possibility that they could end up with five years in a federal prison at the end of the process. But a favorable outcome is at least as likely.
Any candidates for civil libertarian martyrdom (and everlasting fame) out there? 8)
Now, I doubt (God forbid) that this is typical of Dell service. I think I just caught this guy on a bad day. Also, I can see the logic of not supporting a low-volume (for Dell) OS on newer models. They have to qualify it, which takes time and money. The Optiplex GX400 is a P4 with RDRAM, so it's not just a simple upgrade. Having said that, RH 7.1 really was a slam-dunk install. The 2.4 kernel also has settings for the P4. I rebuilt the kernel with that switched on, but I didn't benchmark it. But today's announcement makes clear that the lack of Linux support wasn't merely a delay, but a hint of things to come. They've decided that Linux sales on the desktop don't justify the additional expense in qualifying the hardware and supporting it post-sale. Is that Dell's fault? Partly, maybe. But I'll bet the decision made sense in cold black, white and red.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll
get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers