Even if you do hit back at the actual cracker, so what? So you trash his PC and some files; it's not like it's going to put him out of business, or cost him thousands of pounds to restore it.
You may be right about not putting him totally out of business, but the one time I did this I will say that he never came back to MY network again.
(and yes, i made absolutely sure it was his machine I was logged into.) then again, this wasn't a DDOS attack, he was actually logged into my machine, making the verification much easier.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. In fact, I'm probably more strongly in favor of it than most people here.
I do, however, have a problem with trying to do it too soon. Mars is a valuable resource to us, being the only planet within reach that is even potentially habitable.
It would be a shame to get overzealous and screw things up beyond repair.
Oh yes, the good old days. I still remember how excited I was the day I went out and upgraded to a 2400 bps modem. Almost as exciting as the day I upgraded to a 40 MB hard drive.
But still, nothing compares to finally getting enough cash saved up (i was a poor college student back then) to go out and buy a monitor that could display, of all things, COLOR!
It's almost sad, in a way. I love the fact that the technology has come as far as it has, but I do miss those days. None of the new toys coming out today seem as interesting and fun as that first color monitor did.
What I've always done is just add an entry to lilo.conf that points directly to the compiled kernel in the source tree. call it "test", make it non-default.
Once you've booted the kernel once and made sure everything works as expected, then cp it to the proper place and make it your default kernel.
I don't seem to build many non-bootable kernels anymore, but back in my early Linux days I built quite a few.
I would never have been able to trade MP3s on my original internet connection, not that I had a sound card or anything.
Not to mention that my original hard drive only had enough space to store one MP3 at a time once you allocated space for the OS (DOS 3.3). Which doesn't matter, since the 8088 processor lacked the power to decode the file anyway.
But they still have an effective monopoly on the products that they sell. If you want a Metallica album, you have only one company to buy it from. So they have a monopoly on Metallica's music, since they are, for all practical purposes, the only seller in the market.
Unless you're going to argue that a CD is a CD, and that a Britney Spears CD is an effective alternative to a Metallica CD.
Have to agree on the singles. I used to buy cassette singles back before CDs, but they were usually priced at only a buck or two. As soon as I switched to CDs, I quit buying singles simply because it's ridiculous to spend $5 or more just to get one song.
Most of my CD collection now consists of CDR media burnt from downloaded MP3s. Yes, it's true. And since most of my music listening is done on my boat, in my car, or in other noisy environments, I find that the sound quality of an MP3 is definitely "good enough"
So, in my case anyway, the music industry is, in fact, losing a few sales.
Is that illegal? Yes. Is it wrong? Probably. Do I feel bad about it? Hell no.
The way I see it, it boils down to simple economics. Any piracy that is currently going on is very likely due, in large part, to the ludicrous pricing of new CDs. In a capitalist economy, any time there is demand for a product or service, someone will provide that product or service. If that someone doesn't provide the product at a price people are willing to pay, someone will step in and provide it at a lower price. In this case, that price happens to be free.
Rather than screw around with lawsuits (justifiable or not) the simplest, most straight-forward way for the recording industry to combat piracy, online and otherwise, is to bring the price of their product back into a reasonable range. Any time the price of a product soars too high, consumers will rebel. The monopoly control the music industry has has shielded it from this rebellion for awhile, but I think they're now approaching the price range where even good, honest people are willing to take illegal means to obtain the product at a reasonable price. I mean, good, honest people have been recording songs from the radio onto cassette for years. The only difference now is that they get a little better sound quality (and no DJ talking during the first few bars of the song).
I know these arguments don't really have a leg to stand on morally or legally. I do think they still reflect reality fairly accurately.
Why not eliminate exclusive contracts, and allow artists to sign with two, maybe three, record labels. This way there would be more than one source for the same album, which would introduce true price competition into the industry. (Yes, this suggestion has some problems, but it's the best I can come up with until I've had a little more coffee.)
Publicating? Is that a word? If so, which language? The rest of your post was English, why use one solitary word from another language right in the middle of it? Some people just confuse me.
(Inflamatory tirade deleted. This would be the part where I questioned whether the poster's parents were brother and sister, and other such things. But I decided that would be unnecessarily rude.)
You wouldn't happen to be a Bank of America lawyer, would you?
So, basically, what we've got is a bunch of suits, trying to live up the a staunch "business guy" sort of image, acting more immaturely and "cry-baby-ish" than most 4-year olds I know.
Pathetic. Sad and pathetic.
I'm not a Bank of America customer, but if I were, I'm pretty sure I'd be rather annoyed with them spending my fees on frivolous BS like this.
(Off topic rant to follow: Why the hell does my local electric utility think it needs to spend my money to advertise on TV? They're a fsck'ing monopoly, I couldn't take my business elsewhere if I tried! Why should my monthly bill be higher just so they can run some fsck'ing ego-boosting commercials on the local stations?
allow sites who complain to opt out. Then print their names on the front page as companies who have no tolerance for our brand of humor
I'll do you one better. If he'll e-mail me the scripts (assuming they'll run on a linux box), I'll put them up on my site, refuse to let anyone opt out, and post the URL's of those who request as suggestions for companies who should be translated FIRST.
Sure, the lawyers would probably eventually come up with some tactic heavy handed enough to get me to shut it down, just out of pure survival instinct. But hopefully I could find someone else by then to take up the cause and host the site for awhile.
Even though I depend on them to feed myself, I have to agree with that statement. But neither you nor I can do it on our own. It will take, basically, a revolution.
The way to handle a situation like this is exactly like you said. We, as a united community, need to take a proactive "Fuck 'Em" attitude. Here's how it works:
Lawyers send him threatening letter saying they'll sue if he doesn't take down his site. Fine, he takes it down, and replaces it with a link to MY machine, which is now running the same pages.
Lawyers send me threatening letter, again saying they'll sue if I don't take down the site. Fine, I take it down, and replace it with a link to your site, which is now running the same pages.
And on, and on, and on....
Personally, I don't think it would take too many iterations of this process to drive home the point that there ain't a damn thing they can do.
I don't know. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, I'm just saying I don't think the answer he came up with is the right one.
Personally, I don't think all software needs to be free. If I have a use for a piece of software, it's only fair that the person who wrote it get some sort of compensation. If that person decides, on their own, to make it free, great. But if they want a little cash for their effort, I don't have a problem with that, either.
All I'm saying is if you want money from me for your product, tell me up front. Don't give me some bullshit story about the product being free, and then charge me money for a mandatory support contract. Chances are your competitor is charging for the software and offering free support. The only difference is one person is trying to bullshit me.
If you want to make your software free and charge for support, that's fine. But if that support fee is a mandatory condition for getting the software, then the software isn't free and you're lying to me when you tell me it is.
That's nice in theory, but in reality I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that they asked him to work on this program would be enough to shift the burden back onto him to prove his innocence.
It would be nice if the legal system always worked as it was intended to, but in reality people who are in the right get screwed on a regular basis. One must keep that reality in mind when dealing with legal issues and cover your ass extremely well.
give the software away for FREE, but MAKE the person sign a two-year service contract. (50.00 per year).
So, in order to get your software, I have to agree to give you $100?
Hmm... Doesn't sound all that free to me. I'd much prefer that you just tell me the software costs $100, I'd feel I had meen treated much more fairly and honestly. Your plan sounds very similar to me to the big "FREE PC" signs I've seen, but when you go to pick up your machine you find out you have to sign a $20/mo. contract for MSN Internet access via dialup (even though you've already got a cable modem).
Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a problem with coughing up a little cash for a product I find useful. But when I'm told I can have something for free, then informed of the "catch" once I'm interested, it feels like a scam.
Even if the product is no longer useful, it's still a great thing that they've released the source.
I remember back when I was learning to code, finding well-written code examples was quite a pain in the butt. Had to crawl around BBS systems (with my state-of-the-art 2400 baud modem) and download the little bits and pieces that were available, most of which was more poorly written than the lousy code I was writing at the time.
I'm pretty sure there are at least a few examples in the Motif code that will prove useful to those coding new non-Motif project, both amateurs and pros alike.
Perhaps he's one of the people like me who listens to the radio ONLY in the car.
Sure, you could record radio shows at home. The thing is that a device like this is purely a convenience item in the first place, so why not make things as convenient as possible.
When talking about toys and convenience items like this, the word "need" has no place in the conversation. These things are about fun and "coolness factor."
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Even if you do hit back at the actual cracker, so what? So you trash his PC and some files; it's not like it's going to put him out of business, or cost him thousands of pounds to restore it.
You may be right about not putting him totally out of business, but the one time I did this I will say that he never came back to MY network again.
(and yes, i made absolutely sure it was his machine I was logged into.) then again, this wasn't a DDOS attack, he was actually logged into my machine, making the verification much easier.
If someone breaks into your house and starts shooting a gun at you, is it OK to grab your gun and shoot back?
Of course it is.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. In fact, I'm probably more strongly in favor of it than most people here.
I do, however, have a problem with trying to do it too soon. Mars is a valuable resource to us, being the only planet within reach that is even potentially habitable.
It would be a shame to get overzealous and screw things up beyond repair.
If they control more than 50%, could they fire Carmack?
Well, yeah, they could probably get him pushed out the door if they really wanted to.
It'd be pretty stupid, though. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say the id would quickly cease to exist without Carmack.
I don't see too big of a use outside of the overpriced mega-server market, though,
This thing would seriously rock for video capture. I'm currently having to capture video in compressed form to avoid hard drive bandwidth issues.
Oh yes, the good old days. I still remember how excited I was the day I went out and upgraded to a 2400 bps modem. Almost as exciting as the day I upgraded to a 40 MB hard drive.
But still, nothing compares to finally getting enough cash saved up (i was a poor college student back then) to go out and buy a monitor that could display, of all things, COLOR!
It's almost sad, in a way. I love the fact that the technology has come as far as it has, but I do miss those days. None of the new toys coming out today seem as interesting and fun as that first color monitor did.
What I've always done is just add an entry to lilo.conf that points directly to the compiled kernel in the source tree. call it "test", make it non-default.
Once you've booted the kernel once and made sure everything works as expected, then cp it to the proper place and make it your default kernel.
I don't seem to build many non-bootable kernels anymore, but back in my early Linux days I built quite a few.
I would never have been able to trade MP3s on my original internet connection, not that I had a sound card or anything.
Not to mention that my original hard drive only had enough space to store one MP3 at a time once you allocated space for the OS (DOS 3.3). Which doesn't matter, since the 8088 processor lacked the power to decode the file anyway.
But they still have an effective monopoly on the products that they sell. If you want a Metallica album, you have only one company to buy it from. So they have a monopoly on Metallica's music, since they are, for all practical purposes, the only seller in the market.
Unless you're going to argue that a CD is a CD, and that a Britney Spears CD is an effective alternative to a Metallica CD.
Have to agree on the singles. I used to buy cassette singles back before CDs, but they were usually priced at only a buck or two. As soon as I switched to CDs, I quit buying singles simply because it's ridiculous to spend $5 or more just to get one song.
Most of my CD collection now consists of CDR media burnt from downloaded MP3s. Yes, it's true. And since most of my music listening is done on my boat, in my car, or in other noisy environments, I find that the sound quality of an MP3 is definitely "good enough"
So, in my case anyway, the music industry is, in fact, losing a few sales.
Is that illegal? Yes.
Is it wrong? Probably.
Do I feel bad about it? Hell no.
The way I see it, it boils down to simple economics. Any piracy that is currently going on is very likely due, in large part, to the ludicrous pricing of new CDs. In a capitalist economy, any time there is demand for a product or service, someone will provide that product or service. If that someone doesn't provide the product at a price people are willing to pay, someone will step in and provide it at a lower price. In this case, that price happens to be free.
Rather than screw around with lawsuits (justifiable or not) the simplest, most straight-forward way for the recording industry to combat piracy, online and otherwise, is to bring the price of their product back into a reasonable range. Any time the price of a product soars too high, consumers will rebel. The monopoly control the music industry has has shielded it from this rebellion for awhile, but I think they're now approaching the price range where even good, honest people are willing to take illegal means to obtain the product at a reasonable price. I mean, good, honest people have been recording songs from the radio onto cassette for years. The only difference now is that they get a little better sound quality (and no DJ talking during the first few bars of the song).
I know these arguments don't really have a leg to stand on morally or legally. I do think they still reflect reality fairly accurately.
Why not eliminate exclusive contracts, and allow artists to sign with two, maybe three, record labels. This way there would be more than one source for the same album, which would introduce true price competition into the industry. (Yes, this suggestion has some problems, but it's the best I can come up with until I've had a little more coffee.)
Wouldn't tired be the best way to go to jail? I mean, what else ya gonna do there besides sleep?
Beautiful thought, ain't it?
:-)
Actually, I'd like to see it rewritten as a proxy, so you could have pages translated for other people without their knowledge and co-operation.
I'd love to see my bosses reaction the day he came in to work and discovered that the entire Web had been rewritten in "Valley Girl-ese".
:-)
Exactly. The Dialectizer isn't storing the info, it's just translating it and passing it along.
Lots of routers do exactly the same thing. Packet comes in, packet header get re-written, packet goes out.
Or, are the lawyers going to argue that copyright only applies at certain network layers?
Publicating? Is that a word? If so, which language? The rest of your post was English, why use one solitary word from another language right in the middle of it? Some people just confuse me.
(Inflamatory tirade deleted. This would be the part where I questioned whether the poster's parents were brother and sister, and other such things. But I decided that would be unnecessarily rude.)
You wouldn't happen to be a Bank of America lawyer, would you?
So, basically, what we've got is a bunch of suits, trying to live up the a staunch "business guy" sort of image, acting more immaturely and "cry-baby-ish" than most 4-year olds I know.
Pathetic. Sad and pathetic.
I'm not a Bank of America customer, but if I were, I'm pretty sure I'd be rather annoyed with them spending my fees on frivolous BS like this.
(Off topic rant to follow: Why the hell does my local electric utility think it needs to spend my money to advertise on TV? They're a fsck'ing monopoly, I couldn't take my business elsewhere if I tried! Why should my monthly bill be higher just so they can run some fsck'ing ego-boosting commercials on the local stations?
OK, I'm done ranting. (for now, anyway))
Hmm... I think we're basically trying to make the same point.
I'll quit arguing now...
allow sites who complain to opt out. Then print their names on the front page as companies who have no tolerance for our brand of humor
I'll do you one better. If he'll e-mail me the scripts (assuming they'll run on a linux box), I'll put them up on my site, refuse to let anyone opt out, and post the URL's of those who request as suggestions for companies who should be translated FIRST.
Sure, the lawyers would probably eventually come up with some tactic heavy handed enough to get me to shut it down, just out of pure survival instinct. But hopefully I could find someone else by then to take up the cause and host the site for awhile.
Fuck corporate America.
Even though I depend on them to feed myself, I have to agree with that statement. But neither you nor I can do it on our own. It will take, basically, a revolution.
The way to handle a situation like this is exactly like you said. We, as a united community, need to take a proactive "Fuck 'Em" attitude. Here's how it works:
Lawyers send him threatening letter saying they'll sue if he doesn't take down his site. Fine, he takes it down, and replaces it with a link to MY machine, which is now running the same pages.
Lawyers send me threatening letter, again saying they'll sue if I don't take down the site. Fine, I take it down, and replace it with a link to your site, which is now running the same pages.
And on, and on, and on....
Personally, I don't think it would take too many iterations of this process to drive home the point that there ain't a damn thing they can do.
I don't know. I'm not claiming to have all the answers, I'm just saying I don't think the answer he came up with is the right one.
Personally, I don't think all software needs to be free. If I have a use for a piece of software, it's only fair that the person who wrote it get some sort of compensation. If that person decides, on their own, to make it free, great. But if they want a little cash for their effort, I don't have a problem with that, either.
All I'm saying is if you want money from me for your product, tell me up front. Don't give me some bullshit story about the product being free, and then charge me money for a mandatory support contract. Chances are your competitor is charging for the software and offering free support. The only difference is one person is trying to bullshit me.
If you want to make your software free and charge for support, that's fine. But if that support fee is a mandatory condition for getting the software, then the software isn't free and you're lying to me when you tell me it is.
That's nice in theory, but in reality I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that they asked him to work on this program would be enough to shift the burden back onto him to prove his innocence.
It would be nice if the legal system always worked as it was intended to, but in reality people who are in the right get screwed on a regular basis. One must keep that reality in mind when dealing with legal issues and cover your ass extremely well.
what made the program attractive in the first place -- its freedom
:-)
Or, perhaps, its usefulness?
give the software away for FREE, but MAKE the person sign a two-year service contract. (50.00 per year).
So, in order to get your software, I have to agree to give you $100?
Hmm... Doesn't sound all that free to me. I'd much prefer that you just tell me the software costs $100, I'd feel I had meen treated much more fairly and honestly. Your plan sounds very similar to me to the big "FREE PC" signs I've seen, but when you go to pick up your machine you find out you have to sign a $20/mo. contract for MSN Internet access via dialup (even though you've already got a cable modem).
Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a problem with coughing up a little cash for a product I find useful. But when I'm told I can have something for free, then informed of the "catch" once I'm interested, it feels like a scam.
Of course, this is all just my opinion.
Even if the product is no longer useful, it's still a great thing that they've released the source.
I remember back when I was learning to code, finding well-written code examples was quite a pain in the butt. Had to crawl around BBS systems (with my state-of-the-art 2400 baud modem) and download the little bits and pieces that were available, most of which was more poorly written than the lousy code I was writing at the time.
I'm pretty sure there are at least a few examples in the Motif code that will prove useful to those coding new non-Motif project, both amateurs and pros alike.
Perhaps he's one of the people like me who listens to the radio ONLY in the car.
Sure, you could record radio shows at home. The thing is that a device like this is purely a convenience item in the first place, so why not make things as convenient as possible.
When talking about toys and convenience items like this, the word "need" has no place in the conversation. These things are about fun and "coolness factor."