This is just as easily applied to nearly anything else â" there being only one passenger car, for example, will make it much easier to find parts and all mechanics will need to know just one model.
Not really - having only a single model of car removes choice. There are many encyclopaedias so if you don't like Wikipedia's policies then you're free to choose a different one.
And if anybody were to ask them, it is a fairly obvious bet, that, when shown two freely readable pages with the same text, any reader would prefer one with higher quality illustrations.
You would have lost that bet - *any* reader would not prever the higher quality illustrations. I am a Wikipedia reader and I would prefer the Free version that has illustrations that are good enough.
And there is nothing wrong with it, as long as their contributions are on-topic.
I already said that didn't I? There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia for whatever purpose you like so long as you stick to the rules. But photographers now seem to be telling them to change the rules because it is harming their ability to use it for something which is not Wikipedia's stated purpose. If Wikipedia's mission objective was "allow photographers to publicise their portfolio" then you'd have a point. But it isn't - if you want to do that then you can either play by the same rules as everyone else or go use a different site that has rules more suited to your purpose (for example, Flickr).
And all of the Wikipedia readers are the worse of for it...
No, the Wikipedia readers who don't care about the information being Free are worse off for it. Those who do care about the Freeness of the information are *better* off for it. Please do not be under the illusion that your views universally apply to every Wikipedia reader, for they do not.
They need DRM because a lot of their potential customers **won't** pay for the music,
Even assuming that's true, how does DRM help?
- Without DRM, their "potential customers who won't pay" download the music illegally.
- With DRM, their "potential customers who won't pay" download music illegally. See, there is no difference - DRM stops your *actual* customers copying the music (usually for their own use). It does nothing to stop the "potential customer who won't pay" - DRM won't stop 100% of people copying, so the music will always be available to download illegally. In fact, with DRM you have stopped your actual customers copying the content for their own use by legal means, so they are going to have to download it illegally - i.e. DRM has actually *increased* the amount of illegal copying and done nothing to increase the number of sales. Additionally, DRM will actually decrease the number of sales since some of your customers will decide they don't want to put up with DRM and therefore won't buy your product (either just doing without it, or downloading it illegally).
Of course, your assertion that there are "potential customers" who "*won't* pay" is completely bogus anyway - if they won't pay under any circumstances then they aren't potential customers.
Speaking for myself, I don't buy a lot of music but the vast majority of music I have bought in the past 10 years or so has been bought because I was able to download it first and see what I was going to get for my money. If DRM was 100% successful, most of those purchases simply wouldn't have happened; I won't buy an album on the back of hearing just 1 good track..
You do realize, that according to this argument, there should, for example, be only one passenger car in production nation- (perhaps even planet-) wide?
Eh? In what way does that have *anything* to do with the discussion?
So, you'd rather be looking at a free graffiti on a wall, than at a decent picture?
That isn't what I said is it? Wikipedia is built on the premise that anyone can submit content and anyone can use content (under a very broad licence). If this isn't what you want then go use another (i.e. commercial) encyclopaedia.
The pictures on Wikipedia are generally ok. Sure, many aren't of professional quality, but if you're that interested then you can quite easily find professional pictures elsewhere. For the vast majority of articles, you don't need professional photos, and it isn't Wikipedia's job to promote professional photographers.
And you wish to impose that view on the rest of the subway riders, who stare at the same wall?
Wikipedia is about providing information under a very permissive licence. As soon as they start accepting material which has a strict licence then this is no longer the case - they may as well be any other commercial encyclopaedia, of which there are several already.
They are not imposing a view on anyone - if you don't like looking at Free information then you are free to go elsewhere. If you want to set up your own encyclopaedia which accepts non-permissively licensed material then you are free to do that too.
I have seen my pictures (given to Wikipedia) used on other sites without attribution.
And you are free to take those sites to court for breaking the licence. The fact that some people do, and will always, ignore licences has no bearing on what licences Wikipedia should accept.
I'd rather Wikipedia lose popularity, so somebody more sensible rises to their current spot...
Wikipedia is fraught with political infighting and general crapness, which is why I no longer edit (I have no interest in my work on an article that is informative and useful to people being binned because someone with a god complex has decided that it is their right to delete any and all articles that they themselves don't find useful).
However, there are good reasons why Wikipedia is as popular as it is, and it will remain so until someone else (commercial or otherwise) comes up with something that addresses those reasons. But don't for any minute believe that Wikipedia *deserves* to not be popular just because it doesn't mesh with how *you* would run such a project. Your preferred policies are by no means mirrored by everyone else's preferred policies - I for one prefer to use an information resource that has totally Free pictures that are good enough rather than very high quality non-Free pictures.
It isn't really clear to me who is complaining in this article. It certainly doesn't seem to be the users. It mentions photographers and publicists.
As far as the professional photographers go, Wikipedia is simply a way of publicising their portfolio. If they want to use it for that then that's fine so long as they play by the same rules as everyone else. Wikipedia's mission is not to promote any person or company, so asking them to change the rules for this purpose seems to be taking the piss IMHO.
If publicists have a problem with the photos that are being used on their clients' pages then they are free to fix that problem. They can licence photos off a professional photographer under the CC-BY-SA licence and add them to the article. Sure, it'll probably cost them more to get a photographer to agree to a permissive licence but that's just the cost of publicity. Again, Wikipedia is not in the business of promoting people, if you want to use it as such then you're free to do so so long as you play by the rules, but asking them to change the rules just so it doesn't cost you quite as much is taking the piss.
Sometime you should try clicking on an image on Wikipedia. The results might surprise you.
I'm aware of this. If you'd bothered to read the post I was replying to you would see that the comment was made that printing a Wikipedia article results in something that has no attribution for photos since the attribution isn't captioned. And the poster is absolutely right, which is why I suggested that it would make sense for the templates to automatically add an attribution caption to the embedded image.
Sadly, like most Slashdotters you seem more interested in flaming than actually reading the discussion.
Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available. What more is there to say?
You could elaborate, I suppose... How exactly does rejecting images, which the author allows to be used within *.wikipedia.org, but not elsewhere, advance freedom?
1. It means you don't have to deal with investigating the licence on every bit of content - if you want to reuse some content on Wikipedia then you *know* what the licence is because its all the same. 2. Allowing non-CC licensed content would reduce the amount of CC licensed content on Wikipedia (articles would choose to use the "better" non-Free images *instead* of the Free ones), and that really would harm freedom.
One would think, they want their pages to be printable and (re)publishable, but in that case, the authors wouldn't be credited (there is no author's name printed, when you print the page) — contrary to the current license...
Yes, this is rather at odds with the licence - the Wikipedia templates really need to automatically add an attribution caption to all images that are embedded in a page.
I can't believe you just took literally what I've said about leaving your network open with something like DO_NOT_TOUCH.
Why else would you have said it if you didn't mean it literally? The thread had already discussed the poorness of WEP. In any case, WEP _is_ better than just telling people "don't" - it does take some effort to break, it isn't simply a case of telling your laptop to connect. This is mostly about keeping people honest - if people have to jump through hoops in the full knowledge that what they are doing is illegal then they are less likely to do it. Of course, it doesn't stop real criminals like yourself, but the really determined criminals are quite hard to stop anyway.
Think of it as a really crap lock - you've got the choice between leaving your door unlocked with a notice saying "please don't rob me" or locking the really rubbish lock; it's pretty obvious that no matter how bad the lock is, it's still the better option - the opportunists will probably leave you alone.
Well. "theft of service" is not the only unlegit use I can think about. I'm sure you will agree.
There have been cases of people passively logging wireless network data, but this has usually been connected with real illegal activity - the example I can think of is the Wallmart case whereby criminals sat in the carpark and logged credit card numbers being insecurely transmitted over the air. Wallmart were totally negligent, of course, but recording hundreds of credit card numbers with the intent to use them fraudulently is going to get you locked up, no matter how you came by the data.
In the case of door locks it takes more time. On routers I don't think it takes more time to configure WEP or WPA.
It does take more time if you are having to reconfigure the whole network in order to upgrade to WPA (which is almost as worthless as WEP anyway) or WPA2 (which isn't too bad). Whether you are reconfiguring 5 computers and a single access point, or 2000 computers and a number of access points distributed across a site, it still takes time to do. Make a risk assessment - you might not need it. My internal network traffic is almost exclusively SSH, SSL encapsulated data, or data that is going to/from the internet (and thus appropriate security is taken anyway) - there isn't a huge amount to be gained by changing the wireless security protocol, the same may be true of many other networks which you consider to be insecure.
You have good points about your post, but it seems that you have failed on identifying the purpose of mine. I'm alerting about how easy is to crack WEP networks, and how you should use other options if you can.
I'm not sure much alerting needs to be done - pretty much anyone reading slashdot is going to know this already.
Of course, if someone doesn't feel qualified to assess the risk themselves, they should probably contract in a security consultant.
That is an INCREDIBLY BAD IDEA. Do NOT log anything - for 2 reasons:
1) There is the possibility of logging information that could be considered "private" - in the (admittedly unlikely) event that somebody caught wind of it, you might find yourself on the receiving end of a civil suit and/or a criminal charge. The fact such a charge would likely be found unwarranted in no way mitigates the expense and hassle of dealing with it.
If the user has agreed to the terms of use (which would be presented upon first connection) which state that network activity would be logged then logging this stuff is fine (subject to the normal provisions of the Data Protection Act).
2) Should the police trace something to your connection, they WILL subpoena those logs.
That's fine, they are free to do so.
If and when they don't find what they are looking for, they will assert you have what they want and didn't surrender it, and they will tear your place apart looking for it.
If you keep the logs for $TIMEPERIOD, and the event happened at $TIMEPERIOD+$POSITIVEDELTA ago, they will STILL want the logs - and the statement "I deleted them" will be portrayed at "COLLABORATION with TERRORISTS and PAEDOPHILES!" (again, it doesn't matter if they ultimately succeed in that, the cost of defending against it will be staggering).
Umm, no - maybe this is how they work in your country, but we don't all live in a police state (yet).
Ultimately, the rule to follow is "Record NOTHING you don't want to see on the 6 o'clock news, or have used against you in a court of law."
Evidence of person A agreeing to a service provider's terms of use and then breaking the law cannot be used against the service provider. I have no problem with the news reporting that "someone used a free service provider in order to break the law" - that in no way implicates that the service provider (i.e. me) did anything wrong.
On the other hand, if you don't log anything then you have nothing to defend yourself with.
Well. If you use WEP just to tell people they should be out of your wireless network, you might change it to OPEN and change the SSID to something like DO_NOT_TOUCH. It has the same effect for security reasons.
No it doesn't. 802.11 has a built in *specified* "public/private" flag (i.e. the absence/presence of encryption). Choosing to use some random proprietary method instead of the one specified by the standard, such as setting the SSID to some human readable "private" string, is an utterly stupid idea - not only does it now make it impossible to programmatically determine whether a network is public or private, but it means you no longer have a sensible SSID to identify your network. If your neighbour decides to set their SSID to the same value (e.g. your recommended "DO_NOT_TOUCH") then you are screwed.
Plenty of devices will automatically connect to any open network they see - if you choose to set your network to open and set the SSID to "DO_NOT_TOUCH" then these devices *will* quite legitimately connect to and use your network, and you have no reason to complain about this since you have chosen to use the specified method to advertise your network as public, even though it is private.
Imagine that I'm not using any injection method whatsoever(so no interaction with the remote wireless router), and I only read the packets that are on the air of my room. Although I suspect we live in different countries with different laws, can you tell me if that's against the law?
If you are only listening to the traffic then there can be no "theft of service" anyway, so it doesn't seem relevant to the discussion.
my little survey leads me to suspect that many don't apply better security options on sensitive information, not for compatibility purposes, but because of ignorance.
What makes you believe this? You said that this was a computer shop - it makes sense for their network to be configured so that they can easily connect customers' computers to it. In fact, many computer shops intentionally have a totally open network for connecting customers' computers to.
Yes, but they do lock their doors with the best method that the lock gives them.
Not true - locking with the most secure method takes more time. I certainly don't lock all the locks and bolts every time I lock a door - I make a quick risk assessment. If I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks I'll make damn sure my house is secure, if I'm just popping down to the shops for 5 minutes I'm less bothered about making sure all the locks are secure (I'm not going to do up the 2 key-operated locks and the deadbolt on my front door, every window lock and all the locks on my back door every time I go out - that would just take far too long).
Security is *always* about balancing risk with convenience. If this wasn't the case then you'd leave your computer unplugged and packed in a box all the time because to do otherwise would increase the risk.
My personal experience is that many have the WPA option on their router, with NOT incompatible hardware, and they still use WEP. I've seen it "technicians" configuring Wep to their clients when there is available the option for WAP, with no conflict whatsoever.
That certainly doesn't match my experience. There are plenty of people around using WEP because they have old hardware that supports nothing newer. There are also plenty of people around that are using WEP because they once had hardware that supports nothing newer and haven't reconfigured their whole network after getting rid of it. Both of these are legitimate reasons for running WEP - I wouldn't expect someone to completely reconfigure their network after getting rid of the one thing that was stopping them using WPA2.
On the other hand, where whole new networks are being installed I've yet to see anyone choose to use an obsolete security protocol without good reason. True, where access points are being added to an existing system, it is quite common to stick with whatever the existing system is using because to do otherwise would involve reconfiguring the whole network.
I haven't tried it yet, but one of the changelogs for 8.09.1 is "fix multi-ssids with WPA on Broadcom (#4777, r15200, r15204) ". Not sure what Broadcom they are talking about but it would be nice if it was the chipset in the WRT54GL!
Now i'll have to download it and find out:)
Kamikaze has been able to do multi-SSIDs for years. The problem is that the firmware (or maybe the binary blob driver) only allows a single BSSID to be used. In theory you can have multiple SSIDs per BSSID, but in reality most stuff seems to get very confused when it sees an access point doing that. To work properly, you need to be able to have a separate BSSID per SSID.
I've moved to a new apartment 3 months ago. My building is in a very dense populated area. Due to bureaucrat issues, I was over one month without an internet connection. Since I had over 25 available wireless networks on my house I gave the http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=tutorial aircrack online tutorials a shot. It was amazing how easy it is to crack a WEP connection. On average I took less than 10 minutes to crack a WEP wireless. Over 40% of people(at least around here), still use this totally insecure encryption method.
Yep, I use WEP. I still own devices that won't do anything newer. I don't really see the insecurity as a big deal - an open AP is an advertisement that you don't mind random people using it, an AP with some kind of security (even if it's weak) tells people it isn't for public use. If you choose to break the WEP key then you're choosing to break the law.
I live in a neighbourhood where there are at least 2 other networks within range that are totally open, so I suspect people won't care about mine, but more importantly all my machines are secure and the traffic between internal machines on the network is encrypted, so it isn't really that big a deal if someone breaks into it.
If I had an access point that could reliably do virtual SSIDs (sadly the WRT54GL won't - it can do virtual SSIDs but they have to share the same address which confuses too many clients), I would likely set up a separate open network that used a transparent proxy to do logging so that anyone could use it.
I have a HP shop on the other side of the street, that has a big splash symbol on the window "Microsoft Certified". They have IT consultants and they are using WEP. What a joke.
Not really - they may require a WEP network in order to connect older devices that have no WPA/WPA2 support. Unless you've broken the law and actually cracked the key and investigated further then you have no idea what underlying security they have beneath the WEP - they might only allow ESP+AH traffic, in which case there is absolutely no security problem at all.
Also WAP is not difficult to crack with weak passwords, and most of the people don't have a clue about strong passwords.
Guess what - most people have door locks that are trivial to pick if you have the right knowledge and tools. There is only so much you can do to stop criminals. I'm sure you don't upgrade all your door locks to the latest greatest high security ones every time someone works out how to pick them, why should you expect people to replace all their wireless kit every time a compromise is found?
Vista isn't horrible. It has some issue that can be solved by turing off some features. SHould the user ahve to tunr off features to stop getting apop up, and having there disk grind all that time? no. Other then that thee only crashes I have seen ahve been due to hardware problems. Something that can impact ANY OS.
IT is getting harder and harder to rag on MS for OS performance. There are business and philosophical issues.
Are there technically better OS's? Yes, but that doesn't matter. While they are technically better, the difference doesn't really add much value to the home consumer. You see it in large scale systems, becasue the cost begins to become very apparent, pretty quickly. I ahve said this many time, the killer app for Linux is wide scale desktop business adoption.
Also, the spell checker appears to suck quite badly.
Windows 7 is the only Microsoft OS that is not only markedly better than its predecessor
The Dos + Win 3.11 -> Win95 transition probably counts. That was the biggest step I can think of.
However, there's nothing wrong with incremental upgrades, in fact they are rather good. So long as they are released frequently and cheaply enough. Neither of which is something Microsoft does.
Perhaps IE 8 will work with YouTube, I don't know, but I fail to see why I should have to upgrade to Microsoft's latest just because YouTube and Adobe can't get their act together.
You don't - there are plenty of other browsers not written by Microsoft that can handle YouTube just fine (ignoring the fact that Flash is the most inefficient video player ever invented). Or you could just stop using YouTube. No one is "forcing" you to do anything.
hehe, you think people haven't, for decades now, been buying shit with the intention of using it for n days and then returning it? You think there hasn't been a court case finding on it? It's well established law. If you buy something with the intention of returning it, you're not acting in good faith. It's simple fraud.
Eh? If I buy a product that comes with a contract saying "you can return it for whatever reason within the first 30 days for a full refund" then returning it for any reason is _not_ fraud.
Taking advantage of the agreed terms of a contract is perfectly legal.
The AGPL is as much of a EULA as the regular GPL, be that version 2 or 3.
Wrong.
The GPL is a *distribution licence*. If you don't distribute the software, you don't need to agree to it. If you do distribute the software then copyright law prevents you from doing so unless you have a licence to do so - i.e. if you're going to distribute the software, you *must* agree to the GPL because there is nothing else that allows you to do so.
The AGPL is a *use licence*. If you use the software (i.e. you are a service provider, using it to provide a service to your users) then the FSF tells you you must agree to the licence. But there is no law preventing you from using software for which you have no licence - copyright law only applies to distribution, not use. So from a legal perspective, there is no requirement to agree to a use licence since you can use the software without doing so anyway. You can agree to the use licence if you want, but since it does nothing but revoke your existing rights why would you want to?
So if it ever came up in court, you have very little defence against GPL infringement - if you were distributing the software then you either agreed to the licence, or you are infringing the copyright. On the other hand, you have plenty of defence against the AGPL by simply saying "I didn't agree to that licence". There is no way for the prosecution to prove you ever did agree to it since there is no contract with your signature on it.
This, by the way, applies to any click-through or shrink-wrap EULA - there is no way to prove you agreed to it, and there is no legal obligation to do so in order to use the software. The court cannot prove that you ever read the licence or clicked "I agree" - that might have been done by a friend/spouse/child/dog/shop-you-bought-the-computer-from or the software may even have been modified to remove the technical requirement to agree to the licence.
Thus the only use for an EULA is to intimidate your own customers into doing stuff that you want, even though they have no legal obligation to do so. Now, I know that intimidating, suing and generally abusing your own customers is seen as the right way to do business these days, but I happen to disagree - if you insist on abusing your customers then you can expect me not be be one of them if there are other choices where I won't get that abuse.
Umm... KW per hour makes no sense - watts are joules per second, "22,000 joules per second per hour" is a bit meaningless in this context.
Warning, thick cables carrying 1000's of amps tend to jump about in the earths magnetic field, so stand back as the power is applied, or removed. (Or just ramp the current up/down slowly...)
I imagine that won't be much of a problem compared to the problems associated with turning off a DC current of thousands of amps (back-EMF is a bitch at those sorts of currents - I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when the power is cut).
The AGPL is a complete waste of time - it is an EULA and thus suffers the exact same problems as every other EULA. Namely that it is pretty much unenforceable and thus its only use is to intimidate your own customers into doing things they have no legal obligation to do.
I'm afraid the FSF has completely lost the plot these days - they are more interested in pushing their own agenda than supporting the Free software projects.
This was the single most enlightening YouTube video I've seen in several months.
s/enlightening/depressing/
Although I suspect the interviewer introduced himself to the interviewees as someone from Google, so that probably swayed the results a bit. To get sensible results the interviewees shouldn't be told who the interviewer is working for and the interviewer should use an unambiguous term like "web browser" instead of "browser".
Slashdot Mirror
Status should be changed to "Fix released", then:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-community/+bug/393596
Not really - the bug is calling for code to be released under a Free licence. The AGPL isn't a Free licence.
This is just as easily applied to nearly anything else â" there being only one passenger car, for example, will make it much easier to find parts and all mechanics will need to know just one model.
Not really - having only a single model of car removes choice. There are many encyclopaedias so if you don't like Wikipedia's policies then you're free to choose a different one.
And if anybody were to ask them, it is a fairly obvious bet, that, when shown two freely readable pages with the same text, any reader would prefer one with higher quality illustrations.
You would have lost that bet - *any* reader would not prever the higher quality illustrations. I am a Wikipedia reader and I would prefer the Free version that has illustrations that are good enough.
And there is nothing wrong with it, as long as their contributions are on-topic.
I already said that didn't I? There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia for whatever purpose you like so long as you stick to the rules. But photographers now seem to be telling them to change the rules because it is harming their ability to use it for something which is not Wikipedia's stated purpose. If Wikipedia's mission objective was "allow photographers to publicise their portfolio" then you'd have a point. But it isn't - if you want to do that then you can either play by the same rules as everyone else or go use a different site that has rules more suited to your purpose (for example, Flickr).
And all of the Wikipedia readers are the worse of for it...
No, the Wikipedia readers who don't care about the information being Free are worse off for it. Those who do care about the Freeness of the information are *better* off for it. Please do not be under the illusion that your views universally apply to every Wikipedia reader, for they do not.
They need DRM because a lot of their potential customers **won't** pay for the music,
Even assuming that's true, how does DRM help?
- Without DRM, their "potential customers who won't pay" download the music illegally.
- With DRM, their "potential customers who won't pay" download music illegally.
See, there is no difference - DRM stops your *actual* customers copying the music (usually for their own use). It does nothing to stop the "potential customer who won't pay" - DRM won't stop 100% of people copying, so the music will always be available to download illegally. In fact, with DRM you have stopped your actual customers copying the content for their own use by legal means, so they are going to have to download it illegally - i.e. DRM has actually *increased* the amount of illegal copying and done nothing to increase the number of sales. Additionally, DRM will actually decrease the number of sales since some of your customers will decide they don't want to put up with DRM and therefore won't buy your product (either just doing without it, or downloading it illegally).
Of course, your assertion that there are "potential customers" who "*won't* pay" is completely bogus anyway - if they won't pay under any circumstances then they aren't potential customers.
Speaking for myself, I don't buy a lot of music but the vast majority of music I have bought in the past 10 years or so has been bought because I was able to download it first and see what I was going to get for my money. If DRM was 100% successful, most of those purchases simply wouldn't have happened; I won't buy an album on the back of hearing just 1 good track..
You do realize, that according to this argument, there should, for example, be only one passenger car in production nation- (perhaps even planet-) wide?
Eh? In what way does that have *anything* to do with the discussion?
So, you'd rather be looking at a free graffiti on a wall, than at a decent picture?
That isn't what I said is it? Wikipedia is built on the premise that anyone can submit content and anyone can use content (under a very broad licence). If this isn't what you want then go use another (i.e. commercial) encyclopaedia.
The pictures on Wikipedia are generally ok. Sure, many aren't of professional quality, but if you're that interested then you can quite easily find professional pictures elsewhere. For the vast majority of articles, you don't need professional photos, and it isn't Wikipedia's job to promote professional photographers.
And you wish to impose that view on the rest of the subway riders, who stare at the same wall?
Wikipedia is about providing information under a very permissive licence. As soon as they start accepting material which has a strict licence then this is no longer the case - they may as well be any other commercial encyclopaedia, of which there are several already.
They are not imposing a view on anyone - if you don't like looking at Free information then you are free to go elsewhere. If you want to set up your own encyclopaedia which accepts non-permissively licensed material then you are free to do that too.
I have seen my pictures (given to Wikipedia) used on other sites without attribution.
And you are free to take those sites to court for breaking the licence. The fact that some people do, and will always, ignore licences has no bearing on what licences Wikipedia should accept.
I'd rather Wikipedia lose popularity, so somebody more sensible rises to their current spot...
Wikipedia is fraught with political infighting and general crapness, which is why I no longer edit (I have no interest in my work on an article that is informative and useful to people being binned because someone with a god complex has decided that it is their right to delete any and all articles that they themselves don't find useful).
However, there are good reasons why Wikipedia is as popular as it is, and it will remain so until someone else (commercial or otherwise) comes up with something that addresses those reasons. But don't for any minute believe that Wikipedia *deserves* to not be popular just because it doesn't mesh with how *you* would run such a project. Your preferred policies are by no means mirrored by everyone else's preferred policies - I for one prefer to use an information resource that has totally Free pictures that are good enough rather than very high quality non-Free pictures.
It isn't really clear to me who is complaining in this article. It certainly doesn't seem to be the users. It mentions photographers and publicists.
As far as the professional photographers go, Wikipedia is simply a way of publicising their portfolio. If they want to use it for that then that's fine so long as they play by the same rules as everyone else. Wikipedia's mission is not to promote any person or company, so asking them to change the rules for this purpose seems to be taking the piss IMHO.
If publicists have a problem with the photos that are being used on their clients' pages then they are free to fix that problem. They can licence photos off a professional photographer under the CC-BY-SA licence and add them to the article. Sure, it'll probably cost them more to get a photographer to agree to a permissive licence but that's just the cost of publicity. Again, Wikipedia is not in the business of promoting people, if you want to use it as such then you're free to do so so long as you play by the rules, but asking them to change the rules just so it doesn't cost you quite as much is taking the piss.
If the photog took the pic and put it on FB without asking the subject, isn't that some sort of copyright infringement to begin with?
No.
So if you copy the picture, what are they going to sue you for? Infringing on their infringement?
Two wrongs don't make a right. Generally they just make lawyers rich.
Sometime you should try clicking on an image on Wikipedia. The results might surprise you.
I'm aware of this. If you'd bothered to read the post I was replying to you would see that the comment was made that printing a Wikipedia article results in something that has no attribution for photos since the attribution isn't captioned. And the poster is absolutely right, which is why I suggested that it would make sense for the templates to automatically add an attribution caption to the embedded image.
Sadly, like most Slashdotters you seem more interested in flaming than actually reading the discussion.
we can get plenty of good pics off facebook etc. for free.
You know that you don't have implicit permission to redistribute a photo just because it's on Facebook, right?
You could elaborate, I suppose... How exactly does rejecting images, which the author allows to be used within *.wikipedia.org, but not elsewhere, advance freedom?
1. It means you don't have to deal with investigating the licence on every bit of content - if you want to reuse some content on Wikipedia then you *know* what the licence is because its all the same.
2. Allowing non-CC licensed content would reduce the amount of CC licensed content on Wikipedia (articles would choose to use the "better" non-Free images *instead* of the Free ones), and that really would harm freedom.
One would think, they want their pages to be printable and (re)publishable, but in that case, the authors wouldn't be credited (there is no author's name printed, when you print the page) — contrary to the current license...
Yes, this is rather at odds with the licence - the Wikipedia templates really need to automatically add an attribution caption to all images that are embedded in a page.
I can't believe you just took literally what I've said about leaving your network open with something like DO_NOT_TOUCH.
Why else would you have said it if you didn't mean it literally? The thread had already discussed the poorness of WEP. In any case, WEP _is_ better than just telling people "don't" - it does take some effort to break, it isn't simply a case of telling your laptop to connect. This is mostly about keeping people honest - if people have to jump through hoops in the full knowledge that what they are doing is illegal then they are less likely to do it. Of course, it doesn't stop real criminals like yourself, but the really determined criminals are quite hard to stop anyway.
Think of it as a really crap lock - you've got the choice between leaving your door unlocked with a notice saying "please don't rob me" or locking the really rubbish lock; it's pretty obvious that no matter how bad the lock is, it's still the better option - the opportunists will probably leave you alone.
Well. "theft of service" is not the only unlegit use I can think about. I'm sure you will agree.
There have been cases of people passively logging wireless network data, but this has usually been connected with real illegal activity - the example I can think of is the Wallmart case whereby criminals sat in the carpark and logged credit card numbers being insecurely transmitted over the air. Wallmart were totally negligent, of course, but recording hundreds of credit card numbers with the intent to use them fraudulently is going to get you locked up, no matter how you came by the data.
In the case of door locks it takes more time. On routers I don't think it takes more time to configure WEP or WPA.
It does take more time if you are having to reconfigure the whole network in order to upgrade to WPA (which is almost as worthless as WEP anyway) or WPA2 (which isn't too bad). Whether you are reconfiguring 5 computers and a single access point, or 2000 computers and a number of access points distributed across a site, it still takes time to do. Make a risk assessment - you might not need it. My internal network traffic is almost exclusively SSH, SSL encapsulated data, or data that is going to/from the internet (and thus appropriate security is taken anyway) - there isn't a huge amount to be gained by changing the wireless security protocol, the same may be true of many other networks which you consider to be insecure.
You have good points about your post, but it seems that you have failed on identifying the purpose of mine. I'm alerting about how easy is to crack WEP networks, and how you should use other options if you can.
I'm not sure much alerting needs to be done - pretty much anyone reading slashdot is going to know this already.
Of course, if someone doesn't feel qualified to assess the risk themselves, they should probably contract in a security consultant.
That is an INCREDIBLY BAD IDEA. Do NOT log anything - for 2 reasons:
1) There is the possibility of logging information that could be considered "private" - in the (admittedly unlikely) event that somebody caught wind of it, you might find yourself on the receiving end of a civil suit and/or a criminal charge. The fact such a charge would likely be found unwarranted in no way mitigates the expense and hassle of dealing with it.
If the user has agreed to the terms of use (which would be presented upon first connection) which state that network activity would be logged then logging this stuff is fine (subject to the normal provisions of the Data Protection Act).
2) Should the police trace something to your connection, they WILL subpoena those logs.
That's fine, they are free to do so.
If and when they don't find what they are looking for, they will assert you have what they want and didn't surrender it, and they will tear your place apart looking for it.
If you keep the logs for $TIMEPERIOD, and the event happened at $TIMEPERIOD+$POSITIVEDELTA ago, they will STILL want the logs - and the statement "I deleted them" will be portrayed at "COLLABORATION with TERRORISTS and PAEDOPHILES!" (again, it doesn't matter if they ultimately succeed in that, the cost of defending against it will be staggering).
Umm, no - maybe this is how they work in your country, but we don't all live in a police state (yet).
Ultimately, the rule to follow is "Record NOTHING you don't want to see on the 6 o'clock news, or have used against you in a court of law."
Evidence of person A agreeing to a service provider's terms of use and then breaking the law cannot be used against the service provider. I have no problem with the news reporting that "someone used a free service provider in order to break the law" - that in no way implicates that the service provider (i.e. me) did anything wrong.
On the other hand, if you don't log anything then you have nothing to defend yourself with.
Well. If you use WEP just to tell people they should be out of your wireless network, you might change it to OPEN and change the SSID to something like DO_NOT_TOUCH. It has the same effect for security reasons.
No it doesn't. 802.11 has a built in *specified* "public/private" flag (i.e. the absence/presence of encryption). Choosing to use some random proprietary method instead of the one specified by the standard, such as setting the SSID to some human readable "private" string, is an utterly stupid idea - not only does it now make it impossible to programmatically determine whether a network is public or private, but it means you no longer have a sensible SSID to identify your network. If your neighbour decides to set their SSID to the same value (e.g. your recommended "DO_NOT_TOUCH") then you are screwed.
Plenty of devices will automatically connect to any open network they see - if you choose to set your network to open and set the SSID to "DO_NOT_TOUCH" then these devices *will* quite legitimately connect to and use your network, and you have no reason to complain about this since you have chosen to use the specified method to advertise your network as public, even though it is private.
Imagine that I'm not using any injection method whatsoever(so no interaction with the remote wireless router), and I only read the packets that are on the air of my room. Although I suspect we live in different countries with different laws, can you tell me if that's against the law?
If you are only listening to the traffic then there can be no "theft of service" anyway, so it doesn't seem relevant to the discussion.
my little survey leads me to suspect that many don't apply better security options on sensitive information, not for compatibility purposes, but because of ignorance.
What makes you believe this? You said that this was a computer shop - it makes sense for their network to be configured so that they can easily connect customers' computers to it. In fact, many computer shops intentionally have a totally open network for connecting customers' computers to.
Yes, but they do lock their doors with the best method that the lock gives them.
Not true - locking with the most secure method takes more time. I certainly don't lock all the locks and bolts every time I lock a door - I make a quick risk assessment. If I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks I'll make damn sure my house is secure, if I'm just popping down to the shops for 5 minutes I'm less bothered about making sure all the locks are secure (I'm not going to do up the 2 key-operated locks and the deadbolt on my front door, every window lock and all the locks on my back door every time I go out - that would just take far too long).
Security is *always* about balancing risk with convenience. If this wasn't the case then you'd leave your computer unplugged and packed in a box all the time because to do otherwise would increase the risk.
My personal experience is that many have the WPA option on their router, with NOT incompatible hardware, and they still use WEP. I've seen it "technicians" configuring Wep to their clients when there is available the option for WAP, with no conflict whatsoever.
That certainly doesn't match my experience. There are plenty of people around using WEP because they have old hardware that supports nothing newer. There are also plenty of people around that are using WEP because they once had hardware that supports nothing newer and haven't reconfigured their whole network after getting rid of it. Both of these are legitimate reasons for running WEP - I wouldn't expect someone to completely reconfigure their network after getting rid of the one thing that was stopping them using WPA2.
On the other hand, where whole new networks are being installed I've yet to see anyone choose to use an obsolete security protocol without good reason. True, where access points are being added to an existing system, it is quite common to stick with whatever the existing system is using because to do otherwise would involve reconfiguring the whole network.
I haven't tried it yet, but one of the changelogs for 8.09.1 is "fix multi-ssids with WPA on Broadcom (#4777, r15200, r15204) ". Not sure what Broadcom they are talking about but it would be nice if it was the chipset in the WRT54GL!
Now i'll have to download it and find out :)
Kamikaze has been able to do multi-SSIDs for years. The problem is that the firmware (or maybe the binary blob driver) only allows a single BSSID to be used. In theory you can have multiple SSIDs per BSSID, but in reality most stuff seems to get very confused when it sees an access point doing that. To work properly, you need to be able to have a separate BSSID per SSID.
I've moved to a new apartment 3 months ago. My building is in a very dense populated area. Due to bureaucrat issues, I was over one month without an internet connection. Since I had over 25 available wireless networks on my house I gave the http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=tutorial aircrack online tutorials a shot. It was amazing how easy it is to crack a WEP connection. On average I took less than 10 minutes to crack a WEP wireless. Over 40% of people(at least around here), still use this totally insecure encryption method.
Yep, I use WEP. I still own devices that won't do anything newer. I don't really see the insecurity as a big deal - an open AP is an advertisement that you don't mind random people using it, an AP with some kind of security (even if it's weak) tells people it isn't for public use. If you choose to break the WEP key then you're choosing to break the law.
I live in a neighbourhood where there are at least 2 other networks within range that are totally open, so I suspect people won't care about mine, but more importantly all my machines are secure and the traffic between internal machines on the network is encrypted, so it isn't really that big a deal if someone breaks into it.
If I had an access point that could reliably do virtual SSIDs (sadly the WRT54GL won't - it can do virtual SSIDs but they have to share the same address which confuses too many clients), I would likely set up a separate open network that used a transparent proxy to do logging so that anyone could use it.
I have a HP shop on the other side of the street, that has a big splash symbol on the window "Microsoft Certified". They have IT consultants and they are using WEP. What a joke.
Not really - they may require a WEP network in order to connect older devices that have no WPA/WPA2 support. Unless you've broken the law and actually cracked the key and investigated further then you have no idea what underlying security they have beneath the WEP - they might only allow ESP+AH traffic, in which case there is absolutely no security problem at all.
Also WAP is not difficult to crack with weak passwords, and most of the people don't have a clue about strong passwords.
Guess what - most people have door locks that are trivial to pick if you have the right knowledge and tools. There is only so much you can do to stop criminals. I'm sure you don't upgrade all your door locks to the latest greatest high security ones every time someone works out how to pick them, why should you expect people to replace all their wireless kit every time a compromise is found?
Vista isn't horrible. It has some issue that can be solved by turing off some features. SHould the user ahve to tunr off features to stop getting apop up, and having there disk grind all that time? no. Other then that thee only crashes I have seen ahve been due to hardware problems. Something that can impact ANY OS.
IT is getting harder and harder to rag on MS for OS performance. There are business and philosophical issues.
Are there technically better OS's? Yes, but that doesn't matter. While they are technically better, the difference doesn't really add much value to the home consumer. You see it in large scale systems, becasue the cost begins to become very apparent, pretty quickly. I ahve said this many time, the killer app for Linux is wide scale desktop business adoption.
Also, the spell checker appears to suck quite badly.
Windows 7 is the only Microsoft OS that is not only markedly better than its predecessor
The Dos + Win 3.11 -> Win95 transition probably counts. That was the biggest step I can think of.
However, there's nothing wrong with incremental upgrades, in fact they are rather good. So long as they are released frequently and cheaply enough. Neither of which is something Microsoft does.
Or, maybe he's a pleased and enthusiastic Microsoft customer.
Wait.... I think I saw this one on MythBusters :)
Perhaps IE 8 will work with YouTube, I don't know, but I fail to see why I should have to upgrade to Microsoft's latest just because YouTube and Adobe can't get their act together.
You don't - there are plenty of other browsers not written by Microsoft that can handle YouTube just fine (ignoring the fact that Flash is the most inefficient video player ever invented). Or you could just stop using YouTube. No one is "forcing" you to do anything.
As a corollary for programmers: Just because you think you have found an exploitable loophole in the "system" doesn't mean that you actually /have/.
Except we aren't talking about a loophole, we're talking about an explicit contractual term.
hehe, you think people haven't, for decades now, been buying shit with the intention of using it for n days and then returning it? You think there hasn't been a court case finding on it? It's well established law. If you buy something with the intention of returning it, you're not acting in good faith. It's simple fraud.
Eh? If I buy a product that comes with a contract saying "you can return it for whatever reason within the first 30 days for a full refund" then returning it for any reason is _not_ fraud.
Taking advantage of the agreed terms of a contract is perfectly legal.
Uh, where's the fraud? AT&T put a clause in the contract which he took advantage of.
The AGPL is as much of a EULA as the regular GPL, be that version 2 or 3.
Wrong.
The GPL is a *distribution licence*. If you don't distribute the software, you don't need to agree to it. If you do distribute the software then copyright law prevents you from doing so unless you have a licence to do so - i.e. if you're going to distribute the software, you *must* agree to the GPL because there is nothing else that allows you to do so.
The AGPL is a *use licence*. If you use the software (i.e. you are a service provider, using it to provide a service to your users) then the FSF tells you you must agree to the licence. But there is no law preventing you from using software for which you have no licence - copyright law only applies to distribution, not use. So from a legal perspective, there is no requirement to agree to a use licence since you can use the software without doing so anyway. You can agree to the use licence if you want, but since it does nothing but revoke your existing rights why would you want to?
So if it ever came up in court, you have very little defence against GPL infringement - if you were distributing the software then you either agreed to the licence, or you are infringing the copyright. On the other hand, you have plenty of defence against the AGPL by simply saying "I didn't agree to that licence". There is no way for the prosecution to prove you ever did agree to it since there is no contract with your signature on it.
This, by the way, applies to any click-through or shrink-wrap EULA - there is no way to prove you agreed to it, and there is no legal obligation to do so in order to use the software. The court cannot prove that you ever read the licence or clicked "I agree" - that might have been done by a friend/spouse/child/dog/shop-you-bought-the-computer-from or the software may even have been modified to remove the technical requirement to agree to the licence.
Thus the only use for an EULA is to intimidate your own customers into doing stuff that you want, even though they have no legal obligation to do so. Now, I know that intimidating, suing and generally abusing your own customers is seen as the right way to do business these days, but I happen to disagree - if you insist on abusing your customers then you can expect me not be be one of them if there are other choices where I won't get that abuse.
22 kW per hour
Umm... KW per hour makes no sense - watts are joules per second, "22,000 joules per second per hour" is a bit meaningless in this context.
Warning, thick cables carrying 1000's of amps tend to jump about in the earths magnetic field, so stand back as the power is applied, or removed. (Or just ramp the current up/down slowly ...)
I imagine that won't be much of a problem compared to the problems associated with turning off a DC current of thousands of amps (back-EMF is a bitch at those sorts of currents - I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when the power is cut).
It's too bad this isn't under the AGPL.
The AGPL is a complete waste of time - it is an EULA and thus suffers the exact same problems as every other EULA. Namely that it is pretty much unenforceable and thus its only use is to intimidate your own customers into doing things they have no legal obligation to do.
I'm afraid the FSF has completely lost the plot these days - they are more interested in pushing their own agenda than supporting the Free software projects.
This was the single most enlightening YouTube video I've seen in several months.
s/enlightening/depressing/
Although I suspect the interviewer introduced himself to the interviewees as someone from Google, so that probably swayed the results a bit. To get sensible results the interviewees shouldn't be told who the interviewer is working for and the interviewer should use an unambiguous term like "web browser" instead of "browser".
Didn't you know? IE8 is the world's best browser - there's a totally unbiased comparison table and everything:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx