Copyright and generally ownership laws are getting out of hand in the US. What's more, most of them, as the one here is motivated *purely* by commercial interests. It seems to have gotten worse in the past few years or so.
The US has always been the land of plenty...where most of the people have a high standard of living and don't have to worry about the basic necessities of life (food/clothing/shelter).
Given these comforts, people are supposed to be happy. I wonder why, then, so many people screw around with frivolous lawsuits (basically an exploitation of an efficient legal system) and overwhelmingly inept laws aimed at increasing profits of commercial entities, etc.
I can see two reasons:
1. People become increasingly selfish/material minded once their basic comforts are provided.
2. A capitalist society encourages companies and individuals to act solely based on profit/commercial gain.
Not a troll...I've been trying to figure out this question for a long time. The land of plenty doesn't necessarily mean the land of happiness/satisfaction.
There's no question about it - this book is formidable. It is formidable in its complexity, formidable in the connective leaps it expects you to make between stories and eras, and most of all, it can be formidable in its prose. Before I even read Voice Of The Fire, I'd heard that the first chapter of the book is enough to put many casual readers off, and that's not far wrong. The story of a cave-boy called Hob -- confused, immature, possibly mentally deficient, and alone in a world of freedom, love, and, potentially, disaster -- is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 4000 BC. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the story strong.
[snip]
But what is Voice Of The Fire really about? Well, the thirteenth character in the novel, and almost certainly the most important, is the town of Northampton itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that Moore has dealt with before
from the ooh-make-it-stop-oooh dept.
Read on for GillBates0's review:
There's no question about it - this site is formidable. It is formidable in its complexity, formidable in the connective leaps it expects you to make between stories and comments, and most of all, it can be formidable in its prose. Before I even read Slashdot, I'd heard that the first FP comment of the site is enough to put many casual readers off, and that's not far wrong. The rants of a typical Slashdotter -- confused, immature, possibly mentally deficient, and alone in a world of freedom, love, and, potentially, disaster -- is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 2004. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the group-think strong.
But what is Slashdot really about? Well, the anonymous character on the site, and almost certainly the most important, is Anonymous Coward itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that CmdrTaco has dealt with before -- there's a moment in the massive, monochrome, mystical From Hell where there's an odd 'flash forward' moment - contemporary office buildings intruding on the goings-on of 19th Century London. The same idea of geography subsuming history is true for Voice Of AC.
without location information. The transmitted data would most likely be tagged with the VIN or some unique ID, which ofcourse would be sufficient to track down the location of the driver.
Might as well put that chip inside my brain so it can sense my stress/roadrage levels and turn my car off if I get too violent.
it's only 7 minutes since the 6 page long story was posted and all you slackers are already posting without RTFA. shame on you. now go back to studying or you'll be detained after school.
I live in the Boston area, and would've liked to attend the last 2 SCO related lectures at Harvard (yes, Darryl's too, out of morbid curiousity).
Anybody from Harvard: Am I allowed to attend lectures without being part of Harvard? Are they public lectures? Can I obtain permission to attend them?
Being a recent grad student at a tech school, I know that school ID's are seldom checked at these occasions, but would like to know if it's against the rules or something.
Weird...All the links on that page point to pages on the thescogroup.com domain, but when you click through the "Buy Now!" button and click on "Continue", it tries to access http://shop.sco.com, which times out.
Didn't SCO shift over to thescogroup.com domain after the last worm DoS? I'm pretty sure the page isn't unavailable because of the/. effect, but because of the wrong URL.
Looks like they don't want people purchasing licenses right now.
Most of the arguments/speculations in this story were addressed in this earlier Slashdot story (incidentally submitted by me). A few useful links there:
Posted by
simoniker
on Monday January 19, @04:02PM from the ultimate-internet-moogles dept.
GillBates0 writes "According to a CNN/Reuters story, Google is
developing a service to attach its lucrative keyword-based advertising to
email: ''I'm sure Google is getting more and more concerned about locking
in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated
with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who
tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management
software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article
also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a
full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like
features like Froogle."
Physicists at may soon be manufacturing copious quantities of black holes. When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, is completed in 2005, it could produce a black hole every second.
These tiny, fleeting phenomena might just give researchers a long-sought glimpse of the hidden dimensions of space.
This development of Black Holes on the planet poses big questions about the dangers and risks involved in handling Black Holes. If one gets out of control, it could potentially "eat" through our planet in no time.
This story has been getting a lot of attention on other time-travel/astronomy related sites, supposedly because people think it was predicted by a time traveller (do a google search). Just some food for thought.
Haven't had a chance to read the response, but I definetly agree with the quotes in the summary. ESR's letter is no way to write to *anybody*, and this is the CEO of Sun you're talking about...not Daryll or somebody from SCO.
The following quotes of his just make him sound unprofessional and mannerless more than anything else:
But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about.
This was totally uncalled for, I can think of a million better ways to phrase it.
Matters aren't helped by the fact that Sun appears, with Microsoft, to be one of the two companies doing most to stuff SCO's war chest for its attack on Linux.
I don't see any concrete proof that Sun is *indeed* behind the fiaSCO. You don't go about making false/unfounded accusations against people, just because you read it on Slashdot.
Slightly OT, but take a look at that page (No images, just text page for those at work)...it lists all the misspelt versions of britney spears detected by their spell checker.
Not sure why this page is even up there...it doesn't look like it's linked to from anywhere else.
And even the location is wrong...it's under their Jobs area. I think this page isn't supposed to be up on a public server...maybe somebody'll look at it here and correct a possible vulnerability.
Having lived in both Capitalist and non-Capitalist countries, I've experienced these glaring +ve/-ve aspects of capitalism:
+ve:
====
People forget differences in the race for money. Good thing. I'd rather have people try to cheat others out of money, rather than kill others over race/religion.
-ve:
====
Loss of belief in basic human "goodness" and willingness to donate time for the common good.
I can't believe the amount of scorn/opposition that Open Source is getting in the US, while the goodness behind it's basic tenet it is *so damn* obvious. Just the fact that people are willing to work together to produce a system without expecting a return should be enough to generate good faith (like charities, volunteer etc).
I have noticed that in non-capitalistic societies (only 2 countries so far), a *lot* of work is done on good faith, rather than being driven by the fear of being sued/etc as it has become of late in the US.
The fact that the government is willing to bend over and pass laws that get them corporate dollars doesn't help much either.
Not an exhaustive list by any stretch....just a couple of points which have affected my life/thinking directly.
This is also a Social Engineering technique similar to the catchy email sent by other recent worms.
The difference I see is that the filenames are catchier and seem to be targetted towards a more computer savvy audience. Normal Windows users wouldn't need to look for WinRar.exe and the other security software cracks/etc...but then, they're the ones who opened the MyDoom attachments in the first place.
Get the dumb users with vulnerable PCs through email attachments, and break the more secure computers/users through enticing downloads!
Daryl's take on POSIX standards
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 5, Informative
While some application programming interfaces ("API Code") have been made available over the years through POSIX and other open standards, the UNIX(R) ABI Code has only been made available under copyright restrictions. AT&T made these binary interfaces available in order to support application development to UNIX(R) operating systems and to assist UNIX(R) licensees in the development process. The UNIX(R) ABIs were never authorized for unrestricted use or distribution under the GPL in Linux(R). As the copyright holder, SCO has never granted such permission. Nevertheless, many of the ABIs contained in Linux(R), and improperly distributed under the GPL, are direct copies of our UNIX(R) copyrighted software code.
Most of the code that SCO came up with as evidence of stolen IP consisted of header files, which all of us concluded was part of the POSIX standard. That's Daryl's comeback from the 5 reasons link.
Essentially, what he's saying is that ABI code (including headers) is not part of the standard, but their IP. Atleast we know now what their defense will be if IBM lawyers argue that the headers are part of the POSIX standard, and not their IP.
I make it a point to remind everybody that Bob Enderle is a stupid Microsoft Apologist whenever/. posts an article authored by him. From his earlier writings, I have lost *complete* credibility in anything he writes. My earlier comment:
People who spend a lot of time at their computers (and presumably online) suffer indirectly because of sedentary/inactive lifestyle, lack of exercise, etc.
I, for one, spend most of my living hours at my computer, at work and at home, and thus forego a chance to lead a more active and healthier lifestyle. Even 20 mins spent jogging/walking every evening would be healthier than the same time spent browsing/..
In Windows XP, one click selects a file, then a second click (and a short delay) renders the file name editable. In Mac OS X, any click on the file name renders the file name editable. In my experience, on both platforms, the file renaming functionality is triggered by accident far more often than it is intentionally.
Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.
Just checked on both Windows ME and XP, and confirmed my earlier memory of using the Right-click menu to rename files in Windows. As in Nautilus, the right click menu *does* contain the option to rename files...and I guess that's more often used than the delayed-double-click mechanism, which I think is an additional method to rename a file.
The article may have some valid comments, but when it starts off with an obviously overlooked point, it loses credibility to me. Kudos to the Gnome team though, for all it's good work.
And the worst part of it (again) was having my mailbox bombarded inspite of being on a Solaris box.
The emails looked like they originated within the corporate intranet -- or atleast spoofed internal addresses. Some of the mails were sent to the all_people@ aliases -- gave the IT guys quite a scare.
Hope they wake up and get rid of the MS Exchange Server atleast now *sigh*.
1. When Kids are sued by corporations, and the society doesn't do much about it.
2. Corporations use the lawsuits and sued kids to further "educate" the masses, and promote a contest.
3. The first person pointed out the BIGGEST problem with the story after 200 odd posts.
4. News articles about the incident don't seem to particularly detest the fact that 12+ year old kids were sued, and are going to end up paying some money for settlements.
Something is wrong here...people don't happen to mind their *or their kids'* freedoms abused by corporate entitities.
No wonder the DMCA and other such laws get passed. The RIAA folks have (as we already knew) substantial government influence. This guy is a staunch Republican.
From the RIAA About Us Page:
Bainwol had worked closely with then-National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Frist during the 2002 campaign cycle while serving as Executive Director of the NRSC.
With an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. from Rice University, Bainwol began his career as a budget analyst in President Ronald Reagan's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He went on to become a U.S. Senate leadership staff director from 1993-97, chief of staff of the Republican National Committee in 1998, and then a top lobbyist for the management consulting firm Clark and Weinstock in 1999.
During his career, he has managed two successful statewide campaigns and advised on numerous others. Before forming The Bainwol Group in 2002, he also served as chief of staff for U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL) for nine years (1989-1997). Mack praised Bainwol's "ability to manage an organization, fully appreciate all the nuances of issues, and grasp in a very short period of time the essence of a debate."
Make sure your voice is heard
on
Perens on Patents
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Cool!! $229 is well within my budget....except for the conversion to 8mm format part. Are they made for different formats, or do you mean tweaking it out of the way to make it work like it wasn't meant to?
Slashdot Mirror
The US has always been the land of plenty...where most of the people have a high standard of living and don't have to worry about the basic necessities of life (food/clothing/shelter).
Given these comforts, people are supposed to be happy. I wonder why, then, so many people screw around with frivolous lawsuits (basically an exploitation of an efficient legal system) and overwhelmingly inept laws aimed at increasing profits of commercial entities, etc.
I can see two reasons:
1. People become increasingly selfish/material minded once their basic comforts are provided.
2. A capitalist society encourages companies and individuals to act solely based on profit/commercial gain.
Not a troll...I've been trying to figure out this question for a long time. The land of plenty doesn't necessarily mean the land of happiness/satisfaction.
[snip]
But what is Voice Of The Fire really about? Well, the thirteenth character in the novel, and almost certainly the most important, is the town of Northampton itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that Moore has dealt with before
from the ooh-make-it-stop-oooh dept.
Read on for GillBates0's review:
There's no question about it - this site is formidable. It is formidable in its complexity, formidable in the connective leaps it expects you to make between stories and comments, and most of all, it can be formidable in its prose. Before I even read Slashdot, I'd heard that the first FP comment of the site is enough to put many casual readers off, and that's not far wrong. The rants of a typical Slashdotter -- confused, immature, possibly mentally deficient, and alone in a world of freedom, love, and, potentially, disaster -- is written in intentionally limited language that the less sharp members of mankind might be imagined to use in 2004. It's not an easy read; this segment is a struggle to decode at times, but the rewards are significant, because the emotions are powerful, and the group-think strong.
But what is Slashdot really about? Well, the anonymous character on the site, and almost certainly the most important, is Anonymous Coward itself, looming large over every single character's experience. This is something that CmdrTaco has dealt with before -- there's a moment in the massive, monochrome, mystical From Hell where there's an odd 'flash forward' moment - contemporary office buildings intruding on the goings-on of 19th Century London. The same idea of geography subsuming history is true for Voice Of AC.
Thanks for the applause *bow*
Might as well put that chip inside my brain so it can sense my stress/roadrage levels and turn my car off if I get too violent.
it's only 7 minutes since the 6 page long story was posted and all you slackers are already posting without RTFA. shame on you. now go back to studying or you'll be detained after school.
Anybody from Harvard: Am I allowed to attend lectures without being part of Harvard? Are they public lectures? Can I obtain permission to attend them?
Being a recent grad student at a tech school, I know that school ID's are seldom checked at these occasions, but would like to know if it's against the rules or something.
Thank you.
Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you install Linux, you won't have to.
Didn't SCO shift over to thescogroup.com domain after the last worm DoS? I'm pretty sure the page isn't unavailable because of the /. effect, but because of the wrong URL.
Looks like they don't want people purchasing licenses right now.
And here I was, with my coffee and breakfast all ready to read /. till lunch :(
Next story please!
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion on Monday January 19, @04:02PM
Posted by simoniker on Monday January 19, @04:02PM
from the ultimate-internet-moogles dept.
GillBates0 writes "According to a CNN/Reuters story, Google is developing a service to attach its lucrative keyword-based advertising to email: ''I'm sure Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle."
Physicists at may soon be manufacturing copious quantities of black holes. When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, is completed in 2005, it could produce a black hole every second.
These tiny, fleeting phenomena might just give researchers a long-sought glimpse of the hidden dimensions of space.
This development of Black Holes on the planet poses big questions about the dangers and risks involved in handling Black Holes. If one gets out of control, it could potentially "eat" through our planet in no time.
This story has been getting a lot of attention on other time-travel/astronomy related sites, supposedly because people think it was predicted by a time traveller (do a google search). Just some food for thought.
The following quotes of his just make him sound unprofessional and mannerless more than anything else:
But the casual equation between "open source" and "zero revenue" suggests that on another level you don't really know what you're talking about.
This was totally uncalled for, I can think of a million better ways to phrase it.
Matters aren't helped by the fact that Sun appears, with Microsoft, to be one of the two companies doing most to stuff SCO's war chest for its attack on Linux.
I don't see any concrete proof that Sun is *indeed* behind the fiaSCO. You don't go about making false/unfounded accusations against people, just because you read it on Slashdot.
This comment by VivianC is one of many...search for eBay on that page.
Not sure why this page is even up there...it doesn't look like it's linked to from anywhere else.
And even the location is wrong...it's under their Jobs area. I think this page isn't supposed to be up on a public server...maybe somebody'll look at it here and correct a possible vulnerability.
+ve:
====
People forget differences in the race for money. Good thing. I'd rather have people try to cheat others out of money, rather than kill others over race/religion.
-ve:
====
Loss of belief in basic human "goodness" and willingness to donate time for the common good. I can't believe the amount of scorn/opposition that Open Source is getting in the US, while the goodness behind it's basic tenet it is *so damn* obvious. Just the fact that people are willing to work together to produce a system without expecting a return should be enough to generate good faith (like charities, volunteer etc).
I have noticed that in non-capitalistic societies (only 2 countries so far), a *lot* of work is done on good faith, rather than being driven by the fear of being sued/etc as it has become of late in the US.
The fact that the government is willing to bend over and pass laws that get them corporate dollars doesn't help much either.
Not an exhaustive list by any stretch....just a couple of points which have affected my life/thinking directly.
* Windows2003Keygen.exe
* mIRC.v6.12.Keygen.exe
* Norton.All.Products.KeyMkr.exe
* F-Secure.Antivirus.Keymkr.exe
* FlashFXP.v2.1.FINAL.Crack.exe
* SecureCRTPatch.exe
* TweakXPProKeyGenerator.exe
* FRUITYLOOPS.SPYWIRE.FIX.EXE
* ALL.SERIALS.COLLECTION.2003-2004.EXE
* WinRescue.XP.v1.08.14.exe
* GoldenHawk.CDRWin.v3.9E.Incl.Keygen.exe
* BlindWrite.Suite.v4.5.2.Serial.Generator.exe
* Serv-U.allversions.keymaker.exe
* WinZip.exe
* WinRar.exe
* WinAmp5.Crack.exe
This is also a Social Engineering technique similar to the catchy email sent by other recent worms.
The difference I see is that the filenames are catchier and seem to be targetted towards a more computer savvy audience. Normal Windows users wouldn't need to look for WinRar.exe and the other security software cracks/etc...but then, they're the ones who opened the MyDoom attachments in the first place.
Get the dumb users with vulnerable PCs through email attachments, and break the more secure computers/users through enticing downloads!
Most of the code that SCO came up with as evidence of stolen IP consisted of header files, which all of us concluded was part of the POSIX standard. That's Daryl's comeback from the 5 reasons link.
Essentially, what he's saying is that ABI code (including headers) is not part of the standard, but their IP. Atleast we know now what their defense will be if IBM lawyers argue that the headers are part of the POSIX standard, and not their IP.
Recall that Rob Enderle=Microsoft Apologist /. a couple months back. It surprises me that he should point out the consistency and flexibility of Linux, since his earlier writeup made him look as if he was paid my M$ to mouth major anti-Linux FUD.
by GillBates0 (664202) on Wednesday December 17, @01:30PM (#7746866)
(http://slashdot.org/~GillBates0 | Last Journal: Saturday February 07, @08:37AM)
Note that Rob Enderle is the author of In Defense Of the Microsoft Monoculture [internetwk.com], which was highly debated [slashdot.org] on
I, for one, spend most of my living hours at my computer, at work and at home, and thus forego a chance to lead a more active and healthier lifestyle. Even 20 mins spent jogging/walking every evening would be healthier than the same time spent browsing /..
Gnome, and the Nautilus file manager (the equivalent of Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder) allows you to rename files only by right-clickling and choosing "Rename..." from the context-menu. While it may seem like the function is "hidden away" behind the context-menu, give that renaming files is a far less frequent tasks then double-clicking on them or moving them (click+drag), this is an appropriate trade-off. Accidentally triggered the file-renaming functionality in both Windows and Mac OS, I'm happy to report that the Gnome technique is much better.
Just checked on both Windows ME and XP, and confirmed my earlier memory of using the Right-click menu to rename files in Windows. As in Nautilus, the right click menu *does* contain the option to rename files...and I guess that's more often used than the delayed-double-click mechanism, which I think is an additional method to rename a file.
The article may have some valid comments, but when it starts off with an obviously overlooked point, it loses credibility to me. Kudos to the Gnome team though, for all it's good work.
The emails looked like they originated within the corporate intranet -- or atleast spoofed internal addresses. Some of the mails were sent to the all_people@ aliases -- gave the IT guys quite a scare.
Hope they wake up and get rid of the MS Exchange Server atleast now *sigh*.
2. Corporations use the lawsuits and sued kids to further "educate" the masses, and promote a contest.
3. The first person pointed out the BIGGEST problem with the story after 200 odd posts.
4. News articles about the incident don't seem to particularly detest the fact that 12+ year old kids were sued, and are going to end up paying some money for settlements.
Something is wrong here...people don't happen to mind their *or their kids'* freedoms abused by corporate entitities.
Bainwol had worked closely with then-National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Frist during the 2002 campaign cycle while serving as Executive Director of the NRSC.
With an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. from Rice University, Bainwol began his career as a budget analyst in President Ronald Reagan's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He went on to become a U.S. Senate leadership staff director from 1993-97, chief of staff of the Republican National Committee in 1998, and then a top lobbyist for the management consulting firm Clark and Weinstock in 1999.
During his career, he has managed two successful statewide campaigns and advised on numerous others. Before forming The Bainwol Group in 2002, he also served as chief of staff for U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL) for nine years (1989-1997). Mack praised Bainwol's "ability to manage an organization, fully appreciate all the nuances of issues, and grasp in a very short period of time the essence of a debate."
US:l
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.htm
Europe:
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
(This link is down right now, hope it gets back up fast).
Hopefully, if either the US or the EU see the light, the other and the rest of the world will follow suit.
You're right about getting the professionals to do it too...especially since it's around the budget limit I had in mind.
I'll never forgive myself, if some of the reels get screwed, due to some stupid mistake on my part. Thanks for the info!
Cool!! $229 is well within my budget....except for the conversion to 8mm format part. Are they made for different formats, or do you mean tweaking it out of the way to make it work like it wasn't meant to?