Not nearly enough to tap all conversation content, but is it enough to datamine substantially all call records? (I.e. build a database of who-calls-who, which would enhance the ability to perform "roaming wiretaps" on people who switch devices, for example.)
It will be interesting to see if any hard facts come out on this, but obviously our congress hasn't exactly earned our trust as a vigilant overseer of executive power, which just breeds endless suspicion.
The mail you referenced as a change of heart expresses the exact same view as this one from 29 Feb and others in that series (if you read the TFKernalTrapA you would have seen it):
Excerpted from Linus mail of 29 Feb:
The thing is, I personally don't mind, and I think "derived code" is what matters, but others disagree, and quite frankly, I'm not going to force them - I have my _personal_ beliefs, but hey, others have theirs.
So you really need to talk to not me, but to the people who actually wrote and maintain that code. When they come back and say "yeah, we think ndiswrapper is a special case and we're ok with it", I'll happily either mark those things non-GPL or just mark ndiswrapper special in the module loader again.
What's confusing to slashdotters about this whole shebang is that there are two separate issues going on.
First, there is a technical/legal issue relating ndiswrapper's access to the Linux kernel (specifically, access to symbols marked GPLONLY). On this matter Linus is doing his job, which is to enforce existing policy for GPLONLY stuff. Workarounds had been discussed, including the possibility that the people who actually wrote the code (USB stuff mostly) agree to remove the GPLONLY restriction that *they* imposed. Linus is not opposed to the workarounds, but he won't brook discussion about bending enforcement of GPLONLY.
Secondly, Linus' expressed personal opinion about ndiswrapper (whose only purpose is to load Windows code) is complete indifference. He simply doesn't agree that because users depend heavily on ndiswrapper, he should go out of his way to bend the GPLONLY policy or make other special efforts. And he's not alone in the kernel community. Which freaks out the users who are afraid they won't be able to keep using their wireless cards and whatnot.
So people see these two issues fused together and think that Linus is killing off ndiswrapper by personal fiat.
I agree with you -- Dell seemed at first to be earnestly giving Ubuntu a shot, but now they've set the features and pricing so that you'd almost be a fool not to buy a Windows box instead (and install Ubuntu on it after of course).
You're talking about Canadian laptops, I'm talking about US desktops. They only offer one CPU (E2160), and a Vista box with better specs can almost always be had for the same or less. That's especially true since there are often special offers on Windows boxes, but I've never seen the equivalent for Ubuntu.
I mean, it *is* still awesome that I can order an Ubuntu system from Dell knowing that the hardware will just work. But hey Dell -- where are my Ubuntu cost savings?
Nice one, thanks! I'm pretty impressed so far with Ubuntu's distro-wide focus on desktop end-user needs.
On a tangent, it's too bad Fedora never took up that banner. I do know that Fedora folks have done and continue to do lots to get important stuff to "just work", like NetworkManager as just one example. But they've chosen not to embrace the end-user across the whole distro, and it's turning out to be their loss, IMHO.
I love Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) versions for grandma and "aunt tillie" because they don't need/want to upgrade the whole OS every 6 months. (Myself, I like the bleeding edge.)
But I'd like to be able to upgrade one LTS version to the next without having to do either the intermediate upgrades or a wipe-install. I know that would require a lot of testing, but for a lot of users who rely on the LTS release it would be a godsend.
[I don't have my finger on the pulse of Ubuntu, so if they've added this already don't flame me TOO much.]
For ages, the FOSS community has said "just give us the specs for your graphics cards and we'll write the drivers". Well it looks like AMD is taking real steps in that direction, and I for one, say Thanks!
According to TFA, the small group at AMD who has spent time clearing the docs for legal issues are going to speak at FOSDEM, and the maintainer for the open source driver for AMD/ATI graphics (RadeonHD) will be giving an update.
And thanks also to Intel for putting out their 3D graphics specs last month. These are good days for Linux.
Yes, there are some who will make various intellectual arguments for why it should always be legal to rip the latest Disney movie for free. In the end, it's for the common good that we have created an artifical set of rules that allow creators to be compensated for their otherwise easily copied works. The guy on the street overwhelmingly agrees with this, just as he also agrees on an artificial speed limit for his car.
But there is room for serious dispute over where that artificial line is drawn, and how the rules get enforced. The problem isn't that copyright makes piracy (aka "sharing") illegal. It's that technological enforcement of copyright via "digital rights management" (DRM) just goes too far in restricting human nature. And such attempts to force universities or ISPs to police their students from committing piracy is draconian (plus so lame).
The hard problem isn't to decide whether or not to have copyright law. It's how do we let Disney be paid for every copy of a movie, while still allowing the common man to make a backup copy of his DVD library, or lend a movie to a friend, or use a clip in a remix?
In other news, AMD's Graphics Product Group (GPG) will be having their next open-source document dump this week.
I don't know squat about the performance lib, but the graphics stuff, now *that* could be interesting if it helps the open-source graphics driver effort.
The story is that this kind of thing is inevitable (as an FBI source in the TFA says), yet it hasn't been part of the discussion we're having over the whole issue of wiretaps in the information technology era.
It's part of the price we're paying, and we need to know that if we're going to make informed decisions about a society as to what is acceptable.
[Of course, the fact is that regardless of this particular side-effect, there's ZERO legitimate democratic process happening around this topic anyway. But hey, that's just my opinion.]
Ah, my girlfriend and mother are unfortunately adjacent in my cell address book. I always double check to make sure I've addressed that text message correctly....
Let me guess --- you have a Fisher Price chainsaw too?
Because who hasn't been bit by auto-complete or other software features which are pitfalls for human nature waiting to happen?
My current peeve in this area is my cellphone directory. Every entry is in the same huge list, which means I have to thumb carefully past people I definitely *don't* want to call by accident (but still need to have in my book). The lame workaround is to use an alphabetic prefix to move important people to the top of the list, take-out restaurants to the bottom, etc. Is this really the 21st century?
If you aretrying to do something unsupported with it, well, that's *your* problem. It's not a restriction.
That would be true if Fair Use was "supported". Fair Use is what you are legally permitted to do by copyright law. DRM takes away some of those legally permitted uses. That's a restriction if ever there was one.
It's too bad they didn't partner with an operation like Dell or Amazon, at least for orders in north america, which is probably the bulk. They would have had to convince some company to do it out of good will, (perhaps as a tax-deductible donation of service with PR bragging rights).
But as you and others have pointed out, OLPC isn't in the retail business, so I don't take their troubles with G1G1 fulfillment too seriously.
Your post is bit misleading. The negative blogger is not just a technology partner with Intel, he's apparently a technology partner with the group in Intel that is OLPC's main competitor, which you knew since you read the Blizzard blog. Here's the relevant excerpt:
...You said that in your capacity as director of Geekcorps. One of Geekcorps' technology partners is the "Intel Emerging Markets Group". You may remember one of Intel's products for emerging markets.... the Classmate PC, which runs Windows.
After the Comcast bittorrent interference, the Electronic Freedom Foundation released a tool called pcapdiff. The idea is you capture what your ISP sends you for a given website using wireshark/tcpdump and compare it to what your friend gets for the same site. Pcapdiff diffs the two pcap files and reports discrepencies.
On Fedora you can do "yum install pcapdiff".
It's an early release, but there's bound to be a lot more uses for pcapdiff ahead...
I'd rather have a decent privacy law
on
Will Privacy Sell?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Because in most situations in life you can't apply market pressure in favor of privacy. Your data is being sold to data brokers like Choice Point and Axciom, and after that you don't know who looks at it, why, or when.
And Americans want a nationalized health care system? Examine the VA system and I suspect a nationalized health care system will be very similar.
Oh please. That's like looking at FEMA's response to Katrina and saying "see, you can't expect the gov't to do anything right." It's so Republican to intentionally break government agencies and then use their brokenness as a reason to privatize everything.
While the bullet lead analysis story is indeed big news, the number of people that are unjustly behind bars because of it can likely be counted on one hand.
Where are you getting that idea? The 60 Minutes story said that of 300 cases involving bullet-lead-analysis that 60 Minutes looked at, something like 18 hinged on that analysis. And they said that the 300 cases were a fraction of the total, since the FBI was unwilling to release the list of cases they had provided the analysis for. However:
As a result of the 60 Minutes-Washington Post investigation, the bureau said it will identify, review and release all of the pertinent cases, and notify prosecutors about cases in which faulty testimony was given.
So, did you have any facts to support your "likely to be counted on one hand" comment?
Oh, and I don't think we have to regret missing out on progress like Monju, whose reactor technology AND the supposedly trustworthy approach of Japanese regulation both were hailed by the likes of Richard Rhodes (in Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy, 1993) as the salvation of nuclear power. Two years after his book came out, both Monju and Japan's regulatory agency failed spectactularly. I'm juuuust fine with missing out on that kind of progress.
Slashdot Mirror
Not nearly enough to tap all conversation content, but is it enough to datamine substantially all call records? (I.e. build a database of who-calls-who, which would enhance the ability to perform "roaming wiretaps" on people who switch devices, for example.)
It will be interesting to see if any hard facts come out on this, but obviously our congress hasn't exactly earned our trust as a vigilant overseer of executive power, which just breeds endless suspicion.
Excerpted from Linus mail of 29 Feb:
What's confusing to slashdotters about this whole shebang is that there are two separate issues going on.
First, there is a technical/legal issue relating ndiswrapper's access to the Linux kernel (specifically, access to symbols marked GPLONLY). On this matter Linus is doing his job, which is to enforce existing policy for GPLONLY stuff. Workarounds had been discussed, including the possibility that the people who actually wrote the code (USB stuff mostly) agree to remove the GPLONLY restriction that *they* imposed. Linus is not opposed to the workarounds, but he won't brook discussion about bending enforcement of GPLONLY.
Secondly, Linus' expressed personal opinion about ndiswrapper (whose only purpose is to load Windows code) is complete indifference. He simply doesn't agree that because users depend heavily on ndiswrapper, he should go out of his way to bend the GPLONLY policy or make other special efforts. And he's not alone in the kernel community. Which freaks out the users who are afraid they won't be able to keep using their wireless cards and whatnot.
So people see these two issues fused together and think that Linus is killing off ndiswrapper by personal fiat.
I agree with you -- Dell seemed at first to be earnestly giving Ubuntu a shot, but now they've set the features and pricing so that you'd almost be a fool not to buy a Windows box instead (and install Ubuntu on it after of course).
You're talking about Canadian laptops, I'm talking about US desktops. They only offer one CPU (E2160), and a Vista box with better specs can almost always be had for the same or less. That's especially true since there are often special offers on Windows boxes, but I've never seen the equivalent for Ubuntu.
I mean, it *is* still awesome that I can order an Ubuntu system from Dell knowing that the hardware will just work. But hey Dell -- where are my Ubuntu cost savings?
Nice one, thanks! I'm pretty impressed so far with Ubuntu's distro-wide focus on desktop end-user needs.
On a tangent, it's too bad Fedora never took up that banner. I do know that Fedora folks have done and continue to do lots to get important stuff to "just work", like NetworkManager as just one example. But they've chosen not to embrace the end-user across the whole distro, and it's turning out to be their loss, IMHO.
I love Ubuntu's long-term support (LTS) versions for grandma and "aunt tillie" because they don't need/want to upgrade the whole OS every 6 months. (Myself, I like the bleeding edge.)
But I'd like to be able to upgrade one LTS version to the next without having to do either the intermediate upgrades or a wipe-install. I know that would require a lot of testing, but for a lot of users who rely on the LTS release it would be a godsend.
[I don't have my finger on the pulse of Ubuntu, so if they've added this already don't flame me TOO much.]
For ages, the FOSS community has said "just give us the specs for your graphics cards and we'll write the drivers". Well it looks like AMD is taking real steps in that direction, and I for one, say Thanks!
According to TFA, the small group at AMD who has spent time clearing the docs for legal issues are going to speak at FOSDEM, and the maintainer for the open source driver for AMD/ATI graphics (RadeonHD) will be giving an update.
And thanks also to Intel for putting out their 3D graphics specs last month. These are good days for Linux.
Yes, there are some who will make various intellectual arguments for why it should always be legal to rip the latest Disney movie for free. In the end, it's for the common good that we have created an artifical set of rules that allow creators to be compensated for their otherwise easily copied works. The guy on the street overwhelmingly agrees with this, just as he also agrees on an artificial speed limit for his car.
But there is room for serious dispute over where that artificial line is drawn, and how the rules get enforced. The problem isn't that copyright makes piracy (aka "sharing") illegal. It's that technological enforcement of copyright via "digital rights management" (DRM) just goes too far in restricting human nature. And such attempts to force universities or ISPs to police their students from committing piracy is draconian (plus so lame).
The hard problem isn't to decide whether or not to have copyright law. It's how do we let Disney be paid for every copy of a movie, while still allowing the common man to make a backup copy of his DVD library, or lend a movie to a friend, or use a clip in a remix?
I don't know squat about the performance lib, but the graphics stuff, now *that* could be interesting if it helps the open-source graphics driver effort.
The story is that this kind of thing is inevitable (as an FBI source in the TFA says), yet it hasn't been part of the discussion we're having over the whole issue of wiretaps in the information technology era.
It's part of the price we're paying, and we need to know that if we're going to make informed decisions about a society as to what is acceptable.
[Of course, the fact is that regardless of this particular side-effect, there's ZERO legitimate democratic process happening around this topic anyway. But hey, that's just my opinion.]
Actually "nucular" is now the official US spelling as of about January 20, 2001.
Let me guess --- you have a Fisher Price chainsaw too?
Because who hasn't been bit by auto-complete or other software features which are pitfalls for human nature waiting to happen?
My current peeve in this area is my cellphone directory. Every entry is in the same huge list, which means I have to thumb carefully past people I definitely *don't* want to call by accident (but still need to have in my book). The lame workaround is to use an alphabetic prefix to move important people to the top of the list, take-out restaurants to the bottom, etc. Is this really the 21st century?
That would be true if Fair Use was "supported". Fair Use is what you are legally permitted to do by copyright law. DRM takes away some of those legally permitted uses. That's a restriction if ever there was one.
No no no, nothing like that. This is for those really hard-to-kill whales that just won't go down with a good sonar blast.
It's too bad they didn't partner with an operation like Dell or Amazon, at least for orders in north america, which is probably the bulk. They would have had to convince some company to do it out of good will, (perhaps as a tax-deductible donation of service with PR bragging rights).
But as you and others have pointed out, OLPC isn't in the retail business, so I don't take their troubles with G1G1 fulfillment too seriously.
Not that it takes massive (by today's PC standards) compute power to do decent speech recognition, but it's definitely worth dedicating a core or two.
And then with Vista, you might need one or two cores dedicated to handling UAC events ("The user tried to breath again: Cancel or Allow?").
It seems like newer camcorders (ones with hard disks or flash storage for video) are using USB2.0 exclusively.
After the Comcast bittorrent interference, the Electronic Freedom Foundation released a tool called pcapdiff. The idea is you capture what your ISP sends you for a given website using wireshark/tcpdump and compare it to what your friend gets for the same site. Pcapdiff diffs the two pcap files and reports discrepencies.
On Fedora you can do "yum install pcapdiff".
It's an early release, but there's bound to be a lot more uses for pcapdiff ahead...
Because in most situations in life you can't apply market pressure in favor of privacy. Your data is being sold to data brokers like Choice Point and Axciom, and after that you don't know who looks at it, why, or when.
Fair enough.
The coolest use for a soundcard I've seen is still the SoundcardEEG.
Oh please. That's like looking at FEMA's response to Katrina and saying "see, you can't expect the gov't to do anything right." It's so Republican to intentionally break government agencies and then use their brokenness as a reason to privatize everything.
Where are you getting that idea? The 60 Minutes story said that of 300 cases involving bullet-lead-analysis that 60 Minutes looked at, something like 18 hinged on that analysis. And they said that the 300 cases were a fraction of the total, since the FBI was unwilling to release the list of cases they had provided the analysis for. However:
So, did you have any facts to support your "likely to be counted on one hand" comment?
Agree on both points.
Oh, and I don't think we have to regret missing out on progress like Monju, whose reactor technology AND the supposedly trustworthy approach of Japanese regulation both were hailed by the likes of Richard Rhodes (in Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy, 1993) as the salvation of nuclear power. Two years after his book came out, both Monju and Japan's regulatory agency failed spectactularly. I'm juuuust fine with missing out on that kind of progress.