Personally i regard spyware and adware the same way i regard rootkits.
The machines real users mostly dont know there there, they are using my computing power and bandwidth to provide service to some other person who is using the access to my computer to gather information about me and use this information to target me with traffic i neither like or want, and in some cases, hijack *my* internet services.
I personally dont particularly like adverts on web pages, but i can see they are needed on some sites that can only survive by the revenue they generate.
The fact that theftware (I think this is a reasonable description of programs which steal my bandwidth and steal others advertising space) such as Gator *steal* (And i cant think of any other way of describing this) the advertising space, paid for by companies that are *supporting* some of the websites i view, strikes me as the most dodgy tactics imaginable, and i hope these companies go broke.
If there isnt a law covering this disreputable activity already, i hope we get one soon.
Interesting point of view.
although not one i share, i can see can see its validity.
Debian was always more of a geek release rather than something intended for companies. If you want a commercial grade supported linux, go to redhat/suse/mandrake. Any companies using software in an important role without some sort of direct developer support are taking a huge risk anyway.
I think its good that they are sticking to their morals, and they have the right to do that. We are not short of different linux distributions of various sizes, quality and uses. The Debian maintainers have just clarified where they think they stand.
In a world where everyone+dog is making a linux distribution (How many are there now? 100, 200?) I dont see what the problem is.
Does anyne know how many drivers and packages does this affect anyway?
Hopefully it may force some people to release specifications for particular hardware so they can be supported on other projects. Linux is not the be all and end all of open source projects, or even OS's.
Reverse engineering drivers is possible, but creating drivers is much easier if you have the relevant data books in front of you.
For projects like AROS, SKYOS, ReactOS, heck, even FREEDOS, THe only way they are going to get drivers for some hardware is by the hardware manafacturers taking pity on them, and this is not really an acceptable for "Open source" software.
I would add
(3) Some people prefer having legal, software to play with. This is why I switched to Linux. I had Three boxes with unlicensed copies of Windows 98, and its just not legal. Same difference.
>Implying, of course, that the abandonware defence
>will no longer be as valid,
Abandonware was never a legally defensable position. It was a concept invented by some BBS owners in the 1980's to try to project the image that distribution of ROMS and such like was actually legal. This has always been Bullshit. I have no more rights to copy and distribute Wordstar than i have to distribute MS office.
A *morally* defensable position to on the other hand is different, although i would say that it is only morally defensable if you personally have tried to find the original copyright owner and after a very detailed search, cant find them. (Note, a quick search in the business pages is not a good search)
I'm sure people will disagree in both directions.
>and the original creator of the ROM will get
>basically squat (the middleman gets all the >money in this). I'm all for encouraging and >rewarding creators, but **This does not >do that**.
The original creators of the rom never got anything anyway. Most of them were salaried employees of the arcade companies (And i believe were paid very well).
If you mean the original arcade companies, well then they know what they are signing up for. The advantage of this for them is that they have dealt fairly with the emulation buffs who want to want to be legal, while retaining their rights to the work in question when dealing with the pirates.
The service being described by the main article is a very good idea, and i hope more copyright owners take them up on it.
May I remind you that the MyDoom virus did very little real damage to SCO, and far more damage to Linux users.
It was also probably written by Spammers to redirect attention from the spam engine in it. Please dont give these morons any justification for their work.
Professional spammers and their programmers deserve a very long walk of a very short pier, from the russian criminals engaged in kiddie porn to that american granny spamming insurance offers.
I dont think this situation applies. Even the judge said that the FBI made a real F*kup of that particular situation, and gave them a telling off over that one. No nearly harsh enough considering the circumstances, but i would hope things are different now)
I must assume the FBI knew what they wanted (IRC logs, bash histories, whatever) or they wouldnt have got a warrant. so it shouldnt have taken hours to get this information. If the rumours detailed earlier are true and the owners are knowingly ignoring black hat activity on their networks, then i think that giving them a few hours is overly generous. Personally i would have just went in there, taken out the disks (Or just one of them if they were Raid1'd) and told them you can have them back later after we copy them for evidence.
(But then again i dont do Subtle:-)
Creating images of hard disks is not difficult, and doesnt take very long.
As a european,
What scared me about Kyoto was the fact the politicials thaught they knew better than the majoraty of the scientific specialists who had been working on this for years, and the fact that the worlds biggest polluter decided they could ignore the majoraty of scientific opinion because it was inconvenient.
(Although precisely why they thaught that not doing anything about their own dependance on the middle east was not a good thing, escapes me at the moment)
Yes, there were desenters, but they were in a minority which means they still have to work to prove their case to the majority. (Thats the way these sort of science works BTW, Exactly the same thing happenned 50 years ago with the big bang theory)
While basic principles state that there *might* not be a problem (After all its impossible to prove any theory in Science), the majoraty of the thinking is that there *IS* a problem and to ignore the possibility is the height of arrogance.
Or to put it another way.
Most people thing there is a problem. We need to do something about it before we kill ourselves.
If there isnt a problem, then doing something about it wont hurt.
Kudos to Californias car emission regulations BTW, Now if only more states where as forward thinking we wouldnt be having this argument.
t's all about features. If you code your driver for the lowest common denominator then you end up with a a very plain device driver.
Touche, but you still end up with a device driver thats useful, and the fact is that a lot of writers *do* code for the Lowest common denominator. The only time this may be a concern is things like Video drivers, where the version of Windows my be important.
For things like Printer drivers, Network cards, and to a certain extent, sound cards, this doesnt really apply.
Saying that i havent yet tried coding a device driver for XP (And dont intend to if i can help it, cos there is a nice wall there i could be having much more fun banging my head against:-) )
Actually this is not nesseserilly true. If you write windows drivers for the lowest common denominators (Windows 95 and NT) you only write two. (Although admittedly writing device drivers in windows is sort of like wading through treacle)
I am So sick of having drivers that cant load in Linux due to minor version changes in the Kernel. (EG, my particular bugbear is the Connexant Accessrunner) So much so that i basically dont bother upgrading the kernal any more when i have most stuff working.
How about a half way house where someone defines a common driver interface spec as a Loadable module which remains constant throughout minor version numbers. Just damn wish i had time to work on something like this.
Drivers are one area which Linux really falls down because no-one wants to support ten versions of the drivers for ten linux distributions.
If its Copyright, then the original publisher is liable. If its actually Patents, then the end users are responsible. At least i think that is whats supposed to happen. I personally am very confused by Sco's position. and am led to believe that someone is out to make a quick buck.
If Patents are at issue, then just quote the patent numbers and wait for 5 minutes for the offending code and methods to dissappear.
If its Copyright, sue IBM (Or possibly SGI?) cos you dont have any claim over *my* box.
now IANAL, but vaiguely remember a reference in a legal database i have access to (UK based) there are precidents for any damages being reduced, sometimes to zero, if the company in question did not take steps to reduce the "Damage" as much as possible. (Ie, demanding IBM remove the infringing code from the Kernel)
As in this case, SCO seem to have acted in bad faith and not tried to get the code removed from Linux, its not entirely impossible they may have shot themselves in the foot in relation to legal action in the UK and most of Europe, even if they are proven to be correct.
On the other hand Judges in the UK seem to be very adverse to anyone wasting their time on things that could have easilly been resolved outside the courtroom, and again I am *not* a lawyer.
I wouldnt rely on leaniency in these cases, the laws relating to illegal radio transmissions are stupidly harsh in the UK, and i believe there is little scope for leaniency.
Its a legacy from the Radio Caroline pirate transmitter in the 1960s. The BBC lobbied and got some quite harsh laws passed.
For instance, you know that the UK coast guard can arrest and impound a ship illegally transmitting up to 25 miles away from the UK Coast?
If they *Know* a ship full of tonnes of hard drugs, they cant go near it until it gets within 5 miles of the UK coast.
Stupid eh,.
Actually, you need a "push mower" like the old days. Save money and slim that fat ass of yours.
Actually, i personally dont cut my lawn until either the neighbors complain, or the cats can effectively hide in it. It reached two foot last time:-)
Thats sort of saving energy. Now all i have to do is do something about the 300watt PC on my desk. I'm thinking maybe trained hampsters and a tredle wheel:-)
It is just a matter of time i think. Even without the new trade agreements being forced through, piracy is still a crime. Fortunately the UK courts and EU courts in general dont yet consider piracy to be destroying the fabric of the civilised world:-) so you would likely get off with a couple of hundred Euros fine and court costs (Which shouldnt be more than a few thousand Euros at most). The punishments are only likely to get serious the second time (Certainly courts in the UK dont like people ignoring their cease and desist rulings) I suspect any UK arm of the RIAA (RIAUK?) would get tired of this relatively quickly.
This probably also means its not worth their while until they have pretty much exhausted the honeypot of litigation in the US.
In the UK, we also have the data protection act which should prevent people like this forcing ISPs to divulge information unless they are being traced for a very serious criminal offence (Ie, terrorism, kiddie porn, ect) I dont know how this works in practice though.
I suspect most European judges would look down on the threats being thrown around in america to "destroy these people" and punish accordingly. Certainly a solicitor friend of mine said that such threats could be argued to imply a real threat to the physical wellbeing of the person involved and could seriously backfire in the UK.
Fortuately I dont use file sharing programs (I occasionally take my computer in to work, and using these programs on their network is an automatic firing offence), but i know a lot of people who do.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally i regard spyware and adware the same way i regard rootkits. The machines real users mostly dont know there there, they are using my computing power and bandwidth to provide service to some other person who is using the access to my computer to gather information about me and use this information to target me with traffic i neither like or want, and in some cases, hijack *my* internet services.
I personally dont particularly like adverts on web pages, but i can see they are needed on some sites that can only survive by the revenue they generate.
The fact that theftware (I think this is a reasonable description of programs which steal my bandwidth and steal others advertising space) such as Gator *steal* (And i cant think of any other way of describing this) the advertising space, paid for by companies that are *supporting* some of the websites i view, strikes me as the most dodgy tactics imaginable, and i hope these companies go broke.
If there isnt a law covering this disreputable activity already, i hope we get one soon.
Interesting point of view. although not one i share, i can see can see its validity.
Debian was always more of a geek release rather than something intended for companies. If you want a commercial grade supported linux, go to redhat/suse/mandrake. Any companies using software in an important role without some sort of direct developer support are taking a huge risk anyway.
I think its good that they are sticking to their morals, and they have the right to do that. We are not short of different linux distributions of various sizes, quality and uses. The Debian maintainers have just clarified where they think they stand.
In a world where everyone+dog is making a linux distribution (How many are there now? 100, 200?) I dont see what the problem is.
Does anyne know how many drivers and packages does this affect anyway? Hopefully it may force some people to release specifications for particular hardware so they can be supported on other projects. Linux is not the be all and end all of open source projects, or even OS's.
Reverse engineering drivers is possible, but creating drivers is much easier if you have the relevant data books in front of you.
For projects like AROS, SKYOS, ReactOS, heck, even FREEDOS, THe only way they are going to get drivers for some hardware is by the hardware manafacturers taking pity on them, and this is not really an acceptable for "Open source" software.
I would add (3) Some people prefer having legal, software to play with. This is why I switched to Linux. I had Three boxes with unlicensed copies of Windows 98, and its just not legal. Same difference.
Abandonware was never a legally defensable position.
It was a concept invented by some BBS owners in the 1980's to try to project the image that distribution of ROMS and such like was actually legal. This has always been Bullshit. I have no more rights to copy and distribute Wordstar than i have to distribute MS office.
A *morally* defensable position to on the other hand is different, although i would say that it is only morally defensable if you personally have tried to find the original copyright owner and after a very detailed search, cant find them.
(Note, a quick search in the business pages is not a good search)
I'm sure people will disagree in both directions.
The original creators of the rom never got anything anyway. Most of them were salaried employees of the arcade companies (And i believe were paid very well).
If you mean the original arcade companies, well then they know what they are signing up for. The advantage of this for them is that they have dealt fairly with the emulation buffs who want to want to be legal, while retaining their rights to the work in question when dealing with the pirates.
The service being described by the main article is a very good idea, and i hope more copyright owners take them up on it.
Oh i dunno, never been to an MSCE camp have we?
May I remind you that the MyDoom virus did very little real damage to SCO, and far more damage to Linux users. It was also probably written by Spammers to redirect attention from the spam engine in it. Please dont give these morons any justification for their work. Professional spammers and their programmers deserve a very long walk of a very short pier, from the russian criminals engaged in kiddie porn to that american granny spamming insurance offers.
I dont think this situation applies. Even the judge said that the FBI made a real F*kup of that particular situation, and gave them a telling off over that one. No nearly harsh enough considering the circumstances, but i would hope things are different now) I must assume the FBI knew what they wanted (IRC logs, bash histories, whatever) or they wouldnt have got a warrant. so it shouldnt have taken hours to get this information. If the rumours detailed earlier are true and the owners are knowingly ignoring black hat activity on their networks, then i think that giving them a few hours is overly generous. Personally i would have just went in there, taken out the disks (Or just one of them if they were Raid1'd) and told them you can have them back later after we copy them for evidence. (But then again i dont do Subtle :-)
Creating images of hard disks is not difficult, and doesnt take very long.
As a european, What scared me about Kyoto was the fact the politicials thaught they knew better than the majoraty of the scientific specialists who had been working on this for years, and the fact that the worlds biggest polluter decided they could ignore the majoraty of scientific opinion because it was inconvenient.
(Although precisely why they thaught that not doing anything about their own dependance on the middle east was not a good thing, escapes me at the moment)
Yes, there were desenters, but they were in a minority which means they still have to work to prove their case to the majority. (Thats the way these sort of science works BTW, Exactly the same thing happenned 50 years ago with the big bang theory)
While basic principles state that there *might* not be a problem (After all its impossible to prove any theory in Science), the majoraty of the thinking is that there *IS* a problem and to ignore the possibility is the height of arrogance.
Or to put it another way. Most people thing there is a problem. We need to do something about it before we kill ourselves.
If there isnt a problem, then doing something about it wont hurt.
Kudos to Californias car emission regulations BTW, Now if only more states where as forward thinking we wouldnt be having this argument.
t's all about features. If you code your driver for the lowest common denominator then you end up with a a very plain device driver. Touche, but you still end up with a device driver thats useful, and the fact is that a lot of writers *do* code for the Lowest common denominator. The only time this may be a concern is things like Video drivers, where the version of Windows my be important. :-) )
For things like Printer drivers, Network cards, and to a certain extent, sound cards, this doesnt really apply.
Saying that i havent yet tried coding a device driver for XP (And dont intend to if i can help it, cos there is a nice wall there i could be having much more fun banging my head against
Actually this is not nesseserilly true. If you write windows drivers for the lowest common denominators (Windows 95 and NT) you only write two. (Although admittedly writing device drivers in windows is sort of like wading through treacle) I am So sick of having drivers that cant load in Linux due to minor version changes in the Kernel. (EG, my particular bugbear is the Connexant Accessrunner) So much so that i basically dont bother upgrading the kernal any more when i have most stuff working. How about a half way house where someone defines a common driver interface spec as a Loadable module which remains constant throughout minor version numbers. Just damn wish i had time to work on something like this. Drivers are one area which Linux really falls down because no-one wants to support ten versions of the drivers for ten linux distributions.
Depends. Someone is getting confused i think.
If its Copyright, then the original publisher is liable. If its actually Patents, then the end users are responsible. At least i think that is whats supposed to happen.
I personally am very confused by Sco's position. and am led to believe that someone is out to make a quick buck.
If Patents are at issue, then just quote the patent numbers and wait for 5 minutes for the offending code and methods to dissappear.
If its Copyright, sue IBM (Or possibly SGI?) cos you dont have any claim over *my* box.
now IANAL, but vaiguely remember a reference in a legal database i have access to (UK based) there are precidents for any damages being reduced, sometimes to zero, if the company in question did not take steps to reduce the "Damage" as much as possible. (Ie, demanding IBM remove the infringing code from the Kernel) As in this case, SCO seem to have acted in bad faith and not tried to get the code removed from Linux, its not entirely impossible they may have shot themselves in the foot in relation to legal action in the UK and most of Europe, even if they are proven to be correct. On the other hand Judges in the UK seem to be very adverse to anyone wasting their time on things that could have easilly been resolved outside the courtroom, and again I am *not* a lawyer.
I wouldnt rely on leaniency in these cases, the laws relating to illegal radio transmissions are stupidly harsh in the UK, and i believe there is little scope for leaniency.
Its a legacy from the Radio Caroline pirate transmitter in the 1960s. The BBC lobbied and got some quite harsh laws passed.
For instance, you know that the UK coast guard can arrest and impound a ship illegally transmitting up to 25 miles away from the UK Coast?
If they *Know* a ship full of tonnes of hard drugs, they cant go near it until it gets within 5 miles of the UK coast.
Stupid eh,.
My cant my elected representatives be so forthright (sighs)
It is just a matter of time i think. Even without the new trade agreements being forced through, piracy is still a crime. Fortunately the UK courts and EU courts in general dont yet consider piracy to be destroying the fabric of the civilised world :-) so you would likely get off with a couple of hundred Euros fine and court costs (Which shouldnt be more than a few thousand Euros at most). The punishments are only likely to get serious the second time (Certainly courts in the UK dont like people ignoring their cease and desist rulings) I suspect any UK arm of the RIAA (RIAUK?) would get tired of this relatively quickly.
This probably also means its not worth their while until they have pretty much exhausted the honeypot of litigation in the US.
In the UK, we also have the data protection act which should prevent people like this forcing ISPs to divulge information unless they are being traced for a very serious criminal offence (Ie, terrorism, kiddie porn, ect) I dont know how this works in practice though.
I suspect most European judges would look down on the threats being thrown around in america to "destroy these people" and punish accordingly. Certainly a solicitor friend of mine said that such threats could be argued to imply a real threat to the physical wellbeing of the person involved and could seriously backfire in the UK.
Fortuately I dont use file sharing programs (I occasionally take my computer in to work, and using these programs on their network is an automatic firing offence), but i know a lot of people who do.