Either that or dummy accounts/throw away passwords.
Considering you're going to be doing this more than once you might as well have your own ftpd set to only accept connections from your IP using anonymous login.
>remember that it's freedom *of* religion, not freedom *from* religion.
The difference is almost academic. If a religion is established by the government then my inalieable right of freedom FROM religion would be in jeopardy. Your comment is practically religious sophistry.
>groups want the pledge outlawed because it mentions God (heaven forbid!)
Its a clear support of monotheism which excludes millions of polytheists and non-believers. Smart bets are on the SCOTUS holding up the decision. Any other outcome means opening the door for more theocratic elements until we wake up one day in a theocracy.
>Personally, as a heathen (unbaptised agnostic if you will), I don't care.
Good for you. Some of us aren't politically apathetic and want our children to grow up in a society that respects diversity of belief and non-belief. It didn't hurt you, but it may hurt my kids. Society is bigger than just your personal experience.
Wow, the dream of manned exploration moves one step closer to reality. China has everything to gain with its ambitious space plans and seems to be the only government serious about building a permanent moonbase.
This is cause for celebration. Its especially uplifting after the US has spent the last couple of years at war and the US's loss of its own spacefleet. Not to mention there are no ambitious projects anymore. Spacefaring has been distilled to the tight economics of launching commercial satellites and the scientific probes.
This is a great day for humanity and I hope all goes well for the Chinese space team.
I'm very much in awe. Is the technology old and the accoplishment something of the past? Sure. Is anyone else serious about spacefaring? No. China is quickly entering the 21st century through this, liberalizing its markets, and lately bowing down to protesters in Hong Kong. The future looks bright once again.
>They should wish to lose some weight this year...
Actually they've lost tons of weight.
My first experiences with OO were with a single "master app" that took quite a while to load and used plenty of RAM. I recently had time to play with 1.1 and found that they've finally seperated the apps a la MS office and the boot times are within a very acceptable range, even on a modest system.
The government doesnt have this right. If I choose to use heavy encryption then its my business. If I demand powerful encryption from my VoIP provider then they should be able to deliver the goods without fear of a government legal attack.
We've been down this road before with SSL key-size and other attempts to muzzle crypto. The genie is out of the bottle and the government cannot/shouldn't outlaw something just because it has potential criminal uses.
Then again with Bush and Ashcroft at the wheel it could turn out that weak encryption and government mandated key escrow are the future.
>(Sun is seeing its marketshare destroyed by cheap Linux on Intel, but they're dead anyway)
I certainly don't see that. Sun's mad hatter linux is poised to strike against Windows/MS Office. They have nothing to gain by damaging the reputation of linux and/or hurting the GPL. In fact, Sun has a lot to lose if SCO gets its way.
>'We can put genes into mice and create Arnold Schwarzenegger mice.'
Amazing how far genetic insertion therapy has come. They can take an insider GOP mouse with no political experience and turn him into an overly-built "outsider" catch-phrase spewing governor?
Yes, I know, but there's no download mechanism. They're writing code on emulators and special dev OSs. As of now you cannot simply download an app like you can with the PalmOS. Not to mention PalmOS has time on its side thus tons more apps.
Supposedly the "download manager" was going to launch this month in fear of the Treo. Too little too late.
Once this is available on tmobile's GPRS network I'm going to sell the sidekick on ebay. The thin-client nature of the CSK is very limiting and it drives me crazy when Danger and Tmobile wont fix a trivial problem. No outside development means I'm stuck with a locked box and when they do roll out downloads it will be pay per play. Very few to no freebies.
The CSK has no internal storage or the CPU muscle to play an MP3. It won't synch with anything either. Using it as a phone is a chore, that is when it works and its reception is poor compared to most GSM devices.
The PalmOS apps available for the Treo are making me drool. Free ssh client? PIM synch? Games to download? A browser that can actually view slashdot? Built in camera that has twice the resolution of the color sidekick's?
Pros: Amazing screen, nice browser, great email app, AIM
Cons: locked down thin client, no javascript, no local storage, no mp3 playback
The device has real limitations but as an portable on the go all-in-one phone/pda monster nothing comes close. Makes public transportation bearable. Thats a minor miracle in itself.
Also, the new OS (coming this month) will have an ssh client just for us geeks.
1. Free software does not advertise on TV directly to consumers stuff like "the unstoppable NT," "now easier and more secure than ever" etc.
2. Consumers are fighting a convicted monopoly, something free software isn't. This is probably the biggest reason why this class action has legs. MS is a monopoly. They're held to a much different standard.
3. Free software involves no purchasing thus most consumer proctection laws don't apply. Fuzzy legal ground here, but things get more serious as money is added to the equation.
4. Its all relative:
All tires in the world will break down at a certain point. If they happen to break after six months of purchase in large amounts that doesn't spell doom for the tire industry it spells doom for the company that made them.
If MS is found to be negligent or below typical security standards with its OS, ActiveX/IE, IIS, protocols, design etc as compared to other vendors then there's an argument to be made that MS is manufacturing a crappy product. If not, if MS is up to par with everyone else then the case should be thrown out on those ground alone
I don't think the above is unreasonable, software may be a little different than manufacturing widgets but a junk manufacturer making false promises is still a junk manufacterer.
> They really wanted to give it a libertarian twist, no matter what, didn't they?
Yep, and as Libertarians they fail to recognize a few important facts: we've already give the state the power to control commerce, print money, etc. We have already given up many essential rights (how many pollutants have you ingested this morning) for business, etc. Yet when the grass-roots wants to make a change for the better suddenly its the old "personal responsbility" line. Its like they want to freeze any politcal change but don't undertstand the history of the US is one of protest and change. Protest and change and the workings of a democracy will, in the end, be much more powerful than some hackneyed ideological position that citizens shouldnt be using government for their own end.
The internet by its nature forces us to share and be civil if we want it to last until the end of 2005. If the net or the rights of individuals are in danger then there is nothing wrong with try to bring about change. Heaven forbid people get together a launch a class action suit against those who have harmed them. Of course to the libbers the spammers theft of resources is an acceptable loss for the mantra of "personal responsbility." It seems only victims should be responsbile while spammers get a free ride. Replace spammers with big business or what have you and its the same philosophy.
Lastly, the "do you want your politician writing insert_type_here laws" is a pathetic straw man argument. Politicans are supposed to write laws, that's their job, if they aren't using the proper advisors or writing the laws you don't like then its a problem with that law not the system as a whole.
Also, I fail to see how one can be "personally responsbile" when dealing with mass-mailing not even targeted at you. Because x amount of people are willing to buy penis pumps, something I cant control, I will continue to get spammed. If I dutifully delete spam and report spammers I still get spammed. The very reason, if not the only reason, so many want legislation is because the personal attempts have failed to bring about change and the libbers assumption that we're all a bunch of "run to the nearest authority figure" kiddies is dead wrong. Anyone with 5 minutes to spare on google would know how spam works, the damage it does, and why its so hard to stop.
Rather than doing the research or caring about the issue the libbers are just using this to get their marginalized views across and hey it worked, they're on slashdot.
Have they gotten rid of those ugly 16-bit icons and moved towards something a bit more modern? First impressions might not mean much to geeks but when the app looks like it fell out of 1995 it really is a liability when the non-tech set see something that looks like a very cheap rip-off.
A decent re-skining would produce more "wows" and thus more of an incentive to think of it as a "professional" alternative to MSOffice. Yes, its all very subjective, but in the end I think it hurts the project.
Can all this fuss surrounding Red Flag linux just be a ploy to get MS to give China full and compilable source code that checks against the stuff in the stores? Many companies have been playing the "well we're thinking of linux for our servers" game to get discounts from MS.
How real is red flag linux and how serious are the Chinese about making it their national OS?
> Congratulations, you found a way to complain about the fact that Comcast is increasing bandwidth at no extra cost.
I've been paying the "extra cost" since comcast bought out AT&T. Here in Chicago, and I'm assuming elsewhere, if you don't get their video service they charge you a $10 monopoly fee. I have direcTV (with a direcTivo no less), I dont need their crappy cable. So the 49.99 broadband is now 60 bucks a month. Sadly, they can do this because the alternatives aren't that hot. I would have to get a POTS phone line to get DSL. I don't need another phone when I'm already paying for a cell phone.
At 60 bucks a pop, they *should* move to tiered pricing. There's a glut of people out there who wouldn't mind paying 25-30 bucks for a "slow" broadband connection (a difference most people wont even notice if what theyre doing is web/email). Wasn't verizon playing with DSL-lite just last year?
Comcast's pricing is monpolistic abuse and its pricing itself away from potential customers, many of whom do have POTS lines and could easily just get DSL. Yelling "3mbs down!!" means nothing to them and techies are much more interested in increasing upload speeds and running services than crazier download speeds.
Comcast could be giving us an alternative, but instead they're giving away bandwidth which is much, much cheaper than offering cheaper service. Once your infrastructre is up bandwidth is largely a non-issue. If comcast can keep getting 50 and 60 dollars a month from millions of people they have no incentive to offer cheaper plans.
Right now I'm weighing the benefits of getting a POTS line I don't need just to get DSL and paying just a little more. Sure I won't get 3mbs down, but I wont be dealing with this monopolistic "get video service or we'll punish you" bullshit and I'll get to run whatever services I want on DSL.
I just moved so I'm only paying 30 dollars a month (trial period) and frankly they've pretty much lost a customer after next month.
Plus a POTS line is tempting, the cell networks just aren't up to par just yet. Not to mention I can tweak my cell plan and maybe come out with a net savings and get a free POTS line to boot.
1. Give out the screener in some mass-produced player thats all encrypted and erases itself after a week. Open it or try anything funny and it wipes itself.
2. Have actual screeners, you know, rent a theater.
3. Watermark the crap out of them.
I like the idea of a special DRM player. The MPAA can weigh the benefits of courting the vote of the academy members with the cost of the devices.
The bandwidth can't be that bad especially compared to say binary newsgroups or IRC, it could be a selling point for potential customers (connecting to im.comcast.com), it would simplify and enhance file transfers and video (assuming they route intranet traffic different than internet traffic), etc.
It seems to me that they have the resources to implement an open and free protocol for their customers (or use an existing one) and provide the servers.
I guess the obvious reply to this is "what about ad revenue?" Well, does anyone know if there's any real money to be made here? Little easily ignored (not to mention easily blocked) ads probably aren't profitable nor do I think IM alone is profitable in itself.
I think ISPs could be treating IM like a newsfeed and decide whether they want to limit login access to their customers or open it to the world. Toss in some (mandatory?) encryption and authentication scheme and you're light-years ahead of the competition.
One of the biggest benefits, if not the biggest for me, is that I can enable encryption on my AIM connection in Trillian.
Maybe its a hard sell to the suits and the technophones, but I can really see a successful ad campaign on "New, fast, secure and easy to use IM," bundled with the new user CD. Also it would be supported by the ISP. Rhis would change all this protocol/reverse engineering bickering in almost no time.
The real benefit here would be competition. Okay, so you don't like Comcast's bundled client. Run Trillian. Don't like that either? Fine. Watch tons of news IM clients fighting for marketshare because the protocol is open. Build a standards comittee. There's a lot of potential here and the closed nature of commercial and proprietary IM protocols is really holding progress back.
When did bending-over for big business become "defending the constitution?"
Read the document sometime, you'll see the ideals of the Enlightement in print which include but are not limited to protection from government, protection from others, personal autonomy, democratic voice, freedom from religion, etc.
If an industry is considered a nuisance by a vast majority of Americans and is limited through grassroots effort this can easily be seen as a democratic action at work. Dissenters might say its the tyranny of the majority, but they can have my telemarking calls if they truly believe that. Something tells me they won't volunteer. Would Ron Paul "defender of the Constitution" let coal burning plants pollute your neighborhood because an overisght comission via the EPA is more "big bad government?"
Just because an industry exists doesn't mean that limiting it is 'big government.' Does Ron Paul want to live in country where we're citizens of corporations because of an irrational fear of "big bad government?" Probably. Would he let Microsoft go with a light slap on the wrist like Bush did. Definiately. Sorry about how your upstart was illegally crushed by the big business, but better that then more "big government" eh?
All the neolib economists, starting with old man Milton, would just love to tear down the state and the protections it provides and let us become modern day serfs.
Funny thing about free markets, they have a problem remaining free. Don't let that fact get in the way of a some irrational ideology though.
>They're trying to rely in the fact that some audio CD players will be more tolerant than CD-ROM devices.
I think they're trying to get the rippers to choke on all the errors. Which isn't exactly the same thing but close enough I guess.
I think you could make a CD where the CD-ROM will do a decent job of outputting the CD audio to the soundcard while fighting all this corruption but when accessed as a disk full of errors the rippers and encoders will be thoroughly confused.
> i.e. they're scared to death at the idea of being associated with all these net-paedophiles stuff ?
Well, more accurately the lawsuits and constant warrants for information everytime someone says ASL in a chatroom. Knowing MS, it probably isn't profitable, will never be, thus drop it.
Someone buys some RIAA CD and put it in the computer, of course they don't just play music anymore they launch flash but this time it tells them it needs to validate the CD and you can get the patch easily from Microsoft. Click here!
Or
You want to watch some movie clip at atomfilms, but it won't run without the DRM patch. Click here!
Or
The NYTimes won't load without DRM protection, afterall anyone can just copy and paste their HTML. Click here! Don't worry if we make revisions or anything, its just like paper. Read the corrections section in the morning.
Big content and information control types are going go ecstatic as this slowly rolls out. Third-world dictators can put down their national firewalls and just use the built-in DRM patch before accessing anything on the WAN.
Its a win/win situation for those against open information, standards, and fair competition.
You are exactly correct. In fact I would be wary about a working exploit posted within hours and a patch a little after. That leaves x amount of time for someone with a compiler and ten minutes to try to compromise me. But, these things happen. Its software, its supposed to happen.
If you're running remote admin apps without another layer of protection for redudancy like a VPN tunnel to your firewall, IP range blocking, etc you aren't properly defending yourself.
Be paranoid. Make an ssh tunnel to your behind the firewall telnet connection, each requiring a different login. Run the daemons with a user accout. Allow only one simulatanious login. Enable logging. Pay attention. Eat healthy. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Either that or dummy accounts/throw away passwords.
Considering you're going to be doing this more than once you might as well have your own ftpd set to only accept connections from your IP using anonymous login.
>remember that it's freedom *of* religion, not freedom *from* religion.
The difference is almost academic. If a religion is established by the government then my inalieable right of freedom FROM religion would be in jeopardy. Your comment is practically religious sophistry.
>groups want the pledge outlawed because it mentions God (heaven forbid!)
Its a clear support of monotheism which excludes millions of polytheists and non-believers. Smart bets are on the SCOTUS holding up the decision. Any other outcome means opening the door for more theocratic elements until we wake up one day in a theocracy.
>Personally, as a heathen (unbaptised agnostic if you will), I don't care.
Good for you. Some of us aren't politically apathetic and want our children to grow up in a society that respects diversity of belief and non-belief. It didn't hurt you, but it may hurt my kids. Society is bigger than just your personal experience.
Wow, the dream of manned exploration moves one step closer to reality. China has everything to gain with its ambitious space plans and seems to be the only government serious about building a permanent moonbase.
This is cause for celebration. Its especially uplifting after the US has spent the last couple of years at war and the US's loss of its own spacefleet. Not to mention there are no ambitious projects anymore. Spacefaring has been distilled to the tight economics of launching commercial satellites and the scientific probes.
This is a great day for humanity and I hope all goes well for the Chinese space team.
I'm very much in awe. Is the technology old and the accoplishment something of the past? Sure. Is anyone else serious about spacefaring? No. China is quickly entering the 21st century through this, liberalizing its markets, and lately bowing down to protesters in Hong Kong. The future looks bright once again.
>They should wish to lose some weight this year...
Actually they've lost tons of weight.
My first experiences with OO were with a single "master app" that took quite a while to load and used plenty of RAM. I recently had time to play with 1.1 and found that they've finally seperated the apps a la MS office and the boot times are within a very acceptable range, even on a modest system.
Here's to the OO diet. I heard it killed Atkins.
The government doesnt have this right. If I choose to use heavy encryption then its my business. If I demand powerful encryption from my VoIP provider then they should be able to deliver the goods without fear of a government legal attack.
We've been down this road before with SSL key-size and other attempts to muzzle crypto. The genie is out of the bottle and the government cannot/shouldn't outlaw something just because it has potential criminal uses.
Then again with Bush and Ashcroft at the wheel it could turn out that weak encryption and government mandated key escrow are the future.
>(Sun is seeing its marketshare destroyed by cheap Linux on Intel, but they're dead anyway)
I certainly don't see that. Sun's mad hatter linux is poised to strike against Windows/MS Office. They have nothing to gain by damaging the reputation of linux and/or hurting the GPL. In fact, Sun has a lot to lose if SCO gets its way.
>'We can put genes into mice and create Arnold Schwarzenegger mice.'
Amazing how far genetic insertion therapy has come. They can take an insider GOP mouse with no political experience and turn him into an overly-built "outsider" catch-phrase spewing governor?
Yes, I know, but there's no download mechanism. They're writing code on emulators and special dev OSs. As of now you cannot simply download an app like you can with the PalmOS. Not to mention PalmOS has time on its side thus tons more apps.
Supposedly the "download manager" was going to launch this month in fear of the Treo. Too little too late.
Once this is available on tmobile's GPRS network I'm going to sell the sidekick on ebay. The thin-client nature of the CSK is very limiting and it drives me crazy when Danger and Tmobile wont fix a trivial problem. No outside development means I'm stuck with a locked box and when they do roll out downloads it will be pay per play. Very few to no freebies.
The CSK has no internal storage or the CPU muscle to play an MP3. It won't synch with anything either. Using it as a phone is a chore, that is when it works and its reception is poor compared to most GSM devices.
The PalmOS apps available for the Treo are making me drool. Free ssh client? PIM synch? Games to download? A browser that can actually view slashdot? Built in camera that has twice the resolution of the color sidekick's?
Count me in.
Pros: Amazing screen, nice browser, great email app, AIM
Cons: locked down thin client, no javascript, no local storage, no mp3 playback
The device has real limitations but as an portable on the go all-in-one phone/pda monster nothing comes close. Makes public transportation bearable. Thats a minor miracle in itself.
Also, the new OS (coming this month) will have an ssh client just for us geeks.
>Especially to free software ?
1. Free software does not advertise on TV directly to consumers stuff like "the unstoppable NT," "now easier and more secure than ever" etc.
2. Consumers are fighting a convicted monopoly, something free software isn't. This is probably the biggest reason why this class action has legs. MS is a monopoly. They're held to a much different standard.
3. Free software involves no purchasing thus most consumer proctection laws don't apply. Fuzzy legal ground here, but things get more serious as money is added to the equation.
4. Its all relative:
All tires in the world will break down at a certain point. If they happen to break after six months of purchase in large amounts that doesn't spell doom for the tire industry it spells doom for the company that made them.
If MS is found to be negligent or below typical security standards with its OS, ActiveX/IE, IIS, protocols, design etc as compared to other vendors then there's an argument to be made that MS is manufacturing a crappy product. If not, if MS is up to par with everyone else then the case should be thrown out on those ground alone
I don't think the above is unreasonable, software may be a little different than manufacturing widgets but a junk manufacturer making false promises is still a junk manufacterer.
>
They really wanted to give it a libertarian twist,
no matter what, didn't they?
Yep, and as Libertarians they fail to recognize a few important facts: we've already give the state the power to control commerce, print money, etc. We have already given up many essential rights (how many pollutants have you ingested this morning) for business, etc. Yet when the grass-roots wants to make a change for the better suddenly its the old "personal responsbility" line. Its like they want to freeze any politcal change but don't undertstand the history of the US is one of protest and change. Protest and change and the workings of a democracy will, in the end, be much more powerful than some hackneyed ideological position that citizens shouldnt be using government for their own end.
The internet by its nature forces us to share and be civil if we want it to last until the end of 2005. If the net or the rights of individuals are in danger then there is nothing wrong with try to bring about change. Heaven forbid people get together a launch a class action suit against those who have harmed them. Of course to the libbers the spammers theft of resources is an acceptable loss for the mantra of "personal responsbility." It seems only victims should be responsbile while spammers get a free ride. Replace spammers with big business or what have you and its the same philosophy.
Lastly, the "do you want your politician writing insert_type_here laws" is a pathetic straw man argument. Politicans are supposed to write laws, that's their job, if they aren't using the proper advisors or writing the laws you don't like then its a problem with that law not the system as a whole.
Also, I fail to see how one can be "personally responsbile" when dealing with mass-mailing not even targeted at you. Because x amount of people are willing to buy penis pumps, something I cant control, I will continue to get spammed. If I dutifully delete spam and report spammers I still get spammed. The very reason, if not the only reason, so many want legislation is because the personal attempts have failed to bring about change and the libbers assumption that we're all a bunch of "run to the nearest authority figure" kiddies is dead wrong. Anyone with 5 minutes to spare on google would know how spam works, the damage it does, and why its so hard to stop.
Rather than doing the research or caring about the issue the libbers are just using this to get their marginalized views across and hey it worked, they're on slashdot.
Have they gotten rid of those ugly 16-bit icons and moved towards something a bit more modern? First impressions might not mean much to geeks but when the app looks like it fell out of 1995 it really is a liability when the non-tech set see something that looks like a very cheap rip-off.
A decent re-skining would produce more "wows" and thus more of an incentive to think of it as a "professional" alternative to MSOffice. Yes, its all very subjective, but in the end I think it hurts the project.
Can all this fuss surrounding Red Flag linux just be a ploy to get MS to give China full and compilable source code that checks against the stuff in the stores? Many companies have been playing the "well we're thinking of linux for our servers" game to get discounts from MS.
How real is red flag linux and how serious are the Chinese about making it their national OS?
> Congratulations, you found a way to complain about the fact that Comcast is increasing bandwidth at no extra cost.
I've been paying the "extra cost" since comcast bought out AT&T. Here in Chicago, and I'm assuming elsewhere, if you don't get their video service they charge you a $10 monopoly fee. I have direcTV (with a direcTivo no less), I dont need their crappy cable. So the 49.99 broadband is now 60 bucks a month. Sadly, they can do this because the alternatives aren't that hot. I would have to get a POTS phone line to get DSL. I don't need another phone when I'm already paying for a cell phone.
At 60 bucks a pop, they *should* move to tiered pricing. There's a glut of people out there who wouldn't mind paying 25-30 bucks for a "slow" broadband connection (a difference most people wont even notice if what theyre doing is web/email). Wasn't verizon playing with DSL-lite just last year?
Comcast's pricing is monpolistic abuse and its pricing itself away from potential customers, many of whom do have POTS lines and could easily just get DSL. Yelling "3mbs down!!" means nothing to them and techies are much more interested in increasing upload speeds and running services than crazier download speeds.
Comcast could be giving us an alternative, but instead they're giving away bandwidth which is much, much cheaper than offering cheaper service. Once your infrastructre is up bandwidth is largely a non-issue. If comcast can keep getting 50 and 60 dollars a month from millions of people they have no incentive to offer cheaper plans.
Right now I'm weighing the benefits of getting a POTS line I don't need just to get DSL and paying just a little more. Sure I won't get 3mbs down, but I wont be dealing with this monopolistic "get video service or we'll punish you" bullshit and I'll get to run whatever services I want on DSL.
I just moved so I'm only paying 30 dollars a month (trial period) and frankly they've pretty much lost a customer after next month.
Plus a POTS line is tempting, the cell networks just aren't up to par just yet. Not to mention I can tweak my cell plan and maybe come out with a net savings and get a free POTS line to boot.
Personally, I think Bounty Trail is one of the best star wars fan films.
As far as comedy goes Pink Five is the funniest fanfilm. It ranks right up there with Troops.
I dont know why duality was posted, its almost three years old.
>Except an all-out-spamwar to break out in 2004.
How about an all out virus war? Write a virus that stealth installs AVG and let it run loose. I can't wait to see the Symantec advisory on that:
"This trojan installs a competitor's product. Here is the remove tool and a link to buy our product."
A few solutions:
1. Give out the screener in some mass-produced player thats all encrypted and erases itself after a week. Open it or try anything funny and it wipes itself.
2. Have actual screeners, you know, rent a theater.
3. Watermark the crap out of them.
I like the idea of a special DRM player. The MPAA can weigh the benefits of courting the vote of the academy members with the cost of the devices.
Why aren't ISPs jumping on the IM bandwagon?
The bandwidth can't be that bad especially compared to say binary newsgroups or IRC, it could be a selling point for potential customers (connecting to im.comcast.com), it would simplify and enhance file transfers and video (assuming they route intranet traffic different than internet traffic), etc.
It seems to me that they have the resources to implement an open and free protocol for their customers (or use an existing one) and provide the servers.
I guess the obvious reply to this is "what about ad revenue?" Well, does anyone know if there's any real money to be made here? Little easily ignored (not to mention easily blocked) ads probably aren't profitable nor do I think IM alone is profitable in itself.
I think ISPs could be treating IM like a newsfeed and decide whether they want to limit login access to their customers or open it to the world. Toss in some (mandatory?) encryption and authentication scheme and you're light-years ahead of the competition.
One of the biggest benefits, if not the biggest for me, is that I can enable encryption on my AIM connection in Trillian.
Maybe its a hard sell to the suits and the technophones, but I can really see a successful ad campaign on "New, fast, secure and easy to use IM," bundled with the new user CD. Also it would be supported by the ISP. Rhis would change all this protocol/reverse engineering bickering in almost no time.
The real benefit here would be competition. Okay, so you don't like Comcast's bundled client. Run Trillian. Don't like that either? Fine. Watch tons of news IM clients fighting for marketshare because the protocol is open. Build a standards comittee. There's a lot of potential here and the closed nature of commercial and proprietary IM protocols is really holding progress back.
When did bending-over for big business become "defending the constitution?"
Read the document sometime, you'll see the ideals of the Enlightement in print which include but are not limited to protection from government, protection from others, personal autonomy, democratic voice, freedom from religion, etc.
If an industry is considered a nuisance by a vast majority of Americans and is limited through grassroots effort this can easily be seen as a democratic action at work. Dissenters might say its the tyranny of the majority, but they can have my telemarking calls if they truly believe that. Something tells me they won't volunteer. Would Ron Paul "defender of the Constitution" let coal burning plants pollute your neighborhood because an overisght comission via the EPA is more "big bad government?"
Just because an industry exists doesn't mean that limiting it is 'big government.' Does Ron Paul want to live in country where we're citizens of corporations because of an irrational fear of "big bad government?" Probably. Would he let Microsoft go with a light slap on the wrist like Bush did. Definiately. Sorry about how your upstart was illegally crushed by the big business, but better that then more "big government" eh?
All the neolib economists, starting with old man Milton, would just love to tear down the state and the protections it provides and let us become modern day serfs.
Funny thing about free markets, they have a problem remaining free. Don't let that fact get in the way of a some irrational ideology though.
Now hackers can use this to get rid of Bush and put in whoever is willing to part ways with the DMCA and the Patriot act.
Faux News election night:
"And the results are in for the popular election, Jane"
"75 million votes for..wait.. who the fuck is Lawrence Lessig?"
"I would say he's our new President, Steve."
>They're trying to rely in the fact that some audio CD players will be more tolerant than CD-ROM devices.
I think they're trying to get the rippers to choke on all the errors. Which isn't exactly the same thing but close enough I guess.
I think you could make a CD where the CD-ROM will do a decent job of outputting the CD audio to the soundcard while fighting all this corruption but when accessed as a disk full of errors the rippers and encoders will be thoroughly confused.
> i.e. they're scared to death at the idea of being associated with all these net-paedophiles stuff ?
Well, more accurately the lawsuits and constant warrants for information everytime someone says ASL in a chatroom. Knowing MS, it probably isn't profitable, will never be, thus drop it.
No, they'll make you drink your own poison.
Scenario:
Someone buys some RIAA CD and put it in the computer, of course they don't just play music anymore they launch flash but this time it tells them it needs to validate the CD and you can get the patch easily from Microsoft. Click here!
Or
You want to watch some movie clip at atomfilms, but it won't run without the DRM patch. Click here!
Or
The NYTimes won't load without DRM protection, afterall anyone can just copy and paste their HTML. Click here! Don't worry if we make revisions or anything, its just like paper. Read the corrections section in the morning.
Big content and information control types are going go ecstatic as this slowly rolls out. Third-world dictators can put down their national firewalls and just use the built-in DRM patch before accessing anything on the WAN.
Its a win/win situation for those against open information, standards, and fair competition.
>The "more eyes" mantra doesn't cut it.
You are exactly correct. In fact I would be wary about a working exploit posted within hours and a patch a little after. That leaves x amount of time for someone with a compiler and ten minutes to try to compromise me. But, these things happen. Its software, its supposed to happen.
If you're running remote admin apps without another layer of protection for redudancy like a VPN tunnel to your firewall, IP range blocking, etc you aren't properly defending yourself.
Be paranoid. Make an ssh tunnel to your behind the firewall telnet connection, each requiring a different login. Run the daemons with a user accout. Allow only one simulatanious login. Enable logging. Pay attention. Eat healthy. etc.