By the way, if click on the generalcourt.org link above, you'll notice that each legislator has a "liberty grade." Just like in school, from "A" thru "F" -- the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance rates each and every one of the 400 State Representatives, based on how the actually vote on freedom-related bills, every year. Just one of the many things that become possible as a critical mass of pro-liberty activists concentrate on a single state. For the record, this sort of ranking doesn't require any sort of critical mass -- just a few people (or just one) to rate representatives, and a web page to put your results.
I'm not saying I disagree with the free state concept at all -- I love it, actually -- but merely ranking representatives, that can be done by anybody in any state.
Why did that bearded guy insist that I attend the "Church of GNU" every sunday then ? You must have misunderstood him. He didn't want you to attend church -- he just wanted to make sure you called the church lignux, er, GNU/Linux, and if you didn't, he wouldn't talk to you.
because he is a total fsckwad loser attention hound.
I wondered who'd be the first to launch an ad hominem attack - and look, right in the first comment. Actually, that's not an ad hominem. Here is a description of an ad hominem., and here's the gist of it --
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the
basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.
... the problem is that there's no claim or argument being rejected. It's merely an opinion, based on the presented fact that David Maynor's company doesn't report vulnerabilities to the vendor.
Merely calling somebody names does not make an ad hominem attack, you insensitive clod!
See? Rude, wrong, perhaps, but not an ad hominem attack! Now, had I instead responded to your claim of `that was an ad hominem' with `Oh yeah? Well, we can't trust anything you say, because you're a first poster!', then THAT would have been closer to an ad hominem.
the article is about Macs and PCs in general. It's only the Slashdot summary that assumes it's just about laptops. Fair enough. That's what I get for skimming through it.
Of course, even $600 is expensive in the realm of cheap PCs -- you can get a low end PC for about half that. And you can get nice PC laptops for that sort of money, like the HP dv6000z a fried of mine got for around $500. It had a nice dual core Athlon cpu, nice screen, adequately large hard disk -- my only complaint was that it came with only 512 MB of ram, and then to make that worse they tried to do Vista on it.
I use it at home for storing video files and have not suffered any data loss. The plural of anecdote is not data.
ZFS does indeed look like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if all I cared about `wasn't losing data', then I'd just stick with ext2 or fat. (But I care about more than that, which is why I use xfs, ext3, hfs+ and ntfs for various things.)
i'm a whirlpool fan myself; anyway, he's probably just using md5 out of, well, tradition--he could be used to it Yes, he's probably using md5 out of tradition -- but it's a tradition that needs to go. md5sums are certainly good for detecting corrupted files (as long as they were not intentionally corrupted), but do little to stop actual crackers anymore.
(But RMS does have or did have some non-mainstream ideas about computer security and access and such, and while I don't think he'd want his software compromised and yet passed off as unchanged, it's possible that he might not really mind.)
; and tcp uses crc anyway. Of course. But that's only one of many many ways that a file can be corrupted or changed from the original version. The Internet may be the #1 way for getting GNU software out nowadays, but it's still not the only one. People don't post it via shar files to Usenet anymore, or email it in chunks via UUCP, but there's still plenty of ways for a file to be corrupted, either in transit or even sitting on your hard disk.
As for the person who marked my post as `flamebait', well, that certainly wasn't the intent. And I went ahead and told RMS (well, I submitted it to the bug-gnu-emacs address anyways.)
And as for the AC who responded saying it was a md5 check sum, not a md5 secure cryptographic hash, well, sure, but years ago, if the md5sum matched, it was considered good enough -- you had the unchanged file. If you had the md5 sum, you could safely get your file from any mirror and be sure it wasn't changed. This is not the case anymore.
If you're going to provide a hash at all, provide a good one. Or sign it with gpg or something -- that would be good as well.
Why even FILE patents like this? I realize that this was a rhetorical question, but I can give you a real answer.
At the very least, you file for patents like this to make sure that you beat anybody else who files for patents like this. It's called a defensive patent, and even if you never intend to use it against anybody else, it prevents somebody else from patenting the same thing later and then trying to attack you with it.
Now, obviously the patent in the story isn't being used defensively, but do be aware that they do exist. And they're not really any different than other patents -- it's just what you intend to do with them. And yes, you could have a portfolio of defensive patents, then go bankrupt, have your patents sold, and then the new owner goes on the offensive with them...
Why do you have to SUE over it? It's not fair. It's not right. It's business. They're doing what they think will maximize their profits.
Please send any bug reports to bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org. You can use the function M-x report-emacs-bug to do this.
Somebody needs to tell RMS that since emacs 21 came out, md5 has been cracked. Well, perhaps cracked isn't the right word, but it's not cryptographically secure anymore.
Of course, it's quite possible that RMS doesn't really care, and he's only giving us the md5sum so we can make sure it wasn't corrupted accidently somehow (as opposed to being changed and then modified to give the same md5sum.) But if that were the case, a CRC32 value would be almost as good.
I don't know what city she lives in, who the DA was, etc. I have no details at all. Well, sounds like it was Aurora, Colorado. Still don't know who the DA was, etc.
Of course, the people who need to know the story aren't in Texas like me. They're in Aurora. And/. will only reach a small number of them.
The local news is probably the best bet for getting the story out. If it's even worth it -- getting the local police, fire department and DA mad at you, even if you're completely justified, is rarely a good policy. If you're going to do this, it might be wise to leave the city or the state immediately after.
Posting on slashdot is one such way and it might even be more effective (and cheaper than counter suing). Already 500 people know what has happened and that the system was wrong. So, you see, the OP is fighting the system. Which OP are you referring to?
If you're referring to the person hit by the fireman's widow (WannaBeGeekGirl) well, I don't know what city she lives in, who the DA was, etc. I have no details at all. So this particular post to/. wasn't a very good way of getting the word out -- and besides, 498 of those 500 people who read it probably don't live anywhere near her.
She should talk to a lawyer. Really, she should have talked to a lawyer as soon as things started going wrong in the court room. She should not have signed anything (but let the lawyer make the final say there.) She probably should have contacted the local news -- a `corruption in the courts' story could be very compelling, and it sounds like there was lots of witnesses in the courtroom -- hopefully somebody would corroborate her story. And if there's a court reporter or recording, then it's a slam-dunk. (Is traffic court recorded in the state of X, whatever state this is?)
But it's easier to just let it slide, and fighting the system is rarely rewarding -- even when you win, you tend to lose. And often when you should win, you lose, because everything is stacked against you.
There is no distinction between rape and pissing on a tree
Depends on the state. I believe that most states will not put you on the sex offender list merely for public urination -- but there are a few states that will or can.
Even rape means different things in different places. You know, the whole 15 year old girlfriend, 17 year old boyfriend thing, though there are certainly examples of things that are called `rape' that make even less sense.
I mean, if you got a citation for pissing in the bushes at your local park, and got into your state's sex offender registry, would *you* really take the restrictions seriously?
Depending on which restrictions exactly you're referring to, you'd better, lest you become the victim of the newest up-n-coming politician who realizes that stopping child molesters (er, sex offenders, same thing to him) is the fast track to political success. So you get thrown into jail for failing to keep your registered sex offender address current or whatever, even though your original `crime' is a joke. Or should be.
Try it on my kids and see just how bad it is for you!
Um, no. I'm going to do something really stupid just so you can overreact and `win' your argument? Not likely.
Free clue -- I never said it was a good idea what the teachers did.
You obviously do not have children, take a hint and don't!
You would SUCK as a parent!
Actually, I have three. But if somebody did scare them, I wouldn't see it as an opportunity to make sure I'm `set for life'. Perhaps this makes me an inferior parent to you -- but I do think it makes me a superior human being.
These teachers deserve to go to prison for child abuse and terrorism!
Are you sure you don't chase ambulances for a living?
For the record, what the teachers did doesn't fit the definition of terrorism. But it doesn't surprise me one bit that you scream `terrorism'.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
1) unlawful has not been proven yet.
2) the intention was not to intimidate or coerce anybody
3)... and certainly not societies or governments.
I doubt anybody will even be charged for this. Teachers will probably lose their jobs (if they haven't already -- so far, a principal and teacher have been suspended), lawsuits will probably be filed, children will get therapy, children will be coached by lawyers on just what to say to the nice judges... but I doubt anybody will go to jail for terrorism or child abuse.
because, technically, they could only vote in their parents districts, since college doesn't count as "residency
Must be a state thing. In Texas, college does count as residency for voting purposes (because nine months of college is more than half of the year.) (To be more precise, being a college student itself doesn't count, but living somewhere else for 9 months a year means you vote somewhere else rather than where you live for the other three months a year.)
It's pretty sick that you seem to be trivializing scaring children half to death.
It's not trivial, but it's not really really bad.
At this point, I'd be more worried about blowing it out of porportion, and get the kids who need it some professional attention. Some teachers showed bad judgement, but they were trying to do the right thing. They're not terrorists, or murderers... just people who showed bad judgement.
The lawyers, parents, and you, apparently, on the other hand, will blow this out of porportion. It's the American way -- somebody does you (or your family) wrong, and you are entitled to be set for life. All you have to do is sue, and use terms like `psychological damage', `pain and suffering', `terrorism', `think of the children', etc.
But the lawyers, coaching the kids for what to say on the witness stand -- that's pretty much the opposite of the attention they need. But it's what makes the money.
Of course. I even alluded to it when I mentioned therapy.
But perhaps I'm just being cynical when I don't think that `thinking, for a little while, that you might die very soon' is worse than, say, losing a leg. Or an arm. Or actually dying. Yes, they're elementary kids, think of the children, etc.
But I'm sure the lawyers will have a field day with this.
I could see this claim exhausting all of the available coverage.
I don't, at least not if `all available coverage' is of the order of $50 million.
Sure, it was a bad idea. But the intentions were good (even if the idea itself was really bad), and nobody was actually hurt, and nobody was even really likely to be hurt. (Though no matter where done, I'd be very wary of a kid who brought a gun to school and decided to use it to defend himself and his classmates! Hopefully not in elementary school, but it does happen.)
Ok, some kids might need some therapy, and will be `scarred for life' (at least the lawyers will say so), but nobody was actually hurt, so I don't see this costing *that* much money. Though any time any of these kids acts out in the future, the lawyers will point back at this incident and say this is the cause of it... perhaps you're more right than I give you credit for.
The school district doesn't have coffers that deep. The parents might get a settlement, but when split approximately 69 times (for the sixty nine children -- no idea if anybody else was affected) it won't be big enough to set anybody for life.
And remember, suing the school is basically suing the local community -- any money the school district loses comes from local taxes. (At least it's like that in Texas. No idea about Tennessee.)
The teachers who came up with the idea will be in hot water, however. And what were they thinking? Perhaps it sounded like a good idea, but they should have considered the possible outcomes -- if all goes perfectly, they'll get a pat on the back for being proactive. If it goes poorly, they end up in jail for terrorism. Doesn't seem to be to be worth the risk.
Microsoft does both. They aren't known for innovation (anymore, anyways -- they used to be very innovative), but they do still do it to a significant degree.
Until I see an itemized list of FOSS packages and relevant patent numbers, this is all just smoke.
Uh-huh.
I'm sure Microsoft has such a list already. And it's probably somewhat accurate -- it probably many man-hours to put together, but it's likely that if they say a given software package infringes on a given patent, the odds are good that it probably does. HOWEVER, if Microsoft releases this list, people will start picking it apart, finding prior art, finding patents that are overly broad, obvious to the layperson, etc. Microsoft does NOT want this.
I don't think Microsoft intends to start suing for this. They must realize that this is pointless. Instead, they're probably looking to sow FUD -- get people thinking that using free software is dangerous, is wrong.
For now, I don't see them giving out their list -- there's not much advantage to them to do so, and lots of potential danger. But I do believe that they have their list already, and it may be released eventually.
Yes, selling exploits on the black market is illegal, but that's why it's called the black market, it's a place people go to sell illegal things. Selling exploits is illegal? Or is it only illegal because it's on the black market? (and therefore illegal, because anything sold on the black market is illegal?)
I don't get it. Why would selling knowledge of security vulnerabilities be illegal? In the US, the DMCA makes selling copyright circumvention technologies illegal, but I'm not really sure that would apply to general security vulnerabilities. As I see it, cracking into somebody else's box is certainly illegal in most cases, but selling information about a vulnerability that would allow you to do so? In general, no.
This will be the world's shortest hearing. No it won't. The world's shortest hearing happened in a courtroom -- and this will never make it to court. It's a publicity ploy.
I might have tought they were hoping to settle out of court, because it would be cheaper to pay them off than to go to court and defeat them there, but considering their claim, that doesn't even seem likely. It must just be a way to get people to think about their product.
Then your neighbor must have really screwed it up. $40k worth of solar panels should, properly installed, cover a large part of your electric bill. Granted, it may not be cost effective, as $40k will pay for many years worth of electrical bills for most people -- but even so, he should save a whole lot more than almost nothing.
Now, if `saves almost nothing' means that the money saved on electricity is offset entirely by the payments made on that $40k, then that's a different matter, and he did well -- breaking even with solar power is hard to do in most cases. And eventually the system will be paid off. And as an added bonus, when something goes wrong and everybody else loses power... your neighbor will still have it. At least during the day.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not saying I disagree with the free state concept at all -- I love it, actually -- but merely ranking representatives, that can be done by anybody in any state.
I wondered who'd be the first to launch an ad hominem attack - and look, right in the first comment.
Actually, that's not an ad hominem. Here is a description of an ad hominem., and here's the gist of it --
Merely calling somebody names does not make an ad hominem attack, you insensitive clod!
See? Rude, wrong, perhaps, but not an ad hominem attack! Now, had I instead responded to your claim of `that was an ad hominem' with `Oh yeah? Well, we can't trust anything you say, because you're a first poster!', then THAT would have been closer to an ad hominem.
Of course, even $600 is expensive in the realm of cheap PCs -- you can get a low end PC for about half that. And you can get nice PC laptops for that sort of money, like the HP dv6000z a fried of mine got for around $500. It had a nice dual core Athlon cpu, nice screen, adequately large hard disk -- my only complaint was that it came with only 512 MB of ram, and then to make that worse they tried to do Vista on it.
It's a little painful to go back, however, as things like the graphics are very dated by today's standards.
I wonder if anybody has recreated BG2 with the NWN2 engine ... that could be very cool.
ZFS does indeed look like the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if all I cared about `wasn't losing data', then I'd just stick with ext2 or fat. (But I care about more than that, which is why I use xfs, ext3, hfs+ and ntfs for various things.)
; and tcp uses crc anyway. Of course. But that's only one of many many ways that a file can be corrupted or changed from the original version. The Internet may be the #1 way for getting GNU software out nowadays, but it's still not the only one. People don't post it via shar files to Usenet anymore, or email it in chunks via UUCP, but there's still plenty of ways for a file to be corrupted, either in transit or even sitting on your hard disk.(But RMS does have or did have some non-mainstream ideas about computer security and access and such, and while I don't think he'd want his software compromised and yet passed off as unchanged, it's possible that he might not really mind.)
As for the person who marked my post as `flamebait', well, that certainly wasn't the intent. And I went ahead and told RMS (well, I submitted it to the bug-gnu-emacs address anyways.)
And as for the AC who responded saying it was a md5 check sum, not a md5 secure cryptographic hash, well, sure, but years ago, if the md5sum matched, it was considered good enough -- you had the unchanged file. If you had the md5 sum, you could safely get your file from any mirror and be sure it wasn't changed. This is not the case anymore.
If you're going to provide a hash at all, provide a good one. Or sign it with gpg or something -- that would be good as well.
At the very least, you file for patents like this to make sure that you beat anybody else who files for patents like this. It's called a defensive patent, and even if you never intend to use it against anybody else, it prevents somebody else from patenting the same thing later and then trying to attack you with it.
Now, obviously the patent in the story isn't being used defensively, but do be aware that they do exist. And they're not really any different than other patents -- it's just what you intend to do with them. And yes, you could have a portfolio of defensive patents, then go bankrupt, have your patents sold, and then the new owner goes on the offensive with them ...
Why do you have to SUE over it? It's not fair. It's not right. It's business. They're doing what they think will maximize their profits.Of course, it's quite possible that RMS doesn't really care, and he's only giving us the md5sum so we can make sure it wasn't corrupted accidently somehow (as opposed to being changed and then modified to give the same md5sum.) But if that were the case, a CRC32 value would be almost as good.
Of course, I'm not sure SHA1 is that much better.
Of course, the people who need to know the story aren't in Texas like me. They're in Aurora. And /. will only reach a small number of them.
The local news is probably the best bet for getting the story out. If it's even worth it -- getting the local police, fire department and DA mad at you, even if you're completely justified, is rarely a good policy. If you're going to do this, it might be wise to leave the city or the state immediately after.
If you're referring to the person hit by the fireman's widow (WannaBeGeekGirl) well, I don't know what city she lives in, who the DA was, etc. I have no details at all. So this particular post to /. wasn't a very good way of getting the word out -- and besides, 498 of those 500 people who read it probably don't live anywhere near her.
She should talk to a lawyer. Really, she should have talked to a lawyer as soon as things started going wrong in the court room. She should not have signed anything (but let the lawyer make the final say there.) She probably should have contacted the local news -- a `corruption in the courts' story could be very compelling, and it sounds like there was lots of witnesses in the courtroom -- hopefully somebody would corroborate her story. And if there's a court reporter or recording, then it's a slam-dunk. (Is traffic court recorded in the state of X, whatever state this is?)
But it's easier to just let it slide, and fighting the system is rarely rewarding -- even when you win, you tend to lose. And often when you should win, you lose, because everything is stacked against you.
I concur. Looks like a cop car.
Even rape means different things in different places. You know, the whole 15 year old girlfriend, 17 year old boyfriend thing, though there are certainly examples of things that are called `rape' that make even less sense.
Free clue -- I never said it was a good idea what the teachers did.
Actually, I have three. But if somebody did scare them, I wouldn't see it as an opportunity to make sure I'm `set for life'. Perhaps this makes me an inferior parent to you -- but I do think it makes me a superior human being. Are you sure you don't chase ambulances for a living?For the record, what the teachers did doesn't fit the definition of terrorism. But it doesn't surprise me one bit that you scream `terrorism'.
1) unlawful has not been proven yet.2) the intention was not to intimidate or coerce anybody
3)
I doubt anybody will even be charged for this. Teachers will probably lose their jobs (if they haven't already -- so far, a principal and teacher have been suspended), lawsuits will probably be filed, children will get therapy, children will be coached by lawyers on just what to say to the nice judges ... but I doubt anybody will go to jail for terrorism or child abuse.
At this point, I'd be more worried about blowing it out of porportion, and get the kids who need it some professional attention. Some teachers showed bad judgement, but they were trying to do the right thing. They're not terrorists, or murderers
The lawyers, parents, and you, apparently, on the other hand, will blow this out of porportion. It's the American way -- somebody does you (or your family) wrong, and you are entitled to be set for life. All you have to do is sue, and use terms like `psychological damage', `pain and suffering', `terrorism', `think of the children', etc.
But the lawyers, coaching the kids for what to say on the witness stand -- that's pretty much the opposite of the attention they need. But it's what makes the money.
But perhaps I'm just being cynical when I don't think that `thinking, for a little while, that you might die very soon' is worse than, say, losing a leg. Or an arm. Or actually dying. Yes, they're elementary kids, think of the children, etc.
But I'm sure the lawyers will have a field day with this.
Sure, it was a bad idea. But the intentions were good (even if the idea itself was really bad), and nobody was actually hurt, and nobody was even really likely to be hurt. (Though no matter where done, I'd be very wary of a kid who brought a gun to school and decided to use it to defend himself and his classmates! Hopefully not in elementary school, but it does happen.)
Ok, some kids might need some therapy, and will be `scarred for life' (at least the lawyers will say so), but nobody was actually hurt, so I don't see this costing *that* much money. Though any time any of these kids acts out in the future, the lawyers will point back at this incident and say this is the cause of it ... perhaps you're more right than I give you credit for.
And remember, suing the school is basically suing the local community -- any money the school district loses comes from local taxes. (At least it's like that in Texas. No idea about Tennessee.)
The teachers who came up with the idea will be in hot water, however. And what were they thinking? Perhaps it sounded like a good idea, but they should have considered the possible outcomes -- if all goes perfectly, they'll get a pat on the back for being proactive. If it goes poorly, they end up in jail for terrorism. Doesn't seem to be to be worth the risk.
I'm sure Microsoft has such a list already. And it's probably somewhat accurate -- it probably many man-hours to put together, but it's likely that if they say a given software package infringes on a given patent, the odds are good that it probably does. HOWEVER, if Microsoft releases this list, people will start picking it apart, finding prior art, finding patents that are overly broad, obvious to the layperson, etc. Microsoft does NOT want this.
I don't think Microsoft intends to start suing for this. They must realize that this is pointless. Instead, they're probably looking to sow FUD -- get people thinking that using free software is dangerous, is wrong.
For now, I don't see them giving out their list -- there's not much advantage to them to do so, and lots of potential danger. But I do believe that they have their list already, and it may be released eventually.
I don't get it. Why would selling knowledge of security vulnerabilities be illegal? In the US, the DMCA makes selling copyright circumvention technologies illegal, but I'm not really sure that would apply to general security vulnerabilities. As I see it, cracking into somebody else's box is certainly illegal in most cases, but selling information about a vulnerability that would allow you to do so? In general, no.
I might have tought they were hoping to settle out of court, because it would be cheaper to pay them off than to go to court and defeat them there, but considering their claim, that doesn't even seem likely. It must just be a way to get people to think about their product.
Now, if `saves almost nothing' means that the money saved on electricity is offset entirely by the payments made on that $40k, then that's a different matter, and he did well -- breaking even with solar power is hard to do in most cases. And eventually the system will be paid off. And as an added bonus, when something goes wrong and everybody else loses power