Is there anyone out there among the potential users of non-DC drivers for the CueCat who is actually interested in reading the proprietary DC codes? I've not seen any discussion indicating interest in that type of code; all I've seen is interest in standard, "open format" bar codes (Code 39, UPC, EAN).
Granted, some curiosity exists 'bout the CC codes, but since they lead only into DC's MySQL engine and hence their Little Big Brother, there's way less practical use for this format in the eyes of most of us than for the standard formats.
It's a classic conflict of goals here; we're interested in the cheese, Digital Convergence is interested in catching things with the trap...
because no one is entering a legally-valid contract with ANYONE that binds them to anything when they obtain the scanner at RS. A good case can be made that the transaction is in fact a SALE for good and valuable consideration (i.e., my name/address info that I give RS in exchange for the scanner). No conditions were placed, no contracts signed. Voila! Free and clear of any BS their Web site pushes about it being "on loan."
1) The decoding info and independent software is already out there, and neither genie is going back in that bottle; they will have to coexist with the free software that (admit it) only the technically savvy will use. John Q User will do the dumb-sheep thing as always and use their software.
2) Since the protocol cannot be protected, and their ability to restrict use of the reader is questionable at best (I seriously doubt that a click-through software EULA can restrict my use of the hardware), they may well have to live with competing services that understand the reader. Hard to imagine they can prevent ALL such uses, even if their business model is patented.
3) They WILL lose any suit attempting to suppress the above tools (though they might deter some by intimidation), so they cannot push TOO hard.
4)With the ill will they are generating, any encrypting device they replace the current CueCat with (an unlikely development due to internal compatibility and cost problems; obsoleting the current model would cost as much as the current campaign and yield $0 benefits) would promptly be reverse-engineered as well, so there's no net gain for them there either.
On the one hand, DCNV cannot effectively maintain that monopoly against Open Source drivers and outside lookup servers; on the other hand, they don't really need to try (remember John Q). On the gripping hand, their every effort to suppress alternatives gains them ill will among their most likely user group (techies!), and MAY garner them the attention of a bigger fish that could push THEM out (say, if Yahoo or Amazon offers an option on their site that lets a CueCat user do lookups without using the DCNV software).
Hmmm. I haven't seen what, if any, patent has been granted on the CueCat reader (of which I have two, handed to me by RadioShack clerks without any sign-this-license, and NO hardware license or references thereto anywhere in the package or the transaction process).
However, it seems to me there's nothing new or novel about a pass-through PS/2 kbd interface barcode reader, NOR anything patent-worthy about their encoding scheme (it's damn' well obvious to US practitioners of the Art; see how fast it was reverse-engineered for compatibility purposes); if they are trying to patent a "device implementing said algorithm", then an existing PS/2 pass-through barcode reader would invalidate any hardware portion of said patent.
They may well be able to patent their business model, but the reader? Not likely.
The prior-art monster hits your patent armor -- your armor disappears!
There are several promising if under-attended-to avenues for cheap, reusable post-shuttle launch technologies; single-stage-to-orbit vehicles like the X-33, aerospike engines (don't forget, there's air available for a lot of the trip up there), satellite launchers that get launched from airplanes (check out a fim by the name of Orbital Sciences, Inc, the launcher is called Pegasus), and the like.
There is MUCH room for improvement without any need for woo-woo stuff. Remember, something like 60% of the typical booster's fuel is used to get JUST the first few hundred feet of altitude and first few dozen fps of speed; reduce that weight and the rest gets MUCH easier...
The biggest problem in this respect is that of fostering the innovations rather than having space agencies pick pet favorites for lousy reasons and crowding out the rest of the candidates. Ever wonder why the shuttle can't make it to geosynch? The military-imposed payload requirement to be able to haul spy satellites has something to do with the design choice that precludes that option...
But surely you want it to be made illegal to circumvent an access control device, be it some form of encryption or a defense system on your computer. CSS is a marketing control device and not access control, but access control circumvention must be a crime.
No, sir, I most certainly do NOT want circumvention of access control to be a crime! The issue of cracking someone's computer or infiltrating their firewall is NOT the same as that of blocking or exercising fair use of copyrighted material that I have purchased and now OWN.
Cracking a computer or a firewall is a form of burglary or trespass, and, IMHO, should be recognized as such in law; the cracker has no legitimate business being there. It's an infringement of a property right; I have an essentially absolute right to be free from trespass by private citizens.
Restricting access to copyrighted material one has bought and paid for is an infringement of "Fair Use" under the copyright laws (the DMCA excepted; it WILL go down.). I DO have a legitimate right to view the work, 'cause I bought it! Traditionally, a copyright holder relinquishes ALL control over the manner in which a buyer will view or experience the work, (or even make copies not for distribution); all the copyright holder gets is the legal assurance that he/she will have exclusive rights of first sale for a limited time.
DMCA and its demonic brethren attempt to extend this control over first sale to a total control over all access; THAT is an intellectual property land grab of breathtaking proportions.
Tonight's homework: What about circumvention of access control AFTER the copyright expires and the work enters the public domain?
I saw Battlefield Earth while on a business trip while bored, with low expectations and a certain sense of curiosity. Low expectations primarily 'cause the book it was based on was written by L. Ron Hubbard, inventor of Dianetics et al (and ain't it curious how new novels in the series keep appearing under his name, although he's been dead for quite a while).
The book doesn't have a great reputation, and I fully expected the movie to be total schlock, either because it followed the book or because it didn't, Hollywood being the inventive chaps they are.
That said, I found the movie SO VERY BAD that it was enjoyable in a 1950's alien-invasion-movie sort of way. I was particularly impressed by how a crew of illiterate savages (1000 years of alien rule) were able to find an intact Air Force base (with a functional power system, yet) full of operational 1000-year old Harrier jets and functional nuclear weapons (man, they really built 'em in the good old days!), and be flying combat missions within a week!
Indeed, at one point late in the film I found myself thinking, "Wait a minute! The screenwriters CAN'T have invented something THAT stupid -- it had to come from the book!" I'll find out when I get the book from the local library (none of MY dollars are going to the L. Ron Hubbard Foundation, aka you-know-who).
The movie's single-minded, unselfconscious lack of any plausibility whatever, coupled with its ruthless exploitation of very hackneyed cliche imaginable, made for an unintentionally comical experience. All movies require a willing suspension of disbelief -- this one just requires one's disbelief to be suspended so high it needs space armor and starship anti-collision beacons.
I'm beta-testing a Linux-based (the ColdFire uC port) NAT firewall/router/DHCP server in a box the size of a network hub (no disk, no fan; high MTBF maketh glad.) It's called a NETtel and it's made by a small company in Australia called Moreton Bay (http://www.moretonbay.com). I am quite impressed with this device (one of these appeared on Slashdot a few months ago; one of their engineers tacked a DAC onto it and turned it into an MP3 player -- a neat hack.)
The NETtel is small, VERY user-configurable via built-in HTTP interface (no hidden Big Brother shit here), resists my attempts to hack into it from the 'Net, and works really well in general. 'Tis worth checking out.
(And NO, I do NOT get anything out of saying this; I genuinely LIKE the gadget, and I hope they do well with it.)
Seems they had a serious flaw (as pointed out by one of the Dr. Who creators in an interview I read; seems he kinda hated them as a plot for their improbability): "just run down a flight of stairs, and they would be well and truly screwed."
What I want to see is a stair-climbing motorized wheelchair with on-road capability and a top speed of, say, 40 KPH. Robotic gadgets that cannot handle the terrain we humans take for granted are seriously handicapped.
But seriously, folks, distributed intelligence is THE way to go, IMHO. I myself am building a sort of distributed-intelligence Open Source robotics system inspired by the (somewhat-too-costly) Lego Mindstorms gadget, with a few obvious improvements (stepper motors, DC motors with position feedback, cheap sonar ranging, a generic expansion capability to allow for new sensor/actuator module types) based on low-cost PIC uCs.
If/when I get it up & running, I'll try to make it available somewhere...
I used to work for HP's Personal Office Computers Division in Sunnyvale, and from my knowledge of their corporate culture, they are FAR closer to RedHat than Redmond. If HP says they're going Open Source on a project, there's a healthy component of sincerity there -- especially in the trenches and on the benches, and when I was there, those people counted for a great deal. I seriously doubt that the spirit of Bill (Hewlett) and Dave has left that place.
For the record I call the labour concerns irrelevant because at heart of the matter all that is important is how much stuff the workers recieve.
That's the whole point of much of the protest: With a no-holds-barred "free trade" system, a multinational corporation can force wages to the lowest common denominator, say a Mexican maquiladora or Indonesian sweatshop where workers live in cardboard huts, working conditions are life-threatening, and union organizers are killed.
The WTO guidelines say zilch about any kind of human rights, and with economic power eclipsing national sovereignty, that factor is very important.
Lowering tarriffs can only increase the total amount of goods in a country (more goods enter the nation) and while some citizens may be demoted to lesser jobs a fluid job market will guarantee everyone is still employed and hence the country has more goods in total.
Alas, this is not true. Consider subsistence-level maize farmers in developing countries who must compete head-to-head in their LOCAL market against subsidized US growers with huge mechanized operations, now that the tariff barriers are gone. These farmers, who were poor to begin with, now cannot make a living from their farms at all because the grain prices have fallen, and become homeless unemployed burdens on an overtaxed social welfare system that was poor to start with. Moreover, the cheap US grain is now a monetary drain on the local and national economy, siphoning out currency to the US.
"Free trade" has no net benefit for these people OR their country. The sole beneficiary is the corporation. But then again, that seems to be the whole point of the "free trade" system, anyway...
I am unconcerned by Slashdot (or anyone else, for that matter) recording my IP address because that information does not snoop my browsing habits, nor invade my privacy.
Think of IP logging as analogous to Caller ID: If I call your telephone, you have, IMHO, an inherent right to know who I am.
However, if you twiddle my phone so that when I call YOU it tells you about everyone ELSE I have called, that's invading my privacy. The critical distinction here is the collection of data on my interactions with third parties.
Of course, if a million Web site operators all pooled their IP logs, that would achieve the same result as Comet's dirty trick, but then the public at large would perceive a massive, evil conspiracy, it would make the 6 o'clock news, and they'd be stomped on by the law and public ire.
Here are two other methods of hashing an easily-remembered password into a hard-to-guess password (I use some or all of these -- script kiddies, just guess which;-)
The advantages of hashing the password from an easy word are: the "seed" word can be written anywhere in safety (even on the server case!) and dictionary-based password-guessers will fail, as the number of likely hashing functions is very large.
1) Add an alphabetic offset to an easily-remembered word e.g., "smith" + 1 = "tnjui"; the offset can be 1 letter, 1 keyboard row/column, or a sequence as 1, 2, 3....
2) Choose a lousy potboiler novel you read in high school (do NOT use current popular books or books you have traceably bought or borrowed from the library -- Big Brother may be watching!). Combine two character or place names by concatenating or interleaving them. Here again, the result is easily remembered (you can write the book title on the server case with relative safety), but essentially unguessable AS LONG AS YOU HASH IT in some undisclosed way. Even a cracker who knows you will find the knowledge of little use...
Then too, there's the method I currently use...;-)
There is an important reason Word loses out here: its word-count function is implemented in a manner incompatible with the needs of legal briefs.
I remember seeing something a few months ago to the effect that a US court was discouraging use of Word and preferring WordPerfect for legal briefs. The court went so far as to specially re-count any brief written in Word, 'cause some such briefs wound up over-length and got bounced.
It seems that for legal briefs, which have rigid word-count limitations, page headers/footers count toward the total, but tables of contents don't. (I may have a detail wrong here, so caveat lector!)
Word doesn't let you count the headers/footers if you word-count a text selection (as one would do to exclude the TOC); that option gets grayed out when you select a block of text.
Wordperfect, on the other hand, apparently allows the necessary flexibility in word counting to accommodate the special needs of legal briefs.
(Even MS own law firm uses WordPerfect, according to The REGISTER, http://www.theregister.co.uk)
It's interesting how a major product like Word fouls up on a major market segment like lawyers. Just another tiny niche market, I guess.
Once their heart rates stabilized, the WINE project would get VERY quiet for a while, and then would come the announcement on Freshmeat. Oh, if only it would come to pass...
Here is a suggestion for "what should be done about it":
The threat I see here is that a clueless Patent and Trademark Office will grant patents on common programming techniques, impeding Open Source work; once granted, even an invalid patent is difficult and costly to fight.
The PTO examiners are NOT software-savvy, and without easily-accessible "prior art", they have little choice under PTO procedures but to grant the patents; there's great pressure on examiners to process applications as fast as possible. Miserably sad, but true.
We cannot easily change the PTO procedures (write to your Congressmen!), but we COULD set up a Web site or network of sites where brief examples of Open Source software "prior art" could be contributed (i.e. "published" in the patent sense) in the form of patent-abstract-like summaries, and could then be read by anyone.
I like to think of such a database as an "Anti-Patent Archive", the idea being that publishing an idea in this form prevents it from being patented later; hence "Anti-Patent". The archive would be a way to preeemptively disclose ideas, rendering them patent-resistent.
Such an archive would serve several distinct purposes:
1) It would provide a resource to people defending themselves against dubious software patents, since prior art disclosure is an effective anti-patent defense;
2) It would be a great general-use reference for unencumbered software techniques (this is what would make it both huge and busy, and could be its biggest attraction); and
3)Possibly most important, it would also provide PATENT EXAMINERS with one-stop-shopping for prior art, which could help preemptively squelch bad patents. If examiners can easily see documents showing that this stuff is already out there, it's less likely to show up in patents.
Of course, there ARE some difficult issues in setting up such an undertaking:
A) Who will pay for the server farms and bandwidth needed to hold and access all that data?
B) How will incoming submissions be catalogued, maintained, and culled of irrelevancies, trade secrets being spilled by malefactors, and stuff that has already been patented? What army of thousands will do this ongoing task?
C) How will such an endeavor protect itself from being destroyed by lawsuit attack? (There will certainly be those who find an Anti-Patent Archive threatening to their interests, and lawsuits can be a nasty weapon. Consider a company that anonymously "publishes" one of their expendable trade secrets, then sues to try to shut you down for stealing trade secrets...)
Here are some possible solutions for some of the above:
a) Funding it: Involve public libraries; they are a natural ally and an expert resource here. Use a distributed architecture hosted all over the place. Get the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, and/or civil-liberties groups to participate. Sell advertising space on the Web pages (ugh!). DON'T charge to read or submit Anti-Patents.
b) Cataloging and evaluating submissions: Use the PTO's category system (probably with software-specific extensions) for categorization. Develop submission guidelines (with a patent attorney's help!) on how best to "unclaim" the widest possible area of unpatentability for the ideas they are disclosing. Use a distributed Slashdot-type moderation system; you'll still need some full-timers, but the load can be shared.
c) I'm no laywer, so I'm thin on ideas on how to avoid death by lawsuit. If the archive publishes submissions but does not exercise actual editorial control over the content, this should provide some First Amendment protection. Also, involving civil-liberties groups might provide access to legal resources.
Has the time arrived for the Anti-Patent, or is this just another silly idea?
I find the router itself WAY more interesting than the router-as-MP3-player.
I've long been looking for a low-cost dedicated router/firewall suitable for a cable Internet connection, and this box looks VERY nice (assuming it doesn't cost five times as much as a cheap desktop PC); the Moreton Bay people appear to have done a Neat Thing, even without the optional MP3 output.
To those who question the article's relevance, I say that the router is a worthy story in itself. Consider the following:
1) NO ONE with a cable connection and a Windoze PC is safe from script kiddies; the OS just isn't safe. If you have a cable 'Net connection, you need a firewall.
2) Configuring a firewall isn't for the typical PC user, or even for many Linux newcomers. Proper security is tricky. Botched security is worse.
3) Here's a widely useful Open Source based device that does tricky tasks a less-than-expert probably can't do. And oh, by the way, Mr. User, that's Linux running your router and keeping the barbarians out. The Penguin Army marches on!
Alas, if the poor kiddie wants to practice with a Barrett Light.50, Half-Life won't help; he/she will have to get a copy of Delta Force instead...;-)
But seriously, folks, I think there are several different issues worthy of note here:
1) violent video games (+ movies + TV programs) aren't a Good Thing in the hands and minds of children; 2) in a free society, controlling access to such intoxicants MUST be a parental responsibility; 3) ZD just plain LIED. No excuses, no "editorial mistake," they told a knowing falsehood and got caught. (Where's Ken Starr now that there's something USEFUL for him to do?) 4) If we want to KEEP a free society, we must keep raising hell about things like 2) and 3) and keep concern about 1) from being misused by demagogues. Our society IS too violent, but censorship won't help -- it's just another form of violence.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there anyone out there among the potential users of non-DC drivers for the CueCat who is actually interested in reading the proprietary DC codes? I've not seen any discussion indicating interest in that type of code; all I've seen is interest in standard, "open format" bar codes (Code 39, UPC, EAN).
Granted, some curiosity exists 'bout the CC codes, but since they lead only into DC's MySQL engine and hence their Little Big Brother, there's way less practical use for this format in the eyes of most of us than for the standard formats.
It's a classic conflict of goals here; we're interested in the cheese, Digital Convergence is interested in catching things with the trap...
-- Just another Stainless Steel Rat
because no one is entering a legally-valid contract with ANYONE that binds them to anything when they obtain the scanner at RS. A good case can be made that the transaction is in fact a SALE for good and valuable consideration (i.e., my name/address info that I give RS in exchange for the scanner). No conditions were placed, no contracts signed. Voila! Free and clear of any BS their Web site pushes about it being "on loan."
'Cause:
1) The decoding info and independent software is already out there, and neither genie is going back in that bottle; they will have to coexist with the free software that (admit it) only the technically savvy will use. John Q User will do the dumb-sheep thing as always and use their software.
2) Since the protocol cannot be protected, and their ability to restrict use of the reader is questionable at best (I seriously doubt that a click-through software EULA can restrict my use of the hardware), they may well have to live with competing services that understand the reader. Hard to imagine they can prevent ALL such uses, even if their business model is patented.
3) They WILL lose any suit attempting to suppress the above tools (though they might deter some by intimidation), so they cannot push TOO hard.
4)With the ill will they are generating, any encrypting device they replace the current CueCat with (an unlikely development due to internal compatibility and cost problems; obsoleting the current model would cost as much as the current campaign and yield $0 benefits) would promptly be reverse-engineered as well, so there's no net gain for them there either.
On the one hand, DCNV cannot effectively maintain that monopoly against Open Source drivers and outside lookup servers; on the other hand, they don't really need to try (remember John Q). On the gripping hand, their every effort to suppress alternatives gains them ill will among their most likely user group (techies!), and MAY garner them the attention of a bigger fish that could push THEM out (say, if Yahoo or Amazon offers an option on their site that lets a CueCat user do lookups without using the DCNV software).
Hmmm. I haven't seen what, if any, patent has been granted on the CueCat reader (of which I have two, handed to me by RadioShack clerks without any sign-this-license, and NO hardware license or references thereto anywhere in the package or the transaction process).
However, it seems to me there's nothing new or novel about a pass-through PS/2 kbd interface barcode reader, NOR anything patent-worthy about their encoding scheme (it's damn' well obvious to US practitioners of the Art; see how fast it was reverse-engineered for compatibility purposes); if they are trying to patent a "device implementing said algorithm", then an existing PS/2 pass-through barcode reader would invalidate any hardware portion of said patent.
They may well be able to patent their business model, but the reader? Not likely.
The prior-art monster hits your patent armor -- your armor disappears!
There are several promising if under-attended-to avenues for cheap, reusable post-shuttle launch technologies; single-stage-to-orbit vehicles like the X-33, aerospike engines (don't forget, there's air available for a lot of the trip up there), satellite launchers that get launched from airplanes (check out a fim by the name of Orbital Sciences, Inc, the launcher is called Pegasus), and the like.
There is MUCH room for improvement without any need for woo-woo stuff. Remember, something like 60% of the typical booster's fuel is used to get JUST the first few hundred feet of altitude and first few dozen fps of speed; reduce that weight and the rest gets MUCH easier...
The biggest problem in this respect is that of fostering the innovations rather than having space agencies pick pet favorites for lousy reasons and crowding out the rest of the candidates. Ever wonder why the shuttle can't make it to geosynch? The military-imposed payload requirement to be able to haul spy satellites has something to do with the design choice that precludes that option...
But surely you want it to be made illegal to circumvent an access control device, be it some form of encryption or a defense system on your computer. CSS is a marketing control device and not access control, but access control circumvention must be a crime.
No, sir, I most certainly do NOT want circumvention of access control to be a crime! The issue of cracking someone's computer or infiltrating their firewall is NOT the same as that of blocking or exercising fair use of copyrighted material that I have purchased and now OWN.
Cracking a computer or a firewall is a form of burglary or trespass, and, IMHO, should be recognized as such in law; the cracker has no legitimate business being there. It's an infringement of a property right; I have an essentially absolute right to be free from trespass by private citizens.
Restricting access to copyrighted material one has bought and paid for is an infringement of "Fair Use" under the copyright laws (the DMCA excepted; it WILL go down.). I DO have a legitimate right to view the work, 'cause I bought it! Traditionally, a copyright holder relinquishes ALL control over the manner in which a buyer will view or experience the work, (or even make copies not for distribution); all the copyright holder gets is the legal assurance that he/she will have exclusive rights of first sale for a limited time.
DMCA and its demonic brethren attempt to extend this control over first sale to a total control over all access; THAT is an intellectual property land grab of breathtaking proportions.
Tonight's homework: What about circumvention of access control AFTER the copyright expires and the work enters the public domain?
I saw Battlefield Earth while on a business trip while bored, with low expectations and a certain sense of curiosity. Low expectations primarily 'cause the book it was based on was written by L. Ron Hubbard, inventor of Dianetics et al (and ain't it curious how new novels in the series keep appearing under his name, although he's been dead for quite a while).
The book doesn't have a great reputation, and I fully expected the movie to be total schlock, either because it followed the book or because it didn't, Hollywood being the inventive chaps they are.
That said, I found the movie SO VERY BAD that it was enjoyable in a 1950's alien-invasion-movie sort of way. I was particularly impressed by how a crew of illiterate savages (1000 years of alien rule) were able to find an intact Air Force base (with a functional power system, yet) full of operational 1000-year old Harrier jets and functional nuclear weapons (man, they really built 'em in the good old days!), and be flying combat missions within a week!
Indeed, at one point late in the film I found myself thinking, "Wait a minute! The screenwriters CAN'T have invented something THAT stupid -- it had to come from the book!" I'll find out when I get the book from the local library (none of MY dollars are going to the L. Ron Hubbard Foundation, aka you-know-who).
The movie's single-minded, unselfconscious lack of any plausibility whatever, coupled with its ruthless exploitation of very hackneyed cliche imaginable, made for an unintentionally comical experience. All movies require a willing suspension of disbelief -- this one just requires one's disbelief to be suspended so high it needs space armor and starship anti-collision beacons.
I'm beta-testing a Linux-based (the ColdFire uC port) NAT firewall/router/DHCP server in a box the size of a network hub (no disk, no fan; high MTBF maketh glad.) It's called a NETtel and it's made by a small company in Australia called Moreton Bay (http://www.moretonbay.com). I am quite impressed with this device (one of these appeared on Slashdot a few months ago; one of their engineers tacked a DAC onto it and turned it into an MP3 player -- a neat hack.)
The NETtel is small, VERY user-configurable via built-in HTTP interface (no hidden Big Brother shit here), resists my attempts to hack into it from the 'Net, and works really well in general. 'Tis worth checking out.
(And NO, I do NOT get anything out of saying this; I genuinely LIKE the gadget, and I hope they do well with it.)
Impressive, but... Battery life 15 minutes is a real drawback. It will get better, though.
Seems they had a serious flaw (as pointed out by one of the Dr. Who creators in an interview I read; seems he kinda hated them as a plot for their improbability): "just run down a flight of stairs, and they would be well and truly screwed."
What I want to see is a stair-climbing motorized wheelchair with on-road capability and a top speed of, say, 40 KPH. Robotic gadgets that cannot handle the terrain we humans take for granted are seriously handicapped.
But seriously, folks, distributed intelligence is THE way to go, IMHO. I myself am building a sort of distributed-intelligence Open Source robotics system inspired by the (somewhat-too-costly) Lego Mindstorms gadget, with a few obvious improvements (stepper motors, DC motors with position feedback, cheap sonar ranging, a generic expansion capability to allow for new sensor/actuator module types) based on low-cost PIC uCs.
If/when I get it up & running, I'll try to make it available somewhere...
I used to work for HP's Personal Office Computers Division in Sunnyvale, and from my knowledge of their corporate culture, they are FAR closer to RedHat than Redmond. If HP says they're going Open Source on a project, there's a healthy component of sincerity there -- especially in the trenches and on the benches, and when I was there, those people counted for a great deal. I seriously doubt that the spirit of Bill (Hewlett) and Dave has left that place.
For the record I call the labour concerns irrelevant because at heart of the matter all that is important is how much stuff the workers recieve.
That's the whole point of much of the protest: With a no-holds-barred "free trade" system, a multinational corporation can force wages to the lowest common denominator, say a Mexican maquiladora or Indonesian sweatshop where workers live in cardboard huts, working conditions are life-threatening, and union organizers are killed.
The WTO guidelines say zilch about any kind of human rights, and with economic power eclipsing national sovereignty, that factor is very important.
Lowering tarriffs can only increase the total amount of goods in a country (more goods enter the nation) and while some citizens may be demoted to lesser jobs a fluid job market will guarantee everyone is still employed and hence the country has more goods in total.
Alas, this is not true. Consider subsistence-level maize farmers in developing countries who must compete head-to-head in their LOCAL market against subsidized US growers with huge mechanized operations, now that the tariff barriers are gone. These farmers, who were poor to begin with, now cannot make a living from their farms at all because the grain prices have fallen, and become homeless unemployed burdens on an overtaxed social welfare system that was poor to start with. Moreover, the cheap US grain is now a monetary drain on the local and national economy, siphoning out currency to the US.
"Free trade" has no net benefit for these people OR their country. The sole beneficiary is the corporation. But then again, that seems to be the whole point of the "free trade" system, anyway...
I am unconcerned by Slashdot (or anyone else, for that matter) recording my IP address because that information does not snoop my browsing habits, nor invade my privacy.
Think of IP logging as analogous to Caller ID: If I call your telephone, you have, IMHO, an inherent right to know who I am.
However, if you twiddle my phone so that when I call YOU it tells you about everyone ELSE I have called, that's invading my privacy. The critical distinction here is the collection of data on my interactions with third parties.
Of course, if a million Web site operators all pooled their IP logs, that would achieve the same result as Comet's dirty trick, but then the public at large would perceive a massive, evil conspiracy, it would make the 6 o'clock news, and they'd be stomped on by the law and public ire.
Hmmm, perhaps not such a bad idea here, either...
Here are two other methods of hashing an easily-remembered password into a hard-to-guess password (I use some or all of these -- script kiddies, just guess which;-)
The advantages of hashing the password from an easy word are: the "seed" word can be written anywhere in safety (even on the server case!) and dictionary-based password-guessers will fail, as the number of likely hashing functions is very large.
1) Add an alphabetic offset to an easily-remembered word e.g., "smith" + 1 = "tnjui"; the offset can be 1 letter, 1 keyboard row/column, or a sequence as 1, 2, 3....
2) Choose a lousy potboiler novel you read in high school (do NOT use current popular books or books you have traceably bought or borrowed from the library -- Big Brother may be watching!). Combine two character or place names by concatenating or interleaving them. Here again, the result is easily remembered (you can write the book title on the server case with relative safety), but essentially unguessable AS LONG AS YOU HASH IT in some undisclosed way. Even a cracker who knows you will find the knowledge of little use...
Then too, there's the method I currently use...;-)
There is an important reason Word loses out here: its word-count function is implemented in a manner incompatible with the needs of legal briefs.
I remember seeing something a few months ago to the effect that a US court was discouraging use of Word and preferring WordPerfect for legal briefs. The court went so far as to specially re-count any brief written in Word, 'cause some such briefs wound up over-length and got bounced.
It seems that for legal briefs, which have rigid word-count limitations, page headers/footers count toward the total, but tables of contents don't. (I may have a detail wrong here, so caveat lector!)
Word doesn't let you count the headers/footers if you word-count a text selection (as one would do to exclude the TOC); that option gets grayed out when you select a block of text.
Wordperfect, on the other hand, apparently allows the necessary flexibility in word counting to accommodate the special needs of legal briefs.
(Even MS own law firm uses WordPerfect, according to The REGISTER, http://www.theregister.co.uk)
It's interesting how a major product like Word fouls up on a major market segment like lawyers. Just another tiny niche market, I guess.
Once their heart rates stabilized, the WINE project would get VERY quiet for a while, and then would come the announcement on Freshmeat. Oh, if only it would come to pass...
Here is a suggestion for "what should be done about it":
The threat I see here is that a clueless Patent and Trademark Office will grant patents on common programming techniques, impeding Open Source work; once granted, even an invalid patent is difficult and costly to fight.
The PTO examiners are NOT software-savvy, and without easily-accessible "prior art", they have little choice under PTO procedures but to grant the patents; there's great pressure on examiners to process applications as fast as possible. Miserably sad, but true.
We cannot easily change the PTO procedures (write to your Congressmen!), but we COULD set up a Web site or network of sites where brief examples of Open Source software "prior art" could be contributed (i.e. "published" in the patent sense) in the form of patent-abstract-like summaries, and could then be read by anyone.
I like to think of such a database as an "Anti-Patent Archive", the idea being that publishing an idea in this form prevents it from being patented later; hence "Anti-Patent". The archive would be a way to preeemptively disclose ideas, rendering them patent-resistent.
Such an archive would serve several distinct purposes:
1) It would provide a resource to people defending themselves against dubious software patents, since prior art disclosure is an effective anti-patent defense;
2) It would be a great general-use reference for unencumbered software techniques (this is what would make it both huge and busy, and could be its biggest attraction); and
3)Possibly most important, it would also provide PATENT EXAMINERS with one-stop-shopping for prior art, which could help preemptively squelch bad patents. If examiners can easily see documents showing that this stuff is already out there, it's less likely to show up in patents.
Of course, there ARE some difficult issues in setting up such an undertaking:
A) Who will pay for the server farms and bandwidth needed to hold and access all that data?
B) How will incoming submissions be catalogued, maintained, and culled of irrelevancies, trade secrets being spilled by malefactors, and stuff that has already been patented? What army of thousands will do this ongoing task?
C) How will such an endeavor protect itself from being destroyed by lawsuit attack? (There will certainly be those who find an Anti-Patent Archive threatening to their interests, and lawsuits can be a nasty weapon. Consider a company that anonymously "publishes" one of their expendable trade secrets, then sues to try to shut you down for stealing trade secrets...)
Here are some possible solutions for some of the above:
a) Funding it: Involve public libraries; they are a natural ally and an expert resource here. Use a distributed architecture hosted all over the place. Get the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, and/or civil-liberties groups to participate. Sell advertising space on the Web pages (ugh!). DON'T charge to read or submit Anti-Patents.
b) Cataloging and evaluating submissions: Use the PTO's category system (probably with software-specific extensions) for categorization. Develop submission guidelines (with a patent attorney's help!) on how best to "unclaim" the widest possible area of unpatentability for the ideas they are disclosing.
Use a distributed Slashdot-type moderation system; you'll still need some full-timers, but the load can be shared.
c) I'm no laywer, so I'm thin on ideas on how to avoid death by lawsuit. If the archive publishes submissions but does not exercise actual editorial control over the content, this should provide some First Amendment protection. Also, involving civil-liberties groups might provide access to legal resources.
Has the time arrived for the Anti-Patent, or is this just another silly idea?
I find the router itself WAY more interesting than the router-as-MP3-player.
I've long been looking for a low-cost dedicated router/firewall suitable for a cable Internet connection, and this box looks VERY nice (assuming it doesn't cost five times as much as a cheap desktop PC); the Moreton Bay people appear to have done a Neat Thing, even without the optional MP3 output.
To those who question the article's relevance, I say that the router is a worthy story in itself. Consider the following:
1) NO ONE with a cable connection and a Windoze PC is safe from script kiddies; the OS just isn't safe. If you have a cable 'Net connection, you need a firewall.
2) Configuring a firewall isn't for the typical PC user, or even for many Linux newcomers. Proper security is tricky. Botched security is worse.
3) Here's a widely useful Open Source based device that does tricky tasks a less-than-expert probably can't do. And oh, by the way, Mr. User, that's Linux running your router and keeping the barbarians out. The Penguin Army marches on!
Alas, if the poor kiddie wants to practice with a Barrett Light .50, Half-Life won't help; he/she will have to get a copy of Delta Force instead...;-)
But seriously, folks, I think there are several different issues worthy of note here:
1) violent video games (+ movies + TV programs) aren't a Good Thing in the hands and minds of children;
2) in a free society, controlling access to such intoxicants MUST be a parental responsibility;
3) ZD just plain LIED. No excuses, no "editorial mistake," they told a knowing falsehood and got caught. (Where's Ken Starr now that there's something USEFUL for him to do?)
4) If we want to KEEP a free society, we must keep raising hell about things like 2) and 3) and keep concern about 1) from being misused by demagogues. Our society IS too violent, but censorship won't help -- it's just another form of violence.