All of the rhetoric, spin, and use of loaded words is designed to distract us from what is really going on here: warrantless searches of United States Citizens by the federal government. WTF makes people think that is OK? Bush and Co. have also argued that they have the power to hold citizens incommunicado without bail and without recourse to counsel for as long as they want just because they are suspected of being terrorists. Given the Bushites' history of labelling anyone who disagrees with them as "supporters of terrorists," this scares the hell out of me.
My main problem is that my younger daughter beats the crap out of me at most games. Her older sister I can beat every time. I agree with the various posts about this bringing families together. We play Halo 1 & 2, Crimson Skies, and Need For Speed on the Xbox. Great fun. She actually enjoys the coopertaive mode in Halo more than the combat mode. The family that frags together stays together.
>>Cheap and easy solution: unplug from the internet, shutdown the computer.
>That would be a denial of service.....
There are some instances where the air-gap firewall makes sense. I'm not personally that paranoid, but I am sure that there are isolated machines processing sensitive data where all i/o is via physical media.
>These are guys that go into Congressional offices armed with a dozen lawyers-- per visit-- every visit.
Where have you been? They don't go in there with no steenking lawyers. They go in there with bimbos, all expense paid trips all over the world, and big sacks of cash. The lawyers are for later to negotiate the plea bargain agreement for the unlucky or stupid few who get caught.
I own a Dimage Z3 that I bought as my first digital camera. I bought it for the 12x optical zoom and for the form factor that is identical to the Z5 discussed by the parent article. A lesser factor was its use of SD cards, which I already used in other devices and had plenty of and its use of AA batteries. It is definitely different from other cameras in its niche, and shows a lot of well-thought-out ergonomics. Fringe benefit is the moderately high geek factor from its different shape.
I do own a Ricoh SLR body and a bag full of various Pentax lenses, filters, and attachments. They get hauled out when I'm really taking my time with a few nature shots or the like. Otherwise, I use the Z3.
>Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.
So is he saying that CNN is NOT paying for their hookup to the net? Somehow, I don't think that's true. I would guess that wherever their server farm is (might not be Atlanta), the fat pipe connecting it to the rest of the internet already comes with a fat bill from Bell South or some other telco. I guess he's talking more about MS and Google that are already paying someone else, and he wants to add a tariff to every packet from outside the Bell South system. Does that apply only to packets delivered to BS customers or to those that transit their system on their way to somewhere else?
I can see it now:
To: Bob@ourbiz.com
From: John@ourbiz.com
Subject: Closing the big deal
Bob, We can close this deal for six figures if you meet the client for lunch at [this packet of this email can be made available for reading by logging onto tariff.bellsouth.com and authorizing payment of the tariff from your account. If you do not have an account, one can be set up after arranging the account setup fee and monthly payment structure. Have a noce day, Bell South]late we'll lose the whole deal to those slimeballs at theirbiz. Good luck, John.
Something to be said for still using ICQ. It has a simple interface, supports what I need (text messages to co-workers mostly), and with the increasing popularity of the other services, I haven't had any spam/pR0n offers in months.
Microsoft made the choice to tie things closely to the OS. In particular, their Netscape killing plan was to essentially make IE part of the OS. Outlook also requires the presence of IE to render html mail, or at least it used to. Similar decisions were made regarding hooks to the OS for other Office programs. These decisions were made for reasons of competitive advantage over competing software such as WordPerfect and Lotus.
The consequences of these decisions is an OS with fundamental security issues. Microsoft has an opportunity to change this with Vista, but I'm betting that they haven't.
I don't submit a lot, and I've had some submissions rejected that were later posted for someone else. I started to get discouraged by that, until I figured out that the style of the submission matters as well as the subject. Editors, whether here or at a newspaper or a magazine, all have a style to which they respond./. has multiple editors with differing preferences, but there is still a style that works here. K5 has a different style, and writing a letter to the editor of the New York Times takes a different style, if you want to see it published.
IANAL, but I pay plenty of them. A lawyer is an officer of the court. Solicitation of perjury by an officer of the court is some serious shit. If this young lady is credible and there is some corroborating evidence, we just might see an RIAA lawyer disbarred and jailed. Like the parent article writer, I am cynical enough to doubt it will happen, but yes, we can dream.
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to renew 16 parts of the "USA Patriot Act" that were set to expire at year's end. These include National Security Letters (basically search warrants the FBI issues itself without judicial review) and the ability of the FBI to obtain your medical records and records of library activity. Hopefully, the Senate will remember why the Constitution was written in the first place. Heck, some of this probably contravenes the Magna Carta.
Yes, you are confused. First4Internet's XCP is the "rootkit" installing DRM malware. The article here is talking about exploits using SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5. Santana's new album is "protected" with the SunComm software, not First4Internet's. Sony/BMG uses two different DRM packages. One installed a rootkit, the one discussed in this article allows an elevation of privilege attack. Up to today, it appeared that SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5, while a PITA, did not pose a security threat. Now we know different. Sony/BMG also publishes music CDs without either of the DRM packages. Caveat emptor
This is not the "rootkit" DRM software that were talking about here. This is the other DRM crapware that Sony/BMG has on its discs. I buy a moderate amount of music on CDs, then rip them to MP3s to play on my Rio and car stereo. I was planning to buy Carlos Santana's new disc when this whole flap came up. I checked, saw that Santana wasn't on the rootkit list, and briefly considered buying it, although I have avoided all DRMed music to this point. No worries, I'll rip it on my Linux box anyway.
I changed my mind, and I'm glad I did. One less bit of malware in the stream of commerce. I did go to Carlos' website and told them I had decided not to buy the disc and why. From the notes there, it seems they have been getting a lot of that. This may be the most effective way to deal with this issue. Tell the artists that you will not buy their art, if it comes packaged with such crap.
As the father of two daughters, the younger still technically a teenager at 19, I have a couple of recommendations. First, Frank Baum's Oz books. There are many more than the well-known Wizard of Oz. You can probably find a good boxed set of paperbacks for a reasonable price. My daughters loved them. Second, Watership Down. Third,The Wind In the Willows. These last two are not really SF but fantasy/talking animal books.
A great thing you can do that will be remembered by them later is to read to them, particularly the pre-teens. I read all of the above, plus Tolkien, Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Nancy Drew books to my girls. If you are only around them a bit for the holidays, read something short, like The Polar Express or one of Jimmy Buffet's juveniles.
>So what are you going to *do* about it, apart from have a satisfying rant on an irrelevant technology website that your senators and representatives have never heard about?
Good question! I will continue to lobby the three of five county supervisors whom I know personally, support the local tech group that supports keeping the optical scan system, and generally raise hell about this on the local front. "All politics is local," as someone once said. Ranting here about this and on talk.origins about the idiocy of IC and ID just helps tune up the rhetorical muscles, as it were. On the rare chances I have to talk to my two senators, I'll mention it. My representative is both more accessible and more techno-savy. The important group is the county Board of Suprervisors.
[Rant]
I am a Citizen and an Elector (member of the Electorate) in the US. That puts me at the TOP of the pyramid in the election process. In the US, the Electorate is Sovereign. Where does Diebold or any other corporate entity get off trying to dictate how elections are held? They act like they have some god-given right to make money off of the process. Fuck that! They have a right to come grovelling, hat in hand, and ASK if maybe, just maybe, we might want to use some equipment they want to sell. We get to set the rules about how elections are held, not them.
My county uses optical scan ballots and ballot box readers. If a precinct shows some sort of wierd result, the elections commissioner, in the company of plenty of witnesses, pops that sucker open and looks at the ballots. End of problem.
I frankly don't give a damn if results aren't available until Wednesday morning, or even Friday. They aren't certified official for weeks, anyway. The only difference early results make is who gets hammered for what reason at what post-election party.
There is nothing more important than the election process. All legitimacy of the government flows directly from it. Diebold has no fucking place dictating any damn thing about that. Paper ballots work. If they are slow and more costly, that is a small fucking price to pay for legitimacy.
[/Rant]
Were you the sort of eleven-year-olds who spent their time trying to make various things in the neighborhood go BOOM? Or, did you come by this later in life?
Slashdot Mirror
All of the rhetoric, spin, and use of loaded words is designed to distract us from what is really going on here: warrantless searches of United States Citizens by the federal government. WTF makes people think that is OK? Bush and Co. have also argued that they have the power to hold citizens incommunicado without bail and without recourse to counsel for as long as they want just because they are suspected of being terrorists. Given the Bushites' history of labelling anyone who disagrees with them as "supporters of terrorists," this scares the hell out of me.
>It would be interesting to see Google go head to head with Apple in a music format war.
The format war was already won by Apple. They won it with their hardware. No one else's music is going to sell well, unless it plays on an ipod.
My main problem is that my younger daughter beats the crap out of me at most games. Her older sister I can beat every time. I agree with the various posts about this bringing families together. We play Halo 1 & 2, Crimson Skies, and Need For Speed on the Xbox. Great fun. She actually enjoys the coopertaive mode in Halo more than the combat mode. The family that frags together stays together.
>>Cheap and easy solution: unplug from the internet, shutdown the computer.
>That would be a denial of service.....
There are some instances where the air-gap firewall makes sense. I'm not personally that paranoid, but I am sure that there are isolated machines processing sensitive data where all i/o is via physical media.Things like corn and melons and peppers and tomatoes. Sweet! Now it's all cabbage, broccoli, cabbage, peas, cabbage, and the odd raddish.
>These are guys that go into Congressional offices armed with a dozen lawyers-- per visit-- every visit.
Where have you been? They don't go in there with no steenking lawyers. They go in there with bimbos, all expense paid trips all over the world, and big sacks of cash. The lawyers are for later to negotiate the plea bargain agreement for the unlucky or stupid few who get caught.
I own a Dimage Z3 that I bought as my first digital camera. I bought it for the 12x optical zoom and for the form factor that is identical to the Z5 discussed by the parent article. A lesser factor was its use of SD cards, which I already used in other devices and had plenty of and its use of AA batteries. It is definitely different from other cameras in its niche, and shows a lot of well-thought-out ergonomics. Fringe benefit is the moderately high geek factor from its different shape.
I do own a Ricoh SLR body and a bag full of various Pentax lenses, filters, and attachments. They get hauled out when I'm really taking my time with a few nature shots or the like. Otherwise, I use the Z3.
My car is a Z3, too.
>Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.
So is he saying that CNN is NOT paying for their hookup to the net? Somehow, I don't think that's true. I would guess that wherever their server farm is (might not be Atlanta), the fat pipe connecting it to the rest of the internet already comes with a fat bill from Bell South or some other telco. I guess he's talking more about MS and Google that are already paying someone else, and he wants to add a tariff to every packet from outside the Bell South system. Does that apply only to packets delivered to BS customers or to those that transit their system on their way to somewhere else?
I can see it now:
To: Bob@ourbiz.com
From: John@ourbiz.com
Subject: Closing the big deal
Bob, We can close this deal for six figures if you meet the client for lunch at [this packet of this email can be made available for reading by logging onto tariff.bellsouth.com and authorizing payment of the tariff from your account. If you do not have an account, one can be set up after arranging the account setup fee and monthly payment structure. Have a noce day, Bell South] late we'll lose the whole deal to those slimeballs at theirbiz. Good luck, John.
Something to be said for still using ICQ. It has a simple interface, supports what I need (text messages to co-workers mostly), and with the increasing popularity of the other services, I haven't had any spam/pR0n offers in months.
I modified my old refrigerator into a new case for my Rio Nitrus. A little big to fit in my pocket, true; but cool.
Microsoft made the choice to tie things closely to the OS. In particular, their Netscape killing plan was to essentially make IE part of the OS. Outlook also requires the presence of IE to render html mail, or at least it used to. Similar decisions were made regarding hooks to the OS for other Office programs. These decisions were made for reasons of competitive advantage over competing software such as WordPerfect and Lotus.
The consequences of these decisions is an OS with fundamental security issues. Microsoft has an opportunity to change this with Vista, but I'm betting that they haven't.
Bill Gates buys Birnam Wood and moves it to Cupertino. Which leads to another question, "Are the Borg 'of woman born'?"
I don't submit a lot, and I've had some submissions rejected that were later posted for someone else. I started to get discouraged by that, until I figured out that the style of the submission matters as well as the subject. Editors, whether here or at a newspaper or a magazine, all have a style to which they respond. /. has multiple editors with differing preferences, but there is still a style that works here. K5 has a different style, and writing a letter to the editor of the New York Times takes a different style, if you want to see it published.
You have to think about your audience.
IANAL, but I pay plenty of them. A lawyer is an officer of the court. Solicitation of perjury by an officer of the court is some serious shit. If this young lady is credible and there is some corroborating evidence, we just might see an RIAA lawyer disbarred and jailed. Like the parent article writer, I am cynical enough to doubt it will happen, but yes, we can dream.
>"It's clearly a large campaign, and deserves a thoughtful, measured response,' he wrote on his blog. 'Here's mine: corporate graffiti sucks.'"
To which I would add: "Sony Sucks!"
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to renew 16 parts of the "USA Patriot Act" that were set to expire at year's end. These include National Security Letters (basically search warrants the FBI issues itself without judicial review) and the ability of the FBI to obtain your medical records and records of library activity. Hopefully, the Senate will remember why the Constitution was written in the first place. Heck, some of this probably contravenes the Magna Carta.
Yes, you are confused. First4Internet's XCP is the "rootkit" installing DRM malware. The article here is talking about exploits using SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5. Santana's new album is "protected" with the SunComm software, not First4Internet's. Sony/BMG uses two different DRM packages. One installed a rootkit, the one discussed in this article allows an elevation of privilege attack. Up to today, it appeared that SunnComm's MediaMax Version 5, while a PITA, did not pose a security threat. Now we know different. Sony/BMG also publishes music CDs without either of the DRM packages. Caveat emptor
This is not the "rootkit" DRM software that were talking about here. This is the other DRM crapware that Sony/BMG has on its discs. I buy a moderate amount of music on CDs, then rip them to MP3s to play on my Rio and car stereo. I was planning to buy Carlos Santana's new disc when this whole flap came up. I checked, saw that Santana wasn't on the rootkit list, and briefly considered buying it, although I have avoided all DRMed music to this point. No worries, I'll rip it on my Linux box anyway.
I changed my mind, and I'm glad I did. One less bit of malware in the stream of commerce. I did go to Carlos' website and told them I had decided not to buy the disc and why. From the notes there, it seems they have been getting a lot of that. This may be the most effective way to deal with this issue. Tell the artists that you will not buy their art, if it comes packaged with such crap.
>They've gone on a very offensive offensive to try to change public perception of their products by silencing their critics.
Hey, if it works for the government, why not them?As the father of two daughters, the younger still technically a teenager at 19, I have a couple of recommendations. First, Frank Baum's Oz books. There are many more than the well-known Wizard of Oz. You can probably find a good boxed set of paperbacks for a reasonable price. My daughters loved them. Second, Watership Down. Third,The Wind In the Willows. These last two are not really SF but fantasy/talking animal books.
A great thing you can do that will be remembered by them later is to read to them, particularly the pre-teens. I read all of the above, plus Tolkien, Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Nancy Drew books to my girls. If you are only around them a bit for the holidays, read something short, like The Polar Express or one of Jimmy Buffet's juveniles.
Followed by a couple of Small Faces and Faces discs. Ooh La La with "Silicone Grown" would be a good choice.
>So what are you going to *do* about it, apart from have a satisfying rant on an irrelevant technology website that your senators and representatives have never heard about?
Good question! I will continue to lobby the three of five county supervisors whom I know personally, support the local tech group that supports keeping the optical scan system, and generally raise hell about this on the local front. "All politics is local," as someone once said. Ranting here about this and on talk.origins about the idiocy of IC and ID just helps tune up the rhetorical muscles, as it were. On the rare chances I have to talk to my two senators, I'll mention it. My representative is both more accessible and more techno-savy. The important group is the county Board of Suprervisors.What are *you* doing about it?
[Rant]
I am a Citizen and an Elector (member of the Electorate) in the US. That puts me at the TOP of the pyramid in the election process. In the US, the Electorate is Sovereign. Where does Diebold or any other corporate entity get off trying to dictate how elections are held? They act like they have some god-given right to make money off of the process. Fuck that! They have a right to come grovelling, hat in hand, and ASK if maybe, just maybe, we might want to use some equipment they want to sell. We get to set the rules about how elections are held, not them.
My county uses optical scan ballots and ballot box readers. If a precinct shows some sort of wierd result, the elections commissioner, in the company of plenty of witnesses, pops that sucker open and looks at the ballots. End of problem.
I frankly don't give a damn if results aren't available until Wednesday morning, or even Friday. They aren't certified official for weeks, anyway. The only difference early results make is who gets hammered for what reason at what post-election party.
There is nothing more important than the election process. All legitimacy of the government flows directly from it. Diebold has no fucking place dictating any damn thing about that. Paper ballots work. If they are slow and more costly, that is a small fucking price to pay for legitimacy.
[/Rant]
Were you the sort of eleven-year-olds who spent their time trying to make various things in the neighborhood go BOOM? Or, did you come by this later in life?
>Microsoft's team picks through the game making sure there are no bugs, that menus all work correctly, and that there are no compatibility issues.
When are they going to start doing this for Office releases?