Fuck the government. Democracy is bullshit, our president is incompetent, and we should go communist. Our whole system is wrong.
----
Now, I personally don't believe any of that. Not to troll, but to everyone posting about how the US is just like the PRC on censorship - read the above again. I can say that. All I want. Without fear of retribution from the government. I can talk about socialism, communism, monarchy, even anarchy. I can even encourage them - peacefully, of course. People in China can't even DISCUSS democracy, period.
We censor things here because they threaten monetary income; ignoble, I'll admit, but we don't jail you just for criticizing the government. People of the free world, first recognize what you have, and others have not. That's the first step to freedom for those who don't have it.
At RIT, the NSSA (Network, Security, SysAdmin) program has a special lab set up for this, connected to the outside world by a single ethernet cable that's usually left unplugged. In this lab, teams of students take each other on - one to lock down a rack of servers, the other to turn the rest of the lab into zombies and break in. Of course, this is done in the safety of an isolated environment, on our own server, so it's a bit different. Teaching black-hat countersecurity stuff is just fine - how else are you to test your own - but come on now, in a safe environment. Another experience we get here? Anti-virus, by releasing viruses into our security lab. So how does Professor Packetslinger intend to teach that, releasing viruses into the wild?
If this could help monitor, say, oil tanks, then why doesn't NASA license the technology out to oil companies for exorbitant fees? It might help provide funding to get some important projects, ahem, off the ground.
Linux has this Cool Thing(tm) called fakeroot that does just that - basically intercepts file calls and allows the program to "change" any file on the system as root, without actually changing the filesystem.
This is yet another cool tool that Microsoft has ripped off from Linux/UNIX. Other examples include the Monad shell (reminds me of Tcl/Tk and other GUIable scripting languages), and a feature explained to me by an insider as mapping the registry to a drive (/etc anyone?). Now, I haven't seen any other news about the latter, but they were considering it, is my point.
I'll admit that Vista is innovative in some ways, but a lot of it is amazingly derivative. Even though I give microsoft a lot more flak than they deserve, they're being given a little more credit than I think they deserve as far as innovation in their next-gen OS. Still a worthy upgrade if Windows is your thing.
Is this legal? Can the EFF join up with NVIDIA and ATI to bring a class-action lawsuit against the Blu-Ray Consortium under RICO? Is this the end of watching movies in hi-res on your computer, or is it the dawning of a new age of legal downloading (once you own it, you can download as many copies as you want - read US copyright law), and still getting sued? IS THIS THE END OF MOVIES AS WE KNOW THEM?
Firefox has already told me to change the name in my RHEL rebuild.
This is not abuse - this is precisely what trademarks are intended to do. They're not trying to make money off of it.
The reason that software names are trademarked is to protect the integrity of the original. If there is an official build for RHEL of Firefox, they are well within their rights to request that you rename your custom rebuild.
Parent is missing the point: with open source, trademarks are about quality control. If there was no Linux trademark, I could distribute a custom BSD as Linux. Trademarking Linux provides legal protection of Linux's integrity as a product. Bittorrent is using its trademark to fight adware/spyware, protecting the integrity of both the Bittorrent name and the Bittorrent network. And, as parent clearly demonstrated, Mozilla Foundation is using its Firefox trademark to ensure that all builds distributed as firefox are official builds, so Firefox will always be Firefox, not some custom version. Not that custom versions are bad - confusion between official and custom is bad, particularly for those end users we want so badly in the linux world.
Which is precisely why Photoshop will never have stronger piracy protection, and why no one is ever sued for an illegal copy of Photoshop, even though, as parent points out, almost no home user ever buys a license. It's an ingenious business plan: don't bug people who d/l Photoshop. They wouldn't buy it anyway, they'd buy or d/l inferior (or at least cheaper) software. However, they will go to their employer and demand that they get Photoshop. The business will have to buy licenses, and thus Photoshop makes its way around the industry, one corporation at a time. And employees get hooked, and when they move on, their addiction follows them to their next employer. Viral marketing at its finest.
The reasons that cell phones are not allowed on planes is not the interference potential, as such potential is proven to be near zero, with properly shielded (read: standard complient) airplane systems. The reason is the potential that a cellphone having access to one or two hundred cells at the same time, and switching between cells at intervals in the seconds, could confuse (read: DoS) the terrestrial cell phone network. Evidently, however, the FCC is considering that potential to be less likely then previously thought.
And, to those of you who fly, I know that the flight attendants say it could interfere with flight systems. During takeoff and landing, this is understandable - any nonzero chance of interference is NOT negligible. And, radio recievers cannot physically cause interference to flight systems, any more than your wristwatch can, but they give the same reason to restrict FM radios. This is what they tell you so that you'll listen, because no uninitated end user will believe that a cell phone travelling at 600 mph has the potential to DoS the cell network.
And personally, although I have mixed feelings about legalizing cell phone use on airplanes, as previous posters, a phone call to my gf would be a very nice way to pass a couple of the ~7 hours it takes to fly home.
IANAL, but it seems as if this contract (EULA) is null and void as soon as you agree to it. This EULA, in the interest of "enforcing" the DMCA and "protecting" $ony, removes from the purchaser rights like "fair use" guaranteed in old copyright law and reaffirmed in the DMCA! IMHO, as the contract represented by the EULA is in violation of the law, it therefore voids itself, does it not? Perhaps someone else could weigh in on this, who knows more about this than me.
against installing unwanted software on a users computer by misrepresentation of said software as something the user wants...
Oh yeah, that's right, viruses are already illegal. Using the above definition, even if it requires end-user lack of knowledge (like viruses used to, before activex and blaster worm... ah, the good old days...) the Sony rootkit certainly seems to be a virus. IANAL, but does anyone else think we might have a chance against Sony on a federal class-action level if we try the virus tactic?
I doubt that's a large enough population [Sony DRM installed] for the technique to be considered useful, though.
Are you sure? Remember, anyone who wants to listen to one of Sony's recent CDs on their computer (unless they have used workarounds) has this rootkit. Be careful in assuming how many people know these workarounds - there are a lot of end users out there, and would you like to be slashdotted by a bunch of zombie end-users because they have a worm that virus scanners can't detect?
You know, in the real world, people PAY to have people see their ads, not CHARGE. It's time for IETF to take over the world. (See Stross' Singularity Sky)
Google has. Hang around on the gmail page for a while. I think ~2 min. And you can get their code - there's a whole lot of it, but just follow the script src from the main gmail view.
Again with this "piracy hurts artists" bullshit. I realize that this was sarcasm, but "only" $380 M is exactly how the media will word it. It was, as many have said, one of the top ten highest grossing movies of ALL TIME. #7, if I recall properly. On the subject of piracy and theater patronship - Who else has seen Advent Children? Of those people, who would go and pay to see it in a theater anyway, just because it was SO COOL on a 17" monitor with some sort of computer speakers, now we just have to see it on the big screen with real 5.1 surround sound (and better subs, and maybe even good english voice acting, if we're lucky)? All that piracy of Advent Children really hurt Square Enix, didn't it? Especially since, if I'm not mistaken, there is no plan at this time to release in US?
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck the government. Democracy is bullshit, our president is incompetent, and we should go communist. Our whole system is wrong.
----
Now, I personally don't believe any of that. Not to troll, but to everyone posting about how the US is just like the PRC on censorship - read the above again. I can say that. All I want. Without fear of retribution from the government. I can talk about socialism, communism, monarchy, even anarchy. I can even encourage them - peacefully, of course. People in China can't even DISCUSS democracy, period.
We censor things here because they threaten monetary income; ignoble, I'll admit, but we don't jail you just for criticizing the government. People of the free world, first recognize what you have, and others have not. That's the first step to freedom for those who don't have it.
At RIT, the NSSA (Network, Security, SysAdmin) program has a special lab set up for this, connected to the outside world by a single ethernet cable that's usually left unplugged. In this lab, teams of students take each other on - one to lock down a rack of servers, the other to turn the rest of the lab into zombies and break in. Of course, this is done in the safety of an isolated environment, on our own server, so it's a bit different. Teaching black-hat countersecurity stuff is just fine - how else are you to test your own - but come on now, in a safe environment. Another experience we get here? Anti-virus, by releasing viruses into our security lab. So how does Professor Packetslinger intend to teach that, releasing viruses into the wild?
If this could help monitor, say, oil tanks, then why doesn't NASA license the technology out to oil companies for exorbitant fees? It might help provide funding to get some important projects, ahem, off the ground.
This is yet another cool tool that Microsoft has ripped off from Linux/UNIX. Other examples include the Monad shell (reminds me of Tcl/Tk and other GUIable scripting languages), and a feature explained to me by an insider as mapping the registry to a drive (/etc anyone?). Now, I haven't seen any other news about the latter, but they were considering it, is my point.
I'll admit that Vista is innovative in some ways, but a lot of it is amazingly derivative. Even though I give microsoft a lot more flak than they deserve, they're being given a little more credit than I think they deserve as far as innovation in their next-gen OS. Still a worthy upgrade if Windows is your thing.
Find out next time, on Slashdot.
This is not abuse - this is precisely what trademarks are intended to do. They're not trying to make money off of it.
The reason that software names are trademarked is to protect the integrity of the original. If there is an official build for RHEL of Firefox, they are well within their rights to request that you rename your custom rebuild.
Parent is missing the point: with open source, trademarks are about quality control. If there was no Linux trademark, I could distribute a custom BSD as Linux. Trademarking Linux provides legal protection of Linux's integrity as a product. Bittorrent is using its trademark to fight adware/spyware, protecting the integrity of both the Bittorrent name and the Bittorrent network. And, as parent clearly demonstrated, Mozilla Foundation is using its Firefox trademark to ensure that all builds distributed as firefox are official builds, so Firefox will always be Firefox, not some custom version. Not that custom versions are bad - confusion between official and custom is bad, particularly for those end users we want so badly in the linux world.
Which is precisely why Photoshop will never have stronger piracy protection, and why no one is ever sued for an illegal copy of Photoshop, even though, as parent points out, almost no home user ever buys a license. It's an ingenious business plan: don't bug people who d/l Photoshop. They wouldn't buy it anyway, they'd buy or d/l inferior (or at least cheaper) software. However, they will go to their employer and demand that they get Photoshop. The business will have to buy licenses, and thus Photoshop makes its way around the industry, one corporation at a time. And employees get hooked, and when they move on, their addiction follows them to their next employer. Viral marketing at its finest.
Hey, he's hit on something. If viruses would just comform to Java, they'd slow down to the point of being created after the patch has been released!
My IP has been dugg/slashdotted!
The reasons that cell phones are not allowed on planes is not the interference potential, as such potential is proven to be near zero, with properly shielded (read: standard complient) airplane systems. The reason is the potential that a cellphone having access to one or two hundred cells at the same time, and switching between cells at intervals in the seconds, could confuse (read: DoS) the terrestrial cell phone network. Evidently, however, the FCC is considering that potential to be less likely then previously thought.
And, to those of you who fly, I know that the flight attendants say it could interfere with flight systems. During takeoff and landing, this is understandable - any nonzero chance of interference is NOT negligible. And, radio recievers cannot physically cause interference to flight systems, any more than your wristwatch can, but they give the same reason to restrict FM radios. This is what they tell you so that you'll listen, because no uninitated end user will believe that a cell phone travelling at 600 mph has the potential to DoS the cell network.
And personally, although I have mixed feelings about legalizing cell phone use on airplanes, as previous posters, a phone call to my gf would be a very nice way to pass a couple of the ~7 hours it takes to fly home.
...books request you!
Of all the people to have a broken link... Did anyone else try the "Home Page" link on the SF project description?
PS3 - Blu-Ray at launch. Xbox 360 - HD-DVD someday. Maybe. We have a winner.
Okay, so there is no legislation to protect this poor woman from this SLAPP lawsuit in Canada, but can't she countersue for defamation if she wins?
IANAL, but it seems as if this contract (EULA) is null and void as soon as you agree to it. This EULA, in the interest of "enforcing" the DMCA and "protecting" $ony, removes from the purchaser rights like "fair use" guaranteed in old copyright law and reaffirmed in the DMCA! IMHO, as the contract represented by the EULA is in violation of the law, it therefore voids itself, does it not? Perhaps someone else could weigh in on this, who knows more about this than me.
but does it run linux?(yet)
Oh yeah, that's right, viruses are already illegal. Using the above definition, even if it requires end-user lack of knowledge (like viruses used to, before activex and blaster worm... ah, the good old days...) the Sony rootkit certainly seems to be a virus. IANAL, but does anyone else think we might have a chance against Sony on a federal class-action level if we try the virus tactic?
Wow... the wikipedia has a "warning, we've been slashdotted" template... Are there that many trolls?
Get a Conch Republic passport. That's right, Key West issues passports. Google it.
You know, in the real world, people PAY to have people see their ads, not CHARGE. It's time for IETF to take over the world. (See Stross' Singularity Sky)
Google has. Hang around on the gmail page for a while. I think ~2 min. And you can get their code - there's a whole lot of it, but just follow the script src from the main gmail view.
Again with this "piracy hurts artists" bullshit. I realize that this was sarcasm, but "only" $380 M is exactly how the media will word it. It was, as many have said, one of the top ten highest grossing movies of ALL TIME. #7, if I recall properly. On the subject of piracy and theater patronship - Who else has seen Advent Children? Of those people, who would go and pay to see it in a theater anyway, just because it was SO COOL on a 17" monitor with some sort of computer speakers, now we just have to see it on the big screen with real 5.1 surround sound (and better subs, and maybe even good english voice acting, if we're lucky)? All that piracy of Advent Children really hurt Square Enix, didn't it? Especially since, if I'm not mistaken, there is no plan at this time to release in US?