Yeah, but I didn't get the impression that this was an ethical dilemma for them. They were hired for the purpose of doing something illegal. From the article:
In December, the alleged DDoS conspirators' informal relationship became more corporate, when Echouafni purchased CIT/FooNet from Ashley, and kept Ashley on as network administrator at $120,000 a year salary. Ashley, in turn, formally hired Hall to perform "security" for the company -- which the FBI suggests was a euphemism for launching more DDoS attacks against Echouafni's enemies.
This guy was paid to run a criminal enterprise. And he was stupid to think he'd get away with it.
I know this is kinda redundant, but I'm really blown away by this. The RIAA involvement makes sense, but I don't see why XM cares.
Sure, XM could take legal action. And regardless of whether their claims have merit they could probably intimidate them out of using the software. But, unlike the various RIAA suits against people swapping MP3s online, every person XM sues is guaranteed to be one of their paying customers.
Who in blazing blue fsck thinks this is a good idea? What the hell do they gain by this? Lemme pitch this: "Hey, this will piss off our customers, may irreperably damage our reputation, and will bring in zero money, but it'll maybe help us get a few more subscribers to a service we haven't launched yet. Someday."
I very rarely buy extended warranties. My rule of thumb is, if it's never going to leave the house then it doesn't need an extended warranty.
My first digital camera died young. It was in my pocket when I fell over while drunk. So when I replaced it with a new one, I decided to get an extended warranty.
I read various plans to see what they covered. Most were about 10% of the cost of the camera, and only covered failures that resulted from normal use. Gee, thanks. I wonder how many cameras survive the first year (when the manufacturer covers it) but die the second during "normal use." Even if it's 10%, which I seriously doubt, I imagine not everyone actually uses the coverage (you kept track of your receipt, right?), and those that do can be given a refurb model of what will then be an obsolete camera. It's almost like they're printing money.
I finally found a store that had a decent warranty plan. I read the policy online, then when I got to the store I quizzed the sales guy to see what it covered. I figured if the sales guy knew and pitched what was actually in the documentation, it was a good sign I wouldn't have trouble getting service.
If memory serves, a 2 year plan cost about 15% of the camera price. A year and a half later I was drunk at a Halloween party (me being drunk with a camera is a pretty common event) and smashed it into a wall hard enough to pop two screws from the case. Good night, Gracie.
I took it in, brought my receipt, filled out the form, and they sent it out for repairs. It took longer than promised because of a screwup on their side, but after a little over two weeks I got my camera, a $10 gift certificate and an apology for the delay.
So here's my advice:
Read the policy. Do it online if you can to avoid the pressure from the sales guy. If a sales guy gives you trouble about reading the policy, take a walk.
Always keep your receipt in a safe place.
Don't bother with a warranty on anything that quickly drops in price. A guy once tried to sell me a warranty on a CompactFlash card and I laughed at him.
Don't bother with a warranty that only extends the manufacturer's coverage. If a defect doesn't emerge in the first year, then the odds of it emerging in the second is pretty low compared to the cost of a warranty.
If something's expensive, fragile, and will be used by or around drunk people, get a warranty that covers your drunken stupidness.
If a guy in a clown suit gives you a bottle of rum, you should not feel obligated to finish it.
First of all, the technology in question must be equally available for non-infringing uses. Napster wasn't. It was specifically designed for MP3 trading, and that's the big reason why it got smacked.
If I'm reading the decision correctly, Napster got smacked down because its servers directly handled queries for copyrighted works in question. Thus, Napster was directly contributing to the infringement at the time that the infringement occurred (the Grokster decision refers to this).
Secondly, the court decision clearly leaves the door open for Congress to take up the matter. They feel that the court is not able to make decisions about new tech (what they call 'Art') - that's Congress' job. Think they won't be listening to Big Music's dollars? You bet your ass they will.
Yes, the door has always been open for Congress to change things. The door has been open since the original Betamax decision. I still have my radio, I still have my VCR, and now I have my P2P as well.
Look at the constant extension of copyright in the case of interests like Disney. If Mickey Mouse's copyright gets extended any further they might as well just say, 'Infinity + 1' and be done with it.
One of the few things Congress can't do with regard to copyright extension is say 'Infinity +1.' Copyright has to be limited (as required by the Constitution), even if that limit is ridiculously high. Making copyright unlimited would require a Constitutional amendment.
Finally, this still won't prevent you from getting sued by the music and movie industries for sharing their material. All this does is postphone the final decision on PtoP. The question is whether or not Congress will limit the technology to non-infringing uses (almost impossible to do), or ban it altogether (more likely - it's easier).
MPAA/RIAA want to come after me for violating their copyrights? Let them, that's what copyright law is for. Limit the technology to non-infringing uses? The law already forbids infringing uses, the rights holders just have to go after the people who are actually infringing rather than go after the companies that provide the tools. Ban P2P? Perhaps with something like the INDUCE act, but we'll see if that gets anywhere.
So, when you consider how few and far between such victories are and how profound and lasting they tend to be, I think it's very much appropriate to jump up and down. I think I'll do so right now.
Not-too-distant-future? It happened years ago for me.
I used to play Diablo II with a bunch of friends. Each and every one of us had gone out and purchased the game. And within days of purchase, each and every one of us had downloaded the No-CD crack for it.
This is bad for the software developers on multiple levels:
They're annoying the people who are buying the software
They're failing to annoy people who are pirating it
These annoyed customers are establishing a case for "significant non-infringing uses."
Software crackers are granted legitimacy because they provide a valuable service free of charge to people who have purchased the software.
"Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT."
Hmm, I guess the fact that my current workstation has both a floppy and a CRT speaks poorly of me? This thing's hardly an antique, it's new enough to run Doom 3.
At our firm, we have noticed that in the past 3-6 months, the USPTO is less friendly in approving patents- even for things that we believe are new & patentable. The European Patent Office has been rejecting things as well, for technologies that we believe are new & unique.
Um, I don't mean to seem insolent here, but how often is your firm filing patents for things that you don't believe are new and patentable? And by filing these patents, aren't your clients contributing to the overall problem? I'm genuine curious about the scope of this.
Not that I blame you. At my previous job, our patent attourney told our execs that the chances of us getting patents on our 'technology' were slim. But for the cost of applying for a patent, we had the chance to lock our competition out of the market. And since it was during the peak of the dotcom boom and it was all VC money anwyay, they tried to patent just about everything about our product. Of about ten patent applications the company filed, I'd say only one was for something that was truly innovative. The rest were of the form "performing [widely known process] on the web."
1) Ok, so you need $550 to invest. If you can't put that much down on Google stock, then you probably shouln'd be gambling in the high-risk IPO market anyway.
But wait, this is a Dutch auction. Currect me if I'm wrong, but while $100+ may be a suggested price, but you can bid at whatever you want.
2) If you don't think the company management will be sufficiently accountable, then bid low. It's an auction, and the shares are only worth $100 each if enough people want to pay that much.
You don't want the short term investor interests to run the company anyway. My dad gave me the following advice on investments and influencing management: "When deciding how to vote, I look at the board recommendation. If I agree with the board, I vote their way. If I disagree with the board, I sell the stock."
3) The Dutch auction assures that everyone pays the same price. Regardless of any inefficiencies brought about by small investors, it's no likely to have much of an influence considering how big this IPO is.
4) If Google is overvalued, then both the little guys and the big guys will get screwed, as we're all paying the same price for the shares initially. Traditionally, the big players got the allocations at the lowball IPO price, and the little guys (y'know, the ones who don't have as much information and aren't the best at evaluating the stock in #3) drove the price up on the opening day.
The little guy is never going to have the same chance as the big guy because the big guy has far more money and time to spend evaluating the opportunity. You're competing against experts. But at least with the auction the little players and the big players are all competing on the same field.
In a previous Google discussion, someone pointed out that the goal in this auction isn't just to own Google stock, but to profit from it. If Google's overhyped, then you sit back and let the chumps absorb the loss and buy in when the share price comes down to sane levels.
Re:Politics will never solve this problem
on
CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
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· Score: 1
Whitelisting won't work if you use email for business. You want new customers, and you don't know who they are already. My work account gets ~1200 spams/day. I have to be able to get mail from people I haven't necessarily heard from before in order to do my job. And I can't just switch email addresses when this one gets overwhelmed. If it weren't for a well-trained Bayesian filter, my work account would be unusable.
Filtering may lead us to a solution ultimately. The clients don't see the spam, but the ISPs still pay to transfer it. As spammers increase the volume, eventually the burden on ISPs will be high enough that they'll just start blocking port 25, and blacklisting mail from IP addresses in dynamically allocated ranges. As the problem becomes more expensive, the solutions will become more brutal.
321 Studios is now out of business. What happens if people just start copying DVD-X Copy software willy-nilly?
Can a copyright violation be pursued by anyone besides the copyright holder? Since 321 Studios can no longer profit from the software, they have no incentive to go after pirates, and likely couldn't afford to even if they wanted to. My (possibly flawed) understanding is that, while it would be illegal for me to use a copy of the software copied from a friend, only 321 Studios would be able to take action against meif I were to do so.
Others here have mentioned they could be charged with contempt of court if they released the software as open source, but what if they just don't go after pirates?
First off: $135K/person/year is cost, which is a lot more than just salary. To get closer to the actual cost, don't think in terms of the cash compensation for a salaried employee, think in terms of the rate charged by a contractor (who must pay for his own training, payroll taxes, health insurance, equipment, etc). Taking that into account, all of the professional Perl coders I've known have cost at least that much.
Granted, I don't know many who code Perl professionally, but those who do make as much as any of the other programmers I know.
Back when I was grade school, we sang our own version of the song:
This land is my land.
This land ain't your land.
I've got a shotgun
And you ain't got one.
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off.
This land was made for only me.
Fortunately, the lawyers never showed up at the playground to shut us down.
Hopefully things haven't changed since, but I returned a Seagate drive under warranty back in the days of 3-year coverage, and I didn't need the original receipt. They had a nifty tool on the web site where I punched in the drive serial number to confirm its warranty status, and they gave me an RMA number. I sent them my dead drive and had the replacement a little over a week later. I was actually quite astonished at how painless it was.
If their drives are living longer than 5 years on average, that's great. If someone at Seagate did the calculation and figured out that they'd probably gain more in increased sales than they'd lose from providing warranty service, that's great too. It's the free market at work.
OK, consider a couple of things things:
First off, any terrorist attack will likely cause the local cell network to collapse. A network is most likely to be overloaded when it is in use by a large number of people in a small area. Guess where a terrorist is most likely to attack?
Secondly, hiding this information will not make us safer. In fact, it will put us more at risk. Here's why.
Having outage information publicly available is only useful for a terrorist if the outages show a pattern that can be used to predict a future outage.
If a cell phone provider is having regular, predictable outages, then the network is broken and needs to be fixed.
If the information is public and available, the cell provider is far more likely to fix the problem.
If the information can be kept secret and hidden, the problem will be of a lower priority.
If fixing regular outages is a low priority, then the overall reliability of the network will be lower.
A weak cell phone network will be much easier to overload and exploit regardless of whether the terrorists are even trying to do so.
Security by obscurity is a problem not just because it's ineffective, but because it can encourage bad/lazy practices in other areas of security.
1) You communications are encrypted and can't be interecepted in transit. These days this is a trivial thing and can easily be provided with a self-signed cert.
2) The identity of the site owner has been verified. The trusted certificate authority has taken some measures to assure that the site has been authorized by the entity named in the certificate. This is not trivial.
Without #2, it's not too hard to set up a fake site and hijack someone's traffic. You can then collect usernames and passwords, or distribute false information. Imagine if someone uses a BIND exploit to take over your ISP's DNS servers and reroutes yourbank.com to a fake site. When you pay for a certificate from a trusted CA, you're paying for #2. If you don't care about #2 for your purposes, then you can act as your own certificate authority.
If only there were a Paranoid mod for folks like me...
MP3 support isn't a problem now because the device is a new player in a competitive market and Sony's goign to make sure everything works. What happens later when Sony decides not to support a particular platform or ceases to support its current software when a new player comes out? The problem isn't that someone else would have to pay Sony in order to be able to write to this thing. I doubt they could even get Sony's permission.
For some time Sony has been hindered in this market because it does business in both the content and the technology. As such, it's made some bad decisions about supporting various technologies in order to protect its content business from the supposed threat of pirates. It will likely make more bad decisions in the future, and these decisions will likley cause people who purchased Sony products to regret that decision.
For any music player of this kind, the worst case scenario is the vendor ceasing support for the software required to load music onto the device. Should this happen for any of my current MP3 playing devices, I have the following options:
1. Use third-party software, as alternatives are available for all of them
2. Write my MP3 files directly the the device's storage medium. I lose the library management features of the software, but the device is still usable.
With this Sony device, the above will likely be impossible.
It's a great business case, and it makes perfect sense. But it also means that Yahoo is lying to us and taking us for fools.
Personally, I'm OK with Yahoo blocking whoever the hell they want. It's a proprietary network, they run it using their own resources, and I don't have any sort of service agreement with them. They want to turn a profit on the expenditure so they're kicking off the freeloaders. Yes, this is a good business case. But why the hell am I reading this argument on Slashdot rather than getting the truth straight from Yahoo?
From TFA: "By making frequent protocol changes, it is our expectation that spammers will be blocked from abusing our system to spam our users." This is a lie, pure and simple. They will not block spammers, they're just trying to block out third party clients. Such lies are all too common in the business world, and it sickens me.
Historically, the actions of the industry have shown that they make little distinction between actual pirates (e.g., that guy on the street corner selling DVD's made from a theater camcording) and legitimate paying users who choose to exercise their fair use rights to consume media in a manner not approved by the MPAA. Mr. Valenti's now infamous "Boston stranger" comment springs to mind. These are the people that movie industry reps are usually talking about when they say "pirate."
MythTV users are already "pirates." But as long as they stay relatively few in number, the industry will ignore them.
Linux needs to be accountable in the same way proprietary software vendors are in case problems occur. Sounds good. But do you mean accountable the same way that Microsoft is held accountable for buffer overflows or do you mean accountable in the same way Cisco is accountable for putting a backdoor into its routers?
The accountability issue for open source is a red herring. Everyone I know who uses Linux uses a particular distribution from a particular corporation. If you want support, pony up some cash and you'll get it.
As for the IP issue, the "three monkeys" analogy Brown uses fits far better into the closed source development model. How does any software vendor ensure that its developers don't use code they'd kept from their previous employer or downloaded from SourceForge? A closed source company can profit from stolen code, and it would be extremely difficult to prove unless someone does some serious hacking into the executable. IP protection in the proprietary world is a joke.
At least open source products have their code available so that IP violations can be found and corrected. And the open nature of the projects discourage people from trying such shenanigans. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux is more prone to IP violations than any other OS. Of course, it's not like any third party could properly audit Windows anyway.
And what the recording industry doesn't seem to realize is that by using these two-bit copy protection schemes, they're making the piracy problem worse.
The people who are most likely to be deterred by these measures are those who have the least to gain by circumventing them: the people who have already purchased the CD. The real pirates have a great deal to gain by breaking the DRM, and they won't be stopped. The worst case scenario for them is making a digital copy from the analog output.
You're pretty much guaranteed to get DRM free copies distributed by actual pirates, so the music will get out there. Except now you've inconvenienced your paying customer, who can no longer burn a CD for his car, or download to his MP3 player. Now your paying customer, who in giving you his money has already indicated his desire to be honest and do the right thing, has an incentive to seek black market sources for the music. "Damn, I can't make a copy if this CD I just bought!" "Haven't you heard of Kazaa? Just download it from there." And he'll do so guilt free because he's already paid for the music. Maybe he didn't know how to get pirated music before, but now he does.
Next time, will he go through the song and dance of fighting the DRM restrictions on the CD, or just click that little icon on his desktop?
I think today I'll go to my boss and propose spending millions of dollars developing a technology that annoys our customers, doesn't effectively protect our IP, does nothing to improve our profit margins and exposes us to legal risk. Let's see how long I keep my job.
Yeah, I sometimes run into APs still using the factory default settings around here. Whenever I find one, here's what I do:
1. Change admin password
2. Enable encryption
3. Change network ID to something annoying. My favorite is "Yo_Momma"
This usually results in the AP being secured shortly thereafter.
The real problem is, there has been no admission of guilt, and nobody within the company has been pnuished so far as we know. The same corporate culture is in place. The previous article that revealed the astroturfing campaign gave the impression that the practice was widespread and reached the highest levels of the organization. Even if we take the pledge at face value, all we have is the promise that this particular dishonest practice will stop. In short, JBoss will desist not because they believe that astroturfing is dishonest and wrong, but because they were caught and it makes for bad publicity. The employees will see this, and they'll jump at the next opportunity that pops up. They'll just be a little more careful.
In that context, this pledge does nothing give me any faith in JBoss' integrity. Here's what Marc Fleury should have done:
Openly and honestly admit all of the details of what happened
Acknowledge and denounce any transgressions
Apologize for creating/tolerating a corporate environment that encouraged large scale deception
Fire the most egregious offenders
Establish and publish a company policy that governs how employees present themselves when posting on public message boards with clear penalties defined for violators
Really take responsibility: resign and allow someone else to come in to rebuild trust in JBoss
Until something more substantial happens in response to this incident, JBoss won't be on my list of vendors to consider.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but I didn't get the impression that this was an ethical dilemma for them. They were hired for the purpose of doing something illegal. From the article:
In December, the alleged DDoS conspirators' informal relationship became more corporate, when Echouafni purchased CIT/FooNet from Ashley, and kept Ashley on as network administrator at $120,000 a year salary. Ashley, in turn, formally hired Hall to perform "security" for the company -- which the FBI suggests was a euphemism for launching more DDoS attacks against Echouafni's enemies.
This guy was paid to run a criminal enterprise. And he was stupid to think he'd get away with it.
I know this is kinda redundant, but I'm really blown away by this. The RIAA involvement makes sense, but I don't see why XM cares.
Sure, XM could take legal action. And regardless of whether their claims have merit they could probably intimidate them out of using the software. But, unlike the various RIAA suits against people swapping MP3s online, every person XM sues is guaranteed to be one of their paying customers.
Who in blazing blue fsck thinks this is a good idea? What the hell do they gain by this? Lemme pitch this: "Hey, this will piss off our customers, may irreperably damage our reputation, and will bring in zero money, but it'll maybe help us get a few more subscribers to a service we haven't launched yet. Someday."
Stop the world, I wanna get off.
Reminds me of a sig I first saw many years back:
"The bus station is where the bus stops. The train station is where the train stops. On my desk, I have a workstation..."
My first digital camera died young. It was in my pocket when I fell over while drunk. So when I replaced it with a new one, I decided to get an extended warranty.
I read various plans to see what they covered. Most were about 10% of the cost of the camera, and only covered failures that resulted from normal use. Gee, thanks. I wonder how many cameras survive the first year (when the manufacturer covers it) but die the second during "normal use." Even if it's 10%, which I seriously doubt, I imagine not everyone actually uses the coverage (you kept track of your receipt, right?), and those that do can be given a refurb model of what will then be an obsolete camera. It's almost like they're printing money.
I finally found a store that had a decent warranty plan. I read the policy online, then when I got to the store I quizzed the sales guy to see what it covered. I figured if the sales guy knew and pitched what was actually in the documentation, it was a good sign I wouldn't have trouble getting service.
If memory serves, a 2 year plan cost about 15% of the camera price. A year and a half later I was drunk at a Halloween party (me being drunk with a camera is a pretty common event) and smashed it into a wall hard enough to pop two screws from the case. Good night, Gracie.
I took it in, brought my receipt, filled out the form, and they sent it out for repairs. It took longer than promised because of a screwup on their side, but after a little over two weeks I got my camera, a $10 gift certificate and an apology for the delay.
So here's my advice:
First of all, the technology in question must be equally available for non-infringing uses. Napster wasn't. It was specifically designed for MP3 trading, and that's the big reason why it got smacked.
If I'm reading the decision correctly, Napster got smacked down because its servers directly handled queries for copyrighted works in question. Thus, Napster was directly contributing to the infringement at the time that the infringement occurred (the Grokster decision refers to this).
Secondly, the court decision clearly leaves the door open for Congress to take up the matter. They feel that the court is not able to make decisions about new tech (what they call 'Art') - that's Congress' job. Think they won't be listening to Big Music's dollars? You bet your ass they will.
Yes, the door has always been open for Congress to change things. The door has been open since the original Betamax decision. I still have my radio, I still have my VCR, and now I have my P2P as well.
Look at the constant extension of copyright in the case of interests like Disney. If Mickey Mouse's copyright gets extended any further they might as well just say, 'Infinity + 1' and be done with it.
One of the few things Congress can't do with regard to copyright extension is say 'Infinity +1.' Copyright has to be limited (as required by the Constitution), even if that limit is ridiculously high. Making copyright unlimited would require a Constitutional amendment.
Finally, this still won't prevent you from getting sued by the music and movie industries for sharing their material. All this does is postphone the final decision on PtoP. The question is whether or not Congress will limit the technology to non-infringing uses (almost impossible to do), or ban it altogether (more likely - it's easier).
MPAA/RIAA want to come after me for violating their copyrights? Let them, that's what copyright law is for. Limit the technology to non-infringing uses? The law already forbids infringing uses, the rights holders just have to go after the people who are actually infringing rather than go after the companies that provide the tools. Ban P2P? Perhaps with something like the INDUCE act, but we'll see if that gets anywhere.
So, when you consider how few and far between such victories are and how profound and lasting they tend to be, I think it's very much appropriate to jump up and down. I think I'll do so right now.
I used to play Diablo II with a bunch of friends. Each and every one of us had gone out and purchased the game. And within days of purchase, each and every one of us had downloaded the No-CD crack for it.
This is bad for the software developers on multiple levels:
Yeah, this DRM stuff is a great idea.
"Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT."
Hmm, I guess the fact that my current workstation has both a floppy and a CRT speaks poorly of me? This thing's hardly an antique, it's new enough to run Doom 3.
You see, the '0' in '0wnership' is actually a 'headline canary'. It's a new feature that allows automatic identification of people who didn't RTFA.
At our firm, we have noticed that in the past 3-6 months, the USPTO is less friendly in approving patents- even for things that we believe are new & patentable. The European Patent Office has been rejecting things as well, for technologies that we believe are new & unique.
Um, I don't mean to seem insolent here, but how often is your firm filing patents for things that you don't believe are new and patentable? And by filing these patents, aren't your clients contributing to the overall problem? I'm genuine curious about the scope of this.
Not that I blame you. At my previous job, our patent attourney told our execs that the chances of us getting patents on our 'technology' were slim. But for the cost of applying for a patent, we had the chance to lock our competition out of the market. And since it was during the peak of the dotcom boom and it was all VC money anwyay, they tried to patent just about everything about our product. Of about ten patent applications the company filed, I'd say only one was for something that was truly innovative. The rest were of the form "performing [widely known process] on the web."
1) Ok, so you need $550 to invest. If you can't put that much down on Google stock, then you probably shouln'd be gambling in the high-risk IPO market anyway.
But wait, this is a Dutch auction. Currect me if I'm wrong, but while $100+ may be a suggested price, but you can bid at whatever you want.
2) If you don't think the company management will be sufficiently accountable, then bid low. It's an auction, and the shares are only worth $100 each if enough people want to pay that much.
You don't want the short term investor interests to run the company anyway. My dad gave me the following advice on investments and influencing management: "When deciding how to vote, I look at the board recommendation. If I agree with the board, I vote their way. If I disagree with the board, I sell the stock."
3) The Dutch auction assures that everyone pays the same price. Regardless of any inefficiencies brought about by small investors, it's no likely to have much of an influence considering how big this IPO is.
4) If Google is overvalued, then both the little guys and the big guys will get screwed, as we're all paying the same price for the shares initially. Traditionally, the big players got the allocations at the lowball IPO price, and the little guys (y'know, the ones who don't have as much information and aren't the best at evaluating the stock in #3) drove the price up on the opening day.
The little guy is never going to have the same chance as the big guy because the big guy has far more money and time to spend evaluating the opportunity. You're competing against experts. But at least with the auction the little players and the big players are all competing on the same field.
In a previous Google discussion, someone pointed out that the goal in this auction isn't just to own Google stock, but to profit from it. If Google's overhyped, then you sit back and let the chumps absorb the loss and buy in when the share price comes down to sane levels.
Whitelisting won't work if you use email for business. You want new customers, and you don't know who they are already. My work account gets ~1200 spams/day. I have to be able to get mail from people I haven't necessarily heard from before in order to do my job. And I can't just switch email addresses when this one gets overwhelmed. If it weren't for a well-trained Bayesian filter, my work account would be unusable.
Filtering may lead us to a solution ultimately. The clients don't see the spam, but the ISPs still pay to transfer it. As spammers increase the volume, eventually the burden on ISPs will be high enough that they'll just start blocking port 25, and blacklisting mail from IP addresses in dynamically allocated ranges. As the problem becomes more expensive, the solutions will become more brutal.
Nah, this won't catch on until somebody codes an aimbot that works in real life.
321 Studios is now out of business. What happens if people just start copying DVD-X Copy software willy-nilly?
Can a copyright violation be pursued by anyone besides the copyright holder? Since 321 Studios can no longer profit from the software, they have no incentive to go after pirates, and likely couldn't afford to even if they wanted to. My (possibly flawed) understanding is that, while it would be illegal for me to use a copy of the software copied from a friend, only 321 Studios would be able to take action against meif I were to do so.
Others here have mentioned they could be charged with contempt of court if they released the software as open source, but what if they just don't go after pirates?
First off: $135K/person/year is cost, which is a lot more than just salary. To get closer to the actual cost, don't think in terms of the cash compensation for a salaried employee, think in terms of the rate charged by a contractor (who must pay for his own training, payroll taxes, health insurance, equipment, etc). Taking that into account, all of the professional Perl coders I've known have cost at least that much.
Granted, I don't know many who code Perl professionally, but those who do make as much as any of the other programmers I know.
Back when I was grade school, we sang our own version of the song:
This land is my land.
This land ain't your land.
I've got a shotgun
And you ain't got one.
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off.
This land was made for only me.
Fortunately, the lawyers never showed up at the playground to shut us down.
Hopefully things haven't changed since, but I returned a Seagate drive under warranty back in the days of 3-year coverage, and I didn't need the original receipt. They had a nifty tool on the web site where I punched in the drive serial number to confirm its warranty status, and they gave me an RMA number. I sent them my dead drive and had the replacement a little over a week later. I was actually quite astonished at how painless it was.
If their drives are living longer than 5 years on average, that's great. If someone at Seagate did the calculation and figured out that they'd probably gain more in increased sales than they'd lose from providing warranty service, that's great too. It's the free market at work.
First off, any terrorist attack will likely cause the local cell network to collapse. A network is most likely to be overloaded when it is in use by a large number of people in a small area. Guess where a terrorist is most likely to attack?
Secondly, hiding this information will not make us safer. In fact, it will put us more at risk. Here's why.
Security by obscurity is a problem not just because it's ineffective, but because it can encourage bad/lazy practices in other areas of security.
SSL certificates assure two things:
1) You communications are encrypted and can't be interecepted in transit. These days this is a trivial thing and can easily be provided with a self-signed cert.
2) The identity of the site owner has been verified. The trusted certificate authority has taken some measures to assure that the site has been authorized by the entity named in the certificate. This is not trivial.
Without #2, it's not too hard to set up a fake site and hijack someone's traffic. You can then collect usernames and passwords, or distribute false information. Imagine if someone uses a BIND exploit to take over your ISP's DNS servers and reroutes yourbank.com to a fake site. When you pay for a certificate from a trusted CA, you're paying for #2. If you don't care about #2 for your purposes, then you can act as your own certificate authority.
If only there were a Paranoid mod for folks like me...
MP3 support isn't a problem now because the device is a new player in a competitive market and Sony's goign to make sure everything works. What happens later when Sony decides not to support a particular platform or ceases to support its current software when a new player comes out? The problem isn't that someone else would have to pay Sony in order to be able to write to this thing. I doubt they could even get Sony's permission.
For some time Sony has been hindered in this market because it does business in both the content and the technology. As such, it's made some bad decisions about supporting various technologies in order to protect its content business from the supposed threat of pirates. It will likely make more bad decisions in the future, and these decisions will likley cause people who purchased Sony products to regret that decision.
For any music player of this kind, the worst case scenario is the vendor ceasing support for the software required to load music onto the device. Should this happen for any of my current MP3 playing devices, I have the following options:
1. Use third-party software, as alternatives are available for all of them
2. Write my MP3 files directly the the device's storage medium. I lose the library management features of the software, but the device is still usable.
With this Sony device, the above will likely be impossible.
It's a great business case, and it makes perfect sense. But it also means that Yahoo is lying to us and taking us for fools.
Personally, I'm OK with Yahoo blocking whoever the hell they want. It's a proprietary network, they run it using their own resources, and I don't have any sort of service agreement with them. They want to turn a profit on the expenditure so they're kicking off the freeloaders. Yes, this is a good business case. But why the hell am I reading this argument on Slashdot rather than getting the truth straight from Yahoo?
From TFA: "By making frequent protocol changes, it is our expectation that spammers will be blocked from abusing our system to spam our users." This is a lie, pure and simple. They will not block spammers, they're just trying to block out third party clients. Such lies are all too common in the business world, and it sickens me.
Sorry, just having a bileful morning.
Historically, the actions of the industry have shown that they make little distinction between actual pirates (e.g., that guy on the street corner selling DVD's made from a theater camcording) and legitimate paying users who choose to exercise their fair use rights to consume media in a manner not approved by the MPAA. Mr. Valenti's now infamous "Boston stranger" comment springs to mind. These are the people that movie industry reps are usually talking about when they say "pirate."
MythTV users are already "pirates." But as long as they stay relatively few in number, the industry will ignore them.
Linux needs to be accountable in the same way proprietary software vendors are in case problems occur. Sounds good. But do you mean accountable the same way that Microsoft is held accountable for buffer overflows or do you mean accountable in the same way Cisco is accountable for putting a backdoor into its routers?
The accountability issue for open source is a red herring. Everyone I know who uses Linux uses a particular distribution from a particular corporation. If you want support, pony up some cash and you'll get it.
As for the IP issue, the "three monkeys" analogy Brown uses fits far better into the closed source development model. How does any software vendor ensure that its developers don't use code they'd kept from their previous employer or downloaded from SourceForge? A closed source company can profit from stolen code, and it would be extremely difficult to prove unless someone does some serious hacking into the executable. IP protection in the proprietary world is a joke.
At least open source products have their code available so that IP violations can be found and corrected. And the open nature of the projects discourage people from trying such shenanigans. I have yet to see any evidence that Linux is more prone to IP violations than any other OS. Of course, it's not like any third party could properly audit Windows anyway.
And what the recording industry doesn't seem to realize is that by using these two-bit copy protection schemes, they're making the piracy problem worse.
The people who are most likely to be deterred by these measures are those who have the least to gain by circumventing them: the people who have already purchased the CD. The real pirates have a great deal to gain by breaking the DRM, and they won't be stopped. The worst case scenario for them is making a digital copy from the analog output.
You're pretty much guaranteed to get DRM free copies distributed by actual pirates, so the music will get out there. Except now you've inconvenienced your paying customer, who can no longer burn a CD for his car, or download to his MP3 player. Now your paying customer, who in giving you his money has already indicated his desire to be honest and do the right thing, has an incentive to seek black market sources for the music. "Damn, I can't make a copy if this CD I just bought!" "Haven't you heard of Kazaa? Just download it from there." And he'll do so guilt free because he's already paid for the music. Maybe he didn't know how to get pirated music before, but now he does.
Next time, will he go through the song and dance of fighting the DRM restrictions on the CD, or just click that little icon on his desktop?
I think today I'll go to my boss and propose spending millions of dollars developing a technology that annoys our customers, doesn't effectively protect our IP, does nothing to improve our profit margins and exposes us to legal risk. Let's see how long I keep my job.
Yeah, I sometimes run into APs still using the factory default settings around here. Whenever I find one, here's what I do:
1. Change admin password
2. Enable encryption
3. Change network ID to something annoying. My favorite is "Yo_Momma"
This usually results in the AP being secured shortly thereafter.
The real problem is, there has been no admission of guilt, and nobody within the company has been pnuished so far as we know. The same corporate culture is in place. The previous article that revealed the astroturfing campaign gave the impression that the practice was widespread and reached the highest levels of the organization. Even if we take the pledge at face value, all we have is the promise that this particular dishonest practice will stop. In short, JBoss will desist not because they believe that astroturfing is dishonest and wrong, but because they were caught and it makes for bad publicity. The employees will see this, and they'll jump at the next opportunity that pops up. They'll just be a little more careful.
In that context, this pledge does nothing give me any faith in JBoss' integrity. Here's what Marc Fleury should have done:
Until something more substantial happens in response to this incident, JBoss won't be on my list of vendors to consider.