Um, not exactly. Evidence of Linux botnets and OS X variants with confirmed infections in the wild.
The 'botnet' consisted of about 100 Linux servers, none of whom could be proven to have been infected via automated means. Indeed, the man who discovered this threat speculated that they were compromised by sniffing FTP passwords. Not included in the report was how many actual machines were compromised. Individual Linux web servers can host hundreds of accounts or more.
As a proportion of Linux servers, this number is vanishingly small. Compared to the rate of infection of Windows PCs, both in real numbers and per capita, there's almost no comparison to be made.
The target of the malicious iframes that the Linux machines were serving up? Windows.
Methinks you're buying a bit too much into the late 90s / early 2000s era FUD against Microsoft.
If the parent douchebag would have read what the person hes aiming this at was talking to, he would have realized it was sarcasm to point out the others idiocy... talk about woosh...
Oh, I saw the sarcasm all right. But living as I do in a country with a per capita GDP of only slightly over USD 2000, I didn't find it funny, insightful or even remotely true.
You think jealousy and rage that others are better off than you constitutes perspective?
It doesn't.
Who said anything about jealousy? I'm talking about being able to see where all those license fees are going. Rage, yes, because that money could be used for other, more useful things.
And 'better off' is a highly subjective metric, by the way. In many countries in the world, it's not merely a synonym for 'rich'. I meet more happy people here in a day that I used to meet in a year in North America.
In a world where many people have never made a phone call, where children still get polio or die from malaria, where there are some people who make less than $30 USD in a year, let me be the first to say FUCK YOU! Seriously, Libertarian001, what the hell is the matter with you? You honestly think that showing off by using the luxury of an internet connection and personal computer to bitch about other people's fortune is a good idea? Asshole.
Greetings from the Developing World. On behalf of a couple of billion of my closest confrères, allow me to say: Shut the fuck up.
Using the luxury of an Internet connection to bitch about other people's fortunes - especially the ones they get by profiting from others' misery - is what we all aspire to. In my part of the world, the knowledge that some Ritchie Rich is being inducted into the entitlement regime that is modern-day corporate capitalism with lavish salaries and police escorts to exclusive events.... Well, let's just say it has a remarkably salutary effect.
You see, we recognise this kind of behaviour instantly - about the only time you ever hear a police siren in my town is when some dignitary is getting whisked to or from the airport. So when the convoy of buses goes by on its way to see 'Aripota' (as the Junior Wizard is known here), we know exactly who's in them.
They're the very same young professionals who will be whisked into town to meet with our ministers of education and telecommunications to negotiate wonderful deals ensuring that, for decades to come, there will always be an adequate supply of malarial people without telephones, for whom 'Aripota' is nothing more than a rumour.
And I think he's entirely off-base. Nose-in-the-air "Scholars" like this gentleman fail to recognize that Google's efforts are about making material available to "the rest of us" who don't have access to those major research libraries. And categorical indexing of material makes complete and total sense if you expect to have non-PhD sorts searching for it.
You're fighting the wrong battle here. It's easy to find any number of legitimately nasty things about 'Scholars' and 'Academics' and elitism in general. But arguing for proper classification in Google Books is not one of them.
For several years I was an avid amateur of Information Retrieval. Classification (and other useful organisational models) of information into related collections is essential when you don't know what keywords you're looking for. This is especially important with historical works, where the use of 21st Century names, terms and other common keywords is next to useless.
Google search is useful when you know what you're searching for. But knowing what to look for in Google Books is an entirely different matter. Categorisation matters here.
By using a classification system that is designed for book sellers, Google's chosen a very poor set of criteria. Not only will most of the titles be poorly characterised (and thus harder to find), the effort required to find them increases with their rarity or uniqueness. These aren't always a measure of importance or interest, but often enough, they are.
Asking Google to consider a proven, effective and well-understood categorisation system is not being snooty; it's an effort to suggest - as we geeks often do - that there might actually be a correct way to perform this task.
Sometimes what looks like 'arrogance' is actually the state of being right about something when no one else will listen.
So inviting my friends and neighbors to come over to my house, have some snacks, and watch how Win7 handles disk caching so much better will increase sales eleventy gajillion percent.
Unlikely. Your neighbors will probably ignore the Windows 7 and spend their time on the couch, having an in-depth discussion about birth control options.
... And wondering why your mother didn't use at least one of them.
I know from experience that some of the voices on the open source movement can be really difficult to deal with (yes, RMS, I'm looking at you). So, what to do in this case? Hide them under a rock?
Look at the things they've said in the past. In most cases, you'll be able to dig up something relevant. The Internet is kind of cool that way. Call them and repeat the quote, then ask, "Does this [still] apply?" If the person says yes, you can ask them if they have anything to add. If they say no, ask them to explain what's changed. If they never reply, use the quote to indicate what they've said about the topic in the past.
"A lot of reporters aren't given the luxury of oodles of extra time by their assigning editors and those editors expect results, not requests for more time because "they have to get the corporate wheels rolling over there." "
Then it is the reporter the one with a problem, not the happy hacker or the professional developer paid to do different things than attend the press.
I couldn't agree more. Half the skill of actual reporting is knowing who you can talk to in order to get a quick reply, and in some cases, knowing how to get any reply at all. That means maintaining a long list of contacts, being a total gossip-monger (having something to interesting to tell others is a great way to get them to open up) and always always always having enough information before you ask for comment to write about the topic anyway.
That last one is incredibly important. I produce about 2000 words a week for publication, and even with people I've dealt with dozens of times in the past, only a few of them are prepared to offer a relevant statement at the drop of a hat. If you can't ask the right question, you'll never get a useful answer. That usually means not asking questions that will take days or weeks to answer. (If you're really good, you'll have already had the necessary conversation with the right people, so you can just call them up and ask for a quote on the subject for attribution.)
And while I'm venting: I find spokesmen the most difficult to deal with. Their job is to protect their organisation's reputation, and that often makes them more defensive and less willing to be candid than their bosses might actually want. It's not really their fault, but they rarely have anything interesting - let alone newsworthy - to say, and they're often not qualified to talk at a level of detail that's useful. Nowhere is this more true than geek topics.
To make things worse, their role makes them almost completely incapable of speaking spontaneously. Every question results in a 'Let me check and get back to you on that.' That's the last thing anyone wants to hear when the deadline is looming.
Nope, I think the panel should have been about how reporters could integrate better into the geek community rather than a round of admonitions to play the game 'the right way'.
security practices in GSM networks were below standards
If proper certificates preinstalled on the phone and bank server by phone manufacturer, public key crypto shouldn't be vulnerable to man in the middle, and insecurity of GSM wouldn't matter. Nokia is exactly in position to do it.
What bank?
There's no need for a bank at all. Transactions can be done purely using phone credit because, like cash, it retains its value. 5 bucks worth of credit is still worth 5 bucks after you've transferred it. Most mobile network carriers in the developing world have this capability already. It's extremely popular, especially in areas where crime is a problem. Lose your phone? It's a problem, but you can still call the phone company and cancel your account before anyone spends the credit you had stored in it.
Likewise, in nations where travel is difficult, dangerous or expensive, people can pay for things via mobile credit. expediting trade in economically depressed areas.
Phone credit as cash is a brilliant innovation that was discovered by consumers. The fact that Nokia has discovered its usefulness is a sign of their responsiveness, but I'll wait to see just how truly innovative it is.
The idea of a biometric ID in conjuntion with a reasonably secure password hash has it's appeal, as well. If my bank would use it, I'd install a fingerprint reader on my HOME computer. Businesses should just jump on that idea - it's a small price to increase security dramatically.
Biometrics are only appealing in environments where human life has value. I can assure you that the day banks in Johannesburg or Manila start requiring fingerprints for authentication, there are going to be a lot more fingerless victims of crime than there were the day before.
I mean, I can understand fighting against the MAFIAA in some respects, but this is getting ridiculous. It's like people just pirate for the sake of pirating, just to stick it to "the man" so to speak. But then you have to question why they started pirating in the first place?
As much as we might decry the attitude of those who set up the Pirate Bay, the day will come when the very same functionality is going to be perfectly mainstream, making the whole issue of piracy as difficult for our descendants to comprehend as the sexual appeal of a Victorian hooped skirt.
In the mean time, however, the very idea of a gift economy, in which people share the wealth of entertainment simply because it feels good to do so, remains anathema to the powers that be. Controlling the means of distribution has been one of the keys to economic success ever since... well, ever since forever. Whether it's caravan routes, harbours and shipping lines or electrical networks, the distributor's position has always been the most advantageous because it allows you to deal with both suppliers and consumers from a position of strength.
Content distributors still have a great deal of momentum because of their position in the marketplace, and they're willing to spend it all in order to protect that position. It's an unwinnable battle of course, and perhaps some of them realise it. Until someone manages to find a way to legitimise peer-to-peer content distribution methods, their leverage - legal and moral - will remain strong in business and government.
The 'cloud' isn't necessarily anyone's friend in this scenario, by the way. Centralised services (which is really what they are, no matter what metaphor we apply) are easier to control and commoditise than distributed services like TPB. This enables the distributors to focus on mashing Internet service and content provision together so that the average consumer (and lawmaker and CxO) don't distinguish between the communications channel and the content itself. As long as this confusion remains, technologies like DRM and concepts like 'Intellectual Property' will remain current.
But some day, somewhere, someone is going to realise that there's money to be made from treating communications networks as commodities (like the power or water company) and begin to develop a business plan that consist of nothing but niches, as opposed to the monolithic approach being taken today. When that happens - and it will happen - people will look back at the Pirate Bay more or less in the same way as Clear Channel look at the Pirate Radio operators who used to operate from barges in the North Sea and off the East and West coasts of the US: Radical thinkers who were too principled to bother making a living at what they did so well.
If I was, today, to look at myself in the mirror and decide that I was born to manufacture buggy whips, I would move in that direction in the smartest way I could. Maybe that means I would make props for movies, or maybe that means I would end up moving to a small town where they hold buggy-driving contests every year. But with what I know now, I would never say, "China is the next big place" and just park myself there. Some of my worst career moves have been the result of exactly that sort of thinking.
I dunno, China may just be the next big place for whip makers. You could probably make a fortune designing and manufacturing whips that got the most productivity out of the 'employees' in Chinese sweatshops. Maybe diversify into crops and clubs designed for use against unruly crowds of political agitators. The possibilities are endless!
Comcast's version [of DNS hijacking] is an order of magnitude better than everybody else's.
That's like saying your cellmate is better than the others because he uses lube. Factually correct, but still morally repugnant.
The practice is wrong. Plain wrong. It breaks the Internet and as such should be expressly forbidden. (Well, actually, it is forbidden, because it's not returning NXDOMAIN when it should.) Breakage is breakage is breakage, and while it may be useful to understand in detail the different ways in which this breakage occurs, it is not acceptable to finish that analysis by saying, "Well if it must break, then this way is better than the others...."
Hopefully some of the keyboard hackers read slashdot. I would like to request a function added to the keyboard that senses certain "L33T" speak words and automatically backspaces and substitutes REAL words in its place. Some parents might even like to see such a function that senses curse words and substitutes +%$#"!! for matching words... could even be marketable...hrm?
Information is meant to be free, if you think money is incentive for creating it, then what about the entire open source community and millions of free webpages?
A nitpick, but in the time-honoured slashdot tradition, an important one:
The original quote is that 'Information wants to be free. Here's the fuller context:
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
That fight is not over by any means. Information is not yet meant to be free. Society (and economics in particular) still has to come to terms with what that means in practical terms. The FOSS movement and various other anarcho-technological philosophies are as often responses to the first desire as anything else. RMS and others have stated before that their actions are in response to the others' tendency to see ideas (and even implementations of those ideas) as belonging to them. If the former didn't exist, the latter wouldn't have to.
The whole issue of Droits d'Auteur - the Enlightenment concept of authors' moral rights over their creations - is an unresolved question. Even copyright was an uneasy (and increasingly untenable) accommodation of an idea that does not ultimately benefit society. Unfortunately, measures such as the one that AP has just announced take the discussion in the wrong direction. Their entire approach is predicated on the existence of authors' rights and on their transferability.
Without author's rights, people can't create economies of scarcity. Without transferable rights, the distributors (AP, *AA et alia) have no business model.
Until we begin to cogently and coherently question those two basic assumptions, the dialectic between information freedom and so-called Intellectual Property will be conducted between law-makers and law-breakers. That's very difficult moral (and ethical and legal) territory.
The plan is to basically embed some sort of web bug in the HTML, which will help AP identify the scrapers, which will allow them to file an honest lawsuit, in which the infringing scraper will show up in court, hat in hand, and beg forgiveness.
This is sad for several reasons.
1. The AP believes that these scrapers are actually a serious threat to the AP's revenue stream.
2. The AP believes that the people who run these scrapers won't be able to strip their tracking bugs out
3. The AP believes that it'll be able to find and sue the operators and make them stop, instead of just driving them into jurisdictions that don't care.
4. The AP is confusing these scrapers with legitimate aggregators, like Google News, and legitimate bloggers, and thus making lots of enemies
I think you're wrong on the last count. I think they are thinking primarily of 'legitimate' aggregators. I think their entire plan is predicated on being able to coerce large search engines to comply with their rules of behaviour with regards to their material.
I agree that this is technically naive and suicidal as a business tactic. Even if the large search engines agree to whatever conditions are put on the use of the content, they'll only do so to the extent that playing nice serves their needs. The only leverage AP would have in case of non-adherence to their rules is the suicide option - cutting off access to their own content.
But vested interests the world over have demonstrated their capacity for self-inflicted damage and, more to the point, their ability to damage others on their way down.
Count on a large-scale political push to 'protect their rights' - and to enumerate those rights in the most profit-making way possible, even if that means trashing fair use entirely.
Count as well on Google, Microsoft and whoever else is running a top-tier US-based search engine to compromise themselves (and their service) in order to avoid getting kicked out of the boys' club that is the American corporate establishment.
And count on the anarcho-geeks of the world to have the entire process deconstructed, reverse-engineered and made a mockery of within about 4 days, too. They will be litigated and even prosecuted for their pains.
The net result will be that AP's demise will be delayed by a few months, and the development of a robust, gift-based online economy will be delayed by some multiple of that.
Slashdot Mirror
No sir. What it proves is the existence of the sole.
Yeah, the measurements were right off the scales.
The 'botnet' consisted of about 100 Linux servers, none of whom could be proven to have been infected via automated means. Indeed, the man who discovered this threat speculated that they were compromised by sniffing FTP passwords. Not included in the report was how many actual machines were compromised. Individual Linux web servers can host hundreds of accounts or more.
As a proportion of Linux servers, this number is vanishingly small. Compared to the rate of infection of Windows PCs, both in real numbers and per capita, there's almost no comparison to be made.
The target of the malicious iframes that the Linux machines were serving up? Windows.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
i post this anon because so many exist but what is one more?
Redundant haiku
Tautology makes very
Redundant haiku.
It became extinct fairly recently, why don't we clone it? Surely these things will make a great addition to the New Zealand Air Defense Force.
Well, it would at least mean that New Zealand would have an Air Defence Force...
(I'm Canadian. I'm allowed to make these jokes.)
If the parent douchebag would have read what the person hes aiming this at was talking to, he would have realized it was sarcasm to point out the others idiocy... talk about woosh...
Oh, I saw the sarcasm all right. But living as I do in a country with a per capita GDP of only slightly over USD 2000, I didn't find it funny, insightful or even remotely true.
Whoosh indeed.
You think jealousy and rage that others are better off than you constitutes perspective? It doesn't.
Who said anything about jealousy? I'm talking about being able to see where all those license fees are going. Rage, yes, because that money could be used for other, more useful things.
And 'better off' is a highly subjective metric, by the way. In many countries in the world, it's not merely a synonym for 'rich'. I meet more happy people here in a day that I used to meet in a year in North America.
In a world where many people have never made a phone call, where children still get polio or die from malaria, where there are some people who make less than $30 USD in a year, let me be the first to say FUCK YOU! Seriously, Libertarian001, what the hell is the matter with you? You honestly think that showing off by using the luxury of an internet connection and personal computer to bitch about other people's fortune is a good idea? Asshole.
Greetings from the Developing World. On behalf of a couple of billion of my closest confrères, allow me to say: Shut the fuck up.
Using the luxury of an Internet connection to bitch about other people's fortunes - especially the ones they get by profiting from others' misery - is what we all aspire to. In my part of the world, the knowledge that some Ritchie Rich is being inducted into the entitlement regime that is modern-day corporate capitalism with lavish salaries and police escorts to exclusive events.... Well, let's just say it has a remarkably salutary effect.
You see, we recognise this kind of behaviour instantly - about the only time you ever hear a police siren in my town is when some dignitary is getting whisked to or from the airport. So when the convoy of buses goes by on its way to see 'Aripota' (as the Junior Wizard is known here), we know exactly who's in them.
They're the very same young professionals who will be whisked into town to meet with our ministers of education and telecommunications to negotiate wonderful deals ensuring that, for decades to come, there will always be an adequate supply of malarial people without telephones, for whom 'Aripota' is nothing more than a rumour.
Perspective, it's what's for dinner.
Yeah, it sure is. Let me know when you get some.
You're fighting the wrong battle here. It's easy to find any number of legitimately nasty things about 'Scholars' and 'Academics' and elitism in general. But arguing for proper classification in Google Books is not one of them.
For several years I was an avid amateur of Information Retrieval. Classification (and other useful organisational models) of information into related collections is essential when you don't know what keywords you're looking for. This is especially important with historical works, where the use of 21st Century names, terms and other common keywords is next to useless.
Google search is useful when you know what you're searching for. But knowing what to look for in Google Books is an entirely different matter. Categorisation matters here.
By using a classification system that is designed for book sellers, Google's chosen a very poor set of criteria. Not only will most of the titles be poorly characterised (and thus harder to find), the effort required to find them increases with their rarity or uniqueness. These aren't always a measure of importance or interest, but often enough, they are.
Asking Google to consider a proven, effective and well-understood categorisation system is not being snooty; it's an effort to suggest - as we geeks often do - that there might actually be a correct way to perform this task.
Sometimes what looks like 'arrogance' is actually the state of being right about something when no one else will listen.
So inviting my friends and neighbors to come over to my house, have some snacks, and watch how Win7 handles disk caching so much better will increase sales eleventy gajillion percent.
Unlikely. Your neighbors will probably ignore the Windows 7 and spend their time on the couch, having an in-depth discussion about birth control options.
... And wondering why your mother didn't use at least one of them.
You're welcome.
Possibly?!? Of course it runs Linux. I'd run too if I saw one of these things facing me.
What the fuck do you nerds want?
To talk to someone clueful enough that they don't make crass generalisations like that one.
I know from experience that some of the voices on the open source movement can be really difficult to deal with (yes, RMS, I'm looking at you). So, what to do in this case? Hide them under a rock?
Look at the things they've said in the past. In most cases, you'll be able to dig up something relevant. The Internet is kind of cool that way. Call them and repeat the quote, then ask, "Does this [still] apply?" If the person says yes, you can ask them if they have anything to add. If they say no, ask them to explain what's changed. If they never reply, use the quote to indicate what they've said about the topic in the past.
"A lot of reporters aren't given the luxury of oodles of extra time by their assigning editors and those editors expect results, not requests for more time because "they have to get the corporate wheels rolling over there." "
Then it is the reporter the one with a problem, not the happy hacker or the professional developer paid to do different things than attend the press.
I couldn't agree more. Half the skill of actual reporting is knowing who you can talk to in order to get a quick reply, and in some cases, knowing how to get any reply at all. That means maintaining a long list of contacts, being a total gossip-monger (having something to interesting to tell others is a great way to get them to open up) and always always always having enough information before you ask for comment to write about the topic anyway.
That last one is incredibly important. I produce about 2000 words a week for publication, and even with people I've dealt with dozens of times in the past, only a few of them are prepared to offer a relevant statement at the drop of a hat. If you can't ask the right question, you'll never get a useful answer. That usually means not asking questions that will take days or weeks to answer. (If you're really good, you'll have already had the necessary conversation with the right people, so you can just call them up and ask for a quote on the subject for attribution.)
And while I'm venting: I find spokesmen the most difficult to deal with. Their job is to protect their organisation's reputation, and that often makes them more defensive and less willing to be candid than their bosses might actually want. It's not really their fault, but they rarely have anything interesting - let alone newsworthy - to say, and they're often not qualified to talk at a level of detail that's useful. Nowhere is this more true than geek topics.
To make things worse, their role makes them almost completely incapable of speaking spontaneously. Every question results in a 'Let me check and get back to you on that.' That's the last thing anyone wants to hear when the deadline is looming.
Nope, I think the panel should have been about how reporters could integrate better into the geek community rather than a round of admonitions to play the game 'the right way'.
If proper certificates preinstalled on the phone and bank server by phone manufacturer, public key crypto shouldn't be vulnerable to man in the middle, and insecurity of GSM wouldn't matter. Nokia is exactly in position to do it.
What bank?
There's no need for a bank at all. Transactions can be done purely using phone credit because, like cash, it retains its value. 5 bucks worth of credit is still worth 5 bucks after you've transferred it. Most mobile network carriers in the developing world have this capability already. It's extremely popular, especially in areas where crime is a problem. Lose your phone? It's a problem, but you can still call the phone company and cancel your account before anyone spends the credit you had stored in it.
Likewise, in nations where travel is difficult, dangerous or expensive, people can pay for things via mobile credit. expediting trade in economically depressed areas.
Phone credit as cash is a brilliant innovation that was discovered by consumers. The fact that Nokia has discovered its usefulness is a sign of their responsiveness, but I'll wait to see just how truly innovative it is.
Why don't we have a mod for "I'm obviously lying, but here's my story anyway..."?
You mean, like, +1 Penthouse Letter?
Biometrics are only appealing in environments where human life has value. I can assure you that the day banks in Johannesburg or Manila start requiring fingerprints for authentication, there are going to be a lot more fingerless victims of crime than there were the day before.
As much as we might decry the attitude of those who set up the Pirate Bay, the day will come when the very same functionality is going to be perfectly mainstream, making the whole issue of piracy as difficult for our descendants to comprehend as the sexual appeal of a Victorian hooped skirt.
In the mean time, however, the very idea of a gift economy, in which people share the wealth of entertainment simply because it feels good to do so, remains anathema to the powers that be. Controlling the means of distribution has been one of the keys to economic success ever since... well, ever since forever. Whether it's caravan routes, harbours and shipping lines or electrical networks, the distributor's position has always been the most advantageous because it allows you to deal with both suppliers and consumers from a position of strength.
Content distributors still have a great deal of momentum because of their position in the marketplace, and they're willing to spend it all in order to protect that position. It's an unwinnable battle of course, and perhaps some of them realise it. Until someone manages to find a way to legitimise peer-to-peer content distribution methods, their leverage - legal and moral - will remain strong in business and government.
The 'cloud' isn't necessarily anyone's friend in this scenario, by the way. Centralised services (which is really what they are, no matter what metaphor we apply) are easier to control and commoditise than distributed services like TPB. This enables the distributors to focus on mashing Internet service and content provision together so that the average consumer (and lawmaker and CxO) don't distinguish between the communications channel and the content itself. As long as this confusion remains, technologies like DRM and concepts like 'Intellectual Property' will remain current.
But some day, somewhere, someone is going to realise that there's money to be made from treating communications networks as commodities (like the power or water company) and begin to develop a business plan that consist of nothing but niches, as opposed to the monolithic approach being taken today. When that happens - and it will happen - people will look back at the Pirate Bay more or less in the same way as Clear Channel look at the Pirate Radio operators who used to operate from barges in the North Sea and off the East and West coasts of the US: Radical thinkers who were too principled to bother making a living at what they did so well.
...to email "you were ADOPTED and we never loved you!" to his kid?
I was thinking more about pwning the server and sending one to everyone else's kid. 8^)
Says you. I suggest you ponder the following phrase:
Global Thermonuclear Edit War
If I was, today, to look at myself in the mirror and decide that I was born to manufacture buggy whips, I would move in that direction in the smartest way I could. Maybe that means I would make props for movies, or maybe that means I would end up moving to a small town where they hold buggy-driving contests every year. But with what I know now, I would never say, "China is the next big place" and just park myself there. Some of my worst career moves have been the result of exactly that sort of thinking.
I dunno, China may just be the next big place for whip makers. You could probably make a fortune designing and manufacturing whips that got the most productivity out of the 'employees' in Chinese sweatshops. Maybe diversify into crops and clubs designed for use against unruly crowds of political agitators. The possibilities are endless!
That's like saying your cellmate is better than the others because he uses lube. Factually correct, but still morally repugnant.
The practice is wrong. Plain wrong. It breaks the Internet and as such should be expressly forbidden. (Well, actually, it is forbidden, because it's not returning NXDOMAIN when it should.) Breakage is breakage is breakage, and while it may be useful to understand in detail the different ways in which this breakage occurs, it is not acceptable to finish that analysis by saying, "Well if it must break, then this way is better than the others...."
Hopefully some of the keyboard hackers read slashdot. I would like to request a function added to the keyboard that senses certain "L33T" speak words and automatically backspaces and substitutes REAL words in its place. Some parents might even like to see such a function that senses curse words and substitutes +%$#"!! for matching words... could even be marketable...hrm?
So, like, a Perl interpreter, then?
A nitpick, but in the time-honoured slashdot tradition, an important one:
The original quote is that 'Information wants to be free. Here's the fuller context:
That fight is not over by any means. Information is not yet meant to be free. Society (and economics in particular) still has to come to terms with what that means in practical terms. The FOSS movement and various other anarcho-technological philosophies are as often responses to the first desire as anything else. RMS and others have stated before that their actions are in response to the others' tendency to see ideas (and even implementations of those ideas) as belonging to them. If the former didn't exist, the latter wouldn't have to.
The whole issue of Droits d'Auteur - the Enlightenment concept of authors' moral rights over their creations - is an unresolved question. Even copyright was an uneasy (and increasingly untenable) accommodation of an idea that does not ultimately benefit society. Unfortunately, measures such as the one that AP has just announced take the discussion in the wrong direction. Their entire approach is predicated on the existence of authors' rights and on their transferability.
Without author's rights, people can't create economies of scarcity. Without transferable rights, the distributors (AP, *AA et alia) have no business model.
Until we begin to cogently and coherently question those two basic assumptions, the dialectic between information freedom and so-called Intellectual Property will be conducted between law-makers and law-breakers. That's very difficult moral (and ethical and legal) territory.
I think you're wrong on the last count. I think they are thinking primarily of 'legitimate' aggregators. I think their entire plan is predicated on being able to coerce large search engines to comply with their rules of behaviour with regards to their material.
I agree that this is technically naive and suicidal as a business tactic. Even if the large search engines agree to whatever conditions are put on the use of the content, they'll only do so to the extent that playing nice serves their needs. The only leverage AP would have in case of non-adherence to their rules is the suicide option - cutting off access to their own content.
But vested interests the world over have demonstrated their capacity for self-inflicted damage and, more to the point, their ability to damage others on their way down.
Count on a large-scale political push to 'protect their rights' - and to enumerate those rights in the most profit-making way possible, even if that means trashing fair use entirely.
Count as well on Google, Microsoft and whoever else is running a top-tier US-based search engine to compromise themselves (and their service) in order to avoid getting kicked out of the boys' club that is the American corporate establishment.
And count on the anarcho-geeks of the world to have the entire process deconstructed, reverse-engineered and made a mockery of within about 4 days, too. They will be litigated and even prosecuted for their pains.
The net result will be that AP's demise will be delayed by a few months, and the development of a robust, gift-based online economy will be delayed by some multiple of that.
MICROSOFT STORE: Abort [ ] Retry [ ] Fail [X]