The important difference between any kind of purposeful disobedience and music file sharing is that the former usually has a definite aim in mind. Even if we were to believe that all file sharers have an aim, (beyond the obvious getting something for nothing), what exactly is it?? You could ask thousands and get a different answer every time. Often it involves some wooly hand-waving waffle about adopting new business models, yet strangly lacking in specifics. Frequently the answer would suggest that somehow the music industry can function in a free market economy to a completely different set of rules from any other industry. Slashdotters are particularly very fond of comparisons with the software and hardware industries, as if music was the same thing. Why not compare it to oil and Pepsi Cola, it makes about as much sense.
The thing is, that even if this is civil disobedience, and even if it did have an aim, and even if it did achieve it, nothing would stop the file sharing. And that's because the basic, something for nothing, motivation won't have changed. It'll just have a new set of excuses as to why it's ok.
So you'll have to excuse me while I laugh at those posturing about civil disobedience, and making ridiculous comparisons to civil rights. This is about not liking what your asked to pay for music, hardly a matter of human rights.
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs.
And the problem here is....? If you hang out with drug dealers when the police come calling, you can pretty much rely on getting arrested. Doesn't mean you'll get charged, and it certainly doesn't mean you'll get convicted.
And I don't think BayTSP actually qualify as being comparable to law enforcement agents. This is more like getting sent a letter from your landlord saying there's been complaints that you've been seen hanging with criminal looking individuals and you better not be dealing drugs.
How many different manufacturers of the new Madonna CD are there?
How many manufacturers of the new Bosch refrigerator are there?
If you simply must have a Madonna CD, then obviously you must buy it from Madonna and her record company. If you simply must have a Bosch refrigerators, then obviously you're going to have to buy it from Bosch. Bosch has a monopoly of Bosch products in the same way that only Madonna can produce Madonna CDs. This is so banally obvious it's hardly worth discussing. But neither have a monopoly in the market. There are other producers of fridges, there are other ageing pop singers. Whether you think the others are comparable is only a matter of opinion and brand loyalty. But neither Madonna nor Bosch have a monopoly.
Most recordings are covered by copyright, making their production state granted monopolies
Wrong. You only have a monopoly if there are no alternative products. Last time I looked the music industry was positively overflowing with different artists producing both similar and different styles of music.
If what you're referring to is a monopoly, then every single employee on the planet has both a monopoly of their labour, and on their production. Yet amazingly the labour market shows no signs of being a monopoly.
If there's a yellow lock icon in the status bar, everything is good, otherwise something is wrong. That's the level that normal people deal with and it's not a fault of them.
And here they had been told "do not log in if your picture of a duck isn't shown" and it still didn't work. What I was trying to say was the conditions of this test were not dissimilar to what a phisher would do. They were given a authority figure who perhaps inadvertently offered reassurance that everything would be ok, and the users completely forgot or chose to ignore what they had been told previously. A phisher would actively issue the same reassurances, except on the web page, and the result would be the same.
And my criticisms weren't meant to be of the "stupid lusers" type. It was an acknowledgement of basic human behaviour we all suffer from. It doesn't matter what security is implemented, and how simple and straightforward it is, unless users are trained to the point of near military fixation on proper procedure, phishers will always be able to convince some that's it's ok to bypass.
People are an integral part of the SiteKey system, it's pointless without them. If their flaws are not removed by the total functionality of the system, then the system is flawed.
Not that I think anything will ever be able to claim 100% success in this. But arguing it's not a problem with SiteKey, but with people, is kind of like making a powertool for three hands then arguing it's a people problem that no-one can use it correctly. You knew before you started people's limitations.
The point is that people turn off their brain once told what to do by someone or something that appears to be a source of authority. Here it was the people who led them into the room and stood about with clipboards. People are used to being told what to do by other officious looking people.
On a website all it needs is an official looking statement at the top of the phishing page that says "We are sorry, but our image security is broken just now, please log in as normal while we fix it, thank you." People are used to being told that computer systems are down and they should manage as best they can while they're repaired.
You simply can't regulate for people not willing to think for themselves.
It'll be exactly like the UK ID Card. What it's for is whatever hot-button topic of the month is. And once that has been thoroughly debunked it'll be for the next month's hot-button topic. And so on until something sticks or it's too late....
And by the end of it all the government will have grafted a shiny new ID handle onto you, all the better to grab you by and put you where they want you..
I guess the answer to that is that most companies don't really want to migrate to Linux. What they really want is a computer system that works and does the job, they don't care who makes it, or whether it's open source. Most companies are also certainly not in the business of improving and fixing operating systems, thanks. So if Linux won't do it for them they'll look elsewhere.
There is an attitude that it is the Users aka Customers fault for any problem that occurs, and the program is perfect unless a "Skilled" hacker was able to break your application and find a security problem.
Precisely. And far too much Linux documentation is written by Linux experts for an expected audience of other Linux experts. If you don't understand a sequence of ridiculously abbreviated unix console commands, or don't know what to do when they don't work as expected, then it's your fault.
I love many aspects of Linux, and I love the way many of the applications for it have been put together by enthusiasts who really know and care what makes a good application. But I've gone through just as many aborted attempts at implementing things in Linux as this guy, only to give up in frustration because something won't work and the only help available seems to assume that you're happy and able to begin by recompiling your kernel or something. There is simply no way that Linux is ready for the average user to configure and maintain happily on their own.
The question really is, why is this the case? Linux developers are certainly no less skilled than any other OS developers, and they've had years to get this right. The only answer I can think of is that the Linux community is hampered by the fact that it is top-heavy with 'gurus'. They need more people who need things explained to them in simple terms, people who don't want to be told how to fix things in a 100 character command line string. Only then will they appreciate just how far Linux is from being a universal desktop system.
As to whether the prisoners are terrorists or not, it's mostly op to themselves to have that settled.
Ah, that'll be the old "guilty until you prove yourself innocent" kind of justice. When was this re-introduced in Western society?
It's a fact that most were captured in non-uniform clothing armed
And to think that a lot of Americans are pretty keen on the whole "right to bear arms in my own damn country" deal.
(and often engaging allied forces)
Care to further qualify that 'often'?
in Iraq and Afghanistan and as that falls outside the Geneva conventions, they're either spies or terrorists and thus with absolutely no rights (according to that set of conventions)
Just because Geneva conventions do not assign them rights as Prisoners Of War does not mean they therefore have no rights as persons. If they are PoWs then treat them as such. If they are not PoWs, then treat them as accused terrorists and give them a trial. If they are not criminals/terrorists, then you have no right to detain them. Any further categorisation of person is something that the US Government just made up on their own. And this coming from someone who has a problem with the US applying its copyright laws to other nations! So that's; imprisoning foreign nationals according to your own rules: fine & dandy. Closing down MP3 distributors according to your laws: outrage!
And if living in your own country, owning a gun, and not wearing a uniform makes you a spy then I know a place where there's lots of spies.
Look up offender's web site. Obtain a few example contact email addresses. Obtain managing director's name. Use this information to determine director's email address. Automatically bounce all spam from them straight back to director, with a little note telling him he'd stop getting these emails just as soon as I stopped getting them.
Within a week, an email list I'd had no success getting off (and didn't ask to be on) stopped mailing me.
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate US RRP: $399.95
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UK RRP: £369.99
Current exchange rate = £0.5095 : $1
UK equivalent dollar RRP: $725.70
That is 181.44% of US price. Not twice the price, but close enough.
Oh dear. I don't care whether you wanted to imply by quoting something that wasn't there, or were just jumping to the conclusion that offence was the poster's motivation without any evidence. Either way, you're continuing in a irrelevant rant about something that was never previously mentioned in order to pick up an argument.
I am heartily pleased for you and your impervious cloak that repeals all offence. Perhaps we should all have one, but it's such a pity that's not what was being discussed. So put it away.
Unfortunately when you sell or bid in auctions you are hampered by the fact that a large percentage of everyone else involved is neither rational or logical. And some are borderline insane. So everyone has to make allowances for this, and as a result make decisions that would appear to be equally irrational and illogical.... So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious circle all in one.
No-one cares what spam got through filters last year. No ones cares even what spam got through last week. The spam menace lurches on so quickly that the only thing of interest is what's getting through right now, today. Analysing anything older than that is pointless.
And, as others have pointed out, a big slab of spam is useless for research unless you have equal amounts of real email to compare against.
Your long term plans (20-30+ year) plans for security should take into account the fact that everyone will have access to high resolution photos of everything you can see from a satellite.
Fair point. So what do we do in the meantime? (And these are not satellite pictures, they're ariel pictures.)
Right now we seem to be in the "pretty dumb" category, since you seem to be saying we can't seem to maintain good security of our country without taking steps like blurring out things on maps.
lol! You say it as if it was the worse possible thing that could happen (and they're not 'maps' either.) Will you be sitting down with the grandchildren in 30 years time recounting "Say kids, do you know that there was even a time when google had to take steps like blurring out things on maps! Imagine! Boy, I'm glad we've left those dark ages behind, it was inhuman!"
What the GP poster said is in fact a valid way to avoid becoming part of the problem.
But not in anyway an answer to what was asked. In fact, it's not even a guarantee of avoiding the problem either. It's about as useful as turning up at a car accident with a lecture on proper lane etiquette. It's just your opinion, possibly of no relevance to the circumstances, of zero help at the time, and will not stop car accidents happening.
Your petty concern about not "offending" someone is quite silly in light of these facts.
When did we start "quoting" people with things they didn't say? Wouldn't be building yourself a strawman there, would you?
The ONLY loss for the porn industry is that then every consenting adult lose any excuse to have browsed on porn domain by accident since with.xxx it willl be obvious that you are on a porn page. ?
So you already know the exact domain of every link on every page you look at, and you know the address of every linked image, and you always check the domain of every link before you click on it, and you've never been redirected or had a popup?
Slashdot Mirror
The important difference between any kind of purposeful disobedience and music file sharing is that the former usually has a definite aim in mind. Even if we were to believe that all file sharers have an aim, (beyond the obvious getting something for nothing), what exactly is it?? You could ask thousands and get a different answer every time. Often it involves some wooly hand-waving waffle about adopting new business models, yet strangly lacking in specifics. Frequently the answer would suggest that somehow the music industry can function in a free market economy to a completely different set of rules from any other industry. Slashdotters are particularly very fond of comparisons with the software and hardware industries, as if music was the same thing. Why not compare it to oil and Pepsi Cola, it makes about as much sense.
The thing is, that even if this is civil disobedience, and even if it did have an aim, and even if it did achieve it, nothing would stop the file sharing. And that's because the basic, something for nothing, motivation won't have changed. It'll just have a new set of excuses as to why it's ok.
So you'll have to excuse me while I laugh at those posturing about civil disobedience, and making ridiculous comparisons to civil rights. This is about not liking what your asked to pay for music, hardly a matter of human rights.
And the problem here is....? If you hang out with drug dealers when the police come calling, you can pretty much rely on getting arrested. Doesn't mean you'll get charged, and it certainly doesn't mean you'll get convicted.
And I don't think BayTSP actually qualify as being comparable to law enforcement agents. This is more like getting sent a letter from your landlord saying there's been complaints that you've been seen hanging with criminal looking individuals and you better not be dealing drugs.
How many manufacturers of the new Bosch refrigerator are there?
If you simply must have a Madonna CD, then obviously you must buy it from Madonna and her record company. If you simply must have a Bosch refrigerators, then obviously you're going to have to buy it from Bosch. Bosch has a monopoly of Bosch products in the same way that only Madonna can produce Madonna CDs. This is so banally obvious it's hardly worth discussing. But neither have a monopoly in the market. There are other producers of fridges, there are other ageing pop singers. Whether you think the others are comparable is only a matter of opinion and brand loyalty. But neither Madonna nor Bosch have a monopoly.
In TFA RIAA says "CDs Would Cost More".
Legion303 needs to either RTFA, or learn to comprehend the difference between Should and Would.
The word "should" does not appear anywhere in the original article. Not once. The word "would", however, does. Do I need to explain the difference?
So the Techdirt article is trolling a strawman argument, and this slashdot article is blindly following suit.
Wrong. You only have a monopoly if there are no alternative products. Last time I looked the music industry was positively overflowing with different artists producing both similar and different styles of music.
If what you're referring to is a monopoly, then every single employee on the planet has both a monopoly of their labour, and on their production. Yet amazingly the labour market shows no signs of being a monopoly.
And LOTS of stuff is far dearer, so what's your point, other than if you pick and choose what your comparisons are, you can prove just about anything?
Se,e your basic problem is that you are comparing "systems" with media. They are not the same.
And here they had been told "do not log in if your picture of a duck isn't shown" and it still didn't work. What I was trying to say was the conditions of this test were not dissimilar to what a phisher would do. They were given a authority figure who perhaps inadvertently offered reassurance that everything would be ok, and the users completely forgot or chose to ignore what they had been told previously. A phisher would actively issue the same reassurances, except on the web page, and the result would be the same.
And my criticisms weren't meant to be of the "stupid lusers" type. It was an acknowledgement of basic human behaviour we all suffer from. It doesn't matter what security is implemented, and how simple and straightforward it is, unless users are trained to the point of near military fixation on proper procedure, phishers will always be able to convince some that's it's ok to bypass.
People are an integral part of the SiteKey system, it's pointless without them. If their flaws are not removed by the total functionality of the system, then the system is flawed.
Not that I think anything will ever be able to claim 100% success in this. But arguing it's not a problem with SiteKey, but with people, is kind of like making a powertool for three hands then arguing it's a people problem that no-one can use it correctly. You knew before you started people's limitations.
On a website all it needs is an official looking statement at the top of the phishing page that says "We are sorry, but our image security is broken just now, please log in as normal while we fix it, thank you." People are used to being told that computer systems are down and they should manage as best they can while they're repaired.
You simply can't regulate for people not willing to think for themselves.
And by the end of it all the government will have grafted a shiny new ID handle onto you, all the better to grab you by and put you where they want you..
For your own good, of course.
In what way is writing a virus to exploit a security weakness "informing those affected"?
I guess the answer to that is that most companies don't really want to migrate to Linux. What they really want is a computer system that works and does the job, they don't care who makes it, or whether it's open source. Most companies are also certainly not in the business of improving and fixing operating systems, thanks. So if Linux won't do it for them they'll look elsewhere.
Precisely. And far too much Linux documentation is written by Linux experts for an expected audience of other Linux experts. If you don't understand a sequence of ridiculously abbreviated unix console commands, or don't know what to do when they don't work as expected, then it's your fault.
I love many aspects of Linux, and I love the way many of the applications for it have been put together by enthusiasts who really know and care what makes a good application. But I've gone through just as many aborted attempts at implementing things in Linux as this guy, only to give up in frustration because something won't work and the only help available seems to assume that you're happy and able to begin by recompiling your kernel or something. There is simply no way that Linux is ready for the average user to configure and maintain happily on their own.
The question really is, why is this the case? Linux developers are certainly no less skilled than any other OS developers, and they've had years to get this right. The only answer I can think of is that the Linux community is hampered by the fact that it is top-heavy with 'gurus'. They need more people who need things explained to them in simple terms, people who don't want to be told how to fix things in a 100 character command line string. Only then will they appreciate just how far Linux is from being a universal desktop system.
Ah, that'll be the old "guilty until you prove yourself innocent" kind of justice. When was this re-introduced in Western society?
It's a fact that most were captured in non-uniform clothing armed
And to think that a lot of Americans are pretty keen on the whole "right to bear arms in my own damn country" deal.
(and often engaging allied forces)
Care to further qualify that 'often'?
in Iraq and Afghanistan and as that falls outside the Geneva conventions, they're either spies or terrorists and thus with absolutely no rights (according to that set of conventions)
Just because Geneva conventions do not assign them rights as Prisoners Of War does not mean they therefore have no rights as persons. If they are PoWs then treat them as such. If they are not PoWs, then treat them as accused terrorists and give them a trial. If they are not criminals/terrorists, then you have no right to detain them. Any further categorisation of person is something that the US Government just made up on their own. And this coming from someone who has a problem with the US applying its copyright laws to other nations! So that's; imprisoning foreign nationals according to your own rules: fine & dandy. Closing down MP3 distributors according to your laws: outrage!
And if living in your own country, owning a gun, and not wearing a uniform makes you a spy then I know a place where there's lots of spies.
My solution;
Look up offender's web site. Obtain a few example contact email addresses. Obtain managing director's name. Use this information to determine director's email address. Automatically bounce all spam from them straight back to director, with a little note telling him he'd stop getting these emails just as soon as I stopped getting them.
Within a week, an email list I'd had no success getting off (and didn't ask to be on) stopped mailing me.
That joke's funny again. Could it have it?
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate US RRP: $399.95
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UK RRP: £369.99
Current exchange rate = £0.5095 : $1
UK equivalent dollar RRP: $725.70
That is 181.44% of US price. Not twice the price, but close enough.
Never? Interesting line you're drawing there. What's so unacceptable about 1GB that was ok for 64KB, 640KB and 10MB?
Oh dear. I don't care whether you wanted to imply by quoting something that wasn't there, or were just jumping to the conclusion that offence was the poster's motivation without any evidence. Either way, you're continuing in a irrelevant rant about something that was never previously mentioned in order to pick up an argument.
I am heartily pleased for you and your impervious cloak that repeals all offence. Perhaps we should all have one, but it's such a pity that's not what was being discussed. So put it away.
Unfortunately when you sell or bid in auctions you are hampered by the fact that a large percentage of everyone else involved is neither rational or logical. And some are borderline insane. So everyone has to make allowances for this, and as a result make decisions that would appear to be equally irrational and illogical.
And, as others have pointed out, a big slab of spam is useless for research unless you have equal amounts of real email to compare against.
So no wonder it didn't last.
Fair point. So what do we do in the meantime? (And these are not satellite pictures, they're ariel pictures.)
Right now we seem to be in the "pretty dumb" category, since you seem to be saying we can't seem to maintain good security of our country without taking steps like blurring out things on maps.
lol! You say it as if it was the worse possible thing that could happen (and they're not 'maps' either.) Will you be sitting down with the grandchildren in 30 years time recounting "Say kids, do you know that there was even a time when google had to take steps like blurring out things on maps! Imagine! Boy, I'm glad we've left those dark ages behind, it was inhuman!"
But not in anyway an answer to what was asked. In fact, it's not even a guarantee of avoiding the problem either. It's about as useful as turning up at a car accident with a lecture on proper lane etiquette. It's just your opinion, possibly of no relevance to the circumstances, of zero help at the time, and will not stop car accidents happening.
Your petty concern about not "offending" someone is quite silly in light of these facts.
When did we start "quoting" people with things they didn't say? Wouldn't be building yourself a strawman there, would you?
So you already know the exact domain of every link on every page you look at, and you know the address of every linked image, and you always check the domain of every link before you click on it, and you've never been redirected or had a popup?
You must be unique.