I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money.
Nope, I certainly don't think it is wrong for them to want money. I just don't see what valuable service they provide that they should have the right to be given money. Artists make art and should be paid for it. The RIAA has colluded to take over all the major distribution channels for music. As such they force artists to give up their copyrights in order to be heard. This is unethical and most likely illegal. Artists should be paid for their works. Promoters and advertisers should be paid for their advertising. Investors should be paid for their initial capital. Shipping companies should be paid to move goods. Retail outlets should be paid for their retail space and sales force. The RIAA should die, as they provide nothing to benefit anyone. The majority of artists in the US who sign with the RIAA actually have to pay for the privilege and try to make money on concerts and merchandise. When artists are paid negative money for their intellectual property, the system is fundamentally broken. I'd like to see severely decreased copyright durations, and a stipulation that only the original artist(s) can hold copyright to works. I'd also like to see enforced, percentage based minimum royalties on artistic works and the RIAA banned from collusion for their past illegal price fixing. If they want money, let them actually provide a service instead of building a barrier. Toll bridges are fine, so long as they are not over artificially created chasms between your home and your workplace.
The fact that they made a small design mistake isn't really that surprising. These things happen all the time.
I'm not sure you can write this off as a small design mistake. This seems to me more like a fundamental design flaw based on a series of bad choices. They want you to run a Windows based server, outside your firewall, running a number of services, with security data stored unencrypted, and full privileges to the corporate e-mail server. That sounds like someone's friend or nephew was running the server project and either would not listen to advice that things should be done right, rather than quickly, or simply was unable to hire competent personnel. This is why companies making products like these should have a security team outside each project's chain of command, and why that team should be listened to. Now, who will trust them to do the right thing next time. What security conscious company will consider them as a solution provider?
I'm not sure quite what you're trying to say here. The exploits being used in the wild, as far as I have heard, are not embedding the.wmf with an img tag, but are invoking an auto-launch script when the page loads (sort of like you automatically click on it). Theoretically, a person could embed a 1x1 wmf file as you describe, but named with the.jpg extension, and IE would be infected, but that would make the exploit less effective against other browsers since Firefox would just show the image as a broken jpeg, rather than asking you to load it.
Tell me, if a company appropriated the trade secrets of a rival company without permission (what is commonly known as "stealing" trade secrets) would you consider that "stealing" even though the wronged company still has possession of copies of said secrets?
No, I would not. I usually hear such activities referred to as "industrial espionage" or "appropriation" of trade secrets in any reputable publication with competent writers.
I assume you would admit that it falls under one of the basic categories of "wrong", namely "lie", "cheat", "steal", "injure", "kill". So if not "stealing", then perhaps you'd be willing to call it "cheating"; I guess that eases your conscience when browsing for warez - "I'm not stealing, just cheating!!". LOL
Believe it or not, I don't have a strong stand when it comes to trade secrets. I'm certainly not sure they deserve legal protection on the order they are given. Almost all the valid cases I have heard in support of them are already covered by stock manipulation laws and slander/libel laws. I'm not sure I see any benefit to society for them, although the appropriation of them usually involves the breaking of other laws, and should be punished appropriately. For example, If I find a file folder open it and see a bunch of documents labeled "top secret, property of Microsoft" I'm not convinced that there is any ethical problem with myself or a newspaper printing the contents of that file folder. Although, the folder and contents themselves should be returned to the rightful owners.
BTW, dictionary definition of "steal": To take or appropriate without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wongly[sic].
Copied from another thread I posted this in: From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another." You must have the abridged+spelling errors edition.
Does that mean that I should not be paid for my work?
Do you want to be paid for your work or your idea? Do you want to be paid when you do something useful (create software) or just whenever someone uses your software forever. What about after you are dead, should your heirs, or the company that now owns the rights to your work still profit? Should Shakespeare's works be re-copyrighted and denied to the public until his heirs can be found? What about the bible? Should it be copyrighted and no longer distributed until the descendants of those who wrote all the stories in the old testament have been found?
So called "intellectual property" rights are not natural rights. Naturally I have the right to free speech. That means I can say whatever I want, even if I am singing a song someone else made up. Long ago, the government decided it was proper to make a trade. In order to "promote science and useful arts" they decided to restrict my free speech for a limited time (7-14 years) in the hope that it would encourage artists to make more songs. In exchange The artist had to send several good copies of that song to a repository where it would be preserved. In this way artists would be given incentive to create and share works, rather than keep them secret at the risk that they would perish forever. It was a good deal at the time and benefitted everyone. Seven years was a reasonable amount of time in which to make a profit (given 1700's era printing and distribution methods) and a large repository of valuable works were collected and saved from destruction. Many of those works are now important historical and cultural pieces. The only real problem was the danger that the rights to works would be collected by a few and used to control access to information and culture (as the great publishing houses of Europe had done). But the writers of American copyright law enacted several provisions to prevent that. Copyrights were limited in duration and purpose in the constitution and copies were held by the government.
Now Fast forward two hundred years. Corrupt politicians have purposely broken the laws in violation of the constitution, at the behest of large companies that collected copyrights from the authors, having gained control of the distribution mechanisms. The supreme court ruled that although the practically unlimited copyright durations and lack of "promotion of arts and sciences" probably violate the constitution, it is a vague provision and not the place of the supreme court to decide whether or not a particular term really did promote science and arts (even though they said they almost certainly do not). Thus we, the people, are left with nothing of our half of the bargain. No copies are kept. Works vanish forever. Other works exist somewhere, but are available to basically no one, except a wealthy few collectors.
And we the creators of art and science are in just as bad a situation as those of old Europe. It is nearly impossible for a singer to be heard widely without giving up their copyright to a big publishing house. Huge amounts of work that have outlived their profitability and should be available for us to use, remain locked up and dead. Video games that cannot be purchased anywhere, or played on any existing system vanish from the minds of the people because the law prohibits them from being shared, or altered by the people. Most are owned by some company that doesn't exist any more or by indeterminate parties. Even non-commercial copying of these works, to preserve them, has been made illegal.
That said, I think it is overkill to abolish copyrights. Like you, I rely upon it for my living. I think as it was originally created (but with much shorter terms to reflect modern technology) it can be a boon to society. Still, I'd rather it was abolished than that it continue as it is. I can make money from contract work and I can make money from tertiary sources of income, surrounding my works (like selling ad space next to the first printings of my new works). What
How can a criminal be elected so he can depenalize the very same things he's illegally doing? It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.
Actually, I feel it is very important that criminals, both convicted and free, have the ability to vote to legalize whatever it is they are imprisoned for. Otherwise democracy is undermined by removing the portion of the voting public that disagrees on an issue. With expanding prison populations this becomes a real threat. A huge number of people are imprisoned and denied the right to vote. If we'd had enough police presence and prison space to lock up and deny voting rights to all of those who were illegally drinking in the US, would prohibition have been repealed?
As an aside, I read a story once about military intelligence putting a stop to the first free elections in Vietnam after their preliminary survey indicated that Ho Chi Min (the communist war hero) stood a good chance of winning. The US has often talked about the importance of democracy, but their actions show a greater interest in creating governments that they can manipulate and profit from.
Spoken like someone who's never had an idea worth any money.
Actually, I make the majority of my income as a professional writer and I rely upon intellectual property (as the grandparent post referred to it) to pay for my heating bills and video games. I also understand the importance of precise and accurate speaking and writing. It is fine to use stealing as a metaphor (it is one of the most common and some might say overused). It is not fine to actually claim that the term means something else. You might as well call it murdering intellectual property or raping intellectual property.
Theft is any time that someone acquires property from someone without their permission.
From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another."
How exactly can I carry away so called intellectual property? Do do so (rather than to copy it and carry away a copy) requires that I deprive the original "owner" of that property. Making a copy of a dollar bill is not called stealing, it is called counterfeiting. Making a copy of a copyrighted book without permission is not called stealing. It is called copyright infringement. Knowingly violating a patent is not called stealing. It is called patent violation (or patent infringement). Passing off another's work as my own is not stealing. It is called plagiarism. Buy a dictionary already.
If a teenager stole my car every night and when joyriding but brought in back every morning before I left for work I would still consider it stealing.
...but you'd probably be wrong. They may have illegally borrowed your car, but if they intend to return it, it is not stealing, unless you count them keeping it for a time as "keeping it." In any case, copying something is not stealing it. That is why we have different words for different things. It makes these distinctions clear.
Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?
Hopefully, most people on Slashdot are educated enough to know that "stealing intellectual property" is not even possible, by definition. (Well, maybe it is possible with some sort of memory erasing device.)
An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims. He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits. There are many things wrong with the patent system. Patent holding companies are not among them.
What do you think is the purpose of patents? My understanding is that patents are supposed be encouraging innovation and the creation of better technologies. I don't see any justification for restricting what my natural rights allow me to build and sell merely to move money to particular people. If you read the summary you would note this company does not create and products with this patent. Nor is it clear that anyone else used the patent or the original patentor's ideas in coming up with this idea. So someone comes up with an arguable obvious patent by thinking of something people do and adding "with a computer" on the end of it. Then, they wait for someone with money to do this thing, and sue them. And you think it is essential that this company gets paid for this because of why again? A patent on something that is never created, or created independently of the patent is a hindrance to innovation, not a benefit.
You can be infected whenever Windows uses its default image viewer to display certain image types. This means there is a long list of applications that are vulnerable that rely upon the image viewer code, but as far as I know no one has yet compiled that list. Windows uses this code when previewing images (for example). The current way this is being exploited is to tell your web browser to open an image (wmf and jpg that I have heard about) in the picture viewer. On IE, this behavior defaults to happening automatically. That means you go to a page and it installs whatever code it wants. With Firefox, you go to a page and a dialogue asks to open a.jpg or.wmf file. If you agree, it installs whatever, but if you decline you're in the clear.
Where do you send the money? And they aren't afraid of getting caught?
My understanding is that this is anti-spyware software that is psuedo-legitimate, that is willing to pay others to get users to install it. It might come pre-installed on some computers, for example. It then runs periodically and asks for money to activate all the features. All of this is legal (if shady).
The deal is that crackers are either auto-installing it via this exploit and a cracked web server, or doing so on a legitimate web server. Thus the money goes to a "legal" software company. Whether it can be traced further than that, to the people that companies pays per install (who have broken the law) is the real question.
Basically, protocol inspection won't work because the user can make the protocol look exactly like (say) viewing slashdot.
Actually, no you can't. Packet inspection technology does not live in a vacuum. An automated system looking for (and allowing) web traffic to Slashdot will notice if you are sending the same traffic to different IPs. An automated system can also pick up on keywords. But this is not about preventing generic communication. This is about stopping particular applications, especially ones that risk exposure. The vast majority of them are easily detected, and those masquerading as HTTP traffic are usually detectable by recording some traffic, making it into a generic signature, and then looking for packets that match it. As I said, this will not always work, but it will catch the vast majority of people trying to hide an application. This works today.
...by allowing the use of embryos, it becomes very easy to arbitrarily define a level of development or disability as the "minimal" human... That's why human rights should start when the sperm joins the egg.
First, you have framed the argument as what is human. This is improper, as the question is what is acceptable to kill in order to provide some, as yet nebulous, benefit. You have inserted an implicit assumption that it is never acceptable to kill a human, which is a completely different topic. Second, you followed your rejection of choosing an arbitrary point with... choosing an arbitrary point. Why when a sperm joins an egg? Why not all sperm and all eggs, even before they are joined?
The question is "what killing is acceptable?" Much of our culture has a belief that all life is valuable, and I agree somewhat. This, however, should not be translated (as it often is) into a dogma of killing is bad. Killing invading organisms in my body is not evil. Killing plants and animals for food is not evil. Killing another human who is trying to kill me is not evil. All of these things are my personal beliefs, based upon my ethical decisions and world view. Some might say that it is evil for me to kill someone who is trying to kill me. Others would say that it is evil to kill an animal for food. The point of my post was that just choosing arbitrarily what killing is acceptable and what is not is not sufficient. It should be based upon reason and logic, particularly given the emotional nature of the arguments often asserted. I don't blame any creature for killing to survive, even if they have to kill me. At the same time, I will not necessarily kill to survive in all circumstances. My own worth to me, must be weighed against the life I would take. If it is me or a cow, I'll be having steak and life will go on. If it is me or a unattached fetus that will never develop or grow a brain, I'll be trying that new stem cell treatment too. If it is me or a fetus that is attached and has the potential to be a thinking individual, but as yet has not grown a brain or had its first though, I'd have to consider it, but most likely I'd decide in my own favor again.
Killing, is not wrong. Killing humans is not wrong. Being human is not what is valuable about a person and makes them worth preserving a little longer. It is intelligence, self-awareness, sentiment, and personality that are valuable and worthy of protection. A cow has all of these things in greater measure than a fetus, and yet we kill them every day for food.
You claim that you fear politicians will arbitrarily define the standard for what can be killed as too high. You fear their is greater danger in defining it too high, rather than too low. Either way, people will die and have their lives ruined. Would I sacrifice a goat so that my mother's spine was healed and so that she could walk again. Yes I would and a fetus too. Would I sacrifice a two-year-old? Probably not. So here's the real rub. There is little or no danger that politicians will implicitly set in law that it is legal to kill humans, even in the womb, once they have developed a brain. It is already against the law, unless a doctor has to choose between the life of the unborn and the mother. There is a danger that politicians will pass laws that remove from me, and everyone else, the right to kill humans that have not yet developed a brain, and many are advocating the passage of those laws. Given that people may disagree on this issue, I think it is important that if I find this killing justified, whereas you are unsure and fearful that it might not be, that each of us is free to choose as we need to. I'm confident in my opinions about what makes life valuable and willing to make choices. All I ask is that laws not be enacted to prevent me.
While I do agree with your argument in principle, there are a couple of flaws with your specifics. Basically, there absolutely should be controls on antibiotics. There are already problems due to improper use and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
You bring up an interesting point, but I'm not sure letting the government decide is working either. Antibiotics have been approved for use in general hand soap, and are widely used now. Doctors over-prescribe antibiotics in hospitals resulting in the problems you mention. Maybe the situation would be much worse without the need for prescriptions, but I'm by no means certain of that.
An uninformed user would likely take them either for the wrong problem or for too short of a time period, causing a much larger problem and rendering them uneffective in the future.
Again, this already happens. Users don't pay attention to the doctor's instructions, which are printed on the bottle. It would not likely be any worse, except the poor could make the same mistakes as those who can afford prescription antibiotics now.
Secondly, many drugs have serious side effects as well as interactions with other drugs that the average person would know very little about.
This is a concern, but most doctors do not properly track drug interactions now. I'd like to see pharmacies or home PCs running a database of drug interactions for each person. In fact, I used to have just such software and used to double check my own medications. I found out a lot more about possible side-effects than the doctor's ever told me. Drugs can list common interactions on the bottle, and likely succeed as well as the current system.
But unfortunately, people aren't all smart or humble or wealthy enough to afford doctors now that they are optional, so they will be likely to make some very bad decisions that affect the rest of us.
And this differs from the current situation how?
You bring up some valid issues, such as how drug use can affect society as a whole and the environment. I'm unconvinced, ho that medical doctors are currently addressing those issues properly. Nor can I find in conscionable to restrict individuals from making these choices for themselves for their own well being. I believe there would be more drug overdoses, and more mistakes, but there would also be more proper application of drugs and fewer financial ruins as a result of medical problems. Perhaps I'm a bit too much of a social darwinist for mainstream society.
No firewall will ever be able to look at traffic and say with certainty "this is legitimate business-related stuff" or "this is somebody BSing with their friends" or "this is someone trying to get a trojan horse in here" or "this is someone trying to post trade secrets"...
No, but router ACLs and a packet inspection service can certainly filter out the largest chunks of data, using application "fingerprints" to determine what particular traffic streams are likely generated by. It will never be 100% perfect, but deployed on core and border routers it can take out the majority of unauthorized application traffic within a network.
...I mean four guys who blame the goverment on everything.
I guess I'll have to join and make it five. I blame the government on human nature and the current state of the universe, which is pretty much everything. Or did you mean blame the government for everything?
thuis[sic] underlines an interesting issue: Should people, even dying ones, be allowed to chose an experemental[sic] treatment?
In my mind it underlines an even more important issue. Who should chose if a dying person undergoes an experimental treatment, the dying person or the government?
I know there are multiple sources for stem cells. I simply objected to the readily available source that the vast majority here are clamoring for without giving a second thought - embryonic stem cells.
Death is death. Cells die. Microorganisms die. Sperm die. Fetuses die. Animals die. Everything dies eventually, and most things die before they even get started. The majority of human fetuses naturally abort. There is value in life, but it is the quality of a life that gives it meaning. No one grieves for the 99.99% of sperm that don't grow up to be a thinking human. If a treatment was found to cure cancer that used human sperm, certain religious groups would try to have it banned because it conflicted with their narrow, religious opinion that masturbation was immoral for some reason. A cow, a pig, or a goat has more intellect and personality than the average aborted fetus. They are more similar to me in all the ways I value, and yet very few of the religious fundamentalists opposed to stem cell research oppose the killing of these animals for food.
Are you really and truly opposed to any death, or are you opposed to certain death? If the former, kill yourself now. Your body is extinguishing innumerable microorganisms daily. If the latter, what kind of death are you opposed to any why? What makes a small bundle of cells, without a brain or the capability to live on its own a more tragic death than the death of a cow? What traits of that being do you value more? Is it merely being human? Are humans superior to all other animals for some reason? Other animals are likely smarter, faster, more loving to their own, less deceitful and have many other superior qualities. Is it because we are the most powerful animals... because that might change in the future. Ants could evolve and overrun the planet, or something more technologically advanced could happen by.
A fetus is no more a human than any other group of tissues. Are you opposed to cornea transplants from a dead person to a living? A cornea is just as human and about as complete as a fetus. Is taking that tissue from a dead being any different that taking stem cells from an aborted fetus? Both benefit someone else. If so why? I'm really trying to understand your logic here. Explain it to me.
There is always a balance to be struck between safety and delay. The procedures exist for exactly this reason: to guide us in balancing risk and potential reward.
I think the guidelines are improperly set. The government has made many things illegal, or restricted in an attempt to force us to be safe. I, for one, think that is a tyrannical act. To place physical safety above the freedom to make our own choices is unethical, and is a usurpation of individual rights. I'm all for the government regulating drug quality and medical procedures. I'm all for government oversight of new drugs and techniques. What I oppose is actually restricting the availability of those drugs. Why do I need a prescription for a antibiotic? Sure it is very advisable to get a doctor's advice before taking any drugs. I'd certainly always endeavor to do so. But given the choice between taking a fairly safe antibiotic based upon a self-diagnosis, or risking serious injury or crippling medical expenses from an emergency room visit I'll take the self diagnosis. The U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations without socialized health care, but at the same time that they are promoting a free market for medicine, they are preventing a free market by restricting the sale of the medicines themselves. As a result it is very common for a person to have no healthcare and be unable to afford to get medical treatment and also be banned from legally obtaining drugs to try to treat themselves. The last time I looked, more than half of all personal bankruptcies were the result of medical bills. It should be up to the individual to decide for themselves what risks to take.
I'd extend this same philosophy to stem cells. If I'm dying and unlikely to last another six months, why should the government be preventing me from legally trying stem cell, drug, or other experimental procedures? What exactly is the risk, that I'll die a little faster?
No thanks, I'll not inject myself with dead babies.
Calling a stem cell a baby, is like calling a microwave a weapon of mass destruction. Stem cells are just that, cells. They have the potential to become something else, given the proper conditions, but so does pretty much anything else. Vitamins could be given to a pregnant woman, and then make there way through her body to her fetus, which could then grow into a sentient human being. The vitamins would make up part of that new person's body. But what if the woman had an abortion? Then those vitamins would be wasted. And, by your arguments, it would be unethical to reuse them.
If you think abortion is wrong, all the time, at any point in the process, well that is just fine. But arguing that abortion, by association, taints the very matter of the universe, well that is just plain foolish.
As a side note, you do know that there are many sources for stem cells, aside from abortions, right?
This is idiocy - any disclosure of data which is unwanted can be damaging; so, are we not to have it?
No it is not idiocy. Sharing metadata can be both useful and disastrous, as shown by the metadata often shared with Word files. The concern is that, like MS Word, Vista will include metadata in shared files without providing a proper UI that informs the user and makes sure they are aware of that metadata. MS does not exactly have a stellar record in this regard. Third parties currently provide applications for cleaning Word files of metadata (which in the past has occasionally included random chunks of data from your hard drive). Less expert users are usually the ones that suffer because of this.
I think it is important to both inform users and to pressure MS to provide a proper interface to avoid problems with unintended metadata sharing. For example, when e-mailing or otherwise transferring a file, by default a list of the included metadata should probably be shown as well as an option to delete any of it that is unwanted.
Looking back I wonder if there is still a chance private data could be leaked, that somehow PDF layers the hidden stuff underneath and if someone were to peel back the top.
For the most part, no. PDF files do, however, support the concept of layers (which must be explicitly created by the authoring program). The only security issues I've seen with this is where people layer black boxes over text to censor them, not realizing the information under the boxes is still there and readable. This has caused several important disclosures and usually a reader need only copy and paste the text to have a readable, uncensored, version.
Isn't this like saying Airbags are too safe? I thought whole point of metadata is to make it easier to search and find data? How can it be *too* helpful?
It is possible for something to be helpful in some instances and harmful in others. Airbags can cause accidents if they go off when something hits the bumper, but would not otherwise have caused a crash. Most likely there are more crashes because of airbags, but fewer serious injuries.
In this particular case, metadata can be great for finding things but many users may not know that it exists, leading them to give away information without realizing it. For a real world example, Word files already contain a lot of information that the user may not know has been added. I once received a request for a bid from a vendor that included metadata to tell me it had originally been written for a competitor and included recoverable information on which components they were bidding on. Job posting forms written in Word have occasionally given me the name and phone number of the person doing the hiring, something that can be very useful if you are looking for a job in the security field. All this information was useful to me, but that does not mean the authors wanted me to have it. Meta-data that is not very visible to the end user, may very well be a security issue.
Actually, anti-virus software is nothing but snake oil and a money grab these days.
I guess that depends upon what you mean by "anti-virus." Server-side scanning is very useful, especially for e-mail servers and the like. Also, IDSs that include an AV component can be quite useful, discovering even zero-day worms on a network and shutting them down, while making a list of compromised machines. Client-side systems are less useful, I'll agree, but they do have their place in cleaning up old infections that are known about.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I'm the only one on Slashdot who thinks it's reasonable for record labels to want to make some money.
Nope, I certainly don't think it is wrong for them to want money. I just don't see what valuable service they provide that they should have the right to be given money. Artists make art and should be paid for it. The RIAA has colluded to take over all the major distribution channels for music. As such they force artists to give up their copyrights in order to be heard. This is unethical and most likely illegal. Artists should be paid for their works. Promoters and advertisers should be paid for their advertising. Investors should be paid for their initial capital. Shipping companies should be paid to move goods. Retail outlets should be paid for their retail space and sales force. The RIAA should die, as they provide nothing to benefit anyone. The majority of artists in the US who sign with the RIAA actually have to pay for the privilege and try to make money on concerts and merchandise. When artists are paid negative money for their intellectual property, the system is fundamentally broken. I'd like to see severely decreased copyright durations, and a stipulation that only the original artist(s) can hold copyright to works. I'd also like to see enforced, percentage based minimum royalties on artistic works and the RIAA banned from collusion for their past illegal price fixing. If they want money, let them actually provide a service instead of building a barrier. Toll bridges are fine, so long as they are not over artificially created chasms between your home and your workplace.
The fact that they made a small design mistake isn't really that surprising. These things happen all the time.
I'm not sure you can write this off as a small design mistake. This seems to me more like a fundamental design flaw based on a series of bad choices. They want you to run a Windows based server, outside your firewall, running a number of services, with security data stored unencrypted, and full privileges to the corporate e-mail server. That sounds like someone's friend or nephew was running the server project and either would not listen to advice that things should be done right, rather than quickly, or simply was unable to hire competent personnel. This is why companies making products like these should have a security team outside each project's chain of command, and why that team should be listened to. Now, who will trust them to do the right thing next time. What security conscious company will consider them as a solution provider?
I'm not sure quite what you're trying to say here. The exploits being used in the wild, as far as I have heard, are not embedding the .wmf with an img tag, but are invoking an auto-launch script when the page loads (sort of like you automatically click on it). Theoretically, a person could embed a 1x1 wmf file as you describe, but named with the .jpg extension, and IE would be infected, but that would make the exploit less effective against other browsers since Firefox would just show the image as a broken jpeg, rather than asking you to load it.
Tell me, if a company appropriated the trade secrets of a rival company without permission (what is commonly known as "stealing" trade secrets) would you consider that "stealing" even though the wronged company still has possession of copies of said secrets?
No, I would not. I usually hear such activities referred to as "industrial espionage" or "appropriation" of trade secrets in any reputable publication with competent writers.
I assume you would admit that it falls under one of the basic categories of "wrong", namely "lie", "cheat", "steal", "injure", "kill". So if not "stealing", then perhaps you'd be willing to call it "cheating"; I guess that eases your conscience when browsing for warez - "I'm not stealing, just cheating!!". LOL
Believe it or not, I don't have a strong stand when it comes to trade secrets. I'm certainly not sure they deserve legal protection on the order they are given. Almost all the valid cases I have heard in support of them are already covered by stock manipulation laws and slander/libel laws. I'm not sure I see any benefit to society for them, although the appropriation of them usually involves the breaking of other laws, and should be punished appropriately. For example, If I find a file folder open it and see a bunch of documents labeled "top secret, property of Microsoft" I'm not convinced that there is any ethical problem with myself or a newspaper printing the contents of that file folder. Although, the folder and contents themselves should be returned to the rightful owners.
BTW, dictionary definition of "steal": To take or appropriate without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wongly[sic].
Copied from another thread I posted this in: From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another." You must have the abridged+spelling errors edition.
Does that mean that I should not be paid for my work?
Do you want to be paid for your work or your idea? Do you want to be paid when you do something useful (create software) or just whenever someone uses your software forever. What about after you are dead, should your heirs, or the company that now owns the rights to your work still profit? Should Shakespeare's works be re-copyrighted and denied to the public until his heirs can be found? What about the bible? Should it be copyrighted and no longer distributed until the descendants of those who wrote all the stories in the old testament have been found?
So called "intellectual property" rights are not natural rights. Naturally I have the right to free speech. That means I can say whatever I want, even if I am singing a song someone else made up. Long ago, the government decided it was proper to make a trade. In order to "promote science and useful arts" they decided to restrict my free speech for a limited time (7-14 years) in the hope that it would encourage artists to make more songs. In exchange The artist had to send several good copies of that song to a repository where it would be preserved. In this way artists would be given incentive to create and share works, rather than keep them secret at the risk that they would perish forever. It was a good deal at the time and benefitted everyone. Seven years was a reasonable amount of time in which to make a profit (given 1700's era printing and distribution methods) and a large repository of valuable works were collected and saved from destruction. Many of those works are now important historical and cultural pieces. The only real problem was the danger that the rights to works would be collected by a few and used to control access to information and culture (as the great publishing houses of Europe had done). But the writers of American copyright law enacted several provisions to prevent that. Copyrights were limited in duration and purpose in the constitution and copies were held by the government.
Now Fast forward two hundred years. Corrupt politicians have purposely broken the laws in violation of the constitution, at the behest of large companies that collected copyrights from the authors, having gained control of the distribution mechanisms. The supreme court ruled that although the practically unlimited copyright durations and lack of "promotion of arts and sciences" probably violate the constitution, it is a vague provision and not the place of the supreme court to decide whether or not a particular term really did promote science and arts (even though they said they almost certainly do not). Thus we, the people, are left with nothing of our half of the bargain. No copies are kept. Works vanish forever. Other works exist somewhere, but are available to basically no one, except a wealthy few collectors.
And we the creators of art and science are in just as bad a situation as those of old Europe. It is nearly impossible for a singer to be heard widely without giving up their copyright to a big publishing house. Huge amounts of work that have outlived their profitability and should be available for us to use, remain locked up and dead. Video games that cannot be purchased anywhere, or played on any existing system vanish from the minds of the people because the law prohibits them from being shared, or altered by the people. Most are owned by some company that doesn't exist any more or by indeterminate parties. Even non-commercial copying of these works, to preserve them, has been made illegal.
That said, I think it is overkill to abolish copyrights. Like you, I rely upon it for my living. I think as it was originally created (but with much shorter terms to reflect modern technology) it can be a boon to society. Still, I'd rather it was abolished than that it continue as it is. I can make money from contract work and I can make money from tertiary sources of income, surrounding my works (like selling ad space next to the first printings of my new works). What
How can a criminal be elected so he can depenalize the very same things he's illegally doing? It would be like naming Al Capone for the US senate to ban the Dry Law.
Actually, I feel it is very important that criminals, both convicted and free, have the ability to vote to legalize whatever it is they are imprisoned for. Otherwise democracy is undermined by removing the portion of the voting public that disagrees on an issue. With expanding prison populations this becomes a real threat. A huge number of people are imprisoned and denied the right to vote. If we'd had enough police presence and prison space to lock up and deny voting rights to all of those who were illegally drinking in the US, would prohibition have been repealed?
As an aside, I read a story once about military intelligence putting a stop to the first free elections in Vietnam after their preliminary survey indicated that Ho Chi Min (the communist war hero) stood a good chance of winning. The US has often talked about the importance of democracy, but their actions show a greater interest in creating governments that they can manipulate and profit from.
Spoken like someone who's never had an idea worth any money.
Actually, I make the majority of my income as a professional writer and I rely upon intellectual property (as the grandparent post referred to it) to pay for my heating bills and video games. I also understand the importance of precise and accurate speaking and writing. It is fine to use stealing as a metaphor (it is one of the most common and some might say overused). It is not fine to actually claim that the term means something else. You might as well call it murdering intellectual property or raping intellectual property.
Theft is any time that someone acquires property from someone without their permission.
From Webster: Steal v. t. "To take, and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another."
How exactly can I carry away so called intellectual property? Do do so (rather than to copy it and carry away a copy) requires that I deprive the original "owner" of that property. Making a copy of a dollar bill is not called stealing, it is called counterfeiting. Making a copy of a copyrighted book without permission is not called stealing. It is called copyright infringement. Knowingly violating a patent is not called stealing. It is called patent violation (or patent infringement). Passing off another's work as my own is not stealing. It is called plagiarism. Buy a dictionary already.
If a teenager stole my car every night and when joyriding but brought in back every morning before I left for work I would still consider it stealing.
...but you'd probably be wrong. They may have illegally borrowed your car, but if they intend to return it, it is not stealing, unless you count them keeping it for a time as "keeping it." In any case, copying something is not stealing it. That is why we have different words for different things. It makes these distinctions clear.
Are there really that many people, even on Slashdot, that think stealing intellectual property is not wrong?
Hopefully, most people on Slashdot are educated enough to know that "stealing intellectual property" is not even possible, by definition. (Well, maybe it is possible with some sort of memory erasing device.)
An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims. He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits. There are many things wrong with the patent system. Patent holding companies are not among them.
What do you think is the purpose of patents? My understanding is that patents are supposed be encouraging innovation and the creation of better technologies. I don't see any justification for restricting what my natural rights allow me to build and sell merely to move money to particular people. If you read the summary you would note this company does not create and products with this patent. Nor is it clear that anyone else used the patent or the original patentor's ideas in coming up with this idea. So someone comes up with an arguable obvious patent by thinking of something people do and adding "with a computer" on the end of it. Then, they wait for someone with money to do this thing, and sue them. And you think it is essential that this company gets paid for this because of why again? A patent on something that is never created, or created independently of the patent is a hindrance to innovation, not a benefit.
You can be infected whenever Windows uses its default image viewer to display certain image types. This means there is a long list of applications that are vulnerable that rely upon the image viewer code, but as far as I know no one has yet compiled that list. Windows uses this code when previewing images (for example). The current way this is being exploited is to tell your web browser to open an image (wmf and jpg that I have heard about) in the picture viewer. On IE, this behavior defaults to happening automatically. That means you go to a page and it installs whatever code it wants. With Firefox, you go to a page and a dialogue asks to open a .jpg or .wmf file. If you agree, it installs whatever, but if you decline you're in the clear.
Where do you send the money? And they aren't afraid of getting caught?
My understanding is that this is anti-spyware software that is psuedo-legitimate, that is willing to pay others to get users to install it. It might come pre-installed on some computers, for example. It then runs periodically and asks for money to activate all the features. All of this is legal (if shady).
The deal is that crackers are either auto-installing it via this exploit and a cracked web server, or doing so on a legitimate web server. Thus the money goes to a "legal" software company. Whether it can be traced further than that, to the people that companies pays per install (who have broken the law) is the real question.
Basically, protocol inspection won't work because the user can make the protocol look exactly like (say) viewing slashdot.
Actually, no you can't. Packet inspection technology does not live in a vacuum. An automated system looking for (and allowing) web traffic to Slashdot will notice if you are sending the same traffic to different IPs. An automated system can also pick up on keywords. But this is not about preventing generic communication. This is about stopping particular applications, especially ones that risk exposure. The vast majority of them are easily detected, and those masquerading as HTTP traffic are usually detectable by recording some traffic, making it into a generic signature, and then looking for packets that match it. As I said, this will not always work, but it will catch the vast majority of people trying to hide an application. This works today.
First, you have framed the argument as what is human. This is improper, as the question is what is acceptable to kill in order to provide some, as yet nebulous, benefit. You have inserted an implicit assumption that it is never acceptable to kill a human, which is a completely different topic. Second, you followed your rejection of choosing an arbitrary point with... choosing an arbitrary point. Why when a sperm joins an egg? Why not all sperm and all eggs, even before they are joined?
The question is "what killing is acceptable?" Much of our culture has a belief that all life is valuable, and I agree somewhat. This, however, should not be translated (as it often is) into a dogma of killing is bad. Killing invading organisms in my body is not evil. Killing plants and animals for food is not evil. Killing another human who is trying to kill me is not evil. All of these things are my personal beliefs, based upon my ethical decisions and world view. Some might say that it is evil for me to kill someone who is trying to kill me. Others would say that it is evil to kill an animal for food. The point of my post was that just choosing arbitrarily what killing is acceptable and what is not is not sufficient. It should be based upon reason and logic, particularly given the emotional nature of the arguments often asserted. I don't blame any creature for killing to survive, even if they have to kill me. At the same time, I will not necessarily kill to survive in all circumstances. My own worth to me, must be weighed against the life I would take. If it is me or a cow, I'll be having steak and life will go on. If it is me or a unattached fetus that will never develop or grow a brain, I'll be trying that new stem cell treatment too. If it is me or a fetus that is attached and has the potential to be a thinking individual, but as yet has not grown a brain or had its first though, I'd have to consider it, but most likely I'd decide in my own favor again.
Killing, is not wrong. Killing humans is not wrong. Being human is not what is valuable about a person and makes them worth preserving a little longer. It is intelligence, self-awareness, sentiment, and personality that are valuable and worthy of protection. A cow has all of these things in greater measure than a fetus, and yet we kill them every day for food.
You claim that you fear politicians will arbitrarily define the standard for what can be killed as too high. You fear their is greater danger in defining it too high, rather than too low. Either way, people will die and have their lives ruined. Would I sacrifice a goat so that my mother's spine was healed and so that she could walk again. Yes I would and a fetus too. Would I sacrifice a two-year-old? Probably not. So here's the real rub. There is little or no danger that politicians will implicitly set in law that it is legal to kill humans, even in the womb, once they have developed a brain. It is already against the law, unless a doctor has to choose between the life of the unborn and the mother. There is a danger that politicians will pass laws that remove from me, and everyone else, the right to kill humans that have not yet developed a brain, and many are advocating the passage of those laws. Given that people may disagree on this issue, I think it is important that if I find this killing justified, whereas you are unsure and fearful that it might not be, that each of us is free to choose as we need to. I'm confident in my opinions about what makes life valuable and willing to make choices. All I ask is that laws not be enacted to prevent me.
While I do agree with your argument in principle, there are a couple of flaws with your specifics. Basically, there absolutely should be controls on antibiotics. There are already problems due to improper use and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
You bring up an interesting point, but I'm not sure letting the government decide is working either. Antibiotics have been approved for use in general hand soap, and are widely used now. Doctors over-prescribe antibiotics in hospitals resulting in the problems you mention. Maybe the situation would be much worse without the need for prescriptions, but I'm by no means certain of that.
An uninformed user would likely take them either for the wrong problem or for too short of a time period, causing a much larger problem and rendering them uneffective in the future.
Again, this already happens. Users don't pay attention to the doctor's instructions, which are printed on the bottle. It would not likely be any worse, except the poor could make the same mistakes as those who can afford prescription antibiotics now.
Secondly, many drugs have serious side effects as well as interactions with other drugs that the average person would know very little about.
This is a concern, but most doctors do not properly track drug interactions now. I'd like to see pharmacies or home PCs running a database of drug interactions for each person. In fact, I used to have just such software and used to double check my own medications. I found out a lot more about possible side-effects than the doctor's ever told me. Drugs can list common interactions on the bottle, and likely succeed as well as the current system.
But unfortunately, people aren't all smart or humble or wealthy enough to afford doctors now that they are optional, so they will be likely to make some very bad decisions that affect the rest of us.
And this differs from the current situation how?
You bring up some valid issues, such as how drug use can affect society as a whole and the environment. I'm unconvinced, ho that medical doctors are currently addressing those issues properly. Nor can I find in conscionable to restrict individuals from making these choices for themselves for their own well being. I believe there would be more drug overdoses, and more mistakes, but there would also be more proper application of drugs and fewer financial ruins as a result of medical problems. Perhaps I'm a bit too much of a social darwinist for mainstream society.
No firewall will ever be able to look at traffic and say with certainty "this is legitimate business-related stuff" or "this is somebody BSing with their friends" or "this is someone trying to get a trojan horse in here" or "this is someone trying to post trade secrets"...
No, but router ACLs and a packet inspection service can certainly filter out the largest chunks of data, using application "fingerprints" to determine what particular traffic streams are likely generated by. It will never be 100% perfect, but deployed on core and border routers it can take out the majority of unauthorized application traffic within a network.
I guess I'll have to join and make it five. I blame the government on human nature and the current state of the universe, which is pretty much everything. Or did you mean blame the government for everything?
thuis[sic] underlines an interesting issue: Should people, even dying ones, be allowed to chose an experemental[sic] treatment?
In my mind it underlines an even more important issue. Who should chose if a dying person undergoes an experimental treatment, the dying person or the government?
I know there are multiple sources for stem cells. I simply objected to the readily available source that the vast majority here are clamoring for without giving a second thought - embryonic stem cells.
Death is death. Cells die. Microorganisms die. Sperm die. Fetuses die. Animals die. Everything dies eventually, and most things die before they even get started. The majority of human fetuses naturally abort. There is value in life, but it is the quality of a life that gives it meaning. No one grieves for the 99.99% of sperm that don't grow up to be a thinking human. If a treatment was found to cure cancer that used human sperm, certain religious groups would try to have it banned because it conflicted with their narrow, religious opinion that masturbation was immoral for some reason. A cow, a pig, or a goat has more intellect and personality than the average aborted fetus. They are more similar to me in all the ways I value, and yet very few of the religious fundamentalists opposed to stem cell research oppose the killing of these animals for food.
Are you really and truly opposed to any death, or are you opposed to certain death? If the former, kill yourself now. Your body is extinguishing innumerable microorganisms daily. If the latter, what kind of death are you opposed to any why? What makes a small bundle of cells, without a brain or the capability to live on its own a more tragic death than the death of a cow? What traits of that being do you value more? Is it merely being human? Are humans superior to all other animals for some reason? Other animals are likely smarter, faster, more loving to their own, less deceitful and have many other superior qualities. Is it because we are the most powerful animals... because that might change in the future. Ants could evolve and overrun the planet, or something more technologically advanced could happen by.
A fetus is no more a human than any other group of tissues. Are you opposed to cornea transplants from a dead person to a living? A cornea is just as human and about as complete as a fetus. Is taking that tissue from a dead being any different that taking stem cells from an aborted fetus? Both benefit someone else. If so why? I'm really trying to understand your logic here. Explain it to me.
There is always a balance to be struck between safety and delay. The procedures exist for exactly this reason: to guide us in balancing risk and potential reward.
I think the guidelines are improperly set. The government has made many things illegal, or restricted in an attempt to force us to be safe. I, for one, think that is a tyrannical act. To place physical safety above the freedom to make our own choices is unethical, and is a usurpation of individual rights. I'm all for the government regulating drug quality and medical procedures. I'm all for government oversight of new drugs and techniques. What I oppose is actually restricting the availability of those drugs. Why do I need a prescription for a antibiotic? Sure it is very advisable to get a doctor's advice before taking any drugs. I'd certainly always endeavor to do so. But given the choice between taking a fairly safe antibiotic based upon a self-diagnosis, or risking serious injury or crippling medical expenses from an emergency room visit I'll take the self diagnosis. The U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations without socialized health care, but at the same time that they are promoting a free market for medicine, they are preventing a free market by restricting the sale of the medicines themselves. As a result it is very common for a person to have no healthcare and be unable to afford to get medical treatment and also be banned from legally obtaining drugs to try to treat themselves. The last time I looked, more than half of all personal bankruptcies were the result of medical bills. It should be up to the individual to decide for themselves what risks to take.
I'd extend this same philosophy to stem cells. If I'm dying and unlikely to last another six months, why should the government be preventing me from legally trying stem cell, drug, or other experimental procedures? What exactly is the risk, that I'll die a little faster?
No thanks, I'll not inject myself with dead babies.
Calling a stem cell a baby, is like calling a microwave a weapon of mass destruction. Stem cells are just that, cells. They have the potential to become something else, given the proper conditions, but so does pretty much anything else. Vitamins could be given to a pregnant woman, and then make there way through her body to her fetus, which could then grow into a sentient human being. The vitamins would make up part of that new person's body. But what if the woman had an abortion? Then those vitamins would be wasted. And, by your arguments, it would be unethical to reuse them.
If you think abortion is wrong, all the time, at any point in the process, well that is just fine. But arguing that abortion, by association, taints the very matter of the universe, well that is just plain foolish.
As a side note, you do know that there are many sources for stem cells, aside from abortions, right?
This is idiocy - any disclosure of data which is unwanted can be damaging; so, are we not to have it?
No it is not idiocy. Sharing metadata can be both useful and disastrous, as shown by the metadata often shared with Word files. The concern is that, like MS Word, Vista will include metadata in shared files without providing a proper UI that informs the user and makes sure they are aware of that metadata. MS does not exactly have a stellar record in this regard. Third parties currently provide applications for cleaning Word files of metadata (which in the past has occasionally included random chunks of data from your hard drive). Less expert users are usually the ones that suffer because of this.
I think it is important to both inform users and to pressure MS to provide a proper interface to avoid problems with unintended metadata sharing. For example, when e-mailing or otherwise transferring a file, by default a list of the included metadata should probably be shown as well as an option to delete any of it that is unwanted.
Looking back I wonder if there is still a chance private data could be leaked, that somehow PDF layers the hidden stuff underneath and if someone were to peel back the top.
For the most part, no. PDF files do, however, support the concept of layers (which must be explicitly created by the authoring program). The only security issues I've seen with this is where people layer black boxes over text to censor them, not realizing the information under the boxes is still there and readable. This has caused several important disclosures and usually a reader need only copy and paste the text to have a readable, uncensored, version.
Isn't this like saying Airbags are too safe? I thought whole point of metadata is to make it easier to search and find data? How can it be *too* helpful?
It is possible for something to be helpful in some instances and harmful in others. Airbags can cause accidents if they go off when something hits the bumper, but would not otherwise have caused a crash. Most likely there are more crashes because of airbags, but fewer serious injuries.
In this particular case, metadata can be great for finding things but many users may not know that it exists, leading them to give away information without realizing it. For a real world example, Word files already contain a lot of information that the user may not know has been added. I once received a request for a bid from a vendor that included metadata to tell me it had originally been written for a competitor and included recoverable information on which components they were bidding on. Job posting forms written in Word have occasionally given me the name and phone number of the person doing the hiring, something that can be very useful if you are looking for a job in the security field. All this information was useful to me, but that does not mean the authors wanted me to have it. Meta-data that is not very visible to the end user, may very well be a security issue.
Actually, anti-virus software is nothing but snake oil and a money grab these days.
I guess that depends upon what you mean by "anti-virus." Server-side scanning is very useful, especially for e-mail servers and the like. Also, IDSs that include an AV component can be quite useful, discovering even zero-day worms on a network and shutting them down, while making a list of compromised machines. Client-side systems are less useful, I'll agree, but they do have their place in cleaning up old infections that are known about.