If your system suffered a successful intrusion, you wipe.
Of course, there were LKM rootkits (pretty hard to detect) for a good while now, this is just taking it to an all new level.
I wish the spread of better hidden rootkits on Windows, because only that will further sane security policies and wipe the stupid idea of virus scanners out (when it's doing IDS not IPS). There ain't such thing as 'intrusion removal'. It's like putting on a condom after sex. Oh wait, it's slashdot. Let me rephrase. It is like trying to recover data from/dev/null.
The difference is that all the examples you've listed deal with services with a monthly fee, not products. It is quite unheard of to shut down equipment you've paid for (or haven't).
In practice, fair use is an incredibly fuzzy thing. If you can't pay or your company can't pay a team of lawyers to protect your fair use rights against the 800lb gorillas from Hollywood, then you better not do it.
Lawrence Lessig details this issue in his book. Basically, even if it is a cut clear case of fair use, even then it is only clear cut as long as you have the lawyers to back that up. Lessig mentions the case when some documentary filmmaker was filming in a theatre and there was about 4 seconds of Simpsons caught on footage from a tv in the corner of the recorded picture. The guy who made the documentary wanted to clear rights for that 4 seconds, and the company who owns the rights to Simpsons demanded $10,000 (for something theoretically free under fair use). He couldn't even think about just using it anyway based on fair use, because the company he was making the documentary for had insured his production. It ment that lawyers would review the production and they would look for (among others) fair use parts, and if they didn't clear rights for those supposedly fair use parts from the copyright holder, they would most certainly never approve the production, because in their opinion it would carry too much of a risk factor.
DMCA, copyright and patent laws are broken to some extent. Anti trust laws are only broken in that they should be harsher.
There is no conflict here, most reasonable disinterested people oppose bad laws and mostly accept reasonable ones.
Slashdot may be guilty of some groupthink, but I doubt that. There are simply too many different people here. That's a good thing, I'd hate to see everyone agree with me whole day, where would I go for a good discussion?
Hm. Interesting perspective on scholarships. Let me show you another one, from Europe.
We have state sponsored education in my country. You can also pay if you want to get into the university with a bit lower scores.
We have a grant system based on a student's average grade. On the top of that we've got scholarships, you apply, they tell you if you've been accepted, you sign a form (not a contract! It is governed by educational law so no contract is required).
If a university would tell me to quit being registered on a website I'd most likely first laugh them in the face about the absurdity they want. Even if I would have a scholarship. The point is, just because you've got free education or even a nice scholarship on the top of that, it doesn't mean they should be able to force you to do stupid shit like this just because of that.
Now, I realise that there are differences between my example and this case, but even if they agreed to a contract with the college/university/whatever, it is not certain whether it has a clause by which they can sanction this kind of thing. Even if it has such clause, it could be still horribly wrong and maybe even breaking your laws, because it is a government institution that is doing this. Just because someone gets a scholarship, a government institution shouldn't bastardise the meaning of a scholarship to mean a paid slave/pr drone.
I certainly can understand that you might not be too concerned about losing something most of you never had (so you had to pay for university education), but the scholarship and the censorship should be separated from each other. Accepting a scholarship shouldn't be a faustian business deal. It shouldn't come with this kind of strings attached.
But seriously, I understand if someone wants to use PHP, their choice (of masochism). But why on earth would you want to use PHP and Perl together? Perl is clearly a better language, so why don't you use Perl by itself? You'd get rid of the useless interfacing and the idiocy that is PHP.
RIAA (and all almighty power they have) would not have existed in first place if there were no need of them.
I highly doubt that. The only need why they exist is their own 'need' for cash and control. Most things aren't exist because there is a need for them, they exist because they can survive.
So you are suggesting that all cultural work should be free to everyone to do with as they wish?
While I'm not the poster you've responded to, I'd say yes. A few reasons why: currently improving/sourcing contemporary works isn't possible, so our culture suffers. It is a bit like explaining to someone who had never had something the virtues of that something, but it is not impossible.
Culture is a melting pot. It should be like that at least. It is much better when it relies on human creativity rather than trying to mass produce it. It cannot be mass produced.
Why does copyright exist (theoretically)? To give an incentive for creation. Why was it necessary when it was made into the constitution? Because printing was expensive and had a barrier of entry. Today that barrier is very, very small, so we don't get too much in return for that incentive, but the damage it creates to have long copyright terms or copyright at all, is huge. Most culturally valuable products wouldn't stop being created if copyright were to disappear overnight, but actually if copyright were to be abolished today, a huge wave of creation would begin, because of all the content locked away from improvement and reuse today. Creating culture is not property, shouldn't be treated as such. Unless of course you suggest that food for thought to be taken literally too and health organizations should test and approve this particular food for thought. Oh wait, isn't it what they were/are doing in most dictatorships?
DRM is effective copyright. We don't need laws to support them then, especially because they are violating copyright law. It grants a temporary monopoly. DRM is not temporary. Copyright law has a huge section, which used to be huge at least, called unregulated use. DRM stops unregulated use. DRM also stops fair use. It can be seen clearly why is it contrary to copyright law. Actually it is not contrary, but merely a much stronger technological means to empose limits on the ordinary people than copyright ever did. Corporations today should have a choice: Copyright or DRM (exclusive or).
I could cope with a very short term copyright, like 5 years, but it still would be worse than having no copyright at all. Monopolies are _bad_. No exceptions.
I cannot even begin to discuss this topic, we could talk about it for literally years. Maybe read Lawrence Lessig's book, "Free Culture" for a start.
Ugh. What are you talking about? So after 100 years the millions of tonns of CO2 from the atmosphere will just disappear by a wave of a magic wand or what? Btw, it isn't about being hotter for us humans. Even 5C wouldn't matter for most people on the plus side. But 1-2C increase wrecks havoc in the whole environment.
You're viewing humanity on a million year scale. That is wrong in this context. Civilization exists, if you want to be generous, for 15000 years at max. Progress is exponential. We kind of "exploded" in numbers, in knowledge in that timeframe. In just 1000 years, we will either be colonizing the solar system / nearby planets or live in caves / not live at all. Unless we invent a new way to get rid of CO2 from the atmosphere, there is a high possibility that the pollution we create today will be there in 1000 years aswell.
That is what sets America apart from the rest of the world.
That is what sets the USA apart from fascist countries.
Here, I've corrected it for you. This is my pet peeve: the USA isn't the country which has the most freedom today. Try Sweden, Finland, Denmark or Norway if you're looking for the most freedom.
Yes. This is the "Oh look! There is a brick wall coming and I can't stop my car in time fully to avoid collision! What could I do?! Let's just put the pedal to the metal, then!" mentality.
Some people are whining what China will/might do in the future. Some people are whining that the Kyoto protocol is not affecting change enough. I have this to say to them:
It is the "now" today. As of today the US of A is the biggest pollutant on the planet, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. It is necessary to minimalize CO2 emission as much as you can on the long term. Kyoto isn't supposed to solve it all, but it is a good _first_ step. Oh btw, damage to the economy you say? I say benefit to the economy. How fragile it is depending on fossil fuel? How fragile your political climate is depending on so much oil from the "axis of evil"? Not to mention it will only become more fragile in the future: fact - in 1985 oil discoveries were surpassed by the increase in demand. It means that in the coming years, production will not be able to keep up with demand, so prices will go only up and shortage will ensue. It is not a recipe for economic stability. Investing in economically viable non fossil non CO2 producing technologies make economic, environmental and long term sense. Also, China doesn't have oil, but it has coal. What better way is there to make China not tap into these sources and therefor increase pollution, than to develop new technologies that produce energy more efficiently?
Remember, it is always harder to fix something after it becomes broken, rather than to avoid/minimize the breakage in the first place! It is high time something was done about it, because we're already at the last second when we can do something about it.
Lawrence Lessig in his book called Free Culture (freely downloadable in pdf, google it) details how is this broken.
The researchers are able to research, but they are not able to publish their findings. So they can't share what they've learned legally. This is the difference between theory and practice.
Oh wait, was that offensive? Yes it was. I'M FUCKING TIRED OF FRENCH BASHING BECAUSE THE USA AND ITS RESIDENTS DONT HAVE ANYTHING TO JUSTIFY THEIR PERCIEVED SUPERIORITY. Maybe the French should just take their Statue of Liberty home?
Seriously, when I get modded up for cracking a joke about how stupid americans are - which is newsflash! the current stereotype around the world - then I'll consider it fair to bash the french.
I'm not french, I've only been once in their country and it still pisses me off to see these comments modded up to funny. It is not funny.
Oh and btw, the French army history is one of the biggest in the entirely world if not the biggest, in the number of fought battles (and won).
Please don't take this as a personal affair, my problem is not with you, but the general french bashing. It is stupid, childish and annoying.
I'm also not going to make any disclaimers about how I'll be modded to hell for expressing a controversial opinion, because it serves no purpose apart from the told-you-so feeling of the poster if the post does get modded down. I'm simply willing to stand by my thoughts, be it -1 or +5.
Several years ago the George Bush article kept being reverted back and forth between vandalized versions and unvandalized versions so much...
Another proof that wikipedia is accurate. GW keeps flopping out from reality so often, so maybe locking him permanently in La-La land would do him good, not to mention us.
guarantees free speech in the constitution (which is NOT typically guranteed in Europe)
Well, I think you mean UK on "most of Europe" as they don't have a constitution, but for much of Continental Europe your statement doesn't stand.
Specifically, my country's constitution specifically says "61. (1) A Magyar Köztársaságban mindenkinek joga van a szabad véleménynyilvánításra, továbbá arra, hogy a közérdek adatokat megismerje, illetleg terjessze.", which is a normal free speech declaration. All constitutions only matter if they are stricly enforced and noone is exempt from obeying them in a given country. Can you say that with good faith that your current administration obeys the constitution of your country?
"That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative. The onus is on the supporters of the global warming theory to come up with extremely strong evidence for their claims, they just haven't done so. Those opposed to the idea of global warming have to responsiblity to do anything here."
You can't prove a negative, if you're logically strict that is true. BUT YOU CAN prove a statement that is contrary to what you want to disprove, therefor invalidating it.
This is the difference between:
a.) Global warming doesn't exist, because...
b.) The temperature is decreasing, because [insert proof here], so we can conclude that the temperature is not increasing, so no global warming is happening.
Your understanding of the scientific process is weak at the best, it's play on words. One of the requirements of science is falsifyability, which means that the theory can be proven WRONG, and it is the continous process of trying to disprove the theory (and not succeeding) what makes a theory a scientific theory!
I'd also like to add that the scientific evidence for global warming, especially man induced global warming is overwhelming and noone brought up an argument against it in any serious scientific journal. We should focus on what to do about it, not whether it exist finally, until it is not too late.
Slashdot Mirror
Those damn kids^Wterrorists with their flash, background music and 32 sized Comic Sans fonts have to be apprehended!
My EYES!
Hey Stef, your post seems familiar.
If your system suffered a successful intrusion, you wipe.
/dev/null.
Of course, there were LKM rootkits (pretty hard to detect) for a good while now, this is just taking it to an all new level.
I wish the spread of better hidden rootkits on Windows, because only that will further sane security policies and wipe the stupid idea of virus scanners out (when it's doing IDS not IPS). There ain't such thing as 'intrusion removal'. It's like putting on a condom after sex. Oh wait, it's slashdot. Let me rephrase. It is like trying to recover data from
The difference is that all the examples you've listed deal with services with a monthly fee, not products. It is quite unheard of to shut down equipment you've paid for (or haven't).
We got to help our less intelligent brethren with imaginary friends, to stop hallucinating.
In theory, you're 100% covered by fair use.
In practice, fair use is an incredibly fuzzy thing. If you can't pay or your company can't pay a team of lawyers to protect your fair use rights against the 800lb gorillas from Hollywood, then you better not do it.
Lawrence Lessig details this issue in his book. Basically, even if it is a cut clear case of fair use, even then it is only clear cut as long as you have the lawyers to back that up. Lessig mentions the case when some documentary filmmaker was filming in a theatre and there was about 4 seconds of Simpsons caught on footage from a tv in the corner of the recorded picture. The guy who made the documentary wanted to clear rights for that 4 seconds, and the company who owns the rights to Simpsons demanded $10,000 (for something theoretically free under fair use). He couldn't even think about just using it anyway based on fair use, because the company he was making the documentary for had insured his production. It ment that lawyers would review the production and they would look for (among others) fair use parts, and if they didn't clear rights for those supposedly fair use parts from the copyright holder, they would most certainly never approve the production, because in their opinion it would carry too much of a risk factor.
So there you have it, theory and practice.
I don't see a moral dilemma with it.
DMCA, copyright and patent laws are broken to some extent. Anti trust laws are only broken in that they should be harsher.
There is no conflict here, most reasonable disinterested people oppose bad laws and mostly accept reasonable ones.
Slashdot may be guilty of some groupthink, but I doubt that. There are simply too many different people here. That's a good thing, I'd hate to see everyone agree with me whole day, where would I go for a good discussion?
Hm. Interesting perspective on scholarships. Let me show you another one, from Europe.
We have state sponsored education in my country. You can also pay if you want to get into the university with a bit lower scores.
We have a grant system based on a student's average grade. On the top of that we've got scholarships, you apply, they tell you if you've been accepted, you sign a form (not a contract! It is governed by educational law so no contract is required).
If a university would tell me to quit being registered on a website I'd most likely first laugh them in the face about the absurdity they want. Even if I would have a scholarship. The point is, just because you've got free education or even a nice scholarship on the top of that, it doesn't mean they should be able to force you to do stupid shit like this just because of that.
Now, I realise that there are differences between my example and this case, but even if they agreed to a contract with the college/university/whatever, it is not certain whether it has a clause by which they can sanction this kind of thing. Even if it has such clause, it could be still horribly wrong and maybe even breaking your laws, because it is a government institution that is doing this. Just because someone gets a scholarship, a government institution shouldn't bastardise the meaning of a scholarship to mean a paid slave/pr drone.
I certainly can understand that you might not be too concerned about losing something most of you never had (so you had to pay for university education), but the scholarship and the censorship should be separated from each other. Accepting a scholarship shouldn't be a faustian business deal. It shouldn't come with this kind of strings attached.
I have one question.
Why are you a jackass?
...God kills a kitten.
But seriously, I understand if someone wants to use PHP, their choice (of masochism). But why on earth would you want to use PHP and Perl together? Perl is clearly a better language, so why don't you use Perl by itself? You'd get rid of the useless interfacing and the idiocy that is PHP.
Culture is a melting pot. It should be like that at least. It is much better when it relies on human creativity rather than trying to mass produce it. It cannot be mass produced.
Why does copyright exist (theoretically)? To give an incentive for creation. Why was it necessary when it was made into the constitution? Because printing was expensive and had a barrier of entry. Today that barrier is very, very small, so we don't get too much in return for that incentive, but the damage it creates to have long copyright terms or copyright at all, is huge. Most culturally valuable products wouldn't stop being created if copyright were to disappear overnight, but actually if copyright were to be abolished today, a huge wave of creation would begin, because of all the content locked away from improvement and reuse today. Creating culture is not property, shouldn't be treated as such. Unless of course you suggest that food for thought to be taken literally too and health organizations should test and approve this particular food for thought. Oh wait, isn't it what they were/are doing in most dictatorships?
DRM is effective copyright. We don't need laws to support them then, especially because they are violating copyright law. It grants a temporary monopoly. DRM is not temporary. Copyright law has a huge section, which used to be huge at least, called unregulated use. DRM stops unregulated use. DRM also stops fair use. It can be seen clearly why is it contrary to copyright law. Actually it is not contrary, but merely a much stronger technological means to empose limits on the ordinary people than copyright ever did. Corporations today should have a choice: Copyright or DRM (exclusive or).
I could cope with a very short term copyright, like 5 years, but it still would be worse than having no copyright at all. Monopolies are _bad_. No exceptions.
I cannot even begin to discuss this topic, we could talk about it for literally years. Maybe read Lawrence Lessig's book, "Free Culture" for a start.
Ugh. What are you talking about? So after 100 years the millions of tonns of CO2 from the atmosphere will just disappear by a wave of a magic wand or what? Btw, it isn't about being hotter for us humans. Even 5C wouldn't matter for most people on the plus side. But 1-2C increase wrecks havoc in the whole environment.
You're viewing humanity on a million year scale. That is wrong in this context. Civilization exists, if you want to be generous, for 15000 years at max. Progress is exponential. We kind of "exploded" in numbers, in knowledge in that timeframe. In just 1000 years, we will either be colonizing the solar system / nearby planets or live in caves / not live at all. Unless we invent a new way to get rid of CO2 from the atmosphere, there is a high possibility that the pollution we create today will be there in 1000 years aswell.
Here, I've corrected it for you. This is my pet peeve: the USA isn't the country which has the most freedom today. Try Sweden, Finland, Denmark or Norway if you're looking for the most freedom.
You do know that you'll be ridiculed / thought to be funny from 5-15 years from now on for this username, don't you?
Just like we laugh at flat earth society today.
Yes. This is the "Oh look! There is a brick wall coming and I can't stop my car in time fully to avoid collision! What could I do?! Let's just put the pedal to the metal, then!" mentality.
Some people are whining what China will/might do in the future. Some people are whining that the Kyoto protocol is not affecting change enough. I have this to say to them:
It is the "now" today. As of today the US of A is the biggest pollutant on the planet, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. It is necessary to minimalize CO2 emission as much as you can on the long term. Kyoto isn't supposed to solve it all, but it is a good _first_ step. Oh btw, damage to the economy you say? I say benefit to the economy. How fragile it is depending on fossil fuel? How fragile your political climate is depending on so much oil from the "axis of evil"? Not to mention it will only become more fragile in the future: fact - in 1985 oil discoveries were surpassed by the increase in demand. It means that in the coming years, production will not be able to keep up with demand, so prices will go only up and shortage will ensue. It is not a recipe for economic stability. Investing in economically viable non fossil non CO2 producing technologies make economic, environmental and long term sense. Also, China doesn't have oil, but it has coal. What better way is there to make China not tap into these sources and therefor increase pollution, than to develop new technologies that produce energy more efficiently?
Remember, it is always harder to fix something after it becomes broken, rather than to avoid/minimize the breakage in the first place! It is high time something was done about it, because we're already at the last second when we can do something about it.
Actually, you're wrong.
Lawrence Lessig in his book called Free Culture (freely downloadable in pdf, google it) details how is this broken.
The researchers are able to research, but they are not able to publish their findings. So they can't share what they've learned legally. This is the difference between theory and practice.
So you're advocating a microkernel based approach?
Hack on.
Shut your face stupid yankee.
Oh wait, was that offensive? Yes it was. I'M FUCKING TIRED OF FRENCH BASHING BECAUSE THE USA AND ITS RESIDENTS DONT HAVE ANYTHING TO JUSTIFY THEIR PERCIEVED SUPERIORITY. Maybe the French should just take their Statue of Liberty home?
Seriously, when I get modded up for cracking a joke about how stupid americans are - which is newsflash! the current stereotype around the world - then I'll consider it fair to bash the french.
I'm not french, I've only been once in their country and it still pisses me off to see these comments modded up to funny. It is not funny.
Oh and btw, the French army history is one of the biggest in the entirely world if not the biggest, in the number of fought battles (and won).
Please don't take this as a personal affair, my problem is not with you, but the general french bashing. It is stupid, childish and annoying.
I'm also not going to make any disclaimers about how I'll be modded to hell for expressing a controversial opinion, because it serves no purpose apart from the told-you-so feeling of the poster if the post does get modded down. I'm simply willing to stand by my thoughts, be it -1 or +5.
Specifically, my country's constitution specifically says "61. (1) A Magyar Köztársaságban mindenkinek joga van a szabad véleménynyilvánításra, továbbá arra, hogy a közérdek adatokat megismerje, illetleg terjessze.", which is a normal free speech declaration. All constitutions only matter if they are stricly enforced and noone is exempt from obeying them in a given country. Can you say that with good faith that your current administration obeys the constitution of your country?
"There has always been strong opinion and evidence on both sides of this issue. Where have you been, Arthur Dent?"
Opinion, yes. Evidence, no.
"That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative. The onus is on the supporters of the global warming theory to come up with extremely strong evidence for their claims, they just haven't done so. Those opposed to the idea of global warming have to responsiblity to do anything here."
You can't prove a negative, if you're logically strict that is true. BUT YOU CAN prove a statement that is contrary to what you want to disprove, therefor invalidating it.
This is the difference between:
a.) Global warming doesn't exist, because...
b.) The temperature is decreasing, because [insert proof here], so we can conclude that the temperature is not increasing, so no global warming is happening.
Your understanding of the scientific process is weak at the best, it's play on words. One of the requirements of science is falsifyability, which means that the theory can be proven WRONG, and it is the continous process of trying to disprove the theory (and not succeeding) what makes a theory a scientific theory!
I'd also like to add that the scientific evidence for global warming, especially man induced global warming is overwhelming and noone brought up an argument against it in any serious scientific journal. We should focus on what to do about it, not whether it exist finally, until it is not too late.
Security is the antithesis of comfort/ease of use.
Also, security can be increased to downright unusability, too.