Free Software is always open. I don't capitalize the letters because it looks better, but because it's a specific term that happens to have a precise definition.
FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) is really the most accurate way to refer to what you called "Free Software". It is both free and open.
FOSS is a highly redundant term. I do agree that the unwashed masses don't get it, because of the bloody coincidence of "free" in the english language. Most other languages are better off and don't use the same terms for "freedom" and "no money".
Then again, even americans do get it, if they care and it's been driven home often enough. I don't know anyone who takes "free" for "$0" in the phrase, say, "The land of the free".
It's called peer-review. Note that the word is "peer", not "parents". Our entire science system is based on it, and has been for over 300 years. Your parents don't need to understand the source any more than they do quantum physics or biochemistry. But they can sleep better knowing that people who do understand it could take a look and independently verify the results.
All you have to teach them is the difference between Free Software and Freeware.
It is Freeware that is very often infected with spyware, trojans, ads, etc.
Free Software is almost the opposite. It's where not only can you be reasonably sure it's safe, it's also where you can check - something almost all commercial software doesn't allow you to.
a) I said "my country". b) I said "criminal code", not "dictionary"
The criminal code in my country does define theft, and the definition is not identical with the dictionary. A judge will go with the law, not the dictionary.
You lost that argument [reference.com] a long time ago.
Really? Let's verify this experimentally, shall we?
Give me something you own the copyright to, explicitly tell me that I have no right to redistribution. I'll put it on my website, and you will sue me for theft. This is the important part. Make sure your lawyer doesn't correct it. Make sure you sue me for theft and not for copyright infringement. Don't allow the lawyer or the judge or anyone else to "fix" it.
I'll give you a cookie if you even get to have a trial.
Ok, you can of course get the correct result by chance. However, you can only evaluate it to be correct if you already know which result is correct. You can not independently verify the result if the assumption was incorrect.
I happened to take an "Entertainment Law" course, taught by a Harvard-educated laywer.
My country happens to not include Harvard. I do not talk about US law because I haven't studied it.
The entire concept of "intellectual property" is based on the idea of taking something that is immaterial and treating it as if it were material.
Yeah, and it's a fucked-up concept. Moreover, since we're talking about law, it isn't necessary. Unauthorized copying has its own law and penalties.
The MPAA may call it "theft" in the media. But whenever they actually sue someone, they make sure that they sue for copyright violation, not for theft. If they sued for theft, I'm sure their case would be thrown out.
So splitting hairs with dictionary entriesmight make you feel good. But it isn't going to convince any judges,
On the contrary. This isn't about splitting hairs, it is all about convincing judges. IANAL, but my job requires that I have some training in legal affairs and I got it from people who are lawyers professionally teaching law and legal interpretation to non-lawyers.
There is a massive difference here, and your argument does not address it. Nobody was claiming that unauthorized copying is legal, or that it's not damaging, or whatever.
It is not, however, the same as that which the criminal code calls "theft". It is a different crime. One that doesn't need to be lumped in with theft because it actually has its own code, laws and penalties.
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.
Even if we assume that as true, it is still not theft, because potential profit is not a thing. Thing in this context does mean physical item. There've been many court decisions that make that clear beyond any doubt.
The people who wrote my laws were actually quite clueful. You have to take every word in there.
Theft, according to the criminal code in my country is defined as: "The taking away of a moveable thing owned by someone else."
Note: "taking away"
Unauthorized copying is not stealing. It is illegal, but it is not theft.
If you have any education in logic - and as a geek I simply assume you do - then you know that if your assumption is false, your entire train of argument derails, since it is impossible to get a correct result from a false assumption.
(*) actually, unless you talk about actual piracy, that thing with the boats and the parrots on the captain's shoulder. That, of course, is stealing.
Last I checked, pirates used cannons and cutlasses, had beards and a bad accent.
"unauthorized distribution" is the proper term, and I'm not nitpicking for the heck of it. A chinese proverb says "Calling things by their proper name is the first step of wisdom." I think they got that right. As long as you don't see it for what it is, but instead mix it up with images of bloodshed and destruction, your judgement is clouded.
The problem with this approach is that you never know if he told the full information.
That's why I wrote "torture" and not "ask nicely". With a few professionally mistreated body parts and the promise of a slow and painful death for your family or close friends, people become astonishingly reliable.
You probably could, though at best you could influence the samples, reducing their entropy and thus cryptographic value.
My bet is that in cases like that the CIA/NSA/whatever approach would be to knock down the door, knock out the guy, torture him for the address to send the CD to, and send of a CD of your own with perfectly random noise - that you keep a copy of.
E.g., consider two coffeeshops across the street from one another.
Imagine the FBI agent who is also there and who six months ago wiretapped the conversation where they agreed on the meaning of their paper folding (or whatever other hidden channel they use).
If you need a secret channel to set up a secret channel, you still ain't got nothing.
The old problem of all cryptosystems: Key exchange.
We do that via Diffie-Hellman nowadays. Nevertheless, if there's a trojan (or some software installed by law) on the cafe computer you're using that is logging your keystrokes and keeping them stored in case the FBI comes to collect them, then they not only get your communication, they get your passphrase, too.
I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD."
It's called sniffing. Either on the wire, or if the MUD software encrypts traffic, on your end (via trojan) or the server end (via court-order).
Like SciFi? Robert Heinlein wrote a nice book called Take Back Your Government. It's and old book (the 1992 is a reprint) I think from the 60s or so. There's still much truth in it. It may not be too late yet.
Really? How come that 500 years ago, the church had more power than any king? How is it possible that 2000 years ago, slavery was a totally normal thing? Why is being rude a serious offense in Japan, and somehow "cool" in the west?
People are different depending on the culture they are surrounded by.
Internet access is more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US.
That would be news to me, and I work for a european ISP.
Every American spammer has probably burned through dozens of ISPs and incorporations
As have the european spammers. It's not that we don't have any, or that they don't use the very same methods. It's just that we have much fewer of them.
One explanation that would make sense to me is that credit cards are less ubiquitous in europe. That cuts the possible target audience by perhaps 50%. Also, I do believe the general public (not you and me, I'm talking about Joe Doe) is more educated in europe, and thus less likely to fall for the outright fraud that many spams are.
Nonsense. 90% of the big-time spammers are, and always have been, from the USA. Most of the actual spam is sent from somewhere else, but if you eliminate the spammers, the spam will vanish as well.
And while there are people outside the US who are spammers, the ratio is far, far less. Europe has as many if not more people online than the US, but last I checked there were 2 europeans in the top 20 spammers list.
I figure it's a culture thing. We over here simply know and understand that spamming is just wrong. In the US, there are so many crackheads, it's unbelievable. Some of it is good - a few of the most outlandish and yet great ideas come from over there. Most of it, however, is so far from even the broadest definition of "good", there are no appropriate measurements.
Slashdot Mirror
Free Software is not necessarily Open Software
Free Software is always open. I don't capitalize the letters because it looks better, but because it's a specific term that happens to have a precise definition.
FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) is really the most accurate way to refer to what you called "Free Software". It is both free and open.
FOSS is a highly redundant term. I do agree that the unwashed masses don't get it, because of the bloody coincidence of "free" in the english language. Most other languages are better off and don't use the same terms for "freedom" and "no money".
Then again, even americans do get it, if they care and it's been driven home often enough. I don't know anyone who takes "free" for "$0" in the phrase, say, "The land of the free".
Troll.
It's called peer-review. Note that the word is "peer", not "parents". Our entire science system is based on it, and has been for over 300 years. Your parents don't need to understand the source any more than they do quantum physics or biochemistry. But they can sleep better knowing that people who do understand it could take a look and independently verify the results.
All you have to teach them is the difference between Free Software and Freeware.
It is Freeware that is very often infected with spyware, trojans, ads, etc.
Free Software is almost the opposite. It's where not only can you be reasonably sure it's safe, it's also where you can check - something almost all commercial software doesn't allow you to.
It isn't just the source of spam - 95% or so of the spam is very obviously targetted at americans, too.
Ok, porn sites are international, but mortgage refinancing and what else the other crap is seems totally US-centric to me.
I'm sure 95% of the idiots who buy from spammers can be found in the US, too.
You may want to acquire the skill called reading.
a) I said "my country".
b) I said "criminal code", not "dictionary"
The criminal code in my country does define theft, and the definition is not identical with the dictionary. A judge will go with the law, not the dictionary.
You lost that argument [reference.com] a long time ago.
Really? Let's verify this experimentally, shall we?
Give me something you own the copyright to, explicitly tell me that I have no right to redistribution. I'll put it on my website, and you will sue me for theft. This is the important part. Make sure your lawyer doesn't correct it. Make sure you sue me for theft and not for copyright infringement. Don't allow the lawyer or the judge or anyone else to "fix" it.
I'll give you a cookie if you even get to have a trial.
Ok, you can of course get the correct result by chance. However, you can only evaluate it to be correct if you already know which result is correct. You can not independently verify the result if the assumption was incorrect.
I happened to take an "Entertainment Law" course, taught by a Harvard-educated laywer.
My country happens to not include Harvard. I do not talk about US law because I haven't studied it.
The entire concept of "intellectual property" is based on the idea of taking something that is immaterial and treating it as if it were material.
Yeah, and it's a fucked-up concept.
Moreover, since we're talking about law, it isn't necessary. Unauthorized copying has its own law and penalties.
The MPAA may call it "theft" in the media. But whenever they actually sue someone, they make sure that they sue for copyright violation, not for theft. If they sued for theft, I'm sure their case would be thrown out.
So splitting hairs with dictionary entriesmight make you feel good. But it isn't going to convince any judges,
On the contrary. This isn't about splitting hairs, it is all about convincing judges. IANAL, but my job requires that I have some training in legal affairs and I got it from people who are lawyers professionally teaching law and legal interpretation to non-lawyers.
There is a massive difference here, and your argument does not address it. Nobody was claiming that unauthorized copying is legal, or that it's not damaging, or whatever.
It is not, however, the same as that which the criminal code calls "theft". It is a different crime. One that doesn't need to be lumped in with theft because it actually has its own code, laws and penalties.
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.
Even if we assume that as true, it is still not theft, because potential profit is not a thing. Thing in this context does mean physical item. There've been many court decisions that make that clear beyond any doubt.
The people who wrote my laws were actually quite clueful. You have to take every word in there.
First off, piracy is still stealing.
No, it is not and never has been(*).
Theft, according to the criminal code in my country is defined as:
"The taking away of a moveable thing owned by someone else."
Note: "taking away"
Unauthorized copying is not stealing. It is illegal, but it is not theft.
If you have any education in logic - and as a geek I simply assume you do - then you know that if your assumption is false, your entire train of argument derails, since it is impossible to get a correct result from a false assumption.
(*) actually, unless you talk about actual piracy, that thing with the boats and the parrots on the captain's shoulder. That, of course, is stealing.
Last I checked piracy was still piracy.
Last I checked, pirates used cannons and cutlasses, had beards and a bad accent.
"unauthorized distribution" is the proper term, and I'm not nitpicking for the heck of it. A chinese proverb says "Calling things by their proper name is the first step of wisdom." I think they got that right. As long as you don't see it for what it is, but instead mix it up with images of bloodshed and destruction, your judgement is clouded.
The problem with this approach is that you never know if he told the full information.
That's why I wrote "torture" and not "ask nicely". With a few professionally mistreated body parts and the promise of a slow and painful death for your family or close friends, people become astonishingly reliable.
Sure, that's how to obtain the information.
How do you filter it down to something to get to the interesting stuff?
Bingo.
That's the problem. Getting stuff is easy.
I can't give you an answer. But maybe you can try writing to:
NSA Public and Media Affairs
Phone: (301) 688-6524
Fax: (301) 688-6198
E-mail: nsapao@nsa.gov
They have about 50 years of experience doing just that (among other things).
You probably could, though at best you could influence the samples, reducing their entropy and thus cryptographic value.
My bet is that in cases like that the CIA/NSA/whatever approach would be to knock down the door, knock out the guy, torture him for the address to send the CD to, and send of a CD of your own with perfectly random noise - that you keep a copy of.
This is what face-to-face meetings and couriers are for.
Ask your local CIA agent about just how convenient that is.
Yes, it's the most reliable crypto.
Yes, it is heavily used.
Yes, it is hideously expensive and logistically complicated.
E.g., consider two coffeeshops across the street from one another.
Imagine the FBI agent who is also there and who six months ago wiretapped the conversation where they agreed on the meaning of their paper folding (or whatever other hidden channel they use).
If you need a secret channel to set up a secret channel, you still ain't got nothing.
see above, under "trojan".
Sniffing won't even help if they really care to obscure things.
Correct, sniffing doesn't "defeat" stego, no matter what form it takes.
However, it will intercept:
these require pre-coordination to set up a way of hiding messages
that part of your communication.
When you need a secure channel to set up a secure channel, you aren't one step closer to your goal.
using passphrase convenied in advance.
The old problem of all cryptosystems: Key exchange.
We do that via Diffie-Hellman nowadays. Nevertheless, if there's a trojan (or some software installed by law) on the cafe computer you're using that is logging your keystrokes and keeping them stored in case the FBI comes to collect them, then they not only get your communication, they get your passphrase, too.
Ooops.
I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD."
It's called sniffing.
Either on the wire, or if the MUD software encrypts traffic, on your end (via trojan) or the server end (via court-order).
Like SciFi? Robert Heinlein wrote a nice book called Take Back Your Government. It's and old book (the 1992 is a reprint) I think from the 60s or so. There's still much truth in it. It may not be too late yet.
Best line from the article:
Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
Ah, so refreshing to see a mainstream journalist hit the nail on the head in a single line.
People are people
Really? How come that 500 years ago, the church had more power than any king? How is it possible that 2000 years ago, slavery was a totally normal thing? Why is being rude a serious offense in Japan, and somehow "cool" in the west?
People are different depending on the culture they are surrounded by.
Internet access is more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US.
That would be news to me, and I work for a european ISP.
Every American spammer has probably burned through dozens of ISPs and incorporations
As have the european spammers. It's not that we don't have any, or that they don't use the very same methods. It's just that we have much fewer of them.
One explanation that would make sense to me is that credit cards are less ubiquitous in europe. That cuts the possible target audience by perhaps 50%. Also, I do believe the general public (not you and me, I'm talking about Joe Doe) is more educated in europe, and thus less likely to fall for the outright fraud that many spams are.
Nonsense. 90% of the big-time spammers are, and always have been, from the USA. Most of the actual spam is sent from somewhere else, but if you eliminate the spammers, the spam will vanish as well.
And while there are people outside the US who are spammers, the ratio is far, far less. Europe has as many if not more people online than the US, but last I checked there were 2 europeans in the top 20 spammers list.
I figure it's a culture thing. We over here simply know and understand that spamming is just wrong. In the US, there are so many crackheads, it's unbelievable. Some of it is good - a few of the most outlandish and yet great ideas come from over there. Most of it, however, is so far from even the broadest definition of "good", there are no appropriate measurements.