It's a sad day for any community when the interests of the few are put well above the well-being of the many.
Oh wait. That's the whole bloody human history, and I do mean the term literally. Did the crusader knights cared about the well-being of the sarancens? Or perhaps Attilla was concerned about all the gold that burdened the lives of Roman citizens?
Fool that I am, I thought XXI would be different. All around us there were signs that people start to care. Ecology. Human rights. Open source. The fabled enlightment of the human race seemed to be closer than ever. Perhaps even achievable in my lifetime.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. For every Linus there's going to be a Bill. For every Gore there's going to be a George. For every researcher like Henry Lai there are 5 CEOs willing to bury both him and his research into the ground, because his findings will disturb the rule of the almighty buck.
After all, if our ancestors did it, that can't be such a bad thing. Right?
If you want third party browsers, you should look at Opera or Konqueror. This is NOT a third party browser. Contrary to popular belief, if you take two songs and mix them up, the result is NOT a brand new song. It's a (re)mix.
The "new" Netscape just takes either the IE or the FF engine and slaps an interface on top of it. AOL thus tries to ride on Netscape's reputation and make it look like it still has something to say in browser world. It doesn't. This is just marketing.
Your insights are valid, but not applicable for this release of Netscape. Maybe next time?
Dear Mr. Flamebait, We walked down that "stealing from the artist" path before, haven't we? Hear this:
You definitely can record songs off the radio or TV (whether to a cassette or any other medium) for your personal use. This was settled aages ago by a legal case that defined such personal use of broadcast material as being ok under (U.S.) copyright law. This is not considered stealing. Furthermore, this is, as far as I can tell, the famous "loophole".
As far as I know, Internet is a broadcast medium. The question is not wheter I, as the "downloader", am "stealing" from whoever. It's the "broadcaster" - in our case AllOfMP3 - that should take care of the royalties (if any). And that only if they're applicable under russian law, because that's where the company and their ISP is located.
That being said, it should also be noted that the operation cost in Russia is bound to be lower than in U.S. Don't believe bandwidth is expensive just because you pay an overpriced bill at home.
I know, I know... but I had to get that out of my system. Still new to the whole/. thing, you know;)
That was a "nice" loophole in the russian legislation; I wonder how long it will take before other such services will get some cheap webspace with a russian ISP. I bet the Kazaa folks regret not thinking about moving to Moskow instead of down under.
If enough people concerned about their privacy do this, this won't be a tag any more;) If they can get a search warrant just because of that, I'm screwed anyway, since I use SSH a lot.
Oh wait. Yes, Officer? Just let me press Submit and I'll be right with you.
If you search for computers on the whole net, that may well be the case. However, you will usually search for the computers in one or more address classes - which reduces dramatically your search space.
Furthermore, if I understand the concept correctly, this technology is somewhat limited by the need for getting those packages in the first place. You must be somewhere on the line and actively listen. You could use this in a honeypot network to see if you were attacked by the same guy, but from different IP addresses. You could eliminate the quasi-privacy that a dynamic IP address is currently associated with. But you won't catch that pesky kiddie that rerouted his attack through 10k zombies. You won't catch the professional hacker that knows what a SSH gateway is. And you won't catch the "terrorist" that uses iCafe computers anyway.
ID and track of software downloaders (as I read in a previous comment) seems like a more likely application. But even that can be foiled by a determined user.
You own a Linux box. You know about this technique. You:
1) Erase all your BitTorrent-related tools and get all your stuff from less knowledgeable friends via a DVD burner.
2) Get your hands on that TCP/IP stack implementation and modify it (like the geek you are) to add or subtract one unit at random from the least significant digit of the timestamp. (Is that technically feasible,/.ers? I believe it is, but I'm no expert.)
As a new federal law called "The Anti-Phishing Act of 2005" is being pushed by the U.S. legislative, hackers everywhere celebrate their victory over the English language.
"W3 pl4n 2 in7r0duc3 z00n 0d4r l337 w0rdz in d4 c0n73mp0r4n v0c4bul4rj", said the appointed speaker for the "H4x0rz" community, who prefers to remain anonymous."0ur n3x7 74rg47z 4r3 "h4x0r", "l337" 4nd "pwn3d". 0ur l0bbj gr0up iz z7r0ng, 4nd w3 b3li3v3 d4j will 4lz0 b3 in7r0duc3d bj d4 3nd 0ph d4 j34r."
1) If you want to put license fees on PCs, put them directly on the TV-cards. I'm using my computer for programming, haven't started my TV in months (although I own one) and I don't forsee mainboards with integrated TV tuners in the near future. So why should I pay this fee?
2) If BBC - or any other television station for that matter - will start making shows available for free as BitTorrents, for instance, I "could" be persuaded to pay said fee. Although it would make more sense to pay it together with your ISP subscription - where ISPs are seen (from a legal point of view) as cable companies. Frankly, I don't know why BBC doesn't do it; they don't get revenue from commercials, so that reason is out, and I'd really REALLY love to be able to see shows like Coupling or The Office available online - even for a nominal fee.
3) Mobile providers started to offer TV on the cells. This could be a tricky one - you could tax a TV-capable (*sigh*) phone, and the buyer would decide if he wants it or not, or you could treat mobile providers as cable companies (see above).
Bottom line: PCs can't be taxed for what they "could" do. There is a decent way to check what they're actually capable of doing, and tax according to that. And this would neatly prevent, for instance, universities from paying stupid taxes on lab computers - or, God forbid, on that new Beowulf cluster - and CowboyNeal would be able to bring with him all the 286 he wants when he moves to UK.
From TFA: "The quality assurance process is a process for providing adequate assurance that the software products and processes in the product life cycle conform to their specific requirements and adhere to their established plans."
I think the QA process in the OSS community is more than adequatly covered by the numerous alpha, beta, PR, RC and all the other release mechanisms. The larger your user base, the more chances of a high quality final release (which in turn creates an even larger user base, which is a goldmine for the next release etc etc). That is, imho, one of the biggest advantages that OSS has over proprietary software. No QA department in the world would beat a large enough group of college IT students with too much time on their hands.
Haven't you noticed yet? Human beings sorely lack the capacity to put things in the proper perspective. Their view of their immediate surroundings almost always superceeds whatever large-scale or long-term effects their actions might have.
"Yeah, we'll dump the nuclear waste in the Pacific. The containers are sealed so tight, there's no way they're gonna leak." 350 years later our children's children will have an ecological disaster of such scale on their hands that Hiroshima will be remembered fondly as "the good ol' days".
"Stop pollution? But that would cost us votes... erm, jobs! No way!" What is the long term cost, we wonder? I don't want my grandchildren to live in a future where they buy CocaCola Pure Mountain Air, do you?
This is just the newest folly in a long list of follies that the human race produced over the centuries. Craigslist sees it as a slick marketing move - they'll get all the free publicity they need with this one. They can now safely claim they boldly spammed where nobody spammed before. But that's as far as they think; other consequences, if any, escapes them completely.
Anyone remember the Voyager message? That was something our race could be proud of. 15 years later we're sending another message, which makes me wish there's no one out there to receive it. I wish they would begin and end their transmission with this disclaimer:
"This message represents only the human corporation known as Craiglist, and not in any way, shape or form the entirety of the human race. Any complaints, jams, deathray beams or any other form of communication related with this transmission should be directed towards the aforementioned entity."
The average Joe is very careful with his plastics, and won't loose the suspicious waiter from his sights while the later handles his credit card. The same Joe will thoughtlessly type away his credit card number as a means of "age verification" in some random Paris Hilton pictorial site.
A hacker getting through his poorly set up XP box and stealing his credit card number is more dangerous than a device needing the presence of a physical card. And, of course, there are this kind of occurences, which are the most worrying of all.
I do believe their user base numbers are biased. Back when Yahoo was "the thing" (they even had free POP3 on their mail service, I thought that was SO COOL), everyone and their dog had e-mail accounts on Yahoo. As in "more than one" account. Not only for multiple identities, but also for overcoming the limit in storage.
Besides, having a "large user base" has nothing to do with the quality of developers you are able to attract. AOL has a large user base, how many/.ers would even consider doing development for free for AOL? The high-tech and university crowds were won over by Google years ago, with a simple, fast and ad-free interface, doubled by excelent service. Even when Google wasn't around, Altavista was the search engine of choice, not Yahoo.
And remember, folks, this new "open-source-friendly" Yahoo is the same one that went through the "messenger wars" last year, trying to keep ad-free instant messengers like GAIM and Trillian out of their networks. I for one will sit back, relax, and stick with Google.
I will start worrying when Google won't work in IE anymore. Which is as likely to happen as Windows being built on top of the Linux kernel. By supporting Mozilla.org, Google is ensuring that Microsoft won't be able to push through whatever formats and standards they like simply through the power of ubiquity. After all, there's nothing like healthy competition to promote inovation. (And absence of software patents, but I digress.)
"The next contestants may not be very well known to the general public, but they will be after our lawyers finish tearing them apart. Ladies and gentlemen, here they are:"
Lights out.
"John Doe One. This 15 year old criminal downloaded a crappy hand-filmed DIVX version of Spiderman 2. He agreed to sell one kidney and both his eyeballs to pay the 150k fee."
"John Doe Two. A medschool student (still), the IP of his machine was found in the Lokitorrent logs. That's proof enough that he is guilty. He will spend the next 106 years making Texas license plates to cover for the fine."
"John Doe Three. 35 years old, still living with his mom, has a valid Slashdot account. Since all Slashdot users are geeks and all geeks download illegal contents from P2P networks, he's guilty as hell. Sentenced to 25 years in the Russian unranium mines."
"John Doe Four. Farmer, age 42. His computer contained the infamous BitTorrent software. He claims his 12 year old nephew has installed it without his knowledge. Both are in custody at a high security location, awaiting the decision of the MPAA board."
"John Doe Five. He posted a nasty anonymous comment about MPAA on a well-known forum dedicated to freedom of speech. Why anonymous, John? Do you have something to hide? Thankfully his ISP has been forced to disclose his IP under the Patriot Act, and now the 28 year old security consultant faces the death sentence under accusations of theft, identity stealing (Mr. A. Coward was appaled to find out you used his name, buster!) and digital terrorism."
The fine folks at BuyDomains.com still have the SlashDot.Net for sale, and "The quoted price will be at least $688 and may be over $10,000." Valid business model or what?
(I intentionally left out all AhRefs, if you really want to see it, type away, I don't endorse domain stealers.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's a sad day for any community when the interests of the few are put well above the well-being of the many.
Oh wait. That's the whole bloody human history, and I do mean the term literally. Did the crusader knights cared about the well-being of the sarancens? Or perhaps Attilla was concerned about all the gold that burdened the lives of Roman citizens?
Fool that I am, I thought XXI would be different. All around us there were signs that people start to care. Ecology. Human rights. Open source. The fabled enlightment of the human race seemed to be closer than ever. Perhaps even achievable in my lifetime.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. For every Linus there's going to be a Bill. For every Gore there's going to be a George. For every researcher like Henry Lai there are 5 CEOs willing to bury both him and his research into the ground, because his findings will disturb the rule of the almighty buck.
After all, if our ancestors did it, that can't be such a bad thing. Right?
If you want third party browsers, you should look at Opera or Konqueror. This is NOT a third party browser. Contrary to popular belief, if you take two songs and mix them up, the result is NOT a brand new song. It's a (re)mix.
The "new" Netscape just takes either the IE or the FF engine and slaps an interface on top of it. AOL thus tries to ride on Netscape's reputation and make it look like it still has something to say in browser world. It doesn't. This is just marketing.
Your insights are valid, but not applicable for this release of Netscape. Maybe next time?
Dear Mr. Flamebait,
We walked down that "stealing from the artist" path before, haven't we? Hear this:
You definitely can record songs off the radio or TV (whether to a cassette or any other medium) for your personal use. This was settled aages ago by a legal case that defined such personal use of broadcast material as being ok under (U.S.) copyright law. This is not considered stealing. Furthermore, this is, as far as I can tell, the famous "loophole".
As far as I know, Internet is a broadcast medium. The question is not wheter I, as the "downloader", am "stealing" from whoever. It's the "broadcaster" - in our case AllOfMP3 - that should take care of the royalties (if any). And that only if they're applicable under russian law, because that's where the company and their ISP is located.
That being said, it should also be noted that the operation cost in Russia is bound to be lower than in U.S. Don't believe bandwidth is expensive just because you pay an overpriced bill at home.
Sincerely etc etc.
I know, I know... but I had to get that out of my system. Still new to the whole /. thing, you know ;)
That was a "nice" loophole in the russian legislation; I wonder how long it will take before other such services will get some cheap webspace with a russian ISP. I bet the Kazaa folks regret not thinking about moving to Moskow instead of down under.
... but in Soviet Russia, MP3s listen to YOU!
If enough people concerned about their privacy do this, this won't be a tag any more ;) If they can get a search warrant just because of that, I'm screwed anyway, since I use SSH a lot.
Oh wait. Yes, Officer? Just let me press Submit and I'll be right with you.
If you search for computers on the whole net, that may well be the case. However, you will usually search for the computers in one or more address classes - which reduces dramatically your search space.
Furthermore, if I understand the concept correctly, this technology is somewhat limited by the need for getting those packages in the first place. You must be somewhere on the line and actively listen. You could use this in a honeypot network to see if you were attacked by the same guy, but from different IP addresses. You could eliminate the quasi-privacy that a dynamic IP address is currently associated with. But you won't catch that pesky kiddie that rerouted his attack through 10k zombies. You won't catch the professional hacker that knows what a SSH gateway is. And you won't catch the "terrorist" that uses iCafe computers anyway.
ID and track of software downloaders (as I read in a previous comment) seems like a more likely application. But even that can be foiled by a determined user.
You own a Linux box. You know about this technique. You:
/.ers? I believe it is, but I'm no expert.)
1) Erase all your BitTorrent-related tools and get all your stuff from less knowledgeable friends via a DVD burner.
2) Get your hands on that TCP/IP stack implementation and modify it (like the geek you are) to add or subtract one unit at random from the least significant digit of the timestamp. (Is that technically feasible,
Either way, bye-bye Carnivore!
As a new federal law called "The Anti-Phishing Act of 2005" is being pushed by the U.S. legislative, hackers everywhere celebrate their victory over the English language.
."0ur n3x7 74rg47z 4r3 "h4x0r", "l337" 4nd "pwn3d". 0ur l0bbj gr0up iz z7r0ng, 4nd w3 b3li3v3 d4j will 4lz0 b3 in7r0duc3d bj d4 3nd 0ph d4 j34r."
"W3 pl4n 2 in7r0duc3 z00n 0d4r l337 w0rdz in d4 c0n73mp0r4n v0c4bul4rj", said the appointed speaker for the "H4x0rz" community, who prefers to remain anonymous
Jokes aside, here's some facts:
1) If you want to put license fees on PCs, put them directly on the TV-cards. I'm using my computer for programming, haven't started my TV in months (although I own one) and I don't forsee mainboards with integrated TV tuners in the near future. So why should I pay this fee?
2) If BBC - or any other television station for that matter - will start making shows available for free as BitTorrents, for instance, I "could" be persuaded to pay said fee. Although it would make more sense to pay it together with your ISP subscription - where ISPs are seen (from a legal point of view) as cable companies. Frankly, I don't know why BBC doesn't do it; they don't get revenue from commercials, so that reason is out, and I'd really REALLY love to be able to see shows like Coupling or The Office available online - even for a nominal fee.
3) Mobile providers started to offer TV on the cells. This could be a tricky one - you could tax a TV-capable (*sigh*) phone, and the buyer would decide if he wants it or not, or you could treat mobile providers as cable companies (see above).
Bottom line: PCs can't be taxed for what they "could" do. There is a decent way to check what they're actually capable of doing, and tax according to that. And this would neatly prevent, for instance, universities from paying stupid taxes on lab computers - or, God forbid, on that new Beowulf cluster - and CowboyNeal would be able to bring with him all the 286 he wants when he moves to UK.
I'm getting a Linux-powered microwave!
Analysts still try to find out why the show was cancelled.
From TFA: "The quality assurance process is a process for providing adequate assurance that the software products and processes in the product life cycle conform to their specific requirements and adhere to their established plans."
I think the QA process in the OSS community is more than adequatly covered by the numerous alpha, beta, PR, RC and all the other release mechanisms. The larger your user base, the more chances of a high quality final release (which in turn creates an even larger user base, which is a goldmine for the next release etc etc). That is, imho, one of the biggest advantages that OSS has over proprietary software. No QA department in the world would beat a large enough group of college IT students with too much time on their hands.
Haven't you noticed yet? Human beings sorely lack the capacity to put things in the proper perspective. Their view of their immediate surroundings almost always superceeds whatever large-scale or long-term effects their actions might have.
"Yeah, we'll dump the nuclear waste in the Pacific. The containers are sealed so tight, there's no way they're gonna leak." 350 years later our children's children will have an ecological disaster of such scale on their hands that Hiroshima will be remembered fondly as "the good ol' days".
"Stop pollution? But that would cost us votes... erm, jobs! No way!" What is the long term cost, we wonder? I don't want my grandchildren to live in a future where they buy CocaCola Pure Mountain Air, do you?
This is just the newest folly in a long list of follies that the human race produced over the centuries. Craigslist sees it as a slick marketing move - they'll get all the free publicity they need with this one. They can now safely claim they boldly spammed where nobody spammed before. But that's as far as they think; other consequences, if any, escapes them completely.
Anyone remember the Voyager message? That was something our race could be proud of. 15 years later we're sending another message, which makes me wish there's no one out there to receive it. I wish they would begin and end their transmission with this disclaimer:
"This message represents only the human corporation known as Craiglist, and not in any way, shape or form the entirety of the human race. Any complaints, jams, deathray beams or any other form of communication related with this transmission should be directed towards the aforementioned entity."
Earth: "Greetings, friends from space, welcome to Earth!"
Alien spaceship: "All your Burger Kings are belong to us."
The average Joe is very careful with his plastics, and won't loose the suspicious waiter from his sights while the later handles his credit card. The same Joe will thoughtlessly type away his credit card number as a means of "age verification" in some random Paris Hilton pictorial site.
A hacker getting through his poorly set up XP box and stealing his credit card number is more dangerous than a device needing the presence of a physical card. And, of course, there are this kind of occurences, which are the most worrying of all.
I do believe their user base numbers are biased. Back when Yahoo was "the thing" (they even had free POP3 on their mail service, I thought that was SO COOL), everyone and their dog had e-mail accounts on Yahoo. As in "more than one" account. Not only for multiple identities, but also for overcoming the limit in storage.
/.ers would even consider doing development for free for AOL? The high-tech and university crowds were won over by Google years ago, with a simple, fast and ad-free interface, doubled by excelent service. Even when Google wasn't around, Altavista was the search engine of choice, not Yahoo.
Besides, having a "large user base" has nothing to do with the quality of developers you are able to attract. AOL has a large user base, how many
And remember, folks, this new "open-source-friendly" Yahoo is the same one that went through the "messenger wars" last year, trying to keep ad-free instant messengers like GAIM and Trillian out of their networks. I for one will sit back, relax, and stick with Google.
I will start worrying when Google won't work in IE anymore. Which is as likely to happen as Windows being built on top of the Linux kernel. By supporting Mozilla.org, Google is ensuring that Microsoft won't be able to push through whatever formats and standards they like simply through the power of ubiquity. After all, there's nothing like healthy competition to promote inovation. (And absence of software patents, but I digress.)
Don't look at me, I don't moderate my own posts ;) I'm not even sure I can.
"The next contestants may not be very well known to the general public, but they will be after our lawyers finish tearing them apart. Ladies and gentlemen, here they are:"
Lights out.
"John Doe One. This 15 year old criminal downloaded a crappy hand-filmed DIVX version of Spiderman 2. He agreed to sell one kidney and both his eyeballs to pay the 150k fee."
"John Doe Two. A medschool student (still), the IP of his machine was found in the Lokitorrent logs. That's proof enough that he is guilty. He will spend the next 106 years making Texas license plates to cover for the fine."
"John Doe Three. 35 years old, still living with his mom, has a valid Slashdot account. Since all Slashdot users are geeks and all geeks download illegal contents from P2P networks, he's guilty as hell. Sentenced to 25 years in the Russian unranium mines."
"John Doe Four. Farmer, age 42. His computer contained the infamous BitTorrent software. He claims his 12 year old nephew has installed it without his knowledge. Both are in custody at a high security location, awaiting the decision of the MPAA board."
"John Doe Five. He posted a nasty anonymous comment about MPAA on a well-known forum dedicated to freedom of speech. Why anonymous, John? Do you have something to hide? Thankfully his ISP has been forced to disclose his IP under the Patriot Act, and now the 28 year old security consultant faces the death sentence under accusations of theft, identity stealing (Mr. A. Coward was appaled to find out you used his name, buster!) and digital terrorism."
Lights in. Humorous comment from the host.
"And the loser is...."
Witness the return of the tinfoil wallets!
Fortunately I already had them patented. [insert maniacal laughter here]
The fine folks at BuyDomains.com still have the SlashDot.Net for sale, and "The quoted price will be at least $688 and may be over $10,000." Valid business model or what?
(I intentionally left out all AhRefs, if you really want to see it, type away, I don't endorse domain stealers.)
The original article is already sluggish, so there.
Thanks :) I'd mod you informative, if I had them means.
25 million browsers (including mine) are still unable to properly render Slashdot.