And therein lies the main problem of corporate or political anything today. And I'm not just talking about the USA here, it's world wide. As the board of directors of a company, you have a bunch of perks. You also have a bunch of responsibilities. You are the person responsible for mistakes made by your company. The family analogy is moot because there is an explicit task, an explicit burden of responsibility for the board. This doesn't mean that when some Joe in the mail room drives over a cat on the weekend you take the fall, but when something big and terrible (world wide infection of computers by your company, by malice even) happens, you get to take the fall. That's one of the downsides of being high up in the chain. These days though, the only thing we hear are excuses. "It was a division, not me!", "it was the secretary of state, not me!", "surely you cannot expect me to take the fall for that!" These people didn't end up there because they couldn't help it. It's a job that you choose to take, and it comes with responsibility. If you're not prepared to take it, don't take the job. Also see: politics. It's not as if these people aren't compensated for the risk they take. Now they want to mitigate the risk? Come on.
Do I need to read the rest of your comment? Wii-fanboi against PS3-fanboi, oh so interesting.
Can you tell me that if the Wii's controller is so gimmicky, why did Sony include motion sensing in their new controller? Can it be that even the people at Sony HQ thought the Wii was on to something?
Man, I hate these stupid, pointless conversations. NINE CORES ZOMG! "Serious" gamers need more power! You're being taunted by the ads that say that the cpu in your PS3 is smarter than you are. You cannot be serious.
Good points. Still, you can tell me any kind of marketing speak, but it really does stop playing when you stop paying. You are aware of that, right? The comparison with TV is moot because I hardly ever rewatch anything on tv, but I do relisten most every CD I have.
> there is a clear definition of what "unlimited" means in that context
Are you a lawyer perhaps?
I don't disagree with your point, but you can't sell me something that is unlimited and then turn around and tell me that unlimited really means limited in your world/context. Unlimited means unlimited, there aren't any limits. It doesn't mean that there are no limits we could possibly reach, or a very very high number. I'm aware of the business consequences of truly unlimited plans, but why offer them? There is something to be said for honesty, both from the consumer and from the provider. If the consumer has the feeling that he's constantly fucked ("no, we didn't really mean unlimited, but haha! we already have your money!") then it's not surprising he's going to bend the TOS rules a little in his advantage. The knife cuts both ways.
1. Assemble an incident response team. Gather the buddies round the terminal, see what we got here.
2. Assess the initial damage and the risk for more. You measured the damage, all 14GB of it. In assessing the risk for more of this damage, you noted that no ftp write access had been tried in a while, concluding that the risk was relatively low.
3. Develop a notification plan. You sent an email-to-all that there's going to be a movie night, cancel your dates, postpone dinner, it's going to be a long one!
4. Begin remediating the problem. You closed off ftp access.
5. Document everything. I guess watching the movies, I mean damage, would fall under the documentation stage.
6. Develop a strategy for stopping the next attack. Contemplate re-opening the ftp server to encourage more damage.
Especially since the DMCA specifically provides the RIAA with this handy tool. The only thing they have to do to have any content pulled is claim their employers own the copyright. No need to prove it, no need to show any kind of evidence, no official papers needed. They send any ISP a letter saying: the content on page X is ours, the ISP pulls it, since they can't prove who owns the copyright at all, so they'll just take the easy way out. At the moment, they have more to fear from the RIAA than from their own users. (Isn't that nice? You pay these people and they serve another master. That's for another post, though.) Now they want to take this a step further and have the ISPs police their own network, without any interference from the RIAA. In short, they want to sit back and have you throw your money at them.
The arrogance in claiming that Google wouldn't exist without Viacoms patents is beyond me.
Are they fighting the accusation in a court of law or are they just ignoring it for the bs that it is? I'd like to see the former, but the latter seems more appropriate.
Like the music exec's son pirating music and getting no more than a sound beating from his dad? If that? You know, the EXACT same thing all these people have been sued for? Textbook example of class justice.
And it's not that no-one knows, it's that no-one really cares. The public just does not care. Not about the son, not about pirating, not about music even. That's what's dangerous about the situation.
... the Politicians... paid off... corruption. Always have been, always will be. And, if you're feeling particularly rebellious:
killing them Sounds like a great idea.
Re:Is Roland Piquepaille paid for Slashdot stories
on
A Single-Photon Server
·
· Score: 1
There's been a lot of discussion on this topic before. The link is under his name, the name is posted on the slashdot front page which has a high google page rank, the page rank of whatever the link is to goes up. There have been loads of "stories" like this (although this one isn't half bad) which are just press releases and other non-news, which always gets posted on here. The greasemonkey script seems like a good idea;)
You better be thankful that the courts do "make law" as you describe it. Laws passed down by the government can never take into account all the circumstances of your specific case. They hardly ever see how the law may be used or avoided, even though the law making process takes so long. All laws are judged in a public court, and mostly impartial judges are there to see if your case fits the law in question or not. This is the way the trias politica works, and it works well. What's sometimes even more important than the law, is the case precedence, which is where the law gets worked out to real world examples.
In short, lawmakers make the law, judges tell you if it applies to your case. This is good.
(I won't go into the motives of lawmakers who get funded by certain large corporations, etc, etc)
I've talked a friend through finding his own fc and inputting mine (not trivial, with the mingle, migrate connect 24 functions and fc exchange) and it took about 15 minutes. I would guess that it requests a list of befriended Wiis every once in a while from some main connecting server. Perhaps every 30 minutes?
Wii: Your name is Willy. Your Mii's name is Wiilly! (Or anything that is Wi-, -ey, -ee, -i-, etc.) Wiimote. Wiibrator. I wiish I had a Wii. The double "i" logo possibilities.
The variations are endless. The fun never stops. Don't think this is funny? The Wii may not be for you.
Revolution: Stupid marketing name. It's not a revolution at all. Trying to fit in with the "serious gamer" crowd.
Student: guilty until proven innocent (hardly has a way out except pay) **AA: legal until someone puts up enough cash for an investigation and is not shot down by "funded" politicians.
The real question is: can they take away the right you have to do with your property what you want? You buy a BR (or DVD, for that matter). You want to watch it on Linux. What now? Can they say: you cannot do that? Your analogy with breaking in is a straw man. You have been given the right to watch the movie on your equipment. It doesn't specify what equipment anywhere on the disk, the receipt or in the store. Copyright laws say that I cannot distribute the content without permission. I'm not doing that. I can't display it publicly, not doing that either. Can't make illegal copies, not trying to do that. I just want to watch the movie.
Saying that I can only peruse the film on a "licensed device" is racketeering (I'm looking at you, iTunes!)
The only protection they have is their flimsy "encryption". Flimsy because it gets broken by a couple of guys in a couple of weeks (thanks doom9 people!) Because the RIAA/MPAA/etc aren't THAT stupid, they pushed for the DMCA with its non-circumventing rule. You cannot legally break encryption, even if you are not breaking the copyright it protects. Let me say that one more time. You can't break the encryption on your legally bought disks, even when you just want to watch the movie. Said in yet another way: every person in the USA watching a DVD on their Linux system is a criminal under the DMCA.
> To do so you have to be privy to secret information (i.e. keys). To obtain these you must be an AACS LA licensee, or obtain them illicitly. It's only illicit because of the DMCA. There is nothing wrong with me opening the hood of my car, replacing a couple of parts and driving off if that suits my fancy. The car is mine, the manufacturer has nothing to say about it any more (bad car analogy: cars aren't usually copyrighted. But you get my point)
> While you could contort this into meaning they've given you permission to decrypt it, they've not given you the right to obtain the keys you would need to do so. I don't understand how you can say that. They have obviously given me explicit permission to watch the damn movie. The movie is encrypted. Do I need to spell it out? How does it NOT follow that I can decrypt the movie? It's so obvious that it's painful. Again, the only protection they have from me doing what I'm supposed to do with the movie is the DMCA.
What the **AA successfully does is turn the copyright system into a "we can say what you can do with our stuff because of copyright". Copyright law was never intended that way. Copyright gives the holder a government granted, limited monopoly on distribution. The starting point is that we can do with our stuff what we want. Anything. Copyright was invented to give artists incentive to make more of their art by giving them a short monopoly over the distribution, making them the only selling point of the art, so they can make money. It's like the difference between opt-in and opt-out. It used to be that we could do anything, except for a few things (ie distributing content), for a short time (some years), because of the copyright. The **AA makes it sound like we can do nothing because the content is theirs, except for the few things they allow. This is wrong because it goes against the grain of the law.
Apart from the answers listed above, I would like to point out that the current legal atmosphere is in favour of the guy with the deep pockets.
If you get sued by the RIAA and you go to court, there is a chance that you'll win. This will cost you a lot (a LOT) of money and time, sometimes even years of your life. Sometimes you'll get cost awarded to you as in a recent case, but the RIAA will appeal, taking more time and more money. If you win without being awarded legal costs, you will most likely have spent more money than the RIAA was going to settle for. Then there's the chance that you'll lose, and you'll have to pay everything the RIAA asked for, plus your legal cost and if you're very unlucky theirs as well (I think, IANAL).
So, basically, going to court will cost you, even if you win.
The RIAA knows this. That's why it's a little cynical that they're offering a "discount" now, don't you think?
I guess the jury is literally still out on that. Is an algorithm, however new or revolutionary, a new nutcracker? How broad was the original patent for cracking nuts? Does the USPTO know? Can they see and understand the difference? Can you convince a jury?
> until the offending IP is pulled out of the Linux core
remember that when we're talking about a software PATENT, it's not the implementation that is patented, it's the idea. Simplified, if MS would hold the patent on "interfacing with a magnetic data carrier", Linux couldn't be able to have code that saves stuff on a disk, because that's what the patent covers. It's not the actual code that was stolen/borrowed, it's the idea of "interfacing with a magnetic data carrier" that cannot be implemented in any way without licensing the idea from the patent's owner.
Now you can see why software patents are bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
What, right after you pick the kids up from school, have a cup of coffee, do the dishes, visit granny, contemplate what to have for dinner?
We are surrounded by incompetence. Dilbert, save us!
So long Kurt.
ETC
> But they are not directly responsible
And therein lies the main problem of corporate or political anything today. And I'm not just talking about the USA here, it's world wide.
As the board of directors of a company, you have a bunch of perks. You also have a bunch of responsibilities. You are the person responsible for mistakes made by your company. The family analogy is moot because there is an explicit task, an explicit burden of responsibility for the board. This doesn't mean that when some Joe in the mail room drives over a cat on the weekend you take the fall, but when something big and terrible (world wide infection of computers by your company, by malice even) happens, you get to take the fall. That's one of the downsides of being high up in the chain.
These days though, the only thing we hear are excuses. "It was a division, not me!", "it was the secretary of state, not me!", "surely you cannot expect me to take the fall for that!" These people didn't end up there because they couldn't help it. It's a job that you choose to take, and it comes with responsibility. If you're not prepared to take it, don't take the job. Also see: politics.
It's not as if these people aren't compensated for the risk they take. Now they want to mitigate the risk? Come on.
"A gimmicky controller?"
Do I need to read the rest of your comment? Wii-fanboi against PS3-fanboi, oh so interesting.
Can you tell me that if the Wii's controller is so gimmicky, why did Sony include motion sensing in their new controller? Can it be that even the people at Sony HQ thought the Wii was on to something?
Man, I hate these stupid, pointless conversations. NINE CORES ZOMG! "Serious" gamers need more power! You're being taunted by the ads that say that the cpu in your PS3 is smarter than you are. You cannot be serious.
Playboy... has women?
Good points. Still, you can tell me any kind of marketing speak, but it really does stop playing when you stop paying. You are aware of that, right? The comparison with TV is moot because I hardly ever rewatch anything on tv, but I do relisten most every CD I have.
> there is a clear definition of what "unlimited" means in that context
Are you a lawyer perhaps?
I don't disagree with your point, but you can't sell me something that is unlimited and then turn around and tell me that unlimited really means limited in your world/context. Unlimited means unlimited, there aren't any limits. It doesn't mean that there are no limits we could possibly reach, or a very very high number. I'm aware of the business consequences of truly unlimited plans, but why offer them?
There is something to be said for honesty, both from the consumer and from the provider. If the consumer has the feeling that he's constantly fucked ("no, we didn't really mean unlimited, but haha! we already have your money!") then it's not surprising he's going to bend the TOS rules a little in his advantage. The knife cuts both ways.
Let's assess your response step by step.
1. Assemble an incident response team.
Gather the buddies round the terminal, see what we got here.
2. Assess the initial damage and the risk for more.
You measured the damage, all 14GB of it. In assessing the risk for more of this damage, you noted that no ftp write access had been tried in a while, concluding that the risk was relatively low.
3. Develop a notification plan.
You sent an email-to-all that there's going to be a movie night, cancel your dates, postpone dinner, it's going to be a long one!
4. Begin remediating the problem.
You closed off ftp access.
5. Document everything.
I guess watching the movies, I mean damage, would fall under the documentation stage.
6. Develop a strategy for stopping the next attack.
Contemplate re-opening the ftp server to encourage more damage.
Especially since the DMCA specifically provides the RIAA with this handy tool. The only thing they have to do to have any content pulled is claim their employers own the copyright. No need to prove it, no need to show any kind of evidence, no official papers needed. They send any ISP a letter saying: the content on page X is ours, the ISP pulls it, since they can't prove who owns the copyright at all, so they'll just take the easy way out. At the moment, they have more to fear from the RIAA than from their own users. (Isn't that nice? You pay these people and they serve another master. That's for another post, though.)
Now they want to take this a step further and have the ISPs police their own network, without any interference from the RIAA. In short, they want to sit back and have you throw your money at them.
The arrogance in claiming that Google wouldn't exist without Viacoms patents is beyond me.
Are they fighting the accusation in a court of law or are they just ignoring it for the bs that it is? I'd like to see the former, but the latter seems more appropriate.
Like the music exec's son pirating music and getting no more than a sound beating from his dad? If that? You know, the EXACT same thing all these people have been sued for? Textbook example of class justice.
And it's not that no-one knows, it's that no-one really cares. The public just does not care. Not about the son, not about pirating, not about music even. That's what's dangerous about the situation.
... the Politicians"banish them into the gulfe of Barbarisme"
Beautiful. If only the **AA could at least state their arguments in such prose, they'd be a lot easier to deal with.
The point is: Like what?
There's been a lot of discussion on this topic before. The link is under his name, the name is posted on the slashdot front page which has a high google page rank, the page rank of whatever the link is to goes up. There have been loads of "stories" like this (although this one isn't half bad) which are just press releases and other non-news, which always gets posted on here. The greasemonkey script seems like a good idea ;)
You better be thankful that the courts do "make law" as you describe it. Laws passed down by the government can never take into account all the circumstances of your specific case. They hardly ever see how the law may be used or avoided, even though the law making process takes so long.
All laws are judged in a public court, and mostly impartial judges are there to see if your case fits the law in question or not. This is the way the trias politica works, and it works well. What's sometimes even more important than the law, is the case precedence, which is where the law gets worked out to real world examples.
In short, lawmakers make the law, judges tell you if it applies to your case. This is good.
(I won't go into the motives of lawmakers who get funded by certain large corporations, etc, etc)
I've talked a friend through finding his own fc and inputting mine (not trivial, with the mingle, migrate connect 24 functions and fc exchange) and it took about 15 minutes. I would guess that it requests a list of befriended Wiis every once in a while from some main connecting server. Perhaps every 30 minutes?
Wii:
Your name is Willy. Your Mii's name is Wiilly! (Or anything that is Wi-, -ey, -ee, -i-, etc.)
Wiimote.
Wiibrator.
I wiish I had a Wii.
The double "i" logo possibilities.
The variations are endless. The fun never stops. Don't think this is funny? The Wii may not be for you.
Revolution:
Stupid marketing name.
It's not a revolution at all.
Trying to fit in with the "serious gamer" crowd.
(Can this post get even more off topic?)
... in the comments? I mean, seriously, who cares about Pi when you can get a steak AND a blow job (and if you're good, at the same time?)
Class justice. Text book example.
Student: guilty until proven innocent (hardly has a way out except pay)
**AA: legal until someone puts up enough cash for an investigation and is not shot down by "funded" politicians.
The real question is: can they take away the right you have to do with your property what you want? You buy a BR (or DVD, for that matter). You want to watch it on Linux. What now? Can they say: you cannot do that? Your analogy with breaking in is a straw man. You have been given the right to watch the movie on your equipment. It doesn't specify what equipment anywhere on the disk, the receipt or in the store. Copyright laws say that I cannot distribute the content without permission. I'm not doing that. I can't display it publicly, not doing that either. Can't make illegal copies, not trying to do that. I just want to watch the movie.
Saying that I can only peruse the film on a "licensed device" is racketeering (I'm looking at you, iTunes!)
The only protection they have is their flimsy "encryption". Flimsy because it gets broken by a couple of guys in a couple of weeks (thanks doom9 people!) Because the RIAA/MPAA/etc aren't THAT stupid, they pushed for the DMCA with its non-circumventing rule. You cannot legally break encryption, even if you are not breaking the copyright it protects. Let me say that one more time. You can't break the encryption on your legally bought disks, even when you just want to watch the movie. Said in yet another way: every person in the USA watching a DVD on their Linux system is a criminal under the DMCA.
> To do so you have to be privy to secret information (i.e. keys). To obtain these you must be an AACS LA licensee, or obtain them illicitly.
It's only illicit because of the DMCA. There is nothing wrong with me opening the hood of my car, replacing a couple of parts and driving off if that suits my fancy. The car is mine, the manufacturer has nothing to say about it any more (bad car analogy: cars aren't usually copyrighted. But you get my point)
> While you could contort this into meaning they've given you permission to decrypt it, they've not given you the right to obtain the keys you would need to do so.
I don't understand how you can say that. They have obviously given me explicit permission to watch the damn movie. The movie is encrypted. Do I need to spell it out? How does it NOT follow that I can decrypt the movie? It's so obvious that it's painful. Again, the only protection they have from me doing what I'm supposed to do with the movie is the DMCA.
What the **AA successfully does is turn the copyright system into a "we can say what you can do with our stuff because of copyright". Copyright law was never intended that way. Copyright gives the holder a government granted, limited monopoly on distribution. The starting point is that we can do with our stuff what we want. Anything. Copyright was invented to give artists incentive to make more of their art by giving them a short monopoly over the distribution, making them the only selling point of the art, so they can make money. It's like the difference between opt-in and opt-out. It used to be that we could do anything, except for a few things (ie distributing content), for a short time (some years), because of the copyright. The **AA makes it sound like we can do nothing because the content is theirs, except for the few things they allow. This is wrong because it goes against the grain of the law.
Apart from the answers listed above, I would like to point out that the current legal atmosphere is in favour of the guy with the deep pockets.
If you get sued by the RIAA and you go to court, there is a chance that you'll win. This will cost you a lot (a LOT) of money and time, sometimes even years of your life. Sometimes you'll get cost awarded to you as in a recent case, but the RIAA will appeal, taking more time and more money. If you win without being awarded legal costs, you will most likely have spent more money than the RIAA was going to settle for.
Then there's the chance that you'll lose, and you'll have to pay everything the RIAA asked for, plus your legal cost and if you're very unlucky theirs as well (I think, IANAL).
So, basically, going to court will cost you, even if you win.
The RIAA knows this. That's why it's a little cynical that they're offering a "discount" now, don't you think?
> stopped more music-traders by flat-out killing them
Don't give these people ideas.
I guess the jury is literally still out on that. Is an algorithm, however new or revolutionary, a new nutcracker? How broad was the original patent for cracking nuts? Does the USPTO know? Can they see and understand the difference? Can you convince a jury?
I agree with your statement, but:
> until the offending IP is pulled out of the Linux core
remember that when we're talking about a software PATENT, it's not the implementation that is patented, it's the idea. Simplified, if MS would hold the patent on "interfacing with a magnetic data carrier", Linux couldn't be able to have code that saves stuff on a disk, because that's what the patent covers. It's not the actual code that was stolen/borrowed, it's the idea of "interfacing with a magnetic data carrier" that cannot be implemented in any way without licensing the idea from the patent's owner.
Now you can see why software patents are bullshit.