Actually, I take back my apology. What do I have to be sorry for?
I concur; there was nothing for which your apology was required, at least not in my mind.
The process of writing the reply was enough of a reward for me to write it. And if you view creativity for creativity's sake as the sign of a monon, then I guess we must have different definitions of "moron".
owenPS was the author of this story, not slashdot (the community, or the site collective), with michael providing the editorial services, so lets ensure criticism of this story is directed where it should be.
I do not think the author was unaware of the registration required, but it's possible. I would hope all slashdot posters are aware that registration is required for many stories at www.nytimes.com, but one of the features of the World Wide Web is that we see the web through the filtered lense of our own browser, which creates the risk that we will be blind to the way others will view a web object. It's possible that the author, as a registered user, has simply forgotten that not everyone is registered, in the same way that people who send MSWord documents through email often forget that not everyone is licensed to use MSWord (or even on a platform where MSWord is available), or web masters who only use (for example) IE are often unaware that the pages they create are unreadable by other browsers.
For an example closer to home, the "preview" function of slashdot for posting comments is seriously broke for anyone using the Lynx web browser. (Yes, the slashdot coders know about it)
On the other hand, unless you are owenPS, you cannot say that the URL was wrong. I'll accept that there may have been a better way to provide a link to the NYT article; but you must respect the author's choice for the story the author wrote. If you think you can do better, you are encouraged to do so. I'll michael appears to be the only one working today.;-)
And while we all expect the NYT will continue to require registration for the forseeable future, they could change their policy at any time, and they are in no way required to notify slashdot of this change to their policy.
The post is posting number 2767034 and posted at 06:51 AM in my timezone. It was in response to an article posted at 6:48 in the reference timezone.
The first response to this story was post number 2767032 posted at 6:51 in the reference timezone.
The post contains approximately 500 words, posted 3 minutes after the story was posted. If we neglect the time spent reading the story, the linked story, and all network delays, and presuming the post was not proofread, this still amounts to a raw typing speed of over 150 words per minute; impressive by any standard.
Clearly, this was a pre-written screed against Linux by some individual with more interest in destroying the Linux community than in building their own. It was clearly tied to an automated system to post this pre-written reply in response to any slashdot story meeting it's criteria.
It's a bit unusual, not at all unexpected, and clearly counterproductive to even their own objectives. I wonder where the author expects to be once the internet becomes nothing more than a battleground for competing perl scripts. After all, you can't market to a robot.
Slashdot does a better job than most at warning readers that a linked-to site may require registration, or contain sensitive subject matter, etc.
However, you should realize, due to the nature of the internet, that there is no guarantee that the object you will find at this location[does not exist] will be anything like what it was when I gave you the reference by posting it here, or even that the site will let you access it at all.
In other words, yeah, registration sucks, but don't blame the messenger.
Putting the card number on the recipt changes it from a simple record of a transaction...to a securety risk that should be carefully destroyed as soon as possable.
There's no inherent problem with identifying the account on the receipt. The problem is with a system where simple knowledge of the existance of the account is presumed to imply authorization to charge to it. Unfortunately, it's this which is hopelessly broke.
For security, the system should include an out-of-band method for verifying that the charge is authorized. The receipt does not need to contain enough information reproduce the verification transaction, although a completely anal receipt might contain enough information to uniquely identify the specific verification transaction which was used. That's what we call an "audit trail".
For that matter, account number shouldn't be enough to remove money from an account in the first place.
The affected vehicles are to be updated by the Service Department with a refueling information label and Owner's Manual pages regarding the proper refueling procedure.
Please, owning a PC comes with a certain amount of responsibility, as well as maintaining an internet connection. MS Couldn't hand hold you any more through their patch process than they do alreayd without actually sending someone to your house to wipe your ass for you.
That's right, only us privleged people should be able to use a computer. Get all the low life off my internet. Why don't we just require licenscing and a proficiency examination.
Why are you laughing? Do you think I'm kidding? Check the trends. This is where we are heading.
.. but they can't be exepcted to recall the OS for a single, simple flaw.
There was a time when just "being in business" (the opportunity to make a profit off the public) was considered a privlege, and if your actions as a business didn't serve the public interest as well as your shareholders, you were simply shut down.
Maybe we need a little more "tough love" with abusive firms like MS, for our own protection.
The people who continue to say "Break it up! Break it up!" fail to see the consequences of that kind of action.
So they're already too big to fail?
Sure there will be consequences, and I'll grant that some of them will be bad, and I'll allow that the net effect may even be negative.
So what? How is that relevant? Even in a time of economic crisis, How is that relevant?
We could argue that we should never have abolished slavery, because of all the harm and suffering it caused to those involved in the resulting war, not to mention the...er...."economic disruption"...we caused for those who were...um..."thrown out of work." Is economic stability more important than political stability in cases where you clearly can't choose both?
If we allow the precedent to say "No predatory monopolistic practices, unless you can make a lot of money fast doing it..." we've already lost the game. And that is what you are arguing in support of.
How do we convince Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and others that the playing field is indeed level?
As Lessig points out, in this game code is law.
Ensure that all interface elements (hardware, networking protocols, file formats, user interface, API's, etc) are fully disclosed and fixed. None of that "freedom to innovate" BS.
Seperation of Powers: yes, that means "Break it up! Break it up!
Microsoft (and all other vendors) can keep their implementation private (and innovate within the black box until they're blue in the face), but must make their interfaces public, and must not be able to exercise editorial control over how (or if) those interfaces are used. (And I don't have an answer as to how this could be accomplished without access to the source code.)
We will never see a viable Microsoft Office product for any non-Microsoft operating system as long as the group writing Office has a financial (or otherwise) incentive for making the Windows version better. If you want to see what MS Office for Linux (for example) would look like under a post-settlement Microsoft, just remember what MS Office for MacOS looked like just before the DOJ charged MS with predatory practices. You're dreaming. It will never happen in any viable (read: acceptable to the business community as transparently equal) fashion.
If you run a web server and you pay attention to browser strings, you need to understand that some browsers allow the user to modify that thring to an arbitrary value. Nothing surprising or immoral in that, it's just a fact.
However, that means the browser string shouldn't be interpreted as meaning "this is the browser I'm using" but rather as meaning "this is how i want to be treated".
Does that make it clear to all of you non-IE web surfers? You're using something other than IE for reasons of your own, and then asking the world to treat you as if you were actually using IE.
How are you expecting the world to interpret your actions?
I hate spammers as much (or more) than the rest, but in this case, I'll side with them. I've never seen a spammer throw anyone in jail.
Or, as a recent election slogan put it (in a tight race between a convicted felon and an admitted racist)
All of you "...they're just tilting at windmills..." and "...this can never happen..." types need to spend a few minutes thinking about a world in which it already has happened.
The Internet is a human construction. It can be built or rebuilt to suit whatever criteria its builders choose.
The 'Net we are heading for has no anonymity, is zoned on a per-country and per culture basis, has routers blocking every port but 80 (you can use the others, too, for a price) and only allows "approved publishers" to create content.
- The rage in the router world right now is 'intelligent content sensitive blocking' which would allow, for example' your cable ISP to block H.323 packets (voice over IP) unless you've paid for the service.
- Right behind this is the ability to QOS their routers to "encourage" their customers to use preferred services (== companies with which they've formed a partnership) over competitors. (If you don't like your current ISP, but the competitors home page takes 5 minutes to load and doesn't render right, are you going to switch? Surprise, it may have nothing to do how fast the competing ISP is, or how well they've designed their home page.)
- As previous slashdot stories have pointed out, whole countries (like Saudi Arabia) are firewalling off the rest of the world. AOL does this, too, but their 'zone' is paying customers. Products like SurfWatch allow anyone to do this for themselves and those they "represent".
- We've already lost port 25 (SMTP) because of the spammers. Don't kid yourself into believing the ISP were anything but estatic about being able to take that away, for "anti-spamming" reasons, and now charge us extra for our email accounts.
In the new 'Net world, you won't even get onto the internet without "the 'Net" knowing exactly who you are, what you're allowed to access, and who to charge for every piece of content you view. And BTW, they'll also know what you're likely to buy, how much you can afford, and whether they can charge you for it (because you're already hooked) or have to give it to you for free.
(Just to keep ontopic; once they figure out that you prefer tits to ass, they'll charge you for tits, but ass will be free.)
Imagine an internet no bigger than AOL, or MSN. Imagine an Internet ab bland and braindead as broadcast television is today.
You'll be allowed to create your own home page (for a price), but if there's anything contraversial (== not profitable to the 'Nets owner) you won't be allowed to post it.
If you rest on your laurels, confident that it can never happen, you lose your vote in how you want the Internet to be built. It can be built differently, but you'll have to do it yourself.
DVD's are more of a packaging mechanism than a storage medium. The original work is stored in some other form, and it is 'derived' into an encrypted (or non-encrypted) DVD for distribution. So even if you can't place one derivative of your work (the CSS encrypted one) into the public domain, you could always release the original work (because it's stored in some other form).
But think about CSS...
People who study cryptography think of CSS as little more than an obsfucated proprietary storage format. Once you know how to interpret the bits, it's simply a matter of running the file through an interpreter (DeCSS).
Now think about Word documents.
When you first create (...fix in a tangible form...) an original work in Word, it's stored in a proprietary file format. Like CSS the.doc file format has been broken, by applications like Star Office and Word Perfect, but there's nothing preventing Microsoft from changing their file format in the future, and no guarantee that the new format could be reverse engineered (but I wouldn't bet against it.) But a single court case, or just a marketing statement, could have this proprietary file format classified as an "access control" mechanism.
There are many benefits for a company to do this. How's this for a neat marketing run-in:
"Protect your saved files, even if your laptop is stolen or your server rooted..."
But there's an even better reason....
When you create, for example, a Word document, the original (not a derivative) is stored in the saved file. If that saved file format is already considered (under law) to be an "access control mechanism", then you don't have the option (as you would with a CSS DVD) to just abandon the derivative and release the original to the public domain.
Remember, there a significant amount of intellectual property present in the original file which isn't present in a derivative, for example style sheets and tags. If you're looking to publish (or release to the public domain) these parts of your work, you'll have to release it in Word format (meaning anyone who wants to use it needs to buy a Word license) or abandon your intellectual property but for the parts Word allows you to export. (And Microsoft has no incentive to make it easy for their current customers to switch over to a competitor's product.)
This is the best reason of all: complete vendor lock in.
Using DVD's as an example, it's easy to see how a Microsoft could argue that products like K-Office or StarOffice are analgous to DeCSS -- they allow someone who doesn't have a license to bypass the author's access control mechanism and make illegal use of copyrighted works -- and therefore should be declared illegal, and employees of companies (or SourceForge project members) should be jailed (aka Dimitri) for their actions.
How many individuals and companies which currently have documents stored in proprietary file formats would be able to just write-off these assets? Not many, I'd guess.
So, I reckon there's just one court case (or M$ marketing statement) standing between where we are now and "all your works are belong to us".
Now do you remember why you started using Open Source?
Office for Linux will never happen, here's a few of the reasons why:
1. Why Linux? Why not also BSD, AUX, Be, etc?
2. Which Linux? x86 obviously, but what about PPC? If I port Linux to the X-Box, does M$ have to support that platform as well?
If you want to see what an "Office for Linux" would look like, just remember what Office for Mac looked like back when M$ considered Apple to be it's biggest competitor.
As M$ is so fond of pointing out, you can't separate the application from the OS in the windows world. That's why most IT departments don't consider the Macintosh as a viable business platform: not because the apps aren't there, but because it's not Windows:
If a spreadsheet includes VB macros, it won't be usable by Macintosh users.
If a document uses Windows-only fonts, you know there'll be complaints from Mac users about an unreadable document.
Do you really want to be in front of a client presenting someone else's Powerpoint package and just hoping that there weren't and incompatibilities hiding in there to make you look like a fool?
And what rational business would choose to support an application on two (or more) different platforms when they could choose one instead; especially if one of them is directly profitable to them, and the other might just put them out of business?
The only reason M$ would release something called "Office for " would be for strategic advantage of their Windows product by proving the other platform isn't viable, or to maintain the illusion that they haven't got an absolute monopoly.
Network Effects: That's what Judge Jackson understood, that's why he was so pissed that he wanted to get the word out, and that's why he demanded that M$ be broken up. Until the network effects (including API's, File formats, application/os layering, and distribution channels) are all addressed, and a level playing field established, there cannot be an effective remedy.
Specifically, if you could ask Congress for help in the area of network and information security, what would you ask for?
The design of the Internet requires that all entities on it act cooperatively. It was never designed to provide fair and equal service to all adversaries. Corporations are required by their shareholders to act in an adversarial manner wherever their profits are concerned.
This means that the Internet must evolve into a network run by a single organization (such as Microsoft or AOL) where dissent and creativity are not allowed to exist.
If this is the goal of Congress, then no action is required. But understand that this means you are writing off the investment which was made to date (and turning it over to the eventual winner) and that you will never again see an economic boom like the one we experienced in the 90's prompted by the growth of the Internet.
On the other hand, if Congress deems it important for the United States to maintain a strong technological superiority, and is interested in restoring the "capacity to innovate" which the Internet brought to us, then steps must be taken to ensure that the Internet can act as a fair and level playing field for all entities.
Since the Internet requires (at a technical level) a fair administrative regime, and since corporate ownership of the Internet cannot allow this to happen, Congress must choose between legislating an Internet structure which does not discriminate between players, or replacing the technology of the Internet with a system which can handle an adversarial administrative regime.
The former would require "common carrier" status laws for network service providers, and may also require de-valuing intellectual property protection, since IP and copyright law is the weapon of choice for corporate aggression on the Internet.
The later would require replacing the technology, at the TCP/IP level, with a new technology which
enforces a fair and level playing field.
The risk to Congress, should it fail to take these actions is that the Internet Community will perceive the loss of the fair and level playing field as damage, a route around the problem, making foreign territory the location of choice for innovation and technological advancement.
In summary:
Look very carefully at the way the Microsoft Monopoly case is being handled. Nothing has yet been done to remedy their monopoly practices.
Require Internet access providers to provide service on a fair basis, including legal prohibition on "engineered structural damage" as are created by filtered routing, content-sensitive routing, and such.
So what does all of this have to do with increasing the security of the Internet? Security has to focus on the structural level; it's not an after market add on. The insecurity we have today was designed-in. It will have to be designed out, not painted over.
Gariano said the CD case would carry a copy protection sticker and an insert explaining the technology. Record stores will accept returns, even if the CD case is opened, if buyers are unhappy with it.
From the story author:
I say we specifically look for titles with this sticker, purchase them, give them a whirl in our PCs and see them not play, and return them. Vote with not just our money, but their overhead costs to handle all the returned merchandise and bad publicity when stores don't want CDs with those stickers.
So, if the record companies sold a grapefruit with a label saying "This is a grapefruit, you cannot make orange juice with this." you would buy it, then return it because you couldn't make orange juice from it, right?
It's the clueless gits like you that get us into these messes in the first place.
Here's a roadmap for Microsoft to turn this settlement into a
"we win, game over" victory.
1. Modify the savefile routines in M$ applications (such as Office)
to "encrypt" _every_ saved file under a digital rights management
scheme, using Passport for author authentication, or a password
for those who are still clicking the "not yet" button at startup.
It can even be completely transparent to the user. It doesn't have
to be foolproof, just present.
2. Remove, or make useless, any sort of "export" function from these
applications. Sure you might be able to get a 'text only'
file of your PowerPoint presentation, but what good is that?
3. Begin to market, or otherwise state in the documentation, that
the Microsoft file format is a part of a "content protection"
system. Must use that phrase.
Game Over.
The effect:
A. Locks out any StarOffice-type competition using DMCA protections.
Competitors won't even be able to create applications which can
read the file format.
Think about the DeCSS case. You need both a) a right to access
the protected work, AND b) a license (and the technology) to
decrypt it. If you don't have a licensed DVD player, you can't
even play protected DVD's you've created yourself.
In what way is a DVD containing a CSS-protected file different
from a hard/floppy/zip disk containing an MS-protected file?
B. Completely legal, even under the terms of this settlement.
See the Settlement section J.1.a,.
C. Kick-ass marketing angle. All documents are "protected" against
spying eyes (crackers) by the protection system. Even if your
documents are stolen by some god-like cracker (or a dirt-dumb
SirCam virus) they can't be read. At least, thet will be the
selling angle.
D. Encourage the deployment of.NET to organizations. If you have
to have a corporate "Passport (TM)" infrastructure in order to
"Exchange (TM)" the latest "PowerPoints {TM)" with your workmates,
every business will want a ".NET (TM)".
E. Ensures the continuing purchase of licenses, no matter how high
the license fee gets.
Think about this: How much content-protected copyrighted material
does your business own if "content-protected copyrighted material"
includes every document in a Microsoft format? Every Exchange message,
every PowerPoint chart, every product documentation slide, every
FrontPage web document, every source code file, etc. A business
can't just abandon all of these saved files which happen to be in
a Microsoft-owned format. That would be like erasing every hard
drive and every backup tape, because without the appropriate
Microsoft license you can't access the protected file , and you
have to start over from scratch. Most businesses are much more
addicted to Microsoft products than they are willing to admit.
Before I buy a new gadget, I go online to
see how hackable it is.
also:
Of course, this assumes that Sony wants to work things out. Perhaps Sony is only interested in shutting www.aibopet.com down, in which case, I will no longer be interest
ed in buying Sony products.
That's right, I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than proofread/. posts.
Considering that copyright holders can release their work into the public domain anytime they want,....
Don't be so sure about that.
If I release a copyrighted work under a digital rights management scheme (where you would need a license to view it) like a DVD, I no longer have the option to release that work into the public domain. I don't have the option to let you view that work without requiring you to pay for a license, even though I'm the copyright owner.
Read that again. This is ugly stuff we've created.
Re:That's like MSFT saying it won't ship free brow
on
Adobe Backs Down
·
· Score: 1
So, presumably, if Adobe says they give him authority, then all is well?
That's not how it works. Adobe is not the copyright holder; the individual authors (or their agents) of the eBooks are the copyright holders. So in order to take advantage of this exclusion, he would have to have been granted this authority by all current and future users of the access control software he circumvented.
And even then, he would still be guilty of distributing it.
There are so many things wrong with the DMCA you could never hope to cover them all in a single slashdot post.
It is NEVER helpful to chew-out the person who's there to save your ass.
OTOH, there's a bit of a difference between a customer tounge lashing and "...spend the rest of your career filling-out FCC outage reports..." as would happen with a failure in that other networking technology.....
Remember, 5 9's means 5 9's no matter what the marketdroid said.
I wonder how many Slashdot readers today were yet to be born when Chuck Hammill gave his From Crossbows to Cryptography speech at the Future of Freedom Conference back in November 1987?
He then got down to the meat of his argument -- that the government can
regulate conduct even if there's a speech component to it. He used the
example of Giboney V. Empire Storage and Ice Co., a case where picketers
(a constitutionally protected activity) were successfully prevented from
picketing due to the functional intent of the picketing, which was
apparently to violate certain laws relating to restraint of trade. Alter
argued that the DeCSS case was similar -- the intent of distributing DeCSS
is to promote violations of copyright law,
No, the intent of DeCSS is to fill a market void at a favorable cost.
It should be noted again that DeCSS does not, of itself, impact the
profitibility of the copyright holder; a DVD sold and played through
DeCSS is still a DVD sold, while granting the effect of DeCSS is to
undercut the profitibility of the MPAA CSS licensing scheme. It further
should be noted that, unlike in Giboney, the functional intent and effect
of DeCSS is to the benefit of the consumer.
I wonder if there could be case law on this from the pre-emancipation
era (1800's). If the law supports slavery as legal, is a song agtitating
against slavery protected speech? Is it still protected if it's being sung
by a slave? What if the song includes directions to the Underground
Railroad?
Aren't computers today treated by the law essentially the same as slaves
were treated in the pre-emancipation era; property of the owner, capable
of performing actions on behalf of their owner, when given the proper
instructions?
None of the above should be construed with any disrespect toward anyone.
If we can't study our mistakes and learn from them we really are doomed.
Why and how is a computer program expressive speech? What does it
express? 2600's lawyers are entirely familiar with Touretzky's Gallery, so
forget about those. Assume you have some C or perl staring at you, any random
block of code in any random print-out. What does it express? Why should that
code be protected expression?
A computer program is expressive speech in that it expresses the design
choices a software engineer makes for describing a method to accomplish a
task at hand, with consideration of all related factors.
If I write a computer program to accomplish a task (data compression) I
express my thoughts as to what is important about that task (is it more
important to be memory efficient or fast? Should I trade speed for the
ability to handle arbitrarily large files? Should I insist on portability
or make use of special features of a given processor?)
Clearly such considerations as platform availability (is there another
computer program available which will run on my desired platform and
accomplish the same task?) and cost (does the cost of the license fees
for using program A outweigh the cost of additional memory required to
use program B?) are factors which should not be discounted.
This relates directly to this case, as the software designers in question
chose their particular expression for this task based partially on the lack
of availability of CSS software for the Linux (and other) platforms, and
partially out of a desire to avoid (or allow others to avoid) the licensing
fees associated with another implementation of software accomplishing the same
task.
Another programmer will express their own choices depending on what is important
to them, even though the resulting code may function nearly identically in some
circumstances. Each program is the expression of the choices the designer made in
creating the program. And in software engineering as in any engineering field, an
individual is often jugded by their ability to make good design choices.
As with all speech, if we fail to protect such expression, we remove the
incentive for the creative to create new works.
As related to software, we could stipulate that only one method of data
compression (e.g. Huffman encoding) shall be used, and that creating alternative
methods of accomplishing this same task should be prohibited. This would leave
us without incentive for other forms of compression (e.g. Shanon-Fanon) to be
created.
This seems like a terrible price to pay for the protection of one corporations'
license fees.
What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in
its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one
that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is
destroyed. But perhaps there are others. That is, one cannot excerpt a
digital clip of a CSS-encrypted DVD, but one could point a video camera at
the screen and create a clip, albeit of poor quality. Is that sufficient
for fair use?
I'd argue it is, provided there is no legal requirement obligating the clip
to be of poor(er) quality.
Consider the owner of a copyrighted work (Matrix: DVD). If the owner were
to create a derivative work (Matrix: VHS) which is, by definition, not
identical to the first, does he now have a seperate work such that both works
are deserving of copyright protection, or does he now have one work
(Matrix: DVD) which can be declared forever untouchable by fair use, and a
second work (Matrix: VHS) for which fair use applies?
And who decides how much of the original work must be included in the
derivative, and how much is forever untouchable?
- The copyright holder?
(Could the copyright holder offer "Matrix: The Trailer" as the fair
use derivative?)
- The Government?
(Perhaps only the 7 most significant bits of each byte are available
for fair use. Of course this would mean that licensed players would
be prohibited from displaying these bits as well. If bit0 is outlawed,
only outlaws will have bit0.)
Traditionally, this decision has been left to the 'fair user', who is allowed to duplicate the original to whatever level of
quality is sufficient to meet their own needs. How has this changed?
Selling a handwritten copy of a protected work is still punishable infringement, and if I need to duplicate the original to an arbitrary
level of exactness for a purpose allowed under fair use, fair use still
applies.
But getting back to the original example, if "one could point a video
camera at the screen and create a clip" it should not matter (for reasons
of fair use) if I use an arbitrarily advanced and extraordinarily expensive
screen and camera rig. It should not matter if my arbitrarily advanced rig
is able to reproduce a digitally exact duplicate of the original bits, nor
if such an arbitrarily advanced setup is not extraordinarily expensive
when created through the use of DeCSS. If it's fair use, then it's fair use.
If it isn't then we'd better start working on legislation to limit the
quality of video cameras worldwide.
A better strategy; figure out how much you have been spending on your music and continue to spend that much, just don't spend it with the organization you're boycotting.
This creates a double-edge sword; you're not only denying the profits to one, you're financing their opponents.
I imagine this could mean a strong influx of cash to the new "independent artist" sites, perhaps making a few of them even profitable...which encourages more independent artists...which makes independent artists more popular....
And that is likely to be an even greater concern than the (temporary) loss of a few customers.
Slashdot Mirror
I concur; there was nothing for which your apology was required, at least not in my mind.
The process of writing the reply was enough of a reward for me to write it. And if you view creativity for creativity's sake as the sign of a monon, then I guess we must have different definitions of "moron".
Works for me.
I do not think the author was unaware of the registration required, but it's possible. I would hope all slashdot posters are aware that registration is required for many stories at www.nytimes.com, but one of the features of the World Wide Web is that we see the web through the filtered lense of our own browser, which creates the risk that we will be blind to the way others will view a web object. It's possible that the author, as a registered user, has simply forgotten that not everyone is registered, in the same way that people who send MSWord documents through email often forget that not everyone is licensed to use MSWord (or even on a platform where MSWord is available), or web masters who only use (for example) IE are often unaware that the pages they create are unreadable by other browsers.
For an example closer to home, the "preview" function of slashdot for posting comments is seriously broke for anyone using the Lynx web browser. (Yes, the slashdot coders know about it)
On the other hand, unless you are owenPS, you cannot say that the URL was wrong. I'll accept that there may have been a better way to provide a link to the NYT article; but you must respect the author's choice for the story the author wrote. If you think you can do better, you are encouraged to do so. I'll michael appears to be the only one working today. ;-)
And while we all expect the NYT will continue to require registration for the forseeable future, they could change their policy at any time, and they are in no way required to notify slashdot of this change to their policy.
The first response to this story was post number 2767032 posted at 6:51 in the reference timezone.
The post contains approximately 500 words, posted 3 minutes after the story was posted. If we neglect the time spent reading the story, the linked story, and all network delays, and presuming the post was not proofread, this still amounts to a raw typing speed of over 150 words per minute; impressive by any standard.
Clearly, this was a pre-written screed against Linux by some individual with more interest in destroying the Linux community than in building their own. It was clearly tied to an automated system to post this pre-written reply in response to any slashdot story meeting it's criteria.
It's a bit unusual, not at all unexpected, and clearly counterproductive to even their own objectives. I wonder where the author expects to be once the internet becomes nothing more than a battleground for competing perl scripts. After all, you can't market to a robot.
Then again, some people are just idiots.
Slashdot does a better job than most at warning readers that a linked-to site may require registration, or contain sensitive subject matter, etc.
However, you should realize, due to the nature of the internet, that there is no guarantee that the object you will find at this location[does not exist] will be anything like what it was when I gave you the reference by posting it here, or even that the site will let you access it at all.
In other words, yeah, registration sucks, but don't blame the messenger.
There's no inherent problem with identifying the account on the receipt. The problem is with a system where simple knowledge of the existance of the account is presumed to imply authorization to charge to it. Unfortunately, it's this which is hopelessly broke.
For security, the system should include an out-of-band method for verifying that the charge is authorized. The receipt does not need to contain enough information reproduce the verification transaction, although a completely anal receipt might contain enough information to uniquely identify the specific verification transaction which was used. That's what we call an "audit trail".
Now you're getting it.
One does not "freeze ones butt off" inside a central office, unless one happens to be sitting right on top of the AC vent.
Even then, you can take a stroll among the line cards and get the nice and toasty feeling no matter where they have the AC set.
There is precedent, It's actually more common than you might think. For example, check out:
http://mach.mach-nine.com/gti/vwtechcontent/audipd f/ktcircusrev1.pdf
That's right, only us privleged people should be able to use a computer. Get all the low life off my internet. Why don't we just require licenscing and a proficiency examination.
Why are you laughing? Do you think I'm kidding? Check the trends. This is where we are heading.
There was a time when just "being in business" (the opportunity to make a profit off the public) was considered a privlege, and if your actions as a business didn't serve the public interest as well as your shareholders, you were simply shut down.
Maybe we need a little more "tough love" with abusive firms like MS, for our own protection.
So they're already too big to fail?
Sure there will be consequences, and I'll grant that some of them will be bad, and I'll allow that the net effect may even be negative.
So what? How is that relevant? Even in a time of economic crisis, How is that relevant?
We could argue that we should never have abolished slavery, because of all the harm and suffering it caused to those involved in the resulting war, not to mention the...er...."economic disruption"...we caused for those who were...um..."thrown out of work." Is economic stability more important than political stability in cases where you clearly can't choose both?
If we allow the precedent to say "No predatory monopolistic practices, unless you can make a lot of money fast doing it..." we've already lost the game. And that is what you are arguing in support of.
As Lessig points out, in this game code is law.
Ensure that all interface elements (hardware, networking protocols, file formats, user interface, API's, etc) are fully disclosed and fixed. None of that "freedom to innovate" BS.
Seperation of Powers: yes, that means "Break it up! Break it up!
Microsoft (and all other vendors) can keep their implementation private (and innovate within the black box until they're blue in the face), but must make their interfaces public, and must not be able to exercise editorial control over how (or if) those interfaces are used. (And I don't have an answer as to how this could be accomplished without access to the source code.)
We will never see a viable Microsoft Office product for any non-Microsoft operating system as long as the group writing Office has a financial (or otherwise) incentive for making the Windows version better. If you want to see what MS Office for Linux (for example) would look like under a post-settlement Microsoft, just remember what MS Office for MacOS looked like just before the DOJ charged MS with predatory practices. You're dreaming. It will never happen in any viable (read: acceptable to the business community as transparently equal) fashion.
Nothing immoral here.
If you run a web server and you pay attention to browser strings, you need to understand that some browsers allow the user to modify that thring to an arbitrary value. Nothing surprising or immoral in that, it's just a fact.
However, that means the browser string shouldn't be interpreted as meaning "this is the browser I'm using" but rather as meaning "this is how i want to be treated".
Does that make it clear to all of you non-IE web surfers? You're using something other than IE for reasons of your own, and then asking the world to treat you as if you were actually using IE.
How are you expecting the world to interpret your actions?
Or, as a recent election slogan put it (in a tight race between a convicted felon and an admitted racist)
This is not about quantity, it's about quality.
Is that cause or effect?
All of you "...they're just tilting at windmills..." and "...this can never happen..." types need to spend a few minutes thinking about a world in which it already has happened.
The Internet is a human construction. It can be built or rebuilt to suit whatever criteria its builders choose.
The 'Net we are heading for has no anonymity, is zoned on a per-country and per culture basis, has routers blocking every port but 80 (you can use the others, too, for a price) and only allows "approved publishers" to create content.
- The rage in the router world right now is 'intelligent content sensitive blocking' which would allow, for example' your cable ISP to block H.323 packets (voice over IP) unless you've paid for the service.
- Right behind this is the ability to QOS their routers to "encourage" their customers to use preferred services (== companies with which they've formed a partnership) over competitors. (If you don't like your current ISP, but the competitors home page takes 5 minutes to load and doesn't render right, are you going to switch? Surprise, it may have nothing to do how fast the competing ISP is, or how well they've designed their home page.)
- As previous slashdot stories have pointed out, whole countries (like Saudi Arabia) are firewalling off the rest of the world. AOL does this, too, but their 'zone' is paying customers. Products like SurfWatch allow anyone to do this for themselves and those they "represent".
- We've already lost port 25 (SMTP) because of the spammers. Don't kid yourself into believing the ISP were anything but estatic about being able to take that away, for "anti-spamming" reasons, and now charge us extra for our email accounts.
In the new 'Net world, you won't even get onto the internet without "the 'Net" knowing exactly who you are, what you're allowed to access, and who to charge for every piece of content you view. And BTW, they'll also know what you're likely to buy, how much you can afford, and whether they can charge you for it (because you're already hooked) or have to give it to you for free.
(Just to keep ontopic; once they figure out that you prefer tits to ass, they'll charge you for tits, but ass will be free.)
Imagine an internet no bigger than AOL, or MSN. Imagine an Internet ab bland and braindead as broadcast television is today.
You'll be allowed to create your own home page (for a price), but if there's anything contraversial (== not profitable to the 'Nets owner) you won't be allowed to post it.
If you rest on your laurels, confident that it can never happen, you lose your vote in how you want the Internet to be built. It can be built differently, but you'll have to do it yourself.
DVD's are more of a packaging mechanism than a storage medium. The original work is stored in some other form, and it is 'derived' into an encrypted (or non-encrypted) DVD for distribution. So even if you can't place one derivative of your work (the CSS encrypted one) into the public domain, you could always release the original work (because it's stored in some other form).
.doc file format has been broken, by applications like Star Office and Word Perfect, but there's nothing preventing Microsoft from changing their file format in the future, and no guarantee that the new format could be reverse engineered (but I wouldn't bet against it.) But a single court case, or just a marketing statement, could have this proprietary file format classified as an "access control" mechanism.
But think about CSS...
People who study cryptography think of CSS as little more than an obsfucated proprietary storage format. Once you know how to interpret the bits, it's simply a matter of running the file through an interpreter (DeCSS).
Now think about Word documents.
When you first create (...fix in a tangible form...) an original work in Word, it's stored in a proprietary file format. Like CSS the
There are many benefits for a company to do this. How's this for a neat marketing run-in:
"Protect your saved files, even if your laptop is stolen or your server rooted..."
But there's an even better reason....
When you create, for example, a Word document, the original (not a derivative) is stored in the saved file. If that saved file format is already considered (under law) to be an "access control mechanism", then you don't have the option (as you would with a CSS DVD) to just abandon the derivative and release the original to the public domain.
Remember, there a significant amount of intellectual property present in the original file which isn't present in a derivative, for example style sheets and tags. If you're looking to publish (or release to the public domain) these parts of your work, you'll have to release it in Word format (meaning anyone who wants to use it needs to buy a Word license) or abandon your intellectual property but for the parts Word allows you to export. (And Microsoft has no incentive to make it easy for their current customers to switch over to a competitor's product.)
This is the best reason of all: complete vendor lock in.
Using DVD's as an example, it's easy to see how a Microsoft could argue that products like K-Office or StarOffice are analgous to DeCSS -- they allow someone who doesn't have a license to bypass the author's access control mechanism and make illegal use of copyrighted works -- and therefore should be declared illegal, and employees of companies (or SourceForge project members) should be jailed (aka Dimitri) for their actions.
How many individuals and companies which currently have documents stored in proprietary file formats would be able to just write-off these assets? Not many, I'd guess.
So, I reckon there's just one court case (or M$ marketing statement) standing between where we are now and "all your works are belong to us".
Now do you remember why you started using Open Source?
Office for Linux will never happen, here's a few of the reasons why:
1. Why Linux? Why not also BSD, AUX, Be, etc?
2. Which Linux? x86 obviously, but what about PPC? If I port Linux to the X-Box, does M$ have to support that platform as well?
If you want to see what an "Office for Linux" would look like, just remember what Office for Mac looked like back when M$ considered Apple to be it's biggest competitor.
As M$ is so fond of pointing out, you can't separate the application from the OS in the windows world. That's why most IT departments don't consider the Macintosh as a viable business platform: not because the apps aren't there, but because it's not Windows:
If a spreadsheet includes VB macros, it won't be usable by Macintosh users.
If a document uses Windows-only fonts, you know there'll be complaints from Mac users about an unreadable document.
Do you really want to be in front of a client presenting someone else's Powerpoint package and just hoping that there weren't and incompatibilities hiding in there to make you look like a fool?
And what rational business would choose to support an application on two (or more) different platforms when they could choose one instead; especially if one of them is directly profitable to them, and the other might just put them out of business?
The only reason M$ would release something called "Office for " would be for strategic advantage of their Windows product by proving the other platform isn't viable, or to maintain the illusion that they haven't got an absolute monopoly.
Network Effects: That's what Judge Jackson understood, that's why he was so pissed that he wanted to get the word out, and that's why he demanded that M$ be broken up. Until the network effects (including API's, File formats, application/os layering, and distribution channels) are all addressed, and a level playing field established, there cannot be an effective remedy.
The design of the Internet requires that all entities on it act cooperatively. It was never designed to provide fair and equal service to all adversaries. Corporations are required by their shareholders to act in an adversarial manner wherever their profits are concerned.
This means that the Internet must evolve into a network run by a single organization (such as Microsoft or AOL) where dissent and creativity are not allowed to exist.
If this is the goal of Congress, then no action is required. But understand that this means you are writing off the investment which was made to date (and turning it over to the eventual winner) and that you will never again see an economic boom like the one we experienced in the 90's prompted by the growth of the Internet.
On the other hand, if Congress deems it important for the United States to maintain a strong technological superiority, and is interested in restoring the "capacity to innovate" which the Internet brought to us, then steps must be taken to ensure that the Internet can act as a fair and level playing field for all entities.
Since the Internet requires (at a technical level) a fair administrative regime, and since corporate ownership of the Internet cannot allow this to happen, Congress must choose between legislating an Internet structure which does not discriminate between players, or replacing the technology of the Internet with a system which can handle an adversarial administrative regime.
The former would require "common carrier" status laws for network service providers, and may also require de-valuing intellectual property protection, since IP and copyright law is the weapon of choice for corporate aggression on the Internet.
The later would require replacing the technology, at the TCP/IP level, with a new technology which enforces a fair and level playing field.
The risk to Congress, should it fail to take these actions is that the Internet Community will perceive the loss of the fair and level playing field as damage, a route around the problem, making foreign territory the location of choice for innovation and technological advancement.
In summary:
Look very carefully at the way the Microsoft Monopoly case is being handled. Nothing has yet been done to remedy their monopoly practices.
Require Internet access providers to provide service on a fair basis, including legal prohibition on "engineered structural damage" as are created by filtered routing, content-sensitive routing, and such.
So what does all of this have to do with increasing the security of the Internet? Security has to focus on the structural level; it's not an after market add on. The insecurity we have today was designed-in. It will have to be designed out, not painted over.
From the story author:
So, if the record companies sold a grapefruit with a label saying "This is a grapefruit, you cannot make orange juice with this." you would buy it, then return it because you couldn't make orange juice from it, right?
It's the clueless gits like you that get us into these messes in the first place.
Here's a roadmap for Microsoft to turn this settlement into a
.NET to organizations. If you have
"we win, game over" victory.
1. Modify the savefile routines in M$ applications (such as Office)
to "encrypt" _every_ saved file under a digital rights management
scheme, using Passport for author authentication, or a password
for those who are still clicking the "not yet" button at startup.
It can even be completely transparent to the user. It doesn't have
to be foolproof, just present.
2. Remove, or make useless, any sort of "export" function from these
applications. Sure you might be able to get a 'text only'
file of your PowerPoint presentation, but what good is that?
3. Begin to market, or otherwise state in the documentation, that
the Microsoft file format is a part of a "content protection"
system. Must use that phrase.
Game Over.
The effect:
A. Locks out any StarOffice-type competition using DMCA protections.
Competitors won't even be able to create applications which can
read the file format.
Think about the DeCSS case. You need both a) a right to access
the protected work, AND b) a license (and the technology) to
decrypt it. If you don't have a licensed DVD player, you can't
even play protected DVD's you've created yourself.
In what way is a DVD containing a CSS-protected file different
from a hard/floppy/zip disk containing an MS-protected file?
B. Completely legal, even under the terms of this settlement.
See the Settlement section J.1.a,.
C. Kick-ass marketing angle. All documents are "protected" against
spying eyes (crackers) by the protection system. Even if your
documents are stolen by some god-like cracker (or a dirt-dumb
SirCam virus) they can't be read. At least, thet will be the
selling angle.
D. Encourage the deployment of
to have a corporate "Passport (TM)" infrastructure in order to
"Exchange (TM)" the latest "PowerPoints {TM)" with your workmates,
every business will want a ".NET (TM)".
E. Ensures the continuing purchase of licenses, no matter how high
the license fee gets.
Think about this: How much content-protected copyrighted material
does your business own if "content-protected copyrighted material"
includes every document in a Microsoft format? Every Exchange message,
every PowerPoint chart, every product documentation slide, every
FrontPage web document, every source code file, etc. A business
can't just abandon all of these saved files which happen to be in
a Microsoft-owned format. That would be like erasing every hard
drive and every backup tape, because without the appropriate
Microsoft license you can't access the protected file , and you
have to start over from scratch. Most businesses are much more
addicted to Microsoft products than they are willing to admit.
also:
That's right, I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than proofread
At least you know somebody has read it.
Don't be so sure about that.
If I release a copyrighted work under a digital rights management scheme (where you would need a license to view it) like a DVD, I no longer have the option to release that work into the public domain. I don't have the option to let you view that work without requiring you to pay for a license, even though I'm the copyright owner.
Read that again. This is ugly stuff we've created.
And even then, he would still be guilty of distributing it.
There are so many things wrong with the DMCA you could never hope to cover them all in a single slashdot post.
It is NEVER helpful to chew-out the person who's there to save your ass.
OTOH, there's a bit of a difference between a customer tounge lashing and "...spend the rest of your career filling-out FCC outage reports..." as would happen with a failure in that other networking technology.....
Remember, 5 9's means 5 9's no matter what the marketdroid said.
I wonder how many Slashdot readers today were yet to be born when Chuck Hammill gave his From Crossbows to Cryptography speech at the Future of Freedom Conference back in November 1987?
He then got down to the meat of his argument -- that the government can regulate conduct even if there's a speech component to it. He used the example of Giboney V. Empire Storage and Ice Co., a case where picketers (a constitutionally protected activity) were successfully prevented from picketing due to the functional intent of the picketing, which was apparently to violate certain laws relating to restraint of trade. Alter argued that the DeCSS case was similar -- the intent of distributing DeCSS is to promote violations of copyright law,
No, the intent of DeCSS is to fill a market void at a favorable cost. It should be noted again that DeCSS does not, of itself, impact the profitibility of the copyright holder; a DVD sold and played through DeCSS is still a DVD sold, while granting the effect of DeCSS is to undercut the profitibility of the MPAA CSS licensing scheme. It further should be noted that, unlike in Giboney, the functional intent and effect of DeCSS is to the benefit of the consumer.
I wonder if there could be case law on this from the pre-emancipation era (1800's). If the law supports slavery as legal, is a song agtitating against slavery protected speech? Is it still protected if it's being sung by a slave? What if the song includes directions to the Underground Railroad?
Aren't computers today treated by the law essentially the same as slaves were treated in the pre-emancipation era; property of the owner, capable of performing actions on behalf of their owner, when given the proper instructions?
None of the above should be construed with any disrespect toward anyone. If we can't study our mistakes and learn from them we really are doomed.
Why and how is a computer program expressive speech? What does it express? 2600's lawyers are entirely familiar with Touretzky's Gallery, so forget about those. Assume you have some C or perl staring at you, any random block of code in any random print-out. What does it express? Why should that code be protected expression?
A computer program is expressive speech in that it expresses the design choices a software engineer makes for describing a method to accomplish a task at hand, with consideration of all related factors.
If I write a computer program to accomplish a task (data compression) I express my thoughts as to what is important about that task (is it more important to be memory efficient or fast? Should I trade speed for the ability to handle arbitrarily large files? Should I insist on portability or make use of special features of a given processor?)
Clearly such considerations as platform availability (is there another computer program available which will run on my desired platform and accomplish the same task?) and cost (does the cost of the license fees for using program A outweigh the cost of additional memory required to use program B?) are factors which should not be discounted.
This relates directly to this case, as the software designers in question chose their particular expression for this task based partially on the lack of availability of CSS software for the Linux (and other) platforms, and partially out of a desire to avoid (or allow others to avoid) the licensing fees associated with another implementation of software accomplishing the same task.
Another programmer will express their own choices depending on what is important to them, even though the resulting code may function nearly identically in some circumstances. Each program is the expression of the choices the designer made in creating the program. And in software engineering as in any engineering field, an individual is often jugded by their ability to make good design choices.
As with all speech, if we fail to protect such expression, we remove the incentive for the creative to create new works.
As related to software, we could stipulate that only one method of data compression (e.g. Huffman encoding) shall be used, and that creating alternative methods of accomplishing this same task should be prohibited. This would leave us without incentive for other forms of compression (e.g. Shanon-Fanon) to be created.
This seems like a terrible price to pay for the protection of one corporations' license fees.
What examples of fair uses absolutely require access to the work in its most modern, digital, uncorrupted, un-macrovisioned form? The only one that jumped out at me is making a backup copy in case the original is destroyed. But perhaps there are others. That is, one cannot excerpt a digital clip of a CSS-encrypted DVD, but one could point a video camera at the screen and create a clip, albeit of poor quality. Is that sufficient for fair use?
I'd argue it is, provided there is no legal requirement obligating the clip to be of poor(er) quality.
Consider the owner of a copyrighted work (Matrix: DVD). If the owner were to create a derivative work (Matrix: VHS) which is, by definition, not identical to the first, does he now have a seperate work such that both works are deserving of copyright protection, or does he now have one work (Matrix: DVD) which can be declared forever untouchable by fair use, and a second work (Matrix: VHS) for which fair use applies?
And who decides how much of the original work must be included in the derivative, and how much is forever untouchable?
- The copyright holder?
(Could the copyright holder offer "Matrix: The Trailer" as the fair use derivative?)
- The Government?
(Perhaps only the 7 most significant bits of each byte are available for fair use. Of course this would mean that licensed players would be prohibited from displaying these bits as well. If bit0 is outlawed, only outlaws will have bit0.)
Traditionally, this decision has been left to the 'fair user', who is allowed to duplicate the original to whatever level of quality is sufficient to meet their own needs. How has this changed? Selling a handwritten copy of a protected work is still punishable infringement, and if I need to duplicate the original to an arbitrary level of exactness for a purpose allowed under fair use, fair use still applies.
But getting back to the original example, if "one could point a video camera at the screen and create a clip" it should not matter (for reasons of fair use) if I use an arbitrarily advanced and extraordinarily expensive screen and camera rig. It should not matter if my arbitrarily advanced rig is able to reproduce a digitally exact duplicate of the original bits, nor if such an arbitrarily advanced setup is not extraordinarily expensive when created through the use of DeCSS. If it's fair use, then it's fair use. If it isn't then we'd better start working on legislation to limit the quality of video cameras worldwide.
That is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
A better strategy; figure out how much you have been spending on your music and continue to spend that much, just don't spend it with the organization you're boycotting.
This creates a double-edge sword; you're not only denying the profits to one, you're financing their opponents.
I imagine this could mean a strong influx of cash to the new "independent artist" sites, perhaps making a few of them even profitable...which encourages more independent artists...which makes independent artists more popular....
And that is likely to be an even greater concern than the (temporary) loss of a few customers.