Re:Not quake! ??? what then...
on
Carmack Speaks
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· Score: 1
Don't forget Wolfenstein! However, don't forget Commander Keen either!:-)
Anyone remember the DOOM II secret levels w/ Wolfenstein textures & enemies? In the end of the second level you had to shoot several hanged Commander Keens...
Then pray to the gods that the tech support engineer isn't married to an employee of your competitor (or doens't have a friend who knows somebody who works there etc...:-)
If you want a backdoor, why don't you ask for it right when the system is installed so you can do it yourself? Do you assume the software company installs backdoors only for the good of its customers?
If you get locked out of you mission critical system - well, you should have made complete backups on a regular basis, so you can reinstall it in a couple of hours. If you didn't, your business won't get far anyway...
If it's really important not to lose a single second of work, mirror your system on different machines using different passwords. If you just can't keep your passwords in memory, place them in a bank safe or somewhere else where they can't fall in the wrong hands.
In fact, the parties banned are from the extreme left or right. We still have quite a lot of left- or right-wing groups which are sometimes under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz (a kind of secret service which observes groups whith openly anti-constitutional behaviour), but otherwise legal. E.g. the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), the direct successor of the GDR's ruling communist party, is not illegal and has delegates in quite a lot of the German states and the federal parliament. Scientology isn't illegal (yet), either.
IMO, the "official" dislike for communists comes from the fact that a) Germany was divided for 40 years and we had the Iron Curtain just in the middle and b) left-wing terrorist activity in Germany during the 70s/80s was the hottest in all Europe. After the reunification, this (the dislike) has somewhat lessen. Quite a lot of people now consider the PDS politically acceptable.
BTW what exactly do you mean with "Seems mass murder is still okay if it's done for the good reason."?
The German Music Industry is already planing a filter system called "Rights Protection System" (ironic isn't it?), which could block illegal content
...which (if it ever is installed) will hopefully be turned down as unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (the German supreme court in constitutional matters). AFAIK current plans for the RPS are to filter every URL for access to MP3s and other media files. For that to work reliable, they would have to already know the location of every illegal MP3 file, which kinda would make the whole system obsolete anyway (they could just inform the provieder of the sites in question and demand to shut it down). If they would block just anything, it would infringe on the rights of people downloading legal MP3s.
IIRC, some time ago, there was a similar case regarding an illegal left-wing magazine hosted at xs4all.nl. Access to xs4all was blocked at the main German routers, thus blocking everything hosted there. The result was a massive mirroring of the page in question all over the world, rendering the blocking totally useless. In fact, quite a lot of people started actively searching for the documents just because the government didn't want them to read them. In the end, the blocking itself was ruled unconstitutional because it infringed on the rights of all the people wanting to access the legal sites hosted at xs4all.
IIRC, the Compuserve trial you mentioned was turned down in the appeals court. BTW the first ruling was also done by a Bavarian court (just like this time). Most people over here in Germany think that Bavarian courts semm to have absolutely no clue about internet technology.
The Compuserve trial was about access to pr0n newsgroups - the german head executive of Compuserve was held responsible for all the stuff in the newsgroups they offered access to. Since some of these groups contained pictures and stories which are illegal in Germany, he was accused of spreading illegal pornography. As a consequence, Compuserve/AOL totally blocked acces to all newsgroups containing sex related material (even those groups about gay/lesbian rights or abuse recovery).
BTW the Scientology ban has nothing to do with that. Scientology isn't liked because it isn't considered a religion but a sect using their "pseudo-religion" to gain economic power and secretly working against the Constitution. Groups working against central parts of the constitution are per se illegal in Germany (like the left-wing terrorist group Red Army Fraction and several extremist left and right wing parties. As you surely know, Germany had both a extrem right (the Nazis) and a left wing (in the former GDR) dictatorship, and doesn't want that to happen again in any case. That lead to some measurements a lot of US or Canada residents deem extreme themselves, but AFAIK most European countries share Germanys current view because they themselves suffered under the Nazis during WWII and/or a communist dictatorship during the cold war.
What had happened if Babbage had more time and resources? Things could have been very different!
IIRC there is a science fiction story about an alternate reality in which Babbage successfully finished and sold his machines. This lead to an early advancement of computers based on 19th century technologies - like steam driven computers networked with pneumatic delivery tubes and such. Think of it as Jules Verne gone informatics:)
Unfortunately I only read a review of the story and forgot the name - does anyone know it?
... to use a time machine and show Babbage this. Even if its too late, he at least has the satifaction to know that he was right.
I sometimes have thoughts like this...
what would it be like to bring back from beyond all the scientists and geniuses who died poor and forgotten (or sometimes well respected, but not for their inventions...) and show them the current realisation of their works?
What would Babbage think about modern computers? How would Leonardo da Vinci like a helicopter ride? What would Democrit (first postulated the existence of atoms in ancient greece) say if he saw a scanning tunneling microscope in action? How would Newton like a copy of a physics book for undergraduate students, which contains tenfold more knowledge than all the physicists of the world had in his time? What would the legions of forgotten geniuses who first thought of machines we only realized in the last century think of them?
Would they run in fright from the abominable horrors they see, would they spill tears of joy or would they complain about us not getting it exactly right and everything was better at their time, you know!
I consider napster quite useless for the distribution of legal music from unknown artists, so using it as an example for the possibilities to spread such works is IMO a bad idea. I wouldn't thinks so, if, for example, the napster search engine could offer more information, like "this legal song from that artist is really cool and seems to fit your taste of music, why not try it out?". Of course, this would be rather difficult to implement, and we already have mp3.com...
I'm not interested in prosecuting any napster user; in fact I think that the DCMA is blatantly wrong.
There might be examples of using napster for legitime purposes, but the average napster user uses the search engine to find songs he wants, and doesn't give a fsck whether the artist in question has given permission for free distribution. In fact, most people don't even know these artists and so wouldn't know which songs to search for.
In my opinion, for more or less unknown artists who allow the free distribution of their works, napster wouldn't be the distribution tool of their choice for the reasons mentioned above. If I was to produce music for free, I would put it on a web site and advocate it by other means (e.g. on the "legal" section featured by some of the better mp3 sites).
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Anyone remember the DOOM II secret levels w/ Wolfenstein textures & enemies? In the end of the second level you had to shoot several hanged Commander Keens...
Then pray to the gods that the tech support engineer isn't married to an employee of your competitor (or doens't have a friend who knows somebody who works there etc...:-)
If you want a backdoor, why don't you ask for it right when the system is installed so you can do it yourself? Do you assume the software company installs backdoors only for the good of its customers?
If you get locked out of you mission critical system - well, you should have made complete backups on a regular basis, so you can reinstall it in a couple of hours. If you didn't, your business won't get far anyway ...
If it's really important not to lose a single second of work, mirror your system on different machines using different passwords. If you just can't keep your passwords in memory, place them in a bank safe or somewhere else where they can't fall in the wrong hands.
In fact, the parties banned are from the extreme left or right. We still have quite a lot of left- or right-wing groups which are sometimes under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz (a kind of secret service which observes groups whith openly anti-constitutional behaviour), but otherwise legal. E.g. the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), the direct successor of the GDR's ruling communist party, is not illegal and has delegates in quite a lot of the German states and the federal parliament. Scientology isn't illegal (yet), either.
IMO, the "official" dislike for communists comes from the fact that
a) Germany was divided for 40 years and we had the Iron Curtain just in the middle and
b) left-wing terrorist activity in Germany during the 70s/80s was the hottest in all Europe.
After the reunification, this (the dislike) has somewhat lessen. Quite a lot of people now consider the PDS politically acceptable.
BTW what exactly do you mean with "Seems mass murder is still okay if it's done for the good reason."?
IIRC, some time ago, there was a similar case regarding an illegal left-wing magazine hosted at xs4all.nl. Access to xs4all was blocked at the main German routers, thus blocking everything hosted there. The result was a massive mirroring of the page in question all over the world, rendering the blocking totally useless. In fact, quite a lot of people started actively searching for the documents just because the government didn't want them to read them.
In the end, the blocking itself was ruled unconstitutional because it infringed on the rights of all the people wanting to access the legal sites hosted at xs4all.
IIRC, the Compuserve trial you mentioned was turned down in the appeals court. BTW the first ruling was also done by a Bavarian court (just like this time). Most people over here in Germany think that Bavarian courts semm to have absolutely no clue about internet technology.
The Compuserve trial was about access to pr0n newsgroups - the german head executive of Compuserve was held responsible for all the stuff in the newsgroups they offered access to. Since some of these groups contained pictures and stories which are illegal in Germany, he was accused of spreading illegal pornography. As a consequence, Compuserve/AOL totally blocked acces to all newsgroups containing sex related material (even those groups about gay/lesbian rights or abuse recovery).
BTW the Scientology ban has nothing to do with that. Scientology isn't liked because it isn't considered a religion but a sect using their "pseudo-religion" to gain economic power and secretly working against the Constitution. Groups working against central parts of the constitution are per se illegal in Germany (like the left-wing terrorist group Red Army Fraction and several extremist left and right wing parties. As you surely know, Germany had both a extrem right (the Nazis) and a left wing (in the former GDR) dictatorship, and doesn't want that to happen again in any case.
That lead to some measurements a lot of US or Canada residents deem extreme themselves, but AFAIK most European countries share Germanys current view because they themselves suffered under the Nazis during WWII and/or a communist dictatorship during the cold war.
aargh... how could I forget this? I definitely didn't read enough science fiction lately...:-)
IIRC there is a science fiction story about an alternate reality in which Babbage successfully finished and sold his machines. This lead to an early advancement of computers based on 19th century technologies - like steam driven computers networked with pneumatic delivery tubes and such. Think of it as Jules Verne gone informatics :)
Unfortunately I only read a review of the story and forgot the name - does anyone know it?
I sometimes have thoughts like this...
what would it be like to bring back from beyond all the scientists and geniuses who died poor and forgotten (or sometimes well respected, but not for their inventions...) and show them the current realisation of their works?
What would Babbage think about modern computers? How would Leonardo da Vinci like a helicopter ride? What would Democrit (first postulated the existence of atoms in ancient greece) say if he saw a scanning tunneling microscope in action? How would Newton like a copy of a physics book for undergraduate students, which contains tenfold more knowledge than all the physicists of the world had in his time? What would the legions of forgotten geniuses who first thought of machines we only realized in the last century think of them?
Would they run in fright from the abominable horrors they see, would they spill tears of joy or would they complain about us not getting it exactly right and everything was better at their time, you know!
that wasn't exactly my point...:-)
I consider napster quite useless for the distribution of legal music from unknown artists, so using it as an example for the possibilities to spread such works is IMO a bad idea.
I wouldn't thinks so, if, for example, the napster search engine could offer more information, like "this legal song from that artist is really cool and seems to fit your taste of music, why not try it out?". Of course, this would be rather difficult to implement, and we already have mp3.com...
I'm not interested in prosecuting any napster user; in fact I think that the DCMA is blatantly wrong.
There might be examples of using napster for legitime purposes, but the average napster user uses the search engine to find songs he wants, and doesn't give a fsck whether the artist in question has given permission for free distribution. In fact, most people don't even know these artists and so wouldn't know which songs to search for.
In my opinion, for more or less unknown artists who allow the free distribution of their works, napster wouldn't be the distribution tool of their choice for the reasons mentioned above. If I was to produce music for free, I would put it on a web site and advocate it by other means (e.g. on the "legal" section featured by some of the better mp3 sites).
Just my $0.02
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