That is the gist of what he is saying. The ISPs should be self regulating essentially. This is the beginning of a very slippery slope. What if Comcast decides to ban all torrent traffic? Even with encryption, high usage certainly sends red flags. (perhaps more so) With less oversight this could certainly happen. The service agreement you sign certainly may be subject to change at any moment. The internet is starting to slide into the path of provider approved content. I think a free network is something worth protecting, perhaps even with our very lives. How much is freedom worth to you?
Excuse me? The internet is worth protecting "with our very lives", but it's *not* worth signing a contract that doesn't change at random?
Nothing about your post makes sense. How can you claim the freedom of the internet is worth dying for, yet whine that the government should limit other people's freedom because you're an irresponsible moron who used your freedom to do something stupid, like sign a contract that could change at any time. If you want freedom you have to accept the responsibility that goes along with it.
And before you whine about how you don't have any choice about internet provider, remember that socialist morons like you usually vote to give cable companies local monopolies, claiming the internet and cable TV is *so* important you don't want to trust it to the evil free market system. Internet, phone and cable access is the perfect case study showing why government control of a market is bad. The government regulation fucked it up in the first place, and now everybody wants to add more regulation and government to try to fix it.
That's great. The problem is that most people don't stop listening to the RIAA's music, they just stop paying for it and then act all surprised and pissed off when they get sued. If it's too expensive to buy the CD or get it off iTunes, you have to go without it. You can't just choose not to pay for it. That's just not a legal option.
It's fucking expensive, dumbshit! It costs me, a musician, exactly 1 dollar to get 1 CD pressed. In bulk, it costs less. Paying $15-20 for a CD is ridiculous. This is the same reason that I go to Blockbuster, rather than to the cinema.
Since when do you get to decide the price of other people's products? Being "too expensive" doesn't give you the right to violate the license. Oracle is "too expensive" - that doesn't mean my business can just make as many copies as we want.
You're missing the point. Nobody is saying distributing copyrighted material or "license bound software" against the license is legal.
The claim is that once you possess such material, you're legally allowed to do whatever you want with it, except redistribute it.
Short of ultra-draconian, 1984-esque survelience, there's simply no way to know what people are doing with the products they buy once they get it home and close their door. As long as they don't redistribute the results, it's completely legal. How can an external entity possibly know if I installed my new copy of OSX on a PC or a Mac? They can't. It has to be legal because there's no enforceable way to make it illegal.
Also I guess your point also makes it ok to steal the code of any open source project and release it in your own closed product, I mean, the code was there to grab, I took it, now it's mine, how does the license matter now when I have the code? Thanks..
As long as you don't distribute the end result, it's completely legal to "steal" GPL'd code and use it in your own software. Again, it's legal because even if it weren't there's absolutely no way for anybody to know you're doing it. Once you start giving out copies, then it's a problem.
I use the command line on my Linux boxes far more than I edit the registry on my Windows boxes...and I have considerably more Windows boxes to deal with, most of them I've never touched the registry on.
That's an apples to oranges comparison. "Using the command line" and "editting the registry" are unrelated tasks. It's like comparing how often you use the start menu in Windows to how often you use a web browser in Linux.
I admit I'm not very familiar with MySQL, but why in the world would you need an instance of MySQL running for each customer? Wouldn't it make more sense to give each customer a user account and give them appropriate permissions?
The patent is most likely for a unique design or implementation of the analog stick + rumble pack. The article never says the patent covers the concept of an analog stick + rumble pack, just the design and/or implementation used in the Wii and GameCube.
Do a lot of web development? This is one feature I would love -- users can completely destroy how a web app works just by clicking on the back button and asking "where'd all my data go?"
You mean one of the fundamental features of every web browser ever created breaks your web app? Maybe that's a hint...
If anything like that ever gets added to Konqueror or Firefox I'll release a patch disabling the "feature" just out of basic principle.
Wow! You're so right. That one add-on feature totally makes up for all the other reasons I don't use Firefox. Oh wait, except my browser already has that feature by default. I didn't even have to waste time digging through hundreds of crap extensions to find the handful that are actually useful.
At this point everybody on/. who wants to use Firefox already uses Firefox. Go be a fanboi somewhere else, you're just wasting everybody's time here.
If the company lets people leave the office with laptops containing "millions of SSNs", this exploit isn't their biggest problem.
I have to agree with the OP. So far in the entire thread I've yet to see a convincing argument explaining why this is a big problem.
At most it seems this would be a small concern for a very, very small group of people. And before anybody gives another parnoid explanation involving SWAT teams and the CIA, ask yourself how often that really happens.
Just tell him you go to "anal raping" prison if he doesn't work, and the more he catches, the quicker he gets off.
What if he catches everybody except his friends? It would look like he's doing a terrific job, while he's actually doing a favor for his old hacker buddies by reducing their competition and making sure they're ignored by law enforcement.
Besides that, they just demonstrated that he won't go to "anal raping prison" by letting him off with no jail time after pleading guilty. Not only was he not thrown in jail, they may reward him with a job.
The only way a plan like that could work is for somebody who was honestly just "looking around" or doing it just to see if they could do it. But this guy was actively trying to steal credit card numbers and take over machines. You'd have to be crazy to trust somebody like that.
who the hell said he'd get access to sensitive systems? He can work independently of their system. Hell, they can force him to work from home. If he violates any more laws, then it's more time.
I'm not sure I trust that setup. At the very least wouldn't he need an honest desire to help out? You really can't "force" somebody to do work like that if they don't want to.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF? Just play real beer pong.
If you're going to do something stupid like get an OSS logo tattoo, at least get something more cool than a penguin.
For christ's sake. At least link to the fucking Oracle page.
If I wanted to read ZDNet, I'd just go to fucking ZDNet.
Well no shit. You'd have to be a pretty big asshole to think otherwise.
Excuse me? The internet is worth protecting "with our very lives", but it's *not* worth signing a contract that doesn't change at random?
Nothing about your post makes sense. How can you claim the freedom of the internet is worth dying for, yet whine that the government should limit other people's freedom because you're an irresponsible moron who used your freedom to do something stupid, like sign a contract that could change at any time. If you want freedom you have to accept the responsibility that goes along with it.
And before you whine about how you don't have any choice about internet provider, remember that socialist morons like you usually vote to give cable companies local monopolies, claiming the internet and cable TV is *so* important you don't want to trust it to the evil free market system. Internet, phone and cable access is the perfect case study showing why government control of a market is bad. The government regulation fucked it up in the first place, and now everybody wants to add more regulation and government to try to fix it.
That's great. The problem is that most people don't stop listening to the RIAA's music, they just stop paying for it and then act all surprised and pissed off when they get sued. If it's too expensive to buy the CD or get it off iTunes, you have to go without it. You can't just choose not to pay for it. That's just not a legal option.
Since when do you get to decide the price of other people's products? Being "too expensive" doesn't give you the right to violate the license. Oracle is "too expensive" - that doesn't mean my business can just make as many copies as we want.
If you don't mind "forking over a tiny bit of cash", why don't you stop being a cheap asshole and buy your music in the first place?
News flash: China has spent the last 15-20 years transitioning to capitalism.
Depending on how you want to look at it, they're almost as free (some would say more free) in that respect than we are in the US.
Very true, but that's still not the fault of people running SETI@home.
Perhaps I should have said "Blame the power company, or blame the government"
The only entity you have a right to bitch at is the power company that isn't providing the power they agreed to provide.
It's none of your business what other people use their electricity for.
An ivy league kid would have known it was spelled "site"...
You're missing the point. Nobody is saying distributing copyrighted material or "license bound software" against the license is legal.
The claim is that once you possess such material, you're legally allowed to do whatever you want with it, except redistribute it.
Short of ultra-draconian, 1984-esque survelience, there's simply no way to know what people are doing with the products they buy once they get it home and close their door. As long as they don't redistribute the results, it's completely legal. How can an external entity possibly know if I installed my new copy of OSX on a PC or a Mac? They can't. It has to be legal because there's no enforceable way to make it illegal.
As long as you don't distribute the end result, it's completely legal to "steal" GPL'd code and use it in your own software. Again, it's legal because even if it weren't there's absolutely no way for anybody to know you're doing it. Once you start giving out copies, then it's a problem.
That's an apples to oranges comparison. "Using the command line" and "editting the registry" are unrelated tasks. It's like comparing how often you use the start menu in Windows to how often you use a web browser in Linux.
I think what drives everybody crazy are the people using MySQL who act like they're database experts because of it.
Just because it does what most people want, doesn't mean it's a very good example of DBMS software.
I admit I'm not very familiar with MySQL, but why in the world would you need an instance of MySQL running for each customer? Wouldn't it make more sense to give each customer a user account and give them appropriate permissions?
I wasn't claiming Anascape aren't patent trolls. Just pointing out that the N64's analog stick isn't necessarily "prior art".
That doesn't necessarily matter.
The patent is most likely for a unique design or implementation of the analog stick + rumble pack. The article never says the patent covers the concept of an analog stick + rumble pack, just the design and/or implementation used in the Wii and GameCube.
You mean one of the fundamental features of every web browser ever created breaks your web app? Maybe that's a hint...
If anything like that ever gets added to Konqueror or Firefox I'll release a patch disabling the "feature" just out of basic principle.
Your being a cheapskate doesn't change the fact that Opera was (and still is) the most advanced browser.
Wow! You're so right. That one add-on feature totally makes up for all the other reasons I don't use Firefox. Oh wait, except my browser already has that feature by default. I didn't even have to waste time digging through hundreds of crap extensions to find the handful that are actually useful.
At this point everybody on /. who wants to use Firefox already uses Firefox. Go be a fanboi somewhere else, you're just wasting everybody's time here.
For the lazy:
Field's metal
Rose metal
Galinstan
If the company lets people leave the office with laptops containing "millions of SSNs", this exploit isn't their biggest problem.
I have to agree with the OP. So far in the entire thread I've yet to see a convincing argument explaining why this is a big problem.
At most it seems this would be a small concern for a very, very small group of people. And before anybody gives another parnoid explanation involving SWAT teams and the CIA, ask yourself how often that really happens.
What if he catches everybody except his friends? It would look like he's doing a terrific job, while he's actually doing a favor for his old hacker buddies by reducing their competition and making sure they're ignored by law enforcement.
Besides that, they just demonstrated that he won't go to "anal raping prison" by letting him off with no jail time after pleading guilty. Not only was he not thrown in jail, they may reward him with a job.
The only way a plan like that could work is for somebody who was honestly just "looking around" or doing it just to see if they could do it. But this guy was actively trying to steal credit card numbers and take over machines. You'd have to be crazy to trust somebody like that.
I'm not sure I trust that setup. At the very least wouldn't he need an honest desire to help out? You really can't "force" somebody to do work like that if they don't want to.
How could you forget:
Clean shaven if you're a PC, trendy goatee if you're a mac, two day's stubble if you're linux, long scruffy beard if you're *bsd