Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the below should not be taken as legal advice. The below assumes US copyright law, if you live outside the US your laws are almost certainly different (fortunately for you).
XNormal writes: Installing software is copying
Yes, installing most software involves a step where you copy the copyrighted work. Yes, this copy might be an issue under copyright law, which is one reason most EULA's explicitly give you the right to install it on one machine.
Since installing the software is not distribution, but simple media shifting (from unusable Zip or other format files on a CD to usable files on a hard drive), the probably is covered under fair use. If you purchased the software, your first installation is probably covered comfortably under the First Sale doctorine.
As far as I know, all mainstream commercial software, as well as all Free software, explicitly grants the end user the right to install. So as far as I am aware, neither of these interpretations have been tested in court.
If I install an unlicensed ("pirated") copy of commercial software can I sue the vendor if it causes damage to my system? I have not agreed to any shrink-wrap or click-wrap license.
In this country, you can sue anyone for anything. Of course by doing so, you risk anything from token judgements of $1, to dismissal before trial, to having to pay your opponent's court costs, to being charged for libel or fraud (on top of your attorneys fees for bringing suit).
Liability laws vary from state to state, but most states recognize that:
* It is more difficult to identify who is to blame for what portion of the damages when software is involved than in more physical liability cases
* Business practices to minimize risk are generally depended upon to reduce the chance and severity of damage due to software, not liaibilty
* Therefore, the software industry traditionally does not hold software vendors or developers liable for defects in code design
I would think it would be difficult to find a software vendor liabile for negligence even if they forgot to include any disclaimer. Add that to the fact that in your hypothetical case, you never had any dealings with the vendor, and were in fact breaking the law when the damage occured, and your chances for seeing anything plummets. There's always a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Same here - installing LILO requires *copying* it to your hard disk. You are granted the right to do it under a specific license which includes the "thou shalt not sue" clause. If you sue you are in violation of the license and should be treated no differently than someone who installs "warez" and violates the license by not paying. He can't sue the vendor.
The license for LILO (new BSD) doesn't contractually bind anyone not to sue, the disclaimer accompanying the license says "IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE". They aren't telling you what you can or cannot do here, they are reminding you that they assumed no liability, so suing them would likely be fruitless.
(Or perhaps he can, but is likely to be countersued for copyright infringement? IANAL)
In the piracy case, that's a risk. It's not really a risk in the Free Software case.
As Bruce Perens pointed out earlier, if you want to be protected against damages due to software, buy insurance.
In spite of the trolling title, nothing in the article even implies that the USPS even considered "owning" or controlling the email delivery infrastructure. It says that there was a point where it could have bought much of the telegraph infrastructure (but it didn't), and there was a point where it could have offered email services, but decided it was out of their mandate.
If, in 1982 they decieded to offer electronic mail services, they would have found UUCP and BITNet already there, connecting colleges, government agencies, and some companies with electronic mail and other services. Businessmen and power users with money were already sending electronic mail through services like Compuserve and The Source.
I don't see anything the USPS could have done to stop the rise of FidoNet in 1984. FidoNet allowed anybody to call up a local BBS system (which was often free), and send an email that could get routed internationally, or to any of the other email networks.
The bottom line is, there is no way short of draconian legislation that would have allowed the USPS to "own" email. The most that could have happened is for them to offer email to customers; customers who have other options that the post office must compete with. Kind of like package delivery: the USPS offers package delivery service, but as any employee of FedEx, UPS or DHL will tell you, they by no means own the service.
Bruce Perins wrote: I did not discuss this with anyone at HP. Most of my Free Software activism is done representing myself or SPI, and not HP.
Fair enough, and pretty much what I expected. HP is a public corporation beholden to its shareholders, and shareholders generally do not like their companies taking activist stances.
I would say chances are pretty good that no legal action will come from your demonstration, but if legal consequences happen, just wanted to make sure you and others were aware that it might become a fight on two fronts, the direct legal battle, and a battle with HP over wage garnishment, even though HP is uninvolved in the demonstration.
Since I have your ear, a small idea: If you want to make extra sure that the trafficking clause is triggered, you could sell the hacked VCR to a member of the audience.
Best of luck, and I admire your courage in this matter.
I'm all for civil disobedience. It's a very noble thing to be willing to go to jail (especially give the state of our overstuffed prisons) for your ideals.
But in this case, they're talking about a $500,000 fine. I'm not sure how something like that works out if you can't pay it -- whether they substitute jail time or what.
Generally they attempt to sieze whatever assets they can, and attempt to garnish a percentage of your wages until the debt is paid (or you die of old age). If you get in the way of the attempts to collect, then you can land in jail for contempt.
But supposing this guy was fined, and paid it, is that really civil disobedience?
No, it isn't. I would assume that Bruce intends to not pay the fine.
In general, helping to finance someone else's immoral acts is itself an immoral act. Paying such a fine would directly support the suppression of free expression associated with the DMCA.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple today. He can refuse to pay the fine, and he can try to obstruct the government's attempts to confiscate his assets (and in some cases the rest of us can help obstruct these attempts). The trouble is they often garnish wages.
Garnishment happens completely independant of him, the government would contact his employer (HP) directly, and most businesses don't want to deal with the legal issues of failing to comply with a lawful court order.
Unless he has some understanding with HP where they intend to be disobediant as well (unlikely but possible, the DMCA hurts HP greatly) then he is stuck in a quandry. HP wouldn't be paying the fine for him (and if he requests HP pay the fine for him, it's no longer civil disobediance), HP would be manipulating his earnings so as to force him to pay the fine.
If this happens, then he would have a moral beef with HP. They wouldn't be paying him the wages that he agreed to work for, and if he silently accepts that little injustice, he also accepts the moral wrong of financing the government's immoral act.
If this came to pass, I don't see any way out other than threatening to quit unless HP pays the agreed upon wage. If they refuse, quit. If they accept, then whether or not HP gives the government they money they demand is HP's moral/legal/fiscal quandry, it's not Bruce's any longer.
Because that is the nature of complex algorithmic systems. An algorithmic system is temporally inconsistent and unstable by nature.
What are you talking about? Algorithmic systems are by nature consistent and stable. Inconsistancy and instablity are not caused by the algorhithms, but rather by
the fact that we have largely moved away from an algorithmic model to an event-driven one, which is inconsistant and unstable by nature.
Program states used to be simplified representations modelling reality (or fantasy). They increasingly base their state on raw reality. It doesn't matter how predictable an algorhithm is if you can't predict the state getting fed to it.
Due to a combination of both laziness and overwork, as well as a preponderance of reinventing the wheel, most algorhithmic software-based systems use too much code that's too poorly tested to even dream of reliability.
Using the algorithm as the basis of software construction is an ancient practice pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.
Jaquard also used algorhitms for his software construction, before Lovelace and Babbage.
Just because something is old doesn't make it bad, using the wheel as the basis of long distance land transportation is an ancient practice pioneered by someone who lived so long ago she isn't even recorded in the history books, that doesn't make wheels obsolete.
It is the fundamental reason why dependable software systems are so hard to produce.
The problems in producing dependable software are far far more complex than "we still use algorhithms", although clearly one of the problems is "we use algorithms where they are inappropriate". Algorithms work best where the computer is interfacing with mathematics and other abstract concepts, they work worst where the computer interfaces with the real world.
There is something rotten at the core of software engineering.
How can something that barely exists be rotten already? Software engineering has reached the terrible two's, it can (usually) feed itself, but it still runs around knocking over lamps.
Software functionality should not be fundamentally different from hardware functionality.
Huh? Most software has just the most cursory relation to hardware, it makes no sense to model such software after hardware. What would the hardware model be for a hypertext browser, for example?
Software should emulate hardware and serve as an extension to it. It should only provide the two things that are lacking in hardware: flexibility and ease of modification.
This statement only makes sense if you define "flexibility" far beyond its typical semantic meaning, as in "we don't have hardware that's flexible enough to draw an arbitrary projection of an arbitrary eight-dimensional surface" or "we don't have hardware flexible enough to perform statistics on multimillion element databases".
Even stretching the statement to make some sense, it's still false, since it ignores many things that software has that hardware lacks: zero capital cost, ease of replication, ability to ignore or rewrite natural laws. Tell the people writing software for ASCI White that their work should be an extension of hardware and they'll look at you as if you've got pink elephants on your head, the whole point of that computer is to avoid using the real hardware.
The only way to solve the reliability crisis is to abandon the bad practice of using algorithms as the basis of software construction and to adopt a pure signal-based paradigm.
I dare you to write a GAAP-compliant accounts payable system for a typical mid-sized corporation using a pure signal-based paradigm. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you will quickly see the advantages in software reliabilty and development productivity in using an algorithmic model over a signal based model when the purpose of the program is to follow a set of number crunching algorhithms.
The only way to solve the reliability crisis is to abandon the bad practice of using algorithms as the basis of software construction and to adopt a pure signal-based paradigm.
Abandoning algorithms won't "solve the reliability crisis". One important step towards improving reliaibility is making sure to use the right tools for the job. If you are writing a program to crunch numbers, algorithms are the best tool that I know about. If you are writing a program to control hardware, signal-response systems often make much more sense.
Even using these two paradigms you won't always be using the best tool for the job. Another potent tool is one of Mother Nature's favorites, the paired analog response system, where you have two (or more) complimentary analog systems (for example: the insulin/glucagon system to control blood sugar levels, the force/friction system to control accelleration). Signal-based systems can simulate this, but it can't match the precision of the truly analog processes.
More details can be found at the links below: Project COSA
Very very interesting work, I just see it more as complementing algorhithmic systems rather than replacing them. I see your work as particularly relevant for embedded systems (eg avionics systems like the story is talking about).
Note that, while your COSA system does handle events (signals) more predictably than most other programming paradigms, and it encourages more relaible code in response to the signal, it does not completly eliminate the two reliabliltiy problems I listed at the top.
To use your terms:
You can't predict in what order sensors will trigger, making it possible to have unexpected effects when sensors trigger in an unexpected fashion
Digital data and comparison sensors will never allow for a perfect decision to be made regarding analog reality.
I can't see a digital signal-based system getting away from these fundamental problems, the best you can do is come up with tools and methods that minimizes their effect.
One other thing: You haven't gotten away from algorhithmic computing. I assume the algorithmic kernel is just expediency, it's cheaper to model COSA on an algorithmic computer than to custom design the right hardware. However, your descriptions of the operation of cells are all algorithmic, so the fundemental unit of your system is a handful of algorithms (granted, they're small reliabile-looking ones, but they're still algorithms).
Anonymous Coward wrote: If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.
In a coop, nothing is being resold. The members get together and contribute resources to form an organization. The organization purchases the bandwidth and makes it available to its members. No resale, no need for a resale term.
I don't know what you consider a "major" city. I grew up in NYC, and I consider Albany a major city, as opposed to minor cities like Oneonta or Mechanicville or metropolitan areas like NYC or Boston.
However, Albany is 2.5-3 hours from New York City, 3 hours from Boston and 3.5 hours from Montreal. If New York City isn't major enough to count as a major city for you, there's no place in the US that's within five hours drive of a major city (the closest city bigger than NYC is Mexico City; Cairo and Tokyo are way too far away).
I have friends who grew up in those places. Unless you have your own car and license, you must be chauffeured, or you get no life.
I live in Albany, NY. While the public transportation system is not as comprehensive as New York City's, it is quite extensive and effective. From everything I've heard, it beats out Los Angeles's system in both coverage and hours.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group Committee published the JPEG standard in 1994. While JPEG files were used prior to the publishing of the standard, it's pretty clear that JPEG images themselves don't count as prior art regarding this patent.
This patent appears to me to cover RLE files (claim 1). This strikes me as likely to have prior art.
This patent appears to me to cover a simlple scheme one step removed from Huffman encoding (claim 6). This also seems likely to have prior art.
If someone can find prior art for claims 1, 6, 13, 25, 30, 36, 38, 39 and 42, the entire patent seems likely to fall apart, since every claim is dependant on those few.
The FBI has stated officially that it intends to require "similar level of security" for bus travel and train travel.
Greyhound will not sell me a domestic bus ticket unless I give them my name. It's only a matter of time before they require I show valid identification as well.
I agree with all of your points. I guess your's and my contracts are different. Mine is pretty clear that it shouldn't be shared (although the contract does not state it specifically.)
There are lots of different contracts out there, depending on your bandwidth provider, where you live, what level of service you pay for, and in many cases when you ordered the service.
My contract specifies a maximum of three connections, makes sharing kinda pointless. I guess I could share (haven't checked, I don't share), but assuming I want my computer connected I would have to refuse everyone after the second connection. I would also have to keep rebooting the cable modem, since it has a limit on the number of ethernet ids it can give DHCP addresses to without a cold boot.
However, I have seen other broadband providers that are far more lenient, and I personally like the idea of people sharing their bandwidth.
Sharing bandwidth is generally illegal in the contracts and that is why the cable companies are cracking down. But, even if it is legal (or not contractually defined) it is still immoral (illegal and immoral are very different things).
I certainly agree that illegal and immoral are often very different things, but, given a contract allowing sharing I would take exception to your stand that such sharing is categorically immoral.
If a contract is made in good faith with both parties having certain assumptions, and one party finds a loophole permitting them to violate one of these assumptions to their benefit, it would be immoral to exploit it.
Sharing is natural and expected. Sharing of a good or service should be assumed to be allowed unless the contract specifically excludes it. In this case, if the provider is advertising "personal" internet service, you could argue that their customers know that they aren't supposed to share it.
However, in many cases the providers are just advertising "fast internet access", and even include lines like "attach as many computers as you want" in their ads. For example, a friend of mine got Verizon DSL, and Verizon made a big deal of having no limit on how many computers you could attach to their service.
I sincerely hope our society hasn't gotten so far gone where sharing itself is considered abnormal or immoral. I would agree that sharing someone else's stuff without their consent is immoral, but if you contracted for an unrestricted internet connection, then the bandwidth associated with that connection is yours to use as you see fit. Sharing is one way of using such a service.
I agree with you that we shouldn't support companies with flawed business models (record companies), but we shouldn't exploit loop-holes in their contracts with us either. Again, that is a moral issue not a legal one.
I agree, with a few exceptions, none of which apply in this case (eg. contracts you could not read before allegedly agreeing to them; contracts of adhesion that overstep any reasonable scope; contracts whose terms change without notice or agreement).
Companies especially, but people more and more are starting to cheat each other at any possibility. Individuals and companies believe that if it isn't in the contract then it is okay to do something that is detrimental to the other party.
Yes, there is too much greed, duplicity and just plain bad manners in the world. On the other hand, if the "something...detrimental" is a feature of the contract and not a loophole used in bad faith, then it's hard to argue that it is immoral to make use of the contract as originally agreed.
Greed and selfishness (even disguised as generosity - example - sharing internet with neighbors who could afford it on their own)
Again, using bandwidth that you paid for, within the terms of the service agreement, to share with your neigbors, whether or not they could afford their own service, is neither greed nor selfishness, it is just sharing.
Sharing bandwidth that you had agreed not to share as part of the terms of service is selfishness, because you are violating the terms of your agreement. The argument that "I paid for the bandwidth" doesn't hold water where you explicitly paid for restricted bandwidth, especially since most providers will offer less restricted plans (potentially allowing sharing) for more money.
The problem with the argument "they gave it to me so why do they care what I do with it?" is that it intentionally ignores the principles under which the [insert generic asset here] was given in the first place.
The whole point of a contract is so that I know which side of the agreement is mine to keep up, I have no moral or legal responsibility to ensure that their side of the contract was made with due attention paid to making a profit. Why would I be responsible for their bad business decisions?
They don't cap your line because they *assume* your usage will be typical, and that their infrastructure will support N users at the calculated average rate.
I would call that a bad business decision. A company should plan for typical aggregate usage, not that every customer will use no more than the average amount. They should also have a contingency plan in case everyone maxes out their service agreement. They should also have an emergency plan for substantial violations of their service agreement.
My provider is RoadRunner (NYCAP RoadRunner to be precise). They do cap my line, precisely because they want to minimise customer complaints. There is a limit of how much bandwidth I can use (700 some-odd bps) and how many connections I can have at once (3). If I find either of those limits too...limiting, I can raise either or both of those numbers with a suitable application of cash. They also have a plan for if lots of people max out their service agreement, they can dedicate extra channels in each local loop to multiply the available bandwidth without any last-mile wiring. They are implementing their plan for substantial service agreement violations, they're the one going after people advertising open wireless links in violation of their service agreement.
When someone decides to increase the number of users and thereby increases the demand on resources that is NOT simply a deviation from the average because there is little chance that there will be an offsetting reduction at a later point-- the average is changed in the process,
Yes.
invalidating the assumptions upon which the contract was based.
Averages change, this is why a contract should never be made assuming everyone is average.
The excess demand is taken directly from the commons (which is their bottom line).
This is a perversion of the term "commons", internet bandwidth is not a commons, it is a paid service. The excess demand is taken directly from their bottom line, this is not the Tragedy of the Commons, this is the Risk of Doing Business.
We all know what happens to the commons when too many people take advantage of an unregulated resource. The ISP has no choice but to react.
This is a regulated resource. Whether it's regulated well or badly depends on who your provider is.
I was starting an ISP today I would bill on the bell curve-- the bottom 10% would have their bill waived entirely, the middle 80% would be billed according to the average usage estimates, and the top 10% would be billed by volume.
Nice in theory. In practice you will have customers complaining if they got used to being in one category and suddenly found themselves in the next. It would be a PR nightmare.
You're better off selling "economy", "normal" and "power user" tiers of service contracts and let people pick whichever they think is right for them.
Think of it as a tax on the commons....
I'd rather think of it as an awkward pricing scheme, since it's not a tax and doesn't involve the commons.
It seems that most of the/. and wardriving crowd are more interested in getting whatever they can get, for free, and the hell with anyone else.
Are we reading the same Slashdot? Most of the posts I've read have either been complaints at Broadband providers reneging on their service agreements, or flames at people "stealing" bandwidth.
This is precisely the same attitude as the music and video sharing crowd.
I find this attitude distressingly prevalent in the music and video sharing crowd, but far from universal. I also find many people focussing on:
* Keeping rare/abandoned/unpublished material in circulation
* Introducing new listeners to their favorite music While neither motive makes music and video sharing any more (or less) legal, I find both of them far easier to swallow than the attitude you rightfully complain about.
I plan on putting wireless on my home network, and you can be damned sure it'll be locked down.
Very wise of you. Nobody should be forced to share, and in the case of Wireless Networking, there are many risks to such sharing even if your service agreement allows it.
I still say that if someone has paid for service that allows them to share, and they want to share, then the ISP has no right to say "whoops, we didn't mean for you to share, stop that".
You are the same type of person who thinks it is okay to download all the MP3s you want for free because record companies are evil.
Huh? No, I am saying that sharing bandwidth is both legal and moral, if and only if it is within the bounds of the service agreement. Downloading MP3's is unauthorized copying, and there are many strong arguments that it is illegal copyright infringment, the MP3 issue is much both more complex and completely unrelated to the wireless bandwidth issue.
Same here, you can steal all the bandwidth you want because the cable companies are evil.
I never made any moral judgement about the any companies, and certainly never used "they're evil" as justification for my arguments. In fact, I never mentioned cable companies at all, I am talking about Broadband ISPs (eg. RoadRunner, Covad, Verizon).
I also never advocated stealing, I merely support people's right to use what they paid for.
Obviously companies like Excite@home went under because they weren't making enough money.
Yes, and that is a failure of @Home, not me. A company is responsible for making it's own product (in this case bandwidth, server access and a service agreement), and pricing it accordingly. Nobody outside the company has a responsibility to prop it up if they make bad business decisions. I don't know much about the failure of @Home, but from what I understand bad business decisions were pretty rampant.
Maybe you should consider that when you go stealing more bandwidth.
I am not "stealing more bandwidth", I am operating within my service agreement. In fact, the three connections I mentioned were in the past, I currently only use one connection, don't operate a wireless port, and know that if I do operate one then RoadRunner is well within their rights to cut off my service, because such an open port would violate my service agreement. I also know that other people have other service agreements, and some of them have no such restrictions.
Oh yeah... I bet you were bitching when your cable internet went down from that... then bitched again when they raised the price to bring it back.
Um, I've never been an @Home customer, they never even got close to my area. I'm a RoadRunner customer, they've raised my rates once since I've signed up with them. I haven't griped since they give me reasonably reliable service at a competitive rate. I could save five bucks a month switching to Verizon, but my friends experience with them, their service is quite unreliable.
If I wanted to share bandwidth through an open wireless port, I would find and purchase a service that allowed me to do so. I would expect to pay more for such a service too.
As a Time-Warner NYC cable customer I LIKE not having to worry about bandwidth charges,
Most people are like you, they want a reasonably priced flat fee, but don't mind a few restrictions on it. Some people want unrestricted access, and are willing to pay for it. It's easy enough for ISPs to offer both options as separate plans.
Think of it this way. Bandwidth is limited and an increase of bandwidth use increased the cable companies cost.
We both give them money and cost them money. Balancing those two and coming up with a profitable pricing schedule and service contract is their job, not ours.
For example, assume you are on a fixed electrical plan (they have them in Omaha, I don't know if they have them elsewhere) and you start giving electricity to your neighbors for free. Would that be wrong?
If I paid for an unlimited amount of sharable electricity, then no, it wouldn't be wrong. I would be very surprised to get such an agreement without paying at least the GNP of a small country for it, but if I had such an agreement, I would expect to be able to use it.
To bring the analogy a bit closer, if I had a contract with my electric company that said, for $100 per month, I could draw up to 500kWH of power and do what I like with it, then why shouldn't "what I like with it" include sharing it with my friends and neighbors.
If I could get a similar contract for $80/mo, but with a clause saying I couldn't share it, and I decide to save money by going with that contract, then I couldn't legally or morally share it.
[Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustration only, and do not necessarily represent reasonable usage or pricing]
If so, why isn't stealing bandwidth just as bad?
This isn't stealing bandwidth, the people sharing the bandwidth are paying for it. In exchange for $X per month, they get Y bandwith and some other contract clauses. Provided they remain within their contract, nobody should care what they do.
In some of the cases where the Broadband ISP's are "cracking down" they are cracking down on actual contract violations, that's fine. In other cases the broadband ISP's are going "hey, we didn't think of that" and rather than eating their mistake, they are taking it out on legitimate paid customers who are operating within their terms of service. That is NOT fine.
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use"
So? The whole point of an average is that some people use more and some less. If three machines are using my connection, then I am using more than "average use", but that in and of itself doesn't give them the right to retaliate.
and you against your contract.
Not necessarily, that depends on the contract. My contract explicitly allows me three connections. If I'm within that limit, they should not care; if I go over it, I expect them to complain.
Other people with other providers have other contracts. Some of them might have contracts that say basically, "here's a connection, do whatever you want with it".
The issue is whether or not the usage is within the terms of the contract, not whether or not it's "average use"; and you don't know the terms of the contracts in question. If your service contract specifies that you must not exceed "average use" then I would tell you your contract is fundamentally flawed and you should look for another provider (or renegotiate, if possible).
Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
T-1 lines generally come with usage clauses too, and whether or not they restrict sharing or reselling connections or bandwidth depends on your ISP. Also, there are many more (and cheaper) options than a T1 for internet access now, many of which have laxer usage policies than your typical consumer-grade Cable Modem or DSL contract.
Not really. If your only concern is encrypting/signing mail (and other stuff) within your organization, than the CA only needs to be trusted within your organization. Trust in the CA can be enforced as a condition of employment. This makes PKI practical for many mid size businesses as well, although small businesses should look elsewhere due to the large inital outlay required.
X.509 is a clumsy tool for internal encryption. Most programs using it are using it for communications, not storage. A good chunk of any businesses need for secure communications is with other businesses. You can't make your parts supplier trust your internal CA as a condition of employment, and you usually can't even require it as a term of your contract with them.
If you wish to explicitly trust the PKI of another business than your CA's can issue each other Cross-Certificates.
Again using my parts supplier example, that would basically be me going to my parts supplier, and asking them to trust that every certificate we issue is valid. That's a lot of trust. Most people are prone to say "no", particularly if they don't understand the full ramifications of that trust.
With the PGP/GPG "Web Of Trust" model, all I would have to ask them is to trust that my key is validly my key. Much easier to do, the guy at my parts supplier can do this over the phone in many cases. Then he can sign my key and put it on their keyserver. Anyone at my parts supplier who accepts his signature will automatically trust my key. They are only asked to trust themselves, and what they can readily verify; a much more palatable trust model.
only one of the three businesses you mention is in the business of selling commercial certificates (Verisign).
The other two are the leading distributors of X.509 capable products, and therefore the leading distributors of "Here are the trusted Certificate Authorties" lists. To get on those lists takes money.
PGP has a somewhat different PKI design, but not all that much different. Anyone can be a CA with X.509, the only technical difference being that certificate signing certs have the key signing bit set.
Sure, anyone can be an X.509 CA, but that doesn't help much. In order to issue meaningful X.509 certificates, you need to be a widely trusted CA, and that means commercial certificate distribution deals with Verisign, AOL and Microsoft, and that pretty much rules out all but big businesses.
PGP's web of trust has a much lower barrier of entry.
They give some harsh articles about Microsoft, but they also publish Microsoft press releases almost verbatim, and they give some happy Microsoft articles as well. It's clear that the editorial staff doesn't shy away from throwing barbs at Microsoft, but they are far less harsh than say, The Register and Slashdot.
The technology for server-side PVR is there (eg. iControl), but the economics of the system mean that they are essentially fancy pay-per-view systems.
User interface issues with iControl also limit the number of shows that can be offered right now. Different UI's will, of course, have more or less flexibility in that regard.
Go Slackware! My favorite of the distributions I seldom use. Incredibly flexible, and with some of the best support for old and odd hardware out there.
Quick questions about the new version:
Does it still support floppy installation? (Someone said no, but the website says yes, which one is right?)
Does it still support UMSDOS installations? Yes, UMSDOS is an abomination, but sometimes such abominations are necessary to get the job done.
I heard that a few versions ago, they added some support for System V style init.d scripts. Is that true?
stikves writes: slackware no longer supports "any" floppy installation. It used to support full floppy installation before (I guess) 7.0. After that you could only install bas and network series with floppies.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the below should not be taken as legal advice. The below assumes US copyright law, if you live outside the US your laws are almost certainly different (fortunately for you).
XNormal writes:
Installing software is copying
Yes, installing most software involves a step where you copy the copyrighted work. Yes, this copy might be an issue under copyright law, which is one reason most EULA's explicitly give you the right to install it on one machine.
Since installing the software is not distribution, but simple media shifting (from unusable Zip or other format files on a CD to usable files on a hard drive), the probably is covered under fair use. If you purchased the software, your first installation is probably covered comfortably under the First Sale doctorine.
As far as I know, all mainstream commercial software, as well as all Free software, explicitly grants the end user the right to install. So as far as I am aware, neither of these interpretations have been tested in court.
If I install an unlicensed ("pirated") copy of commercial software can I sue the vendor if it causes damage to my system? I have not agreed to any shrink-wrap or click-wrap license.
In this country, you can sue anyone for anything. Of course by doing so, you risk anything from token judgements of $1, to dismissal before trial, to having to pay your opponent's court costs, to being charged for libel or fraud (on top of your attorneys fees for bringing suit).
Liability laws vary from state to state, but most states recognize that:
* It is more difficult to identify who is to blame for what portion of the damages when software is involved than in more physical liability cases
* Business practices to minimize risk are generally depended upon to reduce the chance and severity of damage due to software, not liaibilty
* Therefore, the software industry traditionally does not hold software vendors or developers liable for defects in code design
I would think it would be difficult to find a software vendor liabile for negligence even if they forgot to include any disclaimer. Add that to the fact that in your hypothetical case, you never had any dealings with the vendor, and were in fact breaking the law when the damage occured, and your chances for seeing anything plummets. There's always a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Same here - installing LILO requires *copying* it to your hard disk. You are granted the right to do it under a specific license which includes the "thou shalt not sue" clause. If you sue you are in violation of the license and should be treated no differently than someone who installs "warez" and violates the license by not paying. He can't sue the vendor.
The license for LILO (new BSD) doesn't contractually bind anyone not to sue, the disclaimer accompanying the license says "IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE". They aren't telling you what you can or cannot do here, they are reminding you that they assumed no liability, so suing them would likely be fruitless.
(Or perhaps he can, but is likely to be countersued for copyright infringement? IANAL)
In the piracy case, that's a risk. It's not really a risk in the Free Software case.
As Bruce Perens pointed out earlier, if you want to be protected against damages due to software, buy insurance.
In spite of the trolling title, nothing in the article even implies that the USPS even considered "owning" or controlling the email delivery infrastructure. It says that there was a point where it could have bought much of the telegraph infrastructure (but it didn't), and there was a point where it could have offered email services, but decided it was out of their mandate.
If, in 1982 they decieded to offer electronic mail services, they would have found UUCP
and BITNet already there, connecting colleges, government agencies, and some companies with electronic mail and other services. Businessmen and power users with money were already sending electronic mail through services like Compuserve and The Source.
I don't see anything the USPS could have done to stop the rise of FidoNet in 1984. FidoNet allowed anybody to call up a local BBS system (which was often free), and send an email that could get routed internationally, or to any of the other email networks.
The bottom line is, there is no way short of draconian legislation that would have allowed the USPS to "own" email. The most that could have happened is for them to offer email to customers; customers who have other options that the post office must compete with. Kind of like package delivery: the USPS offers package delivery service, but as any employee of FedEx, UPS or DHL will tell you, they by no means own the service.
Bruce Perins wrote:
I did not discuss this with anyone at HP. Most of my Free Software activism is done representing myself or SPI, and not HP.
Fair enough, and pretty much what I expected. HP is a public corporation beholden to its shareholders, and shareholders generally do not like their companies taking activist stances.
I would say chances are pretty good that no legal action will come from your demonstration, but if legal consequences happen, just wanted to make sure you and others were aware that it might become a fight on two fronts, the direct legal battle, and a battle with HP over wage garnishment, even though HP is uninvolved in the demonstration.
Since I have your ear, a small idea: If you want to make extra sure that the trafficking clause is triggered, you could sell the hacked VCR to a member of the audience.
Best of luck, and I admire your courage in this matter.
Myco writes:
I'm all for civil disobedience. It's a very noble thing to be willing to go to jail (especially give the state of our overstuffed prisons) for your ideals.
But in this case, they're talking about a $500,000 fine. I'm not sure how something like that works out if you can't pay it -- whether they substitute jail time or what.
Generally they attempt to sieze whatever assets they can, and attempt to garnish a percentage of your wages until the debt is paid (or you die of old age). If you get in the way of the attempts to collect, then you can land in jail for contempt.
But supposing this guy was fined, and paid it, is that really civil disobedience?
No, it isn't. I would assume that Bruce intends to not pay the fine.
In general, helping to finance someone else's immoral acts is itself an immoral act. Paying such a fine would directly support the suppression of free expression associated with the DMCA.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple today. He can refuse to pay the fine, and he can try to obstruct the government's attempts to confiscate his assets (and in some cases the rest of us can help obstruct these attempts). The trouble is they often garnish wages.
Garnishment happens completely independant of him, the government would contact his employer (HP) directly, and most businesses don't want to deal with the legal issues of failing to comply with a lawful court order.
Unless he has some understanding with HP where they intend to be disobediant as well (unlikely but possible, the DMCA hurts HP greatly) then he is stuck in a quandry. HP wouldn't be paying the fine for him (and if he requests HP pay the fine for him, it's no longer civil disobediance), HP would be manipulating his earnings so as to force him to pay the fine.
If this happens, then he would have a moral beef with HP. They wouldn't be paying him the wages that he agreed to work for, and if he silently accepts that little injustice, he also accepts the moral wrong of financing the government's immoral act.
If this came to pass, I don't see any way out other than threatening to quit unless HP pays the agreed upon wage. If they refuse, quit. If they accept, then whether or not HP gives the government they money they demand is HP's moral/legal/fiscal quandry, it's not Bruce's any longer.
What are you talking about? Algorithmic systems are by nature consistent and stable. Inconsistancy and instablity are not caused by the algorhithms, but rather by
- the fact that we have largely moved away from an algorithmic model to an event-driven one, which is inconsistant and unstable by nature.
- Program states used to be simplified representations modelling reality (or fantasy). They increasingly base their state on raw reality. It doesn't matter how predictable an algorhithm is if you can't predict the state getting fed to it.
- Due to a combination of both laziness and overwork, as well as a preponderance of reinventing the wheel, most algorhithmic software-based systems use too much code that's too poorly tested to even dream of reliability.
Using the algorithm as the basis of software construction is an ancient practice pioneered by Lady Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.Jaquard also used algorhitms for his software construction, before Lovelace and Babbage.
Just because something is old doesn't make it bad, using the wheel as the basis of long distance land transportation is an ancient practice pioneered by someone who lived so long ago she isn't even recorded in the history books, that doesn't make wheels obsolete.
It is the fundamental reason why dependable software systems are so hard to produce.
The problems in producing dependable software are far far more complex than "we still use algorhithms", although clearly one of the problems is "we use algorithms where they are inappropriate". Algorithms work best where the computer is interfacing with mathematics and other abstract concepts, they work worst where the computer interfaces with the real world.
There is something rotten at the core of software engineering.
How can something that barely exists be rotten already? Software engineering has reached the terrible two's, it can (usually) feed itself, but it still runs around knocking over lamps.
Software functionality should not be fundamentally different from hardware functionality.
Huh? Most software has just the most cursory relation to hardware, it makes no sense to model such software after hardware. What would the hardware model be for a hypertext browser, for example?
Software should emulate hardware and serve as an extension to it. It should only provide the two things that are lacking in hardware: flexibility and ease of modification.
This statement only makes sense if you define "flexibility" far beyond its typical semantic meaning, as in "we don't have hardware that's flexible enough to draw an arbitrary projection of an arbitrary eight-dimensional surface" or "we don't have hardware flexible enough to perform statistics on multimillion element databases".
Even stretching the statement to make some sense, it's still false, since it ignores many things that software has that hardware lacks: zero capital cost, ease of replication, ability to ignore or rewrite natural laws. Tell the people writing software for ASCI White that their work should be an extension of hardware and they'll look at you as if you've got pink elephants on your head, the whole point of that computer is to avoid using the real hardware.
The only way to solve the reliability crisis is to abandon the bad practice of using algorithms as the basis of software construction and to adopt a pure signal-based paradigm.
I dare you to write a GAAP-compliant accounts payable system for a typical mid-sized corporation using a pure signal-based paradigm. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you will quickly see the advantages in software reliabilty and development productivity in using an algorithmic model over a signal based model when the purpose of the program is to follow a set of number crunching algorhithms.
The only way to solve the reliability crisis is to abandon the bad practice of using algorithms as the basis of software construction and to adopt a pure signal-based paradigm.
Abandoning algorithms won't "solve the reliability crisis". One important step towards improving reliaibility is making sure to use the right tools for the job. If you are writing a program to crunch numbers, algorithms are the best tool that I know about. If you are writing a program to control hardware, signal-response systems often make much more sense.
Even using these two paradigms you won't always be using the best tool for the job. Another potent tool is one of Mother Nature's favorites, the paired analog response system, where you have two (or more) complimentary analog systems (for example: the insulin/glucagon system to control blood sugar levels, the force/friction system to control accelleration). Signal-based systems can simulate this, but it can't match the precision of the truly analog processes.
More details can be found at the links below: Project COSA
Very very interesting work, I just see it more as complementing algorhithmic systems rather than replacing them. I see your work as particularly relevant for embedded systems (eg avionics systems like the story is talking about).
Note that, while your COSA system does handle events (signals) more predictably than most other programming paradigms, and it encourages more relaible code in response to the signal, it does not completly eliminate the two reliabliltiy problems I listed at the top.
To use your terms:
- You can't predict in what order sensors will trigger, making it possible to have unexpected effects when sensors trigger in an unexpected fashion
- Digital data and comparison sensors will never allow for a perfect decision to be made regarding analog reality.
I can't see a digital signal-based system getting away from these fundamental problems, the best you can do is come up with tools and methods that minimizes their effect.One other thing: You haven't gotten away from algorhithmic computing. I assume the algorithmic kernel is just expediency, it's cheaper to model COSA on an algorithmic computer than to custom design the right hardware. However, your descriptions of the operation of cells are all algorithmic, so the fundemental unit of your system is a handful of algorithms (granted, they're small reliabile-looking ones, but they're still algorithms).
A service like RoadRunner Business Class for Apartments/Hotels sounds likely to work fine for a coop situation.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.
In a coop, nothing is being resold. The members get together and contribute resources to form an organization. The organization purchases the bandwidth and makes it available to its members. No resale, no need for a resale term.
hyperturbopete writes:
Ahem.
(1) Snow.
Yay! Snow!
(2) 5 hours from any major city.
I don't know what you consider a "major" city. I grew up in NYC, and I consider Albany a major city, as opposed to minor cities like Oneonta or Mechanicville or metropolitan areas like NYC or Boston.
However, Albany is 2.5-3 hours from New York City, 3 hours from Boston and 3.5 hours from Montreal. If New York City isn't major enough to count as a major city for you, there's no place in the US that's within five hours drive of a major city (the closest city bigger than NYC is Mexico City; Cairo and Tokyo are way too far away).
Pxtl writes:
I have friends who grew up in those places. Unless you have your own car and license, you must be chauffeured, or you get no life.
I live in Albany, NY. While the public transportation system is not as comprehensive as New York City's, it is quite extensive and effective. From everything I've heard, it beats out Los Angeles's system in both coverage and hours.
The full text of the Patent (US4689672) can be found here. It was filed in 1986.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group Committee published the JPEG standard in 1994. While JPEG files were used prior to the publishing of the standard, it's pretty clear that JPEG images themselves don't count as prior art regarding this patent.
This patent appears to me to cover RLE files (claim 1). This strikes me as likely to have prior art.
This patent appears to me to cover a simlple scheme one step removed from Huffman encoding (claim 6). This also seems likely to have prior art.
If someone can find prior art for claims 1, 6, 13, 25, 30, 36, 38, 39 and 42, the entire patent seems likely to fall apart, since every claim is dependant on those few.
Mr Methane writes:
The FBI has stated officially that it intends to require "similar level of security" for bus travel and train travel.
Greyhound will not sell me a domestic bus ticket unless I give them my name. It's only a matter of time before they require I show valid identification as well.
Zelet writes:
I agree with all of your points. I guess your's and my contracts are different. Mine is pretty clear that it shouldn't be shared (although the contract does not state it specifically.)
There are lots of different contracts out there, depending on your bandwidth provider, where you live, what level of service you pay for, and in many cases when you ordered the service.
My contract specifies a maximum of three connections, makes sharing kinda pointless. I guess I could share (haven't checked, I don't share), but assuming I want my computer connected I would have to refuse everyone after the second connection. I would also have to keep rebooting the cable modem, since it has a limit on the number of ethernet ids it can give DHCP addresses to without a cold boot.
However, I have seen other broadband providers that are far more lenient, and I personally like the idea of people sharing their bandwidth.
Zelet writes:
Sharing bandwidth is generally illegal in the contracts and that is why the cable companies are cracking down. But, even if it is legal (or not contractually defined) it is still immoral (illegal and immoral are very different things).
I certainly agree that illegal and immoral are often very different things, but, given a contract allowing sharing I would take exception to your stand that such sharing is categorically immoral.
If a contract is made in good faith with both parties having certain assumptions, and one party finds a loophole permitting them to violate one of these assumptions to their benefit, it would be immoral to exploit it.
Sharing is natural and expected. Sharing of a good or service should be assumed to be allowed unless the contract specifically excludes it. In this case, if the provider is advertising "personal" internet service, you could argue that their customers know that they aren't supposed to share it.
However, in many cases the providers are just advertising "fast internet access", and even include lines like "attach as many computers as you want" in their ads. For example, a friend of mine got Verizon DSL, and Verizon made a big deal of having no limit on how many computers you could attach to their service.
I sincerely hope our society hasn't gotten so far gone where sharing itself is considered abnormal or immoral. I would agree that sharing someone else's stuff without their consent is immoral, but if you contracted for an unrestricted internet connection, then the bandwidth associated with that connection is yours to use as you see fit. Sharing is one way of using such a service.
I agree with you that we shouldn't support companies with flawed business models (record companies), but we shouldn't exploit loop-holes in their contracts with us either. Again, that is a moral issue not a legal one.
I agree, with a few exceptions, none of which apply in this case (eg. contracts you could not read before allegedly agreeing to them; contracts of adhesion that overstep any reasonable scope; contracts whose terms change without notice or agreement).
Companies especially, but people more and more are starting to cheat each other at any possibility. Individuals and companies believe that if it isn't in the contract then it is okay to do something that is detrimental to the other party.
Yes, there is too much greed, duplicity and just plain bad manners in the world. On the other hand, if the "something...detrimental" is a feature of the contract and not a loophole used in bad faith, then it's hard to argue that it is immoral to make use of the contract as originally agreed.
Greed and selfishness (even disguised as generosity - example - sharing internet with neighbors who could afford it on their own)
Again, using bandwidth that you paid for, within the terms of the service agreement, to share with your neigbors, whether or not they could afford their own service, is neither greed nor selfishness, it is just sharing.
Sharing bandwidth that you had agreed not to share as part of the terms of service is selfishness, because you are violating the terms of your agreement. The argument that "I paid for the bandwidth" doesn't hold water where you explicitly paid for restricted bandwidth, especially since most providers will offer less restricted plans (potentially allowing sharing) for more money.
Jetson writes:
The tragedy of the commons
Paid bandwidth is hardly a commons.
The problem with the argument "they gave it to me so why do they care what I do with it?" is that it intentionally ignores the principles under which the [insert generic asset here] was given in the first place.
The whole point of a contract is so that I know which side of the agreement is mine to keep up, I have no moral or legal responsibility to ensure that their side of the contract was made with due attention paid to making a profit. Why would I be responsible for their bad business decisions?
They don't cap your line because they *assume* your usage will be typical, and that their infrastructure will support N users at the calculated average rate.
I would call that a bad business decision. A company should plan for typical aggregate usage, not that every customer will use no more than the average amount. They should also have a contingency plan in case everyone maxes out their service agreement. They should also have an emergency plan for substantial violations of their service agreement.
My provider is RoadRunner (NYCAP RoadRunner to be precise). They do cap my line, precisely because they want to minimise customer complaints. There is a limit of how much bandwidth I can use (700 some-odd bps) and how many connections I can have at once (3). If I find either of those limits too...limiting, I can raise either or both of those numbers with a suitable application of cash. They also have a plan for if lots of people max out their service agreement, they can dedicate extra channels in each local loop to multiply the available bandwidth without any last-mile wiring. They are implementing their plan for substantial service agreement violations, they're the one going after people advertising open wireless links in violation of their service agreement.
When someone decides to increase the number of users and thereby increases the demand on resources that is NOT simply a deviation from the average because there is little chance that there will be an offsetting reduction at a later point-- the average is changed in the process,
Yes.
invalidating the assumptions upon which the contract was based.
Averages change, this is why a contract should never be made assuming everyone is average.
The excess demand is taken directly from the commons (which is their bottom line).
This is a perversion of the term "commons", internet bandwidth is not a commons, it is a paid service. The excess demand is taken directly from their bottom line, this is not the Tragedy of the Commons, this is the Risk of Doing Business.
We all know what happens to the commons when too many people take advantage of an unregulated resource. The ISP has no choice but to react.
This is a regulated resource. Whether it's regulated well or badly depends on who your provider is.
I was starting an ISP today I would bill on the bell curve-- the bottom 10% would have their bill waived entirely, the middle 80% would be billed according to the average usage estimates, and the top 10% would be billed by volume.
Nice in theory. In practice you will have customers complaining if they got used to being in one category and suddenly found themselves in the next. It would be a PR nightmare.
You're better off selling "economy", "normal" and "power user" tiers of service contracts and let people pick whichever they think is right for them.
Think of it as a tax on the commons....
I'd rather think of it as an awkward pricing scheme, since it's not a tax and doesn't involve the commons.
gaudior writes:
/. and wardriving crowd are more interested in getting whatever they can get, for free, and the hell with anyone else.
It seems that most of the
Are we reading the same Slashdot? Most of the posts I've read have either been complaints at Broadband providers reneging on their service agreements, or flames at people "stealing" bandwidth.
This is precisely the same attitude as the music and video sharing crowd.
I find this attitude distressingly prevalent in the music and video sharing crowd, but far from universal. I also find many people focussing on:
* Keeping rare/abandoned/unpublished material in circulation
* Introducing new listeners to their favorite music
While neither motive makes music and video sharing any more (or less) legal, I find both of them far easier to swallow than the attitude you rightfully complain about.
I plan on putting wireless on my home network, and you can be damned sure it'll be locked down.
Very wise of you. Nobody should be forced to share, and in the case of Wireless Networking, there are many risks to such sharing even if your service agreement allows it.
I still say that if someone has paid for service that allows them to share, and they want to share, then the ISP has no right to say "whoops, we didn't mean for you to share, stop that".
Zelet flames:
You are the same type of person who thinks it is okay to download all the MP3s you want for free because record companies are evil.
Huh? No, I am saying that sharing bandwidth is both legal and moral, if and only if it is within the bounds of the service agreement. Downloading MP3's is unauthorized copying, and there are many strong arguments that it is illegal copyright infringment, the MP3 issue is much both more complex and completely unrelated to the wireless bandwidth issue.
Same here, you can steal all the bandwidth you want because the cable companies are evil.
I never made any moral judgement about the any companies, and certainly never used "they're evil" as justification for my arguments. In fact, I never mentioned cable companies at all, I am talking about Broadband ISPs (eg. RoadRunner, Covad, Verizon).
I also never advocated stealing, I merely support people's right to use what they paid for.
Obviously companies like Excite@home went under because they weren't making enough money.
Yes, and that is a failure of @Home, not me. A company is responsible for making it's own product (in this case bandwidth, server access and a service agreement), and pricing it accordingly. Nobody outside the company has a responsibility to prop it up if they make bad business decisions. I don't know much about the failure of @Home, but from what I understand bad business decisions were pretty rampant.
Maybe you should consider that when you go stealing more bandwidth.
I am not "stealing more bandwidth", I am operating within my service agreement. In fact, the three connections I mentioned were in the past, I currently only use one connection, don't operate a wireless port, and know that if I do operate one then RoadRunner is well within their rights to cut off my service, because such an open port would violate my service agreement. I also know that other people have other service agreements, and some of them have no such restrictions.
Oh yeah... I bet you were bitching when your cable internet went down from that... then bitched again when they raised the price to bring it back.
Um, I've never been an @Home customer, they never even got close to my area. I'm a RoadRunner customer, they've raised my rates once since I've signed up with them. I haven't griped since they give me reasonably reliable service at a competitive rate. I could save five bucks a month switching to Verizon, but my friends experience with them, their service is quite unreliable.
If I wanted to share bandwidth through an open wireless port, I would find and purchase a service that allowed me to do so. I would expect to pay more for such a service too.
nomadic writes:
As a Time-Warner NYC cable customer I LIKE not having to worry about bandwidth charges,
Most people are like you, they want a reasonably priced flat fee, but don't mind a few restrictions on it. Some people want unrestricted access, and are willing to pay for it. It's easy enough for ISPs to offer both options as separate plans.
Zelet asks:
Think of it this way. Bandwidth is limited and an increase of bandwidth use increased the cable companies cost.
We both give them money and cost them money. Balancing those two and coming up with a profitable pricing schedule and service contract is their job, not ours.
For example, assume you are on a fixed electrical plan (they have them in Omaha, I don't know if they have them elsewhere) and you start giving electricity to your neighbors for free. Would that be wrong?
If I paid for an unlimited amount of sharable electricity, then no, it wouldn't be wrong. I would be very surprised to get such an agreement without paying at least the GNP of a small country for it, but if I had such an agreement, I would expect to be able to use it.
To bring the analogy a bit closer, if I had a contract with my electric company that said, for $100 per month, I could draw up to 500kWH of power and do what I like with it, then why shouldn't "what I like with it" include sharing it with my friends and neighbors.
If I could get a similar contract for $80/mo, but with a clause saying I couldn't share it, and I decide to save money by going with that contract, then I couldn't legally or morally share it.
[Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustration only, and do not necessarily represent reasonable usage or pricing]
If so, why isn't stealing bandwidth just as bad?
This isn't stealing bandwidth, the people sharing the bandwidth are paying for it. In exchange for $X per month, they get Y bandwith and some other contract clauses. Provided they remain within their contract, nobody should care what they do.
In some of the cases where the Broadband ISP's are "cracking down" they are cracking down on actual contract violations, that's fine. In other cases the broadband ISP's are going "hey, we didn't think of that" and rather than eating their mistake, they are taking it out on legitimate paid customers who are operating within their terms of service. That is NOT fine.
NetJunkie writes:
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use"
So? The whole point of an average is that some people use more and some less. If three machines are using my connection, then I am using more than "average use", but that in and of itself doesn't give them the right to retaliate.
and you against your contract.
Not necessarily, that depends on the contract. My contract explicitly allows me three connections. If I'm within that limit, they should not care; if I go over it, I expect them to complain.
Other people with other providers have other contracts. Some of them might have contracts that say basically, "here's a connection, do whatever you want with it".
The issue is whether or not the usage is within the terms of the contract, not whether or not it's "average use"; and you don't know the terms of the contracts in question. If your service contract specifies that you must not exceed "average use" then I would tell you your contract is fundamentally flawed and you should look for another provider (or renegotiate, if possible).
Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
T-1 lines generally come with usage clauses too, and whether or not they restrict sharing or reselling connections or bandwidth depends on your ISP. Also, there are many more (and cheaper) options than a T1 for internet access now, many of which have laxer usage policies than your typical consumer-grade Cable Modem or DSL contract.
WetCat writes:
Trust? OEM!!!
you cannot get rid of OEM software by Microsoft, even if you are not agree to its EULA, did you forget?
Sure you can. Not everyone has to buy from Gateway or Dell.
Conare writes:
Not really. If your only concern is encrypting/signing mail (and other stuff) within your organization, than the CA only needs to be trusted within your organization. Trust in the CA can be enforced as a condition of employment. This makes PKI practical for many mid size businesses as well, although small businesses should look elsewhere due to the large inital outlay required.
X.509 is a clumsy tool for internal encryption. Most programs using it are using it for communications, not storage. A good chunk of any businesses need for secure communications is with other businesses. You can't make your parts supplier trust your internal CA as a condition of employment, and you usually can't even require it as a term of your contract with them.
If you wish to explicitly trust the PKI of another business than your CA's can issue each other Cross-Certificates.
Again using my parts supplier example, that would basically be me going to my parts supplier, and asking them to trust that every certificate we issue is valid. That's a lot of trust. Most people are prone to say "no", particularly if they don't understand the full ramifications of that trust.
With the PGP/GPG "Web Of Trust" model, all I would have to ask them is to trust that my key is validly my key. Much easier to do, the guy at my parts supplier can do this over the phone in many cases. Then he can sign my key and put it on their keyserver. Anyone at my parts supplier who accepts his signature will automatically trust my key. They are only asked to trust themselves, and what they can readily verify; a much more palatable trust model.
only one of the three businesses you mention is in the business of selling commercial certificates (Verisign).
The other two are the leading distributors of X.509 capable products, and therefore the leading distributors of "Here are the trusted Certificate Authorties" lists. To get on those lists takes money.
Zeinfeld writes:
PGP has a somewhat different PKI design, but not all that much different. Anyone can be a CA with X.509, the only technical difference being that certificate signing certs have the key signing bit set.
Sure, anyone can be an X.509 CA, but that doesn't help much. In order to issue meaningful X.509 certificates, you need to be a widely trusted CA, and that means commercial certificate distribution deals with Verisign, AOL and Microsoft, and that pretty much rules out all but big businesses.
PGP's web of trust has a much lower barrier of entry.
They give some harsh articles about Microsoft, but they also publish Microsoft press releases almost verbatim, and they give some happy Microsoft articles as well. It's clear that the editorial staff doesn't shy away from throwing barbs at Microsoft, but they are far less harsh than say, The Register and Slashdot.
The technology for server-side PVR is there (eg. iControl), but the economics of the system mean that they are essentially fancy pay-per-view systems.
User interface issues with iControl also limit the number of shows that can be offered right now. Different UI's will, of course, have more or less flexibility in that regard.
Quick questions about the new version:
stikves writes:
slackware no longer supports "any" floppy installation.
It used to support full floppy installation before (I guess) 7.0. After that you could only install bas and network series with floppies.
I haven't tried this, but the Slackware Installation Help seems to disagree with you.