Netscape used key NCSA Mosaic developers, and started their code from scratch.
Internet Explorer 1.0 was based on Spyglass Mosaic code, which was the NCSA's commercial distribution of Mosaic. Later versions of IE were, of course, based on IE1.
As long as the program as distributed is compiled and linked against the LGPL version of B, they're fine. If/when they distribute a copy of B to be used with D, they should distribute the LGPL version. The fact that it works with GPL versions of B too is a happy side effect, and there is no guarantee that later versions of B will still work. If later GPL versions of B break binary compaitibility with the LGPL version, they can't upgrade, since they're only allowed to distribute versions linked with the LGPL version.
To use a real-world example: Thousands of commercial, proprietary, closed source software packages were distributed linked to the Motif libraries. Then LessTif was released under the GPL; this did not force all Motif-based programs to be licensed under the GPL. The fact that Motif program "Foo" happens to be functional if you replace Motif with a GPL library is irrelevant, since Foo is not distributed as linked with LessTif. The binary compatibility does not make Foo a derivative work of the GPL code. If LessTif offered a feature *NOT* in Motif, Foo could not legally use it without becoming a derivative work of the LessTif, with all that entails, but as long as they stick to distributing based on Motif Foo is fine, license-wise.
Yes, the DMCA criminalizes certain kinds of copyright violations; it also criminalizes some acts, like reverse engineering protection schemes, that were never even grounds for civil action before. This is in addition to any civil lawsuit the offended party may bring against you.
Yes this moves us ever closer to a corporate police state. Some companies, Wackenhut for example, are even positioning themselves to have their own police forces (they already run several prisons).
I stand corrected. In double checking my sources for my response to this post, it appears that Sun has stepped back from its earlier stances, and is now allowing Kaffe and GJC to actually call themselves Java, and Japhar to call itself a JVM (or at least these projects *are* calling themselves that anyway and Sun hasn't shut their sites down).
My point was based on old information, that Sun made it impossible for a Free implementation of Java to call itself Java, so you had to run Free Java programs on non-Free Java or Free non-Java. This no longer appears to be the case. Still, Sun could give a lot more support to the Free Java implementations, so they aren't playing a constant game of catchup to a moving specification.
There are no guarantees that C#/.NET won't be just as bad as far as moving the specification, so it's too early to say whether Microsoft is better in this respect or not (history predicts not).
Would it increase their server platform sales? What about increasing their client platform?
It very well might. Increasing usage of.NET means that the pie gets bigger. Often, a smaller percentage of a bigger pie is a bigger piece overall. While Microsoft's overall strategy (the pie is mine! mine! all mine!) surely hasn't changed, I'm positive that some people in Microsoft have noticed that enlarging the pie can yield both more sales and fewer antitrust allegations.
Is this the first step in squashing Java?
Of course not, the first step was them signing up for a Java license, and distrubiting a broken JDK with the Java logo on it. They are well past the first step.
Yes, C#/.NET is supposed to help in the "Squash Java" endeavor. I doubt it will work, since Java has some very strong niches (eg. server-side web apps) where.NET doesn't look attractive enough to tear apart existing infrastructure for. New infrastructure must work with what's there already, and.NET doesn't look like it will play nicely with existing Java code.
Ximian, don't be silly.
Focus on fixing GNOME so that it can compete with KDE and Windows.
I find GNOME to compete just fine with KDE and Windows. I use GNOME all the time personally, and usually recommend either it or KDE to people depending on which suits their needs better.
You *cannot* win with Microsoft, you are in a position of weakness and disadvantage by default. Microsoft will screw you over at the first chance, and along the way you will have helped bolster the mindshare of its questionable strategy.
If Ximian was entering into a business agreement with Microsoft, if there was any contract between them, I'd wholehartedly agree with this. Microsoft is notorious for making deals which screw over the little guy.
Hovever, from everything I've seen so far, this is not the case. Ximian contacted Microsoft, basically saying "Look! We're.NET developers too!". Microsoft basically replied with "OK, you get.NET tech support too," and figured that Ximian was a notable enough developer to warrant a press release.
The worst Microsoft can do here is give bad tech support or misleading press releases. Ximian steering clear of Microsoft wouldn't save them from misleading press releases. As an MSDN subscriber (by work, not by choice) I can say that, while Microsoft tech support is not good, it's less bad than I would have expected.
You are creating a conflict with your ally Sun by neglecting JAVA. Do not divest your efforts from GNOME. GNOME needs you. Do NOT neglect the ailing GNOME desktop like this.
If Sun wants the Free Software Community to use Java, it should open up the platform. It's scary that Microsoft has made C#/.NET more accessible to Free software development than Sun has made Java/EJB. They know exactly what they should do to make Java friendly to Free Software, the fact that they don't do it show how much a "fair-weather friend" Sun really is.
Personally, I'm skeptical that.NET is the Right Thing(tm), but it doesn't hurt me for Ximian to explore it. If because of this exploration, two years down the line, good cross platform development tools that I can use reach maturity, I'll be very happy. If this never bears fruit, I'll just go on the way I'm doing:-)
Fully Licensed GmbH is a German company ("GmbH" (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) is the German corporate suffix, the equivalent of the US "Inc." and British "Ltd.").
As far as I know, in Germany you have the right to reverse engineer things, and that right cannot be "signed" away in a shrinkwrap license.
The message you got is because GNOME doesn't distribute binaries, they leave that up to others.
If you are looking for a binary distribution, Debian's GNOME distribution is very good (you can probably install it on Redhat via alien, or just switch to Debian).
Regardless of distribution, you can always download the source from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources.
Configure, compile, install and run. It takes a bit more disk space this way, but it's not as hard as you might think.
You most certainly do have an implicit right to use software. I don't even think he can even restrict people from modifying software unless there is a more tangible contract than a text file distributed with the software.
What you do not have is an implicit right to distribute software (modified or unmodified). In order to copy or distribute copyrighted software you need license or fair use (or the equivalent concepts outside of the US, where OpenBSD is from). If Darrin says you can only distribute unmodified versions of IPFilter, OpenBSD has no choice but to respect his license and dump IPFilter from the OpenBSD distribution.
Yes, it sounds like EFI/GPT is a useful step up from MBR. On the other hand, abrupt transitions like this are generally bad things. If Microsoft cared about the people using their OS (haha) they would have a version or two which supported both, and then dump MBR later.
Here's my problem, if Expressive Speech is more protected than Functional Speech, what exactly is the difference? I've tried looking at it philosophically, and I get "All speech has both Expressive and Functional aspects to it, there is no pure speech". If there is a legal distiction, can someone (preferably a Lawyer, but not necessarily) please elaborate what it is?
Glicbawls goes beyond compressing an image, it talks about ongoing research in the field, demonstrating a routine at the heart of the author's research. It has a clean interface which will do the right thing when confronted with a compressed or uncompressed file. It has a visual representation that is small and artistic. It is programming poetry, a statement about beauty.
Tomx is poetry as well, but poetry of a different kind. Rather than showing beauty, it talks of communication; "All language is fundamentally one". This is a truth we learn when learning to program, but we often forget it as we move into the real world from the abstract. TomX brings this truth into the real world for us to hold, touch, play with. It's even maintainable code (unlike most of the IOCCC entries), so it can grow.
Another example of the expressiveness of a program is in the metaphor it uses to interface with the user. Robert J. Sawyer (Author of Calculating God and Flash Fowrward) wrote an excellent article on the design of Wordstar, and how much more joyful it is for him to use, because of the design metaphor, than other designs that perform the same function.
The Museum of Modern Art has an entire department of Architecture and Design devoted to the art of things that many people think of as purely functional. While they do not yet include software, there is no denying that the software process has much in common with Architecture, Engineering and Design, and the same aesthetic and artistic choices get made during the process.
These are just some examples off the top of my head. I'd really like an answer to my first question tho.
Does DMCA say anything about legal ramifications for a copyright holder who alleges infringement, later it's found that there is none, but the user lost their account for that time anyway?
Not that I know of, no.
Can copyright holders wildly allege infringement without recourse?
Here in the US, we have defamation (i.e. libel and slander) laws that can sometimes cover that. I am not a lawyer, but here's my rundown of how this works. For brevity's sake, I'll use "Alfred" to refer to the person who is claiming "Beth" has violated copyright. As a result, Beth loses access to systems.
First off, there must be no actual copyright infringement, if Alfred speaks truth, then it's instantly not defamation anymore.
If Beth is past that one, and is interested in pursuing, then she should call a lawyer instantly. There are a lot of arbitrary deadlines with defamation cases, and I surely do not list them all here.
Next, Beth should demand a retraction by Alfred within 20 days of finding out what he said. From what I understand, this is really only a requirement if the press has defamed her, but the way I see it, it doesn't hurt and might actually help. He might just retract his statement and tell people to give her account back.
Next, assuming Alfred doesn't retract his statement, Beth should file a lawsuit within a year, or else the statute of limitations takes effect and there is no case anymore.
Keep in mind that Defamation is part of Civil Law, which means that the key recourse is money. If Beth doesn't have significant financial damages to claim, it's just plain not worth it. For example, the guy who put up text files saying "*aitch*" with the names of popular songs really can't claim significant damages. An independant artist, who was counting on the increased recognition of having her own song ("Eat Metallica") widely distributed on Napster to help her career grow, could make a case. If so, she's in for a long and expensive ride (but could get publicity out of the case too, so it might still be worth it).
Most other countries have defamation laws, but from what I understand they often differ substantially from what I described.
But if the DSP sources would have been open-sourced as well, it would have been possible to port them to other Winmodem (and ISDN4Linux) hardware as well.
Unlikely, since as I understand it, the ACP (MWave) modem design is radically different from most (eg. Rockwell or Lucent) "winmodems". For one thing, the MWave actually does have an onboard DSP, but it's a more general purpose one than in more traditional serial modems.
Your suggestion is similar to trying to port a program to Windows by looking at its Macintosh Assembly Code. Technically possible, but more work than anyone cares to do.
By the way--how the hell do you define `really hard' without NP-completeness?
Personally, I define it as impossible to solve given current mathematical and computational technology in less than a year for less than a hundred thousand dollars. If I was in a field with stricter security requirements, I'd probably up the dollar figure. If I was in a less time-critical field I'd probably up the time. Factorization of a typical RSA key easily falls into my definition of "really hard".
Yes, people put a lot of faith in flimsier assumptions--but that doesn't mean we ought to put blind faith in an assumption.
The Brooklyn Bridge (finished 1883) was built with many assumptions, one of which was "Gravity acts in the way that Isaac Newton described". Not only had this assumption never been proven (just as current gravitational theory has never been proven), a few decades later that assumption was actually disproven. Does that make the bridge any less stable? No.
Most things in life are unprovable. If you only allow yourself provable things, you never leave abstract mathematics.
The heart of security is the management of risk; and without a fair and frank assessment of risk, there is no security.
Which is why RSA is so much more popular than elliptical cryptosystems. Because the risks involved in RSA are better understood, explored and documented. If you implement a security system that involves RSA, you have an easy-to-calculate risk involved in that link of the chain depending on key length. You can be confident that, absent an advance in technology, you fully understand the risks involved in your security system.
Note that "absent an advance in technology" phrase. That is not unique to RSA, but is true with any security system: be it cryptography, digital or even a physical security system. The risk of technological advances obsoleting your security system is always present. If you cannot stomach that, I'd suggest that you keep away from fields that require significant security.
I'm very hesitant to declare RSA to be "one of the best types around". RSA is built on several conjectures, none of which have been proven, namely:
1. The only way to make a general break of RSA is to factor large composite numbers
2. Factorization of large numbers is an NP-complete problem,
3. P != NP
#1 is incorrect, there are a few ways to break RSA, only one of which is to factor large composite numbers (another is this Leo person's method). Assuming effective key management, no method has been found which is significantly easier than the factorization problem (although some are no harder). For more detail, see http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/3-1-3.html.
#2 is also incorrect. Factorization is probably not NP-Complete, but RSA never depends on it being NP-Complete, merely on it being really hard to solve. Factorization is provably NP, but has not been shown to be NP-Complete. This is potentially a good thing, if #3 ever falls through for the NP-Complete set, the fact that it isn't NP-Complete means that Factorization will probably still be hard.
Or just attaching a listening device to the S/PDIF output of a SB Live or Trident soundcard, which gives lossless digital output with, as I understand it, no means for encrypting or securing the data.
I've skimmed through the XP books, and there were some excellent ideas, and I partiuclarly like the attitude towards testing brought up there. I have one big question about it, that I didn't see the books answering.
How do you do regression tests on a GUI app? For console apps, daemons and other backend software it strikes me as more or less straightforward to impliment, but there is no reliable way that I've found to do this level of testing for:
* An application's GUI interface
* The interactions between this GUI interface and the non-graphical code.
If someone has a good answer to this, please let me know.
I don't -want- to see hear bad they can make things sound at 64kbps. And further, I don't care about bandwidth or disk usage, even though I'm behind a 28.8 modem.
I -do- want high-quality downloadable (freely or not) music. By high-quality, I mean indistinguishable from a CD to my own ears (LAME at ~220Kbps average VBR does this for me).
Storage is stupid-cheap these days. Bandwidth is slowly spreading out into much more diverse, and usually competitive, markets.
Sounds like what you are looking for is FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net). It's lossless compression. If you sample at CD resolutions, you get CD quality sound (if you sample at higher resolution from a better input source, you get better than CD quality sound). Only two downsides:
* Less compression than mp3's
* Not finished yet (but they do have working code)
What if the client wants to get the data displayed in a format they can control?
Who wants this?
Here's a short list off the top of my head:
* Visually impaired
* Batch software
* Different departments within an organization who need to access the same data in different ways
Yes, in each case, there is a better way to do it than XSL, but there are times when having the single interface that XML offers is worth the awkward programming of XSLT.
It's hard to downgrade a distribution (eg. from Woody to Potato). It's almost as hard to downgrade a suite of interconnected packages with a lot of dependencies (eg, the GNOME or KDE base packages).
WHereas for the last few releases, runining debian unstable will give your random brekaings, as well as sudden, erratic, changes inpolicy that change the way your machine works.
Hence the 'unstable' tag. The unstable branch is often quite stable, but if they have to do major changes in packages or policy, that's the only place they have to put it, and such changes can be destabilizing.
Now how in the world do I back it down from unstable to testing?
That is, IMHO, the biggest thing really missing from Debian, an easy way to downgrade. Then again, I haven't seen any easier downgrades in other distributions either. You seem to be familiar with FreeBSD, how easy is downgrading there? (I don't mean downgrading just one package, I mean going back a distribution version, or downgrading a suite of interconnected packages).
OH, that's why I went to unstable--I wanted the newere kde for them
There are two safer ways for that. KDE has an alternate distribution point for Debian packages of new KDE binaries for running on potato at http://kde.tdyc.com/. Secondly, you could have downloaded the KDE packages from woody and installed them on potato with dpkg.
Since downgrading is hard, I'd recommend against people going to an unstable distribution just because they want newer versions of a few packages.
yes, I *am* deliberately ducking the [KDE] license issues here
This is probably a troll, but i'll respond anyway. AFAIK, there aren't any remaining KDE licensing issues with the newer versions of KDE. Qt has been released under the GPL, and so there is no longer the QPL/GPL license conflicts. That is why it is now being distributed in Debian.
Yes, I read RMS's letter after the release. It was not saying that new KDE releases had a licensing problem. It was reminding that past KDE releases did, and showing the best way for KDE developers to protect themselves from hypothetical lawsuits based on using non-KDE GPL code in past KDE releases from when there was a licensing problem. It was also based on the assumption that KDE reused a lot of GPL code from non-KDE projects, which KDE's response made clear was not the case. Regardless, RMS's comments did not describe a licensing problem with distributing new KDE binaries based on a GPLed Qt. I certainly don't see any licensing problem there, and the Debian distributors apparently agree.
I am very happy, and one of these days will actually get around to playing with KDE on a system to see what I like and dislike about it compared to other options (have to do that with XFCE and UDE also while I'm at it).
Slashdot Mirror
Netscape used key NCSA Mosaic developers, and started their code from scratch.
s .htm
Internet Explorer 1.0 was based on Spyglass Mosaic code, which was the NCSA's commercial distribution of Mosaic. Later versions of IE were, of course, based on IE1.
There's an excellent site devoted to the history of key browsers (though it's missing Konqueror and Lynx) at http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/browser
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As long as the program as distributed is compiled and linked against the LGPL version of B, they're fine. If/when they distribute a copy of B to be used with D, they should distribute the LGPL version. The fact that it works with GPL versions of B too is a happy side effect, and there is no guarantee that later versions of B will still work. If later GPL versions of B break binary compaitibility with the LGPL version, they can't upgrade, since they're only allowed to distribute versions linked with the LGPL version.
To use a real-world example: Thousands of commercial, proprietary, closed source software packages were distributed linked to the Motif libraries. Then LessTif was released under the GPL; this did not force all Motif-based programs to be licensed under the GPL. The fact that Motif program "Foo" happens to be functional if you replace Motif with a GPL library is irrelevant, since Foo is not distributed as linked with LessTif. The binary compatibility does not make Foo a derivative work of the GPL code. If LessTif offered a feature *NOT* in Motif, Foo could not legally use it without becoming a derivative work of the LessTif, with all that entails, but as long as they stick to distributing based on Motif Foo is fine, license-wise.
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Thank you, I was pretty sure this was the case, but I couldn't find any documentation of anyone who was using them in this capacity.
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Yes, the DMCA criminalizes certain kinds of copyright violations; it also criminalizes some acts, like reverse engineering protection schemes, that were never even grounds for civil action before. This is in addition to any civil lawsuit the offended party may bring against you.
Yes this moves us ever closer to a corporate police state. Some companies, Wackenhut for example, are even positioning themselves to have their own police forces (they already run several prisons).
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I stand corrected. In double checking my sources for my response to this post, it appears that Sun has stepped back from its earlier stances, and is now allowing Kaffe and GJC to actually call themselves Java, and Japhar to call itself a JVM (or at least these projects *are* calling themselves that anyway and Sun hasn't shut their sites down).
My point was based on old information, that Sun made it impossible for a Free implementation of Java to call itself Java, so you had to run Free Java programs on non-Free Java or Free non-Java. This no longer appears to be the case. Still, Sun could give a lot more support to the Free Java implementations, so they aren't playing a constant game of catchup to a moving specification.
There are no guarantees that C#/.NET won't be just as bad as far as moving the specification, so it's too early to say whether Microsoft is better in this respect or not (history predicts not).
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Corrodo asks:
.NET means that the pie gets bigger. Often, a smaller percentage of a bigger pie is a bigger piece overall. While Microsoft's overall strategy (the pie is mine! mine! all mine!) surely hasn't changed, I'm positive that some people in Microsoft have noticed that enlarging the pie can yield both more sales and fewer antitrust allegations.
.NET doesn't look attractive enough to tear apart existing infrastructure for. New infrastructure must work with what's there already, and .NET doesn't look like it will play nicely with existing Java code.
Would it increase their server platform sales? What about increasing their client platform?
It very well might. Increasing usage of
Is this the first step in squashing Java?
Of course not, the first step was them signing up for a Java license, and distrubiting a broken JDK with the Java logo on it. They are well past the first step.
Yes, C#/.NET is supposed to help in the "Squash Java" endeavor. I doubt it will work, since Java has some very strong niches (eg. server-side web apps) where
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Karma Sucks writes:
.NET developers too!". Microsoft basically replied with "OK, you get .NET tech support too," and figured that Ximian was a notable enough developer to warrant a press release.
.NET is the Right Thing(tm), but it doesn't hurt me for Ximian to explore it. If because of this exploration, two years down the line, good cross platform development tools that I can use reach maturity, I'll be very happy. If this never bears fruit, I'll just go on the way I'm doing :-)
Ximian, don't be silly.
Focus on fixing GNOME so that it can compete with KDE and Windows.
I find GNOME to compete just fine with KDE and Windows. I use GNOME all the time personally, and usually recommend either it or KDE to people depending on which suits their needs better.
You *cannot* win with Microsoft, you are in a position of weakness and disadvantage by default. Microsoft will screw you over at the first chance, and along the way you will have helped bolster the mindshare of its questionable strategy.
If Ximian was entering into a business agreement with Microsoft, if there was any contract between them, I'd wholehartedly agree with this. Microsoft is notorious for making deals which screw over the little guy.
Hovever, from everything I've seen so far, this is not the case. Ximian contacted Microsoft, basically saying "Look! We're
The worst Microsoft can do here is give bad tech support or misleading press releases. Ximian steering clear of Microsoft wouldn't save them from misleading press releases. As an MSDN subscriber (by work, not by choice) I can say that, while Microsoft tech support is not good, it's less bad than I would have expected.
You are creating a conflict with your ally Sun by neglecting JAVA. Do not divest your efforts from GNOME. GNOME needs you. Do NOT neglect the ailing GNOME desktop like this.
If Sun wants the Free Software Community to use Java, it should open up the platform. It's scary that Microsoft has made C#/.NET more accessible to Free software development than Sun has made Java/EJB. They know exactly what they should do to make Java friendly to Free Software, the fact that they don't do it show how much a "fair-weather friend" Sun really is.
Personally, I'm skeptical that
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Fully Licensed GmbH is a German company ("GmbH" (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) is the German corporate suffix, the equivalent of the US "Inc." and British "Ltd.").
As far as I know, in Germany you have the right to reverse engineer things, and that right cannot be "signed" away in a shrinkwrap license.
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The message you got is because GNOME doesn't distribute binaries, they leave that up to others.
If you are looking for a binary distribution, Debian's GNOME distribution is very good (you can probably install it on Redhat via alien, or just switch to Debian).
Regardless of distribution, you can always download the source from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources.
Configure, compile, install and run. It takes a bit more disk space this way, but it's not as hard as you might think.
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The Uranus experiment was even nominated for a 1999 Nebula award (it didn't win, of course).
_ experiment_000516.html
More info here: http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/uranus
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You most certainly do have an implicit right to use software. I don't even think he can even restrict people from modifying software unless there is a more tangible contract than a text file distributed with the software.
What you do not have is an implicit right to distribute software (modified or unmodified). In order to copy or distribute copyrighted software you need license or fair use (or the equivalent concepts outside of the US, where OpenBSD is from). If Darrin says you can only distribute unmodified versions of IPFilter, OpenBSD has no choice but to respect his license and dump IPFilter from the OpenBSD distribution.
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If you go by Darrin's original clarification, IPFilter never had the right to fork in the license.
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Yes, it sounds like EFI/GPT is a useful step up from MBR. On the other hand, abrupt transitions like this are generally bad things. If Microsoft cared about the people using their OS (haha) they would have a version or two which supported both, and then dump MBR later.
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Here's my problem, if Expressive Speech is more protected than Functional Speech, what exactly is the difference? I've tried looking at it philosophically, and I get "All speech has both Expressive and Functional aspects to it, there is no pure speech". If there is a legal distiction, can someone (preferably a Lawyer, but not necessarily) please elaborate what it is?
Barring that, there are some programs that, in my opinion, just plain qualify as art. For example, in the 15th International Obfuscated C Code Contest, I'd put the programs Glicbawls (bmeyer.c) and TomX.
Glicbawls goes beyond compressing an image, it talks about ongoing research in the field, demonstrating a routine at the heart of the author's research. It has a clean interface which will do the right thing when confronted with a compressed or uncompressed file. It has a visual representation that is small and artistic. It is programming poetry, a statement about beauty.
Tomx is poetry as well, but poetry of a different kind. Rather than showing beauty, it talks of communication; "All language is fundamentally one". This is a truth we learn when learning to program, but we often forget it as we move into the real world from the abstract. TomX brings this truth into the real world for us to hold, touch, play with. It's even maintainable code (unlike most of the IOCCC entries), so it can grow.
Another example of the expressiveness of a program is in the metaphor it uses to interface with the user. Robert J. Sawyer (Author of Calculating God and Flash Fowrward) wrote an excellent article on the design of Wordstar, and how much more joyful it is for him to use, because of the design metaphor, than other designs that perform the same function.
The Museum of Modern Art has an entire department of Architecture and Design devoted to the art of things that many people think of as purely functional. While they do not yet include software, there is no denying that the software process has much in common with Architecture, Engineering and Design, and the same aesthetic and artistic choices get made during the process.
These are just some examples off the top of my head. I'd really like an answer to my first question tho.
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interiot wrote:
Does DMCA say anything about legal ramifications for a copyright holder who alleges infringement, later it's found that there is none, but the user lost their account for that time anyway?
Not that I know of, no.
Can copyright holders wildly allege infringement without recourse?
Here in the US, we have defamation (i.e. libel and slander) laws that can sometimes cover that. I am not a lawyer, but here's my rundown of how this works. For brevity's sake, I'll use "Alfred" to refer to the person who is claiming "Beth" has violated copyright. As a result, Beth loses access to systems.
First off, there must be no actual copyright infringement, if Alfred speaks truth, then it's instantly not defamation anymore.
If Beth is past that one, and is interested in pursuing, then she should call a lawyer instantly. There are a lot of arbitrary deadlines with defamation cases, and I surely do not list them all here.
Next, Beth should demand a retraction by Alfred within 20 days of finding out what he said. From what I understand, this is really only a requirement if the press has defamed her, but the way I see it, it doesn't hurt and might actually help. He might just retract his statement and tell people to give her account back.
Next, assuming Alfred doesn't retract his statement, Beth should file a lawsuit within a year, or else the statute of limitations takes effect and there is no case anymore.
Keep in mind that Defamation is part of Civil Law, which means that the key recourse is money. If Beth doesn't have significant financial damages to claim, it's just plain not worth it. For example, the guy who put up text files saying "*aitch*" with the names of popular songs really can't claim significant damages. An independant artist, who was counting on the increased recognition of having her own song ("Eat Metallica") widely distributed on Napster to help her career grow, could make a case. If so, she's in for a long and expensive ride (but could get publicity out of the case too, so it might still be worth it).
Most other countries have defamation laws, but from what I understand they often differ substantially from what I described.
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Marias suggests:
But if the DSP sources would have been open-sourced as well, it would have been possible to port them to other Winmodem (and ISDN4Linux) hardware as well.
Unlikely, since as I understand it, the ACP (MWave) modem design is radically different from most (eg. Rockwell or Lucent) "winmodems". For one thing, the MWave actually does have an onboard DSP, but it's a more general purpose one than in more traditional serial modems.
Your suggestion is similar to trying to port a program to Windows by looking at its Macintosh Assembly Code. Technically possible, but more work than anyone cares to do.
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rjh asks:
By the way--how the hell do you define `really hard' without NP-completeness?
Personally, I define it as impossible to solve given current mathematical and computational technology in less than a year for less than a hundred thousand dollars. If I was in a field with stricter security requirements, I'd probably up the dollar figure. If I was in a less time-critical field I'd probably up the time. Factorization of a typical RSA key easily falls into my definition of "really hard".
Yes, people put a lot of faith in flimsier assumptions--but that doesn't mean we ought to put blind faith in an assumption.
The Brooklyn Bridge (finished 1883) was built with many assumptions, one of which was "Gravity acts in the way that Isaac Newton described". Not only had this assumption never been proven (just as current gravitational theory has never been proven), a few decades later that assumption was actually disproven. Does that make the bridge any less stable? No.
Most things in life are unprovable. If you only allow yourself provable things, you never leave abstract mathematics.
The heart of security is the management of risk; and without a fair and frank assessment of risk, there is no security.
Which is why RSA is so much more popular than elliptical cryptosystems. Because the risks involved in RSA are better understood, explored and documented. If you implement a security system that involves RSA, you have an easy-to-calculate risk involved in that link of the chain depending on key length. You can be confident that, absent an advance in technology, you fully understand the risks involved in your security system.
Note that "absent an advance in technology" phrase. That is not unique to RSA, but is true with any security system: be it cryptography, digital or even a physical security system. The risk of technological advances obsoleting your security system is always present. If you cannot stomach that, I'd suggest that you keep away from fields that require significant security.
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rjh writes:
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p /NP/ijcai91/paper/IJCAI91-paper.html.
I'm very hesitant to declare RSA to be "one of the best types around". RSA is built on several conjectures, none of which have been proven, namely:
1. The only way to make a general break of RSA is to factor large composite numbers
2. Factorization of large numbers is an NP-complete problem,
3. P != NP
#1 is incorrect, there are a few ways to break RSA, only one of which is to factor large composite numbers (another is this Leo person's method). Assuming effective key management, no method has been found which is significantly easier than the factorization problem (although some are no harder). For more detail, see http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/3-1-3.html
#2 is also incorrect. Factorization is probably not NP-Complete, but RSA never depends on it being NP-Complete, merely on it being really hard to solve. Factorization is provably NP, but has not been shown to be NP-Complete. This is potentially a good thing, if #3 ever falls through for the NP-Complete set, the fact that it isn't NP-Complete means that Factorization will probably still be hard.
#3, of course, has not been proven. It also has not been disproven, despite hundreds of mathematicians trying for decades. A good analysis of the issue is at http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayes-grou
Just because #3 hasn't been proven doesn't mean it's not a useful assumption. People routinely bet their lives on much flimsier ones.
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Or just attaching a listening device to the S/PDIF output of a SB Live or Trident soundcard, which gives lossless digital output with, as I understand it, no means for encrypting or securing the data.
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jbrians comments:
That sounds a little far-fetched. I doubt they have human-beings evaluating each of the folders they have and jotting down comments.
True, but I can easily imagine that they have human beings evaluating each of the folders they sell, at the time of sale and jotting down comments.
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I've skimmed through the XP books, and there were some excellent ideas, and I partiuclarly like the attitude towards testing brought up there. I have one big question about it, that I didn't see the books answering.
How do you do regression tests on a GUI app? For console apps, daemons and other backend software it strikes me as more or less straightforward to impliment, but there is no reliable way that I've found to do this level of testing for:
* An application's GUI interface
* The interactions between this GUI interface and the non-graphical code.
If someone has a good answer to this, please let me know.
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adolf writes:
I don't -want- to see hear bad they can make things sound at 64kbps. And further, I don't care about bandwidth or disk usage, even though I'm behind a 28.8 modem.
I -do- want high-quality downloadable (freely or not) music. By high-quality, I mean indistinguishable from a CD to my own ears (LAME at ~220Kbps average VBR does this for me).
Storage is stupid-cheap these days. Bandwidth is slowly spreading out into much more diverse, and usually competitive, markets.
Sounds like what you are looking for is FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net). It's lossless compression. If you sample at CD resolutions, you get CD quality sound (if you sample at higher resolution from a better input source, you get better than CD quality sound). Only two downsides:
* Less compression than mp3's
* Not finished yet (but they do have working code)
Check it out.
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Ars-Fartsica asks:
What if the client wants to get the data displayed in a format they can control?
Who wants this?
Here's a short list off the top of my head:
* Visually impaired
* Batch software
* Different departments within an organization who need to access the same data in different ways
Yes, in each case, there is a better way to do it than XSL, but there are times when having the single interface that XML offers is worth the awkward programming of XSLT.
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It's easy to downgrade a package in Debian
It's hard to downgrade a distribution (eg. from Woody to Potato). It's almost as hard to downgrade a suite of interconnected packages with a lot of dependencies (eg, the GNOME or KDE base packages).
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hawk wrote:
WHereas for the last few releases, runining debian unstable will give your random brekaings, as well as sudden, erratic, changes inpolicy that change the way your machine works.
Hence the 'unstable' tag. The unstable branch is often quite stable, but if they have to do major changes in packages or policy, that's the only place they have to put it, and such changes can be destabilizing.
Now how in the world do I back it down from unstable to testing?
That is, IMHO, the biggest thing really missing from Debian, an easy way to downgrade. Then again, I haven't seen any easier downgrades in other distributions either. You seem to be familiar with FreeBSD, how easy is downgrading there? (I don't mean downgrading just one package, I mean going back a distribution version, or downgrading a suite of interconnected packages).
OH, that's why I went to unstable--I wanted the newere kde for them
There are two safer ways for that. KDE has an alternate distribution point for Debian packages of new KDE binaries for running on potato at http://kde.tdyc.com/. Secondly, you could have downloaded the KDE packages from woody and installed them on potato with dpkg.
Since downgrading is hard, I'd recommend against people going to an unstable distribution just because they want newer versions of a few packages.
yes, I *am* deliberately ducking the [KDE] license issues here
This is probably a troll, but i'll respond anyway. AFAIK, there aren't any remaining KDE licensing issues with the newer versions of KDE. Qt has been released under the GPL, and so there is no longer the QPL/GPL license conflicts. That is why it is now being distributed in Debian.
Yes, I read RMS's letter after the release. It was not saying that new KDE releases had a licensing problem. It was reminding that past KDE releases did, and showing the best way for KDE developers to protect themselves from hypothetical lawsuits based on using non-KDE GPL code in past KDE releases from when there was a licensing problem. It was also based on the assumption that KDE reused a lot of GPL code from non-KDE projects, which KDE's response made clear was not the case. Regardless, RMS's comments did not describe a licensing problem with distributing new KDE binaries based on a GPLed Qt. I certainly don't see any licensing problem there, and the Debian distributors apparently agree.
I am very happy, and one of these days will actually get around to playing with KDE on a system to see what I like and dislike about it compared to other options (have to do that with XFCE and UDE also while I'm at it).
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