I've seen a few people pointing toward the howto, and saying that it's the definitive answer. Only, the big problem is that Linux's IP masquerading only forwards ports to one specified machine. It's hardcoded in the setup file that you create. A good workaround that I've yet to actually try would be to write a shell script on the gateway machine that changes where it's forwarding the ports to, so that more than one machine could take advantage of the feature. This does not, however, take care of another problem - while it could be made relatively easy to change which machine on the internal net gets the ports forwarded to it, the port forwarding still only works for one machine at a time. If there are ways around this, I'd love to know. Me and my roomates have been itching to try this cable modem out on Battle.net for quite some time now.:)
As for the first question, I think that DVD will only replace VHS if serious interoperability problems don't arrive. The average joe won't even notice things like region locking, and likely won't even care that they won't be able to make backup copies. But if the DVD folks create a whole new format, thereby rendering obsolete all existing players, and all existing movies (go to a Blockbuster - there are a _lot_ of movies on DVD) then people aren't going to like it too much.
And as for the second question, that one's easy. Before I knew about the whole DeCSS thing, I was planning on buying a DVD-Rom drive, and some DVDs to watch with it. I have no plans to do that now. I can't speak for those who already have DVD players, but I personally am not getting anything DVD related until this ends - and ends in our favor. I know of others, too - one friend of mine is carrying the boycott to everything MPAA related. She won't see movies, or rent videos, or even buy from a tie-in venture (like, for instance, the recent Pokemon: The first movie items at Burger King). So, yes, there are at least two of us doing a boycott. Likely, there are more. And yes, support would be appreciated:)
This story's obviously fake! I mean, it's supposedly an e-mail virus, but no virus could infect a system as robust and secure as Microsoft Outlook, right?
For as long as I've figured out how to use nslookup, I've been waging my own private war against spammers. Lately, my anger has been less and less directed toward the spammers themselves (they're still bastards), and more and more toward the companies that allow it to happen. Specifically, PSINet and uunet, but I've also got spam from AOL, the sprint dialup network, and various lesser-known servers. Most of the time, the only kind of response I get when I send in an abuse report is a form letter, and that's it. Sometimes I get to know when the offender's account has been closed down, but when it's actually a relay acting up, that doesn't help. And no matter how many abuse reports I send in, no matter how many times I send a letter to the administrative contacts telling them that they are allowing people to exploit security holes (the open relays) in their mailservers to send bulk e-mail to people, I've never once got any kind of reply other than a form letter. So my question is, really, is there any way to get through to these people? Are the corporate ISPs so utterly clueless that they can't comprehend the idea that spam is a Bad Thing? What does it take to get through to these corporations? Does the Better Business Bureau take complaints about spam-enabling companies? Would writing letters to the editor every time a spam-offending company is mentioned positively in an article help? Would making an appointment with the corporate types and showing up in person even make it past the "call them up and try to arrrange something" phase? I'm becoming really burnt out on trying to get rid of my spam. The S/N ratio on my mailbox has dropped to almost negligable levels - I'd abandon it if most people didn't e-mail me there. I want to stop spammers, but even sending e-mail to abuse departments doesn't help. What, then, can be done?
I mean, I'm in favor of people getting source code out every possible way, but I just don't understand this particular method of distribution. It seems a bit of overkill for a Cascading Style Sheet stripper, after all.
Yeah, I entered this contest. I didn't do to well, though. You know how, at the time, you think you're coding well but you think back to it later and you realize you completely screwed up? That's what happened here:
Despite the fact that this program didn't answer any of the questions given, let alone do anything useful, I didn't come in dead last. I beat... what was it? I don't quite remember. Microsoft something-something 2000....
This is a good thing, in my opinion. Even if it doesn't turn out to be a very good search engine in and of itself, it's raising the level of attention that privacy gets. There was a fair amount of outrage at the recent RealNetworks fiasco when it was discovered the jukebox was collecting information on its users. There was a bit more when Doubleclick decided to identify people and collect statistics on them. Imagine the outrage if, when a company that's been hyping privacy (because otherwise nobody does business with you) turns out to have violated it:) In my view, raising the level of attention that privacy issues get is a definite Good Thing.
the problem will not be "rogue states, but rogue individuals."
This statement reminds me quite a bit of Frank Herbert's "The White Plague". The basis is that a scientist - one lone genius - creates a plague to wipe out humanity. Of course, we've all seen doomsday scenarios. Our world may end up like the Diamond Age, or it may end up like The Matrix. More likely, I think things will just keep happening:) In the event that it doesn't, I quote Futurama's Bender: "Time to start lootin'!"
What emmett didn't tell you was that Slashdot was going to do its own interview with Mr. Blizzard, but they realized that it would look a lot like this:
Mr. Blizzard, are you considering porting Diablo II to linux?
While we appreciate all the testing that goes into your games, do you think that you may lose customers with the recent delays of Diablo II?
Is there a similar 'collector's edition' planned for Warcraft III?
The Mozilla project has, for its mascot, a large reptillian creature. Was this the inspiration for the Zerg? And finally:
Do people ever think that you work for Blizzard, just because of your last name? Also, could you get me in on the Diablo II beta?
The "Lucas in Love" link reminded me.... I'd heard of it a while back on some show (one of those like 'entertainment tonight' which I was watching for some unfathomable reason) and it popped into my head again when I saw TPM and its resultant game.
The show had a brief interview with the person who made "lucas in love", and the person said that he had created the movie as kind of an 'homage' to Lucas and the whole Star Wars franchise.
The question that then occurred to me: Could I extend this idea to games?
The whole Star Wars mythology is full of characters, settings, and an entire ethos - great building blocks for, say, an RPG. None has been made as yet, and - if recent movies are any indication - we're likely to be disappointed if one is. So what if someone created a Star-Wars like game in homage?
Obviously, it can't be called "Star Wars". But how much of the SW franchise is trademarked? Suppose we make something set in a Star Wars universe, that refers to the "force" (A generic enough term, right?) and possibly "Jedi", and then build a story and game around it?
Granted, it might not be an original idea, but many of us are star wars fans, and I know that I, for one, would love to see a well-done game out of it.
Dang - just when you think your valentine's day couldn't get any worse, you find out that a lifeless asteroid and a hunk of metal with a camera attatched are both getting more action than you are....
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about these attacks is that they still don't know who did it. I may be wrong, but it seems that usually when we see a high-profile media 'hacker' story, it's about some website that was cracked, and some script-kiddie who left behind graffiti. Or, in recent cases, people who wanted money. But, with these latest rounds of extremely-effective DoS attacks, nobody's stepped forward. It's bad enough that this sort of thing is happening, but it's perhaps even worse that we dont even know why.
I think 'gecko' sounds nice. It has the following advantages:
It reminds those among us who know things of lizards, and everyone else goes 'huh', thus helping me maintain my "I'm in the know" superior feeling.
Those who've played Fallout 2 will immediately have flashbacks to ghouls and repairing nuclear reactors. Anything that induces Fallout 2 flashbacks is cool, even if it's a bit frightening at first. Those who've played the original fallout will probably, as a side effect, recall iguana-on-a-stick, with even better flashbacks as a result.
"Suzy" is too hard to make a trademark out of. But can't you all just see it now? "Gecko(TM) is a registered mark of SuSE Linux(TM). Linux(TM) is, in turn, a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds(TM). Torvalds(TM) is, in turn, a trademark of...."
And perhaps most frighteningly, if people use "suzy", they'll implicitly think of a female mascot. "Tux" is implicitly male. Soon, despite the will of many a valiant linux user, there will be an unnatural union - think gatekeeper and keymaster - which we must stop at all costs. Plus we don't want to get PETA angry at us.
In conclusion, a vote for "gecko" is a vote for a linux distribution which won't have horrifying, horrifying consequences on all of our lives! Thank you.
Upon reading this article, the following two words immediately entered my mind, in the following order:
"Kick", and
"Ass"
I know, I know, they need more sales until Blizzard will even think of it, but still, just the idea that they're aware of the Linux audience is a good sign. I recall that, of the games mentioned in the recent "What games would you love to see ported", Starcraft and Diablo were right up there, as well as future Blizzard endeavors. There's definitely a market. And finally, on a more personal note, I got back from Electronics Boutique today, and I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic III all day:) Ahh, the beauty of games for Linux....
A serious problem with this client
on
YETI@Home
·
· Score: 3
You know what?
Yeti@home is using inferior, close-sourced clients . Reports have already shown that people with "hacked" clients get two to three times better performance. Clearly, there are ways to improve the yeti@home client so that it can make better use of people's CPU cycles! This is a call to the slashdot population - I'd like you all to join me in demanding that yeti@home be open-sourced! Only then can we-
What? Yes, I do see the icon by the story. A foot, kinda like the Monty-Python one.
Nope, Loki games isn't opensourcing the games so far as I know, they're just porting them over. They have, however, open-sourced the library they used to port the games over. It's SDL, and it works on many different platforms (though I, personally, have only used it for Linux and Windows).
I think it would be a truly wonderful thing if the answer to that question was: "Because the DVD consortium is unfairly restricting the use of that format". But, unfortunately, that's not what they said. A lot of the posters here feel it's a trick for money, and that could well be the truth. However, Maybe our small case can be heard. It's probably unlikely, or even impossible, for Lucas to go against the will of the MPAA, but it would be nice for a public figure in the movie industry to let people know what they think. I would love to be able to buy a DVD with a clear conscience. Hey, I can dream, can't I?
The first of which is that it's in.gif format so I can't copy and paste the text. Oh well....
The Plantiff has shown that CSS... dereived its independent economic value from not being generally known to the Public, and that Plantiff made reasonable efforts... to maintain its secrecy
The Defendants made the same argument that I was going to - that CSS is weak. The judge made the argument which anyone following up to me would have: Just because you've got a bad lock on your car, doesn't mean you're at fault if it's stolen. What the judge didn't seem to consider was the second part - the plantiff making reasonable efforts to keep CSS secret. Wasn't the first key obtained from an Xing player that didn't encrypt it? If that's the case, it doesn't sound like they made reasonable efforts at all - or even if it's entirely Xing's fault, the DVD folks didn't do anything to the company to attempt to salvage what had happened.
The circumstantial evidence, available mostly due to the various defendant's inclination to boast about their disrespect for the law is quite compelling on the issue of... [the] knowledge of impropriety
I wasn't aware that we could convict on circumstantial evidence. In an ideal world, we couldn't, but this is far from that. The disrespect for the law that the judge cites is mainly because of this. To me, it seems that the judge just didn't like the defendant's position, since he took offense to the fact they thought they were innocent.
If the court does not immediately enjoin the posting of this proprietary information, the plaintiff's right to protect this information as secret will surely be lost, given the current power of the Internet to disseminate information and the Defendants' stated determination to do so.
I think it's strange that, while the judge acknowledges that it's nearly impossible to contain such information, he still tries to enforce the rule that it be contained. As though he's catching it in the nick of time... I think it's far past the time that it could have been stopped - quite possibly, there are more copies of deCSS out there than there would have been had the DVD consortium just left the authors alone! There are far too many people to pull into the courts at this point. What if some slashdot user decided to post the entire deCSS source code in a comment? It would be on-topic, after all. What if someone posted it to a newsgroup, again on topic? Deja.com would archive it. There are too many ways to get too many people involved for it to be a secret any longer. I am not, however, a lawyer. I could be completely wrong:)
WASHINGTON -- In a move which surprised relatively few people, scientists have patented the cloning technique known as "embryo splitting". This technique involves forcing an embryo to split in two in the early stages of development. It was pointed out that prior art existed, in the form of twins born naturally. Geoff Carpenter, the patent lawyer who represented the scientists, commented "Just because a technique which is exactly the same in almost every respect already exists does not mean that it is prior art." The lawyer went on to add "Besides, it's not likely that God will sue us. He's much too busy with the gene patenting crowd at the moment." More as it develops.
[Disclaimer: The above was a work of fiction, a bit of humor. Please don't interpret it as flamebait -- the actual patent discussed in this topic seems to be pretty valid, as nothing like it exists or has existed.]
There are some nice quotes in this particular article which other people have already commented on, but there was one that caught my attention immediately:
Linux can be criticized in many ways...
My first reaction, as a happy linux user who thinks open source will eventually conquer all inferior methods, was to think "No there's not! Linux is perfect! Bow before the kernel!" Of course, Linux isn't perfect. Nothing's perfect, after all. But the difference is that, once we admit we have faults, it doesn't take long for open source to fix them. As a result, my second reaction was to think "Well, what are these criticisms, so I can fix them?" I think it's that kind of attitude (the second) which will make the reporter's vision of a linux-on-even-footing(financially, not innovationwise)-with-Microsoft come true.
I thought it was talking about distributed.net cracking CSS code, instead of CSC.
For the on-topic part: I think it's good that distributed.net's accomplished another goal. Just showing people what the community is capable of is an end unto itself. An earlier poster commented that they believed it was a waste of CPU cycles, but the whole idea behind such an effort, if I'm remembering correctly, was that those CPU cycles would have been unused anyway. Might as well show off with them:)
For my idea, which the on-topic stuff spawned: I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know about the legality of this. What if distributed.net were to host a challenge where people could use their cycles to crack the other keys on CSS, for DVD-playing? Granted, it wouldn't be a very long challenge, as CSS is fairly simple, but it would be a nice, big statement about how the community in general feels toward the recent actions of the MPAA and DVD consortium. Probably not legal at all. Still, it would be a fun thing to do.
The next logical step from here seems to be cloning of extinct species as the article suggests. The only thing it doesn't mention, and that I haven't heard a lot of mention of at all, is the biodiversity issue. A few clones of, say, a wooly mammoth, are going to have the exact same genes as one another. So how do they expect to be able to bring them back? I imagine they could:
Randomly change genes: With knowledge of the cloned animals' genome, you could cause minor mutations that could be used in the place of biodiversity. The only problem is mutating it 'just right' - so that it doesn't kill the creature. Not to mention that we don't exactly have that kind of advanced knowledge yet.
Just keep cloning: You don't have an ecosystem of cloned animals, you've got a zoo or three that have a clone of the same animal. Whenever you need a new one, you just clone from the original specimen, or clone one of the clones. This doesn't, however, solve the problem of reintroducing them into the ecosystem.
Get more samples If you had DNA from enough specimens, you could clone a biologically diverse group. The only problem is that we have trouble getting enough DNA for one specimen....
Personally, I'd like to see this kind of thing happen. If we can preserve species which are dying off, then perhaps we can bring them back at some future date when (if) we stop tearing their habitats down.
It seems to me that every time I see a cracker take down a webpage and put up in its place a political statement of his/her own, it's littered with swearing, and poor grammar. More likely than not, an attack like this isn't going to affect anyone. People straddling the fence on this issue before will take one look at the website and say "This kind of thing should be censored!" -- which is exactly what we don't want.
What's the point in cracking something if you're going to do more harm than good?
Personally, if I'm going to contribute to Open Source (and, one day, I will) I'm going to do it for a specific set of reasons, which are:
There's a feature I want that the program in question doesn't have,
There's a bug I don't want that the program in question does have, And finally,
I use an open-source OS with a rather large number of open source tools. While I'm not obligated by law to give anyone anything for this, I'd like to give back to the people that gave to me.
For me, money's not an object. I'm most likely to give back to something that I use a lot. I'm not so great with the kernel, but maybe I could add something to WindowMaker. If there's a project I want to be involved in, getting involved is as easy as looking at the TODO list and going out and doing it.
Of course, I am not everyone. For those who will get paid nearly three times their monthly income for a project, this is a godsend. For others who just like the extra cash, it's not too bad either.
Because of this, I don't think offering money will affect the general direction of open source at all. People who were writing code because they wanted to will keep doing it, and people who were writing code for money will keep doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
... the single-box limitation.
:)
I've seen a few people pointing toward the howto, and saying that it's the definitive answer. Only, the big problem is that Linux's IP masquerading only forwards ports to one specified machine. It's hardcoded in the setup file that you create.
A good workaround that I've yet to actually try would be to write a shell script on the gateway machine that changes where it's forwarding the ports to, so that more than one machine could take advantage of the feature.
This does not, however, take care of another problem - while it could be made relatively easy to change which machine on the internal net gets the ports forwarded to it, the port forwarding still only works for one machine at a time.
If there are ways around this, I'd love to know. Me and my roomates have been itching to try this cable modem out on Battle.net for quite some time now.
As for the first question, I think that DVD will only replace VHS if serious interoperability problems don't arrive. The average joe won't even notice things like region locking, and likely won't even care that they won't be able to make backup copies. But if the DVD folks create a whole new format, thereby rendering obsolete all existing players, and all existing movies (go to a Blockbuster - there are a _lot_ of movies on DVD) then people aren't going to like it too much.
:)
And as for the second question, that one's easy. Before I knew about the whole DeCSS thing, I was planning on buying a DVD-Rom drive, and some DVDs to watch with it.
I have no plans to do that now.
I can't speak for those who already have DVD players, but I personally am not getting anything DVD related until this ends - and ends in our favor.
I know of others, too - one friend of mine is carrying the boycott to everything MPAA related. She won't see movies, or rent videos, or even buy from a tie-in venture (like, for instance, the recent Pokemon: The first movie items at Burger King).
So, yes, there are at least two of us doing a boycott. Likely, there are more. And yes, support would be appreciated
This story's obviously fake! I mean, it's supposedly an e-mail virus, but no virus could infect a system as robust and secure as Microsoft Outlook, right?
....
Right?
For as long as I've figured out how to use nslookup, I've been waging my own private war against spammers.
Lately, my anger has been less and less directed toward the spammers themselves (they're still bastards), and more and more toward the companies that allow it to happen.
Specifically, PSINet and uunet, but I've also got spam from AOL, the sprint dialup network, and various lesser-known servers. Most of the time, the only kind of response I get when I send in an abuse report is a form letter, and that's it. Sometimes I get to know when the offender's account has been closed down, but when it's actually a relay acting up, that doesn't help.
And no matter how many abuse reports I send in, no matter how many times I send a letter to the administrative contacts telling them that they are allowing people to exploit security holes (the open relays) in their mailservers to send bulk e-mail to people, I've never once got any kind of reply other than a form letter.
So my question is, really, is there any way to get through to these people? Are the corporate ISPs so utterly clueless that they can't comprehend the idea that spam is a Bad Thing? What does it take to get through to these corporations? Does the Better Business Bureau take complaints about spam-enabling companies? Would writing letters to the editor every time a spam-offending company is mentioned positively in an article help? Would making an appointment with the corporate types and showing up in person even make it past the "call them up and try to arrrange something" phase?
I'm becoming really burnt out on trying to get rid of my spam. The S/N ratio on my mailbox has dropped to almost negligable levels - I'd abandon it if most people didn't e-mail me there. I want to stop spammers, but even sending e-mail to abuse departments doesn't help. What, then, can be done?
I mean, I'm in favor of people getting source code out every possible way, but I just don't understand this particular method of distribution.
It seems a bit of overkill for a Cascading Style Sheet stripper, after all.
Yeah, I entered this contest. I didn't do to well, though. You know how, at the time, you think you're coding well but you think back to it later and you realize you completely screwed up?
That's what happened here:
#include <stdio.h>
void main(int argc,char **argv) {
printf("Hello, world!\n");
}
Despite the fact that this program didn't answer any of the questions given, let alone do anything useful, I didn't come in dead last. I beat... what was it? I don't quite remember. Microsoft something-something 2000....
This is a good thing, in my opinion. Even if it doesn't turn out to be a very good search engine in and of itself, it's raising the level of attention that privacy gets. :)
There was a fair amount of outrage at the recent RealNetworks fiasco when it was discovered the jukebox was collecting information on its users. There was a bit more when Doubleclick decided to identify people and collect statistics on them. Imagine the outrage if, when a company that's been hyping privacy (because otherwise nobody does business with you) turns out to have violated it
In my view, raising the level of attention that privacy issues get is a definite Good Thing.
This statement reminds me quite a bit of Frank Herbert's "The White Plague". The basis is that a scientist - one lone genius - creates a plague to wipe out humanity.
Of course, we've all seen doomsday scenarios. Our world may end up like the Diamond Age, or it may end up like The Matrix. More likely, I think things will just keep happening
In the event that it doesn't, I quote Futurama's Bender: "Time to start lootin'!"
And finally:
The "Lucas in Love" link reminded me.... I'd heard of it a while back on some show (one of those like 'entertainment tonight' which I was watching for some unfathomable reason) and it popped into my head again when I saw TPM and its resultant game.
The show had a brief interview with the person who made "lucas in love", and the person said that he had created the movie as kind of an 'homage' to Lucas and the whole Star Wars franchise.
The question that then occurred to me: Could I extend this idea to games?
The whole Star Wars mythology is full of characters, settings, and an entire ethos - great building blocks for, say, an RPG. None has been made as yet, and - if recent movies are any indication - we're likely to be disappointed if one is. So what if someone created a Star-Wars like game in homage?
Obviously, it can't be called "Star Wars". But how much of the SW franchise is trademarked? Suppose we make something set in a Star Wars universe, that refers to the "force" (A generic enough term, right?) and possibly "Jedi", and then build a story and game around it?
Granted, it might not be an original idea, but many of us are star wars fans, and I know that I, for one, would love to see a well-done game out of it.
Dang - just when you think your valentine's day couldn't get any worse, you find out that a lifeless asteroid and a hunk of metal with a camera attatched are both getting more action than you are....
Happy 14th to those wacky lovebirds up there!
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about these attacks is that they still don't know who did it.
I may be wrong, but it seems that usually when we see a high-profile media 'hacker' story, it's about some website that was cracked, and some script-kiddie who left behind graffiti. Or, in recent cases, people who wanted money. But, with these latest rounds of extremely-effective DoS attacks, nobody's stepped forward. It's bad enough that this sort of thing is happening, but it's perhaps even worse that we dont even know why.
- It reminds those among us who know things of lizards, and everyone else goes 'huh', thus helping me maintain my "I'm in the know" superior feeling.
- Those who've played Fallout 2 will immediately have flashbacks to ghouls and repairing nuclear reactors. Anything that induces Fallout 2 flashbacks is cool, even if it's a bit frightening at first. Those who've played the original fallout will probably, as a side effect, recall iguana-on-a-stick, with even better flashbacks as a result.
- "Suzy" is too hard to make a trademark out of. But can't you all just see it now? "Gecko(TM) is a registered mark of SuSE Linux(TM). Linux(TM) is, in turn, a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds(TM). Torvalds(TM) is, in turn, a trademark of...."
- And perhaps most frighteningly, if people use "suzy", they'll implicitly think of a female mascot. "Tux" is implicitly male. Soon, despite the will of many a valiant linux user, there will be an unnatural union - think gatekeeper and keymaster - which we must stop at all costs. Plus we don't want to get PETA angry at us.
In conclusion, a vote for "gecko" is a vote for a linux distribution which won't have horrifying, horrifying consequences on all of our lives! Thank you.I know, I know, they need more sales until Blizzard will even think of it, but still, just the idea that they're aware of the Linux audience is a good sign.
I recall that, of the games mentioned in the recent "What games would you love to see ported", Starcraft and Diablo were right up there, as well as future Blizzard endeavors. There's definitely a market.
And finally, on a more personal note, I got back from Electronics Boutique today, and I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic III all day
Ahh, the beauty of games for Linux....
You know what?
Yeti@home is using inferior, close-sourced clients . Reports have already shown that people with "hacked" clients get two to three times better performance. Clearly, there are ways to improve the yeti@home client so that it can make better use of people's CPU cycles! This is a call to the slashdot population - I'd like you all to join me in demanding that yeti@home be open-sourced! Only then can we-
What? Yes, I do see the icon by the story. A foot, kinda like the Monty-Python one.
What do you mean, 'Think about it!'
Oh.
Nope, Loki games isn't opensourcing the games so far as I know, they're just porting them over. They have, however, open-sourced the library they used to port the games over. It's SDL, and it works on many different platforms (though I, personally, have only used it for Linux and Windows).
"Why no Star Wars DVD?"
I think it would be a truly wonderful thing if the answer to that question was: "Because the DVD consortium is unfairly restricting the use of that format". But, unfortunately, that's not what they said. A lot of the posters here feel it's a trick for money, and that could well be the truth. However, Maybe our small case can be heard. It's probably unlikely, or even impossible, for Lucas to go against the will of the MPAA, but it would be nice for a public figure in the movie industry to let people know what they think. I would love to be able to buy a DVD with a clear conscience. Hey, I can dream, can't I?
The Defendants made the same argument that I was going to - that CSS is weak. The judge made the argument which anyone following up to me would have: Just because you've got a bad lock on your car, doesn't mean you're at fault if it's stolen. What the judge didn't seem to consider was the second part - the plantiff making reasonable efforts to keep CSS secret. Wasn't the first key obtained from an Xing player that didn't encrypt it? If that's the case, it doesn't sound like they made reasonable efforts at all - or even if it's entirely Xing's fault, the DVD folks didn't do anything to the company to attempt to salvage what had happened.
I wasn't aware that we could convict on circumstantial evidence. In an ideal world, we couldn't, but this is far from that. The disrespect for the law that the judge cites is mainly because of this. To me, it seems that the judge just didn't like the defendant's position, since he took offense to the fact they thought they were innocent.
I think it's strange that, while the judge acknowledges that it's nearly impossible to contain such information, he still tries to enforce the rule that it be contained. As though he's catching it in the nick of time... I think it's far past the time that it could have been stopped - quite possibly, there are more copies of deCSS out there than there would have been had the DVD consortium just left the authors alone! There are far too many people to pull into the courts at this point. What if some slashdot user decided to post the entire deCSS source code in a comment? It would be on-topic, after all. What if someone posted it to a newsgroup, again on topic? Deja.com would archive it. There are too many ways to get too many people involved for it to be a secret any longer.
I am not, however, a lawyer. I could be completely wrong
WASHINGTON -- In a move which surprised relatively few people, scientists have patented the cloning technique known as "embryo splitting". This technique involves forcing an embryo to split in two in the early stages of development.
It was pointed out that prior art existed, in the form of twins born naturally. Geoff Carpenter, the patent lawyer who represented the scientists, commented "Just because a technique which is exactly the same in almost every respect already exists does not mean that it is prior art." The lawyer went on to add "Besides, it's not likely that God will sue us. He's much too busy with the gene patenting crowd at the moment."
More as it develops.
[Disclaimer: The above was a work of fiction, a bit of humor. Please don't interpret it as flamebait -- the actual patent discussed in this topic seems to be pretty valid, as nothing like it exists or has existed.]
My first reaction, as a happy linux user who thinks open source will eventually conquer all inferior methods, was to think "No there's not! Linux is perfect! Bow before the kernel!"
Of course, Linux isn't perfect. Nothing's perfect, after all. But the difference is that, once we admit we have faults, it doesn't take long for open source to fix them. As a result, my second reaction was to think "Well, what are these criticisms, so I can fix them?"
I think it's that kind of attitude (the second) which will make the reporter's vision of a linux-on-even-footing(financially, not innovationwise)-with-Microsoft come true.
I thought it was talking about distributed.net cracking CSS code, instead of CSC.
:)
For the on-topic part:
I think it's good that distributed.net's accomplished another goal. Just showing people what the community is capable of is an end unto itself. An earlier poster commented that they believed it was a waste of CPU cycles, but the whole idea behind such an effort, if I'm remembering correctly, was that those CPU cycles would have been unused anyway. Might as well show off with them
For my idea, which the on-topic stuff spawned:
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know about the legality of this. What if distributed.net were to host a challenge where people could use their cycles to crack the other keys on CSS, for DVD-playing? Granted, it wouldn't be a very long challenge, as CSS is fairly simple, but it would be a nice, big statement about how the community in general feels toward the recent actions of the MPAA and DVD consortium. Probably not legal at all. Still, it would be a fun thing to do.
- Randomly change genes: With knowledge of the cloned animals' genome, you could cause minor mutations that could be used in the place of biodiversity. The only problem is mutating it 'just right' - so that it doesn't kill the creature. Not to mention that we don't exactly have that kind of advanced knowledge yet.
- Just keep cloning: You don't have an ecosystem of cloned animals, you've got a zoo or three that have a clone of the same animal. Whenever you need a new one, you just clone from the original specimen, or clone one of the clones. This doesn't, however, solve the problem of reintroducing them into the ecosystem.
- Get more samples If you had DNA from enough specimens, you could clone a biologically diverse group. The only problem is that we have trouble getting enough DNA for one specimen....
Personally, I'd like to see this kind of thing happen. If we can preserve species which are dying off, then perhaps we can bring them back at some future date when (if) we stop tearing their habitats down.It seems to me that every time I see a cracker take down a webpage and put up in its place a political statement of his/her own, it's littered with swearing, and poor grammar. More likely than not, an attack like this isn't going to affect anyone. People straddling the fence on this issue before will take one look at the website and say "This kind of thing should be censored!" -- which is exactly what we don't want.
What's the point in cracking something if you're going to do more harm than good?
Well, so much for my plan of building an automatic vaccum cleaner out of lego mindstorms.
I guess I'll just have to move on to building that automatic lawnmower....
And finally,
For me, money's not an object. I'm most likely to give back to something that I use a lot. I'm not so great with the kernel, but maybe I could add something to WindowMaker. If there's a project I want to be involved in, getting involved is as easy as looking at the TODO list and going out and doing it.
Of course, I am not everyone. For those who will get paid nearly three times their monthly income for a project, this is a godsend. For others who just like the extra cash, it's not too bad either.
Because of this, I don't think offering money will affect the general direction of open source at all. People who were writing code because they wanted to will keep doing it, and people who were writing code for money will keep doing it.