If nature has made any one thing less
susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power
called an idea, which an individual may
exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces
itself into the possession of everyone, and the
receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one
possesses the less, because every other
possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea
from me, receives instruction himself
without lessening mine; as he who lights his
taper at mine, receives light without darkening
me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his
condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she
made them, like fire, expansible over all space,
without lessening their density at any point, and
like the air in which we breathe, move, and have
our physical being, incapable of
confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions
then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
--Thomas Jefferson
I think the same can be said about recordings of musical performances.
I suggest everyone go to - Gag! Nofreelunchster - and send this quotation to the webmaster, or whatever address is soliciting comments. Fill up their mailbox to overflowing. Send it to Orrin Hatch and your own congressperson and senators while you're at it.
But nobody seems to be asking: WHAT IS THE COST OF ACCEPTING A SECOND-BEST SYSTEM?
The various encoding schemes - which Walid has apparently patented - ARE the 2nd best systems! Their only redeeming feature is that they can be deployed quickly with minimal disruption to existing clients and servers. Other than that, they're an ugly hack.
If you were designing an Internationalized Internet Protocol suite from scratch, you wouldn't go near anything like them with a 10 meter pole!
Do it right, even though it will be a long process to convert: UTF on the wire.
The various encoding hacks are just that: HACKS. Their only redeeming feature is that they interoperate with existing clients and servers. This allows it to be deployed more quickly than some of the more thorough and robust approaches. Adapting IP and the higher layer protocols to Unicode would truly internationalize the Internet, not just the presentation layer, which for all practical purposes is just the browser.
It's more painful and will take a lot longer, but it is the right thing to do. Let Walid wallow in their worthless patent. Three cheers for the IETF thumbing their noses at the patent Nazis.
"Oh, you patented that, well I guess Internationalization will take a lot longer then, because we are not going to use patented technology, no way, now how, unless it is licensed freely for all to use."
Uhhh, dude - the Russians have been ditching spacecraft into the south Pacific for decades. If there are any space bacteria peculiar to man-made objects that can survive re-entry, they've been here since the 60's.
Never mind any bacteria that may live in or on the several tons of dust and micro meteoroids that have been falling to Earth each day for the past 4 billion years.
DNSSEC is a project to have a central company, Network Solutions, sign all the.com DNS records. Here's the idea, proposed in 1993:
...
Even if DNSSEC is someday put into place, it will continue to allow attacks through Network Solutions itself. What happens if a Network Solutions employee is bribed? Are the Network Solutions computers secure? An attacker who breaks into one critical Network Solutions computer will have control over the entire Internet.
Or Network Solutions, now VeriSign, could simply be incompetent.
When it finally became un-slashdotted, I was able to read the article. Yawn. It's not particularly well-written, it says nothing new or shocking, it's all about how someone got job burnout. Big deal.
Go read and post on Raging Bull's or
Motley Fool's RMBS boards. You think/. gets a bit high strung at times, you ain't seen nothin' 'til you've seen longs and shorts going at each other. They have money on the line, you know.:)
Now Fool keeps the boards civil, at least as far as language goes, but not Raging Bull.
If you're the type who likes to throw gasoline onto a fire, here's a bonfire just waiting for you to back up the fuel tanker.
Someone does. Every ISP that operates a recursive resolver, every domain holder that operates an authoritative nameserver, are collectively the operators of the domain name system. There is no need for centralized root servers, but only for a consistent root zone. There are any number of ways to build a root zone file and get it installed someplace where users can resolve against the namespace it represents. ICANN is not needed to coordinate any of this.
ICANN have provided this over the years.
Provided what, exactly? Can you name one significant achievement attributable in part, or in whole, to ICANN's activities? I can't think of one.
True, if someone could come up with a method for making ICANN democratically and internationally representative and elected, this would have beena good idea. But at the present stage of our global development, this has just not been possible.
Oh, it IS possible, if only ICANN would allow it. We already elected At-Large representatives, but ICANN has been determined to disenfranchise them, and has so far succeeded for the most part. ICANN is the problem, not the solution.
...is whether the Sun Blade and Netra X1 boxen take ordinary DRAM DIMMs.
I'm betting they don't, and Sun makes their profit on these low end boxes from the customers who actually have useful stuff to do with them, and therefore need the expensive memory upgrades.
But if these things take garden variety DRAM DIMMs, Katie Bar the Door, they'll sell like hotcakes and Sun will lose a ton of money. Better get 'em while they're hot.:)
The only reason some open source software is difficult to install on Solaris is because the developers have only the vaguest idea of how to write portable software, or even portable Makefiles. I built Nessus recently on Solaris 2.6/sparc with SunPro C 4.2, and it was a two day chore to get it all done right, e.g.: what kind of security application wants to rely on LD_LIBRARY_PATH?? The Makefiles and configure scripts in the Nessus build process are obsessive about throwing away my LDFLAGS and CFLAGS assignments, which would have properly hard-wired the app to look for its libs in the apropriate places.
This kind of problem is epidemic at sites like Freshmeat, which should be renamed FreshPenguinMeat.
And who says Linux is the standard for where files should be placed? Linux is BSD-like, POSIX-like, SVR4-like, but not really. Solaris is SVR4 through and through, and has its files where SVR4 puts them./usr/sbin/sendmail indeed! <sneer>
Under this interpretation, a DVD is also a procedure, process, system, method of operation that is exempt from copyright protection. For what is a DVD but a series of instructions for reproducing images and sounds? Only the actual images and sounds that emanate after the DVD program is executed are protected.
This leads to the curious conclusion that a DVD may be copied ad infinitum, but infringment only occurs when the code on a DVD copy is executed to produce images and sounds.
What prevents someone from producing a DVD - maybe containing the GNU software collection - scrambling it with CSS, then granting everyone permission to circumvent? Wouldn't that make DeCSS legal under the DMCA, since it allows you access to a work you have been given permission to circumvent the protection for?
I imagine the CSS license prohibits this. But what is the penalty for violating the license, and is it as onerous as the DMCA itself? And does the CSS license override the copyright holder's right to grant permission to circumvent protection on his own work?
I was getting all worked up, until I came to the end of the article:
Victory means driving piracy as far underground as possible.
Nothing to worry about folks, this is exactly what they should not be doing, if they really want to get a handle on things. If CCS succeeds in driving it all "as far underground as possible", they'll be out of a job. They've set the standard by which you can copy stuff with impunity: don't be obvious, for some lame definition of obvious. Powell sounds a lot like a script kiddie who just discovered where to get a root kit, now he thinks he owns the 'net.
Network Solutions sold out years ago. What's the point of this article? It may as well have had the headline "Pedophile molests child, film at eleven."
The UDRP has always been about non-binding arbitration. What part of non-binding did you not understand?
This is one of the reasons it is silly to even have a UDRP. Without any force behind it, it's just a way to while away the hours while the attorneys prepare suits. Or a way to bully the little guy without having to pay a lawyer (as much as you would) for a full-blown lawsuit.
Can anybody else get their upgrade? FTP server seems to be down. How long have the new tarballs be unavailable because of this? Anyone know if it's just the usual "oops" or is it throttling connections due to high demand?
Slashdot Mirror
Why spend $2 million on a super bowl ad at all?
I think the same can be said about recordings of musical performances.
I suggest everyone go to - Gag! Nofreelunchster - and send this quotation to the webmaster, or whatever address is soliciting comments. Fill up their mailbox to overflowing. Send it to Orrin Hatch and your own congressperson and senators while you're at it.
EOF
Two more cases in point:
The various encoding schemes - which Walid has apparently patented - ARE the 2nd best systems! Their only redeeming feature is that they can be deployed quickly with minimal disruption to existing clients and servers. Other than that, they're an ugly hack.
If you were designing an Internationalized Internet Protocol suite from scratch, you wouldn't go near anything like them with a 10 meter pole!
Do it right, even though it will be a long process to convert: UTF on the wire.
It's more painful and will take a lot longer, but it is the right thing to do. Let Walid wallow in their worthless patent. Three cheers for the IETF thumbing their noses at the patent Nazis.
"Oh, you patented that, well I guess Internationalization will take a lot longer then, because we are not going to use patented technology, no way, now how, unless it is licensed freely for all to use."
With a corrupt judiciary, most anything is possible.
Never mind any bacteria that may live in or on the several tons of dust and micro meteoroids that have been falling to Earth each day for the past 4 billion years.
DNSSEC
DNSSEC is a project to have a central company, Network Solutions, sign all the .com DNS records. Here's the idea, proposed in 1993:
Even if DNSSEC is someday put into place, it will continue to allow attacks through Network Solutions itself. What happens if a Network Solutions employee is bribed? Are the Network Solutions computers secure? An attacker who breaks into one critical Network Solutions computer will have control over the entire Internet.
Or Network Solutions, now VeriSign, could simply be incompetent.
When it finally became un-slashdotted, I was able to read the article. Yawn. It's not particularly well-written, it says nothing new or shocking, it's all about how someone got job burnout. Big deal.
AssMan is not a role playing name. You should have been banned.
It's gawd-awful slow... Did /. manage to /. it?
Now Fool keeps the boards civil, at least as far as language goes, but not Raging Bull.
If you're the type who likes to throw gasoline onto a fire, here's a bonfire just waiting for you to back up the fuel tanker.
Someone does. Every ISP that operates a recursive resolver, every domain holder that operates an authoritative nameserver, are collectively the operators of the domain name system. There is no need for centralized root servers, but only for a consistent root zone. There are any number of ways to build a root zone file and get it installed someplace where users can resolve against the namespace it represents. ICANN is not needed to coordinate any of this.
ICANN have provided this over the years.
Provided what, exactly? Can you name one significant achievement attributable in part, or in whole, to ICANN's activities? I can't think of one.
True, if someone could come up with a method for making ICANN democratically and internationally representative and elected, this would have beena good idea. But at the present stage of our global development, this has just not been possible.
Oh, it IS possible, if only ICANN would allow it. We already elected At-Large representatives, but ICANN has been determined to disenfranchise them, and has so far succeeded for the most part. ICANN is the problem, not the solution.
I'm betting they don't, and Sun makes their profit on these low end boxes from the customers who actually have useful stuff to do with them, and therefore need the expensive memory upgrades.
But if these things take garden variety DRAM DIMMs, Katie Bar the Door, they'll sell like hotcakes and Sun will lose a ton of money. Better get 'em while they're hot. :)
The only reason some open source software is difficult to install on Solaris is because the developers have only the vaguest idea of how to write portable software, or even portable Makefiles. I built Nessus recently on Solaris 2.6/sparc with SunPro C 4.2, and it was a two day chore to get it all done right, e.g.: what kind of security application wants to rely on LD_LIBRARY_PATH?? The Makefiles and configure scripts in the Nessus build process are obsessive about throwing away my LDFLAGS and CFLAGS assignments, which would have properly hard-wired the app to look for its libs in the apropriate places.
This kind of problem is epidemic at sites like Freshmeat, which should be renamed FreshPenguinMeat.
And who says Linux is the standard for where files should be placed? Linux is BSD-like, POSIX-like, SVR4-like, but not really. Solaris is SVR4 through and through, and has its files where SVR4 puts them. /usr/sbin/sendmail indeed! <sneer>
The Simpsons long ago became little more than a marketing tie-in, why all the fuss now?
This leads to the curious conclusion that a DVD may be copied ad infinitum, but infringment only occurs when the code on a DVD copy is executed to produce images and sounds.
Interesting...
I imagine the CSS license prohibits this. But what is the penalty for violating the license, and is it as onerous as the DMCA itself? And does the CSS license override the copyright holder's right to grant permission to circumvent protection on his own work?
Just wondering...
That proves him a liar. Outlook Express cannot handle 15,000 messages in the inbox. It will crash before getting through a tenth of that.
Victory means driving piracy as far underground as possible.
Nothing to worry about folks, this is exactly what they should not be doing, if they really want to get a handle on things. If CCS succeeds in driving it all "as far underground as possible", they'll be out of a job. They've set the standard by which you can copy stuff with impunity: don't be obvious, for some lame definition of obvious. Powell sounds a lot like a script kiddie who just discovered where to get a root kit, now he thinks he owns the 'net.
Let him think that.
Network Solutions sold out years ago. What's the point of this article? It may as well have had the headline "Pedophile molests child, film at eleven."
The UDRP has always been about non-binding arbitration. What part of non-binding did you not understand? This is one of the reasons it is silly to even have a UDRP. Without any force behind it, it's just a way to while away the hours while the attorneys prepare suits. Or a way to bully the little guy without having to pay a lawyer (as much as you would) for a full-blown lawsuit.
Can anybody else get their upgrade? FTP server seems to be down. How long have the new tarballs be unavailable because of this? Anyone know if it's just the usual "oops" or is it throttling connections due to high demand?