Funny how the latest patch being pushed for Ubuntu includes a vulnerability where any system which is installed on an ext4 filesystem is vulnerable to privilege escalation.
Good timing, there!
And yes, I agree that Linux systems get patched more frequently and my guess is that the percent of Linux systems which are actively patched is greater than with Windows. Doesn't change the argument in a qualitative way.
Even if one can assume that the infection has been safely sandboxed to the user account in question, it is theoretically impossible to discover all the possible ways the user account could have been compromised (exactly like it's impossible to discover how a compromised OS is infected).
You're already the second poster I've seen here (the first chronologically, tho) with this erroneous idea, see my reply to the first one.
> check the (graphical, so-easy-to-use-a-caveman^H^Hgrandma-could-do-it) Gnome startup programs tool for suspicious entries
If you think that this is the only way a user account can be infected under Linux, you are very naive. I, myself, can think of about 7 additional ways to do it. The only way to be totally sure is to open a new user and very carefully transfer only non-virulent things like bookmarks (and to know what is non-virulent you have to have more knowledge than "Grandma" --- e.g., you don't want to transfer bookmarklets).
Now that I think about this, Linux needs someone to develop a tool for this purpose. It wouldn't be all that hard to do if you were happy to severely limit what can be transferred. Probably the hard part would be the explanation why the other stuff which the use wants cannot be transferred safely.
OTOH, even this is not foolproof, because the tool would either be useless, or would let you transfer bookmarks to web pages which could infect you via Flash (since it is not possible for the program to know if a web page is safe, and even if it would be at the time checked it could change).
Please give references for this interesting "fact", I'm very curious.
It actually doesn't matter, because even if you are correct, if RIAA threatens to sue you unless you pay $2K dollars, it will be cheaper, probably much cheaper, for you to pay them than to go to trial. So most people who are not wealthy cannot afford to be the "test cases" for making precedents. Frankly, I wonder whether RIAA does credit checks on the people it chooses to sue in court.
> at the last minute when you are loosing to cry "fair use"
My impression from reading the document was that he couldn't be "losing" at that point in the trial, because it was even before the jury was selected. My understanding is that the defense is supposed to reveal to the judge and the plaintiffs ahead of time (and visa versa) what their arguments will be so that the other side can prepare counter-arguments based on good legal research.
Unfortunately, it seems that the defense lawyer wasn't really prepared for the case and pulled this "wonderful" argument out of his, er, hat at the last possible moment. The judge disses the defense lawyer at practically every opportunity in those 38 pages. And I can understand why.
Anyway, after reading a few posters' stories here about personal bankruptcy, I'm confident that even if Joel has to go that route he'll manage to survive this and still have an almost normal life.
If you remove the.nyud.net suffix on the hostname, you will no longer be using a proxy, and your work's Websense configuration might allow you to read the article.
At first, I read your reply as just pointing out that I was being pedantic. And I admit that I am a pedant.
But after some thought, it seems to me that one could characterize your reading of "safely... like a regular book" as quantitative, and my reading as qualitative.
(Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I was mainly fishing for a Funny mod.)
Unless you're talking about those "books" with the padded plastic-covered pages and nice colorful pictures, it's not not really that safe to drop a regular book in the bathtub. Or are you some kind of alien who bathes using solvents which cannot be absorbed by paper?
ePub is based on the IBEP open publishing standards, so, yeah it is opening up. It's just not the kind of "opening up" you wanted.
I checked in Wikipedia, and it may not even be the kind of opening up which you think it is, since the WP article claims that the current EPUB standard does not specify a particular DRM algorithm. Anyway, DRM for text is ridiculous, the analog hole is really big, and the sizes of the digital files are tiny making it easy to conceal them (and their transfer) in all kinds of ways.
I also disagree that it is morally ok to obtain new copies of his books.... if he wants the convenience with out the effort, he should be willing to pay for it again.
And what if there is no one to pay (i.e., no ebook has been put on sale)?
I think it's reprehensible to steal these works. On the other hand, I also think copyright extensions have become a mockery of the original intent of copyright
I was a bit shocked when I brought up the topic of copyright with a friend at work, and his initial reaction to my desire to severely limit the terms and rights associated with copyright was that he thought that creators have a moral right to their creations in perpetuity, in a similar fashion to physical property. In his case, it just may be that he hasn't thought it out yet (I am going to continue the thread with him in the future). This just goes to show that everyone has their own "reprehensibility" scale.
Basically everything but the Kindle is opening up. Everyone is switching to at least supporting ePub, and a number of stores sell only ePub now instead of their formerly proprietary format (like Sony). Eventually even the Kindle will have to compete or die as competition grows via the ePub format.
Supporting a common DRM standard is good, but far from "opening up".
Your requirement of a lack of DRM is, frankly, silly. This is the modern digital age - you will not be able to avoid DRM completely no matter what you do. Do you refuse to watch DVD's because they have copy protection? Because that's all DRM systems are. Plus, aside from the Kindle, they are not a requirement. You can create your own ePub or PDF documents and read them on most ebook readers (again, excluding Kindle), and people can sell non-DRM files if the market demands it. DRM also allows Libraries to lend e-books, soemthing they could not legally do without it. Several readers support this now, and libraries are starting to pick it up. Once again, that excludes the Kindle (can you tell I don't like Kindle's lock-in?).
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Some people here on Slashdot claim that they don't buy Blu-ray disks at least partially because their DRM hasn't been broken so wide open that it's still inconvenient to do all kinds of things like back them up or work around unskippable content. Since you compare ebook DRM to CSS, are you saying that DRM for text is ridiculously weak anyway (which is true) so no one, including the GP, should worry about it?
Lastly, your complaint about re-buying books is unavoidable. One is on paper, the other is digital, and it's not easy to go from one to the other without good OCR technology. This would be expensive for home use, but if you already had a nice camera, were really really dedicated to getting your books on PC, and didn't mind chopping up your paper books, you could do this if you wanted to. Personally, I wouldn't. If you really read the book that often then just fork out the few extra bucks to buy it again. If you do incrimentally you will eventually have your entire library, and it won't hurt the pocket book as much as trying to do it all at once.
He might also be able to find quite a few of these books already available (illegally) online, and might feel that it is morally OK to just obtain a DRM-free copy from there. I think that a lot of people would agree with him, also.
I hate to tell you, but you're not very convincing. You've made a lot of assumptions which are probably correct for you, but stack things in your favor. Well, I agree with you, then. But the whole point of my post, quite a bit of which was in the title "Depends" (for which I apologize, it's bad form to use the title as an essential part of a post), is that, well, it does depend on quite a few factors.
The assumptions you make:
The file system GUI is structured like the default Windows Explorer layout. IIRC, the default Windows layout is not like that, and doesn't have a directory structure pane on the left side of each directory window.
When you advise using typing to locate a file in a window into a large directory, you assume that the filename is very unique, and that the sorting which has been set on the files in the window is alphabetical, and not by date or something else.
You make the valid point that switching your hand between mouse and keyboard is major overhead (at least I assume that's why you'd rather not take your hand of the mouse), yet you try to counter my point that it could take scrolling to find the file in question by proposing starting to type its name.
Your last paragraph blithely ignores/forgets my assumption that neither the source nor the destination GUI windows are already open. In my post, I obviously agree with you that if all you have to do to move the file/directory is a single drag-and-drop, then the GUI wins.
As to how often one does "cold" moves of files deep within filesystems to other directories which are also deep within filesystems, well, I actually do type things like "scp uid@remote:/this/is/a/fairly/long/pathto/file ~/Desktop" quite a bit, because I know that if I open the remote filesystem in a GUI window, even if I have the exact source location bookmarked, the file manager will often have to wait quite a while while all of the directory information travels over the network (e.g., if the directory contains a lot of files, or the connection is slow). I admit it's less common for me to type two long paths, since I mainly use Emacs' dired mode as my file manager (and yes, it does have a kind of GUI-like flavor even if given the way I use it, its input is almost totally text/typing-based).
> Dragging and dropping a file, though.. that's easier than using mv blahfile toblah
IMO, that's only true if both the source and destination windows are already open in the GUI (and even then, perhaps only if the file you want to drag is already visible in the source window and you don't have to scroll or resort to find it). Or, of course, if you are typing-challenged. Otherwise, typing
is almost certainly easier than find+clicking the seven (or more, depending on how you do it) parents of the paths in question and then dragging and dropping.
Your post assumes that efficiency is measured in units of lives saved or care given, but the administration is measuring efficiency in units of money. If your observations were widespread, the computerization should save the hospital money, but the study says otherwise.
I personally know two children who have been diagnosed by real psychiatrists, and as far as I can see neither of them, even though they are of normal intelligence and one of them knows what autism and Asperger's is, would ever be able to wake up one day and say "Yes, I must suffer from Asperger's syndrome!". And both of them, even though they haven't been told their diagnosis yet, know they've gone through all kinds of tests and counseling that other children haven't. So I mainly agree that "self-diagnosed Asperger's" is an "affectation" (or rather, an affectation of self-classification which I supposed is used as an excuse in many cases).
It's also a myth that people with Asperger's are "really smart". IIRC, the diagnostic criterion is that they must be of normal intelligence, i.e., cannot be retarded. I suppose, since the vast majority of people suffering from autism are retarded, that makes Asperger's sufferers "really smart" --- for autists.
And this is just internet piracy. If the government were to REALLY crack down, then swapping 2 terrabyte hard drives between friends is a heck of a lot more time efficient than the old days of copying floppies and cassette tapes.
Ah, good, I'm glad that someone else besides me has started to wave the face-to-face-copying-is-mega-efficient-now flag.
You forgot to add that face-to-face copying, while being backed up with internet-based "social networking" for finding the shortest path to the content you want is much, much better than the old times when we only found out who had what by perusing their record collection in person.
You've made a good start, but forgotten all the rest of the bad things of copyright law.
Ridiculous statutory damages.
Fair use is relatively useless because its boundaries are only prescribed by the courts, not by copyright law itself. The law itself should clearly define a "safe" area for fair use of various types of works (but not limit fair use to that definition, only).
It is impossible to check if what you think is an original creation is actually just a derived work, since there are no registration requirements for copyrighted works. If your creation turns out to be a derived work, you shouldn't be liable for unreasonable damages.
Currently accepted usage of most copyrighted works requires copying them (to various players/devices, between locations within your house, to offsite backup) yet this copying is actually illegal (since copyright law was designed in an era when copying was difficult and blatantly infringing).
Copyright law varies widely from country to country but the net is international in nature.
Copyright law has expanded to restrict and criminalize behavior which only enables others to infringe on copyright, and the extent of this expansion is only defined by the courts, enabling litigation-happy companies to effectively extort money from a section of the public which they would struggle to actually prove guilty. But lack of due diligence in pursuing copyright claims is not effectively punished.
> But, collectively, we have to have room for compromise or we will all get nothing.
I can think of a lot of futures where this is not true.
For example, the future where copyright law is unchanged, infringement is rampant and unenforceable, and the content industry merely has to scale down because of lowered profits.
Or the future where the content industry pushes copyright law so out of whack that no one infringes, but their profits are just as lowered because many people are so afraid of the possible penalties they totally avoid buying their products and instead go for the safe indie products which have CC/alternative licensing and/or viewing the content only in ephemeral ways (like on television or a movie screen).
BTW, when I finished school I was a model "responsible citizen" in that I would never have thought to break any laws. Now that I am an adult, I see that the simplistic "law == morality" equivalence is far from being correct. So you might have a big problem in your plans, there, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
Have you thought of trying to use white/pink noise or, if you are more into "natural" stuff, surf sounds or some of the other nature/ambiance stuff?
Funny how the latest patch being pushed for Ubuntu includes a vulnerability where any system which is installed on an ext4 filesystem is vulnerable to privilege escalation.
Good timing, there!
And yes, I agree that Linux systems get patched more frequently and my guess is that the percent of Linux systems which are actively patched is greater than with Windows. Doesn't change the argument in a qualitative way.
No OS which is usable is is totally secure.
Even if one can assume that the infection has been safely sandboxed to the user account in question, it is theoretically impossible to discover all the possible ways the user account could have been compromised (exactly like it's impossible to discover how a compromised OS is infected).
You're already the second poster I've seen here (the first chronologically, tho) with this erroneous idea, see my reply to the first one.
> check the (graphical, so-easy-to-use-a-caveman^H^Hgrandma-could-do-it) Gnome startup programs tool for suspicious entries
If you think that this is the only way a user account can be infected under Linux, you are very naive. I, myself, can think of about 7 additional ways to do it. The only way to be totally sure is to open a new user and very carefully transfer only non-virulent things like bookmarks (and to know what is non-virulent you have to have more knowledge than "Grandma" --- e.g., you don't want to transfer bookmarklets).
Now that I think about this, Linux needs someone to develop a tool for this purpose. It wouldn't be all that hard to do if you were happy to severely limit what can be transferred. Probably the hard part would be the explanation why the other stuff which the use wants cannot be transferred safely.
OTOH, even this is not foolproof, because the tool would either be useless, or would let you transfer bookmarks to web pages which could infect you via Flash (since it is not possible for the program to know if a web page is safe, and even if it would be at the time checked it could change).
Please give references for this interesting "fact", I'm very curious.
It actually doesn't matter, because even if you are correct, if RIAA threatens to sue you unless you pay $2K dollars, it will be cheaper, probably much cheaper, for you to pay them than to go to trial. So most people who are not wealthy cannot afford to be the "test cases" for making precedents. Frankly, I wonder whether RIAA does credit checks on the people it chooses to sue in court.
> at the last minute when you are loosing to cry "fair use"
My impression from reading the document was that he couldn't be "losing" at that point in the trial, because it was even before the jury was selected. My understanding is that the defense is supposed to reveal to the judge and the plaintiffs ahead of time (and visa versa) what their arguments will be so that the other side can prepare counter-arguments based on good legal research.
Unfortunately, it seems that the defense lawyer wasn't really prepared for the case and pulled this "wonderful" argument out of his, er, hat at the last possible moment. The judge disses the defense lawyer at practically every opportunity in those 38 pages. And I can understand why.
Anyway, after reading a few posters' stories here about personal bankruptcy, I'm confident that even if Joel has to go that route he'll manage to survive this and still have an almost normal life.
DRM for text is silly.
I might believe it if we were talking about text with a lot of extra goodies like hyperlinks.
I meant 'you will no longer be using a mirror (for "proxy avoidance")', not 'you will no longer be using a proxy'...
If you remove the .nyud.net suffix on the hostname, you will no longer be using a proxy, and your work's Websense configuration might allow you to read the article.
At first, I read your reply as just pointing out that I was being pedantic. And I admit that I am a pedant.
But after some thought, it seems to me that one could characterize your reading of "safely ... like a regular book" as quantitative, and my reading as qualitative.
(Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I was mainly fishing for a Funny mod.)
Unless you're talking about those "books" with the padded plastic-covered pages and nice colorful pictures, it's not not really that safe to drop a regular book in the bathtub. Or are you some kind of alien who bathes using solvents which cannot be absorbed by paper?
If anything, TFA says that you should restrict all amino acids except methionine. If you are fruit fly, that is.
TFA also says nothing about tryptophan in particular.
Or am I totally confused?
ePub is based on the IBEP open publishing standards, so, yeah it is opening up. It's just not the kind of "opening up" you wanted.
I checked in Wikipedia, and it may not even be the kind of opening up which you think it is, since the WP article claims that the current EPUB standard does not specify a particular DRM algorithm. Anyway, DRM for text is ridiculous, the analog hole is really big, and the sizes of the digital files are tiny making it easy to conceal them (and their transfer) in all kinds of ways.
I also disagree that it is morally ok to obtain new copies of his books .... if he wants the convenience with out the effort, he should be willing to pay for it again.
And what if there is no one to pay (i.e., no ebook has been put on sale)?
I think it's reprehensible to steal these works. On the other hand, I also think copyright extensions have become a mockery of the original intent of copyright
I was a bit shocked when I brought up the topic of copyright with a friend at work, and his initial reaction to my desire to severely limit the terms and rights associated with copyright was that he thought that creators have a moral right to their creations in perpetuity, in a similar fashion to physical property. In his case, it just may be that he hasn't thought it out yet (I am going to continue the thread with him in the future). This just goes to show that everyone has their own "reprehensibility" scale.
Basically everything but the Kindle is opening up. Everyone is switching to at least supporting ePub, and a number of stores sell only ePub now instead of their formerly proprietary format (like Sony). Eventually even the Kindle will have to compete or die as competition grows via the ePub format.
Supporting a common DRM standard is good, but far from "opening up".
Your requirement of a lack of DRM is, frankly, silly. This is the modern digital age - you will not be able to avoid DRM completely no matter what you do. Do you refuse to watch DVD's because they have copy protection? Because that's all DRM systems are. Plus, aside from the Kindle, they are not a requirement. You can create your own ePub or PDF documents and read them on most ebook readers (again, excluding Kindle), and people can sell non-DRM files if the market demands it. DRM also allows Libraries to lend e-books, soemthing they could not legally do without it. Several readers support this now, and libraries are starting to pick it up. Once again, that excludes the Kindle (can you tell I don't like Kindle's lock-in?).
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Some people here on Slashdot claim that they don't buy Blu-ray disks at least partially because their DRM hasn't been broken so wide open that it's still inconvenient to do all kinds of things like back them up or work around unskippable content. Since you compare ebook DRM to CSS, are you saying that DRM for text is ridiculously weak anyway (which is true) so no one, including the GP, should worry about it?
Lastly, your complaint about re-buying books is unavoidable. One is on paper, the other is digital, and it's not easy to go from one to the other without good OCR technology. This would be expensive for home use, but if you already had a nice camera, were really really dedicated to getting your books on PC, and didn't mind chopping up your paper books, you could do this if you wanted to. Personally, I wouldn't. If you really read the book that often then just fork out the few extra bucks to buy it again. If you do incrimentally you will eventually have your entire library, and it won't hurt the pocket book as much as trying to do it all at once.
He might also be able to find quite a few of these books already available (illegally) online, and might feel that it is morally OK to just obtain a DRM-free copy from there. I think that a lot of people would agree with him, also.
I hate to tell you, but you're not very convincing. You've made a lot of assumptions which are probably correct for you, but stack things in your favor. Well, I agree with you, then. But the whole point of my post, quite a bit of which was in the title "Depends" (for which I apologize, it's bad form to use the title as an essential part of a post), is that, well, it does depend on quite a few factors.
The assumptions you make:
As to how often one does "cold" moves of files deep within filesystems to other directories which are also deep within filesystems, well, I actually do type things like "scp uid@remote:/this/is/a/fairly/long/pathto/file ~/Desktop" quite a bit, because I know that if I open the remote filesystem in a GUI window, even if I have the exact source location bookmarked, the file manager will often have to wait quite a while while all of the directory information travels over the network (e.g., if the directory contains a lot of files, or the connection is slow). I admit it's less common for me to type two long paths, since I mainly use Emacs' dired mode as my file manager (and yes, it does have a kind of GUI-like flavor even if given the way I use it, its input is almost totally text/typing-based).
> Dragging and dropping a file, though.. that's easier than using mv blahfile toblah
IMO, that's only true if both the source and destination windows are already open in the GUI (and even then, perhaps only if the file you want to drag is already visible in the source window and you don't have to scroll or resort to find it). Or, of course, if you are typing-challenged. Otherwise, typing
mv /path/to/source/file /another/path/to/destination/directory
is almost certainly easier than find+clicking the seven (or more, depending on how you do it) parents of the paths in question and then dragging and dropping.
> an efficiency benefit
Your post assumes that efficiency is measured in units of lives saved or care given, but the administration is measuring efficiency in units of money. If your observations were widespread, the computerization should save the hospital money, but the study says otherwise.
I personally know two children who have been diagnosed by real psychiatrists, and as far as I can see neither of them, even though they are of normal intelligence and one of them knows what autism and Asperger's is, would ever be able to wake up one day and say "Yes, I must suffer from Asperger's syndrome!". And both of them, even though they haven't been told their diagnosis yet, know they've gone through all kinds of tests and counseling that other children haven't. So I mainly agree that "self-diagnosed Asperger's" is an "affectation" (or rather, an affectation of self-classification which I supposed is used as an excuse in many cases).
It's also a myth that people with Asperger's are "really smart". IIRC, the diagnostic criterion is that they must be of normal intelligence, i.e., cannot be retarded. I suppose, since the vast majority of people suffering from autism are retarded, that makes Asperger's sufferers "really smart" --- for autists.
For anyone feeling up to it, it has been previously proposed that we should each donate some time wasting this jerk's marketing staff's time...
But if you are Asperger's be warned you might get extradited if you overdo it.
Do you believe the same about other behaviors like depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia?
Just curious...
I was pretty sure he wasn't immortal even before this....
OTOH, given the pommeling due process has taken in the US lately, maybe this guy's lawyer is on to something. We'll just have to wait and see.
...
And this is just internet piracy. If the government were to REALLY crack down, then swapping 2 terrabyte hard drives between friends is a heck of a lot more time efficient than the old days of copying floppies and cassette tapes.
Ah, good, I'm glad that someone else besides me has started to wave the face-to-face-copying-is-mega-efficient-now flag.
You forgot to add that face-to-face copying, while being backed up with internet-based "social networking" for finding the shortest path to the content you want is much, much better than the old times when we only found out who had what by perusing their record collection in person.
You've made a good start, but forgotten all the rest of the bad things of copyright law.
> But, collectively, we have to have room for compromise or we will all get nothing.
I can think of a lot of futures where this is not true.
For example, the future where copyright law is unchanged, infringement is rampant and unenforceable, and the content industry merely has to scale down because of lowered profits.
Or the future where the content industry pushes copyright law so out of whack that no one infringes, but their profits are just as lowered because many people are so afraid of the possible penalties they totally avoid buying their products and instead go for the safe indie products which have CC/alternative licensing and/or viewing the content only in ephemeral ways (like on television or a movie screen).
BTW, when I finished school I was a model "responsible citizen" in that I would never have thought to break any laws. Now that I am an adult, I see that the simplistic "law == morality" equivalence is far from being correct. So you might have a big problem in your plans, there, eh?
I am a friendly law enforcement officer ?
Well, maybe you could substitute something else for the, er, f-word...
(I was thinking of "Federal", of course!)