Amen. I am very sick of hearing claims such as "scientists have disproven the possibility of life in environment X" based on crap like chemical substances or atmospheric conditions. Life should not be defined in terms of our experience, it should be defined in a more neutral and objective way. Self replication, intelligent patterns, an unique phenomena are reasonable criteria. Green plants and little humanoid guys aren't.
He's also an excellent speaker. I particularly like this quote from a DMCA discussion, in reference to the media industry:
> "Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
Given his accent, this makes for a very interesting voice-over when combined with electronic music.
Correct, but as someone a few posts up said, politicians can take on this role. Lessig demonstrated in Free Culture that, throughout history and today, industries will seek to artificially preserve their irrelevant business models via the courtroom and our Congress.
And for the past decade or so, they've been succeeding.
As someone who despises both companies, I too hope Vonage prevails. It will be a sad day if the bigger player gets even more power. Underdog competition benefits the rest of us.
> "Is it really necessary that every Slashdot summary ends with a very polarizing question?"
No, it is not. The question may be rhetorical instead.
What's required is that the question elicits an immediate and resounding answer from each individual who reads it. If almost all readers happen to agree on their answer, than the question was rhetorical. If not, than it was polarizing. In either case, you have the illusion of intelligent discourse, thereby justifying the editor's selection of the article.
> "Quite surprised by what, that programs running in user-mode can still access the current user's data and programs in their home folder? Hardly news."
The GP was being extremely sarcastic. I'm sure most of the people who read this summary, or even just the title, thought "Duh" and wondered why an expert like Russinovich didn't have anything more insightful to say.
> "surely if a rootkit is running with LUA privs, it wouldn't be able to hide itself?"
Well it wouldn't be able to hide itself from the root, but I don't see why it couldn't hide itself from other limited user apps.
> "If it's a prompt that will give a malicious program elevated rights when the user clicks 'allow', what part of it is fake?"
The fake part would be the premise under which it is requesting additional rights. Maybe it's masquerading in the dialog as a service the user already has.
I like the quote from the article: "Elevations are a convenience and not a security boundary".
O(1) is good. It's really good. It is, in fact, too good. Too good to not have sid-effects. Side-effects that affect fairness with respect to other tasks. It's a trade-off, because having the best of both worlds is too good to be true.
Glad to see someone else mentioning Magnatune once in a while. Normally when this kind of topic comes up people jump all over eMusic, when in reality the only thing they have going for them is the lack of DRM. Magnatune goes the whole nine yards with their phenomenally benevolent policies that benefit both the customer and the artist. No other label is anywhere near as geek-friendly, from the perspective of typical Slashdotter values.
Of their artists, I would *highly* recommend Drop Trio and Thursday Group, under the jazz section.
I was wondering that too - what is proper technical procedure for removing files from an image? Is it enough to simply zero out the bits allocated for that file? What if it's cached or backed up somewhere else on the drive?
From the hypothetical point of view of a technologically knowledgeable guilty party, I would look for some way to store the copyrighted files steganographically in something that can reasonably be considered private, and request that it be deleted from the image. Then again, if I'm using steganography, I probably wouldn't need those files deleted anyway.
If secustick is that company that was in an article a few days ago for trivially leaking passwords because they relied on proprietary driver software that could not be trusted, then they don't deserve your forgiveness. The design was so terrible that they had no choice but to admit a mistake, lest they lose ALL of their fans.
Ah, those double underlined hyperlink ads. Yeah, that always seemed like the most bizarre way possible to advertise on a web page, as it's both highly annoying and utterly useless since the products they link to are almost always unrelated to the context of the source article. But hey, if companies are willing to throw their money at ridiculous advertisers, I guess they're not going to complain.
Opening up their server takes away my power to despise Linden Labs. Previously, I had little respect for them, because their business model is based on passing off as valuable something that has no inherent worth. This is either alchemy or counterfeiting depending on your point of view, but it struck me as a bit shady, even if they were ethical about it. But open sourcing the client showed me (as someone who has had no dealings or knowledge of them outside of these articles) that they weren't all bad. Now that they're going to do the same with the server, I feel like I have to forgive them and let them try to turn a profit.
Does anyone know if they're choosing a free license, or is it possible that they're releasing the source code only under a restrictive license?
My friend had that problem. He couldn't convince the students sitting next to him that the games he was playing and the desktop environment he was using weren't installed on all the machines.
Then I think I did indeed ignore slander. But I don't think it affects my point too much. Internet communications, even if technically public, can still be intended for a private audience, and should not necessarily be subject to the same rules as print publications.
Sorry if I overreacted, I was just tired of the link dropping that started with the last guy I had this discussion with.
Ah, that explains it. Here in the US the consummers have no rights. Any digital product that has been unwrapped from its packaging is often unreturnable and unexchangeable, except for another copy of the same exact product. This is of course to stop Best Buy from turning into Netflix, but it sucks nonetheless.
> "So what we as a society are saying is that it's okay for kids to see people shooting, stabbing, kick boxing, or whatever else to each other in a violent rage, but HEAVEN FORBID if any minors see NAKED PEOPLE or, worse, two people engaged in a perfectly normal act that is part of our biological survival process as a species."
Yes, yes, we know the bit, it's hypocritical, the religious right sucks, blah blah blah. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to jerk off to a gory slasher flick.
The last time I had a discussion on slander/libel, last week I think it was, someone linked to a similar wikipedia article. I mildly resent this because you are implying that I know next to nothing of the matter, but you have not demonstrated that you understand any more than me. So next time please include some summary of your point. It doesn't mean anything if you just link to a google search or encyclopedia entry and say "Come back after the required reading."
I am not a lawyer. I have read (parts of) the libel article, and don't feel up to getting lost in thousands of wiki tabs at the moment (I should be doing a lab right now, not debating free speech;) ). Moreover, I'm not arguing how the legal system *currently* treats libel and slander, I'm arguing how I feel it *should*.
The point I was trying to make in my above post is that I seem to be free to defame people as much as I like so long as it's verbally and not too widespread. There's no law that I can't call my neighbor a douchebag around my friends - even to his face. There's no law that says I have to back up my claim (especially such a subjective one) with hard evidence or even an irrational rant. I think that it is possibly hypocritical to allow this in the physical world but not in the electronic one. Furthermore, it could represent a gradual retraction of free speech as more and more communications do become electronic.
So my statement that there is a line between free speech and libel is a concession that not all electronic communications are analogous to personal conversations held in a public place. I attempt to define this distinction not in legal terms but based on the reasons behind the laws. Conversations that are not part of a permanent record and not widely distributed do not impact reputation nearly as much as publications. The question is how do we redefine the technical rules to make sense morally and practically.
Sorry if I jumbled any of my thoughts. Back to this lab.
I know him as "Star Wars Kid", and mentioned him explicitly as an example. Lawsuit. Pure and simple. There should be no law specifically targetting what they did, let emotional distress cover it.
To illustrate my point: Let's pretend that a group of kids are insulting and deriding one of their classmates in public but off school property - they may congregate on the sidewalk or in a park, talking in loud voices. Whether or not the target is present is irrelevant. Show of hands please, from all of you who think that they should be punished by the school or some other public institution rather than by their parents.
Now, will somebody please tell me the difference between a semi-public gathering among friends that takes place in a park (where anyone can overhear), and one that occurs online?
In both cases, the message is intended primarily for the closed group of friends but is visible by any member of the public, including the victim. To allow government restriction of this harassment, while tempting, is a restriction of free speech; you're telling people what they can and can not express in their communications with their peers.
I suppose the classic distinction between free speech and libel is that the former is in a transient medium, while the latter is mass-distributed and accessible for the long term. The Internet changes the rules of the game by making that line not so obvious. It's no longer how the information is communicated that matters - that's just a technicality. Can we consider instead its intended audience, lifetime, authority, and degree of maliciousness? Perhaps, but it's all a slippery slope towards the censorship of minors by non-parental figures. I'd rather not go in that direction.
Kids have been taking verbal beatings from their peers for centuries. Putting it online can't be much worse.
And as I type that, the first thought that comes to my mind is "Star Wars Kid". So my response is "Lawsuit". Sue for emotional damages rather than outlawing the practice among minors, that way only the acts that really warrant a reaction will get one.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. I am very sick of hearing claims such as "scientists have disproven the possibility of life in environment X" based on crap like chemical substances or atmospheric conditions. Life should not be defined in terms of our experience, it should be defined in a more neutral and objective way. Self replication, intelligent patterns, an unique phenomena are reasonable criteria. Green plants and little humanoid guys aren't.
He's also an excellent speaker. I particularly like this quote from a DMCA discussion, in reference to the media industry:
> "Now if you leave them alone to buy more congressmen, in this very corrupt time of ours, they will survive for a little while longer but all of this talk is about the technicalities of the adjustment of the terms of their demise. When we want to start talking about something that matters, we would do better to begin from some basic social propositions. Everybody is connected to everybody else, all data that can be shared will be shared: get used to it."
Given his accent, this makes for a very interesting voice-over when combined with electronic music.
Correct, but as someone a few posts up said, politicians can take on this role. Lessig demonstrated in Free Culture that, throughout history and today, industries will seek to artificially preserve their irrelevant business models via the courtroom and our Congress.
And for the past decade or so, they've been succeeding.
As someone who despises both companies, I too hope Vonage prevails. It will be a sad day if the bigger player gets even more power. Underdog competition benefits the rest of us.
> "Is it really necessary that every Slashdot summary ends with a very polarizing question?"
No, it is not. The question may be rhetorical instead.
What's required is that the question elicits an immediate and resounding answer from each individual who reads it. If almost all readers happen to agree on their answer, than the question was rhetorical. If not, than it was polarizing. In either case, you have the illusion of intelligent discourse, thereby justifying the editor's selection of the article.
I'll extract my daily dose of ironic humor from the mod you received for your comment.
Extraction complete. Ahh.
> "Seriously, sometimes when I read Slashdot, a small part of my brain cries out in pain, and then is silent forever."
This was only the first in a sequence of articles, the next being "Hackers can break into unsecured wireless routers."
The Jedis are going to feel this one.
> "Quite surprised by what, that programs running in user-mode can still access the current user's data and programs in their home folder? Hardly news."
The GP was being extremely sarcastic. I'm sure most of the people who read this summary, or even just the title, thought "Duh" and wondered why an expert like Russinovich didn't have anything more insightful to say.
> "surely if a rootkit is running with LUA privs, it wouldn't be able to hide itself?"
Well it wouldn't be able to hide itself from the root, but I don't see why it couldn't hide itself from other limited user apps.
> "If it's a prompt that will give a malicious program elevated rights when the user clicks 'allow', what part of it is fake?"
The fake part would be the premise under which it is requesting additional rights. Maybe it's masquerading in the dialog as a service the user already has.
I like the quote from the article: "Elevations are a convenience and not a security boundary".
O(1) is good. It's really good. It is, in fact, too good. Too good to not have sid-effects. Side-effects that affect fairness with respect to other tasks. It's a trade-off, because having the best of both worlds is too good to be true.
Glad to see someone else mentioning Magnatune once in a while. Normally when this kind of topic comes up people jump all over eMusic, when in reality the only thing they have going for them is the lack of DRM. Magnatune goes the whole nine yards with their phenomenally benevolent policies that benefit both the customer and the artist. No other label is anywhere near as geek-friendly, from the perspective of typical Slashdotter values.
Of their artists, I would *highly* recommend Drop Trio and Thursday Group, under the jazz section.
I prefer the smell of virtual Napalm in the morning.
Guess that's why I play FPSs instead of Second Life.
I was wondering that too - what is proper technical procedure for removing files from an image? Is it enough to simply zero out the bits allocated for that file? What if it's cached or backed up somewhere else on the drive?
From the hypothetical point of view of a technologically knowledgeable guilty party, I would look for some way to store the copyrighted files steganographically in something that can reasonably be considered private, and request that it be deleted from the image. Then again, if I'm using steganography, I probably wouldn't need those files deleted anyway.
I prefer the hi-tech solution of using a camcorder aimed at the monitor.
David Grossman. It was his term originaly if I recall correctly, but I'm not sure.
r )
I read some of his book "On Killing" a while back, and he made some valid points, but I believe he certainly overstated the potential harm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(autho
If secustick is that company that was in an article a few days ago for trivially leaking passwords because they relied on proprietary driver software that could not be trusted, then they don't deserve your forgiveness. The design was so terrible that they had no choice but to admit a mistake, lest they lose ALL of their fans.
Ah, those double underlined hyperlink ads. Yeah, that always seemed like the most bizarre way possible to advertise on a web page, as it's both highly annoying and utterly useless since the products they link to are almost always unrelated to the context of the source article. But hey, if companies are willing to throw their money at ridiculous advertisers, I guess they're not going to complain.
Opening up their server takes away my power to despise Linden Labs. Previously, I had little respect for them, because their business model is based on passing off as valuable something that has no inherent worth. This is either alchemy or counterfeiting depending on your point of view, but it struck me as a bit shady, even if they were ethical about it. But open sourcing the client showed me (as someone who has had no dealings or knowledge of them outside of these articles) that they weren't all bad. Now that they're going to do the same with the server, I feel like I have to forgive them and let them try to turn a profit.
Does anyone know if they're choosing a free license, or is it possible that they're releasing the source code only under a restrictive license?
My friend had that problem. He couldn't convince the students sitting next to him that the games he was playing and the desktop environment he was using weren't installed on all the machines.
Then I think I did indeed ignore slander. But I don't think it affects my point too much. Internet communications, even if technically public, can still be intended for a private audience, and should not necessarily be subject to the same rules as print publications.
Sorry if I overreacted, I was just tired of the link dropping that started with the last guy I had this discussion with.
Ah, that explains it. Here in the US the consummers have no rights. Any digital product that has been unwrapped from its packaging is often unreturnable and unexchangeable, except for another copy of the same exact product. This is of course to stop Best Buy from turning into Netflix, but it sucks nonetheless.
> "So what we as a society are saying is that it's okay for kids to see people shooting, stabbing, kick boxing, or whatever else to each other in a violent rage, but HEAVEN FORBID if any minors see NAKED PEOPLE or, worse, two people engaged in a perfectly normal act that is part of our biological survival process as a species."
Yes, yes, we know the bit, it's hypocritical, the religious right sucks, blah blah blah. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to jerk off to a gory slasher flick.
> "If a DVD was not working, I would just bring it back to the shop, the second time I would exchange it for another DVD (not the same movie)."
I never knew there existed retailers that would allow you to exchange for a non-identical movie.
The last time I had a discussion on slander/libel, last week I think it was, someone linked to a similar wikipedia article. I mildly resent this because you are implying that I know next to nothing of the matter, but you have not demonstrated that you understand any more than me. So next time please include some summary of your point. It doesn't mean anything if you just link to a google search or encyclopedia entry and say "Come back after the required reading."
;) ). Moreover, I'm not arguing how the legal system *currently* treats libel and slander, I'm arguing how I feel it *should*.
I am not a lawyer. I have read (parts of) the libel article, and don't feel up to getting lost in thousands of wiki tabs at the moment (I should be doing a lab right now, not debating free speech
The point I was trying to make in my above post is that I seem to be free to defame people as much as I like so long as it's verbally and not too widespread. There's no law that I can't call my neighbor a douchebag around my friends - even to his face. There's no law that says I have to back up my claim (especially such a subjective one) with hard evidence or even an irrational rant. I think that it is possibly hypocritical to allow this in the physical world but not in the electronic one. Furthermore, it could represent a gradual retraction of free speech as more and more communications do become electronic.
So my statement that there is a line between free speech and libel is a concession that not all electronic communications are analogous to personal conversations held in a public place. I attempt to define this distinction not in legal terms but based on the reasons behind the laws. Conversations that are not part of a permanent record and not widely distributed do not impact reputation nearly as much as publications. The question is how do we redefine the technical rules to make sense morally and practically.
Sorry if I jumbled any of my thoughts. Back to this lab.
I know him as "Star Wars Kid", and mentioned him explicitly as an example. Lawsuit. Pure and simple. There should be no law specifically targetting what they did, let emotional distress cover it.
To illustrate my point: Let's pretend that a group of kids are insulting and deriding one of their classmates in public but off school property - they may congregate on the sidewalk or in a park, talking in loud voices. Whether or not the target is present is irrelevant. Show of hands please, from all of you who think that they should be punished by the school or some other public institution rather than by their parents.
Now, will somebody please tell me the difference between a semi-public gathering among friends that takes place in a park (where anyone can overhear), and one that occurs online?
In both cases, the message is intended primarily for the closed group of friends but is visible by any member of the public, including the victim. To allow government restriction of this harassment, while tempting, is a restriction of free speech; you're telling people what they can and can not express in their communications with their peers.
I suppose the classic distinction between free speech and libel is that the former is in a transient medium, while the latter is mass-distributed and accessible for the long term. The Internet changes the rules of the game by making that line not so obvious. It's no longer how the information is communicated that matters - that's just a technicality. Can we consider instead its intended audience, lifetime, authority, and degree of maliciousness? Perhaps, but it's all a slippery slope towards the censorship of minors by non-parental figures. I'd rather not go in that direction.
Kids have been taking verbal beatings from their peers for centuries. Putting it online can't be much worse.
And as I type that, the first thought that comes to my mind is "Star Wars Kid". So my response is "Lawsuit". Sue for emotional damages rather than outlawing the practice among minors, that way only the acts that really warrant a reaction will get one.