Did you miss the whole 9/11 thing with people calling the ground reporting they were being hijacked? Obviously phones are more than capable of holding extended conversations at altitude.
The experiments I cited, and later reports proved that the "cell phone" calls made by the hijack victims were actually placed by the plane's airphones. Airphones are satellite phones on many plane flights that require the use of a credit card to activate. Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, and VERIZON all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone.
Read the physics experiment article that I posted, and try a google search for "9/11 cell phone". Or find a friend with a pilot's license and try it yourself -- above 2,000, even at low-speed (2,500ft @ 65mph airspeed in a Cessna 150 is how I tried it), you will be hard-pressed to get a cell tower, and when you do you will have it for at most a few seconds. The reason for this is multi-fold: 1) cell tower antennas have horizontal, as opposed to vertical, polarization. This means that their signal spreads closer to the ground, and the radiation lobe is very small in the up-and-down direction. The reason? A cell tower would just waste power by broadcasting up in the air when there will be at most two people up there using that particular tower for 15 seconds. It makes a lot more sense to broadcast with a pattern that hugs the ground, where most of your customers are, especially when the cell company must pay the FCC by the watt for their tower. 2) at 30,000 feet, you are going to be a minimum of *five miles* from a tower, and you will not have the benefits of ground-wave propagation to help your tiny signal reach the tower. Coupled with (1), you simply won't get a signal (and you don't. Discreetly try it if you don't believe me [legal disclaimer: I won't be held liable for anything that happens should you actually try it;-)]).
Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, VERIZON, and NOKIA all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone. Nokia is even working on a wireless carrier system specifically for flights, which will allow the use of a cell phone in-flight, but using the AirPhone system.
This stated, cell phones were used on the Pennsylvania flight, but only after the plane was well below 8,000 feet of altitude (one of my posts a few months ago on this topic had a link to a nice graph from a conference paper showing the altitude was about 4,000 feet, and that the terrain at the crash site was ~2,000 feet, lending more weight to the polarization/propagation arguments above). A normal commercial flight would only be at this low altitude for a few minutes during landing pattern, and about 2-3 minutes during takeoff (or slightly longer if, y'know, the plane was hijacked and the hijackers were trying to evade radar, or were intending to crash the plane, or something).
As for interference rejection, yes shielding helps. But you cannot shield your antenna, and it is always going to be a conductive source for interference to enter your receiver. I have a very nicely shielded ham radio that still experiences front-end overloading from nearby radio sources, like my cell phone, other ham radios, etc. I cannot vouch for its shielding when compared to your car stereo's, nor to a plane's ATC comm system, but I'd like to think that it's pretty good. Buzzing still happens when I get a phone call, even on a non-harmonic signal.
Why is everyone making such a big deal about this? It's pretty well-established that cell phones will not work on flights once the flight goes above about 5,000 feet. My own experiments showed my cell phone stopped working about 2,000 feet up. My roommate a few months ago was a private pilot, and we lived in/flew over San Diego where there's a cell tower for every 50 sq. feet of ground cover. Other projects have yielded similar results to my own, and are far more scientific to boot. Couple this evidence with the fact that any lengthy flight is going to fly at well over 30,000 feet over areas with no cell phone towers.
All that allowing cell phones will do in the US is make it so that a hundred or so people will have phones on during the whole flight, and those phones will switch to their highest power mode trying to find a tower. The pilot will hear this buzzing in his headset because his receiver's front end will overload. Try this: drive down the interstate, put your cell phone in your center console, turn your radio on and turn the speakers up. You hear that electronic humming that pops up every once in a while? That's your phone establishing a connection with a new tower. It is using the highest transmit setting at first, overloading the receive sensitivity of your car's stereo and causing a blaring sound through your speakers (actually it is inducing signal in your receiver, and this experiment will probably work in your stereo even when you play CDs/Tapes). Imagine a pilot trying to listen to a tower and instead hearing this cell phone garbage. It would not make for a very safe flight. What's really interesting? Modern radios are more susceptible to this behavior than older, tube-driven radios/amplifiers!
Unless cell phones become far more powerful, and aircraft switch *back* to vacuum-tube radio receivers, there will be 1) no point to allowing cell phones on flights, and 2) it will actually make flights far more dangerous by effectively DoS'ing your pilot's communications.
I mean, your web browser is reading the source code to their page and then parsing it. I'm not sure if the EULA that comes with your particular web browser places the blame for this copyright infringement on you or on your browser author. I'd suggest contacting a good intellectual property attorney...
When I reviewed (~2 years ago) it was for the MDA (they weren't my employer, just the sponsors of the SBIR and needed my organization's mindshare to review stuff). We were told specifically not to judge the qualification of staff even though it was an evaluation criteria because the staff proposed is non-binding. That is, the company's inclusion of particular people's CVs does not mean that those people have any obligation to actually take part in the actual work. By SBIR standards, this is (or at least, was) okay, which strikes me as wrong. Potential commercialization is rather a moot point as well, and we were told to chiefly ignore it by the sponsors. The idea for this part is that a small business that is just starting out will not have a clear commercialization plan lain out yet. So long as they acknowledged that they would need help making business/government customer contacts, they were golden.
SBIR data rights have indeed changed somewhat as I am just finding out. This case is particularly interesting. Still, five years? That's an awfully long time to wait for the data rights. Not nearly as bad as a 20 year patent, but still pretty bad for research that.GOV paid for...
It is a delicate balance, I realize. On the one hand you want to encourage small businesses to get into this thing and thrive and get the government's work done, but on the other hand you don't want to get screwed if the small business decides to take the money and run. All too often I saw just that, though: the abusive side to the contracts...companies with a hundred phase 1 and a dozen or so phase 2 awards under their belt, but with no phase 3s.
I'd like to reply to myself with an excerpt from the SBIR award contract, just to highlight one of the other big problems: SBIR data rights.
" (1) Each agency must refrain from disclosing SBIR technical data to outside the Government (except reviewers) and especially to competitors of the SBC, or from using the information to produce future technical procurement specifications that could harm the SBC that discovered and developed the innovation."
So, essentially if I pay a small business for phase 1 and phase 2 research, and then they don't continue on to commercialize it, I (as the government agency) cannot use their research for anything. So I pay $850k, get a whitepaper, maybe a prototype, and then I'm not allowed to use either if the company decides not to go in on phase 3. It's a great deal for small businesses, but a horrible deal for the government when it encounters greedy little companies (of which there are many in the SBIR world).
Some kind of contractual obligation to attempt commercialization after phase 2 would be nice, and if the company doesn't go for it,.GOV should get the rights to the research (IANAL and I have no idea how this could be enforced). Just my thought as one that was once on the other side of the fence...
Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies that won two awards listed on the website.
If you like the idea of your tax dollars going to smaller companies, then please let your congressional representative know! The SBIR program has been targeted in recent years by lawmakers who feel that it's a waste of money.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a government agency that awarded numerous SBIRs. I reviewed proposals, met with the small businesses owners, etc.
For the most part, SBIR awards go to companies that win a lot of Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards, and then never commercialize a thing. The companies just go on to win more Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards ($100k and $750k, respectively). Companies have little motivation to do more than this, because a team of four or five people can pull down a handful of phase 1 SBIRs (pretty much they just have to write a whitepaper at the end, and the quality I saw was low -- the type of thing that I could write in a solid week if was in my field), or 1-2 Phase 2 SBIRs in a year, and can make a very good life for themselves by doing very little work.
In the lovely world of government contracting, there simply isn't much we could do to stop this sort of behavior -- I wasn't, for example, allowed to weight proposals based on the company's past SBIR experience, or even on the CVs of the folks that were proposed to do the research. Either the SBIR process has to change a lot, or I do think that it should go away -- the money isn't big, I realize, but the way that it is set up now, it is ripe for abuse at the expense of taxpayers.
...of the MS efforts. Discrediting the standards process (and, by implication, the standards produced through it) is just as good, or better, for them then getting a spot as a second standard alongside ODF. If the standards bodies aren't credible, than the only "standard" that matters is "what's dominant in the marketplace today", and Microsoft has that locked up right now.
Interesting theory.
I worked in.GOV research labs for a few years, my primary responsibility being evaluating computer security products for government acquisition. Both organizations that I worked for (both DoD) had a 'open standards only' policy -- we would not buy anything unless there was a freely implementable, non-patent-encumbered standard or specification for the product in question. The bigger and smarter organizations have adopted this policy -- it helps to avoid vendor lock-in and we know it!
I think that if this is MS' tactic, they're throwing away a v. big customer. That said, I do fear that you're right...
Pretty much. Copyright is a contract, so when I *buy* a book or CD or whatever, I have really negotiated use of said product in compliance with US copyright law. Even if I win the same book or CD or whatever as a prize (or it is given to me as a gift), it is being given to me with an implicit dollar value and so invokes a contractual obligation. A cease and desist letter has no monetary value, though. At best, it can be covered by a memorandum of understanding, which I am free to violate without legal recourse. (And if it did have a contractual aspect to it, I would much prefer the cash than the letter!)
"I'm sorry, but you clearly didn't read the EULA on my mailbox. Any unsolicited mail that comes in to my office via the post is owned by me, giving me exclusive rights to reproduce it."
Ties in nicely with my SMTP server, which actually does issue a notice that the email you are sending is subject to my terms and conditions.
But that's ok. If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Because you'd do the world a lot more good if you bought a set of radio shack speaker cables (which sound the same), and donated $7000 to some variety of charitable organization (which would help those of us without a lot of money out -- a lot!).
"Any use of GPL'd code for profit requires commercial support interfacing the device to GNU operating systems."
Okay, that's a horrible idea. Microsoft would just write a thousand GNU operating systems, and then demand support and put the company in question out of business.
I own a domain that I use only for spamtrapping. I use zoneedit.com to house the domain name, and it provides an email 'catchall'. *@mydomain.com goes to my private email address. So when I buy stuff/register online, I put the domain name in the email address: reid.amazon.com@mydomain.com, reid.slashdot.org@mydomain.com, that sort of thing.
I actually caught a data thief this way...I bought an item from one site (POR-15, a gas tank cleaner/sealer), and a year or so later a competitor started emailing that email address. I forwarded to the mails to the CEO of POR-15 so he could explain why he violated his own privacy policy, or if the data had been stolen. He has been quite responsive.
Anyway, setting up a few hundred such domain names would be cheap. Then the registered email addresses could just be first.last.phonenumber@{domainnamelist, choose one}. It would have to be a cooperative effort, but I'm willing to sacrifice some bandwidth for the cause...
We would have to do it via something like TOR so as to have different access IPs (otherwise they would probably get suspicious). Feel like doing it? We could turn it into a distributed.net project, where each person gets a block of phone numbers to register...:)
Prohibiting users to get the source code is restrictive. Forcing users to get the source code is restrictive. Allowing users to get the source code is permissive. The GPL does the third thing, so it is indeed permissive. And any restrictions on distributors are irrelevant.
If you're really arguing that the GPL does not force distributors to provide source code, you don't understand the GPL. The GPL *does* force distributors to provide source code. In fact, the GPL does both: (1) Allowing users to get the source code and (2) Forcing distributors to provide source code. If distributors are not being forced to provide source code, then users are not allowed to get it.
Your argument is trying to put spin on the agreement and only mentions one half of the equation. I would suggest that you try the FSF GPL quiz, particularly questions 1 and 2: link. They detail the requirements that a binary distributor *must* meet in order to meet the licensing requirements of the GPL.
This means that the license is restrictive toward the distributor, and hence can be considered a restrictive license.
I blogged this a long time ago, but it still isn't acknowledged widely. Myspace filters its message boards and blogs. It is no email replacement for a lot of reasons, this certainly isn't even the biggest one.
Anyway, if you have a myspace account, try this experiment:
1) Make a new bulletin board post 2) Enter the text "Rupert Murdoch censors my posts" and submit. 3) Watch the post never show up in your bulletin board
Repeat the experiment with a control:
1) Make a new bulletin board post 2) Enter the text "Rup3r7 teh Murd0ch c3n50r5 my posts" and submit. 3) Watch this post show up in your bulletin board immediately
Yes, I know Myspace is a private website and they can filter whatever they want from their users. I won't call it outright censorship for that reason. I do feel that there is an expectation from users that Myspace can be used to discuss anything (well, anything legal) without a thought to having the conversation squashed, though. So it's kind of a grey area at best.
Slashdot does similar things in its comments. There are blacklisted words and whatnot. Slashdot is at least nice and tells you when you say something bad, so you can 'correct' it. Myspace simply says (in experiment 1) "Your message will appear on your bulletin board shortly" with no indication that the post was actually squashed. I deleted my myspace account quite some time ago in protest, whatever little good it does...
I've been thinking the same thing...first FUSE, now this. More and more of the kernel is going into userspace services, and these are the 'biggies.' It's really a welcome change. Albeit a strange one, given the great Torvald/Tanenbaum debate.
If you think a computer virus author will actually get the chance to spread herpes, you haven't met very many computer virus authors. Unless, y'know, transferring herpes from his genitals to his hands counts as "spreading."
(Just doing my part to eliminate "Hackers are cool" from the dumbest ideas list...).
Therefore, they'd be less willing to buy exploits in the future, or at least pay less....Or they'd be more willing to pay you a visit...a lot of the people buying these zero-days are Chinese military and other government-funded security groups. Not exactly the type of people that I would want to cross (or even be involved with, for that matter).
Slashdot Mirror
Did you miss the whole 9/11 thing with people calling the ground reporting they were being hijacked? Obviously phones are more than capable of holding extended conversations at altitude.
;-)]).
The experiments I cited, and later reports proved that the "cell phone" calls made by the hijack victims were actually placed by the plane's airphones. Airphones are satellite phones on many plane flights that require the use of a credit card to activate. Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, and VERIZON all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone.
Read the physics experiment article that I posted, and try a google search for "9/11 cell phone". Or find a friend with a pilot's license and try it yourself -- above 2,000, even at low-speed (2,500ft @ 65mph airspeed in a Cessna 150 is how I tried it), you will be hard-pressed to get a cell tower, and when you do you will have it for at most a few seconds. The reason for this is multi-fold: 1) cell tower antennas have horizontal, as opposed to vertical, polarization. This means that their signal spreads closer to the ground, and the radiation lobe is very small in the up-and-down direction. The reason? A cell tower would just waste power by broadcasting up in the air when there will be at most two people up there using that particular tower for 15 seconds. It makes a lot more sense to broadcast with a pattern that hugs the ground, where most of your customers are, especially when the cell company must pay the FCC by the watt for their tower. 2) at 30,000 feet, you are going to be a minimum of *five miles* from a tower, and you will not have the benefits of ground-wave propagation to help your tiny signal reach the tower. Coupled with (1), you simply won't get a signal (and you don't. Discreetly try it if you don't believe me [legal disclaimer: I won't be held liable for anything that happens should you actually try it
Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, VERIZON, and NOKIA all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone. Nokia is even working on a wireless carrier system specifically for flights, which will allow the use of a cell phone in-flight, but using the AirPhone system.
This stated, cell phones were used on the Pennsylvania flight, but only after the plane was well below 8,000 feet of altitude (one of my posts a few months ago on this topic had a link to a nice graph from a conference paper showing the altitude was about 4,000 feet, and that the terrain at the crash site was ~2,000 feet, lending more weight to the polarization/propagation arguments above). A normal commercial flight would only be at this low altitude for a few minutes during landing pattern, and about 2-3 minutes during takeoff (or slightly longer if, y'know, the plane was hijacked and the hijackers were trying to evade radar, or were intending to crash the plane, or something).
As for interference rejection, yes shielding helps. But you cannot shield your antenna, and it is always going to be a conductive source for interference to enter your receiver. I have a very nicely shielded ham radio that still experiences front-end overloading from nearby radio sources, like my cell phone, other ham radios, etc. I cannot vouch for its shielding when compared to your car stereo's, nor to a plane's ATC comm system, but I'd like to think that it's pretty good. Buzzing still happens when I get a phone call, even on a non-harmonic signal.
Just my $.02,
Reid
Why is everyone making such a big deal about this? It's pretty well-established that cell phones will not work on flights once the flight goes above about 5,000 feet. My own experiments showed my cell phone stopped working about 2,000 feet up. My roommate a few months ago was a private pilot, and we lived in/flew over San Diego where there's a cell tower for every 50 sq. feet of ground cover. Other projects have yielded similar results to my own, and are far more scientific to boot. Couple this evidence with the fact that any lengthy flight is going to fly at well over 30,000 feet over areas with no cell phone towers.
All that allowing cell phones will do in the US is make it so that a hundred or so people will have phones on during the whole flight, and those phones will switch to their highest power mode trying to find a tower. The pilot will hear this buzzing in his headset because his receiver's front end will overload. Try this: drive down the interstate, put your cell phone in your center console, turn your radio on and turn the speakers up. You hear that electronic humming that pops up every once in a while? That's your phone establishing a connection with a new tower. It is using the highest transmit setting at first, overloading the receive sensitivity of your car's stereo and causing a blaring sound through your speakers (actually it is inducing signal in your receiver, and this experiment will probably work in your stereo even when you play CDs/Tapes). Imagine a pilot trying to listen to a tower and instead hearing this cell phone garbage. It would not make for a very safe flight. What's really interesting? Modern radios are more susceptible to this behavior than older, tube-driven radios/amplifiers!
Unless cell phones become far more powerful, and aircraft switch *back* to vacuum-tube radio receivers, there will be 1) no point to allowing cell phones on flights, and 2) it will actually make flights far more dangerous by effectively DoS'ing your pilot's communications.
I mean, your web browser is reading the source code to their page and then parsing it. I'm not sure if the EULA that comes with your particular web browser places the blame for this copyright infringement on you or on your browser author. I'd suggest contacting a good intellectual property attorney...
When I reviewed (~2 years ago) it was for the MDA (they weren't my employer, just the sponsors of the SBIR and needed my organization's mindshare to review stuff). We were told specifically not to judge the qualification of staff even though it was an evaluation criteria because the staff proposed is non-binding. That is, the company's inclusion of particular people's CVs does not mean that those people have any obligation to actually take part in the actual work. By SBIR standards, this is (or at least, was) okay, which strikes me as wrong. Potential commercialization is rather a moot point as well, and we were told to chiefly ignore it by the sponsors. The idea for this part is that a small business that is just starting out will not have a clear commercialization plan lain out yet. So long as they acknowledged that they would need help making business/government customer contacts, they were golden.
.GOV paid for...
SBIR data rights have indeed changed somewhat as I am just finding out. This case is particularly interesting. Still, five years? That's an awfully long time to wait for the data rights. Not nearly as bad as a 20 year patent, but still pretty bad for research that
It is a delicate balance, I realize. On the one hand you want to encourage small businesses to get into this thing and thrive and get the government's work done, but on the other hand you don't want to get screwed if the small business decides to take the money and run. All too often I saw just that, though: the abusive side to the contracts...companies with a hundred phase 1 and a dozen or so phase 2 awards under their belt, but with no phase 3s.
Reid
I'd like to reply to myself with an excerpt from the SBIR award contract, just to highlight one of the other big problems: SBIR data rights.
.GOV should get the rights to the research (IANAL and I have no idea how this could be enforced). Just my thought as one that was once on the other side of the fence...
" (1) Each agency must refrain from disclosing SBIR technical data to outside the Government (except reviewers) and especially to competitors of the SBC, or from using the information to produce future technical procurement specifications that could harm the SBC that discovered and developed the innovation."
So, essentially if I pay a small business for phase 1 and phase 2 research, and then they don't continue on to commercialize it, I (as the government agency) cannot use their research for anything. So I pay $850k, get a whitepaper, maybe a prototype, and then I'm not allowed to use either if the company decides not to go in on phase 3. It's a great deal for small businesses, but a horrible deal for the government when it encounters greedy little companies (of which there are many in the SBIR world).
Some kind of contractual obligation to attempt commercialization after phase 2 would be nice, and if the company doesn't go for it,
Reid
Disclaimer: I work for one of the companies that won two awards listed on the website.
If you like the idea of your tax dollars going to smaller companies, then please let your congressional representative know! The SBIR program has been targeted in recent years by lawmakers who feel that it's a waste of money.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a government agency that awarded numerous SBIRs. I reviewed proposals, met with the small businesses owners, etc.
For the most part, SBIR awards go to companies that win a lot of Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards, and then never commercialize a thing. The companies just go on to win more Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards ($100k and $750k, respectively). Companies have little motivation to do more than this, because a team of four or five people can pull down a handful of phase 1 SBIRs (pretty much they just have to write a whitepaper at the end, and the quality I saw was low -- the type of thing that I could write in a solid week if was in my field), or 1-2 Phase 2 SBIRs in a year, and can make a very good life for themselves by doing very little work.
In the lovely world of government contracting, there simply isn't much we could do to stop this sort of behavior -- I wasn't, for example, allowed to weight proposals based on the company's past SBIR experience, or even on the CVs of the folks that were proposed to do the research. Either the SBIR process has to change a lot, or I do think that it should go away -- the money isn't big, I realize, but the way that it is set up now, it is ripe for abuse at the expense of taxpayers.
$.02,
Reid
...of the MS efforts. Discrediting the standards process (and, by implication, the standards produced through it) is just as good, or better, for them then getting a spot as a second standard alongside ODF. If the standards bodies aren't credible, than the only "standard" that matters is "what's dominant in the marketplace today", and Microsoft has that locked up right now.
.GOV research labs for a few years, my primary responsibility being evaluating computer security products for government acquisition. Both organizations that I worked for (both DoD) had a 'open standards only' policy -- we would not buy anything unless there was a freely implementable, non-patent-encumbered standard or specification for the product in question. The bigger and smarter organizations have adopted this policy -- it helps to avoid vendor lock-in and we know it!
Interesting theory.
I worked in
I think that if this is MS' tactic, they're throwing away a v. big customer. That said, I do fear that you're right...
Reid
Pretty much. Copyright is a contract, so when I *buy* a book or CD or whatever, I have really negotiated use of said product in compliance with US copyright law. Even if I win the same book or CD or whatever as a prize (or it is given to me as a gift), it is being given to me with an implicit dollar value and so invokes a contractual obligation. A cease and desist letter has no monetary value, though. At best, it can be covered by a memorandum of understanding, which I am free to violate without legal recourse. (And if it did have a contractual aspect to it, I would much prefer the cash than the letter!)
Reid
"I'm sorry, but you clearly didn't read the EULA on my mailbox. Any unsolicited mail that comes in to my office via the post is owned by me, giving me exclusive rights to reproduce it."
Ties in nicely with my SMTP server, which actually does issue a notice that the email you are sending is subject to my terms and conditions.
Reid.out
But that's ok. If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Because you'd do the world a lot more good if you bought a set of radio shack speaker cables (which sound the same), and donated $7000 to some variety of charitable organization (which would help those of us without a lot of money out -- a lot!).
Sounds like the old iPhone excuse: "OMG, teh networks is down, it must be new product xyz's fault, and not my network misconfigurations!!11!!"
Work it into GPLv4!
"Any use of GPL'd code for profit requires commercial support interfacing the device to GNU operating systems."
Okay, that's a horrible idea. Microsoft would just write a thousand GNU operating systems, and then demand support and put the company in question out of business.
Reid
Yeah, email catchalls.
I own a domain that I use only for spamtrapping. I use zoneedit.com to house the domain name, and it provides an email 'catchall'. *@mydomain.com goes to my private email address. So when I buy stuff/register online, I put the domain name in the email address: reid.amazon.com@mydomain.com, reid.slashdot.org@mydomain.com, that sort of thing.
I actually caught a data thief this way...I bought an item from one site (POR-15, a gas tank cleaner/sealer), and a year or so later a competitor started emailing that email address. I forwarded to the mails to the CEO of POR-15 so he could explain why he violated his own privacy policy, or if the data had been stolen. He has been quite responsive.
Anyway, setting up a few hundred such domain names would be cheap. Then the registered email addresses could just be first.last.phonenumber@{domainnamelist, choose one}. It would have to be a cooperative effort, but I'm willing to sacrifice some bandwidth for the cause...
We would have to do it via something like TOR so as to have different access IPs (otherwise they would probably get suspicious). Feel like doing it? We could turn it into a distributed.net project, where each person gets a block of phone numbers to register...:)
Reid
0 0 1 1 * wget --post-data 'ctlACPH1:txtAreaCode=&ctlACPH1:txtPhone=&ctlEmail:txtEmail=&txtConfirmEmail=' https://www.donotcall.gov/Register/Reg.aspx
You could wrap the wget in an if-block to see if the year is divisible by 5, but I'm lazy.
Reid
Isn't Apergillis how the folks in the movie Primer discovered what their device did?
Sure, you could use AppArmor (tm, R, etc). ...or you could use SELinux...
Let the flamewar begin!
Prohibiting users to get the source code is restrictive. Forcing users to get the source code is restrictive. Allowing users to get the source code is permissive. The GPL does the third thing, so it is indeed permissive. And any restrictions on distributors are irrelevant.
If you're really arguing that the GPL does not force distributors to provide source code, you don't understand the GPL. The GPL *does* force distributors to provide source code. In fact, the GPL does both: (1) Allowing users to get the source code and (2) Forcing distributors to provide source code. If distributors are not being forced to provide source code, then users are not allowed to get it.
Your argument is trying to put spin on the agreement and only mentions one half of the equation. I would suggest that you try the FSF GPL quiz, particularly questions 1 and 2: link. They detail the requirements that a binary distributor *must* meet in order to meet the licensing requirements of the GPL.
This means that the license is restrictive toward the distributor, and hence can be considered a restrictive license.
Reid
The GPL is permissive, and thus turns the usual function of copyright on it's head.
Permissive is such a funny word here. The GPL is actually quite restrictive.
* legalizing polygamy (permissive)
* making a law that says everyone must be polyamorous (GPL)
We're happy either way (trust me), but the latter is a lot more work if we just want to be lazy.
This exploit involves users visiting a malicious website. To learn more about this exploit, click here.
I blogged this a long time ago, but it still isn't acknowledged widely. Myspace filters its message boards and blogs. It is no email replacement for a lot of reasons, this certainly isn't even the biggest one.
Anyway, if you have a myspace account, try this experiment:
1) Make a new bulletin board post
2) Enter the text "Rupert Murdoch censors my posts" and submit.
3) Watch the post never show up in your bulletin board
Repeat the experiment with a control:
1) Make a new bulletin board post
2) Enter the text "Rup3r7 teh Murd0ch c3n50r5 my posts" and submit.
3) Watch this post show up in your bulletin board immediately
Yes, I know Myspace is a private website and they can filter whatever they want from their users. I won't call it outright censorship for that reason. I do feel that there is an expectation from users that Myspace can be used to discuss anything (well, anything legal) without a thought to having the conversation squashed, though. So it's kind of a grey area at best.
Slashdot does similar things in its comments. There are blacklisted words and whatnot. Slashdot is at least nice and tells you when you say something bad, so you can 'correct' it. Myspace simply says (in experiment 1) "Your message will appear on your bulletin board shortly" with no indication that the post was actually squashed. I deleted my myspace account quite some time ago in protest, whatever little good it does...
Reid
I've been thinking the same thing...first FUSE, now this. More and more of the kernel is going into userspace services, and these are the 'biggies.' It's really a welcome change. Albeit a strange one, given the great Torvald/Tanenbaum debate.
If you think a computer virus author will actually get the chance to spread herpes, you haven't met very many computer virus authors. Unless, y'know, transferring herpes from his genitals to his hands counts as "spreading."
(Just doing my part to eliminate "Hackers are cool" from the dumbest ideas list...).
Therefore, they'd be less willing to buy exploits in the future, or at least pay less. ...Or they'd be more willing to pay you a visit...a lot of the people buying these zero-days are Chinese military and other government-funded security groups. Not exactly the type of people that I would want to cross (or even be involved with, for that matter).
Reid
I think I saw this on star trek once...