Said a million times, I'm sure, but neither blue nor black was a DDOS. One spam received. One response or less sent back as an opt-out. Fair enough. The reason for distributing this is because of the targetting problem.
I've got a site that has been around since '97. I've noticed all kinds of related issues, from outright ripping off of my articles to large chunks of articles being used with obscure links back to my original. The thing is, Google will penalize for this kind of behavior, and, I believe, helps my traffic in the long run. Once I realized this, the issue upset me less.
Perhaps the pressure is the other way around. Sun wants widespread embrace of Java, and developers are reluctant to embrace something that isn't truly free as in speech. The "railing" just happens when we get a glimmer of hope it is free, but, alas, it truly isn't. The same need for the blessing of developers eventually got Trolltech to free QT. So, how many versions of QT are there by competing, almost compatible toolkits? I really don't know, but I'd guess there aren't any that are in widespread use. My guess is if Java was free, the need for a competing version will be diminished. Why fragment? Sure you can, but if Sun Java is truly free, then the need for fragmenting goes down. It is more like a card that can be played if Sun does something crazy. What kernel do you think we would be running on GNU/Linux if the kernel wasn't free? This is a perfect example of a world that would be even more fragmented. We could very well have HURD, Minix(x), etc. running GNU systems, quite fragmented, but because of the sense of well being that the GPL provides for developers (and *some* corporations), it is OK to use Linux as the kernel. But I'm rambling. My point is: Sun is motivated to get Java widely embraced, and this is why they change and make promises about the licensing. Also, I'm not so sure that free software necessarily leads to fragmentation.
Oracle supports RealID. Cisco supports tiered service. This is not a surprise. Just as managing a database of every person and handling the distribution and security of that database will be a complicated and expensive task, the router burden from tiered service will mean a lot of money for Cisco.
On the other hand, it probably is true that lawmakers have no idea about the technology involved. It is entirely likely we could hamstring ourselves with blind legislation. Often, many overly ambitious attempts to control traffic through routers ends up imploding because of the impracticality of complicated rule sets and associated load. I'd say this is probably more the case, and would be reluctant to put some kind of legislation in place until we understand the issues better, which is exactly what the hardware vendors are saying.
And, we shouldn't forget Tipper Gore's involvement in music censorship. This crosses party lines in many ways. Mojo Nixon ranted at the time, "We want to control what you read, what you listen to, what you watch".
Seriously, if what you say is important to you, control your domain name rather than having it under the blanket of myspace and easily targetable. I know, it is simplistic, but these kids these days, I wouldn't put it beyond them to simply deal with RSS themselves. Basically, personal expression is being outsourced, and the users have to deal with the consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Said a million times, I'm sure, but neither blue nor black was a DDOS. One spam received. One response or less sent back as an opt-out. Fair enough. The reason for distributing this is because of the targetting problem.
There is a history of this issue and related links here. The castlecops stuff has threads of the original spam message board threads.
When I ping the servers in my server room, every server replies, except her, she has no nic.
I've got a site that has been around since '97. I've noticed all kinds of related issues, from outright ripping off of my articles to large chunks of articles being used with obscure links back to my original. The thing is, Google will penalize for this kind of behavior, and, I believe, helps my traffic in the long run. Once I realized this, the issue upset me less.
Perhaps the pressure is the other way around. Sun wants widespread embrace of Java, and developers are reluctant to embrace something that isn't truly free as in speech. The "railing" just happens when we get a glimmer of hope it is free, but, alas, it truly isn't. The same need for the blessing of developers eventually got Trolltech to free QT. So, how many versions of QT are there by competing, almost compatible toolkits? I really don't know, but I'd guess there aren't any that are in widespread use. My guess is if Java was free, the need for a competing version will be diminished. Why fragment? Sure you can, but if Sun Java is truly free, then the need for fragmenting goes down. It is more like a card that can be played if Sun does something crazy. What kernel do you think we would be running on GNU/Linux if the kernel wasn't free? This is a perfect example of a world that would be even more fragmented. We could very well have HURD, Minix(x), etc. running GNU systems, quite fragmented, but because of the sense of well being that the GPL provides for developers (and *some* corporations), it is OK to use Linux as the kernel. But I'm rambling. My point is: Sun is motivated to get Java widely embraced, and this is why they change and make promises about the licensing. Also, I'm not so sure that free software necessarily leads to fragmentation.
Oracle supports RealID. Cisco supports tiered service. This is not a surprise. Just as managing a database of every person and handling the distribution and security of that database will be a complicated and expensive task, the router burden from tiered service will mean a lot of money for Cisco. On the other hand, it probably is true that lawmakers have no idea about the technology involved. It is entirely likely we could hamstring ourselves with blind legislation. Often, many overly ambitious attempts to control traffic through routers ends up imploding because of the impracticality of complicated rule sets and associated load. I'd say this is probably more the case, and would be reluctant to put some kind of legislation in place until we understand the issues better, which is exactly what the hardware vendors are saying.
And, we shouldn't forget Tipper Gore's involvement in music censorship. This crosses party lines in many ways. Mojo Nixon ranted at the time, "We want to control what you read, what you listen to, what you watch". Seriously, if what you say is important to you, control your domain name rather than having it under the blanket of myspace and easily targetable. I know, it is simplistic, but these kids these days, I wouldn't put it beyond them to simply deal with RSS themselves. Basically, personal expression is being outsourced, and the users have to deal with the consequences.