Having been introduced to Usenet in 1991, I've been through at least six periods of "Imminent death of Usenet predicted: News at ten". It didn't happen then, and it won't happen now.
DVDs: Hackers are mass producing ways to view their own movies, and we don't like it
by GREEDO VALENTI
A case is currently before a federal court in New York that has to be of interest to anyone who believes in the right to trample consumers. The case involves the efforts of producers of films to stop three Web sites from distributing a program that allows computer users to view encrypted digital video discs they've bought.
Why should this concern corporations? The answer is simple: if you cannot use that which you own, you own nothing. If Web sites are allowed to pass along computer "keys" that disarm "protections" designed to shaft consumers, then all corporate blood money is put in jeopardy.
Every DVD is coded with encryption software to line the movie industry's pockets by keeping consumers from using their products as they wish. The protection of our image is even more critical in a digital world because the one-millionth copy of a digital film is as pristine and pure as the original, which has nothing to do with the software in question, but we're hoping you don't realize that. The program legally breaks the encryption, leaving the valuable product easy for the consumer to use and depriving us of licensing fees for other uses.
In 1998, Congress passed and the president signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which expressly made it illegal to traffic in "any technology, product, service, device, component or part thereof that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner," which again has nothing to do with the primary purpose of the DeCSS software, but you're gullible enough to believe it, right? Wordy prose indeed, but what the Web sites named in our claim have done isn't exactly what the law forbids. They have circumvented copyright protection legally, but without our authorization, and we hate to see consumers get their money's worth. If one visits the sites in question, one will see enticements to "use your property in linux." Pretty blatant stuff.
[etc...you get the point]
Greedo Valenti is President and Chief Whore of the Biting the Hand that Feeds Us Assn. of America.
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles "Bending Over and Spreading Our Cheeks for Corporate America" Times
These have been mentioned by several other posters here, but they bear repeating:
Anything at all by Ray Bradbury. The man is the greatest short-story writer of our time, and any of his works are suitable for any age of reader (what a bargain, eh?).
Piers Anthony. While I can't stand his writing anymore--he's getting lazy in what should be his prime writing years--his older stuff is great for younger readers. Recommendations: Macroscope, the Incarnations of Immortality series, the Tarot series, Orn, Omnivore and Ox, the first few books of the Phaze series, Dead Morn (co-written with Roberto something and highly recommended), and of course younger readers seem to love his long-running Xanth fantasy series, although the first three are definitely aimed at an older audience. There are tons of old Anthony books that I'm forgetting here, but go look him up and choose anything written before, say, 1993.:)
Stephen Baxter. Anything. This man is an SF god.
And the obligatory SF cadre in the order I think of them: Asimov, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell, Fred Saberhagen, the Wild Cards series of books edited by George R.R. Martin (and written by several different authors per book) for when she's a bit older, Harry Harrison, Greg Bear. Hope that gives you a decent start.
This whole article should be moderated down for redundancy...unless I'm missing something, it's just a rehash of the earlier bit from Jon about being raided, only from the press' view of things. At any rate, I'm sticking by my strict "fuck the MPAA/RIAA" policy by refusing to buy new movies or music.:)
The best way to personalize a case is still to make your own little logo and stick it on the plate where the corporate logo is supposed to be if it would be a retail box.
Mine has a homemade "Linux inside" parody slapped over the Intel logo.:)
"Survival of the fittest" is more about the survival of a species than it is about the survival of individuals. There is a good chance that his children inherited at least some of his intelligence, but not his physical genetic problem.
it's $35/month plus $5 for an extra mailbox for my wife, for static IP and hosting for www.copkiller.org, which is hosted on dimcom's T3s. My machine, legion.copkiller.org, just exists as a firewall/router to my home network and has a fun mail alias. It does cost a little more than most ISPs, but it's worth it to me because the sysadmin is a strong believer in free speech and he refuses to pull the plug on my site just because the FOP finds it offensive. The 56k link doesn't bother me at all since I get to play with a T1 at work all day. 56k is speedy enough to download kernel patches, load web pages, and get email. And to let my wife play Chaos on irc.:)
around 95% of the hackers I know hate the current government and wouldn't work for the military. So the army is going to have to come up with something a little different from the traditional ads if they want to attract the script kiddies who will end up working for them:
YO!
Do you have the mad skillz to break your enemy's NT box like a cheap toy? Can you use someone else's program to wreak havoc? Do you know how to type in 31337-5p34K? Apply today, because the U.5. R00|z, b0Y33!@#$
I can do the same thing here...DSL from US West=$20/month (on the cheapest plan) and they throw in a free DSL modem. And my ISP (dimensional.com, plug plug) charges $40/month for the service, which is what I pay for 56k with the extras (static IP, hosting, extra email)...getting rid of my "internet line" would save me that $20/month, so I'd be paying the same price for DSL as I am for 56k. Unfortunately, I live too far from the CO to get DSL, but we're moving soon.:)
I know I wouldnt have had a problem in linux, but I'm running Win2K at the moment (for Maya...woohoo), and it rolled over without a problem--as expected. Although someone was firing a pistol into the air at midnight...welcome to Colorado.:)
We're still waiting for California to rollover to see if the power grid will be affected. If it is, we'll jus
If the DVD Consortium starts honest work on players/decoders for linux, then I will remove my mirror of the css-auth tarball. But whether they do or not, fuck 'em. They've permanently lost my business, just like RIAA, for being greedy corporate scumbags. I suggest this for those of you who like DVDs and CDs but who don't want the CEOs getting your money: buy your movies and music used.
I can't speak for the rest of the linux community, but I think UT is a blast. As for getting it to run...tar zxvf the.tgz files in the UT client to your install directory (mine was installed in windows before I found the linux binaries) and rm the UnrealTournament.ini file. Works like a charm.
In the letter, the DVD CCA claims that they are a not-for-profit entity, but practically in the same breath, they mention that they are the sole licensing party of the encryption. Does that mean that they're giving away licenses dirt cheap?
Here's my "letter to the editor" to the Columbus Dispatch:
I was disappointed with Ray Malone's 12/25 letter to the editor. Speaking as a hacker and security enthusiast of 17 years, allow me to educate Mr. Malone on hacking and open source.
First of all, viruses have nothing at all to do with hacking. Virus writers are not hackers in any sense of the word, they're merely vandals. But semantics aside, virus scanners that look for virus "fingerprints" can't be fooled by making the virus appear to be something else. The virus' fingerprint still exists in the code. At any rate, Mr. Malone is discussing individual programs here and not the operating system, which is the part that would be open source.
Mr. Malone goes on to say, "So with the Windows source code, the hacker could write a program that on June 1, 2001, swaps all bank balances." Yes, if the hacker had a database full of bank balances to work with in the first place, I suppose. And his modified source would only run on his system and any other system whose owner was duped into installing it. Other systems wouldn't be affected.
The real fun begins with this gem from Mr. Malone: "Every programmer I have ever met has always left himself a back door into every system he writes." I find this an extremely interesting perspective, considering that every single programmer I know does NOT leave a back door in ANY code. Given that Mr. Malone works for MBS Software (according to his letter), I take his words to mean that MBS products contain security holes by way of programmed "back doors," and I will accordingly caution consumers not to purchase anything from MBS until such time as they secure their software.
Mr. Malone then warns "Microsoft bashers" to beware, lest they get what they wished for. I don't know about him, but I've been wishing for stable, secure products for years, and Microsoft has yet to deliver. I am fortunate that the open source movement--pioneered by such products as the 32-bit multitasking, multithreaded, stable-as-a-rock, open source operating system known as Linux--is making such a large impact on the computer industry. Otherwise, we'd have 10 more years of Microsoft "innovation" to look forward to.
Hell, it's been a long time since I've bought a new CD anyway. AFAIK, neither the industry nor the artist (who gets shafted by the industry) makes money when someone buys a used CD. Support your local used CD place. secondspin has some nice deals.:)
I just fired this off to badbeat@riaa.com (the antipiracy division of RIAA):
The recent lawsuit against the makers of Napster shows RIAA's arrogance. If you're going to go after someone for presenting a medium in which copyrighted music *might* be illegally copied, why not sue Sony for the MiniDisc? After all, the MiniDisc is a medium in which people can very easily make illegal copies of copyrighted music.
But no, Sony is a member of the RIAA, and they have the money and power to have such a frivolous and spiteful suit dropped immediately. You'd better stick to going after the little guys who can't afford to defend themselves.
The fact is, Napster is a a useful tool for sharing non-copyrighted music (in case you don't know what that is, it's music that artists release to the public domain without lining your greedy pockets). As more and more artists begin to sell their music directly to the public via pure digital media, your organization will die. I for one will enjoy the show.
Incidentally, I notice that you only have a few quotes from actual artists (not managers or agents, but the musicians themselves). Why do you suppose that is? Could they be as disgusted with your outdated business model and gouging as the general public is? Where are the quotes from internet-savvy artists like the Beastie Boys and Primus?
Perhaps this will be moderated down as flamebait. In any case, as someone hinted at earlier, is the RIAA going to file suit against sony for making walkmans and minidisc players, with which people listen to pirated music all the time? Or are they going to stick to suing the small startups who don't have the revenue to fight back?
It's because of this and other RIAA arrogance and stupidity that I'm going to start using napster. I'm also going to start burning CDs full of MP3s (650M could hold about 10 full albums) and sharing them with others just to spite these petty scumbags. Suck on that, RIAA.
You seem to be saying that we can either buy the CDs through mp3.com or not at all, and that if the choice is "not at all" then the artist makes nothing anyway. But there's another choice: contact the artist directly and buy the CD. Then he or she gets all the profit from the work.
I personally don't care which OS runs faster. Linux suits me just fine and I don't have to reboot it every day to prevent it from crashing, like I do with NT. And it's not like I'm ever going to take a Mindcraft benchmark seriously after the last M$-funded fiasco anyway. If they want people to care about the results, perhaps they should let an independant company run the tests.
In the previous password poll on slashdot I revealsed that I 'leet my passwords (password -> p4ssw0rd). This is hard to crack and easy to remember. The only thing left now, is to associate all the many passwords with the accounts they belong to. Unfortunately I do this by simply making passwords from services they are associated with (e.g., randomportal.com -> r4nd0mp0rt4l). I guess that's a weak link in my scheme...although the only way to break it would be to actually know my scheme...which I guess I've just given to every slashdotter:\
What is "hooters.jpg," and why is it in your home directory?
Seriously, though, this is not a secure system at all. Several password cracking programs have a switch that will try "L337" combinations of dictionary words.
AntiOnline was asked by the FBI to help investigate a group called "HFG" which broke into the New York Times' Website.
Then you say:
The FBI doesn't talk to anyone about who they are/have investigated.
Well, does the FBI talk to anyone about who they are investigating or not? Could it be that you contacted them and not the other way around?
Brian Martin has attempted to do anything and everything he can to discredit myself and AntiOnline. Wonder why? Is it because I'm an evil menace to society that threatens the very existence of the internet and all that is good? I wouldsubmit to you that Brian Martin's motivations are far more geared towards protecting his own ass, than they are geared towards protecting society's ass.
At the risk of sounding like I'm name-dropping, John, I've known Brian for around 6 or 7 years now, on a personal (i.e., nightclubs, parties, hanging out) level as well as a professional (i.e., attrition and his zine) one. As such, I consider him a friend and I can guarantee you that he is, in fact, interested in the security community. He is attempting to discredit you and AO (and believe me, a page or two on a security site is not "going out of his way") because you are precisely what the security community does not need: a fake.
Slashdot Mirror
-Legion
DVDs: Hackers are mass producing ways to view their own movies, and we don't like it
by GREEDO VALENTI
A case is currently before a federal court in New York that has to be of interest to anyone who believes in the right to trample consumers. The case involves the efforts of producers of films to stop three Web sites from distributing a program that allows computer users to view encrypted digital video discs they've bought.
Why should this concern corporations? The answer is simple: if you cannot use that which you own, you own nothing. If Web sites are allowed to pass along computer "keys" that disarm "protections" designed to shaft consumers, then all corporate blood money is put in jeopardy.
Every DVD is coded with encryption software to line the movie industry's pockets by keeping consumers from using their products as they wish. The protection of our image is even more critical in a digital world because the one-millionth copy of a digital film is as pristine and pure as the original, which has nothing to do with the software in question, but we're hoping you don't realize that. The program legally breaks the encryption, leaving the valuable product easy for the consumer to use and depriving us of licensing fees for other uses.
In 1998, Congress passed and the president signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which expressly made it illegal to traffic in "any technology, product, service, device, component or part thereof that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner," which again has nothing to do with the primary purpose of the DeCSS software, but you're gullible enough to believe it, right? Wordy prose indeed, but what the Web sites named in our claim have done isn't exactly what the law forbids. They have circumvented copyright protection legally, but without our authorization, and we hate to see consumers get their money's worth. If one visits the sites in question, one will see enticements to "use your property in linux." Pretty blatant stuff.
[etc...you get the point]
Greedo Valenti is President and Chief Whore of the Biting the Hand that Feeds Us Assn. of America.
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles "Bending Over and Spreading Our Cheeks for Corporate America" Times
-Legion
Anything at all by Ray Bradbury. The man is the greatest short-story writer of our time, and any of his works are suitable for any age of reader (what a bargain, eh?).
Piers Anthony. While I can't stand his writing anymore--he's getting lazy in what should be his prime writing years--his older stuff is great for younger readers. Recommendations: Macroscope, the Incarnations of Immortality series, the Tarot series, Orn, Omnivore and Ox, the first few books of the Phaze series, Dead Morn (co-written with Roberto something and highly recommended), and of course younger readers seem to love his long-running Xanth fantasy series, although the first three are definitely aimed at an older audience. There are tons of old Anthony books that I'm forgetting here, but go look him up and choose anything written before, say, 1993. :)
Stephen Baxter. Anything. This man is an SF god.
And the obligatory SF cadre in the order I think of them: Asimov, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell, Fred Saberhagen, the Wild Cards series of books edited by George R.R. Martin (and written by several different authors per book) for when she's a bit older, Harry Harrison, Greg Bear. Hope that gives you a decent start.
-Legion
-Legion
[*duck*]
-Legion
Mine has a homemade "Linux inside" parody slapped over the Intel logo. :)
-Legion
-Legion
-Legion
YO!
Do you have the mad skillz to break your enemy's NT box like a cheap toy? Can you use someone else's program to wreak havoc? Do you know how to type in 31337-5p34K? Apply today, because the U.5. R00|z, b0Y33!@#$
Uncle Sam wants YOU...to ping -s 65536
-Legion
-Legion
-Legion
We're still waiting for California to rollover to see if the power grid will be affected. If it is, we'll jus
-Legion
-Legion
-Legion
I was disappointed with Ray Malone's 12/25 letter to the editor. Speaking as a hacker and security enthusiast of 17 years, allow me to educate Mr. Malone on hacking and open source.
First of all, viruses have nothing at all to do with hacking. Virus writers are not hackers in any sense of the word, they're merely vandals. But semantics aside, virus scanners that look for virus "fingerprints" can't be fooled by making the virus appear to be something else. The virus' fingerprint still exists in the code. At any rate, Mr. Malone is discussing individual programs here and not the operating system, which is the part that would be open source.
Mr. Malone goes on to say, "So with the Windows source code, the hacker could write a program that on June 1, 2001, swaps all bank balances." Yes, if the hacker had a database full of bank balances to work with in the first place, I suppose. And his modified source would only run on his system and any other system whose owner was duped into installing it. Other systems wouldn't be affected.
The real fun begins with this gem from Mr. Malone: "Every programmer I have ever met has always left himself a back door into every system he writes." I find this an extremely interesting perspective, considering that every single programmer I know does NOT leave a back door in ANY code. Given that Mr. Malone works for MBS Software (according to his letter), I take his words to mean that MBS products contain security holes by way of programmed "back doors," and I will accordingly caution consumers not to purchase anything from MBS until such time as they secure their software.
Mr. Malone then warns "Microsoft bashers" to beware, lest they get what they wished for. I don't know about him, but I've been wishing for stable, secure products for years, and Microsoft has yet to deliver. I am fortunate that the open source movement--pioneered by such products as the 32-bit multitasking, multithreaded, stable-as-a-rock, open source operating system known as Linux--is making such a large impact on the computer industry. Otherwise, we'd have 10 more years of Microsoft "innovation" to look forward to.
-Legion
The recent lawsuit against the makers of Napster shows RIAA's arrogance. If you're going to go after someone for presenting a medium in which copyrighted music *might* be illegally copied, why not sue Sony for the MiniDisc? After all, the MiniDisc is a medium in which people can very easily make illegal copies of copyrighted music.
But no, Sony is a member of the RIAA, and they have the money and power to have such a frivolous and spiteful suit dropped immediately. You'd better stick to going after the little guys who can't afford to defend themselves.
The fact is, Napster is a a useful tool for sharing non-copyrighted music (in case you don't know what that is, it's music that artists release to the public domain without lining your greedy pockets). As more and more artists begin to sell their music directly to the public via pure digital media, your organization will die. I for one will enjoy the show.
Incidentally, I notice that you only have a few quotes from actual artists (not managers or agents, but the musicians themselves). Why do you suppose that is? Could they be as disgusted with your outdated business model and gouging as the general public is? Where are the quotes from internet-savvy artists like the Beastie Boys and Primus?
Cc: www.slashdot.org
-Legion
It's because of this and other RIAA arrogance and stupidity that I'm going to start using napster. I'm also going to start burning CDs full of MP3s (650M could hold about 10 full albums) and sharing them with others just to spite these petty scumbags. Suck on that, RIAA.
-Legion
-Legion
-Legion
-Legion
What is "hooters.jpg," and why is it in your home directory?
Seriously, though, this is not a secure system at all. Several password cracking programs have a switch that will try "L337" combinations of dictionary words.
-Legion
-Legion
Then you say:
Well, does the FBI talk to anyone about who they are investigating or not? Could it be that you contacted them and not the other way around?
At the risk of sounding like I'm name-dropping, John, I've known Brian for around 6 or 7 years now, on a personal (i.e., nightclubs, parties, hanging out) level as well as a professional (i.e., attrition and his zine) one. As such, I consider him a friend and I can guarantee you that he is, in fact, interested in the security community. He is attempting to discredit you and AO (and believe me, a page or two on a security site is not "going out of his way") because you are precisely what the security community does not need: a fake.
-Legion