In the first major dump they seemed to be more interested in page count than content; I believe the media outlets were left to do the redactions.
Media outlets were asked to assist prior to the release, but Wikileaks staff did perform quite a bit of redaction. After the release, the media outlets warned that there was still redacting left to be done.
Why all the concern for publishers rather than concern for authors? Are you sure that publishing companies are the only possible way for authors to get paid for their work?
Most authors never see enough income from book sales to actually live on. They almost always have some other job.
That aside, who says that there are not other ways to pay authors? Why build up an entire technological system that monitors and restricts people, just because we assume that there is no other way to compensate authors for their work?
I don't really know, perhaps someone can explain better, but I just get this bad feeling the way they are going about this.
Well, here is the situation we have right now: the government labels a document classified, and we are expected to assume that it would be dangerous for anyone without clearance to read the document. After all, we are at war, and if the enemy were to learn about our planned troop movements, it would result in many dead American soldiers.
Great, in theory, and it makes sense -- the military has always needed to keep certain things secret during times of war. Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices.
The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago. Wikileaks exists to fight back and show people what the government (and other powerful organizations) does not want them to know.
Sure, Wikileaks has some responsibility for ensuring that civilians are not harmed in the process, and they try to redact the leaks. They even asked for government help in redacting the leaks. In the end, though, Wikileaks is run by volunteers, and the government is not willing to help them, so yes, some civilians are harmed. That is unfortunate, but it is not Wikileaks' fault -- Wikileaks is not responsible for the war, and Wikileaks is not responsible for the government misclassifying documents to the point of becoming untrustworthy.
I would prefer if we could hold protests where they would actually make a difference. What is more effective, a protest against Wall Street investment practices that takes place in Union Square Park (which is 2 miles from the financial district) or a protest that actually takes place on Wall Street?
Yes, the government has an obligation to stop protests from turning into uncontrolled riots. That should mean that the protesters tell the government when and where they will hold their rally, and the police show up to prevent rioting. It should not mean that the government gets to tell the citizens when, where, and for how long a rally may be held.
Seriously, why limit the students to iPads? When did the school system suddenly become a venue for creating lock-in where it doesn't need to exist? And with all the DRM on iPads, I really do not want to see textbooks on that platform -- textbook publishers pull all sorts of evil tactics already, why give them even more options for trampling on students?
The SSHv1 attack was most certainly practical. Basically, SSHv1 essentially sent a packet for each keystroke, so while a user was entering their password, you could time the delay between packets, which is correlated with the letters being typed (so you could greatly reduce the search space and mount a practical attack). This is why using SSHv1 is a very bad idea, at least if you log in using passwords.
You are assuming that SSH is secure; I know of at least one attack on SSHv1, and it is likely that there are other attacks on SSHv2 (and yet-undiscovered attacks).
Perhaps the ultimate goal of these lawsuits is not to actually recoup losses or find new modes of profit, but rather to kill any system in which commoners are not reliant on some corporation to provide service for them. You know, scare people away from P2P and toward service providers like Rapidshare, scare municipalities away from providing Internet access and toward favorable deals for broadband providers. In the end, everyone except for the People will win; the copyright holders can go back to arguing with other companies about licensing fees, rather than worrying that millions upon millions of people will stop relying on them, and they can open new deals with various service providers instead of having to try to work with municipal governments (i.e. which may actually care about the interests of their citizens).
The GPL is merely one method of implementing libre software. RMS has noted that there are other methods, such as government run code escrows which automatically release code to the public after a certain amount of time (assuming the absence of a copyright system -- so anyone who releases software would be legally obligated to submit their code to the escrow or to make it available to the public with their own equipment).
It is very difficult to trust porn sites -- pornography is one of the most common vectors for credit card fraud. Additionally, some people may not want pornography showing up on their credit card statement (i.e. because of other people who live in their house), and we have not yet implemented an anonymous digital cash system.
Hm, maybe we should stop sending all of the manufacturing jobs overseas, and return to economic policies based on producing real goods. Just saying, if our economy is based on intangible "goods," we are in a pretty bad situation.
To be fair, there is no evidence that Northrop is doing worse than anyone else would have done. We are talking about an enormously complex IT infrastructure here (or so I assume, since it is a government network), and this is not exactly a uniquely bad failure. A week may seem extreme, but I have seen smaller scale systems go down for that long.
I am not an apologist for Northrop, I am just saying that this is not exactly one-of-a-kind incompetence.
When enforcing the law creates an undue burden on society -- tax dollars are not enough, private industries dollars are not enough, and people continue to break the law anyway -- perhaps it is time to ask, "Does this law even make sense?"
Oh, wait, the copyright lobby -- I forgot that their interests trump everything, even logic.
What is amazing is that turning a profit that is greater than what most people make in their entire lifetime is considered "relatively poor performance." The fact that those other movies turned even greater profits means that they did well too, not that this one did poorly.
Look...I understand that piracy is wrong, and if something can be legally obtained it should be.
Basing a moral argument on what the law says is probably not the best strategy, especially considering that the relevant law in this case constantly changes (usually to subvert the interests of commoners and to favor the interests of corporations).
I seriously doubt many people genuinely used their PS3 for Linux
Funny, I seem to recall that from the start, the majority of PS3 owners were running GNU/Linux on their PS3s. I also seem to recall Sony dropping that capability in the new PS3 models to try and cut their losses. Maybe I need to get my memory checked though.
The Internet is a communications tool, not some global meeting place. Treating it any differently is just asking for trouble. If a US citizen publishes something using computers in the US that is not legal to publish in the UK, what difference does it make if the Internet was involved? Jurisdiction does not change just because a computer was involved.
Hm, software vendors put enormous effort into preventing attacks over the Internet. Did anyone really think that virus writers were not going to find new attack vectors?
Usefulness to the user has nothing to do with this. This is about Apple gaining control over its users and their computers, and deciding what can or cannot be installed. It is plenty useful for Apple to do this.
Kill it? Of course not, nobody is claiming Apple would kill Mac OS X.
On the other hand, they might try a tactic of only supporting Mac OS X on their most expensive workstations, and shipping lower end computers with only iOS.
Clearly, you never used Windows 3.1. "File manager" and "Program Manager" were the programs you would use to interact with your system in Windows 3.1 (actually, last I checked, Program Manager still existed in Windows XP, and probably still in Vista and Windows 7).
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In the first major dump they seemed to be more interested in page count than content; I believe the media outlets were left to do the redactions.
Media outlets were asked to assist prior to the release, but Wikileaks staff did perform quite a bit of redaction. After the release, the media outlets warned that there was still redacting left to be done.
Why all the concern for publishers rather than concern for authors? Are you sure that publishing companies are the only possible way for authors to get paid for their work?
authors need book sales to get paid
Most authors never see enough income from book sales to actually live on. They almost always have some other job.
That aside, who says that there are not other ways to pay authors? Why build up an entire technological system that monitors and restricts people, just because we assume that there is no other way to compensate authors for their work?
How would that law be enforced? If you cannot read the documents, how do you know whether or not they have been overclassified?
I don't really know, perhaps someone can explain better, but I just get this bad feeling the way they are going about this.
Well, here is the situation we have right now: the government labels a document classified, and we are expected to assume that it would be dangerous for anyone without clearance to read the document. After all, we are at war, and if the enemy were to learn about our planned troop movements, it would result in many dead American soldiers.
Great, in theory, and it makes sense -- the military has always needed to keep certain things secret during times of war. Unfortunately, the military also has a habit of classifying documents inappropriately. An old video of an attack that left two reporters dead? Reports about the numbers of casualties? We live in a democracy, and we need to know what is happening in order to make democratic choices. The inappropriate classification of documents is the reason Wikileaks does what it does. The government can only lie about the reasons for classifying documents so long before the people stop trusting the government, and we crossed that line a long time ago. Wikileaks exists to fight back and show people what the government (and other powerful organizations) does not want them to know. Sure, Wikileaks has some responsibility for ensuring that civilians are not harmed in the process, and they try to redact the leaks. They even asked for government help in redacting the leaks. In the end, though, Wikileaks is run by volunteers, and the government is not willing to help them, so yes, some civilians are harmed. That is unfortunate, but it is not Wikileaks' fault -- Wikileaks is not responsible for the war, and Wikileaks is not responsible for the government misclassifying documents to the point of becoming untrustworthy.
I would prefer if we could hold protests where they would actually make a difference. What is more effective, a protest against Wall Street investment practices that takes place in Union Square Park (which is 2 miles from the financial district) or a protest that actually takes place on Wall Street?
Yes, the government has an obligation to stop protests from turning into uncontrolled riots. That should mean that the protesters tell the government when and where they will hold their rally, and the police show up to prevent rioting. It should not mean that the government gets to tell the citizens when, where, and for how long a rally may be held.
+1 insightful
Seriously, why limit the students to iPads? When did the school system suddenly become a venue for creating lock-in where it doesn't need to exist? And with all the DRM on iPads, I really do not want to see textbooks on that platform -- textbook publishers pull all sorts of evil tactics already, why give them even more options for trampling on students?
The SSHv1 attack was most certainly practical. Basically, SSHv1 essentially sent a packet for each keystroke, so while a user was entering their password, you could time the delay between packets, which is correlated with the letters being typed (so you could greatly reduce the search space and mount a practical attack). This is why using SSHv1 is a very bad idea, at least if you log in using passwords.
You are assuming that SSH is secure; I know of at least one attack on SSHv1, and it is likely that there are other attacks on SSHv2 (and yet-undiscovered attacks).
Perhaps the ultimate goal of these lawsuits is not to actually recoup losses or find new modes of profit, but rather to kill any system in which commoners are not reliant on some corporation to provide service for them. You know, scare people away from P2P and toward service providers like Rapidshare, scare municipalities away from providing Internet access and toward favorable deals for broadband providers. In the end, everyone except for the People will win; the copyright holders can go back to arguing with other companies about licensing fees, rather than worrying that millions upon millions of people will stop relying on them, and they can open new deals with various service providers instead of having to try to work with municipal governments (i.e. which may actually care about the interests of their citizens).
Here I was, thinking that all those expenses were rolled into the production costs -- which we subtracted from the revenue to compute the profit.
To be fair, there is no evidence that Northrop is doing worse than anyone else would have done. We are talking about an enormously complex IT infrastructure here (or so I assume, since it is a government network), and this is not exactly a uniquely bad failure. A week may seem extreme, but I have seen smaller scale systems go down for that long.
I am not an apologist for Northrop, I am just saying that this is not exactly one-of-a-kind incompetence.
When enforcing the law creates an undue burden on society -- tax dollars are not enough, private industries dollars are not enough, and people continue to break the law anyway -- perhaps it is time to ask, "Does this law even make sense?"
Oh, wait, the copyright lobby -- I forgot that their interests trump everything, even logic.
$2900 sounds reasonable to you? Last I checked, that was over 100 times the cost of a DVD.
What is amazing is that turning a profit that is greater than what most people make in their entire lifetime is considered "relatively poor performance." The fact that those other movies turned even greater profits means that they did well too, not that this one did poorly.
Talk about being "out of touch."
Look...I understand that piracy is wrong, and if something can be legally obtained it should be.
Basing a moral argument on what the law says is probably not the best strategy, especially considering that the relevant law in this case constantly changes (usually to subvert the interests of commoners and to favor the interests of corporations).
Which profit would you be referring too? Movies rarely turn profits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
I seriously doubt many people genuinely used their PS3 for Linux
Funny, I seem to recall that from the start, the majority of PS3 owners were running GNU/Linux on their PS3s. I also seem to recall Sony dropping that capability in the new PS3 models to try and cut their losses. Maybe I need to get my memory checked though.
Is this really news? I thought everyone knew this already.
The Internet is a communications tool, not some global meeting place. Treating it any differently is just asking for trouble. If a US citizen publishes something using computers in the US that is not legal to publish in the UK, what difference does it make if the Internet was involved? Jurisdiction does not change just because a computer was involved.
Hm, software vendors put enormous effort into preventing attacks over the Internet. Did anyone really think that virus writers were not going to find new attack vectors?
Usefulness to the user has nothing to do with this. This is about Apple gaining control over its users and their computers, and deciding what can or cannot be installed. It is plenty useful for Apple to do this.
Kill it? Of course not, nobody is claiming Apple would kill Mac OS X.
On the other hand, they might try a tactic of only supporting Mac OS X on their most expensive workstations, and shipping lower end computers with only iOS.
Clearly, you never used Windows 3.1. "File manager" and "Program Manager" were the programs you would use to interact with your system in Windows 3.1 (actually, last I checked, Program Manager still existed in Windows XP, and probably still in Vista and Windows 7).