Definitely. I frequently think of that quote when I see the trend towards illegalizing everything. How's this for an idea: before a Congressman can introduce a new bill, he must recite the existing laws of the US from memory. If even the lawmakers don't know the laws, how can we be expected to obey them?
Re:Freenet - dodging the issue
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Basically you are offering a variation of the "can't stop our superior technology argument." If Freenet catches on and the PTB want to kill it, I think they will. They would only have to do one of the following, but they will probably do all to be sure.
Arrest and imprison anyone who offers Freenet software for download, as it's a circumvention device under the DMCA.
Stop all inbound TCP connections to consumer computers. Stop all UDP to/from consumer computers except for UDP53 to the ISP's nameserver.
Require a license, complete with an examination and posted bond, to run any kind of internet server. This would also help get poorly-admined boxes off the net. I can verify that this mechanism is quite effective in the construction industry. Every construction contractor, whether specializing in glass, electrical, fire alarms, ceilings, or other trade, must have a responsible individual who passed his license examination, and must post a bond. The responsible individual tends to shoot down sleazy ideas like building something below code to save money. He knows from his license exam that he faces license suspension/revocation, which effectively kills his company and can follow him to future companies.
Apply Civil Asset Forfeiture to computers used in Freenet. An enforcement firm could connect to Freenet, identify at least one node, and subpoena the customer info from the ISP. A special police task force could drive around following a list and confiscating computers. The operation would more than pay for itself. Remember, no court proceeding is needed for CAF. The officer just has to believe that the asset was used in the commission of a crime.
Anyhow, as the article author points out, the way to protect Freenet from all that is to get the general public on our side. Simply flaunting our allegedly superior technology invites the techno-illiterates to haul out the big guns.
Re:He Who Controls The Pipes...
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
But I disagree that geeks should stop fighting "rules" and restrictive legislation out of fear of causing a clamp-down effect.
That's not what the article's saying. It's saying that geeks should not express arrogance, hubris, and a belief that we will technologically route around any restrictions. The more we taunt the government with "can't catch me!" the more laws and countermeasures they will bring to bear. The way to fight the internet crushers is to articulate our viewpoint to the public and to the press, to show that our perspective is a reasonable one that most people can understand, and to advocate a clear, logical path forward that makes more sense to the average person than the current path.
I agree with you that the ability to do this is quite rare.
Re:Explain this one to me...
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
Nope. You could just come up with a protocol that tunneled atop existing connections (opened from the ISP customer to some central server that brokers the handshakes), used UDP, or whatever.
Sounds like an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA. You are proposing to set up a commercial server (remember, consumer bandwidth won't help) with the explicit purpose of helping people violate the law. It could work if it's not widely publicized. But p2p only became great when it was widely publicized. I think that after the first operator of such a server is sentenced to ten years in prison, the others will be off the net pretty fast. As for UDP, why would the ISP of the future allow UDP packets? The only 'legitimate' use for UDP will be a client querying his ISP's nameserver.
You're right about the morphability of information - if I can transmit X, I can transmit Y. But if I can only receive, not transmit, then this property is of no use to me.
Re:Explain this one to me...
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
I'd like to think that economics would rear its head at this point and supply of server allowed connections would appear to fit the demand gap.
Imagine a town that has two broadband options: DSL from SBC (you know they're planning to force pppoe, right?) and a cable company. SBC filters all inbound connections. After initial grumbling from a tiny minority of users, it becomes apparent that their support costs and bandwidth costs have gone down. They're making money. The cable company sees this and decides to follow suit. At this point the ten geeks in town move to the one remaining dialup ISP. They proudly flaunt their ability to share mp3's at 56k.
I think you are too optimistic, and underestimate your opponents.
...at which point Freenet will start tunneling... How about consumer ISP's don't allow inbound TCP connections? End of code red, end of zombie DOS attacks, end of p2p. And only 0.01% of users will even understand what's happening, much less complain. Look at the cable ISP's that filtered inbound port 80 in the wake of Code Red. Mostly they didn't even bother telling their tech support!
why would ISPs do this? Because the government tells them to. ISPs already remove alleged copyright-infringing material without due process, because the DMCA says they must do this to avoid liability. All we need is an amendment to the DMCA listing the technical countermeasures that ISP's must take. And it's easy, much easier and cheaper than the content-policing ISP's are currently being forced to undertake.
MP3s and porn are far and away the most popular uses for the Internet... Cutting off p2p only hurts the ISP if the consumer has a choice. If all ISPs block p2p, consumers have no incentive to hop. And I don't think many people will give up internet access altogether because they can't have p2p. And the reduction in bandwidth might make ISP's more profitable.
Re:The Internet Will Never Be Successfully Regulat
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
The article "addressed" it in a most unsatisfactory way.
Yes. Because the off-shore company cited in the article is apparently still operating, despite their alleged vulerability. However I still agree with the author that national sovereignty is becoming a less effective shield against corporate interests.
Many people here hope that a powerful antagonistic country like China could house data havens. The missing fact here is that if China did that, they'd be using the data havens as bargaining chips. So in a future negotiation with the US, China could give up the data havens in exchange for less pressure on their human rights record. Any country powerful enough to stand up to the US has its own agenda, which does not include freedom of information.
And all of this guerrilla networking will evaporate like breath on a mirror with the first few high-profile arrests and convictions. The government could prosecute under any number of laws, but the most straightforward prosecution would be under the DMCA, showing that the unauthorized network is a 'circumvention device'.
The government would target one or two of the most visible net-builders and the rest of us would scurry away with our tails between our legs.
You seem to be missing the point of the article, which is that network cleverness is not going to beat laws, police and prisons. If we want a free internet, we have to explain our beliefs to the press and to ordinary people. If we keep saying 'you can't stop us', they will stop us.
It's very difficult to detect low-power, tight beam microwave...
That was conventional wisdom until it was disclosed that the US was sniffing lots of Soviet point-to-point microwave via satellite in the '70s. What was possible in the '70s is probably much cheaper and easier now. And before you point out how bizarre it is to bring the full might of the military-industrial complex against some popular victimless crime, look at the war on drugs. Drug sniffing dogs? Heat scans of neighborhoods? It's like science fiction.
Re:Not only the net. THe article mentions CPRM als
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
suppose I rip music from an encripted CD, decrypt it, pass it to another process through a named pipe, encode it in another format, and write it to disk.
That would not be possible in the 'trusted hardware' regime, which is already being designed. Let's take it step by step:
suppose I rip music from an encripted CD This may or may not be possible, depending on the design of the trusted hardware. A conservative design would have the CD drive go into "safe mode" on encountering protected media. When in safe mode, the CD reader could output the data on a special dedicated connector that connects to the sound card and sends an encrypted stream. It could refuse to transmit protected information via the IDE/SCSI interface. But let's assume that they don't go this far, and that the encrypted data is available to the CPU.
...decrypt it... Here's the problem. Let's say there are several keys embedded in the DAC of your sound card. The stream is encrypted with one of those keys. How are you going to discover one of those keys to use it in software decryption? Remember, CSS was cracked because (first) they allowed software implementations (a mistake) and (second) there were fundamental flaws in the homemade cryptosystem. But let's imagine that the stream is encrypted with AES, using a session key encrypted with RSA. How are you ever going to decrypt this?
...pass it to another process... You can't. Sorry to belabor the point, but a correctly implemented trusted hardware solution will never trust software. The decrypted program material will never be visible to the bus, cpu or ram of the host computer.
The crux is, as you say, that the platform will interfere with many innocuous activities. Because from the IP owner's point of view, the only innocuous activity is playing the program material through a licensed, authorized, tamperproof output device.
As you can see, there's no need to outlaw open source. If the IP interests are kind enough to open their specs, we will be able to play their material on open source platforms. No harm done, because the computer will never have access to the cleartext material.
For the first time, I'm replying without reading the article. I can't get through to the server. I'm really responding to the general tenor of comments.
Everyone is blaming the media for not understanding computers. Are you making any effort to help them understand? I know it's popular to be cynical and claim that reporters are idiots/biased/bought, but in reality they are very busy and provide shallow coverage of many domains. Those who take the time to talk to reporters eventually get their ideas and viewpoint represented. Those who just sit there and chuck rotten vegetables will always be excluded.
We seem to be the only group that has not figured out how to communicate with reporters. Retired people, cops, farmers, insurance salesmen, teachers - all of these have taken the effort to establish communications with the press and make sure that their side of the story gets told.
So, if you give a damn, find out who the technology reporter is for your local paper and contact him. But first read some of his stuff so you understand what is and isn't interesting to him. See if you've got material for a story. If not, at least he might contact you for a quote on the next virus scare/whatever.
There's nothing magical about square waves. Lots of synthpop used a square-wave lead instrument in the 80s. All you're really saying is that if the CD has no dynamic range and is normalized to fill the number space, the player will output a relatively loud signal. And if the downstream electronics are adjusted on the expectation of a quieter signal, you could blow up speakers. If you want to maximize the power level in a digital recording, record white noise rather than square waves.
From California Labor Code:
232. No employer shall do any of the following: (a) Require, as a condition of employment, that any employee refrain from disclosing the amount of his or her wages. (b) Require any employee to sign a waiver or other document which
purports to deny the employee the right to disclose the amount of his or her wages. (c) Discharge, formally discipline, or otherwise discriminate
against, for job advancement, an employee who discloses the amount of
his or her wages.
Maybe your state has similar laws.
I think the idea of a ten year duty cycle on the thin clients is laughable. The screens and keyboards won't last that long.
The keyboard I use at home is the same one I bought with a 486 in 1992. The keyboard on which I'm now typing is an IBM 'clicky' made in May 1993. So I'm shy of ten years, but neither keyboard is showing signs of age. Likewise, I still have the 17" monitor I bought with that 486. I don't use it much because I have 21" monitors now. However, it works.
Anyway, even if the display/keyboard wear out, the thin client (less display/keyboard) has a better lifespan than the PC (less display/keybaord). But I agree that it's a moot point.
I don't have the complete answer, but some points:
Re StarOffice: Apparently City of Largo agrees with you, as they're using Open Office.
Re miscellaneous and legacy Windows apps: It's very feasible to concentrate these on one or more Citrix servers. The coolest thing is to load balance several identical Citrix servers and create a.ICA file that points to the load-balanced IP. That way when one of the servers crashes, the impact is minimized and users are still able to start application sessions while the sysadmins reboot/fix the machine. This setup works so nicely that I'd recommend it even if your desktops are 100% windows. However I'm not sure it's worth the work for 100 users. I've seen it deployed for 60,000+ users, and it rocked. Once you encapsulate these odd little applications on Citrix servers, they're available to Linux/Mac/Windows and the desktop options are much more open. I would not recommend serving Office/Outlook/IE via Citrix, however - it's a little too sluggish for primary application use.
Re Gnome/Ximian: I think KDE is more mature. However I have to wonder if a conventional window manager like WindowMaker wouldn't be a better choice. The conventional window managers are quite straightforward for a sysadmin to configure, and they're way past the core dump stage of development.
Re Outlook: Have you checked out Bynari's products? They seem to be nipping at Microsoft's heels with Unix-based Exchange-like servers and multi-platform clients.
Re ERP: This is a serious issue, as ERP is the heart of a company and the decisions you make now might lock you in for a long time. If it's already looking Windows-centric, you could be heading into long-term platform lockin that will outlast all the other software. I guess ERP breaks into three parts: client, server, and data store. The data store should be a real relational database - therefore you should be able to put it on Sun/Solaris or other solid platform. As long as you have the table definitions and ER diagram, you avert complete lockin. If you have to abandon the application server in the future, it will be painful but at least your data is in a usable format. I'm guessing it's too late in the process for you steer the selection towards a more cross-platform product. Sadly, in ERP Unix == expensive. Maybe Linux will change that, as vendors seem to price Linux apps like NT apps.
And yes, the NSA had no intention of allowing software DES out if they could help it.
I don't think NSA was trying to prevent anyone from using a software implementation. Rather, they deeply distrusted software implementations of crypto because they are subject to so many hidden compromises. If NIST had endorsed software implementations, banks and other high-profile customers might have adopted them as cheaper and more convenient than hardware. Then there would be a big scandal and loss of credibility when one of them was inevitably compromised, due probably to unforseen interaction between the program, operating environment and hardware.
The article implies that Aeron chairs are terribly expensive and contributed to the death of some companies. This is silly. According to the article,
Quokka had "hundreds" of Aerons.
Quokka burned through $200 million.
If we round "hundreds" up to 1000, we have $700,000 investment in chairs, or roughly 1/3 of 1% of $200 million. Two days of a programmer's salary cost more than his chair. Cubicles cost vastly more than chairs.
Many things contributed to the dot com failures. Expensive chairs did not.
You seem to see BNW and 1984 as utterly different books. I read them in the same year; perhaps that's why I see them as two sides of the same coin. I think many people do. I remember arguing with my father over which was more likely to come true. I backed BNW, because it continued the trend of dumb and happy consumers. My Dad favored 1984 because a) it's cheaper (who needs soma when you have rubber truncheons) and b)it's closer to the real and gritty texture of life, with all its malfunction and beauracracy.
Anyhow, people frequently use the expression 'brave new world' to refer to an alarmingly different regime under which they'd lose their rights and freedoms. Example:
Gene discovery: Brave new world has an ambiguous attitude towards genetic research.
So this ebook-peddler's use of the phrase seems unintentionally ironic.
The thing all you "everything should be free" people don't seem to understand is that it takes an investment to create something, people have to get a return on that investment in order to make the investment worthwhile.
And the thing you don't seem to understand is that the above argument is infintely applicable in both directions. In other words, it is an argument of the margin, a statement about how human behavior will change with a change in incentive. Therefore, it can be expressed as either:
Don't reduce the incentive, or the desired behavior will decrease. (What you're saying.) Or:
Increase the incentive, so the desired behavior will increase. (implied).
So let's declare all published authors and musicians exempt from taxes. That would be an increase in the incentive to produce creative works. Likewise, let's give them all free cars at taxpayer expense. If you deny these requests, it looks like you're just supporting the status quo without any real logic - how did you decide the that current level of incentive is the correct one?
We need more people helping little old ladies across the street. Let's offer a million dollar reward for doing this. It will be expensive, but it complies with your logic. To turn it around, if the reward were already established policy and I advocated repealing it, you'd point out that this reduction in incentive would lead to a reduction in the desired behavior (helping little old ladies across the street).
On another note, it is the investor's job to make his investment profitable, not mine. I suggest investing in things people are willing to buy, rather than investing first and then seeking legal protection to make your investment feasible.
My answer is that it serves you, and you alone, If cracking the ebook served only the cracker, it would not be a copyright infringement. Everyone has the right to copy copyrighted materials for personal use. More likely, the cracker would be looking to benefit the entire world by publishing the plain text of the book. This benefits everyone who can read and has internet access.
You steal from the author... I'm always curious about you folks who claim that copying data is stealing. If you're going to call it something totally irrelevant, why not rape? Say "you're raping the author". Or how about murder? If you have some logical case against copying things, you're just impairing it by calling copying theft. Secondly, the main beneficiary of book sales is generally the publisher, not the author. The author gets little or none of the price of a book. Agatha Christie is dead, so she won't get any.
...yes, they're a millionaire. Generally, authors are not millionaires. The median published author in the US gets a sub-poverty-level income from his writing. Typically people write for fame and to spread their ideas.
But they got those millions, because they earned it... This statement is not as simple as it sounds. Make the same assertion of a plantation owner in the slaveholding south. Did he "earn" his money? To a large extent he benefited from a peculiarity of contemporary law. Copyright law is fairly arbitrary. Let me illustrate with only one point - duration. Let's say that book X makes $1000 per year forever. If the copyright term is 10 years, the publisher makes $10,000. If the term is 20 years, the publisher makes $20,000. Which amount is actually 'earned'?
...you discourage the author from producing more of the same material... I want to discourage Christie from writing more books. I don't approve of dead people competing with the living. In general, though, I think that copying of ebooks will discourage future ebook publication rather than all publication. And that's a good thing.
Anyhow, in an internet context we get used to thinking: if it can be done, it will be done. Fretting about the moral issues has not turned out to be productive in evaluating security weaknesses.
The page you cite does not support your conclusion:
It is gaining ground, and one or
two recent dictionaries claim that it is now acceptable - the New
Oxford Dictionary of English, for example, says it is "widely accepted
in modern standard English". I wouldn't go so far myself.
When the typical agent turns on a computer, it displays not the multi-colored screen familiar to many--with its landscape of toolbars, boxes, brows
ers and icons--but a green-and-black screen that was obsolete a decade ago.
Poor agents, denied their touchy-feely GUI experience. Maybe they could paste a picture of a dancing paperclip to the terminal.
Why is their such a widespread belief among the pointy-haired that green screen terminals are 'obsolete' or 'inefficient'?
The article was talking about corporations that want to allow only specific IP addresses to join their VPN. Imagine that you set up a news server only for your friends. Your friends mail you their IP addresses and you tell your firewall to only accept NNTP connections from those addresses. Now one of your friends is on PPPoE. You notice that his address is within a certain range, so you allow that entire range. You've increased the risk of an unauthorized connection.
I agree with an earlier poster - SBC is looking to kill the 'value add' that competing ISP's offer and drag everyone down to their level. This will kill the other ISP's.
The huge question which I'd like to ask these regulators is, "How could you let the Bells sell end-user internet service? Wasn't it obvious that they would exploit their privileged position to sabotage competitors?"
Starting with the third, I agree with you that they wouldn't do it right. But lets look at who could benefit from this scheme, regardless of whether it's really secure:
Microsoft would have a good chance of locking out competing OS's from the new net. They could release a (deliberately crappy) compatibility layer, which will later break. They could sell MSBSD with closed-source kernel mods to speak the new protocol. Or they just slam the door immediately.
Content Owners could benefit if the new net incorporates anti-copying and content control mechanisms into its very fabric. For example, the net could slow p2p connections to a crawl, while allowing extra high bandwidth and priority for authorized streaming media.
Router Makers, as I mentioned, would enjoy a new demand that 'decomoditized' routers and helped to raise the price.
Law Enforcement would like a world in which each packet is provably linked to its author. Of all interests, they're most likely to carry weight with Congress.
Struggling ISP's would enjoy the ability to differentiate and make some profit by offering access to the 'new net' during the cutover period.
Verisign and ICANN would love to become the monopoly supplier of credentials. They have already proved to be effective lobbyists when they smell cash.
So, would MS do it? With the right alignment of interests, this could happen. And pointing out the flaws in the system won't help at all. It could even land you in jail, ala Sklyarov. The only thing that could scuttle such a plan, once it's under way, is lack of interest from the public. And that's a viable hope, because no matter how much marketing and propaganda are used, this plan doesn't really benefit Joe Sixpack at all.
I agree that it's mostly equivalent to not running things as root. But maybe it could provide a mandatory clue wrapper, no matter how clueless the programmers and admins. More importantly, the new scheme does not necessarily have to benefit anyone but Microsoft - it just has to appear to benefit.
As for leaving authentication/encryption to higher level protocols, the trend is in the opposite direction. First we got SSL, which became the de facto standard for application level encryption. Then many companies started using VPN's between remote offices. When I first saw this I thought it was stupid - why not just use ssh/scp? Then I started to appreciate the vast number of protocols used within a corporate network. Some are utterly insecure, while some offer flawed or illusory security. Instead of trying to get every vendor to secure every program (and still get it wrong) corporations prefer to secure with firewalls and VPNs, which puts the onus on security specialists.
If you read Bugtraq, there's a constant stream of exploits in software where security was an afterthought. I'm afraid that application-layer security is an unworkable idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Definitely. I frequently think of that quote when I see the trend towards illegalizing everything. How's this for an idea: before a Congressman can introduce a new bill, he must recite the existing laws of the US from memory. If even the lawmakers don't know the laws, how can we be expected to obey them?
- Arrest and imprison anyone who offers Freenet software for download, as it's a circumvention device under the DMCA.
- Stop all inbound TCP connections to consumer computers. Stop all UDP to/from consumer computers except for UDP53 to the ISP's nameserver.
- Require a license, complete with an examination and posted bond, to run any kind of internet server. This would also help get poorly-admined boxes off the net. I can verify that this mechanism is quite effective in the construction industry. Every construction contractor, whether specializing in glass, electrical, fire alarms, ceilings, or other trade, must have a responsible individual who passed his license examination, and must post a bond. The responsible individual tends to shoot down sleazy ideas like building something below code to save money. He knows from his license exam that he faces license suspension/revocation, which effectively kills his company and can follow him to future companies.
- Apply Civil Asset Forfeiture to computers used in Freenet. An enforcement firm could connect to Freenet, identify at least one node, and subpoena the customer info from the ISP. A special police task force could drive around following a list and confiscating computers. The operation would more than pay for itself. Remember, no court proceeding is needed for CAF. The officer just has to believe that the asset was used in the commission of a crime.
Anyhow, as the article author points out, the way to protect Freenet from all that is to get the general public on our side. Simply flaunting our allegedly superior technology invites the techno-illiterates to haul out the big guns.I agree with you that the ability to do this is quite rare.
You're right about the morphability of information - if I can transmit X, I can transmit Y. But if I can only receive, not transmit, then this property is of no use to me.
Yes. Because the off-shore company cited in the article is apparently still operating, despite their alleged vulerability. However I still agree with the author that national sovereignty is becoming a less effective shield against corporate interests.
Many people here hope that a powerful antagonistic country like China could house data havens. The missing fact here is that if China did that, they'd be using the data havens as bargaining chips. So in a future negotiation with the US, China could give up the data havens in exchange for less pressure on their human rights record. Any country powerful enough to stand up to the US has its own agenda, which does not include freedom of information.
The government would target one or two of the most visible net-builders and the rest of us would scurry away with our tails between our legs.
You seem to be missing the point of the article, which is that network cleverness is not going to beat laws, police and prisons. If we want a free internet, we have to explain our beliefs to the press and to ordinary people. If we keep saying 'you can't stop us', they will stop us.
That was conventional wisdom until it was disclosed that the US was sniffing lots of Soviet point-to-point microwave via satellite in the '70s. What was possible in the '70s is probably much cheaper and easier now. And before you point out how bizarre it is to bring the full might of the military-industrial complex against some popular victimless crime, look at the war on drugs. Drug sniffing dogs? Heat scans of neighborhoods? It's like science fiction.
The crux is, as you say, that the platform will interfere with many innocuous activities. Because from the IP owner's point of view, the only innocuous activity is playing the program material through a licensed, authorized, tamperproof output device.
As you can see, there's no need to outlaw open source. If the IP interests are kind enough to open their specs, we will be able to play their material on open source platforms. No harm done, because the computer will never have access to the cleartext material.
For the first time, I'm replying without reading the article. I can't get through to the server. I'm really responding to the general tenor of comments.
Everyone is blaming the media for not understanding computers. Are you making any effort to help them understand? I know it's popular to be cynical and claim that reporters are idiots/biased/bought, but in reality they are very busy and provide shallow coverage of many domains. Those who take the time to talk to reporters eventually get their ideas and viewpoint represented. Those who just sit there and chuck rotten vegetables will always be excluded.
We seem to be the only group that has not figured out how to communicate with reporters. Retired people, cops, farmers, insurance salesmen, teachers - all of these have taken the effort to establish communications with the press and make sure that their side of the story gets told.
So, if you give a damn, find out who the technology reporter is for your local paper and contact him. But first read some of his stuff so you understand what is and isn't interesting to him. See if you've got material for a story. If not, at least he might contact you for a quote on the next virus scare/whatever.
There's nothing magical about square waves. Lots of synthpop used a square-wave lead instrument in the 80s. All you're really saying is that if the CD has no dynamic range and is normalized to fill the number space, the player will output a relatively loud signal. And if the downstream electronics are adjusted on the expectation of a quieter signal, you could blow up speakers. If you want to maximize the power level in a digital recording, record white noise rather than square waves.
From California Labor Code: 232. No employer shall do any of the following:
(a) Require, as a condition of employment, that any employee
refrain from disclosing the amount of his or her wages.
(b) Require any employee to sign a waiver or other document which
purports to deny the employee the right to disclose the amount of his
or her wages.
(c) Discharge, formally discipline, or otherwise discriminate against, for job advancement, an employee who discloses the amount of his or her wages.
Maybe your state has similar laws.
Anyway, even if the display/keyboard wear out, the thin client (less display/keyboard) has a better lifespan than the PC (less display/keybaord). But I agree that it's a moot point.
- Quokka had "hundreds" of Aerons.
- Quokka burned through $200 million.
If we round "hundreds" up to 1000, we have $700,000 investment in chairs, or roughly 1/3 of 1% of $200 million. Two days of a programmer's salary cost more than his chair. Cubicles cost vastly more than chairs.Many things contributed to the dot com failures. Expensive chairs did not.
You seem to see BNW and 1984 as utterly different books. I read them in the same year; perhaps that's why I see them as two sides of the same coin. I think many people do. I remember arguing with my father over which was more likely to come true. I backed BNW, because it continued the trend of dumb and happy consumers. My Dad favored 1984 because a) it's cheaper (who needs soma when you have rubber truncheons) and b)it's closer to the real and gritty texture of life, with all its malfunction and beauracracy.
Anyhow, people frequently use the expression 'brave new world' to refer to an alarmingly different regime under which they'd lose their rights and freedoms. Example: Gene discovery: Brave new world has an ambiguous attitude towards genetic research.
So this ebook-peddler's use of the phrase seems unintentionally ironic.
- Don't reduce the incentive, or the desired behavior will decrease. (What you're saying.) Or:
- Increase the incentive, so the desired behavior will increase. (implied).
So let's declare all published authors and musicians exempt from taxes. That would be an increase in the incentive to produce creative works. Likewise, let's give them all free cars at taxpayer expense. If you deny these requests, it looks like you're just supporting the status quo without any real logic - how did you decide the that current level of incentive is the correct one?We need more people helping little old ladies across the street. Let's offer a million dollar reward for doing this. It will be expensive, but it complies with your logic. To turn it around, if the reward were already established policy and I advocated repealing it, you'd point out that this reduction in incentive would lead to a reduction in the desired behavior (helping little old ladies across the street).
On another note, it is the investor's job to make his investment profitable, not mine. I suggest investing in things people are willing to buy, rather than investing first and then seeking legal protection to make your investment feasible.
- My answer is that it serves you, and you alone, If cracking the ebook served only the cracker, it would not be a copyright infringement. Everyone has the right to copy copyrighted materials for personal use. More likely, the cracker would be looking to benefit the entire world by publishing the plain text of the book. This benefits everyone who can read and has internet access.
- You steal from the author... I'm always curious about you folks who claim that copying data is stealing. If you're going to call it something totally irrelevant, why not rape? Say "you're raping the author". Or how about murder? If you have some logical case against copying things, you're just impairing it by calling copying theft. Secondly, the main beneficiary of book sales is generally the publisher, not the author. The author gets little or none of the price of a book. Agatha Christie is dead, so she won't get any.
...yes, they're a millionaire. Generally, authors are not millionaires. The median published author in the US gets a sub-poverty-level income from his writing. Typically people write for fame and to spread their ideas.- But they got those millions, because they earned it... This statement is not as simple as it sounds. Make the same assertion of a plantation owner in the slaveholding south. Did he "earn" his money? To a large extent he benefited from a peculiarity of contemporary law. Copyright law is fairly arbitrary. Let me illustrate with only one point - duration. Let's say that book X makes $1000 per year forever. If the copyright term is 10 years, the publisher makes $10,000. If the term is 20 years, the publisher makes $20,000. Which amount is actually 'earned'?
...you discourage the author from producing more of the same material... I want to discourage Christie from writing more books. I don't approve of dead people competing with the living. In general, though, I think that copying of ebooks will discourage future ebook publication rather than all publication. And that's a good thing.
Anyhow, in an internet context we get used to thinking: if it can be done, it will be done. Fretting about the moral issues has not turned out to be productive in evaluating security weaknesses.Gaining ground != perfectly correct.
Poor agents, denied their touchy-feely GUI experience. Maybe they could paste a picture of a dancing paperclip to the terminal.
Why is their such a widespread belief among the pointy-haired that green screen terminals are 'obsolete' or 'inefficient'?
The article was talking about corporations that want to allow only specific IP addresses to join their VPN. Imagine that you set up a news server only for your friends. Your friends mail you their IP addresses and you tell your firewall to only accept NNTP connections from those addresses. Now one of your friends is on PPPoE. You notice that his address is within a certain range, so you allow that entire range. You've increased the risk of an unauthorized connection.
I agree with an earlier poster - SBC is looking to kill the 'value add' that competing ISP's offer and drag everyone down to their level. This will kill the other ISP's.
The huge question which I'd like to ask these regulators is, "How could you let the Bells sell end-user internet service? Wasn't it obvious that they would exploit their privileged position to sabotage competitors?"
- Would MS do it?
- Who would it benefit?
- Would MS do it right?
Starting with the third, I agree with you that they wouldn't do it right. But lets look at who could benefit from this scheme, regardless of whether it's really secure:- Microsoft would have a good chance of locking out competing OS's from the new net. They could release a (deliberately crappy) compatibility layer, which will later break. They could sell MSBSD with closed-source kernel mods to speak the new protocol. Or they just slam the door immediately.
- Content Owners could benefit if the new net incorporates anti-copying and content control mechanisms into its very fabric. For example, the net could slow p2p connections to a crawl, while allowing extra high bandwidth and priority for authorized streaming media.
- Router Makers, as I mentioned, would enjoy a new demand that 'decomoditized' routers and helped to raise the price.
- Law Enforcement would like a world in which each packet is provably linked to its author. Of all interests, they're most likely to carry weight with Congress.
- Struggling ISP's would enjoy the ability to differentiate and make some profit by offering access to the 'new net' during the cutover period.
- Verisign and ICANN would love to become the monopoly supplier of credentials. They have already proved to be effective lobbyists when they smell cash.
So, would MS do it? With the right alignment of interests, this could happen. And pointing out the flaws in the system won't help at all. It could even land you in jail, ala Sklyarov. The only thing that could scuttle such a plan, once it's under way, is lack of interest from the public. And that's a viable hope, because no matter how much marketing and propaganda are used, this plan doesn't really benefit Joe Sixpack at all.I agree that it's mostly equivalent to not running things as root. But maybe it could provide a mandatory clue wrapper, no matter how clueless the programmers and admins. More importantly, the new scheme does not necessarily have to benefit anyone but Microsoft - it just has to appear to benefit.
As for leaving authentication/encryption to higher level protocols, the trend is in the opposite direction. First we got SSL, which became the de facto standard for application level encryption. Then many companies started using VPN's between remote offices. When I first saw this I thought it was stupid - why not just use ssh/scp? Then I started to appreciate the vast number of protocols used within a corporate network. Some are utterly insecure, while some offer flawed or illusory security. Instead of trying to get every vendor to secure every program (and still get it wrong) corporations prefer to secure with firewalls and VPNs, which puts the onus on security specialists.
If you read Bugtraq, there's a constant stream of exploits in software where security was an afterthought. I'm afraid that application-layer security is an unworkable idea.