I am writing to express my concern with an article you wrote recently. To quote from the article, "...the other harder but possibly even more damaging form of theft is reverse-engineering'...".
This attitude is quite disturbing. Reverse engineering is a cornerstone of technological development, especially when dealing with companies like Microsoft, famous for their "embrace and extend" tactics with regards to
standards. Reverse engineering has also been found by your Supreme Court to be legal; I (and many other like-minded software developers) consider your statement linking reverse engineering and theft to be defamatory.
Obviously, I'm not intending to sue you (as I'm not American, and I'm not that rich:-). But an apology would be nice; it's quite offensive to find myself publicly branded a thief when I am simply seeking to better an existing technology, in a fashion which has been deemed legal in the highest court in the U.S.A.
I have also sent the follow letter to Mr. Edward Gallagher, one of the aforementioned legal representatives:
Dear Mr. Gallagher,
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dhbayne
Bite me.
Yours sincerely, XXXXXXXXXXXX
I shall be interested to see if this generates any response at all. I imagine that Mr. Gallaghers email account (egallagher@sargoy.com) should be well and truly/.ed by now. I'll also be interested to see how much clout they have in New Zealand. Actually, probably more clout than New Zealand itself. Oh well.
I have sent the following letter to Leonardo Finance to register my extreme displeasure with the current situation:
Dear Yves Delacour,
I am writing to express my deep concern over your legal intimidation of the Leonardo arts community. I, and many others in the online community, consider that this reflects very poorly on your company, and request that you cease such intimidation immediately.
Yours sincerely, XXXXXX XXXXXX
Cher Yves Delacour,
J'écris pour exprimer mes inquiétudes profondes au-dessus de votre intimidation légale de la communauté d'arts de Leonardo. I, et beaucoup d'autres dans la communauté en ligne, considèrent que ceci réfléchit très mal sur votre compagnie, et demandent que vous cessez une telle intimidation immédiatement.
Bien à vous, XXXXXX XXXXXX
My only prayer is that they can make some sense out of the Babelfished French translation:-)
Well, I *am* female...I even have short hair. And I can fence...I'm not a lesbian right now...
So, how many proposals have you had from regular slashdotters after the above post?
Thoughtcrime! Thoughtcrime!
on
Dear Mr. Lucas
·
· Score: 1
So sue me - I was sexually attracted to her long before that.
From reading the above, anyone would think that it would be thoughtcrime to harbour attraction towards anyone under the age of eighteen. Oh, wait a minute, it is....
Great so it looks as if you know something about the Internet. Let's have alook at something else shall we. CHINA is not IRAQ or a "small" country.
True, but I never said it was. To fight China would take a vast investment in hardware and personnel. But the fundamental problem China faces is that it has no technological answer to the stealth aircraft available to the USA; how would their extensive anti-aircraft defenses detect B2s (or F117's, or whatever the YF22 becomes) flying at altitude?
How about taking on the Chinese complements of MIGS especially the new MIG-31 which they have been receiving through new SINO-RUSSIAN agreement.
The Russians supplied Iraq with Fulcrums, but after the UN declared war, Russia stopped supporting them. Unsurprisingly, they were never a threat to UN forces despite the fact that they are actually quite impressive aircraft.
You are also making the assumption that Russia would continue to support China despite a war beetween China and America / NATO. But what would be the point of that? Many ex-USSR states (and parts of Russia itself) want to join NATO. When faced with a war against China, NATO would probably be most happy to have alies in the area, leading to many ex-Warsaw pact countries joining them.
Why isn't the UNITED STATES stepping in all over CHECHNYA because they know they cannot win a war against another real power.
I must disagree with you there. America has technological, numerical and financial superiority over Russia. They only lack numerical superiority against China. The only way America could loose a war with either country would be by mismanagement.
I can't wait personally finally another power who will not be afraid to stand-up to the worlds oldest and most corrupt POLICEMAN.
Do you mean America or the Roman Catholic Church?;-)
"Modern high-tech warfare cannot win without the Net"
The above is a quote from the article and is, IMO, complete rubbish. I am not saying that internet warfare would not be an effective means of disrupting the functioning of a large, technlogised country. But to state that a war could not be won without using the Net is garbage.
One squadron of B2 stealth bombers could completely obliterate most small countries before their populace new they were there. How the hell does this kind of aggresive, decisive action involve the internet?
Another example is the air war fought against Iraq in 1990. That operation could be repeated again, with even greater success, tomorrow. In exactly the same fashion. Hell, the bombing raids could probably use the same flight patterns. Denial of service would be far easier to achieve using a physical attack. Why not just airburst a small nuke over Wall Street? EMP is far more effective, more direct, then DoS attacks over the internet.
By all means, hack government and community systems to cause confusion, unrest and inconvenience. But the effective use of electronic warfare has virtually nothing to do with the Internet.
It seems to me that Echelon would fall flat on its face when presented with a message entirely in book code. Or, in case it could be set to flag book code messages, simple subsitution could be used:
dodge for bomb car pool for airport secretary for courier
The result of this would be conversations like:
"Have you made contact with your secretary?" "Yes". "Has the dodge been delivered to the car pool?" "Yesterday".
Looks perfectly innocuous, doesn't it?
IMO, the NSAs system is only going to catch stupid terrorists. The only reason they could *possibly* invest in a system like this would be to provide American companies with information on their competitors.
IMO, very few people seem to think that a violation of privacy is important until someone starts misusing gathered information.
For example, few people in Europe batted an eyelid when citizens were required to carry ID cards containing, among other things, ones religous affiliations. This of course was an absolute bitch for the Jews after Hitler gained power, because all they had to do was check your ID card (compulsory by then), and bingo, off to the camps.
Personal choice in music may seem unimportant. But wouldn't music choice be a way for morons to identify 'anti-government sentiment' (Rage Against the Machine), 'satanistic tendencies' (Marilyn Manson), 'suicidal tendences' (Nirvana)?
This may seem like a pathetic example, but just think of McCarthy and the communist witch-hunts. Belonged to a communist-sympathetic group in your youth? McCarthy used that kind of irrelevant 'information' to destroy many lives.
My point is, any information gathered about you can be used against you by dictators, government forces, whatever. We must fight against this as hard as we can, and as loudly as we can.
Slashdot Mirror
XXXX XXXX Road
XXXX XXXX
Auckland
New Zealand
Wednesday 18th October, 2000
Dear Mr. Brian Dipert,
I am writing to express my concern with an article you wrote recently. To quote from the article, "...the other harder but possibly even more damaging form of theft is reverse-engineering'...".This attitude is quite disturbing. Reverse engineering is a cornerstone of technological development, especially when dealing with companies like Microsoft, famous for their "embrace and extend" tactics with regards to standards. Reverse engineering has also been found by your Supreme Court to be legal; I (and many other like-minded software developers) consider your statement linking reverse engineering and theft to be defamatory.
Obviously, I'm not intending to sue you (as I'm not American, and I'm not that rich :-). But an apology would be nice; it's quite offensive to find myself publicly branded a thief when I am simply seeking to better an existing technology, in a fashion which has been deemed legal in the highest court in the U.S.A.
Yours sincerely,
XXXX XXXX
Rather annoyed by the actions of the MPAA (and their legal representatives, I have put a copy of css.tar.gz on my homepage:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dhbayneI have also sent the follow letter to Mr. Edward Gallagher, one of the aforementioned legal representatives:
Dear Mr. Gallagher,
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~dhbayne
Bite me.
Yours sincerely,
XXXXXXXXXXXX
I shall be interested to see if this generates any response at all. I imagine that Mr. Gallaghers email account (egallagher@sargoy.com) should be well and truly /.ed by now. I'll also be interested to see how much clout they have in New Zealand. Actually, probably more clout than New Zealand itself. Oh well.
Cya all, :-)
Gomez
The Altair 8800 was based on the 8080 microprocessor. Having a model number so similar to the CPU name didn't help.
Well, I *am* female...I even have short hair. And I can fence...I'm not a lesbian right now...
So, how many proposals have you had from regular slashdotters after the above post?So sue me - I was sexually attracted to her long before that.
From reading the above, anyone would think that it would be thoughtcrime to harbour attraction towards anyone under the age of eighteen. Oh, wait a minute, it is....
Great so it looks as if you know something about the Internet. Let's have alook at something else shall we. CHINA is not IRAQ or a "small" country.
True, but I never said it was. To fight China would take a vast investment in hardware and personnel. But the fundamental problem China faces is that it has no technological answer to the stealth aircraft available to the USA; how would their extensive anti-aircraft defenses detect B2s (or F117's, or whatever the YF22 becomes) flying at altitude?How about taking on the Chinese complements of MIGS especially the new MIG-31 which they have been receiving through new SINO-RUSSIAN agreement.
The Russians supplied Iraq with Fulcrums, but after the UN declared war, Russia stopped supporting them. Unsurprisingly, they were never a threat to UN forces despite the fact that they are actually quite impressive aircraft.You are also making the assumption that Russia would continue to support China despite a war beetween China and America / NATO. But what would be the point of that? Many ex-USSR states (and parts of Russia itself) want to join NATO. When faced with a war against China, NATO would probably be most happy to have alies in the area, leading to many ex-Warsaw pact countries joining them.
Why isn't the UNITED STATES stepping in all over CHECHNYA because they know they cannot win a war against another real power.
I must disagree with you there. America has technological, numerical and financial superiority over Russia. They only lack numerical superiority against China. The only way America could loose a war with either country would be by mismanagement.
I can't wait personally finally another power who will not be afraid to stand-up to the worlds oldest and most corrupt POLICEMAN.
Do you mean America or the Roman Catholic Church? ;-)
"Modern high-tech warfare cannot win without the Net"
The above is a quote from the article and is, IMO, complete rubbish. I am not saying that internet warfare would not be an effective means of disrupting the functioning of a large, technlogised country. But to state that a war could not be won without using the Net is garbage.
One squadron of B2 stealth bombers could completely obliterate most small countries before their populace new they were there. How the hell does this kind of aggresive, decisive action involve the internet?
Another example is the air war fought against Iraq in 1990. That operation could be repeated again, with even greater success, tomorrow. In exactly the same fashion. Hell, the bombing raids could probably use the same flight patterns. Denial of service would be far easier to achieve using a physical attack. Why not just airburst a small nuke over Wall Street? EMP is far more effective, more direct, then DoS attacks over the internet.
By all means, hack government and community systems to cause confusion, unrest and inconvenience. But the effective use of electronic warfare has virtually nothing to do with the Internet.
Cya,
Gomez
It seems to me that Echelon would fall flat on its face when presented with a message entirely in book code. Or, in case it could be set to flag book code messages, simple subsitution could be used:
dodge for bomb
car pool for airport
secretary for courier
The result of this would be conversations like:
"Have you made contact with your secretary?"
"Yes".
"Has the dodge been delivered to the car pool?"
"Yesterday".
Looks perfectly innocuous, doesn't it?
IMO, the NSAs system is only going to catch stupid terrorists. The only reason they could *possibly* invest in a system like this would be to provide American companies with information on their competitors.
Cya,+ EW++N++@o?K?wOM-V?P S+@PE++Y+PGP-t+5X+@R+! tvb+DI++++D+G--e>++h---@r++x+ -
Gomez
GCS/d++@s+:+@a--c++ULP+>+++L++>+++
IMO, very few people seem to think that a violation of privacy is important until someone starts misusing gathered information.
For example, few people in Europe batted an eyelid when citizens were required to carry ID cards containing, among other things, ones religous affiliations. This of course was an absolute bitch for the Jews after Hitler gained power, because all they had to do was check your ID card (compulsory by then), and bingo, off to the camps.
Personal choice in music may seem unimportant. But wouldn't music choice be a way for morons to identify 'anti-government sentiment' (Rage Against the Machine), 'satanistic tendencies' (Marilyn Manson), 'suicidal tendences' (Nirvana)?
This may seem like a pathetic example, but just think of McCarthy and the communist witch-hunts. Belonged to a communist-sympathetic group in your youth? McCarthy used that kind of irrelevant 'information' to destroy many lives.
My point is, any information gathered about you can be used against you by dictators, government forces, whatever. We must fight against this as hard as we can, and as loudly as we can.
Phuck off.