Media On MS Asking Slashdot To Remove Comments 238
The mainstream media has followed yesterday's story about
Microsoft Asking Slashdot to Remove Comments
with several stories. These include one from
The Washington Post,
Salon,
news.com
Wired, and
Linux Journal.
Finally, After Y2k has a comic (important, pecs shown in pixels may be larger than those in real life).
Time to buy Andover/VA shares! (Score:2)
Re:Vanity Posts (Score:1)
The ramifications of this are more far reaching than /. later
<//-------------//> /. but you can tell it was designed by programmers..."
"I like
Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel about all thi (Score:1)
Which would make for an interesting discovery part of any legal battle, I can see the headlines now "Smoking gun email shows more Microsoft monopolisation", time to start a new DOJ case against M$, if they can they prosecute them again while an appeal is happening for the other case.
Re:How to shut MS up and still kick their backside (Score:1)
I posted the same idea on the first of the threads regarding what
Re:Funny but impossible (Score:1)
By signing away express and implied warrenties, you have signed away any grounds for suing. By signing away damages, there is no point in suing since the court can only grant damages in a civil case.
Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel.. Mod UP plz! (Score:1)
Mod #101 up please cause I'm really interested in reading some answers...
Thank you.
//Frisco
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"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
Re:This is what matters (Score:1)
(Who, you'll remember, just settled with the FTC over illegally fixing the prices of CDs too high. So they are not inspiring confidence in me just now)
I don't believe that objective reporting is common. I *really* don't believe that it's possible for media that contain 3rd party ads or who are not independently owned 99.44% of the time
So I don't really trust Time to fairly report on Napster at all. Traditional or not.
Re:Gotta love the slant on some of these.. (Score:1)
Now that's a quote to put on the resume. I think...
(Actually, I'm just bitter that John jumped into this thread before me. Don't you have work to do here?
Rob Pegoraro, Consumer Technology Editor
Re:Don't forget the others (Score:1)
Re:No (Score:1)
It's About the DMCA, Not Free Information (Score:2)
I see your point, but this isn't about where you get the information from; it's about making sure people agree to a licence agreement before being allowed to view the document. Yes, the information is free one way or the other, but Microsoft wants people to agree to their licence first.
This is why Microsoft is invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in this case. If I recall correctly, the DMCA says that you can't circumvent any mechanism that controls access to copyrighted information or a copyrighted work. I don't agree with that, but that's what the law says. The executable program that you must download and run controls access to the Kerberos document.
Do note, however, that the DMCA does make an exception to that rule for purposes of compatibility. So if Microsoft did not provide Macintosh or Linux versions of the program to view the Kerberos specification, we could argue that those messages on Slashdot that describe how to view the document without going thru the program are there to make the Kerberos specification accessible to Macintosh or Linux users. However, the fact that this also allows people to bypass the licence agreement might create a problem.
Re:Funny but impossible (Score:1)
I think it depends on the industry. Case-in-point; my C++ instructor was a Ski Patrol type at Copper Mountain (a Colorado ski resort) and once in an irrelevant aside told us how, at any given time, every major ski resort is fighting at least a dozen different lawsuits brought on by people who hit a tree in some out-of-bounds area, in spite of EULA type gibberish on the back of every ski pass (and the off-limits signs, and the rope or fence they had to jump over, and the innate danger in a sport that involves strapping one or more slabs of wood/plastic to one's feet then sliding rapidly down a hill). But ski resorts have deep pockets and history shows that they can survive these legal tussles, no matter how idiotic. Whereas, the software industry is new enough (and profitable enough) that lawmakers are taking a "don't kill the golden goose" approach and passing stunningly bad laws to "protect" an industry that, IMHO, needs to be shaken up instead (as in "Bad code! No biscuit!" instead of "Bad code! Too bad I clicked through the EULA.").
Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel about all thi (Score:5)
Upper management doesn't always reflect my opinions, and legal *absolutely* doesn't. Of course I can speak only for myself, but frankly I don't think your characterization of this Kerberos issue is at all correct.
I know a few people in the Win2k team, but I've never worked there myself. Of course their aim is to become the premier backend server, but honestly they don't think they *have* to fight dirty in order to achieve that. And I agree. Win2k really *is*, in my opinion, a far superior product. Hell, if I didn't think that about most of our products, why would I work here at all?
I know none of you have any trust left when it comes to MS. Sometimes your suspicions are just, but often I find that people's suspicions are based upon a weak foundation of reiterated rumours and second-hand false characterizations. For people who already believe (despite evidence) that NSAKEY is a government plant, that FrontPage Extensions has a "weenies" backdoor (it's actually a bad attempt at encryption), that Win2k has 65000 real bugs, and so on, the slightest hint that MS is up to dirty tricks with Kerberos is enough to convince them.
Personally, when the NT team tells me that their implementation is interoperable with MIT's reference implementation, when they tell me that they have managed to get interoperability in mixed environments, and when they assure me that this was a bad PR move rather than a malicious plot to kill Samba, I believe them. I work on the inside and when I weigh the truthfulness of the people I work with against the eagerness of Slashdot to inflame passions against us, I'm inclined to side with MS.
Now, don't get the impression I always agree with the company. Many times I don't, and I've almost been fired for being a little too rude in expressing my difference of opinion. But in this case, I'm going to side with the people who think the Samba team is paranoid and the slashdot crowd is attacking when it should be pausing for reflection.
Now, as to the legal thing: dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But only because it obviously is terrible PR, not because I think they're wrong. If I could have my way, the proprietary extensions (it wasn't the entire Kerb spec, if you actually read the doc - just the extension struct) would have been published without a legalese watermark and click-thru, but I can't have my way, and the fact is that those comments did infringe MS property rights.
Would you all be happier if MS had never published the extensions at all? Perhaps you would, because then you could reverse engineer without contamination. But while you see this release as a deliberate ploy to kill Samba, I see it as a stupid move by legal, and I, unlike some, am equipped with the capacity to forgive stupid people for their stupidity.
So, basically, my answer is: I don't agree with you. If I did agree, would I be out the door? Maybe. But most likely, I will stay at MS until I am convinced their products are no longer the best. And with our current lineup and the project I am working on, I don't see that happening for a long time.
yours,
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Re:Pointless you mean (Score:1)
Re:No (Score:1)
You can sign away your right to sue. From what I understand, if you pay more money, you can sue for more money. (if you are poor, a rich guy is drunk and hits you, sorry, you didn't pay the higher premium!)
Re:DDOS? (Score:1)
Oh!... the one with the innovative DoubleSpace?.. Hmm.. BTW... Was dblspace the original name or the one they gave it after being sued?
Thank you.
//Frisco
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"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
Re:Why pretend this is censorship? (Score:3)
Not true. Some of the posts they objected to did contain the verbatim text, and most users had no problem with Slashdot taking down those particular posts.
However, they did not stop there. They also wanted posts that had links to the text. This is a gray area with, to quote Al Gore, "no controlling legal authority".
Plus, Microsoft also wanted Slashdot to delete posts that observed the FACT that if you use pkunzip to unzip the file, you do not see licensing agreement.
The last is definately a Free Speech issue and has nothing to do with copyright protection.
noticed this too (Score:2)
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The news even Russia... (Score:2)
http://lenta.ru/internet/2000/05/12/ms/
We will bury you. (Score:2)
Surely this is the golden moment we've all waited for for years? M$ has made a huge legal blunder in front of a target too big and too well supported, and just too damned annoyed, to back down, and while they're on the ropes from the DoJ too.
Wipe them out now, don't wait for break-up, just kill the bastards now. Put every amoral SOB who ever took the M$ shilling on welfare. Take the company assets and burn them. Plough the M$ HQ building into the ground and sow the ground with salt. Deny bread, water and salt to Gates and the scum who serve him. Break his glasses and pitch his wife and children into the street. Burn his filthy house to the ground and give his money to the Red Cross.
Make an example of Gates for all those who see him as a "business genius". Show the world that people can only be pushed so far in the name of one man's greed.
Hang his bloodless body heel-first from a lamp post to show children what happens when you live by stealing other people's work and speak only lies and deceit.
Your country is supposed to be based on "Government by the people, for the people"; show that is has not irreversibly become "Government by the rich, for the rich".
TWW
Gotta love the slant on some of these.. (Score:3)
Washington Post:
The site is, in no small part, an online clubhouse for Microsoft haters; news items about the firm are accompanied by a small picture of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates as a Borg, one of the human-machine chimeras from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" who say, "Resistance is futile -- you will be assimilated."
The Washington Post makes me sick with their pro-MS slant to everything, and their tech writers in their business section are -horrible-. Fast forward [washingtonpost.com] is *occasionally* worth reading, but that's it. Thank god they really only run tech stuff once a week..
That got me to thinking this morning as I bought my paper.. wouldn't it be cool to have a print version of what's going on/what had happened in the web the previous day? I would certainly plunk down a quarter to get some slashdot headlines, the register headlines, some article blurbs, security stuff, recent security holes, penny-arcade [penny-arcade.com], sluggy [sluggy.com], and friend bear [friendbear.com] on the comics page, some 20 page editorials by Jon Katz :)..
I find print format a lot more friendly to read for longer periods, and it's nice to have something to read on the metro (not all of us have laptops, and even if I did, the paper is a more efficent way of reading all this I think.)
Re:DDOS? (Score:3)
Wired reports that popular tech news site Slashdot was hit with a DDOS attack...
Here's the quote from Wired (don't worry, I didn't circumvent any EULA to get it)
"About 400 readers weighed in over the first 30 minutes. Then we got hit by a DDOS," wrote Slashdot founder Rob Malda in email to Wired News.
There's news for ya! Wired scoops Slashdot... with Rob's help...
Hopefully we'll here more about this when Andover's had time to investigate and give us a full story.
- StaticLimit
This is what matters (Score:5)
Even if the case goes to court, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins, Slashdot wins.
Even if the case goes to court and MS wins and gets exclusive IP rights to Kerberos and the Justice Department feels so sorry that it decides not to break them up after all Slashdot... um... breaks even.
Because it's clear that the public is on our side now. These articles are not presenting Microsoft in a favorable light. They are giving a good accounting of open source, explaining what MS did, and citing third-party lawyers who mostly seem to agree with us.
If this becomes a trial situation, what we're going to have isn't a lawsuit against Slashdot, but an honest-to-god test case. And with a test case like this comes public support, angry letters, and the ACLU and their army of mutant squirrels. It would be the best thing we could hope for if one of the first cases prosecuted under DMCA were something well-known and obviously unjust. As long as there's not some kind of backlash in the next few days, I think the long-term outlook is quite lovely.
- Michael Cohn
Can Kerberos tell MS to not use the name? (Score:5)
Probably depends on the way Kerberos is licensed.
Re:Except the cost isn't minimal (Score:2)
--
J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
Ejercisio Perfecto [nai.net]: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!
DDOS? (Score:4)
It was mentioned on Wired that you suffered from a DDOS yesterday - do you have any more information about this yet?
~P
There was a EULA in there? I thot it was a virus. (Score:2)
Isn't that what we're supposed to do?
Re:Illegal to produce software to circumvent licen (Score:2)
By that same reasoning, then, it should also be illegal to a) rob banks, b) explain to other people how to rob banks, and c) produce tools (e.g. masks and guns) that allow others to rob banks. Seems to be a lot of movie and television producers, clothing manufacters, and gun makers are in deep kimchee if this is true... I say we slap an injunction on the corporate officers of Victoria's Secret, since the stocking they produce may be used in a crime!
I never meta story I didn't like (Score:2)
"Open source postings"? Hmm, that's an idea.
This post is released under the LGPL. By replying to this post, you are giving me the right to modify and incorporate your replies into my later posts. As this is the LGPL, you can "link" to this thread for any use. You can find this thread on Slashdot; gosh, I hope they keep it available for three years...
"Slashdot readers improperly posted specifications for the Windows 2000 operating system"?? What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? W2K is *way* too big for that. I guess technically they're adding their Kerberos stuff to W2K, but that's just some confusion there.
At least the news.com article got the facts right on the "trade secret" issue. Their lawyers are far superior than their technical people, apparently...
Hey, Microsoft, if your program is in an ".EXE" file, and I have to run Wine to run it, is that reverse engineering? Are we circumventing a protection device (the
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Illegal to produce software to circumvent licence? (Score:3)
Focusing on point (c) for a moment: Does this mean that as soon as this licencing agreement was written, WinZip (and other zip extraction tools that can bypass the licencing acceptance code) suddenly became illegal?
Re:DDOS? (Score:3)
Who says Microsoft cannot Innovate. This was actually a very innovative DDOS attack. All it took was one email to /. that mentioned the DMCA, Copyright violation, Kerberos and Windows. Even more insidiously this email was made to look like it was protecting a trade secret in a manner that would sabotage attempts to embrace extend and extinguish Kerberos, but that would be silly, such a thing would fly in the face of antitrust law.
This email was the direct cause of /. being wired,linuxtoday'd, cnet'd, saloned, washington posted, first posted etc...
The instigators of this vile DDOS attack should be hunted down and prosecuted.
So maybe the DoJ will get interested (Score:2)
The fact that the WP and other media have picked this up should make the DoJ (and the Judge in turn) more receptive to SlashDot's complaint. But there's little time since AFAIK the DoJ punishment brief is due soon!
Re:Illegal to produce software to circumvent licen (Score:2)
Not at all, since the DMCIA says " [...] devices SPECIFICALLY to circumvent copy-protection"...
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:Remeber to change your sig line (Score:2)
Re:Seems RMS was right, again! (Score:2)
Re: Unzipping on Linux? (Score:2)
Re:This says it all! (Score:2)
Re:How Microsoft can save face (Score:2)
I believe that Kerberos is a fairly strategic technical standard. In short, it is major. Think Echelon, think crypto policy. Data security is information security, it's power. It's actually what this whole fight is about - the abiltiy to control information. If MS-Kerberos becomes the standard, and Microsoft controls it, it could easily become tomorrows NSAKey. To more than just browser transactions. MS must not be allowd to quash the open version of this standard, and then control it's proprietary version, while it becomes the defacto and very likely the dejure standard. When that happens, freedom will be well and truly fucked.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel about all thi (Score:3)
I agree that the post of the text of the extension spec breaks MS's Trade Secret protection, however MS may have already broken it by publishing. And although I think one should be allowed to quote from the spec, I think that I agree that publishing the whole thing is a copyright violation. However, it's short and there may be a case that meaningful commentary requires the context of the whole thing, so I'll leave that one to the lawyers.
However, I think that you have the extensions issue right. I think that the MS engineers that designed it were using a wrongheaded method for extending Win2k security through Kerberos, in their own windows-centric sort of way, without worrying about Samba. But when I look at the whole standards interaction thing, I see that upper management and the lawyers probably did get together and say something like:
"hey, those standards people have a point. This could make it hard to run workstations without a Windows server. Bonus! Score!"
I agree that the legal thing was a dumb PR move, but again, I think you trust your lawyers too much if you imagine they weren't trying to prevent uncontaminated reverse engineering for interoperability. Heck, I don't even work in the private sector, and we often do things with two agendas -- the "if it flies, fine, but if they give us guff we'll spring the fine print on them" sort of thing. Your boss's boss does more than sign timesheets :-).
In short, although I agree that the inital concept was not to kill Samba, I very much doubt that the Samba-killing agenda didn't enter into the process at a higher level, and that Samba-killing might be behind the selection of the particular technological design that made the final cut, even if the engineer that proposed it didn't start there. Me, I'd have picked a more straightforward way to do it (like printing "Microsoft Kerberos Server Required" right on the box), but if I were a MS exec, I'd try to kill Samba too. It's not that they want to kill Samba or Kerberos, it's that they want to do it by sleight of hand, while promoting a false openness, that rankles.
Re:This is what matters (Score:2)
The mass media, on the other hand, while slow to pick stories like this up, usually adopt the traditional viewpoint. If this does blow up into something big, which I don't think it will, but assuming it did, you would almost certainly see Time or Newsweek rushing to the side of Microsoft with their trademark staid viewpoint saying "Wait a minute, guys, but MS is getting ripped off here". And those are the rags that shape public opinion - not Wired, CNet, or even a tech column buried in the Washington Post.
I know this to be true because I witnessed it with Napster. Salon especially has written a lot of positive things for what Napster is doing. Even Wired news, for all its Cronkitian, stick-to-the-facts overtones, usually comes off as pro-Napster. In contrast, the "big" pubs like Time presented a lot more bitter picture of what's happening: namely, that we are all stealing from the artists. This is perfectly true, but they usually ignore the fact that free music just might be a more viable means of distributing than paying for a conspiritorially overpriced CD.
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This says it all! (Score:4)
"Microsoft has no comment at this time," said a Microsoft public relations spokesperson.
Doesn't that tickle you pink! Bwaaahahahahahaha!
Coverage on heise.de (Score:4)
Regards,
January
How Microsoft can save face (Score:5)
The cost is minimal... they lose a chance to "embrace and extend" a relatively minor technical standard. And the risk is tremendous... if this really does go to court, besides the fact that MS will be painted as jackbooted thugs even by the mainstream press, there is a significant chance that it could lead to a precendent-setting ruling that is not in MS' favor. Simple risk analysis says they should back off.
It'd be nice to see, just once, that Microsoft can learn from its legal mistakes. But more likely, the psychology of paranoia will drive them to even bigger and clumsier mistakes, until the drive to win at all costs destroys Microsoft, as surely as the tragic hero of a Greek drama.
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What's Next? (Score:2)
Segfault
segfault@bellatlantic.net [mailto]
Quote on Salon from RobLimo (Score:4)
But, Microsoft doesn't have public relations people: it has public opinion management people. Microsoft has never had any relation with the public (unless you define "relation" in the same way as used in this example: "The larger of the two prisoners had relations with the smaller").
Re:noticed this too (Score:2)
Traceroutes petered-out somewhere near Chicago.
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel about all thi (Score:4)
questions that you might be able to answer about the Kerberos
extension.
Did folk at Microsoft talk about how they thought the Kerberos
extensions would be received in either the security/academic
community, or in the developer community? One of Bruce Schneier's
points about the Kerberos extensions is that a changed security
protocol simply doesn't inherit the trust of its parent. Trying to
keep the protocol secret had the predictable-from-the-outside
consequence of losing the already thin trust of the security
community. Did anyone talk about this in Microsoft?
What you say about the internal culture at Microsoft strikes me as
fair and true. I have several colleagues who work at various MS
research labs, and all of them have been very flattering about the
high quality of staff at MS. However a darker side emerges about the
arrogance of the MS world: the long list of protocols broken by MS
owes more to developers within MS simply not being interested in
finding out how things were done by developers outside MS than to
deliberate attempts to undermine standards (though that too has
indubitably happened). Is this unfair? If it is, I think it is quite
appalling.
Re:First Haiku! (Score:2)
You're not supposed to use metaphors and/or similes in classical haiku.
trademark = branding (Score:2)
The significance of a trade or certification mark is control over branding. Forking the code, extending it, whatever, is allowed, but, as an example, Microsoft cannot call its forked Kerberos "Kerberos", if the trademark-holding authority says that they can't (note that a trademark search at the USPTO's website for "kerberos" produces no hits).
The trick is that the trademark owner can establish his/her own standards for licensing, which can be loose (Linux (TM)), strict (Xerox (TM)), or subject to meeting some standard (Harris Tweed (TM), Underwriters Laboratories (TM)). And if the mark holder wants to change the terms (to head off noncompliant extensions), it's their right to do so.
Licensing terms are an arbitrary decision on the part of the mark holder. The obligation of the markholder, however, is to uphold the mark. Trademarks can be lost -- asprin is one, dixie cups (IIRC) is another. A lawyer friend once had to do research in defending the Hooters (TM) trademark (I kid you not).
What we've seen in the past are modifications to code which wasn't subject to trademark (kerberos), or attempts to regulate ability to modify code directly, rather than certification of compliance (Java). Neither mode works particularly well, as we've seen.
The use of a mark to insure compliance means that someone contemplating a code fork has to weigh the strategic advantages of noncompliant operation with the loss of branding or certified compliance. Likewise, the licensing authority is under pressure to keep terms reasonable enough that a seperate compliance program isn't launched in competition, with more reasonable (or easier to comply with) rules.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]
Re:Why pretend this is censorship? (Score:2)
And often, expressing an opinion, thought, or idea that is a response to another one requires the one reguritate, partially or wholly, the target of your response. (As, for example, my quote of your post above.)
Some thoughts. (Score:2)
The thing about our modern, connected world is that the internet, and technology in general empowers us. I mean it REALLY empowers us.
Slashdot... sure.. it's a news site. We slam on Taco and Hemos and whoever else... there are trolls... there are lots of attention-grabbing posts... but in the end.. it is an example of how society has changed.
Taco et-all are my age. We are still fairly young in the grand scheme of things. Technology has empowered this generation, and those to come, to communicate like no other generation in the past. We can communicate en-masse WITHOUT the need to ask our neighbors (governments, etc.) for help.. we can arrange it ourselves. And we DO!
The fact remains... We like technology, we like to learn more and more about technology, and we don't like people telling us we can't.. and we have the technological means to share it. It seems natural!
Sure.. the law says pirating music is illegal, and the law says that exposing MS crap is illegal, I agree that lots of things are illegal.. but that's just the law. Most of us in our generation, agree that the law is out of hand, and too complicated. We also agree that corporations are getting too powerful. We agree that racism is bad. We agree on a great many things, in principle... yet the law prevents us from acting on many of these things. It's a tangled web to unravel. It is very difficult to re-write the law, and the way modern courts work it is even harder. How many people realize that a Jury has the right to declare someone not guilty simply because they don't FEEL that the user should be punished? Seriously.. if a jury feels that the laws themselves are unjust.
Technology gives us the ability to circumvent certain laws.... but it also makes those laws irrelevant. Think 'bout it.
Music... sharing music... we can all debate who stole what from which artist/record label.. but in the end, music can be compressed into an ever smaller amount of data, and the available bandwidth is ever increasing.
The addition of encryption layers like IPSec to the internet will make content sniffing much more difficult for law enforcement.. or for anyone.
If it can be reduced to data, we can move it around. If people think that the way we move DeCSS around in order to not let a court order quash it is hard.. they must think again. What could we do if we REALLY applied our collective geek efforts to the problem? Freenet is a great example. So is gnutella. Both are fundamentally very simple applications.
The world is chaning. People from different cultures talk on the internet. Politics matter less. Laws matter less. Communications matter more.
Re:First Haiku! (Score:2)
stinging, burning, shades of green
apparently not
(Jell-O is a registered TM of somebody or other.)
Mirrors? (Score:3)
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How do Microsoft's employees feel about all this? (Score:5)
Employees of Microsoft, does your company's upper management and legal department speak for YOU? Microsoft is effectively declaring war against open engineering standards and the progress that open standards foster, an openness enjoyed by all other engineering disciplines. How do YOU feel about that?
So, post anonymously if you feel you must, but post and tell us YOUR position! Or are you all to stricken by Redmonditis and your own FUD tactics to let the world know how you feel?
If the brass at Microsoft does not speak for you, let yourself be heard. If you (and all of us) are lucky, the Microsoft "spies" that allegedly lurk on Slashdot might see how their employees feel. And maybe, just maybe, Gates and the rest will hop on board the cluetrain next time it stops in Redmond.
Re:No Publicity is Bad Publicity? (Score:2)
My view: it was a colossal screwup. The (speculative) history of it looks sorta like a train wreck - slow but inevitable.
They've been working on putting kerberos in win2000 for years now. They must have always planned to embrace & extend. However, a brief was about to be filed in the antitrust case about antitrust case regarding their proprietary extensions. Someone got scared and decided they'd better publish, since this was pretty damned blatant and really could be the last straw. But unfortunately their legal boys decided it couldn't hurt to slap on an EULA, call it a trade secret, whatever. Bad idea.A theory (Score:2)
DeCCS case, among other things, there was a claim of "missapropriation" of a "trade secret" that become public through an unrelated third party, and that this claim was sustained as part of the injunction against DeCCS code.
My guess is that this package was put out specifically to "poison" the public pool and provide a legal basis for Microsoft to challenge the kerberos support in Samba. By "publically" placing this information with weak protection, they are looking both to have it become published/known, and looking at the same time to retain it's "status" as a trade secret.
As we know the Samba team is busy working on reverse engineering the kerberos extensions through legitimate means, and this work would likely be successful eventually. By the precidence of the DeCCS actions, Microsoft can now claim that this work was most likely completed as a result of this "trade secret", even if by a distant party, and thereby put a very difficult
and potentially very expensive legal hurdle in front of the Samba group.
Re:Other Media (Score:2)
In a related question, does RUSirius have a slashdot login?
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Re:Illegal to produce software to circumvent licen (Score:2)
Pretty much. Basically, these sweepingly broad clauses have been drafted with an eye towards selective enforcement, which is a nice way of saying that only those who can afford to wage protracted war in the courtroom can develop inter-operable software. (Yes, I know there's allegedly an exception for interoperability, but that applies AFAIK only to reverse-engineering; tools which make infringement possible are illegal under the DMCA, period.)
I wouldn't be suprised to see archiving/compression tools like WinZip but w/ "rights-management features" (think SDMI) built into Windoze at some point, followed by a rash of DMCA-derived lawsuits. In their zeal to ensure an eternal gravy-train to holders of "intellectual property" (who happen to be major campaign contributors), Congress may well drive the most innovative (not in the sense MS abuses the term) software development out of this country, killing the proverbial goose. It's already happened with encryption, where the recent changes to our export laws were too little, too late. The industry had already moved off-shore.
Of course, the masses won't take any notice until it's too late; in 1994, I was written off as a kook for my opposition to the DMCA, but then the masses get their information spoon-fed to them by the very same media companies who pushed for the law. Noam Chomsky knows what's up.
-Isaac
Re:Gotta love the slant on some of these.. (Score:2)
I'll shut up while the irony sinks in.
Info-ZIP makes portable zip tools. (Score:2)
Is there any way for me to unzip this file?
The third most portable program in the C world (after Hello World and one implementation of the Kermit protocol) is the Info-ZIP [cdrom.com] software. You don't need PKWARE or Nico Mak to unzip anymore.
OOPS! fixed link (Score:2)
Re:Gotta love the slant on some of these.. (Score:2)
I realize that a biased person rarely sees his own bias, but I've got to say that I was trying to write a straight story. Most of the people who emailed me about it today seemed to think that I had done that. Sorry you disagree.
The Post also ran a story of mine about slashdot the day before this one ran. Here's the URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37
----John Schwartz/one of those "horrible" writers in the business section
Re:Funny but impossible (Score:2)
Re:Why not fight Fire with Fire? - Final Solution( (Score:2)
Re:Why not fight Fire with Fire? - Final Solution( (Score:5)
hehe, they will have to sue themselves (Score:2)
Sorry, no link so try to past it:
http://content.communities.msn.com/isapi/fetch.
Guess what it is.
Re:Why not fight Fire with Fire? - Final Solution( (Score:2)
Instead of breaking up Microsoft.... (Score:5)
"Monopolies cannot come to exist without the assistance of government".
I think, in this case, it relates to absurdly overbearing patent and copyright protection.
Instead of breaking it up into smaller versions of itself that may each continue to act like the parent, why not take away the weapon that allowed them to get into the dominant position?
As punishment for being found guilty of unfair monopolistic business practices, the US government should permanently invalidate all copyrights and patents held by Microsoft.
How Odd (Score:2)
Win or lose, one thing's for certain; life is good for the MS Lawyers.
Re:This is silly (Score:2)
> cnn.com posting, article, etc. and posted it on
> my own site without permission or formal
> process. How would
How do domain names ever feel?
Slashdot is not a person, it is not even an animal
like a monkey, wher eyou could make a case that it
might "feel" something.
Now, How would the people who work putting
together feel? Beats me, I don't know them.
How would the community feel? Hard to say. There
would be alot of reactions, depending on how
you did it.
There would be people like me who would be pissed
if you claimed to have written it yourself,
afterall, its not nice to lie. However, if you
did not commit fraud (ie lie about who wrote it)
then, I would say "More power to ya". I couldn't
care less....its just some text. Hell...mirror
my website for all I care.
(for anyone who looks at my site and once again
calls me a hipocrite: I put those notices in
telling people NOT to do that a LONG time ago,
I havn't updated in 4 years - I consider it more
a historical snapshot than a changing web page)
Then...there woul dbe others who would call you
a theif and be all mad about it. There would be
still more who would think its a silly issue and
not really care one way or the other.
The range of response would be wide. There is no
single "/. opinion".
How to shut MS up and still kick their backside (Score:5)
2) Distributing copies of (c) material without the cp-holder's consent is illegal. This gives MS a reason to write to /. and demand the removal of the messages, links, etc.
Put 2 and 2 together ... you can get around the copyright problem quite legally in ANY case of information distribution by simply LEARNING from the original work, and rewriting your own work! If someone studies the Kerberos file that is now publically available, and then writes up what they have learned IN THEIR OWN WORDS, MS has no control over that writeup.
So for anyone out there with technical knowledge on the subject, and more time than I have, make such a writeup and post a link to it here. Lets see MS try to put a stop to that!
If you put your name on it though, you'd better make sure that there's no way you can get caught on having 'agreed' to some trade secret contract though. Maybe release it anon just to be safe, or at least have proof that you read the MS document from a publically available source WITHOUT agreeing to a trade secret contract. I know it's been mentioned that there is legal precident that this CAN'T be a trade secret anymore, but better safe than sorry I always say.
Oh, and IANAL, and my apologies if someone's posted this idea already. I don't have time to read everything, but I just had to get this idea out.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Re:Except the cost isn't minimal (Score:5)
But at some point, they still need to do risk analysis... is the risk of having key parts of the DMCA thrown out for First Amendment violations worth the benefit of keeping Samba from being a domain controller?
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Re:How to shut MS up and still kick their backside (Score:3)
Not necessarily. Quoting a section of something for the purposes of review and criticism is fair use. The posting on Slashdot probably falls into that category; it's a commentary, and definitely a criticism, of a small section of Microsoft's version of Kerberos, which itself is a derived work of an MIT product.
Why not fight Fire with Fire? - Final Solution(tm) (Score:5)
Why not fight M$ with their own methods?..
I propose that from now on (using a click-through agreement of course) slashdot readers/posters must agree not to persecute slashdot in any court american or non american and that no material posted on slashdot is allowed to be used in any legal way to fight slashdot, it's owners, it's readers, it's posters, their friends, pets and whatever.
It's partly a joke, but so is M$'s EULA. So please give it a thought...
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
Re:DDOS? (Score:2)
New MS slogan:
Embrace, extend, extinguish
gee.. (Score:3)
First Haiku! (Score:4)
hitting Jello with hammer
Can't Microsoft see?
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Re:How do Microsoft's employees feel about all thi (Score:2)
you're trying to imply that there are two options: release the spec the ms did or not release the spec at all. they could have released the spec like the developers of kerberos (or pam or nis or nfs or ext2
the "legalese" you refer to can't be described as anything else *but* a dirty trick. it essentially states that by reading the document you cannot do any development on a competing implementation. and then they release the document out in the wild. in a sense slashdot should cancel all the posts that microsoft has requested canceled (including the ones with links and or instructions) BECAUSE THEY ENDANGER FREE SOFTWARE PROJECTS TRYING TO MAKE ALTERNATIVES TO MS KERBEROS.
you excuse a lot of crap ms is doing with an "oh well, wish it could be different" attitude. just how often will you say that before you need to quit?
Finally! (Score:2)
Re:I wonder... (Score:2)
IANAL, but I think so. However, MS is pressing for new hearings, so they may be about to shoot their other foot off. The DoJ already has a memo re the recent e3 move against Kerebos, and I'm sure they would be more than happy to share it with the judge if new hearings come up.
--
I wonder... (Score:5)
Now, in light of the increasing attention to this story, I wonder what MS's next statement on the issue will be. The more attention it gets, the harder it will be for them to back down - but it will also be all the more necessary for them to do so. This situation can only hurt their current status with the DOJ - especially now that they are in the remedy stage. You just have to know that the judge is watching stuff like this closely.
What I am really waiting for is a reaction out of groups like the ACLU - have they contacted anyone, or are there any indications that they are going to make a support statement for
Microsoft must not be allowed to win! (Score:2)
If Microsofts case that posting about how to use Winzip to get around the EULA is ruled as being illegal under the DMCA then Winzip by extension must also be illegal and so anyone using it or distributing it is doing so with the intent to violate Microsofts trade secrets. This is also completely ludicrous. The only place where they have a chance in succedding is getting the repostings of the documents off of slashdot.
Re:Mirrors? (Score:2)
If someone created a bot that mirrored slashdot, syncing their site with Slashdot periodically through out the day - minus the banner ad - would Slasdot/Andover tolerate this "free speech" or would they sue for copyright violation? -- me think they'ld sue.
What if only readers' comments' were mirrored? They supposedly belong to the user. - I think they'ld still try to sue on behalf of
Wouldn't a mirror have been a public service during the past two days?
Which brings me to my final question: When is Slashdot going to muster the courage to post the perhaps embarassing but noteworthy story of the DDoS attack?
I don't think the typical corporate response of clamming up about these things is befitting Slashdot.
Re:DDOS? (Score:5)
http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,36313,00.html [wired.com]
NOT OT:How to prevent a potential viral infection (Score:3)
We all know well how problematic the problem of viruses is under Windows.
Well, generally these aren't technically Viruses but Worms; they need that the user execute the viruses to reproduce themselves.
A potential way of being infected is if somebody sends you an autoextractable file. The problem is that the code executed to autoextract the files can be anything, including a virus.
To avoid taking the risk to execute a virus when opening this kind of files you should ALWAYS use an extraction software (like WinZip www.winzip.com or WinRar). The steps to do so are:
1. Install the software (refer yourself to your software's installation procedure).
2. With most such softwaree, to use them without launching the possibly infected code you can click on the right button of your mouse when the aforementioned device is positioned over the autoextractible file.
3. Select the "extract in folder XXXXX" option, or the similar option depending on your software, XXXXX generally being the name of the file you want to uncompress.
4. The files should now be uncompressed in the XXXXX directory.
Remember, DO NOT OPEN YOUR FILES WITHOUT SUCH A TRUSTED SOFTWARE, THEY MAY CONTAIN NASTY VIRUSES THAT COULD ERASE YOUR DATA.
I hope that no company is against free speech to the point of wanting to censor people trying to help others to protect themselves from that company errors.
Except the cost isn't minimal (Score:2)
That's why everyone is making such a big deal about this extension.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Re:No Publicity is Bad Publicity -- True! (Score:2)
Yes, that was Microsoft's plan all along. Until yesterday, I had never heard of them.
;-)
---
Importance of trademark in free software (Score:5)
Excellent point, and it shows the importance of trademark and certification mark in free software. While there's a strong argument to distributing spec and code in free software, there's an equally strong argument to retaining and reserving the rights to the trade name of the product being released.
One of the better ways to do this is to provide a regression test for the software in question, requiring it to meet the test. Microsoft, in this world, would be free to embrace and extend all it wanted, and would have free access to the source to do this. However, unless they met the terms for the trade name usage, they would have to call the product by some other name -- defeating the whole marketroid check-off item school of product promotion.
Many free software firms and propenents don't yet see the importance of this. Sun Microsystems in particular has just plain got it wrong in attempting to enforce compliance through code regulation rather than certification marks and compliance/compatibility testing. Very frustrating, as I've worked with some of the folks involved in the SCSL concept. IMO most of the issues Sun has seen in licensing Java would be non-starters had they used an alternative approach. As things stand, they're fighting with Microsoft for the standard, while IBM emerges as the market leader in workable Java implementations.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]
Re:DDOS? (Score:2)
The corporate culture there would make Adolf Hitler well up with tears of nostalgia.
Re:DDOS? = Translation (Score:2)
Comply or we will
This email notification is a statement made under penalty of perjury that we are the copyright owner of the referenced Specification, that we are acting in good faith, and that the above-referenced comments, as part of http://www.slashdot.org, is posting proprietary material without express written permission.
smack you with a DOS attack
We request immediate action to remove the cited violations from Andover's servers, in accordance with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
The likes of which
This email is not intended to waive any of our other rights and remedies.
You've never seen before!
Re:Other Media (Score:2)
Is Mondo, and/or the people/energy behind it still out there somewhere that I haven't located? It's been awhile since I saw it on the stands.
Wasn't it decided somewhere (Score:2)
It's about time consumers get SOME rights back - the illegalily of circumventing protection mechanisms is another case of banishing a tool of crime rather than the crime itself, presupposing criminal tendancies, like the DAT tax, reduction of freedoms, etc. It's not addressing the root cause, just the symptom and is right up there w/ other bad laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 [cmcnyls.edu], passed on behest of the cell phone business/lobby,
which makes it illegal to own a device and merely 'tune in' certain bands of radio frequencies, such as old 70's era TV UHF sets can. The law used to be you could listen to anything, but it was a crime to use that ill gotten information. Another of it's problems is that it's horribly unenforcable and thus innately unjust, as it can only be used selectively at chosen 'enemy' targets, it can't apply to everyone equally. You end up with a society with many people happily scanning and evesdropping on what the calling parties consider a 'secure' conversation (that's what the phone sales flak said!) that really isn't, and a few unlucky evesdroppers who get the book thrown at them and made an example out of which doesn't stop the others from secretely scanning away, with very little chance of ever getting caught. As we all know, Msft has about a 27% unlicensed software 'shrinkage' and I'm sure there are lots of developers out there who will ask friendly Bob down the hall for the Kerberos spec printout with impunity, while highly visible sources like Dash Slot here get trounced on.
Don't forget the others (Score:4)
Re:Except the cost isn't minimal (Score:2)
You mean to say the only purpose of not fully disclosing the functionality is to keep 3rd parties (Free Software and authentic SMB providers like IBM and AT+T) from interoperating, and to keep the SMB domain controllers on Windows.
See the comments [slashdot.org] by Jeremy Allison. Using the field for Windows-specific authorization is apparently legitimate according to the spec. Other Unix-based systems such as DCE have done the same thing, if I understand correctly.
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Re:DDOS? maybe even MS-DOS (Score:2)
Multiple
Source
Denial
of
Service
--
Re:How Microsoft can save face (Score:2)
A chink in their armor (Score:2)
Re:Funny but impossible (Score:2)
Clicks have more legal weight than signatures.
Once it's on the internet... (Score:5)
Only through hard work and perseverence can one truly suffer.
While we're listing media reports... (Score:2)