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Slashback Privacy The Internet

Slashback: VeriSign, Balance, Manifestation 186

Posted by timothy from the 4-lumps-or-6 dept.
Tonight's Slashback brings updates and clarifications to several previous Slashdot stories, so read on below for information on the (over-stated) recall of Segway scooters, the fate of RAV AntiVirus's Linux development team, VeriSign's Site Finder, the (latest) Lindows v. Microsoft scuffle, and more.

Linux antivirus developers join Kaspersky Labs prostoalex writes "The Linux development team of Romania-based RAV AntiVirus, acquired this June by US-based Microsoft, joined Russia-based Kaspersky Labs. This transition took place after Microsoft confirmed there will be no Linux or Novell version of antivirus software. Kaspersky Labs now works on RAV Migration program for Unix/Linux users, since the company officials deem this market as one of the fastest-growing."

VeriSign must love attention. talon77 writes "Netsys is reporting that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Verisign due to their Sitefinder. It's about time."

And Anonymous Brave Guy writes "VeriSign are in legal trouble yet again, this time for handing over a domain name to a former employee of the former holder. Also some interesting tidbits in here about the impact of the sex.com case, the fact that since July domain names are regarded as property under U.S. law, and the idea that VeriSign might themselves be held accountable for punitive damages awarded against someone who takes over a domain name improperly."

Piling on, Anonymous submits: "Verisign seems to have issues with returning proper response packets for DNS queries on unused domains, so we thought we would give them a quick reminder in case they forgot what the right answer was. You can find pictures here. (This was on their building in Mountain View, and the signs said 'Verisign/Netsol, as if people didn't hate you enough already... How greedy/stupid are you? [Made with figlet/vim/a2ps/poster.c]')"

Update: 10/02 00:37 GMT by T : And (ooops!) this part got chopped off: "Note that the Verisign web search is powered by Inktomi for search and overture for ads, both of which are now owned by Yahoo. You can always vote with your dollars and your clicks."

Ohio uncappers peer at the ToS. Mike writes "Looks like Broadband Reports has posted a follow up to what happened to those Ohio Cable broadband users who had FBI agents confiscate their hardware for uncapping their modems (See original BBR story here, Slashdot story here). Looks like most of the offenders settled for fines and community service, but one took the case all the way, and eventually got it overturned because the cable company's AUP failed to clearly mention their legal stance on uncapping."

Thorn-in-side lessons, part IIXIIXV. jlechem writes "Lindows and Microsoft are at it again. Wired News is running a story about Lindows refusing to take down the settlement website reported on by Slashdot earlier. CEO Michael Robertsone stated 'Our plan is to continue to offer the MSfreePC service in spite of your threats. If required, we will be a voice in the courtroom defending a consumer's right to use technology and an online process to secure their settlement claims.'"

MPAA Scratches Oscar Screeners xstein writes "In a follow up to this story, the major studios have agreed to go along the MPAA's proposal to stop sending out screener tapes and DVDs to Academy members. The agreement would include MPAA's seven studio members, Disney, WB, Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and MGM, as well as their affiliates, which include New Line, Miramax, Focus Features and Sony Pictures Classics. Dreamworks, although not an MPAA member, also agreed to the ban. This move scratches a longstanding tradition, and is seen to hurt smaller, independent-minded movies distributed by MPAA members the most, though may allow truly independent studios such as Lions Gate to gain extra attention with their screener tapes. E! Online and Salon.com have the scoop."

Phantom Offices? Ray B writes "On September 18th, Slashdot posted about an article on the Phantom video game console. Of particular note in the primary article investigating the Phantom's founder(s), was that the company did not even have physical offices.

Just four days later, the Phantom email Newsletter #2 is issued, with the first bit of news being:

"Infinium Labs recently signed a five-year lease on 10,000 sq. ft. of prime office space to locate its corporate offices in the Centre Pointe Building in downtown Sarasota, Florida. The Centre Pointe offices are in close proximity to many of the company's early investors, its corporate legal counsel and the industrial design firm that is developing the Phantom Game System(TM) prototypes"

Coincidence or damage control?"

Well, start with the Python then and work your way up. Wolfbone writes "A recent edition of 'Global Business,' a BBC World Service programme available here in RealAudio form, contains an admission that the BBC cannot afford to put it's entire archive online, contradicting an earlier Slashdot story and the BBC's own report. Even though it only has 11.56 Petabytes of the stuff, some of it recorded on wax cylinders, it would be too expensive, apparently, to keep their earlier promise. The rest of the programme is about the more general problems of long term archiving of data and how some organizations still don't trust digital electronic formats and prefer to stick with paper and microfiche."

Segway recall: in and out in 10 minutes! ptorrone writes "I got my Segway HT updated today, the 'recall' is a simple software update, it took 10 minutes and that was about it. To clarify what the recall is ...the HTs are not being sent back, Segway has people in each state of the USA and they update them. So far all owners have been notified and thousands have updated. The update makes it harder for people to ride after numerous low battery alerts (3 people out of 6,000 thought something else). Here are my pictures from the update procedure."
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Slashback: VeriSign, Balance, Manifestation More

Slashback: VeriSign, Balance, Manifestation

Comments Filter:

  • I'm a little confused.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:03PM (#7109349) Homepage Journal
    ... What does banning screeners do to affect Indie filmmmakers?

    Sorry if I'm being ignorant here, I'm not having a great day.
    • Indies are not part of the agreement. Thus they may still send out DVDs. This should give them more attention than in the past, since they will be the only ones sending out the screener DVDs.

      • Re:I'm a little confused.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by exhilaration ( 587191 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:11PM (#7109418)
        and is seen to hurt smaller, independent-minded movies distributed by MPAA members

        He's talking about THAT, and it refers to the exposure that smaller films will lose because of this. Because they never got the same ad budget as the summer blockbusters, smaller films relied on the buzz generated by screeners, or so the blurb would suggest.

        • "Because they never got the same ad budget as the summer blockbusters, smaller films relied on the buzz generated by screeners, or so the blurb would suggest."

          Ah, thank you. That's exactly what I was trying to piece together. :)
    • So many movies to see, so little time to attend screenings. Without screeners, some movies simply won't get the attention of the Academy folks.
    • Well, it could possibly help the indies, since there is nothing preventing them from sending out DVD copies of movies up for consideration to Academy members. It's more likely that someone will see your film if you make it more convenient for the prospective watcher.
    • If their film has little exposure, and some people at the academy haven't seen it, and don't get a screener copy, then they won't get nominated?

      That's my best guess.

    • Re:I'm a little confused.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Klerck ( 213193 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:14PM (#7109438) Homepage
      Many of the more indie films that happen to be distributed by the MPAA do not see wide release, perhaps only playing in New York or LA. Because of this, not all Academy members may get a chance to see them, and it can hurt the film's chances of being nominated for awards.

      Screeners allowed the Academy members to view movies in the comfort of their own homes or while travelling which means they wouldn't have to go out of their way to see a film that wasn't playing on thousands of screens nationwide.

      • Watermarking? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 )
        Wasn't there talk a while back about watermarking each DVD sent to the screeners, so they could track who leaked it?

        For preventative maintenance, they could have set up a DRM solution that depended on a screener's private key.

        They could have embedded the video on a BSD or Linux boot CD with an encrypted FS, so they'd have the DMCA on their side.
    • Given the extremely limited distribution that a lot of indie films get and given how hard/expensive it is to make prints and such there is a strong chance that your average Academy voter would be unable to see one of the indie contenders in the theater. If the Academy member's cannot be sent a video or DVD then there's a strong chance they won't see the movie at all...and they probably wouldn't vote for a movie they haven't seen.
    • It helps indies because now only the indies
      will be sending out screeners. The majors
      have "banned" them, i.e., will not be sending
      them out. Thus indies will get a lot more
      academy exposure, and win more awards.
  • Is there any digital database that large nowadays?
  • I don't think anything concerning the current state of the Phantom should be believed there is just too much undeniable proof that the guys a 'tard.

  • So... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Luigi30 ( 656867 )
    Does that mean we can give Shrub a Segway, and he won't fall off this time?
  • Talk about irony. Here I am looking at the pics of the "altered" VeriSign signs, and I have an ad for a VeriSign SSL guide popping up in Opera.

    "The Value of Trust" indeed.

    • That's about as ironic as every event in the alanis morrisette song. Perhaps you meant coincidence?

      irony ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-n, r-)
      n. pl. ironies

      1.
      1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
      2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
      3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.
      2.
  • How often will Microsoft do this rubbish. I don't even use RAV and never have but everytime I hear about their latest asset strip and close down I cringe...
  • Doesn't seem like those signs are terribly visible from afar, but at least the ones who take them down will be able to tell what it says. They might not get the point, though, not that the average passer-by would either.

    • Re:NXDOMAIN (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rootofevil ( 188401 )
      yea, they really showed verisign didnt they!

      be nice, or we will tape MORE paper up over your logo, so that people wont know where you work!

      that just screams obey.
      • Personally what I liked is that it seemed to have been printed on a Dot Matrix printer.

        I mean, where does a protest oriented person even FIND one of those thing?!?!?

        Yeah, I know, there's still some things they can do that inkjets/Lasers/etc can't, including printing barely legible protest posters

    • they remind me of the two-line "jokes" you often see on slashdot... that are then followed by a ten-line explanation of why it was allegedly funny.

    • Doesn't seem like those signs are terribly visible from afar, but at least the ones who take them down will be able to tell what it says. They might not get the point, though, not that the average passer-by would either.

      Ahh yes, the power of figlet/vim/a2ps/poster.c
      (bold will be added in the next version)

  • So the obviously American Question... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:16PM (#7109451)
    How do i join the class action. I don't use my site much, just to put pics up for family and friends and stuff.. but the idea behind it really pisses me off. I have spam checkers (and sendmail) going apeshit about all these domains suddenly existing.. I don't really want a portion of the settlement (how unamerican of me) but I'd rather it go to schools. I just want versign to learn in the only way corporations do, with their wallet.
  • I thought the banners were a clever idea, although a bit small to make anybody really notice them in my opinion. . .

  • VeriSign class action - 404? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Specialist2k ( 560094 ) <slashdot-200408.10.spezi@spamgourmet.com> on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:22PM (#7109483)
    After quickly scanning the class action document against VeriSign, I am shocked about the incompetence of the plaintiff's lawyers: Their argumentation about 404 error pages has nothing to do with VeriSign's DNS change.

    Is it that hard for a "high technology" law firm [techfirm.com] to understand how DNS works?

    A s/\"404\"/NXDOMAIN/g; would definitely improve their chances to win the law suit. ;-)

  • 404 is not the same as domain not found (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Clipper ( 547339 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:24PM (#7109496) Homepage

    The actual complaint [techfirm.com] in the class action law suit has very serious confusion involving the technical issues surrounding the SiteFinder [verisign.com].

    In the introduction, they discuss that the SiteFinder replaces what was previously done with 404 errors. However, as has been previously discussed many times here on SlashDot, 404 errors occur when the domain exists, but the requested document does not exist on the webserver hosting that domain (it is the webserver than returns the 404 HTTP error code). In actually, when a domain didn't exist, you would get an error stating "Could not find domain". The complaint even describes how, in the past, incorrectly typing a URL would give a 404 error (they use the typo "ssyncalot.com" as a typo of "syncalot.com"). This behaviour never occured.

    Although I feel that legal action against Verisign is a good idea, the plaintiffs should perhaps organize their technical facts before appearing in court.

    • If there's going to be complaints about the 404 error code, someone might take it up with Microsoft why their error page in IE is the same for both HTTP 404 and for an unresponsive server.

      Life sucks here in tech support.
      • No they're different. They look similar (little i icon thingee, text message in verdana font) but the actual text is different.

        "This page cannot be displayed" as opposed to "This page cannot be found" with "HTTP 404 - File not found
        Internet Explorer " at the bottom.
    • I emailed the law firm involved, and was stunned to actually get an answer:

      The NXDOMAIN issue is part of the case as well - in Federal Court we have
      mere "notice" pleading - frankly we could have simply said "they broke the
      internet and we want the Court to fix it" and that would have been enough to
      get the case started...Slashdot rocks and I do read the postings ;-)

      Ira

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: "Chris Daniel"
      To:
      Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 6:50 PM
      Subject: Verisign Case

      > It appears you are
      • attempting to sue Verisgn (we applaud you at Slashdot)

        Normally I don't do the spelling Nazi thing, but I want to hope that you retyped the Original Message, and didn't include a spelling error in an email. On Slashdot, it's forgivable, but email has spell-check. Otherwise, leave off the parenthetical.

  • Segway updates (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    10 minutes... from a laptop... through a little plug...

    How long before h4xx0rs are offering simple 10-minute updates to make Segways go 20 mph?

  • Phantom Offices (Score:4, Funny)

    by tessaiga ( 697968 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:30PM (#7109530)
    "Infinium Labs recently signed a five-year lease on 10,000 sq. ft. of prime office space to locate its corporate offices in the Centre Pointe Building in downtown Sarasota, Florida. The Centre Pointe offices are in close proximity to many of the company's early investors, its corporate legal counsel and the industrial design firm that is developing the Phantom Game System(TM) prototypes"

    Coincidence or damage control?

    It probably just means that enough investors have bought their hype that Timothy Roberts can now afford to splurge and start living the high life again. Look for the next press release to say that they're loading up on Aeron chairs [salon.com] for the employees.

    (By the way, the link in that article probably should have been this one [hardocp.com].)

  • Kaspersky Labs now works on RAV Migration program for Unix/Linux users, since the company officials deem this market as one of the fastest-growing

    So does this mean Linux/Unix is going to beat Windows in the championship for most viruses available for the platform?

    • Antivirus software in Linux might focus on performing as a safety net for when boxes get rooted. Like forcing a restore of shadow files if they were modified outside an authorized time, or notifying a user and administrator if a file that'd been set to "read-only" was written to anyway.
    • Actually, they're many used as anti-virus for windows, cf. the rececent worms and e-mail worms.

    • Re:Antivirus market for Linux the fastest-growing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @09:28PM (#7109902)
      The most common use of anti-virus on Linux is for scanning and removing viruses destined for Windows machines.

      Client side scanning isn't as effective as server side virus scanning because people don't update their virus sigs as often as they should. With a server side solution, you can update it every hour, and protect thousands of windows users.

      I doubt Kaspersky is gonna put much of a dent in this market though with their high prices. I see they charge $2045 for their AV product for Linux mailservers, which only covers 500 users.

      With RAV you were good for 2 domains and unlimited users for $300

      I was bit by the shutting down of RAV, but have since moved to BitDefender.
      Their AV solution costs $225

      http://www.bitdefender.com/bd/site/buy1.php

      I use it with sendmail.
      It is easy to set-up, takes less than 5 minutes. Just install the tarball or the RPM, enter in your relay domains and IP addresses. It installs an SMTP proxy and moves sendmail to port 10025

      The smtp proxy accepts the mail scans for viruses and passes it off to sendmail. I have it running on a 266Mhz with 64MB of RAM and it averages around a .3-.6 load for my 2500 email users.

      Even most anti-spam solutions for Linux are ridiculously priced. Some costing thousands of dollars when SpamAssassin/MimeDefang are free, and probably work as good if not better than commercial solutions.

      I set-up MimeDefang and Spamassassin on one of those cheap $400 Dells with the 2.2 celeron. I added half a GIG of memory to it, and it now stops around 120,000 pieces of spam per day with a load average around .6

      My entire anti-spam/anti-virus solution cost me
      less than $800 when I could have easily spent anywheres from $4000-$10,000+ for other solutions.
  • Pity. Now those three people who own them are going to have to learn to walk again. What a shame that people have no concept of stored energy and how it's finite. The video of I guess it's GWB falling off of a Segway is damn hilarious.
    • Pity. Now those three people who own them are going to have to learn to walk again. What a shame that people have no concept of stored energy and how it's finite.

      For crying out loud dude, this is pathetic. I know it's too much to ask for people to read the articles before commenting, but can't you at the very least read the editors summary?!
    • People seem to forget that recall doesn't necessarily (or even usually) mean pulling the prodct off of the market. It's very common that a recall just means a repair of some sort that (usually) increases the safety of a product.

      I have to admit that 'pulling off the market' was my first reaction to the recall announcement. Then I read the original news articles and I hit myself... "Oh yeah -- that kind of a recall."

  • Cyber crime (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leeward ( 313589 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @08:50PM (#7109651)

    I couldn't help but notice the quote from John Weglian, chief of the special units division of the prosecutor's office, when explaing why he is coming down so hard on modem uncappers. Cyber crime is potentially very damaging to society. We are taking a firm position on that type of criminal activity.

    Uh, yea. I guess that is why they are putting virtually no effort into stopping the blatantly criminal spam and viruses that are spewed out every day by the millions. Besides, law enforcement is so busy protecting companies... err I mean society... from uncappers.

  • NXDOMAIN signs are embarrassing! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh God, how embarrassing are those NXDOMAIN signs! I live around 3 minutes from Middlefield and Ellis, and I drive by there everyday. I didn't see this "protest".

    Maybe, instead of using a dot-matrix printer, which made the letters almost invisible, they should have used a simple Sharpie pen. It would have been so much more visible. And maybe they should have used something else other than their obscure, stupid choice of words.

    I wish I could see this entire debacle unfold:
    1) Nerds spend hours thinking
    • 3) Nerds put up sign outside of one of Verisign's buildings, not the HQ

      Well, it is at a pretty busy intersection in the mornings. Sad thing is, that same fountain used to have a Netscape logo on it. ::sniff::

      5) Security guard comes by, sees sign, has no idea what it means, and throws sign in the trash.

      Unlikely. I've been in that fountain before. Security guards would wait until the junior guard comes in, then make him wade into the fountain.

      • > Sad thing is, that same fountain used to have a Netscape logo on it. ::sniff::

        The funny thing, though, is that same fountain also used to have water in it. I worked a couple blocks from there until recently, and as of about a month ago the water seems to have disappeared. Maybe Verisign can't afford water anymore? :-)

        Oddly, I know several people at Verisign. I'm hoping they're all in a department that isn't involved in this whole mess, because I'm friends with a couple of them. Of course, their

  • I thought they would be interested in finding and prosecuting the offenders?
    Couldn't they individually encode the discs so the source of the leak can be traced (I realise this would cost more as you can't use a single master disk)?
    Then again, the RIAA hasn't had too much success with their customers, and this would probably only annoy their members.
    I suppose they'll still need some kind of an alternative for promotions.

  • Download movie in 5 seconds? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @09:04PM (#7109748) Homepage Journal
    From the E! Online article:

    Valenti says a new program developed by Caltech researchers allows a movie file to be downloaded in five seconds

    Did I miss something here? Is this some quantum leap in information theory/signal compression? Or maybe Caltech was doing some tests in their labs on a gigabit Ethernet connection, and Valenti thought that it meant that any home user could achieve such download times as well?

  • random domain lookups (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jeffmock ( 188913 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @09:05PM (#7109757)
    I'm just thinking, if a few high volume websites were to include links to a 1-pixel GIF at bogus randomly generated domains, wouldn't sitefinder crumble, and zero the value of any collected statistics on domain name typos.

    I think this would be much more entertaining than lawsuits or BIND hacks...

    jeff

    • I've written a simple C program [jk0.org] to do something similar, except it generates Netcraft queries of pseudorandom but legit-looking domain names, thus pushing up Apache's Netcraft rank at the expense of IIS. A competent programmer could probably adapt it to generate HTML that requests a PNG image while rewriting it in one of the Three P's of Dynamic Web Pages (Perl, Python, and PHP).

      • ideas... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pr0ntab ( 632466 )
        you should surround that system with a fork/forget, and add a timeout to the wget (or use curl with "-m #") so that you don't spawn off too many. (make sure to reap children in the spawning loop).

        I'm sure a machine on a broadband connection could spawn 40 requests in the time it takes one to reply.

        Finally, you should really consider not using the bare URLs in the request because all you really do is hammer your local DNS server.

        instead, make fake requests DIRECTLY to sitefinder-idn.verisign.com. To see w

  • "Wrongful Handling" Of Domain Names? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have my doubt about the Optima Technology "wrongful handling" suit against Verisign for handing a "their" domain over to a former employee without "proper authorization."

    The domain was registered in 1990. From my experience, it is much more likely that the former employee, seeing the business benefit of the Internet, registered the domain listing him/herself as the registrant because most companys didn't give a sh*t about domain names in 1990. That was particularly true of startups. As I have done, th

  • 11.56 Petabytes (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by istartedi ( 132515 )

    Why does Peta want to byte them? Do they wear fur? /me ducks...

    Linux AV software writers? Maybe they should team up with the Maytag repairman.

    Oh, and for good measure... ummm... I dunno, pour some hot grits on that, make a Beowulf cluster. You're all smart guys, I'm sure you'll think of something.

  • "MPAA Scratches Oscar Screeners" - Its Ok! Really! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @09:23PM (#7109862) Journal
    The Academy members will just download the movies from the internet instead!
    • The Academy members will just download the movies from the internet instead!

      Dude, no they won't! Where do you think we got the internet rips?!?

      Seriously, that's how I got my copy of Two Towers before I went out and bought it. Someone ripped the DVD that was given to one of the academy reviewers. Then, instead of compressing it, they put it on the internet as 6 gigs of raw DVD movie file. Weeeeeee! DVD burner, and bam, instant two towers.
      To be honest, I haven't bought it yet, but I'm planning on buy

  • Complain about VeriSign here! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SEE ( 7681 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @09:33PM (#7109930) Homepage
    1. The Department of Commerce [mailto]; VeriSign's contract to operate .com and .org was originally with them.
    2. The Federal Communications Commission [fcc.gov], which oversees telecommunications.
    3. The Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications [senate.gov]; contact the committee itself [senate.gov], the chairman [senate.gov], the ranking member [senate.gov], and any of the other members you'd like.
    4. The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet [house.gov], including the committee itself [house.gov], the chairman [house.gov], the vice-chairman [house.gov], and the ranking member [house.gov]. Plus any of the other members you feel like contacting.
    5. The Federal Trade Commission [ftc.gov], which hears consumer complaints.
    6. Your U.S. Representative [house.gov]
    7. Your Senators [senate.gov]
    8. Your Governor [firstgov.gov]
    9. Your State Legislators [ncsl.org]
    10. ICANN's wildcard comment address [mailto]
    11. VeriSign itself [verisign.com]
    12. Finally, complain to the media. If they get lots of letters on a topic, they'll run stories. Try the New York Times [mailto], the Washington Post [mailto], the Washington Times [mailto], the Los Angeles Times [latimes.com], USA Today [usatoday.com], the Wall Street Journal [mailto], CNN [cnn.com], Fox News [foxnews.com], CBS News [cbsnews.com], ABC News [go.com], NBC News and MSNBC [msnbc.com].
    • Since ICANN doesn't seem to be very good at "stabilizing" the Internet as they were supposed to be doing can't someone sue them for allowing this to go on?

      ICANN was set up to oversee all the registrars but it seems they are just allowing Verisign to get away with whatever it wants to.

      I've had Verisign attempt to hijack domains by pretending they didn't receive payments, I had them actually take domains claiming they were unpaid for when they were, I've had them steal my own domain name, transfer it to a

      • Actually now that the ruling came down in the Sex.com case I think you can sue Netsol (Verisign) for a couple of the things that you just mentioned if true.

        Seems like it might be a good time to talk to a lawyer in your case.

    • Wow, great job tracking down these e-mails. Also, don't forget to contact the companies actually paying for SiteFinder, especially if you or your business have a relationship with them. Here are a few of them (websites only, someone else can find the contacts). Let them know what they're association with VeriSign is contributing to (domain name hijacking, disruption of internet standards, interference with spam filters, etc.) and that you'll encourage others to avoid (boycott) their products where ever p

  • Uncapping and the Law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @10:48PM (#7110375)
    If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then neither is ignorance by the Law.

    I'm amazed at the complete and total lack of technological prowess exhibited by the law enforcement officials in the Buckeye case. Law enfarcement is closer to the mark. Hell, forget the computer skills ... how about some basic common sense? It's just unbelievable. How on EARTH could anyone believe that 23 individuals could appropriate a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS of bandwidth over cable modems in such a short period? It's not like they were tapping into an OC3 or a major fiber trunk. One would have every right to expect the cops to have at least asked for some evidence that an actual crime was committed! I am truly staggered. Okay, a cable company behaved in an unethical and/or criminal manner (insert sincere expression of surprise here) but the fact that a bunch of supposedly professional "police officers" were so easily taken in is, well, disappointing.

    Somebody higher up in the cops' food chain should have said "WTF? Slap their wrists, say you're sorry, and send these guys home." This is called oversight, and it is supposed to prevent such egregious abuses. I imagine it would probably have been more than sufficient to deter any future "abberrant" behavior. But ... arrests? Seizures? FELONY CHARGES? My God. People speeding in cars who run red lights and might actually kill someone are given more respect. Gang-bangers that shoot people dead in the street can get better treatment! What were these cops thinking? Were they thinking?

    Law enforcement purports to protect us from wrongdoing and frequently does, but this level of irrationality by government officials is just unnerving. I mean, what kind of judge signed the warrants that (I presume) were presented during these raids? Whoever he (or she) was ought to turn in his (or her) robes immediately, and go work in a computer store for a few months and learn a few useful facts before returning to the bench. I would further venture to guess that there are many judges who would benefit from such training. My apologies to any judges in the Slashdot audience, but considering how many poor technology decisions I've seen handed down by the Judiciary lately I feel justified in my opinion. It is no longer enough to simply understand the Law: one must have a good grasp of scientific and engineering principles as well, and a basic understanding of such terms as "bandwidth" probably wouldn't hurt!

    The sad truth is that merely being accused of a crime in this country is punitive in and of itself. The sadder truth is the increasing number of individuals and corporations who abuse that fact for fun, profit, or as a means of intimidation. This reminds me of some older cases involving the Bell System where publicly-available documents that were accessed by crackers were arbitrarily valued at tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was done solely and deliberately to exceed legal minimums on financial damage to enable law enforcement to take action. This kind of behavior is unethical as hell, and should be illegal in and of itself, if it isn't already.

    And I'll further say this: the rest of the nation's cable companies had better start distancing themselves from the Buckeye debacle. If they're smart, they'll indemnify their users from such actions, and limit their own recourse to termination of services, in writing. For most people, broadband is an expensive luxury, yet one that most have felt safe in using (viruses, trojans, hackers and spyware notwithstanding.) At least, we weren't afraid of the service provider itself.

    If the public perception of broadband shifts to one of fear and anxiety (we're already well-past loathing) users will simply put that disposable income into some other avenue of entertainment. If that comes to pass they won't need to worry about bandwidth caps: they'll be out of business, and then were would I get my MP3s?
    • One would have every right to expect the cops to have at least asked for some evidence that an actual crime was committed!

      If I walk up to you on an empty street and punch you in the face, then run away, are you going to call for the police to pursue me? After all, there's no evidence that I committed a crime, except your word. In fact, there's no evidence that a crime was committed at all -- you could have gotten that bruised jaw some other way.

      Gang-bangers that shoot people dead in the street can get
      • If I walk up to you on an empty street and punch you in the face, then run away, are you going to call for the police to pursue me? After all, there's no evidence that I committed a crime, except your word. In fact, there's no evidence that a crime was committed at all -- you could have gotten that bruised jaw some other way.

        I don't know what idea you're trying to support with that example, but the puncher in your example would most assuredly get away scott free, and the punchee would be out of luck... un
      • The sad truth is that this is and has been true of every culture in human history. It's not a defect of the American legal system, it's a defect of Human Nature.

        Partially true. Yes, other nations exhibit similar problems, if not worse ones, BUT this is very much a defect of the modern American justice system. I use the term "justice" very loosely in this context. Much of what the Founding Fathers agonized over when creating the basis of our legal system involved this very issue: how do we create a leg
      • Judges might have to preside over a malpractice suit someday, so better make it mandatory for judges to have gone through medical school. Oh, and they should be licensed auto mechanics, airline pilots, and accountants too. Never know when they might need to be experts in THOSE fields, too. And we probably ought to make them kill a guy so they'll have the expertise required to preside over a murder trial, yeah.

        And let me add that, while I don't expect judges to be experts in every field of human knowledge
  • Did I miss something?

    I assume that this is suposed to be Roman numerals, but it's not a valid numeric value. I suppose most closely translated it would be "8 8 5" or "8 and 8 and 5". But that doesn't make very much sense.

    If we're suposed to add these values together that would make arabic numerals 29, or XXIX in roman.
    Maybe he means "eight hundred and eighty-five" bot correctly rendered in Roman is DCCCLXXXV.

    Maybe I should just pronounce it as is...eekseeksev, but that sound doesn't homonymistic to any o
    • The only correct interpretation is 2, 12, 15.
      8, 8, 5 doesn't work as IIX is NOT 8, anymore than IIV is 3. You can have a maximum of ONE lesser value before a greater value to decrement it, for example CM (900), XL (40), etc.

      II XII XV works. IIX IIX V doesn't.
  • The thing that gets me is that broadband providers never have a minimum speed that they guarantee. If they do, it's something extremely small; ie, Earthlink guarantees 2400bps on its DSL service. However they usually do have a maximum speed which, if exceeded, they'll take notice. The double standard amuses me, "If we're giving the customer piss poor service we don't care but if they're getting really good connection speeds we do." Hmmm...
  • The Shift Key: It's not just for punctuation anymore.

    I know yours works because of the brackets, try it with some letters too.

  • Until today, for me the wildcard in .com wasn't much trouble. Everybody was making a lot of noise about basically nothing.

    However, today I mistyped a domainname by one character. I then get redirected to some stupid sitefinder. I realize my mistake and mouse over to the addressbar to correct that single character typo. Not so. I Have to retype the whole thing.

    This annoys me to no end. Crash verisign, crash!

    Roger.

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