Classic movie that I haven’t seen: Raging Bull. Remedy: Film Forum, 1:30 PM today, 20th anniversary showing. UPDATE: the movie was awesome, but I don’t know which was cooler, sitting in the movie theater a seat away from Spike Lee, or watching someone shush Spike Lee as the movie was about to roll.

In a bit of word trickery rivaling anything Clinton has mustered, Dubya got caught in a major lie about military readiness this week. In claiming that two divisions of the military aren’t “ready for duty,” Dubya failed to understand exactly what that term means, and why the divisions fit into their specific readiness categories. (The C-4 readiness category, to which both the 1st Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division downgraded themselves temporarily, indicates that they would not be able to report to two major theatres of war, in separate parts of the world, at the same time. The reason for both divisions downgrading themselves is that they were already stationed in Bosnia and Kosovo, on military missions.) The Army News Service explained the exact meaning of all this way back in November — one would think that Dubya should have been paying attention.

For all those who rant and rave about Internet Explorer and its various security issues, you may want to level your guns at Netscape Navigator right about now… but not after turning off Java in Netscape, since Brown Orifice is a huge gaping wound.

There’s an interesting patch, IP Personality, available for the 2.4.X line of Linux kernels. It allows your Linux box to masquerade as another type of machine at the network level; this fools network probe programs that try to identify machine types (like nmap) into thinking that your Linux box is something else. Why would you do this? Knowing what operating system a box runs helps hackers begin to plan an attack on that box; if you can legitimatly fool them, then you’re one step further from being hacked.

I hadn’t realized that the genius site TakeBackVermont.com was a Jessamyn product. I love her idea of just tacking a “.COM” onto the end of all of the offensive lawn signs, which will bring people to her website and to the more level-headed side of the issue.

I missed a WSJ article last week about Napster’s two-faced approach to intellectual property — the company’s officers don’t mind encouraging the sharing of other’s copyrighted works, but come down with a strong fist on anyone who tries to share in the company’s own labors. Meanwhile, Rafe Colburn doesn’t like the fact that Napster is trying to make money on the backs of other’s creative works.

Comments

Jason, that WSJ article got it wrong. Go look around the Web, there are Napster clones popping up everywhere. It’s going to be as widely deployed a protocol as HTTP. Good or bad? Who knows. But it surely is happening. Napster’s not suing anyone. So the WSJ article completely misses the point, as far as I’m concerned.

• Posted by: Dave Winer on Aug 7, 2000, 11:49 AM

Dave, I’m not talking about the PROTOCOL, or even the IDEA, I’m talking about the COMPANY. Yes, Napster clones are popping up, and yes, the whole networking notion that Napster has brought to the world is phenomenal. But as a COMPANY, Napster has fought to prevent companies from tapping into its network, prevent the details of its protocol from becoming public (hence it needing to live on a third party website), and prevent Napigator from detailing Napster network statistics (read the third FAQ), to name a few things it’s doing to protect its OWN interest while hurting others’. And Napster did send a cease-and-desist letter to The Offspring when they decided to offer Napster stuff on their website (although the two later settled) — seems fishy for a company that allows people to get almost ANY artist’s stuff on their OWN network.

People keep assuming that I’m attacking the idea behind Napster. I’m not, and to paraphrase you, Dave, I’ll keep saying it a million more times. What I’m attacking is the use of that idea to violate long-held rights. Again, Napster’s cool to you, but God forbid someone starts offering up Frontier and a serial number on Gnutella, and Userland’s lawyers will be all over them like West Nile on a New York crow.

/jason

• Posted by: Jason Levine on Aug 7, 2000, 6:07 PM

Your idea of fishy is my idea of water under the bridge. Have a nice day, if possible.

• Posted by: Dave Winer on Aug 7, 2000, 7:38 PM

Your idea of fishy is my idea of water under the bridge.

I don’t even understand how this reply applies to that to which I was applying “fishy” — Napster’s sending a cease-and-desist letter to a group distributing their wares when they were so publicly ignoring similar letters from groups accusing them of doing the same.

Have a nice day, if possible.

Snarky! I think you elevate all this to a position of way more importance in my life than it actually occupies.

• Posted by: Jason Levine on Aug 7, 2000, 8:29 PM
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