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Or, in the case of Disney, outright pilfers and then claims to own what they pilferred (say, Snow White or Cinderella).

I'm sorry, but that's patently false. Almost every time Disney has made a children's animated film, another company called Good Times Video has immediately come out with an animated film with basically the same story on DVD. If you've walked through a Wal-Mart, I'm sure you've seen these. They've even got a Snow White , and besides the Good Times video there's dozens or probably hundreds of illustrated children's books on the theme. Disney has mainly left them alone, even though they probably attract some meagre amount of business away from Disney.

Sure, Disney was a major copyright lobbyist to keep their precious "Steamboat Willie" cartoon out of the public domain, but they don't act like they exclusively own the Snow White story.

*goes home to work on hacking his Kindle*

David Gewirtz of the Outlook Power and Domino Power magazines has published a book on the subject titled Where Have All the Emails Gone?

It's written to be read by a non-technical crowd, so if you pick it up be prepared to skip some chapters which go over networking and e-mail application basics. It's still a very interesting read in that provides some fascinating history going back to the first e-mail system used in the White House and works forward to the current controversy. None of the administrations is blameless in their handling of information.

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero makes the suggestion that interstellar contacts between races are more likely in the beginning of the universe than towards the end, simply because all matter will spread so far apart and there won't be enough fuel to move around.

Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun also conjectures a future where galaxies move so far apart that the steersmen of ships cannot locate their destinations by sight and must rely on old charts.

After so many years of having your stupid management decisions crap-o-meter go off you eventually reach your limit. What you are going through is normal. Over the last 17 years in software development I've seen technology change and survived many re-organizations in various companies. I started out as a permanent employee (5 years) also became disillusioned, became a consultant and ran a small "C" corp for 8 years, got married, had kids, am currently a perm employee again-- but am still living the dream of creating a killer web services app. Management becomes more about politics and negotiating to get the right tools in place to do the job right. I've lived through several re-orgs where layers of management were wiped out. In many of these cases there were managers that no longer had technical skills who had a hard time finding new management positions because their companies fell behind technology-wise and they did not themselves keep up. But there is risk associated with everything- it just comes down to how good you are at mitigating it by developing good working relationships and keeping up in your field or learning new things. Being en entrepreneur can be an exciting adventure. Doing it on the hardware side might be difficult with the start up costs, however, if you are interested in automation or robotics you might be able to find a market gap as the field is just getting going. Just as big auto and big manufacturing have automated, small and middle manufacturing are ripe for automation. In my case I chose web service applications because software is what I know. Two critical points if you are interested: 1. Read books on entrepreneurship. Not the franchise magazines so much as ones like Think And Grow Rich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_and_Grow_Rich and The Start Up Entrepreneur http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Entrepreneur-Succeed-Building-Company/dp/0452278007 These books teach about becoming motivated, learning how to see market gaps (opportunities), and overcomming obstacles put in front of you. 2. Avoid naysayers and idiots who tell you something cannot be done. When someone offers you free negative advice quietly ask yourself one queston: What has this person done in this field that gives their opinion credibility. Having family responsibliities may force you to be more careful on how you approach undertaking a new business but there is a plus side to not being too much of a Cowboy as well. Good luck in whatever you choose to do.

I just finally ran out of ink in my Canon Pixma MP780 and am looking at buying replacement ink cartridges. I know that a lot of the printers, mine included I'm pretty sure, have counters in the carts to keep you from refilling them. You can (usually) disable the counters through some undocumented voodoo, but then it doesn't watch out for you running out of ink and you can burn up the expensive print head.

So I'm going to skip the refill. But I'm looking at buying the non-name brand ink carts. Does anyone know if this avoids the counter problem? Do these "compatible" ink carts also have the counter chip so it can avoid silently running out of ink?

I need replacements of all the carts - BCI-3eBk, BCI-6C, BCI-6Y, BCI-6M, BCI-6Bk. From Canon, this costs around $40-50 for all 5. I found one compatible one that is $14.51 and actually contains about twice as many carts: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000C159LW

Couple of other questions: if I got the above package, would I still need a BCI-6Bk, or could it use the BCI-3eBk for all the black needs? Does anyone have a link to a page the explains the difference between BCI-3, BCI-3e, BCI-6, etc.?

Note: I sometimes print photos, but it's not really for archival purposes. If I want a quality long term photo, I send it to Walgreens. Most of my printing is fairly disposable - a map to some place, a story to read later, etc.

It's funny that this is the second story on Slashdot in a row about military technology. For me, this shows an interesting dichotomy in how military issues are treated here. On one hand, us nerds show certain tendencies to pacifism, especially with the current war in Iraq. War, in a Star Trek sense, is often seen as belonging to a backward age of Man. On the other hand, among the nerd community there has always been an admiration of military technological advances and the efficiency of military organization. Look at the long popularity of Heinlein's Starship Troopers , for example.

Anything that is not in the list of trusted root certs I would call invalid, indeed all browsers but Safari call these certs invalid

Someone should really setup a time to do a mass prank call attack. Could be quite hilarious.

That would be appropriate, since the first album by the band that has brought independent digital releases to world attention, Radiohead's Pablo Honey , took its title from a hilarious Jerky Boys bit.

Is there any statement from the Jerky Boys themselves about how they view the RIAA? I'd imagine such a free-spirited team to be sympathetic to the new world of independent digital distribution, and I'm sure we'd all love if they pranked the RIAA.

just to scare the nigga away

http://www.amazon.com/Sylvania-SY-600-Simulated-Security-Camera/dp/B00005R8TI

HTC make plenty of excellent Smartphones.

I agree. I'm very happy with the HTC Mogul PPC-6800 phone, which overcame my dislike of Windows Mobile devices. Too bad they chose a name like "Mogul", though. It makes me feel as if mere telephony has me trodding on oppressed classes.

Still, I am looking forward to coming developments in the smartphone field. I'd like to be the type who uses only Free software, and I wish we could reach the point where that could be done with no loss of efficiency or ease of use.

By the way, did Slashdot just go down for anyone else for the last hour or so?

Two things about Clay Shirky's critique of TV:

1. He's right.
2. He is pissing in the wind.

The Internet, and in particular Web 2.0 and the interactive/collaborative opportunities it creates, have pretty much already been coopted into the trivialization of thought and discourse. For every Wikipedia article there are hundreds of lame blog posts on boneheaded topics (including, for some of you, this one!). From an epistomological perspective, the Internet/television convergence is only accelerated by Web 2.0 technology, because the medium conditions us to behave trivially, a sizable fraction of people like it that way, and the economics of the medium tend to reinforce and extend that use.

The interested reader may also want to check out Neil Postmans's magnum opus on the death blow television has administered to our public discourse, written some twenty years ago.

When Lars Ulrich was attacking file-sharing in the Napster days, Metallica had long lost its independent spirit and street cred. Albums like Load were glossy, commercial affairs little different than your cookie-cutter non-threatening metal bands of the era. If they went a fully independent route like Radiohead or NIN, they might be able to secure the same vibe of semi-undergroundness that they enjoyed in the 1980s. I wouldn't bet on it, though. Most of their fans from that time got older and left metal behind, and many of those who still enjoy the best of the genre will hold their mistakes against them.

WHO is observing, physically? An abstract-entity?

Why can't this abstract-entity observe/perceive abstractions?

The Buddhists have held this to be possible for ages ( http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Mind-Geshe-Kelsang-Gyatso/dp/8120818911/ )

The Mental Sense Consciousness is what they call it.

I am an evil giraffe, and I shall eat more leaves from this tree then prehaps I should, so that other giraffes may die.

In case anyone doesn't get it, the above is a reference to the Stanley Kubric film 2001: A Space Odyssey (screenplay by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke), where the Hal-9000 computer that runs a spaceship begins its descent into madness. In 2008, we're sadly still a long way from sentient talking (and lip-reading) computers, though perhaps we should be thankful that the robot apocalypse has thus been put off a few more years.

Uh. No. It won't.

I submit as my two pieces of evidence: a TED talk by Levitt and his book.

Steven Levitt: Why do crack dealers still live with their moms?.

You may also want to check out his book (Freakonomics).

I'm right there with you. I keep hoping there will be something for our brand of conservative to band around. Although the title sounds un-conservative, there is a book that just hit the bookstores this week that I think maybe we can use to rally the old conservatives and save this dying experiment in freedom.

Back around the turn of the millennium, the U.S.'s monitoring of Internet traffic was a big topic of discussion on the Internet, spurred on by James Bamford's Body of Secrets and the European Union's report on ECHELON facilities. Except for some of us Slashbots, the public seems to have lost interest in this troubling phenomenon.

I saw it when it hit digg, which was apparently 1 Year, 220 days ago. I don't recall the specific model of hardware or software, but I've since used it on several other systems as well.

At least one example- while not anywhere near top-quality equipment, the Microsoft Fingerprint Reader is vulnerable, and is the class of device that you're likely to see on most consumer machines, as well as in a good percentage of offices.

If you don't like Genesis, there is a Hungarian Myth that tells the story of the Huns (one of the language groups) beginning with the tower of Babel (the Genesis story above). The best telling, IMO, is The White Stag, by Kate Seredy.

No. You've got it backwards. Google's App Engine is a reactive response to Amazon's successful Elastic Computing Cloud service.

The beauty of "getting out and exploring the world" is that it's one of the few remaining activities that doesn't require any "means." Here's an example that is decidedly geeky, always involves fresh air, and has scalable physical exertion requirements:
Geocaching

All you need is a handheld GPS, which can be had for less than $100:
cheap Garmin from Amazon
cheap Magellan from Amazon

The beauty of "getting out and exploring the world" is that it's one of the few remaining activities that doesn't require any "means." Here's an example that is decidedly geeky, always involves fresh air, and has scalable physical exertion requirements:
Geocaching

All you need is a handheld GPS, which can be had for less than $100:
cheap Garmin from Amazon
cheap Magellan from Amazon

When using an emulator you can buy a USB adapter and then use PS2 controllers rather than cheapo ones made for the computer. http://www.amazon.com/Playstation-PC-USB-Gamepad-Converter/dp/B000F6BGXY I would assume they also make them for other game system controllers too, but I haven't looked

Like OLPC, the original Bayless Freeplay Plus Radio was designed for local production.

The problem is that the precision manufacturer in Asia can also produce a rugged, reliable, clockwork dynamo.

He can package more sophisticated electronics and he can beat your price anywhere in the world. Midland XT511 Dynamo 22-Channel FRS/GMRS Emergency Crank Radio

The $67 three pound Midland may not be best-of-breed - but it is an easily portable dynamo powered transceiver and battery charger with AM/FM radio, NOAA weather radio and alerts.

http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592400876

You'd dig this book.

Is this some kind of Bussard ramjet then? I really love Larry Niven's Known Space stories (there's a great one about a ramjet chase in Neutron Star ) where ramjets serve for interstellar journeys, or Poul Anderson's Tau Zero. I wonder why ramjets aren't a big part of science fiction anymore. Even if they might not work in interstellar space, they seem to still have value inside the solar system, and this story looks like what people say a valid design would be.

We can finally begin to smell the rot on the corpse that is MS.

Emusic. The #2 US retailer of downloadable music has no DRM. It does have an annoyingly complex pricing model, but it is still amazingly cheap. Last month I discovered an artist I liked, and I downloaded every track they ever made for around 20 dollars.

Indies only, of course. Amazon.com for Mariah Carey. Emusic for The Pinker Tones and a lot of other great bands.

Unfortunately just about anyone "legally purchasing" music has signed a license agreement with the service. Since they are legally purchasing a license to use the sound recording for personal use - a rather restrictive license, at that - they really got what was coming to them.

I doubt that the courts would be an effective place to take this up. The market has already started to push producers towards offering their music through DRM-free avenues. (iTunes Plus, Amazon MP3, eMusic, Magnatune)

If enough users get screwed like this with closing DRMed stores, DRM will come crashing down.

(side note: I'm in a band that chose to only make its music available through DRM-free stores. We don't like letting retailers screw our fans. Check it out.

expect civil liberties to really hit the roof over this one... whatever happened to the right of free association?

You give up certain rights when you are sentenced to prison. Now, granted, my only knowledge of the U.S. prison system is from watching plenty of Oz , but it seems that few crimes happen in prison with just one prisoner against another. Prisoners build up networks for mutual defence and revenge, and if Prisoner A gets slammed by Prisoner B, it's possible that Prisoner B had accomplices. Tracking the social networks of prisoners would allow prison staff to find all the people responsible for plotting a crime, not just the guy who did it (who might even just be a fall guy). When a lot of prison murders are happening because one dude wants initiation into a gang, it's important to uncover the whole criminal enterprise if you want to stop future crimes.

These Two? They appear to be out of print.

It's not just consumer stuff. There's a well publicized account of Chinese counterfeiters setting up a fake NEC in China which sold products that NEC never manufactured. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/technology/01pirate.html?pagewanted=all

How many products can only be made in the U.S. or E.U.? It really doesn't take that long to throw together a manufacturing plant. Honestly, with the huge numbers of educated engineers in China and its culture of IP theft, how long was it going to be before truly sensitive, high tech products were copied?

The FBI's fears remind me of a recent book, The Execution Channel. http://www.amazon.com/Execution-Channel-Ken-MacLeod/dp/0765313324

While it might be a lot of trouble to rewrite firmware in a legitimate product, what's to stop someone from writing malicious firmware into their own knockoff product?

To find out why, read The Killing Star... If you can find a copy :p

Prior art:
http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Richard-K-Morgan/dp/0345457684

PS: No, not a paid referrer link.

Fascinating stuff. I'm still amazed that we have underwater cables at all. I had be shown a map of existing cables before I believed it.

Undersea cables were a big deal among nerds about a decade ago when Blind Man's Bluff came out. The military was doing amazing whizbang things with tapping underseas cables, but they obviously couldn't let anyone know about it at the time and it took decades for the stories to come out. The subsequent preparation of the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter to tap fiber-optic cables got quite a bit of coverage in the news.

Patents were crafted by people who accept capitalism and competition as inviolate principles, and wish to prevent the sort of secret hoarding that defined the guilds of the Mercantile age.

Dude, you obviously don't know, or forgot, what capitalism is about. To educate, or remind you, what capitalism is about I suggest you read Adam Smith's, the Father of Capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". He was opposed to monopolies but believed that limited monopolies granted by patents, key word being "limited", could bring benefits. Then Thomas Jefferson at first opposed patents as well but then his friend James Madison convinced him they could benefit society as well.

The point of patents was to force secret societies to reveal their secrets if they wanted the law to continue to validate and enforce their control. If you didn't reveal the secret, you couldn't ask the cops to go shut that guy down, but if you did, you could.

This would be better realized in the modern age by making transparency of process a requirement to enter the market, period.

Add the requirement that a patent application included a working example of the invention, which used to be required but was dropped. Requiring a working product, as you say released to the public, would prevent patent trolls like NTP from suing others like RIM over the Blackberry.

Patents were crafted by people who accept capitalism and competition as inviolate principles, and wish to prevent the sort of secret hoarding that defined the guilds of the Mercantile age.

Dude, you obviously don't know, or forgot, what capitalism is about. To educate, or remind you, what capitalism is about I suggest you read Adam Smith's, the Father of Capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". He was opposed to monopolies but believed that limited monopolies granted by patents, key word being "limited", could bring benefits. Then Thomas Jefferson at first opposed patents as well but then his friend James Madison convinced him they could benefit society as well.

The point of patents was to force secret societies to reveal their secrets if they wanted the law to continue to validate and enforce their control. If you didn't reveal the secret, you couldn't ask the cops to go shut that guy down, but if you did, you could.

This would be better realized in the modern age by making transparency of process a requirement to enter the market, period.

Add the requirement that a patent application included a working example of the invention, which used to be required but was dropped. Requiring a working product, as you say released to the public, would prevent patent trolls like NTP from suing others like RIM over the Blackberry.

I seriously believe that one of the reasons throwing money at the problem hasn't been working is that people who are implementing these things aren't the best possible candidates.

In larger corporations, especially where the regulatory environment is a driving factor, you might find that money isn't being thrown at security, but rather compliance. As ErichTheRed points out, there is no shortage of these silver bullets being purchased from executives who don't know better.

As someone who heads up an information risk program for a global financial firm, I've been fortunate enough to see the policy and technical control environment and observe where and why controls failed to prevent against security incidents. Having a company that came from a regulatory-driven security model (not unlike many), the assessments of the incidents has shown repeatedly that the alignment of a program in reaction to PCI, GLBA, HIPAA, SOX, etc. does not provide for a risk-optimized information security program. Yet business executives in many firms believe that the highest bar to be funded is that prescribed by external regulation. Compliance should be regarded as the lowest bar, not the highest, as it is by no means intended to fully address the realm of information risk and security.

The recent breach experienced by Hannaford is a good illustration of this problem. Hannaford was reportedly PCI compliant at the time of the breach, yet was using WEP to secure wireless in numerous cases. Elsewhere, there is too much reliance upon comprehensive common controls to compensate for lousy security at the application level. Hannaford execs are apparently "shocked" at the breach, yet were using a wireless security control a mediocre offsec analyst can break in 2-10 minutes. At the same time, I'm certain many firms have gone overboard on other controls (prospect theory tends to explain why so many of us over-treat the perceived likely risks and completely ignore the perceived improbable black swans that end up wiping us out). It's hard for us to make a case for security when we blow too much on some things and never see a threat test it out, and get clobbered on something we ignored.

The biggest problem I see is that the business executives see security as a product, not a process, and information risk and security people don't do a good enough job correcting that misconception. The lack of understanding risk optimization by InfoSec professionals is a real issue: we tend to overspend for the risk in some controls while neglecting others.

NIST SP800-37 prescribes creating safe applications in a sea of risk, yet many large firms pretend the oceans can be calmed if the right firewall or NIDS is deployed (think about what it tells you when NIDS is regarded as a control that *prevents* threats from exercising vulnerabilities by executives!).

The best results I've seen have come from a very close tie between the business unit management and information risk using financial language to communicate risk through an optimization approach. I'd suggest ISO 31000 or AS/NZS 4360 (Aussie/NZ standard) as a great starting place to talk about not being risk averse, as so many of us in InfoSec are, but taking the right risks. I certainly encourage people to be careful about probability models - read Taleb's "The Black Swan" for some clues on why you don't want to rely on guassian models for too much of your modeling.

Back to those regulations like PCI, I've found business execs understand the concept of "minimum baseline" when put in the context of a reserve requirement on credit portfolios. That regulatory requirement serves as the bottom line level, permitting the lending firm to select its own optimizing level of risk. Some may have offsetting efforts that

The original mean went through Paris, but shifted to Greenwich as a result of the aforementioned invention, and the naval political pull the British earned as a result.

In my opinion, one of the most worrying trends in the computer security world was Bruce Schneier's turn from crypto guru to security consultant. He now gives only vague pronouncements of security, doesn't seem to seek to empower the community, and his books like Secrets and Lies seem designed to sell Counterpane's services. Has lessening interest in widespread use of crypto led to security experts closing themselves off in consultancy bubbles?