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While we're on the subject of awk,
here's a Lisp implementation in awk.

While we're on the subject of Lisp... well, those of you who know, know. The others might learn one day.

This past year, I was accepted into Carnegie Mellon's [cmu.edu] School of Computer Science [cmu.edu]. It has been a remarkable experience that I would lik e to share with the Slashdot community. Here's an account of my experience.

Week 1, Sunday: I moved in today. My roommate, a sophomore CS student, had already moved in tw o days before me. The floor is already completely covered with garbage. He also smells. I think he might be gay too. He's already asked me if I like the color he painted his toenails. This should be interesting. I am almost completely settled in. Techno music is playing in every room in every floor of my dorm. There are computers and other types of trash out in the common areas. What a mess. Tom orrow, I am going to go sign up to get my network connection.

Week 1, Monday: I got hooked up to the CMU network today! I jacked into the network, only to f ind that the hostname and address assigned to me were colliding with another system. I'll just increm ent the network numbers a few times. I am really eager to get on.

Week 1, Tuesday: I am still looking for a free IP address. Can't anybody here properly configu re their systems?

Week 1, Friday: I finally found a free IP! It's mine! You sons of bitches can't have i t, I found it, I keep it, it's mine! To hell with all of you! Head hurts really bad. I've slowly be en developing a headache since I first arrived. Everywhere I look there are these Lucent Technologies wireless access points. I wonder if that's the problem.

Week 1, Saturday: I sat down at my computer today. My desktop wall paper is now the goatse.cx guy. Pleasant. Scattered over every directory on my C: drive are thousands, possibly millions, of fi les titled "J00AR30WN3DBITCH-phj33r-" and then some random hacker's name. Don't these people have liv es? Maybe they need laid or something. It'd take days to clean this out. I mentioned to my roommate that I needed to reinstall Windows, and immediately he jumped up and shouted: "NO! Do NOT use Window s!" Suddenly, two dozen other guys (all of them possibly homosexuals) appeared at the door, each tout ing an operating system called Linux. Half of them got into a fight over which was better, Debian, Re dHat, Slackware, and a bunch of others I couldn't recognize. Some kid who appeared to not have shower ed since he was born was touting "Linux From Scratch", saying that only losers used pre-made distros. A crowd of people in the back kept quiet about how I'd be sorry if I used Linux instead of BSD on the network. Who the fuck are these people? Classes start next week. Hope I have my computer working s o I can do my assignments.

Week 3, Friday: People are still trying to get Linux to work on my system. They keep telling m y that my hardware sucks. We go through about four or five distributions a day. Every now and then, I notice a little devil on my screen. Stickers for every of these distributions have been plastered o n my case. Suddenly, my room stinks a lot more with these people in here. I ask them why they never shower, and the usual response is something along the lines of "showering is like rebooting" and "I do n't want to lose my uptime."

Week 3, Saturday: There's a troop of men running naked in a circle around McGill Hall. I am no t even going to ask.

Week 4, Wednesday: Linux is FINALLY working on my computer! I have a pretty slick desktop too. I think I might like this. I can finally work in my room instead of the labs, although considering the every increasing layer of garbage on the floor...

Week 4, Thursday: My computer flashes messages about how I am "0WNX0RED" and how I should "PHJ3 3R" whoever and how "L4MEX0R" I am for having an insecure box. A kid suggests we reinstall Linux afte r discovering about 17 rootkits.

Week 5, Friday: Someone got BSD working on my computer. I wonder if this will last. The stres s has been building and I forgot to take a shower this morning.

Week 6, Tuesday: Seems I have been "0WNX0R3D" again. Took longer this time. Minutes later, so meone comes in with a "Bastile Linux" install CD. He gets started installing. I am feeling very susp icious of these guys.

Week 6, Thursday: Everyone seems to know more about my system than I do. It's a bit unnerving. I guess anyone could feel upset from this sort of treatment. They hack my box, trash it, then reins tall everything. I guess they think they're being funny. My dirty clothes are piling up and I am out of clean ones. I don't have time to do laundry, I'll have to wear something out of the pile.

Week 6, Friday: I got up this morning, sat at my machine, and stared at it blankly. An icon ap peared on my desktop for Quake III. I suppose it couldn't hurt to play some. I have been very stress ed lately.

Week 6, Sunday: I lost track of time! I started playing Quake III on the network with some oth er CMU students (who killed me hundreds of times in the course of 10 minutes) and completely lost myse lf. There's a bag of chips that has been sitting here for a few weeks. I think I'll finish those off for breakfast and then go to sleep.

Week 7, Wednesday: I masturbate every day now. Not a single girl comes near me. This is so de pressing. Do I really smell? Oh well, I have the task of learning how to secure my Linux box to keep me busy. Who has time for the opposite sex after all?

Week 8, Tuesday: I got into a fight with this little shit who kept telling me RedHat was great. What a fucking moron! Anybody who knows Linux knows that Debian kicks its sorry little ass. I'll b e getting my judiciary papers for the incident in the mail. Doesn't this school get it? I can't let someone go around converting people to RedHat! WtF!?

Week 8, Friday: My roommate squeezed my ass today! At first I was shocked and appauled, and I told him off for it. Thinking about it later though, there was just something that seemed too strong about my reaction. I'll talk to him later and appologize for getting so upset, it wasn't really so ba d.

This past year, I was accepted into Carnegie Mellon's [cmu.edu] School of Computer Science [cmu.edu]. It has been a remarkable experience that I would lik e to share with the Slashdot community. Here's an account of my experience.

Week 1, Sunday: I moved in today. My roommate, a sophomore CS student, had already moved in tw o days before me. The floor is already completely covered with garbage. He also smells. I think he might be gay too. He's already asked me if I like the color he painted his toenails. This should be interesting. I am almost completely settled in. Techno music is playing in every room in every floor of my dorm. There are computers and other types of trash out in the common areas. What a mess. Tom orrow, I am going to go sign up to get my network connection.

Week 1, Monday: I got hooked up to the CMU network today! I jacked into the network, only to f ind that the hostname and address assigned to me were colliding with another system. I'll just increm ent the network numbers a few times. I am really eager to get on.

Week 1, Tuesday: I am still looking for a free IP address. Can't anybody here properly configu re their systems?

Week 1, Friday: I finally found a free IP! It's mine! You sons of bitches can't have i t, I found it, I keep it, it's mine! To hell with all of you! Head hurts really bad. I've slowly be en developing a headache since I first arrived. Everywhere I look there are these Lucent Technologies wireless access points. I wonder if that's the problem.

Week 1, Saturday: I sat down at my computer today. My desktop wall paper is now the goatse.cx guy. Pleasant. Scattered over every directory on my C: drive are thousands, possibly millions, of fi les titled "J00AR30WN3DBITCH-phj33r-" and then some random hacker's name. Don't these people have liv es? Maybe they need laid or something. It'd take days to clean this out. I mentioned to my roommate that I needed to reinstall Windows, and immediately he jumped up and shouted: "NO! Do NOT use Window s!" Suddenly, two dozen other guys (all of them possibly homosexuals) appeared at the door, each tout ing an operating system called Linux. Half of them got into a fight over which was better, Debian, Re dHat, Slackware, and a bunch of others I couldn't recognize. Some kid who appeared to not have shower ed since he was born was touting "Linux From Scratch", saying that only losers used pre-made distros. A crowd of people in the back kept quiet about how I'd be sorry if I used Linux instead of BSD on the network. Who the fuck are these people? Classes start next week. Hope I have my computer working s o I can do my assignments.

Week 3, Friday: People are still trying to get Linux to work on my system. They keep telling m y that my hardware sucks. We go through about four or five distributions a day. Every now and then, I notice a little devil on my screen. Stickers for every of these distributions have been plastered o n my case. Suddenly, my room stinks a lot more with these people in here. I ask them why they never shower, and the usual response is something along the lines of "showering is like rebooting" and "I do n't want to lose my uptime."

Week 3, Saturday: There's a troop of men running naked in a circle around McGill Hall. I am no t even going to ask.

Week 4, Wednesday: Linux is FINALLY working on my computer! I have a pretty slick desktop too. I think I might like this. I can finally work in my room instead of the labs, although considering the every increasing layer of garbage on the floor...

Week 4, Thursday: My computer flashes messages about how I am "0WNX0RED" and how I should "PHJ3 3R" whoever and how "L4MEX0R" I am for having an insecure box. A kid suggests we reinstall Linux afte r discovering about 17 rootkits.

Week 5, Friday: Someone got BSD working on my computer. I wonder if this will last. The stres s has been building and I forgot to take a shower this morning.

Week 6, Tuesday: Seems I have been "0WNX0R3D" again. Took longer this time. Minutes later, so meone comes in with a "Bastile Linux" install CD. He gets started installing. I am feeling very susp icious of these guys.

Week 6, Thursday: Everyone seems to know more about my system than I do. It's a bit unnerving. I guess anyone could feel upset from this sort of treatment. They hack my box, trash it, then reins tall everything. I guess they think they're being funny. My dirty clothes are piling up and I am out of clean ones. I don't have time to do laundry, I'll have to wear something out of the pile.

Week 6, Friday: I got up this morning, sat at my machine, and stared at it blankly. An icon ap peared on my desktop for Quake III. I suppose it couldn't hurt to play some. I have been very stress ed lately.

Week 6, Sunday: I lost track of time! I started playing Quake III on the network with some oth er CMU students (who killed me hundreds of times in the course of 10 minutes) and completely lost myse lf. There's a bag of chips that has been sitting here for a few weeks. I think I'll finish those off for breakfast and then go to sleep.

Week 7, Wednesday: I masturbate every day now. Not a single girl comes near me. This is so de pressing. Do I really smell? Oh well, I have the task of learning how to secure my Linux box to keep me busy. Who has time for the opposite sex after all?

Week 8, Tuesday: I got into a fight with this little shit who kept telling me RedHat was great. What a fucking moron! Anybody who knows Linux knows that Debian kicks its sorry little ass. I'll b e getting my judiciary papers for the incident in the mail. Doesn't this school get it? I can't let someone go around converting people to RedHat! WtF!?

Week 8, Friday: My roommate squeezed my ass today! At first I was shocked and appauled, and I told him off for it. Thinking about it later though, there was just something that seemed too strong about my reaction. I'll talk to him later and appologize for getting so upset, it wasn't really so ba d.

Jane Margolis and Allan Fischer had a close look at the situation of women in computing at CMU. Based on their study, CMU developed a program to attract and retain a larger percentage of women, which actually worked.

Some of their methods are not easily transfered to other schools. For example, they increased the percentage of women admitted to computing by changing the selection criteria - not by watering them down, but by unbiasing them (e.g., women tend to have less previous experience with computers). CMU could do so and still maintain their standards due to the large number of excellent applicants, which might not work as well for schools that are less popular.

Nevertheless, the CMU study produced interesting results, some of which suggest ways to remove bias against women where it exists.

Chilli

That's because she was a salesperson--not an engineer (or systems administrator or help-desk troglodyte)--before becoming CEO. The average chick in CS (or "IT" as you put it) is more like Mary Shaw, Judy Estrin or Anita Jones than Fiorina.

C is a powerful language

Whenever I think about language utility I always think of the gallery of CSS descramblers. Here we see a CSS descrambler in C that is 434 bytes long and runs at better than 10 times the speed of the next smallest implementation (472 bytes of perl code).

Is there another general purpose language around that can solve this problem with equivalent portions of simplicity and performance?

I think incompatability, lack of design work and other general language misuse are more to blame for problems in most C code than the language itself. Nearly any language can be used successfully and effectively and nearly any language can be abused.

Will C be the most widely used programming language for the next 20 years? Hopefully not. Will C continue to be used effectively in the next 20 years when appropriate? Hopefully so.

See the Gallery of DeCSS Desramblers at Carnegie Mellon University

This is what academia is all about!

Cheers,

W00t

can be found at www.ulib.org. The Universal Library will have a million books online within a few years, and many more after that. Check it out yo!

I have looked and I can't find DeCSS anywhere. The MPAA and DVD CCA have done a really good job at keeping regular folks from discussing their technology. If only the force of law where so well equiped to deal with people who think they can speak freely about routine government abuses of power.

Go here and grab your favourite

On the same site, look at the just-out-of-school salaries for undergrads in computer science. How's *that* for a pay range.

New engineering students were there for the money

I have a 2002 degree in electrical engineering, and saw this happening during my last years of school. I was in it because of a genuine interest and desire to do engineering as a career, not because of the

Personally as soon as I heard that DeCSS was banned I downloaded a copy just to prove to myself the futility of internet censorship.

You and everyone else. Thats the great thing about the internet. Ban something and 1000+ people are going to download it and mirror it everywhere. The sooner the RIAA/MPAA/etc realize that the internet is not something they can control and that we, as consumers, are going to thwart their attempts to shut off the flow of information the better off they're going to be. I personally will dance the jigg if/when the RIAA and/or MPAA get bitchlapped in court.

Hell, the idiot lawyers even included the source code for DeCSS in the court documents. There's no need for anyone to mirror it anymore!

The link above is the Hoy filing from this page...

Personally as soon as I heard that DeCSS was banned I downloaded a copy just to prove to myself the futility of internet censorship.

You and everyone else. Thats the great thing about the internet. Ban something and 1000+ people are going to download it and mirror it everywhere. The sooner the RIAA/MPAA/etc realize that the internet is not something they can control and that we, as consumers, are going to thwart their attempts to shut off the flow of information the better off they're going to be. I personally will dance the jigg if/when the RIAA and/or MPAA get bitchlapped in court.

Hell, the idiot lawyers even included the source code for DeCSS in the court documents. There's no need for anyone to mirror it anymore!

The link above is the Hoy filing from this page...

There is a link from the article to this page. Which has loads of interpretations of DeCSS. Including a Haiku and a screen dump.
How can the capitalist pigs think that this is not free speech or that DeCSS is still a trade secret
Personally as soon as I heard that DeCSS was banned I downloaded a copy just to prove to myself the futility of internet censorship.
better delete it now before the law gets hold of me and confiscated my PC for having sensitive materials

what are the terms of their license?

First of all, the largest sole source of CAPTCHA funding is the National Science Foundation, so if you are a U.S. taxpayer, you are paying for this work.

Having said that, the rights to and interests in NSF-sponsored work are very much up in the air, nowhere moreso than the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. The Dean is said to have a somewhat different view than the Provost, who is probably not in agreement with the President, and the Board of Trustees are clearly all over the map on the issue, too. CMU is a study in contrasts when it comes to intellectual property opinions. CMU switched intellectual property policies exactly three days after I entered (yeay for freshman camp -- I knew it was worth the extra few bucks!) and the new (1985) one is draconian yet astoundingly vague. So, the authors might not even know the actual rights under which they are allowed to distribute their software. Noboday may know -- often an ajudication committee is required to make an arbitrary decision on a case-by-case basis.

However, principles of academic freedom have repeatedly trumped the Intellectual property policy, and that means that the researchers have the right to publish their code as sceintific research results, without restriction which is what they have apparently done. The scientific method requires absolutly no restrictions on such results (so as to allow for unimpeded replication), which means that the code is in the public domain. Even if it is released under copyright or GPL later, it is still in the public domain.

I am not a lawer, but years ago I paid a lawyer to answer a related question and I am faithfully repeating his answer above.

what are the terms of their license?

First of all, the largest sole source of CAPTCHA funding is the National Science Foundation, so if you are a U.S. taxpayer, you are paying for this work.

Having said that, the rights to and interests in NSF-sponsored work are very much up in the air, nowhere moreso than the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. The Dean is said to have a somewhat different view than the Provost, who is probably not in agreement with the President, and the Board of Trustees are clearly all over the map on the issue, too. CMU is a study in contrasts when it comes to intellectual property opinions. CMU switched intellectual property policies exactly three days after I entered (yeay for freshman camp -- I knew it was worth the extra few bucks!) and the new (1985) one is draconian yet astoundingly vague. So, the authors might not even know the actual rights under which they are allowed to distribute their software. Noboday may know -- often an ajudication committee is required to make an arbitrary decision on a case-by-case basis.

However, principles of academic freedom have repeatedly trumped the Intellectual property policy, and that means that the researchers have the right to publish their code as sceintific research results, without restriction which is what they have apparently done. The scientific method requires absolutly no restrictions on such results (so as to allow for unimpeded replication), which means that the code is in the public domain. Even if it is released under copyright or GPL later, it is still in the public domain.

I am not a lawer, but years ago I paid a lawyer to answer a related question and I am faithfully repeating his answer above.

My school is rather wired with WiFi everywhere. I agree with the article to a certain extent. There are always at least, say, half a dozen people on laptops doing stuff during a class of 100. Still, there have always been people like this. Some people skip classes entirely if they don't want to listen, the people with laptops are like these people only they don't realize it. I myself don't have a laptop since there are computers everywhere on campus and I wanted to build my own desktop. There isn't any real use to it in a lecture when the notes are posted online and I can have a notebook. I am perfectly fine with my desktop and a laptop in class would be distracting. I must say I am sympathetic to the claims of these professors.

You may be interested in checking out Carnegie Mellon's The IrYdium Project, which has been developing a Virtual Laboratory, as a free (with a lowercase "f") simulation of acid base chemistry, including thermodynamics, strong/weak acids, redox, indicator chemistry, solubility, etc. It's currently being used by a number of universities and high schools, and is funded by the NSF.

(Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I'm the author of said software -- having worked on it for the last six years -- so I may be a little biased. :)

You may be interested in checking out Carnegie Mellon's The IrYdium Project, which has been developing a Virtual Laboratory, as a free (with a lowercase "f") simulation of acid base chemistry, including thermodynamics, strong/weak acids, redox, indicator chemistry, solubility, etc. It's currently being used by a number of universities and high schools, and is funded by the NSF.

(Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that I'm the author of said software -- having worked on it for the last six years -- so I may be a little biased. :)

• Change control?
• Incident management?
• Problem management?
• Change window?
• Service level negotiations?
• Capacity management?
• Security management?

As long as all the SysAdmins seem to be making it up as they go along, we will continue to be marginalized and geek-ified by management. Try on for size:

• ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)
• More ITIL
• IT Service Management Forum (the U.K. headquarters)
• CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Technical Engineering Practices
• The Open Group's Technical Architecture Framework.

It's not that the SysAdmin necessarily has to manage these processes - though in a small shop no one else will - but he/she/it needs at least to be able to talk the language and understand the processes that the IT Manager has set up. And if you are managing the shop, then this is your job. You must know this stuff as a matter of professional responsibility and "keeping up" in your field.

A 20 min. presentation to the other managers on Best Practices and Processes in IT Management will gain you a lot of credibility and help lift you out of the geek gutter. There are decades worth of lessons that have been learned the hard way and documented into these processes. When you can demonstrate to management that you are drawing on a substantial body of knowledge that is geared towards improving service and reducing total cost of ownership, you will gain their respect (assuming that you care about their respect).

Beyond this, I want to emphasize an excellent point that Sanders makes in the article. The SysAdmin job is one that is invisible if you're doing it right. A good day at work is a boring day. Excitement is a sign that something has gone wrong. You should structure your environment to be as boring and reliable as possible.

Too many SysAdmins live off the adrenaline rush of fixing a broken server while everyone else in the organization sits on their thumbs waiting. That's costly for the organization, but ironically is the easy way out for the SysAdmin - you don't need to be disciplined or structure your time or do any planning or thinking, just jump from crisis to crisis. It's much more challenging to turn it into a boring desk job where most of your work is pushing paper and the machines pretty much take care of themselves. But guess which option is better for the organization's mission?

Once you do get to that Nirvana state of boring life, you can strategize how to produce some measurables so you can blow your department's horn at the monthly managers meeting. Because if you do your job well, with the result that your work is invisible, they'll cut your funding unless you keep in their face on a regular basis.

.nosig

Or how about The Computer Code Hoedown, the DeCSS algorithm in a square dance song? Funniest MP3 ever, end of story.

And what if someone makes an image of the US flag and xors the top line with the zipped file of the perl implementation? Would that image of the US flag be illegal?

From the article on Salon: "Lawyers for the association told the Supreme Court that the stay was needed to keep Pavlovich from reposting the decryption program on the Internet."

Even in haiku form?

http://www.carnegielearning.com

But it's still shooting the messenger.

Oh, I do that, too.

a rather well-greased slope

Oh, we're already there. An implied example might be the Nichols trial. Actually there it is a tougher question of constructive knowledge, or shouldn't Nichols have realized what was going on? This assumes he isn't simply lying.

Reagardless of the details of this or any case, it is existing law that you can be reponsible for a crime without pulling the trigger, whether as a conspirator, accomplice, accessory. That liability might even be just civil. This liability is not absolute, it depends on the character of your participation, what you knew, and when you knew it.

I don't know the precise rules with regard to a merchant selling something to a soon-to-be criminal. But there is the possibility in there somewhere, particularly where the merchant knows of an imminent threat to a third party. Try to think of the ugliest possible facts, like the person announces, "Sell me this gun so I can go shoot my wife waiting in the car," and so on; at some point it should feel like too much. Then it is simply a matter of drawing the line.

This sounds kind of unfair because the defendant didn't "do" anything to the victim, but a good part of the analysis is about economics not morals. It is efficient to hold the defendant to a duty of care to prevent bad acts by others to others. One common example is the "dram shop acts" holding liable bars and restaurants that serve too many drinks to someone who goes out and runs over someone. Another example is that you can be liable for leaving your keys in the car, or worse leaving the car running (which in most places is illegal, too), if someone steals the car and runs over people. Yes, technically you didn't "do it" but you certainly enabled it, and the point is the safety of society more than condemning an individual.

Here is a random hit from the web, a "sale of bullets" case that appears to me correct (I skimmed it). Note that this is a civil case, and the court basically found that the plaintiff's legal arguments might be valid but needed to be developed factually in the trial court. The court did not look at who should win, just whether the plaintiff could win under their various theories of the case.

I'm not justifying any of this so much as saying it is already the law, adn has been for many years.

oh yeah?

That ruling was applied to contributory copyright law though, not the DMCA. The DMCA has a different test.

Are you now saying that the DMCA has nothing to do with copyright law? :)

The test was what things can and cannot be held responsible for potential copyright violations. According to that test things like DeCSS are perfectly fine.

> Making DeCSS illegal is like making VCRs illegal.
Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean Congress can't do it.

They can pass a law making smiles illegal if they like, that doesn't mean the law is valid. When congress passes laws that violate supreme court rulings those laws tend to get struck down.

And even if a law against VCR's did hold up that wouldn't make it a good idea. I think most people agree oulawing VCR's is a bad idea - except the idiots who tried to do exactly that. And those very idiots now make more money on videos than they do on theaters. Yep, videotape killed hollywood alright. Just like the internet is going to kill hollywood.

I don't see the Supreme Court overturning a case like DeCSS. And neither did 2600, which is why they didn't appeal.

2600 didn't do anything Professor Felton hasn't done. Have you seen his DeCSS gallery? The RIAA beat a hasty retreat in the Felton case because they would have been smacked down hard, possibly striking down the DMCA in the process. 2600 didn't proceed because expert oppinion was that the negative perception of the defendant would hurt their chances of taking down the DMCA. They certainly DO want to proceed, just with a different defendant.

The DMCA does not outlaw legitimate use.

Please enlighten me, how do you make those legitimate uses without breaking the law?

My friends' DVD players doesn't play hard drive files.

It took me mere seconds to google a software DVD player that will play from the hard drive. "PowerDVD XP can also preview and playback DVD video file sets from Hard Disk Drives."

So I'd have to buy a multi layer DVD burner for tens of thousands of dollars.

It took me mere seconds to google a DVD burner for $225. That's hardly more than CD burners go for.

So instead I use DeCSS, and then I can watch the movie on my computer.

Like I said, you could have done it without DeCSS.

Encryption prevents viewing.

Nope, because...

Any player that can play the original does so after decrypting...

exactly the same way it will decrypt and play any COPY.
CSS encryption does not prevent copying.
CSS encryption does not prevent you from viewing copies.

It may or may not be deceptive to call it "copyprotection or copyright protection." That's semantics.

It is a flat out lie.

It's fine if you came into this believing what they presented as the truth, but I really hope this post has explained why it is completely false.

designed primarily for circumvention

As I think I've shown, that circumvention has nothing to do with copyright violation. You can violate copyright without DeCSS. About the only thing outlawing DeCSS does is outlaw the legitimate uses.

But now we've gotten into pure opinion really, so we might as well agree to disagree.

Yeah. It's tempting to discuss the meanings of fair use points 1,3, and 4, but these posts are already too long :)

-

I go to CMU. MS Office XP costs $10. MS Windows XP costs $10. MS Visual Studio.NET costs $15. All these are without manuals, in tiny packages with a license for installing it one time (actually, the license is separate, and it claims it's illegal without a license, but the people at the computer store say it's a one time install).

Anyways, this cuts down on piracy on one hand. On the other hand, I'm seriously bothered by the fact that they are using MY highly priced college tuition to support a convicted felon.

What's really sad is that there is a Microsoft club at my university called MSImpact, supported by MS (and the girl who runs it is paid by MS to do this, she interned there one summer and has some sort of deal right now).

The kernel is Mach.
Not Unix.

Darwin refers to the userland stuff, and it seems a bit odd to equate "heavily based" with "100%".

Quartz clearly isn't unix, but that doesn't necessarily mean that X isn't either.
Historically, X is the unix GUI, and has as much justification for being considered part of a full-fledged unix system as say, 'tar'.

As for freshmeat deciding this warrants its own section, I could care less. Just another category for me to filter out. I would not consider this newsworthy by any means, though. Maybe if they were specifically excluding OS X packages, or excluding everything else except OS X, but not this. This lands in importance just above "Freshmeat fixed a typo" and just below "Freshmeat redesigned the look of the site again"

-transiit

You're thinking of tRNAs - transfer RNAs, which are in the 70-100 nucleotide range. Small RNAs are generally below this - right down to a dozen or so nucleotides or less in some cases. I work in a lab that does a fair bit of small RNA work, and the tRNAs are right up at the top of all our gels as the "big" RNAs in the population.

Furthermore, what if you want to freely distribute a MP3 containing the DeCSS code? Such as the Computer Code Hoedown, as found at Touretzky's DeCSS gallery? I kid you not!

Furthermore, what if you want to freely distribute a MP3 containing the DeCSS code? Such as the Computer Code Hoedown, as found at Touretzky's DeCSS gallery? I kid you not!

For those of you with a nostalgic bent, it's here, at Dave Touretzky's Gallery of CSS Descramblers.

For those of you with a nostalgic bent, it's here, at Dave Touretzky's Gallery of CSS Descramblers.

Well, from here:

#part 2

E^=(72,@z=(64,72,G^=12*(U-2?0:S&17)),
H^=_%64?1 2:0,@z)[_%8]}(16..271))[_]^((D>>=8
)+=P+(~F&E))fo r@a[128..$#a]}print+qT,@a}';
s/[D-HO-U_]/\$$&/g;s /q/pack+/g;eval

Well, from here:

#part 1

#!/usr/bin/perl
s''$/=\2048;while(){G=29;R=142; if((@a=unqT="C*",_) [20]&48){D=89;
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QuickTime IS an open standard. It is the Sorenson codec that isn't. Quicktime also adheres to RFCs for all sorts of relevant streaming standards, hence the reason CMU's peer to peer streaming software used it.

Just because you can't play Sorenson encoded .movs on your Linux box doesn't mean it isn't an open standard.

Click here to view the Slashdot effect in action.

Check out their overlay tree here. It shows how the current peer-to-peer tree of everyone viewing anything at that given point in time. Pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm a little peeved at that too. I'm a geek and I don't get to enjoy this project because for some reason they've neglected the NATIVE PLATFORM for the streaming product they're using.

However, there IS a note stating that they are "explorting porting to the MacOS" I think they meant "exploring", and even if they do explore it, are they talking about Mac OS 9 or OSX?

I want to play :(

• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report1.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report2.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report3.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/judgement.jpg

• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report1.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report2.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report3.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/judgement.jpg

• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report1.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report2.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report3.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/judgement.jpg

• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report1.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report2.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/report3.jpg
• http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scotts /mosaic/JOKE/judgement.jpg

Using remote controlled rats reminds me of those controversial military dolphin programmes that both the Soviets, and the Americans seemed to carry out.
Even though I'm not exactly an animal rights activist this still all sounds a bit... unnecessary. Especially when there are alternatives.

I worked briefly in a SAR robot project, while I was at Edinburgh University. Myself and two other MSc students got together and built 2 SAR robots, to participate in the SAR event at Robocup 2001, Seattle. Even though our project wasn't really ready in time (read, the heat-seeking robots rather chase the CNN cameraman than find victims, and didn't report at all to the base station) I did learn a lot from just being there.

For example, I learnt how difficult it is to remote control a robot using only its on-board cameras/sensors. One of Murphy's Urbies was due for repair when its human-operator managed to drive it down a flight of stairs, and I quote Murphy, "without ever touching the stairs". :)
And this difficulty is ever so larger when the robots go inside rubble, with lack of light, and the well known radio control problems/outages.
Human control also limits the number of robots you can deploy, assuming you need 1 operator per robot.

Autonomous robot swarms are only possible if the robots are small and cheap, so you can deploy dozens or hundreds and accept a number of 'losses'. But this approach has its own disadvantages, such as small size meaning less sensorial capabilities for example. What good are dozens of little crawlers that just step on top of the victim's heads without ever detecting them?

In the event debriefing meeting, where sponsored teams had to make a small presentation, this Few_Big_Expensive vs many_small_cheap issue was debated. I believe there must be a compromise, and whoever finds the right balance will be half-way there.

As far as rats... I'd rather hear about research into fluorescent heat-seeking 'intelligent' jelly, that is poured on top of the rubble, seeks victims, attaches itself around their body keeping them worm (but intelligent enough to stay away from eyes, hears, nose, and mouth) and nutritionally rich so the victim can eat it if required... ;)

From:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/FrankStevenson/ analysis.html

CSS was designed with a 40 bit keylength to comply with US government export regulation, and as such it easily compromised through brute force attacks ( such are the intentions of export control ).
Moreover the 40 bits have not been put to good use, as the ciphers succumb to attacks with much lower computational work than which is permitted in the export control rules.
Whether CSS is a serious cryptographic cipher is debatable. It has been clearly been demonstrated that its strength does not match the keylength. If the cipher was intended to get security by remaining secret, this is yet another testament to the fact that security through obscurity is an unworkable principle.

Here is a short event log of how things happened.

What the Norvegian prosecutor is doing is claiming that Jon broke the protection on the DVD keyblock. He didn't.
In fact it was a real professional cryptographer Frank Stevenson that demonstrated how to (a) defeat CSS without a key and (b) how to recover all the keys from the keyblock.

And yet the brave Norvegian prosecutor is going after a kid ... His ancestors must be turning wildly in their graves ..

Incase anyone forgot, This is the guy that wrote DeCSS (The program that lets people decode dvds so they can be played in free operating systems).

More info on the trial at Google News (Wouldnt it be cool if slashdot automagicly added a google news link to stories to show all relevant links?)

Shouldn't that be Andy Grove and Gordon Moore?


No No No No No! It's Gordon Moore's dorky brother
Andy Moore

I am having a bit of problems understanding the events that lead to the publishing og DeCSS. According to my research. A norwegian called Frank Stevenson made a published a couple of hacks on the CSS algorithm in october 1999. Then in November he published a cryptoanalasys on the algorithm.
Frank Stevenson's CSS Cracks.
Is there an earlier documented attack on the CSS system? Where does this DeCSS fit in ?