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Slashback: Elaboration, The number 4, Toys
Alright mister, I'll see your accusatory bluster and raise you a page of cogent explanation. Our own Jamie McCarthy points out: "[Matthew Scala, one] of the authors of cphack has written a very extensive FAQ about the program and his settlement with Cyber Patrol/Mattel." Here's the link to the Cyber Patrol break FAQ.
This just in from Georgetown: Pat Ramsey, omniscient Mac-support guru at Southwestern University (The original University of Texas) participated in the recent ResNet 2000 conference, and wrote with some clarification about the recent Slashdot story on Simson Garfinkle's recommendations on ftp, telnet and other common protocols.
I submitted a blurb on Sunday about Simson Garfinkle keynoting the Resnet 2000 Symposium in Philadelphia. Being there at the conference, I can say that Rob's take on the Chronicle article is a little off. Garfinkle gave a presentation intended to raise awareness of how insecure most campuses are.Telnet and ftp protocols are just two examples of services that use clear-text passwords. He believes that that practice should be banned. Clear-text passwords are too easily sniffed.Especially good for anyone who didn't read the full text of the article linked to; ftp and telnet may be great protocols, but Garfinkel is arguing they're less suitable than their more secure counterparts. Thanks, Pat!But telnet and ftp were just two examples of things that campuses should look at. Even bigger, and the article didn't convey this with it's somewhat sensational headline, is the lack of policies that say in writing what is done with data that is inconspicuously gathered. Search engine queries, cookies, packet sniffs, Cisco Netflow logs, tcpdumps, etc.
This seemed to be of more importance then eliminating telnet and ftp.
14 hours ought to be enough for -- oh, nevermind. undef24 writes: "A followup to a slashdot story posted earlier this week. They've published a way to upgrade a 14-hour Tivo to 52 hours on the AVS Forum." The directions are thorough, but these guys make no bones about what TiVO will think of your mucking about in the guts of your previously-sealed machine. And it raises the inevitable, recurrent question: how close is an off-the-shelf Linux hobbyist version that has the same function?
For once, technical information is slightly flashier than the product name. Maro Shim writes "What's Up With Willamette? (Part 1, Part2), a two-part article, is a good one for understanding Willamette, (i.e. Pentium 4) architecture, which is the next generation x86 processor design from Intel. It includes a description of the development roots of Willamette and the basics of how its organization and operation differs from earlier P6 generation processors. In Part 2, he examines the new technology and features of Willamette in more detail and speculate on its implementation, operational characteristics, and performance. This is a must read for CPU enthusiast."
Flashes of Doh from the other side of the pond.
Builder writes "Hi. A while back I used the stand.org.uk service to fax my MP. Today I got a reply back.
Some things scare me about the reply. It is almost as if my MP refuses to believe the things we and other large groups of people (ISP's, Consumer groups, etc.) have been saying. ...
I've posted the letter, as well as a quick disection about why this whole thing (The bill, my reply and the attitude in general) scares me so much. It can be found at http://www.penguinpowered.org.uk/stand/index.html
If you haven't got involved yet, please do so now! Lobby your MP. Make a noise! Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease..."
Tell me this wasn't inevitable. nutty writes pointing out that the Connectix lawsuit dropped by Sony has been refiled. Legal maneuvering? War of attrition against those who dare oppose the marketing might of the PlayStation behemoth? Sony!? I wish this one were tougher to believe.
Yeah, I've sent one email and one fax so far.
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
The email was met by a letter from my MP, and was relatively pacifying - "sure, we don't believe in it either" was the overall tone.
However, when it came to the fax thing, all my MP did was to forward it to Jack Straw and convey an incredibly patronising response back to me. Between them they obviously think that I'm so naiive as to believe it's for the good of the country that we all lose any privacy rights and some essential human rights just to lock up a few stupid criminals.
Someone on here posted a sensible idea: perjury-trap your keys with a comment like "this key not valid if used under duress".
I really *really* don't want to be associated with the UK if the government is going to be a bunch of pillocks like this...
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Sony dropped the copyright suit against Connectix (77% of which had been thrown out already) in favor of a patent suit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Um...newspapers actually tend to follow up on major stories. It's just rare that a followup gets front-page coverage.
Newpapers even print errata when they really blow it.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
I recently ran across an interesting paper, Fear and Loathing in Whitehall: Bolshevism and the Firearms Act of 1920, that argues that the Firearms Act of 1920, the first law that seriously restricted gun ownership and the carrying of guns in Britain, was passed due to a fear of Bolshevik revolution, not because of the misuse of firearms by criminals. As in the United States, a bogeyman was used to justify a law that turned a right into a privilege that was granted at the convenience of the state.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Your strategy would be effective if you had complaints under 20 separate titles of law. Sony dropped the copyright suit because legal thought a new suit accusing patent infringement would be more effective.
Will I retire or break 10K?
AugustFalcon is correct on the intent of finality.
Mattel happens to be trying the same with me. They dismissed w/o prejudice which would allow them to bring the case anywhere they please (maybe someplace without an Anti-SLAPP statute or free speech rights).
Fight Spammers!
Reading the FAQ for the guy who wrote (or helped write) cphack, it seems almost like the whole point of the thing was to get famous from it, and talk about all the job offers and scholarships he's had to turn down. You see a lot of people doing this kind of thing lately. Getting "busted" for some sort of hacking/cracking/hacktivising/crapping or whatever other PC term you have for this these days, then turning around and becoming a computer security advisor to the news. Trying to get their name mentioned in as many articles as possible. He says he didn't want use a pseudonym because that reeks of the unprofessionalism associated with "WarEZ d00DZ". There are kiddy cracking groups that could have written this thing over a weekend. When I say cracking, I mean the by-passing of copy protection schemes on commercial software for the purpose of pirating that software. Not breaking into systems.
Well, sure, it's possible to build your own TiVo. However, it will take far longer than walking to the Best Buy in a City two states away and cost far more than the price of several TiVo's.
Anyone who's seen the insides of a TiVo -- and actually understands computer hardware -- knows there's a great deal of work inside that box. While there are several common components -- various Philips video in/out chips, sound processing chips, and even a standard IBM MPEG2 decoder chip -- there are two notable non-common chips: a TiVo custom ASIC, and a Sony "thing". And we've not even gotten to the software (or the remote.)
MP does mean "member of parliament."
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
Our own Jamie McCarthy points out:
Jamie McCarthy works for slashdot now? Man, Geeks are getting better looking every day!
Somewhat offtopic, but does anyone know whether there's a radio equivalent for the Tivo? There are several radio programs that I would love to record to hear afterwards, how can I do this? Could you, maybe, hack the Tivo to record audio? (and later convert the audio to MP3) Is there a computer solution for doing this? Please advise
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
Buy one of those radio cards. Hauppage has a WinTV+radio card for $100. Despite the name the TV card is very cross platform compatible, not sure about the radio aspect. It should be a piece of cake to record programs on a given schedule, and you could probably encode to MP3 in real time just like the MP3 broadcasters do.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
The Bill has been amended in the house of Lords, and some of the worst features have been eliminated. For example, clause 51(3) now allows 'forgetten it' as a reasonable defence.
Note for non-UK readers: the House of Lords functions primarily as a revisionary chamber, where the details of Bills can be examined outside the hothouse atmosphere of the Commons. It allows the government of the day to back down on contentious issues without suffering the indignity of losing a Commons vote.
Slashback is not a bunch of shorter stories, it's a bunch of updates to stories previously posted on /. . Quickies tend to be whimsical and/or irrelevant, but Slashback stories merely aren't given full story status because the topic hs been covered recently already.
Mark Prindle, the most underappreciated genius on the web.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
If you don't like the section, feel free to post suggestions on improving it, or simply avoid it. Unlike quickies (which can show up like leprachauns, whenever they feel like it), Slashback appears (subject to change, but hey) Saturday around noon and Wednesday around 5 pm. Can't post everything, usually it's 4-6 items.
Cheers,
timothy
And 6 != "about 10"! ;)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So if I don't like the way a trial's going I can just drop and it and refile it?
If anyone thinks they can easily make a TiVo like setup out of a off the shelf linux machine they've never used the TiVo. The appeal of the TiVo just isn't recording TV to MPEG it's the interface, the channel guides, the TiVo suggestions, etc. With the price at only $299/$399 I just don't think it's worth the effort.
Next time I want something, im just going to _pretend_ to sue 20 times and wear em' out...
::
SwiftBob
mp3.com/PhysicsOfASquall
-Swift
-Swift
Oh, wait. Yeah, that's right. Amazon.com did.
-MunKy_v2
Jay
For those of you who think that the RIP Bill represents some NEW incursion into your rights, think again. It is already the case that, with a warrant, your communications can be monitored without your knowledge. It is common practice to bug members of opposition political parties (Sinn Fein).
If you want to be scared, look at the Prevention of Terrorism act. (Not on line, AFAICT), or indeed any of the Northern Ireland Acts. The current PTA strectches the definition of terrorism to include "the threat of damage to property" (targetted at environmental protestors). "Terrorist" groups can be declared "proscribed organisations"; effectively, you can be arrested and held without charge if you are "suspected" of being a terrorist.
Let's not forget the Criminal Justice and Public Order Acts, various parts of which have attempted to make raves, gypsies, the miner's strikes, and environmental protests by occupation ["Aggravated Tresspass"] criminal offences.
Currently they're going after asylum seekers, who are currently being rounded up and held in what are concentration camps in all but name.
Finally, don't forget the War On Drugs, although it's not nearly as bad as in the US due to the lack of guns.
Liberal Democracy? Sorry, we prefer Thatecherism which lives on in the persona of Jack Straw. Oh well, at least I don't live in NI.
...use a larger hammer.
Honestly, when this happens to a company like Sony, you really can't (shouldn't) be surprised that they withdrew it, changed it so it wasn't half-assed, and refiled it.
I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, since I love *almost* everything Sony makes (anyone who's met me will know this is true), but I think Sony dropped the ball on their original suit.
I remember reading an article about how Sony breaks even on the PlayStation unit itself, and just makes money on the games. If this is true, then Sony should have nothing to worry about, since people have to buy the games anyway to use them with Connectix's software...
...or then again, can you use burned "backup" copies with it? Does the software check for the validity/legitimacy of the PlayStation CD inserted?
As an interesting side note, you can actually get black "PlayStation" CD-Rs -- unfortunately, they're almost impossible to find. (PlayStation CDs aren't actually black, they're dark blue -- hold one up to bright light and look around the center hole. Since the laser light is infrared, it goes right through a dark blue disc with no problems.)
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