Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Justice, Delving, Printing, Noir
Danke sehr, Herr Doktor Pabst! The sighs -- nay, screams! -- of disappointment rose like the wail of a cat in heat following the announcement that AMD's new chips would be clock-locked, nullifying the advantages of Abit's ultra-overclockable motherboard. Jonathan Dabian writes: "This is probably a little late for me to get the name postage on the front page, but Tom's Hardware posted a new story that is an update to the Monday Blurb where they revealed that the new AMD processors would be multiplier locked. In this new story, Tom Pabst reveals the information he has since pieced together about the connections on the top of the processor, and ideas on how to alter those laser etched connections. Overclocking on the Duron and Thunderbird isn't dead. All that's needed is an easy way to alter those connections."
How do you like your quasi-futuristic clothing, Mr. Mitnick? One of the many following the bizarre turns of the Kevin Mitnick saga, RadarRider writes: "According to the following article on MSNBC:' Reversing a previous decision, Kevin Mitnick?s probation officer has given the notorious computer intruder permission to lecture on hacking and cracking, work as a security consultant and write a column for a soon-to-be-launched e-commerce site.'"
Disallowing use of computers unless specially granted seems a fairly over-the-top punishment -- everything has embedded processors. I wonder if Kevin has to ask permission to use an infrared-type automatic toilet, or a programmable thermostat. Where's King Solomon when you need him?
Unca Steve, Unca Steve! Tell us a bedtime story, OK? Speaking of *ashback, gwernol writes: "There's a fascinating letter from Woz - one of the co-founders of Apple on his web page at woz.org. Its a candid glimpse into the early days of the computer world, including tales of hacking the world's first video games -Pong and Breakout - at Atari. See inside the mind of one of the truly great ones. Some interesting perspective on Steve Jobs, too."
(Hint: some of the same words you can't say on television are off-limits to mass-market video games, too!)
Now I can print up dozens of tasty eclaires under Linux! If you followed the recent story about modernizing UNIX printing standards, you may have caught the news that CUPS 1.1 has been released. Here's some more information from the horse's mouth. printman writes: "Nine months after the CUPS 1.0 release, we are proud the announce the birth of CUPS 1.1, with documentation nearly 500 pages long and distributions weighing in at around 4MB.
"What is CUPS", you ask? The Common UNIX Printing System ("CUPS") is an IPP-based printing system developed by Easy Software Products as a replacement for the aging and clunky Berkeley (LPD) and System V printing systems. CUPS provides all of the modern printing ammenities, including support for user-defined printers and options, non-PostScript printers, color management, and page accounting.
CUPS 1.1 continues our commitment to an open-sourced, IPP-based printing system for all UNIX's. The new release contains many of the functional enhancements that have been requested by our users, including:
- New USB backend and backend device discovery.
- Banner page support
- Digest authentication
- Directory service enhancements, including polling, relaying, and access control
- Directory structure changes to conform to the FHS 2.0 standard used by most Linux distributions.
- Documentation improvements and additions
- Drivers for EPSON printers
- Filters - new PostScript RIP based on GNU Ghostscript 5.50 core, new PDF filter based on Xpdf, new text filter supporting Unicode and bidirectional text
- IPP/1.1 support
- Job persistence & history
- Licensing change - the CUPS API is now provided under the GNU LGPL
- LPD client support
- User-defined printers and options
- Web administration interface
In addition we have contributed more new code to the SAMBA team to support CUPS printing "natively" via IPP, providing a faster, more reliable Windows printing experience.
Others have also been busy at work adding to CUPS. Besides our ESP Print Pro software, two new graphical interfaces have appeared for CUPS - KUPS is a KDE-based interface for CUPS, and XPP is a FLTK-based interface for CUPS.
On the driver front, Grant Taylor has come up with CUPS-o-matic, a PPD file generator and filter script for existing Ghostscript printer drivers, and the GIMP print plug-in developers are working towards "universal" drivers for GIMP, Ghostscript, and CUPS.
Finally, many Linux distributions are including (or planning to include) CUPS or ESP Print Pro. This should provide the final push to get printer manufacturers to support their printers under Linux and *BSD.
For more information on CUPS, go to: www.cups.org
And for bonus points ... Katsu Jin Ken writes: "Indrema has posted a new picture of their upcoming console on their front page." It's looking a lot svelter and sleeker than the old look, and like the finest computers everywhere, features a blue LED. (On the other hand, beware the rude no-exit site design.) Please, Indrema, make it so!
First things first: K. Mitnick did not kill anybody ... nor did he cause physical injury. So speculations about "drunk drivers plowing into crowds"(of nuns?) or "serial murders with cars" and whatnot is wildly off. Kevin stole. The analogy is more like someone who uses a car to rip off a million dollars. Actually, given the nature of the actual crimes, it's like "using a car to disrupt a system worth millions of dollars". You know how you "disrupt a system worth millions of dollars" with your car? You park it in the middle of the Holland Tunnel at rush hour, throw the keys down a grate and walk away. And you know what your punishment for that act will be?
A fucking traffic ticket.
2 1337 4 u!
I don't justify what Mitnick did, but when I hear about this case, I am reminded of the ancient Roman punishment "aqua et igni interdictus" ("to be denied water and fire", a form of ostracism that was more common in Greece, but I'll be damned if I can remember the Greek name for it)
In under six months, we'll be in the 21st century (no flames, we're all sick of that debate, and either way you look at it, the statement is true) and Mitnick's parole conditions will pass into history as a testament to our irrationality.
If a mechanic with several DUIs plows into a crowd and kills several people, we may take away his license (to prevent further deaths) and sentence him to prison (for his reckless disregard, etc.), but we don't prevent him from ever working on cars, buying or selling cars, being a paid anti- drunk driving activist, or examining the car being used as evidence against him during his trial. [the link above includes many articles about the unusual handling of his case]
We wouldn't do such things even if he was a vehicular serial killer. I think using a car or computer are roughly comparable in the coming decades. many might argue that the computer would be even more omnipresent and valuable.
Are we so messed up that the courts are actually willing to openly state that corporate damages and evading the police are worse crimes than sniffing out than several human lives?
"But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers." -
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
The copyright office has posted the post-reply hearings regarding the DMCA circumvention rulemaking. Have you hugged your Librarian of Congress recently? I hope so, because his office is going to decide the fate of publication and fair use as we know it... Unless Orrin Hatch gets entirely fed up with the RIAA and fixes the DMCA singlehandedly.
Also, 2600, the EFF, the MPAA, and the Harvard Open Law discussion list prepare for the trial over the publication of DeCSS, in which a preliminary injunction that constitutes a prior restraint on the defendant's speech will be decided simultaneously with the merits of the trial on July 17th.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
::Point::
At 4MHz/dollar on such a nice, well-designed part, why bother? For reference, my Celeron-II 566 @ 850MHz gave me 7MHz/dollar when I bought it, and that's a 150% overclock, but it's a piece of junk with no SMP and 4-way set-associative cache (opposed to Thunderbird's 16-way). I've always "rationalized" (why is it that [geeks] feel they can rationalize [overclocking]?) my overclocking madness by saying that I "have a lot to get Intel back for," the 8088, the 486SX, the Pentium MMX, etc. But at this point in the game, AMD isn't trying to saturate the market, or confuse us, or bleed us for every cent we're worth [like Intel]. Let's buy their silicon and run with it.
::Counter-Point::
On the other hand, only a select few people overclock their computers. I would say less than 1% of all the people who purchase new computers yearly and that's probably generous. Was it really worth the time and effort of AMD, Tom Pabst, et cetera to stop 10,000 or so people from getting an extra 100 or 150MHz out of their shiny new AMD CPU?
::Inference::
If anything, overclocking HELPS the market. Look at how many mainboards Abit and Soyo have sold over the last three years because of the incredible overclocking goodness of the i440BX chipset. People with a Pentium II 300 decided to go ahead and make that upgrade to 600MHz because they could do it for $200 or $300 instead of $500 like it would to buy all `kosher' parts. Otherwise they may have waited another year. Cheaper prices, more CPU purchases, more mainboards, more fans, more slotkets, etc. Basic economics, right?
::Hypothesis::
Would AMD have ever made it this far had their loyalists not bought the AMD 586 to overclock it, the K6-2 to overclock it, and the Athlon Classic to overclock it for less than it would cost to buy an Intel part?
Humm, humm.
Alakaboo
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
-I meant to say "post-hearing replies"
-Take a close look at the comments submitted. I encourage everyone to even just skim them, if they have the time. There were a total of 28.
-9 were clearly against any exemptions to the anti-circumvention provision, all submitted by big media (one co-signed by ASCAP, Association of American University Presses [ironically in direct opposition with the comments of the Association of American Universities, The American Council on Education, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges], the BSA, The McGraw-Hill Companies, the MPAA, and the RIAA.
-One has an informative illustration of the flawed nature of CSS and how it inhibits non-infringing use of copyrighted materials.
-Most of the arguments against exemption lean on the fact that nobody "adequately" testified to current hinderance of fair use... totally ignoring the arguments of CSS and misdirecting the purpose of the rulemaking (to prevent hinderance).
-I didn't notice a single comment by a self-proclaimed artist. You know, the people that copyright is supposed to protect? Sure, there were a few clearinghouses that represent the copyright interests of artists--but that's a bit disconnected from what the artist actually wants. After all, these clearinghouses have their own financial stake in the DMCA, separate from the interests of the artists they represent. Of course, let's not forget that we are all protected by copyright, self-proclaimed artist or not. Yet the overwhelming majority of us copyright holders are for exemptions to 1201(a)! Why is that?
-On to the trial: The final depositions are wrapping up. The judge has consolidated the motion to expand the preliminary injunction, as well as the motion to vacate the PI, with the trial itself. He moved the trial date up because of the first amendment implications of banning the distribution of DeCSS on a 1201(a) case, rather than on a pure copyright basis, among various other reasons.
-The DVD-discuss list is preparing an amicus brief... hopefully it will address basic flaws in the MPAAs pursuit of the lawsuit over circumvention, my favorite being that circumvention does not exist under 1201 if the copyright owner's authorization scheme to access the material is not well defined. There are many more, so review the archive, take note in particular of the proposed outlines for the brief, and see exactly why the MPAA will lose before it actually happens. The list is generally the best place to catch wind of current developments, as most filings and transcripts don't make it to wide distribution and those that do might just make it to 2600 and cryptome.
-Don't forget to donate to the EFF (I haven't sent my check either, yet), because they're footing the bill for this.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
If you read through the FAQ, you'll notice that Indrema has an architecture for playing DVD's on their DV Linux. Now, using the following assumptions:
(1) The encryption stuff is binary-only, and they have (what they claim) is a safe way to show the stream without 'progmatic' access to it.
(2) Their box is x86, mine is x86
(3) They also mention that it's fully based on X.
(4) It's DVD Video on Linux (!)
They could easily sell the DVD portion to desktop users as well. I understand that everyone is supposed to hate DVD's, but I love my movies, and I'd love to be able to run Linux on my notebook AND watch my DVDs.
All politics and DeCSS stuff aside, this could be a Good Thing(tm).
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
It's good to see that the probation office took a more reasonable stance on his lecturing and consulting. Though I suspect that he'll be carefully watched at the consulting gigs.
However, the comment about not allowing Kevin to use any computers is grossly misleading. The limitations are against any Programmable electronic device, and even then, it's up to the probation officer about what is or is not allowable. Kevin can use an HP calculator, a microwave, an even (i'm pretty sure) an ATM machine. Anything that he can reprogram for dastardly ends (or use to reprogram an otherwise "legal" device) is out. Given the crime he's on probation for, this is logical, reasonable, and appropriate.
Also, a note to those crying about restriction of his Inalienable Rights: as a convicted felon, he has lost the right to many of his "Rights". He may get them back over time (e.g. when his parole is up), but right now, as part of his punishment (and ALL FELONS are subject to this), he loses many of the rights normal citizens enjoy:
I've missed a few, but you get the point.
Believe me, you don't want to be convicted of a Felony in the U.S. - it's a serious cramp on your future.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.