How are you supposed to read the minds of the developers to figure out if they "intended" to promote illegal use?
You ask them, and you look at their actions, and decide if they are telling the truth.
This is no different than intent in any other area of law. For example, when someone kills someone else, what they intended is often a major factor in determining what crime they are guilty of. When two people disagree over the meaning of a contract, what they intended when they signed is often important.
We've got a whole system designed to figure out intent, and it works pretty well.
There's a simple explanation for that: Any time I have to give out my e-mail address to someone when I don't want to receive mail from them, I give them my Hotmail address. Not to doubt my own superior intellect, but I'm sure I can't be the only person on earth who uses this practice
Uhm...you must have missed the part where I said these were from people who sent mail to our tech support. Generally, such people give out their real email addresses, because they do want to receive mail from us.
Yes. A lot of ordinary users use it. Examining a database of customer addresses from people who have contacted technical support where I work, I see the following:
The quote above snapped me back to reality. Sure wireless everywhere is the buzz these days, but how many people really need, or want it?
I think this kind of thing is an enabling technology. What I mean by that is that you don't need it, until it is available, and then you can do various things so much better than you could before, that your life changes so that you then do need that technology. (By need I mean that things would be not nearly as good without it)
An example of this kind of technology is the internet itself. 30 years ago, we got by without it. However, now that it is so widely available that we can count on having it all the time at home and at work, we can adjust our lives based on that assumption, and it becomes an essential part of our lives.
Cell phones are another example of this. A lot of businesses would grind to a halt now if all the workers had to give up their cell phones, yet 30 years ago, business managed without everyone having one. When the technology became widespread enough and cheap enough that we could count on it, we adjusted our lifestyles to take advantage of that technology.
I think widespread wireless net access will be like this, if some company or the government has the foresight to recognize the possibility, and keep it going and growing through the early years, when there aren't a lot of customers.
eriously, I'm asking...how would they be able to stop it? I must be missing something
One way is to put a chip in the system that only Apple has access to, and that is essential for OS X to function.
For example, they could get ATI and NVidia to make special GPUs for Apple. OS X, especially with Quartz Extreme, pushes a lot onto the GPU, and if they made Intel OS X only support Quartz Extreme, and made that depend on these special GPUs, OS X would be very very very difficult to run on non-Apple hardware.
Hard to hear you say that (I heard this on Slashdot, alas). I heard you had problems with sound cards in Linux. However, I do belive you may have the same problems with MacOS X -- you can't play two sounds at once
I don't know where you got that notion, but it is wrong. Right now, for example, my OS X system is playing music in iTunes, environmental sounds from World of Warcraft, and my terminal can beep, as can my email program when I receive a mail.
vim has integrated cryptographic functionality through VimCrypt.:help:X for more information.
I have a rather large master password list for every server at work which I store this way. It's quite handy.
When I do that and read the warnings about how weak the encryption is, I remember why I don't use that.:-)
A much better approach is to use gpg. You can make vim automatically decrypt gpg files on reading, and encrypt them on writing, with this handy addition to your.vimrc, which I got from O'Reilly's "Linux Security Cookbook".
augroup encrypted
au!
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg,*.asc set viminfo=
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg,*.asc set noswapfile
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg set bin
autocmd BufReadPre,FileReadPre *.gpg,*.asc let ch_save = &ch|set ch=2
I went high-tech. I'm using software called "Keyring" on a Palm Zire 21 PDA. It protects my password list using triple-DES encryption, and I'm using a 25-character passphrase
That's almost what I want. What I want is a password manager for some kind of hand held device, and I want the hand held device to have a USB interface. After I pick out a password on the device, I should be able to plug the device into my computer, press a button (or tap on the touch screen...) and have the device make it look to the computer as if I had just plugged in a USB keyboard, typed the password, and then unplugged the keyboard.
Even better, the hand held device should have both a USB A and USB B connector. I should be able to hook it between my keyboard and computer, and it should operate as a USB keyboard proxy, sending through anything I type, and allow me to insert a password into the keyboard data.
And make no mistake, it WILL happen as the linked article says. If for no other reason than "because we can". Darwin already runs so if
nothing else someone will just extract the higher level functions from
the CD and drop them in, disabling the copy protection as required.
Removing copy protection is well understood and will pose no real
challenge. Macs aren't X-Boxes, developers who have not signed an NDA
must be able to use one, including the debugger, so hardware lockdown
isn't a real option.
Well, here's one way, off the top of my head, that they could do it. All they have to do is put some chip in the system that is essential for the OS to function, and that is not available on generic HW. For example, they could get ATI and NVidia to build them special GPUs. With Quartz Extreme, OS X is capable of pushing a lot of the GUI stuff onto the GPU. If Quartz Extreme depends on HW functionality from the GPU that is not available on non-Mac GPUs, then OS X is pretty locked to Mac hardware.
The time two different tasks are perceived to take by the user often is backwards from what they actually take. Also, the time perceived for a sequence of tasks is strongly affected by the variation in individual times. For example, a series of commands that all take the same time will often be perceived as much faster than a series of commands where some are instantaneous and some are slow, even if the total time of the later is lower.
So, opinions on the relative productivity of mice and keyboards that aren't backed up with measurements are worthless.
In any case, it took her a full two minute to realize her mistake, and another four or five minutes to figure out how to stop the print job. By that time she had printed off about 500 worthless pages.
Instead of stopping the print job, she should have first stopped the printer, either by turning its power switch off, or pulling the plug. Or, remove the paper tray.
Then, without paper spewing out, she could take her time figuring out how to convince the computer not to resume printing that job when the printer is turned back on.
Under OS X, installation consists of downloading the application, and optionally extracting it from an archive. That's it, nothing more
Well, for maybe half the apps that is true. The other half require using an installer, because they need you to type your admin password to install them.
This includes a good fraction of Apple's own apps.
The battery cycles. Kids in my classes take laptops that have been used for an hour and just plug them back in again, and it happens every hour. I really wonder how long it will be until they stop holding charges
For Apple laptops, they tell you right in the manual that it is OK to do that.
So A actually connects to C, instead of B. If this becomes popular, the law will simply be changed to hold C liable from any illegal material A downloads through C from B.
The law will provide that C can get out of trouble by coughing up B's address.
Anyone who offers an anonymous P2P service is offering snake oil.
With/dev/random, you have to worry about what to do if it blocks, and you have to worry about causing others to block.
If you really need actual random numbers, as opposed to cryptographically secure random numbers, then yes, you should use/dev/random, but for almost all applications, cryptographically secure random numbers are all that you need, and so using/dev/urandom is sufficient, without the hassle of dealing with blocking.
Your best bet is to use/dev/urandom on Linux or *BSD. If you have to use Windows, there's something equivalent in the crypto API, but I don't recall what it is called.
These are cryptographically secure PRNGs, which means they are good enough for key generation, one time pads, etc.
There are a very very very few situations where they aren't good enough, but the only people who are going to be doing things that hit those situations are people who know enough about this subject that they would not need to be asking on Slashdot about this stuff.:-)
If you must generate your own random numbers, get the book "Practical Cryptography" by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier, and read the section on Fortuna.
The articles cited have NO details. This could be something is simple as having instructions to make it easier to implement the cryptographic functions used in Microsoft's DRM, all the way up to a secure coprocessor with key storage to make it harder to crack DRM.
Without details, there's really nothing more to say on this subject.
Maybe the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should get its fucking priorities straight and enforce the fucking immigration laws with the same zeal that it goes after teenagers downloading movies
If you have a limited amount of agents and resources, so that you can't go after all criminals, then allocating them strictly according to the priority of the crime is not a good strategy. You'll catch more people who are doing the highest priority crime, but you'll lose all deterrent effect for the other crimes, as the people contemplating commiting them will know there is no chance of getting caught.
The optimal allocation of resources will depend on the severity of each type of crime, the number of people commiting it, and how big of a deterrent seeing others getting caught is.
Microsoft's TerraServer site has been available online since 1998 (or earlier...1998 is the earliest reference I can find to it).
Google currently is more useful overall, but TerraServer will give lattitute and longitude (useful with GPS) and has higher res images of a lot of areas outside major cities that are missing from Google.
I feel like I'm restating the obvious, but the MPAA is perverting the intention of copyright. The idea was to *ENCOURAGE* creativity, not to maximize anyone's profits in perpetuity
Now I think back to 1995, when IE focused on user needs over software perfection and the following of published specifications
You are confused. Netscape was the browser that started that. They added all kinds of new tags, and new options to standard tags. Any browser that wanted to compete with Netscape had to start doing the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
You ask them, and you look at their actions, and decide if they are telling the truth.
This is no different than intent in any other area of law. For example, when someone kills someone else, what they intended is often a major factor in determining what crime they are guilty of. When two people disagree over the meaning of a contract, what they intended when they signed is often important.
We've got a whole system designed to figure out intent, and it works pretty well.
Uhm...you must have missed the part where I said these were from people who sent mail to our tech support. Generally, such people give out their real email addresses, because they do want to receive mail from us.
Yes. A lot of ordinary users use it. Examining a database of customer addresses from people who have contacted technical support where I work, I see the following:
Those are all the ones that are above 1%.
I think this kind of thing is an enabling technology. What I mean by that is that you don't need it, until it is available, and then you can do various things so much better than you could before, that your life changes so that you then do need that technology. (By need I mean that things would be not nearly as good without it)
An example of this kind of technology is the internet itself. 30 years ago, we got by without it. However, now that it is so widely available that we can count on having it all the time at home and at work, we can adjust our lives based on that assumption, and it becomes an essential part of our lives.
Cell phones are another example of this. A lot of businesses would grind to a halt now if all the workers had to give up their cell phones, yet 30 years ago, business managed without everyone having one. When the technology became widespread enough and cheap enough that we could count on it, we adjusted our lifestyles to take advantage of that technology.
I think widespread wireless net access will be like this, if some company or the government has the foresight to recognize the possibility, and keep it going and growing through the early years, when there aren't a lot of customers.
He didn't say it was because of his domain being in the body.
Uhm...you sure botched that one. Yes, the block is IP based. That is why it is catching paulgraham.com, even though paulgraham.com doesn't spam.
How does one become a "former founder" of something?
One way is to put a chip in the system that only Apple has access to, and that is essential for OS X to function.
For example, they could get ATI and NVidia to make special GPUs for Apple. OS X, especially with Quartz Extreme, pushes a lot onto the GPU, and if they made Intel OS X only support Quartz Extreme, and made that depend on these special GPUs, OS X would be very very very difficult to run on non-Apple hardware.
I don't know where you got that notion, but it is wrong. Right now, for example, my OS X system is playing music in iTunes, environmental sounds from World of Warcraft, and my terminal can beep, as can my email program when I receive a mail.
I have a rather large master password list for every server at work which I store this way. It's quite handy.
When I do that and read the warnings about how weak the encryption is, I remember why I don't use that. :-)
A much better approach is to use gpg. You can make vim automatically decrypt gpg files on reading, and encrypt them on writing, with this handy addition to your .vimrc, which I got from O'Reilly's "Linux Security Cookbook".
The formatting is horrible...that's slashdot's fault, not mine!
That's almost what I want. What I want is a password manager for some kind of hand held device, and I want the hand held device to have a USB interface. After I pick out a password on the device, I should be able to plug the device into my computer, press a button (or tap on the touch screen...) and have the device make it look to the computer as if I had just plugged in a USB keyboard, typed the password, and then unplugged the keyboard.
Even better, the hand held device should have both a USB A and USB B connector. I should be able to hook it between my keyboard and computer, and it should operate as a USB keyboard proxy, sending through anything I type, and allow me to insert a password into the keyboard data.
Well, here's one way, off the top of my head, that they could do it. All they have to do is put some chip in the system that is essential for the OS to function, and that is not available on generic HW. For example, they could get ATI and NVidia to build them special GPUs. With Quartz Extreme, OS X is capable of pushing a lot of the GUI stuff onto the GPU. If Quartz Extreme depends on HW functionality from the GPU that is not available on non-Mac GPUs, then OS X is pretty locked to Mac hardware.
So, opinions on the relative productivity of mice and keyboards that aren't backed up with measurements are worthless.
Instead of stopping the print job, she should have first stopped the printer, either by turning its power switch off, or pulling the plug. Or, remove the paper tray.
Then, without paper spewing out, she could take her time figuring out how to convince the computer not to resume printing that job when the printer is turned back on.
Well, for maybe half the apps that is true. The other half require using an installer, because they need you to type your admin password to install them.
This includes a good fraction of Apple's own apps.
For Apple laptops, they tell you right in the manual that it is OK to do that.
It's trivial to write such a law so that it would not hit routers, ISPs, etc.
Laws get to take into account intent and context.
The law will provide that C can get out of trouble by coughing up B's address.
Anyone who offers an anonymous P2P service is offering snake oil.
With /dev/random, you have to worry about what to do if it blocks, and you have to worry about causing others to block.
If you really need actual random numbers, as opposed to cryptographically secure random numbers, then yes, you should use /dev/random, but for almost all applications, cryptographically secure random numbers are all that you need, and so using /dev/urandom is sufficient, without the hassle of dealing with blocking.
These are cryptographically secure PRNGs, which means they are good enough for key generation, one time pads, etc.
There are a very very very few situations where they aren't good enough, but the only people who are going to be doing things that hit those situations are people who know enough about this subject that they would not need to be asking on Slashdot about this stuff. :-)
If you must generate your own random numbers, get the book "Practical Cryptography" by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier, and read the section on Fortuna.
Without details, there's really nothing more to say on this subject.
If you have a limited amount of agents and resources, so that you can't go after all criminals, then allocating them strictly according to the priority of the crime is not a good strategy. You'll catch more people who are doing the highest priority crime, but you'll lose all deterrent effect for the other crimes, as the people contemplating commiting them will know there is no chance of getting caught.
The optimal allocation of resources will depend on the severity of each type of crime, the number of people commiting it, and how big of a deterrent seeing others getting caught is.
Microsoft's TerraServer site has been available online since 1998 (or earlier...1998 is the earliest reference I can find to it).
Google currently is more useful overall, but TerraServer will give lattitute and longitude (useful with GPS) and has higher res images of a lot of areas outside major cities that are missing from Google.
Copying someone else's work, or distributing someone else's work, isn't creative.
If you want to create a show, as opposed to copying one, nothing the MPAA is doing will stop you.
You are confused. Netscape was the browser that started that. They added all kinds of new tags, and new options to standard tags. Any browser that wanted to compete with Netscape had to start doing the same thing.