While this post isn't insightful in any way, I tought I'd share in an attempt to humor some of you. I was actually in Kauai last week with some of my friends, and we were driving around the southern end of the island doing touristy things. We decided to check out a secluded beach we had heard about on the west side of the island, so we began driving. Eventually we got to a dirt road that supposedly led to this beach. After driving a couple of miles, we saw a guard house down the road and some signs that, in no uncertain terms, told us we shouldn't be there. Apparently, this was the military base where this thing is housed and flies out of. Needless to say, I couldn't check it out in person because once we were about 100 yards from the gate, three machine-gun toting guards came running out of their shack to see who we were. We promptly turned around and headed back. We did manage to find the beach, which was quite beautiful, by the way.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what kind of copy protection methods are employed for audio CD's. Even if someone came up with the ultimate copy protection scheme that wasn't possible to "break," you can always run the analog outputs of your CD player into your computer, record a bunch of wav files, and burn back to a CD. Wash, rinse, repeat. While it's not an exact copy, for most purposes I think it would suffice. I wonder if this would be considered a violation of the DMCA, since I suppose you are technically cirumventing copy protection schemes. Better yet, the manufacturer of the CD player, connecting cables, computer and recording software (Windows Media Player?) would be the one's who developed and made available the technology. The possibilities are endless...
I think I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and become an investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform's Special Investigations Division. That way, I can get paid to download and watch porn all day. Not only would I have to verify that it was in fact pornography, but I'd have to be sure to watch enough of it to properly classify it as beastiality, rape, incest or preteen.
I love how the knee-jerk reactions to these things take an incredibly closed-minded and negative tone when the word "Microsoft" is present. If this had been an open source database, I doubt anyone on Slashdot would be so quick to jump to conclusions.
Isn't this exactly what the phone company does when they publish the Yellow Pages? Certain companies have simple listings with only their name, phone number and address. Others have quarter-page three-color ads that pop out at you when browsing a particular catergory. Maybe the yellow pages are more like Yahoo than a conventional search engine, but the idea is still the same (looking for listings based on key words).
Screw knocking on doors. The way I see it, portscanning is akin to driving down a street (the host) and writing down which street addresses (ports) have houses at them. If someone did this in my neighborhood, I certainly wouldn't bother them, nor would I call the cops. They're not jiggling my door knob, and they certainly don't have the keys to my house. This is absolutely ridiculous.
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While this post isn't insightful in any way, I tought I'd share in an attempt to humor some of you. I was actually in Kauai last week with some of my friends, and we were driving around the southern end of the island doing touristy things. We decided to check out a secluded beach we had heard about on the west side of the island, so we began driving. Eventually we got to a dirt road that supposedly led to this beach. After driving a couple of miles, we saw a guard house down the road and some signs that, in no uncertain terms, told us we shouldn't be there. Apparently, this was the military base where this thing is housed and flies out of. Needless to say, I couldn't check it out in person because once we were about 100 yards from the gate, three machine-gun toting guards came running out of their shack to see who we were. We promptly turned around and headed back. We did manage to find the beach, which was quite beautiful, by the way.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what kind of copy protection methods are employed for audio CD's. Even if someone came up with the ultimate copy protection scheme that wasn't possible to "break," you can always run the analog outputs of your CD player into your computer, record a bunch of wav files, and burn back to a CD. Wash, rinse, repeat. While it's not an exact copy, for most purposes I think it would suffice. I wonder if this would be considered a violation of the DMCA, since I suppose you are technically cirumventing copy protection schemes. Better yet, the manufacturer of the CD player, connecting cables, computer and recording software (Windows Media Player?) would be the one's who developed and made available the technology. The possibilities are endless...
I think I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and become an investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform's Special Investigations Division. That way, I can get paid to download and watch porn all day. Not only would I have to verify that it was in fact pornography, but I'd have to be sure to watch enough of it to properly classify it as beastiality, rape, incest or preteen.
I love how the knee-jerk reactions to these things take an incredibly closed-minded and negative tone when the word "Microsoft" is present. If this had been an open source database, I doubt anyone on Slashdot would be so quick to jump to conclusions.
Isn't this exactly what the phone company does when they publish the Yellow Pages? Certain companies have simple listings with only their name, phone number and address. Others have quarter-page three-color ads that pop out at you when browsing a particular catergory. Maybe the yellow pages are more like Yahoo than a conventional search engine, but the idea is still the same (looking for listings based on key words).
Screw knocking on doors. The way I see it, portscanning is akin to driving down a street (the host) and writing down which street addresses (ports) have houses at them. If someone did this in my neighborhood, I certainly wouldn't bother them, nor would I call the cops. They're not jiggling my door knob, and they certainly don't have the keys to my house. This is absolutely ridiculous.