1. This is geared toward a specific type of file (x86 executable), not generic data files. 2. Adding an educated-guess-where-all-the-pointers-are system might just mess with the rsync protocol. 3. Google has the advantage of knowing, with a quick version number check, exactly what changes need to be made: most data flows from server to client. The rsync destination would have to send back two sets of rolling checksums: first for the disassembly, then for the guess made using the patched disassembly. Don't know how big of an effect this would be on efficiency, but it would be at least slightly slower than what Google can achieve.
I really like the idea, though, and I'm a big fan of rsync. It would be interesting if there was a general purpose system for guessing changes in files, given that X changed.
Passwords are the gateway to more extreme security measures! Airports started using passwords on their computers, and now they're a step away from making you take off your underwear in order to board a plane.
Slippery slope and hasty generalization all in one. Not all security is obnoxious, and not all security will lead to obnoxious security.
Reading off the keyboard is more difficult than reading off the screen.
Granted, part of this is experience, and a bad guy could probably learn how to read keyboards with accuracy. But showing passwords doesn't help keep honest people honest. I'm more worried about tempting nosy friends and coworkers than I am about helping government spies with zoom lenses.
Someone else mentioned that it's possible to lock things down further (such that only executables in approved directories will run), but I bet it's not as common as just making sure the users aren't admins.
This seems reasonable to me. Businesses don't care about web standards -- they care about money.
Of course, the web developers would have to work together on this. If only one guy charges a premium, the boss is going to hire someone else. Though you could fight this by lowering prices for web standards work, which in effect is asking the web developer, "How much would you pay to not have to worry about IE6?"
Still a good idea. Someone mod this guy up further.
I really like this idea. Especially if a significant percentage of people had such a blocker installed. Might give advertisers incentive to not be as obnoxious.
Seems like this would be pretty easy to cheat. Just make a bunch of repeated network connections to download a small, free app.
I'm guessing you'd need to do more than just ping their servers, but it seems like spoofing a download would be possible, provided that they aren't using hardware-enforced crypto. It's similar to the DRM problem: how do you keep iPhone users from downloading apps yet still allow them to download apps?
What the parent just showed is that most kids acquire most of their music via P2P, and that it would be impossible for the average teen to buy all the music that's on their computer. In short: everyone uses P2P, and we couldn't buy all the music we obtain via P2P.
But this does not prove that P2P harms no one. (Possibly poor) analogy: Most people break the speed limit, and you wouldn't have as much free time if you didn't speed. Therefore, speeding hurts no one.
What the parent did prove is that P2P's harm must be much less than what the RIAA claims. If P2P disappeared, a few former P2P users might buy a few songs, but the majority of their music consumption would simply disappear. There is still the possibility for loss, but it would be impossible for everyone to buy all the music they currently consume.
P2P use could even have a net benefit if copyright holders would use P2P to their advantage instead of fighting it. In this case, P2P really doesn't hurt anyone, and the parent (with whom I actually agree) would be right -- but the argument used is still faulty.
Why don't they just completely rip off the MacBook Air, to the extent that they can do so while avoiding legal trouble?
If you're offering obvious competition for the Air, and your design skills aren't as good as Apple's, you might as well just copy their design. It would be blatant competition, but it would be anyway.
I agree, but it's hard to guarantee security without encrypting everything. If you only encrypt part of the system (say, a partition on a USB thumb drive), data tends to get out (users copying files to their desktop for convenience, unencrypted virtual memory, applications saving temporary copies of documents, etc). And don't forget to keep the computer disconnected from the Internet! It's just Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong.
Perfect security is really hard to obtain if there's more than one or two people keeping a secret. The compromise route is usually the most pragmatic: (1) encrypt to the point where if you encrypted anything else, users couldn't use the system; (2) tell your users what is and what is not encrypted; and (3) hold users accountable.
When Coca-Cola was developing New Coke, they found that only 11% of the people were opposed to the new product. However, it was a vocal 11%, and the dissent spread. EA may be facing a similar situation...
Or, another way of looking at things: If EA truly believes that DRM isn't turning off gamers, why did the CEO feel the need to announce that 98.8% don't care about DRM? They're afraid, and rightly so (I hope).
It's not that we're surprised that this is how internal investigations run -- it's the wording, "Police later cleared themselves," that makes it classic.
On one hand, I'd hate to think the computer was letting me win, but on the other, that's how I usually want to be treated. My dad used to play Global War (a Risk clone), and he commented that to really have fun, you need to win something like 80% of the time.
In an evenly matched multiplayer game, your wins are going to be around 50% (thinking first-person shooters here). But that's compensated in part by the satisfaction that you just fragged a real human. Food for thought: are multiplayer games more fun if there are more ways to win than to lose (so everyone can get their wins up to 80%)?
On another note: you could integrate the dynamic levels of difficulty with the standard "easy, medium, hard" menu. For example, if you get beat the first time you play on hard, the computer goes easy on you the second time you play — but it still makes it harder than medium would. You could also have something like easy tries to let you win 90% of the time, medium tries to let you win 80% of the time, etc. Just thinking out loud.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe. But I can think of a few issues:
1. This is geared toward a specific type of file (x86 executable), not generic data files.
2. Adding an educated-guess-where-all-the-pointers-are system might just mess with the rsync protocol.
3. Google has the advantage of knowing, with a quick version number check, exactly what changes need to be made: most data flows from server to client. The rsync destination would have to send back two sets of rolling checksums: first for the disassembly, then for the guess made using the patched disassembly. Don't know how big of an effect this would be on efficiency, but it would be at least slightly slower than what Google can achieve.
I really like the idea, though, and I'm a big fan of rsync. It would be interesting if there was a general purpose system for guessing changes in files, given that X changed.
Passwords are the gateway to more extreme security measures! Airports started using passwords on their computers, and now they're a step away from making you take off your underwear in order to board a plane.
Slippery slope and hasty generalization all in one. Not all security is obnoxious, and not all security will lead to obnoxious security.
Reading off the keyboard is more difficult than reading off the screen. Granted, part of this is experience, and a bad guy could probably learn how to read keyboards with accuracy. But showing passwords doesn't help keep honest people honest. I'm more worried about tempting nosy friends and coworkers than I am about helping government spies with zoom lenses.
You probably mean, "raises an interesting question". http://begthequestion.info/
Because money is changing hands?
I mean, if this is true, what if the Russians found a way to activate the botnet first?
Or, no economic theory is going to save you if everyone pretends they have infinite money.
Can't you install Chrome without being an admin?
Someone else mentioned that it's possible to lock things down further (such that only executables in approved directories will run), but I bet it's not as common as just making sure the users aren't admins.
This seems reasonable to me. Businesses don't care about web standards -- they care about money.
Of course, the web developers would have to work together on this. If only one guy charges a premium, the boss is going to hire someone else. Though you could fight this by lowering prices for web standards work, which in effect is asking the web developer, "How much would you pay to not have to worry about IE6?"
Still a good idea. Someone mod this guy up further.
This should be modded funny, right?
They are *not* closing down the page (I know this for a fact, as I am the current site owner). This is just part of a running joke that ZZT is dying.
I like this idea.
I really like this idea. Especially if a significant percentage of people had such a blocker installed. Might give advertisers incentive to not be as obnoxious.
Seems like this would be pretty easy to cheat. Just make a bunch of repeated network connections to download a small, free app.
I'm guessing you'd need to do more than just ping their servers, but it seems like spoofing a download would be possible, provided that they aren't using hardware-enforced crypto. It's similar to the DRM problem: how do you keep iPhone users from downloading apps yet still allow them to download apps?
What the parent just showed is that most kids acquire most of their music via P2P, and that it would be impossible for the average teen to buy all the music that's on their computer. In short: everyone uses P2P, and we couldn't buy all the music we obtain via P2P.
But this does not prove that P2P harms no one. (Possibly poor) analogy: Most people break the speed limit, and you wouldn't have as much free time if you didn't speed. Therefore, speeding hurts no one.
What the parent did prove is that P2P's harm must be much less than what the RIAA claims. If P2P disappeared, a few former P2P users might buy a few songs, but the majority of their music consumption would simply disappear. There is still the possibility for loss, but it would be impossible for everyone to buy all the music they currently consume.
P2P use could even have a net benefit if copyright holders would use P2P to their advantage instead of fighting it. In this case, P2P really doesn't hurt anyone, and the parent (with whom I actually agree) would be right -- but the argument used is still faulty.
Why don't they just completely rip off the MacBook Air, to the extent that they can do so while avoiding legal trouble?
If you're offering obvious competition for the Air, and your design skills aren't as good as Apple's, you might as well just copy their design. It would be blatant competition, but it would be anyway.
I agree, but it's hard to guarantee security without encrypting everything. If you only encrypt part of the system (say, a partition on a USB thumb drive), data tends to get out (users copying files to their desktop for convenience, unencrypted virtual memory, applications saving temporary copies of documents, etc). And don't forget to keep the computer disconnected from the Internet! It's just Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong.
Some of that may be overkill, but it depends on what you're doing. I like this quote from the Diceware page: "Of course, if you are worried about an organization that can break a seven word passphrase in order to read your e-mail, there are a number of other issues you should be concerned with -- such as how well you pay the team of armed guards that are protecting your computer 24 hours a day."
Perfect security is really hard to obtain if there's more than one or two people keeping a secret. The compromise route is usually the most pragmatic: (1) encrypt to the point where if you encrypted anything else, users couldn't use the system; (2) tell your users what is and what is not encrypted; and (3) hold users accountable.
Just a couple of cents.
Seriously, how does stuff like this get on the front page?
Mod up. Not only is the quote in the article, it's in the summary as well.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=964
When Coca-Cola was developing New Coke, they found that only 11% of the people were opposed to the new product. However, it was a vocal 11%, and the dissent spread. EA may be facing a similar situation...
Or, another way of looking at things: If EA truly believes that DRM isn't turning off gamers, why did the CEO feel the need to announce that 98.8% don't care about DRM? They're afraid, and rightly so (I hope).
Why have it depend on the author's lifetime? Maybe copyright should have a fixed duration.
It's not that we're surprised that this is how internal investigations run -- it's the wording, "Police later cleared themselves," that makes it classic.
On one hand, I'd hate to think the computer was letting me win, but on the other, that's how I usually want to be treated. My dad used to play Global War (a Risk clone), and he commented that to really have fun, you need to win something like 80% of the time.
In an evenly matched multiplayer game, your wins are going to be around 50% (thinking first-person shooters here). But that's compensated in part by the satisfaction that you just fragged a real human. Food for thought: are multiplayer games more fun if there are more ways to win than to lose (so everyone can get their wins up to 80%)?
On another note: you could integrate the dynamic levels of difficulty with the standard "easy, medium, hard" menu. For example, if you get beat the first time you play on hard, the computer goes easy on you the second time you play — but it still makes it harder than medium would. You could also have something like easy tries to let you win 90% of the time, medium tries to let you win 80% of the time, etc. Just thinking out loud.
It is kinda like see how good things use to be when Microsoft was your favorite OS.
Nuh-uh. My favorite OS was Netscape Navigator 3!
...or was the company/OS mixup on your part intentional (to give some idea of how the typical user sees things)?
It really is a shame. If Wikileaks begins to decline, I hope someone starts a similar site, but with the intent to keep it fully open.
I mean, I understand that they need money to pay their lawyers, but I fear that they are straying too far from their original goal.
A distributed leak service would be interesting. Maybe some kind of specialized P2P software?