the only thing worth preserving is the high quality pr0n... It's a lot more interesting than reading what some obscure 300 y/o programmer named Linus had to say about some equally obscure "MACH microkernel"....
You could send your service provider a friendly letter noting they are being dissected on/.
This could dramatically improve their service in roughly 5 seconds...
Oh, and university research has never found its way into corporate cash machines...
Mosaic comes to mind. Akamai too. Not that there is anything wrong with it. They weren't using other people's processing power for free while selling them alturistic fables.
But all this is mute.
Who would exactly produce these miracle drugs once they were found? Someone would have to pay for testing and manufacturing. This sounds suspiciously like a pharmaceutical company to me. Also, let's not forget the royalties Oxford would demand. All this from other people's computers...
"What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.
Those beads would be small potatoes compared to the untold billions a pharmaceutical company would generate from selling the publicly number crunched drug at outrageous prices. I'm sure the company would not fail to patent the drug completely disregarding the fact that people volunteered their computing power to the task of finding it.
Not only would the company reap huge profits from such a drug, they would potentially outprice and kill untold thousands of cancer patients...
As noble as the idea of finding a cure for cancer is, I don't think pharmaceutical companies need public computer cycle subsidies. Especially when one considers that the return on the investment is in question.
C'mon, all this talk of training is just so much bollocks. All you have to do is sit atop the damn rocket and put your seat belt on. This whole "astronaut training" thing is just so much hogwash. Astronauts are gerbils for all intents and purposes on a mission. Anyone with a little common sense can be one.
Also, let us not forget that NASA was sending up non establishment people when Challenger blew up. Remember the teacher? Challenger also showed how important all that "training" is in a real emergency.
Your idea that independant splintering might occur is very possible. However, such splintering would probably die out in the long run as its drawbacks would eventually far outweigh it's perceived benefits for the intended audience. Some immediate examples:
why would a website owner deliberately seek to restrict his audience?
how would such a website owner ensure that his website appears on search engines properly?
there is a chicken and egg problem as far as users adopting the new method and websites adopting it.
All these problems would still happen with an international standard. The only difference is that a standard would set this silliness in stone and only postpone the idea's inevitable death and as a result further its damage.
The distinction is irrelevant... Any desktop system intended for web use is ASCII compatible in some manner, out of the box. In other words, the user does not have to fiddle with his computer to get it to work. As such, from the user's point of view, every desktop computer is ASCII comaptible.
aw, heck there are more things to comment about...
"However, I still have to disagree. If you are likely to want the contents of a non-English URL, you're going to need a non-English viewer of some kind, and if you already have that, then the input method is only a tiny step beyond."
The premise that only people speaking the language of a website will be interested in it is narrow minded to the extreme. Several examples that immediately spring to mind:
have you ever gone searching for a driver update for your new fangled computer doodad on some Taiwanese web site? now imagine trying to do that when the website name is in Taiwanese...
what about tourists (American or Chinese) trying to reserve a train ticket, online, in Germany, a classicaly "German only" affair by your reckoning? No more tickets for net savvy tourists because they can't type Os with umlauts?!?
what do you do if you are trilingual? Dual boot Windows Me?!?
"Thirdly, there would be terrible political consequences to forcing everyone to use ASCII. It would very quickly be perverted into an East versus West issue."
This one is ridiculous. ASCII letters are the tool to navigate the web. Just like the browser and its back button. It is not ideal but it is still just a tool. Saying it will turn into a religious war is just plain alarmist.
Adding multilingual domain names is bound to fail in the long run and will only create confusion and incompatabilities as it crashes and burns.
For example, your average Russian user will not be able to type in a Chinese domain name, who in turn will be unable to access a Japanese domain name, who in turn will not know how to see a German web site with that pesky umlaut somewhere in its domain name. The only thing this silly idea will do well is effectively fragment DNS and, as a result, the net.
May this patent help this idea disappear before it causes any real damage...
do they still allow additions and fixes to the DB?
start fixin' it wrong...
Enough mad people get even and no one will use such an ureliable service anymore.
Napster is dead in the water anyway. Whatever happens, Napster will never be able to offer good service because it is under the yoke of the RIAA. Napster is certain to be martyred to the point where the only mp3 you will be able to download is an FBI warning. There is nothing wrong with hastening it's demise.
It might even be positive in that it will keep the RIAA busy litigating Napster and not you, running opennap on your cable modem.
So you propose using chips in a computer instead of educating your child and wielding your authority as a parent?
Maybe you shouldn't have children in the first place...
All it takes is a little bit of patience and the will to spend time with your children. Patience, love and a little luck and you won't have to police them ever.
1. the RIAA would in effect be mounting a DoS attack. They can't just swamp a computer with requests because they want to.
2. There is no need for trust. Anyone can set up a server with a unique (and private) key to serve up obfuscated names to the world. Granted, this would splinter the Napster network for a while but eventually a few widely used servers would dominate. In fact, the system would be more robust with several servers as the RIAA would have to map several namespaces
3. "slow server response" is in the range of several seconds. This is plenty fast for the average user (your current net experience is far from instant) and way too slow to brute force every possible song.
4. I don't understand what you mean by the RIAA running servers because it doesn't make sense.
Posted this idea several weeks ago. Figure I might as well post it again.
It is conceivable to have a name obfuscation server to allow secure file renaming such that the original name cannot be easily deduced from the obfuscated name. Usage would be as follows:
user opens 'obfuscate' client, types in title and performer name: Enter Sandman, Metallica.
'obfuscate' client contacts server and requests obfuscated name
'obfuscate' client returns the obfuscated name: '12f64723ff.mp3'
user uses Napster to search for '12f64723ff.mp3'
user renames to whatever he likes
For the absolutely paranoid, the following steps could be taken to disallow 'abuse' by big labels:
strong cryptography for the name obfuscation.
to disable rapid mapping of files - deliberately slow server response or a client intensive authentication mechanism such as Hashcash.
It would be possible to map part of the renaming scheme and ban certain files but if the implementation is done right, it would be too difficult to do on a massive scale.
If Microsoft were so concerned with the quality of user experience and not cracking Netscape open why doesn't Windows come bundled with a usable FTP client? Why is FTP in explorer so decidedly second rate? Why isn't MSN messenger bundled with Windows? Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Why is there still no decent shell under Windows?
To me the answer seems to be that the main objective for Microsoft is maintaining a monopoly by excluding competition and not by improving user satisfaction with its products. Bundling any of these features would have done nothing for this objective.
I'm sure it's not what is legally defined in the law but antitrust laws are here to ensure that a company's first objective is to seek dominance through user satisfaction.
Microsoft hasn't had that objective in years.
Re:No, you're wrong. That's exactly the point
on
Anticryptography
·
· Score: 1
So quit your job, stop wasting your time posting on/. and join doctor's without frontiers or the Red Cross or Amnesty or whatever other misguided goody goody two shoes organisation you find "morally correct". Be sure to sell all your posessions and donate the proceeds to really needy people - you should be able to live just fine in an old VW beetle.
Then, after you have done all these things, you may find a cyber-soup-kitchen and preach on/. how other people should do more for their brethren.
Practice what you preach.
Slashdot Mirror
the only thing worth preserving is the high quality pr0n... It's a lot more interesting than reading what some obscure 300 y/o programmer named Linus had to say about some equally obscure "MACH microkernel"....
You could send your service provider a friendly letter noting they are being dissected on /.
This could dramatically improve their service in roughly 5 seconds...
umm.. I don't want to nitpick but isn't the RIAA in violation of Napster's trademarked logo?
Didn't Napster sue someone over T-shirts about this once?
Unless, of course, you consider that "pop singer" is defined as popular singer...
Oh, and university research has never found its way into corporate cash machines...
Mosaic comes to mind. Akamai too. Not that there is anything wrong with it. They weren't using other people's processing power for free while selling them alturistic fables.
But all this is mute.
Who would exactly produce these miracle drugs once they were found? Someone would have to pay for testing and manufacturing. This sounds suspiciously like a pharmaceutical company to me. Also, let's not forget the royalties Oxford would demand. All this from other people's computers...
"What they forgot to mention was that running the client primarily benefits a for-profit company in Austin, TX which wants to sell your CPU cycles to the highest bidder in exchange for some nice beads.
Those beads would be small potatoes compared to the untold billions a pharmaceutical company would generate from selling the publicly number crunched drug at outrageous prices. I'm sure the company would not fail to patent the drug completely disregarding the fact that people volunteered their computing power to the task of finding it. Not only would the company reap huge profits from such a drug, they would potentially outprice and kill untold thousands of cancer patients...
As noble as the idea of finding a cure for cancer is, I don't think pharmaceutical companies need public computer cycle subsidies. Especially when one considers that the return on the investment is in question.
As much as I dislike M$ this sounds like thought crime...
C'mon, all this talk of training is just so much bollocks. All you have to do is sit atop the damn rocket and put your seat belt on. This whole "astronaut training" thing is just so much hogwash. Astronauts are gerbils for all intents and purposes on a mission. Anyone with a little common sense can be one.
Also, let us not forget that NASA was sending up non establishment people when Challenger blew up. Remember the teacher? Challenger also showed how important all that "training" is in a real emergency.
Your idea that independant splintering might occur is very possible. However, such splintering would probably die out in the long run as its drawbacks would eventually far outweigh it's perceived benefits for the intended audience. Some immediate examples:
All these problems would still happen with an international standard. The only difference is that a standard would set this silliness in stone and only postpone the idea's inevitable death and as a result further its damage.
The distinction is irrelevant... Any desktop system intended for web use is ASCII compatible in some manner, out of the box. In other words, the user does not have to fiddle with his computer to get it to work. As such, from the user's point of view, every desktop computer is ASCII comaptible.
"However, I still have to disagree. If you are likely to want the contents of a non-English URL, you're going to need a non-English viewer of some kind, and if you already have that, then the input method is only a tiny step beyond."
The premise that only people speaking the language of a website will be interested in it is narrow minded to the extreme. Several examples that immediately spring to mind:
"Thirdly, there would be terrible political consequences to forcing everyone to use ASCII. It would very quickly be perverted into an East versus West issue."
This one is ridiculous. ASCII letters are the tool to navigate the web. Just like the browser and its back button. It is not ideal but it is still just a tool. Saying it will turn into a religious war is just plain alarmist.
"Secondly, the vast majority of the world do not use English."
But every desktop computer on earth uses ASCII letters out of the box.Adding multilingual domain names is bound to fail in the long run and will only create confusion and incompatabilities as it crashes and burns.
For example, your average Russian user will not be able to type in a Chinese domain name, who in turn will be unable to access a Japanese domain name, who in turn will not know how to see a German web site with that pesky umlaut somewhere in its domain name. The only thing this silly idea will do well is effectively fragment DNS and, as a result, the net.
May this patent help this idea disappear before it causes any real damage...
"I could have bought a Harley for the money I've blown on it," he said."
Only a Harley? His lawyer is working pro bono...
The only other unmentioned use I can find for crypto is trading mp3s...
do they still allow additions and fixes to the DB? start fixin' it wrong... Enough mad people get even and no one will use such an ureliable service anymore.
Whoever wrote these shopping cart applications should be taken out and shot. It is disgraceful.
Napster is dead in the water anyway. Whatever happens, Napster will never be able to offer good service because it is under the yoke of the RIAA. Napster is certain to be martyred to the point where the only mp3 you will be able to download is an FBI warning. There is nothing wrong with hastening it's demise.
It might even be positive in that it will keep the RIAA busy litigating Napster and not you, running opennap on your cable modem.
So you propose using chips in a computer instead of educating your child and wielding your authority as a parent? Maybe you shouldn't have children in the first place... All it takes is a little bit of patience and the will to spend time with your children. Patience, love and a little luck and you won't have to police them ever.
1. the RIAA would in effect be mounting a DoS attack. They can't just swamp a computer with requests because they want to.
2. There is no need for trust. Anyone can set up a server with a unique (and private) key to serve up obfuscated names to the world. Granted, this would splinter the Napster network for a while but eventually a few widely used servers would dominate. In fact, the system would be more robust with several servers as the RIAA would have to map several namespaces
3. "slow server response" is in the range of several seconds. This is plenty fast for the average user (your current net experience is far from instant) and way too slow to brute force every possible song.
4. I don't understand what you mean by the RIAA running servers because it doesn't make sense.
Posted this idea several weeks ago. Figure I might as well post it again.
It is conceivable to have a name obfuscation server to allow secure file renaming such that the original name cannot be easily deduced from the obfuscated name. Usage would be as follows:- user opens 'obfuscate' client, types in title and performer name: Enter Sandman, Metallica.
- 'obfuscate' client contacts server and requests obfuscated name
- 'obfuscate' client returns the obfuscated name: '12f64723ff.mp3'
- user uses Napster to search for '12f64723ff.mp3'
- user renames to whatever he likes
For the absolutely paranoid, the following steps could be taken to disallow 'abuse' by big labels:It would be possible to map part of the renaming scheme and ban certain files but if the implementation is done right, it would be too difficult to do on a massive scale.
It's only a matter of time before the RIAA finds the right sauce to cook their goose in.
If Microsoft were so concerned with the quality of user experience and not cracking Netscape open why doesn't Windows come bundled with a usable FTP client? Why is FTP in explorer so decidedly second rate? Why isn't MSN messenger bundled with Windows? Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Why is there still no decent shell under Windows?
To me the answer seems to be that the main objective for Microsoft is maintaining a monopoly by excluding competition and not by improving user satisfaction with its products. Bundling any of these features would have done nothing for this objective.
I'm sure it's not what is legally defined in the law but antitrust laws are here to ensure that a company's first objective is to seek dominance through user satisfaction.
Microsoft hasn't had that objective in years.
So quit your job, stop wasting your time posting on /. and join doctor's without frontiers or the Red Cross or Amnesty or whatever other misguided goody goody two shoes organisation you find "morally correct". Be sure to sell all your posessions and donate the proceeds to really needy people - you should be able to live just fine in an old VW beetle.
Then, after you have done all these things, you may find a cyber-soup-kitchen and preach on /. how other people should do more for their brethren.
Practice what you preach.