This article has been up on/. for about two minutes, and almost every comment so far has been, "Well I had a card from them that sucked, so everything else they do will suck too."
Guess what? THOSE CARDS ARE YESTERDAY'S NEWS! Trident is making a different card with different chips and different circuits. They'll have different performance than the old cards!!!!
Now the new card is going to be cheap, which makes me suspicious of its performance/quality. However, discounting is out of hand because their last card (or even every card before this one) is completely pointless and wrong-headed. Look at the card, and then decide if it sucks. Amazing that so many of you have to be told that.
Lets also not forget that Trident did extremely well selling 'shite' cards. At one point there were more 8900 chips than any other single video chip in PCs at the time! Cheap, slow, but great where you just need a screen. (like my console server and my firewall, for instance)
"Why don't any of these reviews make any effort to explain mozilla's licensing and why users should care about it?"
This was probably intended to be rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyways.
Why don't the reviews explain why users should care about licensing? Because they don't care! Nobody outside the OSS movement really gives a rat's ass about being able to modify, redistribute, use, etc. it for free and free of restrictions. If they want to do anything like that, then they'll already know about the licensing issues. If they don't want to do that, then they just simply won't care.
All an end user wants is a good web browser that they can use, ideally without paying and with a bare minimum of installation hassle. Anything else is irrelevant to about 95% of the online population.
More people are getting news of this. Not a lot, but more. More and more musicians are speaking out against the RIAA, and as a result more of the general population is hearing about it. I also make sure that MY family and friends know about it, and tell them to spread the word as much as possible.
However, it doesn't matter from a PR point of view. The RIAA doesn't care if people like them--they want to have the legal and physical might to crush anyone who stands in their way, and they're getting damned close.
"...copyright owners -- those who actually take the time and effort to create an artistic work --..."
Guess what Hilary? The artists don't hold copyright on their own music. The artists don't have control over their creative output, either past present or future. YOU do!
Oh, you knew that? Then why are you LYING about it?
As a non-violent person, I'd like to see Hilary Rosen and her evil cohorts tragically drive off a cliff in a bus with a broken axle.
Back in the 'good days' of gamesdomain.com, there was a column called, "The Pink Aisle," discussing women in computer games. It was very insightful (and occasionally inciteful:-), but depressing to see how pathetically the gaming industry still toadies to (and helps establish/reinforce) adolescent fantasies.
Personally, I don't have a lot of problems with women who want to take off their clothes for my entertainment, assuming they get paid and treated fairly for it. However, it doesn't belong in the computer gaming industry, it shouldn't be aimed at teenagers, and it certainly shouldn't be done as a projection of reality (which it currently is).
If I want to see scantily clad women, I'll pick up Playboy, etc. If I want to see game info, I'd like to be able to pick up a game magazine.
Game previews should be factual, rather than hypeful. Tell us what the game is going to be about and how it's going to work. Tell us about the tech behind it, if it's known. Don't waste breathless prose telling us about how it'll be the best game ever created!!! (again)
On a side note, does ZD have anything to do with the current incarnation of Gamesdomain? They certainly stink like a ZD site these days.
I think that part of the problem here is that.NET is this amorphous thing that MS has been pushing, without ever actually explaining. Sure we know what passport is, but that's one concrete part of...
Heh. Asia is definitely an alpha geek, and a charming lady too. Occasionally she wanders through usenet, or at least used to, and is a neat lady to talk to. She's also a very effective reminder of the fact that porn stars are more than just spread and penetrated body parts.:-)
Too bad that her implants are an unfortunate mess. She looked much better before them. Still a cool lady, though.
This is slowly driving me crazy. This is an alternative idea, and one that is WORKING on a small scale. There are people right now who are recycling fryer grease into car fuel.
- Is it emission free? Of course not! - Are the emissions better than gas/diesel emissions? Maybe. Maybe not. - Is this going to make it all OK for all of us to drive big cars as much as possible? Of course not!!! - Is it at least going to replace fossil fuels? Don't be absurd!
This is not a solution. Electric cars or hybrids are not a solution. H2, solar, or compressed air powered cars are not the solution! No piece of technology stuck onto a car is going to solve the socioeconomic nightmare of our dependency on vehicles!
BUT...
That doesn't mean we shouldn't use this. In fact, we should be VIGOROUSLY studying these alternatives. The bottom line is that if we wait for a solution, it'll never happen and we'll eventually be buried up to our asses in rusted carparts and used car oil. WHILE we pursue a solution, we MUST be using this thing, the electric cars available, Hybrids, diesel, and whatever else is out there. Same for engines--let's look at the Wankel again, now that Mazda has (sadly) dropped it. If they get used, they get researched. If they don't get used, we'll end up stuck with inefficient, archaic, dinosaur-burning tanks until the end of time; and that will come a lot quicker as a result.
So quit throwing away all of the little steps forward--they're the only way we advance.
Bah. I used up all of my moderation points yesterday, otherwise I'd bump this up.
Someone else pointed out that trains now have the same requirement, and of course you can't crash a train into a building, so what's the point?
The points (there are two) are first of all the one you mentioned--that this is a private company able to do what they want. Don't like it, start your own air/trainline! Secondly the potential for huge loss of life is equally present in a train. 300 passengers running into a fuel tanker at 300 km/h is pretty substantial! Definitely worth protecting against.
Although it makes sense, coke will never be legalised. Neither will heroin, crack, or any of the other seriously hard drugs. (pot and maybe hash are in a different category, for various reasons)
The first politician who seriously tries to legalise these drugs and _doesn't_ get kicked out of office will die horribly in a car accident. So will the second one. If they start getting too serious about it, then a few politicians will end up with bullets in their heads, just to drive the point home.
The drug cartels will never let their 'industry' be legalised--it's too lucrative, too rich, and gives them too much power. They're not dumb.
First of all, I don't disagree with it being a good form of exercise.
However, why do we make phys ed a requirement at all? Not just for the exercise, but also to give balance to the academic studies. It's like art class, band, or any other subject.
Oh hell, let's computerise everything. We'll replace painting (and photography, and sculpture, and...) with digital image manipulation classes. Band with audio editing. Math is pointless since computers already do it all, so we'll phase it out. English (Language Arts up here, don't know about there) can be dumped for structured programming languages. Social Studies for history of computing. No on second though, replace it entirely with search term creation lessons. After all, all of that stuff can be looked up.
Need I continue?
The goal of schools isn't to develop ubergeeks, or to become as brainy as possible while keeping their bodies healthy enough to carry their brains around. It is to develop well balanced healthy adults who can make critical decisions. Some of those critical decisions will undoubtedly require the knowledge that computers won't solve everything, and aren't appropriate in some cases. In fact, whoever decided to implement this thing seems to have failed in that thought process, sadly.
Computers don't belong and shouldn't be absolutely everywhere. We're going to utterly cripple ourselves if we can't step away at times. This class is missing that point.
I've seen lots of posts that say this is a good thing, because anything that gets fat lazy kids off their collective asses is good. This may be true, but why try to bribe the kids?
Here's a novel thought: The kids are REQUIRED to take Phys Ed in most places. If they don't participate, they fail the class! If they fail the class, they don't go on to the next grade! I think that's as much of a motivator as giving them computer games to play, so they never have to be disconnected.
Bah. Come on people, go out and buy a soccer ball! Or a tennis racket. Or something.
This is just wonderful. As a society, we're getting fatter and lazier, and more addicted to computers. The solution? Encourage our addiction! Forget about balance, richness, or anything else--just try to use the addiction to mask the symptoms (fat, lazy, unhealthy).
Teaching kids nice and early that computers can solve everything, and that we can't live without them is guaranteed to create a generation that _can't_ live without them, and will painfully discover that they can't solve much of anything.
Hmm. I can't imagine any better way of convincing companies to run away screaming from open source software. Hell, if MS was to be held accountable for their shite software whereas open source types weren't, I'd probably happily run MS at home as well!
Here's an idea. Make the _default_ software liability dependant on a few basic ground rules, something like this:
1) Free software has no liability, unless the source or vendor assigns some. 2) Commercial software (i.e. for sale) has a base liability, and must explicitly state if it is to be used for home, business, or mission critical environments. (probably several other categories too--life critical, for instance) 3) Explicitly state that the misuse of software only protects the company from liability issues.
So if I run MyIIS ("for home/non-commercial use only!") as my company's web server and it breaks due to negligence on MS's part, I'm SOL because I've not used it appropriately. Aside from that issue, I _am_ free to use it in that environment, though.
About all that commentary you added at the end. You're not that insightful, and it's not that interesting to read. Just shut up and post the damned story next time.
I work daily in the computing/programming/IT business. My brother is a musician, and I see a fair bit of what goes on in the music industry. I have worked in other fields along the way as well.
Computing is possibly the single best field to be a grunt in, bar none. Clueless managers? Finger pointing? Absolutely. That's just human nature. However, msot people are scared of mission critical computers and the like, and ultimately treat them with HUGE amounts of respect, vs. their counterparts in other fields.
The original poster was unfortunately right. Music is about as bad as it comes if you're anywhere more successful than a bar band. We're not talking about overbearing managers--we're talking criminal dirtballs at their lowest.
If you think programing is less than rosy, take a step outside for a year or two. You'll end up running screaming back, I suspect.
With all due respect for your talents, it sounds like you should never have been hired for the job in the first place. It seems pretty clear that you're not a Unix person, and have no intention of being one. Does your resume' say "web developer' or 'pc-based web developer?'
Also, you mention (multiple times!) that you had a problem with this because you're a creative person. Oh, poor sensitive creative person! The world is so much more difficult for you!
I'm sorry, but that's how it sounds.
All of that said, I can certainly see the drawbacks. I'm a consultant, and one of my requirements was that I have a permanent desk at my 'home' company, regardless of where I was onsite. Having a base of operations is crucial to the contentment of most employees. (and that includes both the special creative ones, and the rest of us poor lowlifes)
Is there not? Excellent! That might mean that Intel will continue to support it on the P4 line, and then let it die a miserable death.
They can't dump it yet, because most of the early P4 systems were sold to companies who want some ROI before the hardware dies. If Intel pulled the plug 100% right now, Sun would reap the benefits.
1) RDRAM doesn't die because Intel still supports it.
1a) Intel still supports RDRAM because it wasn't a 100% bad decision, and they invested HUGE amounts of money.
2) Intel can't force stupid things onto consumers? How about an endless string of CPU upgrades based originally on the 4004? Motorola dumped the 6800-based line for the PPC, which is what Intel has been too scared to do. If IBM hadn't fallen on their fat and lazy ass, the PPC probably would have cut Intel's market share to about 40% right now. (and we'd have a better windows CPU than the P4)
Reread the article. Read a few others. The MPAA is agressively attempting to control the upcoming technology in such a way that without the backing of a major studio, a filmmaker won't be able to make films. They're also trying to control all forms of playback technology, so that ultimately no one will be able to watch a movie without the knowledge and consent of their organisation.
Alex Cox is capable of making movies that sell well enough and have enough of a following to support him, and allow him to make more movies. If the MPAA has their way, this won't be possible.
That's what is being objected to here. If that's a "Euro-Leftist" attitude, then the US is a pretty damned socialist country.
"This case illustrates the failure of law enforcement agencies to implement adequate protection against the abuse of information they collect."
Michael, take a deep breath. You're starting to sound like Jon Katz.
This case illustrates exactly why mandatory encryption key repositories are a bad idea. It illustrates why keeping excessive information is a problem. It highlights the fact that we don't live in a safe world.
We will never. Ever. Ever! eliminate leaks, corruption, and fraud. If the information exists at all, then there's no way of protecting it perfectly from unintended use. (Which, it occurs to me, is exactly why people have argued against copy-protection. Hmmm...) Sooner or later someone will find a way of getting to it and exploiting it.
Note also that (as others have pointed out), the law enforcement agencies worked!" The perps were caught and punished, exactly like they should be.
The only answer we have to threats like this goes as follows.
1) Limit the amount of information collected to what's necessary. (in this case, the info. was necessary. Private key repositories are definitely not) 2) Limit the amount of cross-referencing between separate databases. 3) Implement and enforce legal protections on the data. 4) Implement and enforce technical protections on the data. 5) (really 3a) When things are abused or leaked, punish the perpetrators and reevaluate policies 1-4.
This is old, old, OLD stuff but is changing now for a few reasons. Massive networking, storage, and databases are fundamentally contrary to items (1) and (2). Technology moving as fast as it is makes (4) a difficult moving target. The fact that too many people (legislators and judges especially included) consider this to be a different situation than it was 25 years ago makes (3) more complicated than it should be.
The one difference with this one is that it's going to be included with (and eventually the default for) Solaris. Quite likely HPUX and AIX will go the same way if they can all get along.
Slashdot Mirror
This article has been up on /. for about two minutes, and almost every comment so far has been, "Well I had a card from them that sucked, so everything else they do will suck too."
Guess what? THOSE CARDS ARE YESTERDAY'S NEWS! Trident is making a different card with different chips and different circuits. They'll have different performance than the old cards!!!!
Now the new card is going to be cheap, which makes me suspicious of its performance/quality. However, discounting is out of hand because their last card (or even every card before this one) is completely pointless and wrong-headed. Look at the card, and then decide if it sucks. Amazing that so many of you have to be told that.
Lets also not forget that Trident did extremely well selling 'shite' cards. At one point there were more 8900 chips than any other single video chip in PCs at the time! Cheap, slow, but great where you just need a screen. (like my console server and my firewall, for instance)
So get over the past.
"Why don't any of these reviews make any effort to explain mozilla's licensing and why users should care about it?"
This was probably intended to be rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyways.
Why don't the reviews explain why users should care about licensing? Because they don't care! Nobody outside the OSS movement really gives a rat's ass about being able to modify, redistribute, use, etc. it for free and free of restrictions. If they want to do anything like that, then they'll already know about the licensing issues. If they don't want to do that, then they just simply won't care.
All an end user wants is a good web browser that they can use, ideally without paying and with a bare minimum of installation hassle. Anything else is irrelevant to about 95% of the online population.
More people are getting news of this. Not a lot, but more. More and more musicians are speaking out against the RIAA, and as a result more of the general population is hearing about it. I also make sure that MY family and friends know about it, and tell them to spread the word as much as possible.
However, it doesn't matter from a PR point of view. The RIAA doesn't care if people like them--they want to have the legal and physical might to crush anyone who stands in their way, and they're getting damned close.
That sleazy bitch Rosen said...
..."
"...copyright owners -- those who actually take the time and effort to create an artistic work --
Guess what Hilary? The artists don't hold copyright on their own music. The artists don't have control over their creative output, either past present or future. YOU do!
Oh, you knew that? Then why are you LYING about it?
As a non-violent person, I'd like to see Hilary Rosen and her evil cohorts tragically drive off a cliff in a bus with a broken axle.
In a word, Bravo!
:-), but depressing to see how pathetically the gaming industry still toadies to (and helps establish/reinforce) adolescent fantasies.
In a few more words...
Back in the 'good days' of gamesdomain.com, there was a column called, "The Pink Aisle," discussing women in computer games. It was very insightful (and occasionally inciteful
Personally, I don't have a lot of problems with women who want to take off their clothes for my entertainment, assuming they get paid and treated fairly for it. However, it doesn't belong in the computer gaming industry, it shouldn't be aimed at teenagers, and it certainly shouldn't be done as a projection of reality (which it currently is).
If I want to see scantily clad women, I'll pick up Playboy, etc. If I want to see game info, I'd like to be able to pick up a game magazine.
Game previews should be factual, rather than hypeful. Tell us what the game is going to be about and how it's going to work. Tell us about the tech behind it, if it's known. Don't waste breathless prose telling us about how it'll be the best game ever created!!! (again)
On a side note, does ZD have anything to do with the current incarnation of Gamesdomain? They certainly stink like a ZD site these days.
I think that part of the problem here is that .NET is this amorphous thing that MS has been pushing, without ever actually explaining. Sure we know what passport is, but that's one concrete part of...
.NET?
what?
What is
Why should we care about it?
Heh. Asia is definitely an alpha geek, and a charming lady too. Occasionally she wanders through usenet, or at least used to, and is a neat lady to talk to. She's also a very effective reminder of the fact that porn stars are more than just spread and penetrated body parts. :-)
Too bad that her implants are an unfortunate mess. She looked much better before them. Still a cool lady, though.
You're right, and...
You're wrong.
This is slowly driving me crazy. This is an alternative idea, and one that is WORKING on a small scale. There are people right now who are recycling fryer grease into car fuel.
- Is it emission free? Of course not!
- Are the emissions better than gas/diesel emissions? Maybe. Maybe not.
- Is this going to make it all OK for all of us to drive big cars as much as possible? Of course not!!!
- Is it at least going to replace fossil fuels? Don't be absurd!
This is not a solution. Electric cars or hybrids are not a solution. H2, solar, or compressed air powered cars are not the solution! No piece of technology stuck onto a car is going to solve the socioeconomic nightmare of our dependency on vehicles!
BUT...
That doesn't mean we shouldn't use this. In fact, we should be VIGOROUSLY studying these alternatives. The bottom line is that if we wait for a solution, it'll never happen and we'll eventually be buried up to our asses in rusted carparts and used car oil. WHILE we pursue a solution, we MUST be using this thing, the electric cars available, Hybrids, diesel, and whatever else is out there. Same for engines--let's look at the Wankel again, now that Mazda has (sadly) dropped it. If they get used, they get researched. If they don't get used, we'll end up stuck with inefficient, archaic, dinosaur-burning tanks until the end of time; and that will come a lot quicker as a result.
So quit throwing away all of the little steps forward--they're the only way we advance.
Bah. I used up all of my moderation points yesterday, otherwise I'd bump this up.
Someone else pointed out that trains now have the same requirement, and of course you can't crash a train into a building, so what's the point?
The points (there are two) are first of all the one you mentioned--that this is a private company able to do what they want. Don't like it, start your own air/trainline! Secondly the potential for huge loss of life is equally present in a train. 300 passengers running into a fuel tanker at 300 km/h is pretty substantial! Definitely worth protecting against.
Well there's a reason I said, 'the first politician who attempts it and _doesn't_ get kicked out of office...'
You're quite right, though. The 'moral' groups are doing a very good job of promoting the drug cartels, inadvertent though it may be.
Although it makes sense, coke will never be legalised. Neither will heroin, crack, or any of the other seriously hard drugs. (pot and maybe hash are in a different category, for various reasons)
The first politician who seriously tries to legalise these drugs and _doesn't_ get kicked out of office will die horribly in a car accident. So will the second one. If they start getting too serious about it, then a few politicians will end up with bullets in their heads, just to drive the point home.
The drug cartels will never let their 'industry' be legalised--it's too lucrative, too rich, and gives them too much power. They're not dumb.
First of all, I don't disagree with it being a good form of exercise.
However, why do we make phys ed a requirement at all? Not just for the exercise, but also to give balance to the academic studies. It's like art class, band, or any other subject.
Oh hell, let's computerise everything. We'll replace painting (and photography, and sculpture, and...) with digital image manipulation classes. Band with audio editing. Math is pointless since computers already do it all, so we'll phase it out. English (Language Arts up here, don't know about there) can be dumped for structured programming languages. Social Studies for history of computing. No on second though, replace it entirely with search term creation lessons. After all, all of that stuff can be looked up.
Need I continue?
The goal of schools isn't to develop ubergeeks, or to become as brainy as possible while keeping their bodies healthy enough to carry their brains around. It is to develop well balanced healthy adults who can make critical decisions. Some of those critical decisions will undoubtedly require the knowledge that computers won't solve everything, and aren't appropriate in some cases. In fact, whoever decided to implement this thing seems to have failed in that thought process, sadly.
Computers don't belong and shouldn't be absolutely everywhere. We're going to utterly cripple ourselves if we can't step away at times. This class is missing that point.
I've seen lots of posts that say this is a good thing, because anything that gets fat lazy kids off their collective asses is good. This may be true, but why try to bribe the kids?
Here's a novel thought: The kids are REQUIRED to take Phys Ed in most places. If they don't participate, they fail the class! If they fail the class, they don't go on to the next grade! I think that's as much of a motivator as giving them computer games to play, so they never have to be disconnected.
Bah. Come on people, go out and buy a soccer ball! Or a tennis racket. Or something.
This is just wonderful. As a society, we're getting fatter and lazier, and more addicted to computers. The solution? Encourage our addiction! Forget about balance, richness, or anything else--just try to use the addiction to mask the symptoms (fat, lazy, unhealthy).
Teaching kids nice and early that computers can solve everything, and that we can't live without them is guaranteed to create a generation that _can't_ live without them, and will painfully discover that they can't solve much of anything.
Hmm. I can't imagine any better way of convincing companies to run away screaming from open source software. Hell, if MS was to be held accountable for their shite software whereas open source types weren't, I'd probably happily run MS at home as well!
Here's an idea. Make the _default_ software liability dependant on a few basic ground rules, something like this:
1) Free software has no liability, unless the source or vendor assigns some.
2) Commercial software (i.e. for sale) has a base liability, and must explicitly state if it is to be used for home, business, or mission critical environments. (probably several other categories too--life critical, for instance)
3) Explicitly state that the misuse of software only protects the company from liability issues.
So if I run MyIIS ("for home/non-commercial use only!") as my company's web server and it breaks due to negligence on MS's part, I'm SOL because I've not used it appropriately. Aside from that issue, I _am_ free to use it in that environment, though.
About all that commentary you added at the end. You're not that insightful, and it's not that interesting to read. Just shut up and post the damned story next time.
Two more points.
1) While I don't entirely agree with your opinions, the facts you've hit on here are 100% on the money. Well done!
2) I want a sword of boinking!!!
Heh. Oh, now naive...
I work daily in the computing/programming/IT business. My brother is a musician, and I see a fair bit of what goes on in the music industry. I have worked in other fields along the way as well.
Computing is possibly the single best field to be a grunt in, bar none. Clueless managers? Finger pointing? Absolutely. That's just human nature. However, msot people are scared of mission critical computers and the like, and ultimately treat them with HUGE amounts of respect, vs. their counterparts in other fields.
The original poster was unfortunately right. Music is about as bad as it comes if you're anywhere more successful than a bar band. We're not talking about overbearing managers--we're talking criminal dirtballs at their lowest.
If you think programing is less than rosy, take a step outside for a year or two. You'll end up running screaming back, I suspect.
I thought seeing this as a large hit against Microsoft WAS looking at the glass as half full!
Hmmm.
With all due respect for your talents, it sounds like you should never have been hired for the job in the first place. It seems pretty clear that you're not a Unix person, and have no intention of being one. Does your resume' say "web developer' or 'pc-based web developer?'
Also, you mention (multiple times!) that you had a problem with this because you're a creative person. Oh, poor sensitive creative person! The world is so much more difficult for you!
I'm sorry, but that's how it sounds.
All of that said, I can certainly see the drawbacks. I'm a consultant, and one of my requirements was that I have a permanent desk at my 'home' company, regardless of where I was onsite. Having a base of operations is crucial to
the contentment of most employees. (and that includes both the special creative ones, and the rest of us poor lowlifes)
Is there not? Excellent! That might mean that Intel will continue to support it on the P4 line, and then let it die a miserable death.
They can't dump it yet, because most of the early P4 systems were sold to companies who want some ROI before the hardware dies. If Intel pulled the plug 100% right now, Sun would reap the benefits.
1) RDRAM doesn't die because Intel still supports it.
1a) Intel still supports RDRAM because it wasn't a 100% bad decision, and they invested HUGE amounts of money.
2) Intel can't force stupid things onto consumers? How about an endless string of CPU upgrades based originally on the 4004? Motorola dumped the 6800-based line for the PPC, which is what Intel has been too scared to do. If IBM hadn't fallen on their fat and lazy ass, the PPC probably would have cut Intel's market share to about 40% right now. (and we'd have a better windows CPU than the P4)
Pissed in your _own_ cornflakes this morning?
Reread the article. Read a few others. The MPAA is agressively attempting to control the upcoming technology in such a way that without the backing of a major studio, a filmmaker won't be able to make films. They're also trying to control all forms of playback technology, so that ultimately no one will be able to watch a movie without the knowledge and consent of their organisation.
Alex Cox is capable of making movies that sell well enough and have enough of a following to support him, and allow him to make more movies. If the MPAA has their way, this won't be possible.
That's what is being objected to here. If that's a "Euro-Leftist" attitude, then the US is a pretty damned socialist country.
"This case illustrates the failure of law enforcement agencies to implement adequate protection against the abuse of information they collect."
Michael, take a deep breath. You're starting to sound like Jon Katz.
This case illustrates exactly why mandatory encryption key repositories are a bad idea. It illustrates why keeping excessive information is a problem. It highlights the fact that we don't live in a safe world.
We will never. Ever. Ever! eliminate leaks, corruption, and fraud. If the information exists at all, then there's no way of protecting it perfectly from unintended use. (Which, it occurs to me, is exactly why people have argued against copy-protection. Hmmm...) Sooner or later someone will find a way of getting to it and exploiting it.
Note also that (as others have pointed out), the law enforcement agencies worked!" The perps were caught and punished, exactly like they should be.
The only answer we have to threats like this goes as follows.
1) Limit the amount of information collected to what's necessary. (in this case, the info. was necessary. Private key repositories are definitely not)
2) Limit the amount of cross-referencing between separate databases.
3) Implement and enforce legal protections on the data.
4) Implement and enforce technical protections on the data.
5) (really 3a) When things are abused or leaked, punish the perpetrators and reevaluate policies 1-4.
This is old, old, OLD stuff but is changing now for a few reasons. Massive networking, storage, and databases are fundamentally contrary to items (1) and (2). Technology moving as fast as it is makes (4) a difficult moving target. The fact that too many people (legislators and judges especially included) consider this to be a different situation than it was 25 years ago makes (3) more complicated than it should be.
In other words, reevalutate, enforce, and repeat.
The one difference with this one is that it's going to be included with (and eventually the default for) Solaris. Quite likely HPUX and AIX will go the same way if they can all get along.
Aside from that, I agree.