Well, it might be harder to make a cryptographically solid dongle, at it might not be of interest for the average game with a 6 months lifetime before it comes out in the supermarket $5 bargain bin. But for your $50 million developed super game or your $5000 per copy CAD program I'm surprised that the dongle has gone the way of the dodo. Plus the dongle would be a good compromise between first sales doctrine and preventing the proliferation of copies.
The other thing that I'm surprised that manufacturers haven't come up with is individual serial numbers on CDs, to go with an external key. It can't be too hard to add a small writable sector to a CD/DVD blank that I can individualize. No fitting key for the CD - no install. Sure you can crack that, but now you need to distribute files with their individual keys.
It doesn't matter that it takes 1 cent to press a disk. How much did it cost to make the software, and how many disks did you sell? If your development cost was 10 million dollars, and you sold 10 million copies, you would have to charge at least $10 per disk to break even -- simple math. Even simpler math would have given you $10 M / 10 M copies needing $1 per copy to break even, but I guess you're in sales and add overhead
Also, the rovers are too successful by NASA politics. Since they are working, the public and the scientific community makes them actually keep gathering data with it. That costs money that could be used for new projects.
Stationary systems can look only at so much horizon before people get bored. So maybe the unit can play tic-tac-toe in the dust for amusement.
Oh, thanks, I missed that part that the 30 years was for the 660 bit key.
One question so - once you break it - does that mean you have all solutions to all possible keys of that lengths, kind of having a look-up table, or do you have to run the process again against any new key?
My comment was based on the statement that it would take 30 years to break it on a PC. What let me to the conclusion that the NSA would have no problem doing it either by having 3000 PCs chewing on it or, more likely, having dedicated hardware that can do it in a day.
Sadly, there seems to be a limited number of slashdotters admitting to NSA capabilities from first hand experience.
I think the big question is - does the virus carry it's own key around, or does it "phone home" to get a specific key for the infected machine?
In the first key someone will most likely find the key in the virus code, in the second case it's BAD. Sure the NSA can break a 1024 RSA key if they have to, but I haven't heard of a "simple" commercial tool to do it.
Actually, since the question comes from the Republican chair, if Obama gets 60% in a county that voted 60% for Bush the last time, that HAS to be tampering.
As long as stuff is in beta you're not responsible in a product liability sense. If you're computer goes up in smoke because you tinkered with unreleased software - you should have read the fine print on "beta software".
My worry would be that our brain interfaces too well with the new gadgets.
"how did he die?"
"his spacial awareness co-processor run out of battery, and he run into a wall"
Adding extra-human capabilities without turning a human into a human-machine hybrid, each depending on each other for survival, sounds like the true challenge. And that's not even looking in the ethical challenges of preventing borg-like control via the add-ons.
"Don't fret about the elections, Mr. President. The new citizen 2.1 firmware rev has your reelection secured by a 58.2% margin."
Just trying to be cheeky there; the guy has nearly all the proper attributes despised by the average/. crowd.
And that was before I realized he was W's replacement as Texas Gov.
Congratulations on today's topics, first we get a "lawyer bashes GPL" thread, and now the Pharyngula crowd gets to jump all over the Christian Republican Politician. If he'd just owned Microsoft shares, this would be perfect.
hmm, that last number is intriguing, according to the same article no one has ever seen more than 2800 T. Makes you wonder how they determined that 10 kT are lethal.
I thought the aspect relating GPL_3 and web page design bares some attention so. I can see scenarios where use of software using the GPL_3 becomes actually impossible; if I have implemented closed source software for part of my site it might become impossible for me to use open source on others because I either don't have source code to give or am contractually obligated to keep it secret.
As far as "we have to wait and see what the courts will say" the article is actually informative.
As a guy heavily into nano-research I personally am very worried about letting a genie out of the bottle that we won't be able to get back in. Your experience may vary.
In case you missed it, recent research showed that carbon nanotubes, despite earlier reports to the contrary, carry quite a cancer risk. So making self organizing molecules with lethal potential sounds like as safe an idea as splitting the atom. Someone will do it, but where it leads only (enter deity/superhuman ai/advanced life form of choice) knows.
I guess the idea is that at some point there will be some form of technological "superhuman" intelligence, and they call that point in time the "crossing the event horizon" of the technical singularity.
Compared to the likelihood that we blow ourselves up using a nuclear war or a ecological catastrophe I'm not too worried.
People are mixing up two different things here - quantum transmission, the one you can't read unnoticed, and encryption/decryption using quantum computers and algorithms.
The first one has been demonstrated, and works over limited distances.
The second is an "advanced concept", right next to fusion reactors.
googling "density liquid sodium" would have given you 927 kg/m^3 as the correct number
doing your unit conversions correctly would have given you 13.77 tons
and I get scared with a kilo in my reactions - I'm a wimp
How much money did the Googles, Amazons, CNNs (aka the bubble survivors) blow through before they became profitable? Wasting means to me they spent money with no chance of success, and at least half of the examples the article gives were converted into successful businesses later. A lot of these are typical stories for either underfunded (even if they blew through $100 Million, it just wasn't enough to survive a downturn) or simple "ahead of their time" ideas.
A lot them did not waste the VC cash - they got to IPO's, and the VCs were rewarded handsomely for their investments.
If you had put down $20M for 50% of a company that bubbled up to $1B, you made quite a cut as a VC company.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it might be harder to make a cryptographically solid dongle, at it might not be of interest for the average game with a 6 months lifetime before it comes out in the supermarket $5 bargain bin. But for your $50 million developed super game or your $5000 per copy CAD program I'm surprised that the dongle has gone the way of the dodo. Plus the dongle would be a good compromise between first sales doctrine and preventing the proliferation of copies.
The other thing that I'm surprised that manufacturers haven't come up with is individual serial numbers on CDs, to go with an external key. It can't be too hard to add a small writable sector to a CD/DVD blank that I can individualize. No fitting key for the CD - no install. Sure you can crack that, but now you need to distribute files with their individual keys.
Also, the rovers are too successful by NASA politics. Since they are working, the public and the scientific community makes them actually keep gathering data with it. That costs money that could be used for new projects.
Stationary systems can look only at so much horizon before people get bored. So maybe the unit can play tic-tac-toe in the dust for amusement.
Oh, thanks, I missed that part that the 30 years was for the 660 bit key. One question so - once you break it - does that mean you have all solutions to all possible keys of that lengths, kind of having a look-up table, or do you have to run the process again against any new key?
My comment was based on the statement that it would take 30 years to break it on a PC. What let me to the conclusion that the NSA would have no problem doing it either by having 3000 PCs chewing on it or, more likely, having dedicated hardware that can do it in a day.
Sadly, there seems to be a limited number of slashdotters admitting to NSA capabilities from first hand experience.
I think the big question is - does the virus carry it's own key around, or does it "phone home" to get a specific key for the infected machine?
In the first key someone will most likely find the key in the virus code, in the second case it's BAD. Sure the NSA can break a 1024 RSA key if they have to, but I haven't heard of a "simple" commercial tool to do it.
I don't think so, my Alltel Razor talks to my desktop using usb, my office mate's identical Verizon model is locked up.
Yes, I'm one of the Alltel customers, I found out when I got a call from an unknown number, asking me
"Can you here me now?"
damn, I knew I should have put /sarcasm on into the post...
Actually, since the question comes from the Republican chair, if Obama gets 60% in a county that voted 60% for Bush the last time, that HAS to be tampering.
As long as stuff is in beta you're not responsible in a product liability sense. If you're computer goes up in smoke because you tinkered with unreleased software - you should have read the fine print on "beta software".
My worry would be that our brain interfaces too well with the new gadgets.
"how did he die?"
"his spacial awareness co-processor run out of battery, and he run into a wall"
Adding extra-human capabilities without turning a human into a human-machine hybrid, each depending on each other for survival, sounds like the true challenge. And that's not even looking in the ethical challenges of preventing borg-like control via the add-ons. "Don't fret about the elections, Mr. President. The new citizen 2.1 firmware rev has your reelection secured by a 58.2% margin."
Just trying to be cheeky there; the guy has nearly all the proper attributes despised by the average /. crowd.
And that was before I realized he was W's replacement as Texas Gov.
Congratulations on today's topics, first we get a "lawyer bashes GPL" thread, and now the Pharyngula crowd gets to jump all over the Christian Republican Politician. If he'd just owned Microsoft shares, this would be perfect.
hmm, that last number is intriguing, according to the same article no one has ever seen more than 2800 T. Makes you wonder how they determined that 10 kT are lethal.
I thought the aspect relating GPL_3 and web page design bares some attention so. I can see scenarios where use of software using the GPL_3 becomes actually impossible; if I have implemented closed source software for part of my site it might become impossible for me to use open source on others because I either don't have source code to give or am contractually obligated to keep it secret.
As far as "we have to wait and see what the courts will say" the article is actually informative.
As a guy heavily into nano-research I personally am very worried about letting a genie out of the bottle that we won't be able to get back in. Your experience may vary.
In case you missed it, recent research showed that carbon nanotubes, despite earlier reports to the contrary, carry quite a cancer risk. So making self organizing molecules with lethal potential sounds like as safe an idea as splitting the atom. Someone will do it, but where it leads only (enter deity/superhuman ai/advanced life form of choice) knows.
I guess the idea is that at some point there will be some form of technological "superhuman" intelligence, and they call that point in time the "crossing the event horizon" of the technical singularity.
Compared to the likelihood that we blow ourselves up using a nuclear war or a ecological catastrophe I'm not too worried.
People are mixing up two different things here - quantum transmission, the one you can't read unnoticed, and encryption/decryption using quantum computers and algorithms.
The first one has been demonstrated, and works over limited distances.
The second is an "advanced concept", right next to fusion reactors.
googling "density liquid sodium" would have given you 927 kg/m^3 as the correct number
doing your unit conversions correctly would have given you 13.77 tons
and I get scared with a kilo in my reactions - I'm a wimp
How much money did the Googles, Amazons, CNNs (aka the bubble survivors) blow through before they became profitable? Wasting means to me they spent money with no chance of success, and at least half of the examples the article gives were converted into successful businesses later.
A lot of these are typical stories for either underfunded (even if they blew through $100 Million, it just wasn't enough to survive a downturn) or simple "ahead of their time" ideas.
A lot them did not waste the VC cash - they got to IPO's, and the VCs were rewarded handsomely for their investments.
If you had put down $20M for 50% of a company that bubbled up to $1B, you made quite a cut as a VC company.
hmm, so trying to pop that annoying pimple and spilling my beer over it becomes a terrorist activity?
Now if they'd add an ergonomic version of their boards, I can't go back to a straight key alignment.
And when the theme park idea doesn't work out they can always get a job for the next credit card commercial