One sole owner, one sole licencee.
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 5
Andy Warnock says that "[we are] going to have a piece of music that will only play on one Walkman. [We're] going to have a piece of software that will only work on one machine. It will provide enormous inconvenience."
Well, yes. On his machine, since he will, with that attitude, become the one sole owner and one sole licencee of his software.
My question is this: were you inspired by Cryptonomicon, or did Cryptonomicon scoop you? If the former, then this is not the first time SF inspired real world events, a self-fulfiling prophecy. If the latter, then this must be one of the quickest SF predicted prophecies. How does it feel to be in this position? I gather you are already sold on the necessity and market for a data haven. How seriously do you take Stephenson's warnings of governmental or corporate harassment?
Seeing how that nobody answered your question, let me try.
Let n be the largest known prime number. Now is n+2 itself prime? (You have to prove/disprove this one)If it is, (just like 5 and 7) then you've just increased the largest known prime number by 2. Then it is just another instance of Goldbach's conjuecture.
If it is not prime, things become more interesting. Is there some primes less then n, such that when you add them together, you get n+2? If you can prove that there isn't, then you have disproven Goldbach's conjecture. But chances are, there is, since we can do (for example) 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 +... and use that hit a lot of numbers. Good luck finding that number missed by ALL such sequences....
Sorry - I mean to say "It is widely believed, but not proven, that the problem of factoring a large number is NP-hard". That is, it believed to be in NP, but outside of P.
Not true. It is widely believed, but not proven, that the problem of factoring a large number is NP. This difficulty (even if it is not NP) is what RSA depends upon. If P = NP, then obviously, there is a polynomial time algorithm to decrypt RSA encrypted messages. But if P != NP, we still have to prove that decrypting RSA is really NP.
Hey, I don't write video drivers, and I was just guessing. I can't control who mods me and who doesn't, and anyway, the moderation system is screwed. Thanks for your informative post though. I wish I had moderation points to distribute.
That the Linux drivers were all (marginally) slower then the Windows counterparts was no surprise at all. It's all X's fault. That said, having a networked client/server GUI beats the shit out of a single-user, single desktop GUI anytime. This small sacrifice is worth it, to gain this extra flexibility.
The more interesting question, IMHO, is the reason behind the good performace of the Matrox G400 and Nvidia, compared to 3dfx. The Nvidia card's performance is due to vendor tweaking, hence the close performance measurements. The Matrox G400, I think, is due to the wide popularity of the card, detailed vendor specs, and - dar I say - the wide use by the XFree86 team. 3dfx had a greater discrepancy becuase it is an older card and developers have lost interest, perhaps?
But of course, just how much can you trust the benchmarks? They ran it on one game, using a particular configuration, for a specific kernel. How can one generalize the results? I just have to wonder...
Not only that, you can even turn off the display of scores, if you feel that it biases you towards reading some comments but not others. This must be some kind of censorship if people can choose not to see the scores!
The article says that the US was pressurising the EU not to go ahead with the move. Why did CmdrTaco say that the "US is pissed"? What further indications are there in the article that the US is indeed pissed?
It would not be surprising that the US is pissed about this development. But please don't try to stir the sauce - it's hot enough as it is.
Seriously, what was the most challenging of maintainence tasks you had to undertake? Do you anticipate that a trade off point where the number of machines makes maintanence impossible? Do you have any pearls of wisdom for those of us just involved in the initial design of such clusters, so that maintaining it in the future is less painful?
is to be able to play that MP3 while you are having a conversation. Then I could subliminally play "I've got my mind set on you" by George Harrison while talking to my GF!
(No, don't sue me Mr Harrison! I haven't got MP3s of your song, honest!:-) )
Everyone knows that if FBI screws up its tracking, gun sales still go through. OThe only thing which stopped is their tracking, which wasn't really any good in the first place!
Guns don't kill people. People don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Try firing an unleaded gun.:-)
User stupidity is user stupidity. An equivalent hole (eg. the MIME exploit) could well exist in Linux. To brag about this is just asking for the script kiddies to come take on Linux. Not that it will succeed much becuase of the heterogenous setups available to Linux...
It is specifically MS Outlook and its tight integration that is the course of the problem (plus the total lack of unprivileged accounts in Windows 9x). People who don't use Outlook, eg. Eudora users are also not as vulnerable. But stupidity can always overcome whatever advantage these different mailers grant.
Because either the techie will become a suit, or the suit will get a clue, and manage to hang around for longer.
Running a business consultancy is not just about technical knowledge. One has to have a customer base to draw from. The hard-core techies cannot and would not dress up as salesman and look for clients. So either you get yourself a suit, or you become a suit.
No - suits doesn't mean black boots, black cape, dark helmet and mean, breathy voice.
I used to insist, when talking to friends about computer intruders, on using "cracker" and not "hacker". Now this insistence only invites derision, so I don't do it anymore. Now I just call computer intruders hackers, and the real hackers - "computer experts". Nobody challenges that (even if "expert" is sounds silly, and in a few cases doesn't apply at all). IMHO, this means *I* have won the argument, since they don't challenge that statement.
In anycase, I have seen Chinese newspapers translate "hacker" homonymously as "hei ke". Literally this means a "black visitor", thief or assasin. A very apt translation if you ask me.:-)
Sorry, I was not very clear. I show you two balls, and say one is mine, the other is not, and is free for you if you want. I give no indication of being able to tell which is which. (Assume you have done some tests that this indeed is the case. But you let me continue to believe so.) One day, I wake up to find one ball in your possession. Can I raise hell?
Your other example is flawed. I am not free to delete your file, becuase that would be depriving you of what you have. You must remember the key point here - copying digital music does not destroy the original. The more interesting siutuation where copyright laws may apply is if you lost one file, and ask me for copy. Whether I could give it to you or not depends on who own the copyright of the file.
The UCITA for example was protested vehemently by many slashdotters because of the clause where software owners can remotely disable software. I don't think copyright owners can delete your files just like that, because of copyright violation. They must go through the long process of suing you before they can deprive you of their software.
This makes very little sense. If I show you two identical balls, and then try to sue you for stealing one which I say is free, and the other, which I say is mine, what would you do?
That is exactly what the argument is about. For listening purposes, one copy is as good as any other. To say that I use one but not the other is just looking for differences where there aren't any. If you took the principle to something else like source code, the copies are perfect and identical. You cannot GPL one and not the other!
Or think of it another way. If MP3.com took the pains to pay royalties to RIAA (an amount to their satisfaction), I don't think there would be any complaints about the "lineage" of the copies.
Not convinced? I can think of more hairy situations that could arise... such as you downloading a song from a public ftp server. You did not know it is a copyrighted song, and that was placed there by some warez d00d. Now when you find out, you try to pay the author fairly. But the author refuses to accept the money and sues for more damages, claiming that you copied from a "tainted" source, and should have gotten "clean" copies from him, despite there being no difference.
Rakoff disagreed with MP3.com's argument that its music service is the "functional equivalent" of storing CDs that had already been purchased.
"In actuality defendant is replaying for the subscribers converted versions of the recordings it copied, without authorization, from plaintiffs' copyrighted CDs," Rakoff wrote.
Judge Rakoff seems to ignore that fact that the digital copies are nearly indistinguishable. I say nearly becuase we all know that the ripping process is not perfect, that some amount of noise and loss must be endured. MP3 is a lossy format after all. So there is nothing wrong with MP3.com's argument. I don't see how he could disagree, since MP3.com could have gotten these copies from the legal distributors and done the same. Does that mean that the my.mp3.com service is noe legal?
The fact of what the plaintiffs did should not matter, since the copies are virtually identical. I think Rakoff is just confused.
Don't get me wrong, I think MP3.com does not have case. But this just does not seem like a relevanty argument at all.
There are some differences between what Debian is doing and MS. The entire list of packages is mainatained in a Packages.gz file, and the "apt update" grabs this entire file for all list of packages. It seems that MS actually queries the server package by package for this. Whether the date or the package version is used is a minor issue really.
Now is this innovative and worth a patent? I can't see why. So one does not need to download the entire list, but face it, that is good database to browse offline anyway. You can't do that with MS, short of sending a query for all packages, which takes effectively, more than the bandwidth needed than Debian.
Minor rant: What is it with the patent application process anyway? I would like to see what sort of problems MS was trying to solve with this "innovation". Who cares how they did it, if we don't know what problem they were trying to solve. If fubar algorithm does not solve fubar problem, by what criteria does one know if it is "innovative" or not? I could strip in the middle of winter and dance around a fire naked. That would be new, but it doesn't solve any damn problem!
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Well, yes. On his machine, since he will, with that attitude, become the one sole owner and one sole licencee of his software.
My question is this: were you inspired by Cryptonomicon, or did Cryptonomicon scoop you? If the former, then this is not the first time SF inspired real world events, a self-fulfiling prophecy. If the latter, then this must be one of the quickest SF predicted prophecies. How does it feel to be in this position? I gather you are already sold on the necessity and market for a data haven. How seriously do you take Stephenson's warnings of governmental or corporate harassment?
Let n be the largest known prime number. Now is n+2 itself prime? (You have to prove/disprove this one)If it is, (just like 5 and 7) then you've just increased the largest known prime number by 2. Then it is just another instance of Goldbach's conjuecture.
If it is not prime, things become more interesting. Is there some primes less then n, such that when you add them together, you get n+2? If you can prove that there isn't, then you have disproven Goldbach's conjecture. But chances are, there is, since we can do (for example) 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + ... and use that hit a lot of numbers. Good luck finding that number missed by ALL such sequences ....
Sorry - I mean to say "It is widely believed, but not proven, that the problem of factoring a large number is NP-hard". That is, it believed to be in NP, but outside of P.
Not true. It is widely believed, but not proven, that the problem of factoring a large number is NP. This difficulty (even if it is not NP) is what RSA depends upon. If P = NP, then obviously, there is a polynomial time algorithm to decrypt RSA encrypted messages. But if P != NP, we still have to prove that decrypting RSA is really NP.
Marketing, Legal and Bill.
Hey, I don't write video drivers, and I was just guessing. I can't control who mods me and who doesn't, and anyway, the moderation system is screwed. Thanks for your informative post though. I wish I had moderation points to distribute.
Right, like I am going to die laughing from watching two twerps utter banalities at each other. Next article please!
The more interesting question, IMHO, is the reason behind the good performace of the Matrox G400 and Nvidia, compared to 3dfx. The Nvidia card's performance is due to vendor tweaking, hence the close performance measurements. The Matrox G400, I think, is due to the wide popularity of the card, detailed vendor specs, and - dar I say - the wide use by the XFree86 team. 3dfx had a greater discrepancy becuase it is an older card and developers have lost interest, perhaps?
But of course, just how much can you trust the benchmarks? They ran it on one game, using a particular configuration, for a specific kernel. How can one generalize the results? I just have to wonder ...
Not only that, you can even turn off the display of scores, if you feel that it biases you towards reading some comments but not others. This must be some kind of censorship if people can choose not to see the scores!
It would not be surprising that the US is pissed about this development. But please don't try to stir the sauce - it's hot enough as it is.
Seriously, what was the most challenging of maintainence tasks you had to undertake? Do you anticipate that a trade off point where the number of machines makes maintanence impossible? Do you have any pearls of wisdom for those of us just involved in the initial design of such clusters, so that maintaining it in the future is less painful?
(No, don't sue me Mr Harrison! I haven't got MP3s of your song, honest! :-) )
Which is why they are now "releasing this for open-source operating systems". They are getting desperate, yes? I guess it is too late.
Everyone knows that if FBI screws up its tracking, gun sales still go through. OThe only thing which stopped is their tracking, which wasn't really any good in the first place!
Guns don't kill people. People don't kill people. Bullets kill people. Try firing an unleaded gun. :-)
Is it because CmdrTaco wants to stress test his shiny new box?
It is specifically MS Outlook and its tight integration that is the course of the problem (plus the total lack of unprivileged accounts in Windows 9x). People who don't use Outlook, eg. Eudora users are also not as vulnerable. But stupidity can always overcome whatever advantage these different mailers grant.
Right?
Running a business consultancy is not just about technical knowledge. One has to have a customer base to draw from. The hard-core techies cannot and would not dress up as salesman and look for clients. So either you get yourself a suit, or you become a suit.
No - suits doesn't mean black boots, black cape, dark helmet and mean, breathy voice.
In anycase, I have seen Chinese newspapers translate "hacker" homonymously as "hei ke". Literally this means a "black visitor", thief or assasin. A very apt translation if you ask me. :-)
Your other example is flawed. I am not free to delete your file, becuase that would be depriving you of what you have. You must remember the key point here - copying digital music does not destroy the original. The more interesting siutuation where copyright laws may apply is if you lost one file, and ask me for copy. Whether I could give it to you or not depends on who own the copyright of the file.
The UCITA for example was protested vehemently by many slashdotters because of the clause where software owners can remotely disable software. I don't think copyright owners can delete your files just like that, because of copyright violation. They must go through the long process of suing you before they can deprive you of their software.
That is exactly what the argument is about. For listening purposes, one copy is as good as any other. To say that I use one but not the other is just looking for differences where there aren't any. If you took the principle to something else like source code, the copies are perfect and identical. You cannot GPL one and not the other!
Or think of it another way. If MP3.com took the pains to pay royalties to RIAA (an amount to their satisfaction), I don't think there would be any complaints about the "lineage" of the copies.
Not convinced? I can think of more hairy situations that could arise ... such as you downloading a song from a public ftp server. You did not know it is a copyrighted song, and that was placed there by some warez d00d. Now when you find out, you try to pay the author fairly. But the author refuses to accept the money and sues for more damages, claiming that you copied from a "tainted" source, and should have gotten "clean" copies from him, despite there being no difference.
This is just opening a whole big can of worms.
The fact of what the plaintiffs did should not matter, since the copies are virtually identical. I think Rakoff is just confused.
Don't get me wrong, I think MP3.com does not have case. But this just does not seem like a relevanty argument at all.
Now is this innovative and worth a patent? I can't see why. So one does not need to download the entire list, but face it, that is good database to browse offline anyway. You can't do that with MS, short of sending a query for all packages, which takes effectively, more than the bandwidth needed than Debian.
Minor rant: What is it with the patent application process anyway? I would like to see what sort of problems MS was trying to solve with this "innovation". Who cares how they did it, if we don't know what problem they were trying to solve. If fubar algorithm does not solve fubar problem, by what criteria does one know if it is "innovative" or not? I could strip in the middle of winter and dance around a fire naked. That would be new, but it doesn't solve any damn problem!
Urrm. So does that mean that the kiddies should download their p0rn brazenly? :-) It might be good that - teach them not to be hypocrites!