Declan McCullagh also lurked in the LiViD newsgroup during its early days, writing a wired story about "rampemt DVD piracy software" with the full knowledge that DeCSS and cssauth were being used to develop a GNU/Linux DVD player and that absolutely no pircacy was going on, anywhere (at that time). This was before burnable DVDs, before DivX, in short, before such piracy was even technically feasable even with easy decryption (without a $4000 DVD burner that could copy DVDs without decrypting them... unlike later models following the start of the DeCSS court case). His actions were directly responsible for legal troubles by numerous early developers, some of whome were forced to drop out of the project and discontinue their work.
If you do not believe me, feel free to perus the LiViD mailing list archives. The entire ugly incident is well documented in the public record. His behavior was appalling and reprehensible, and very destructive to a number of free software volunteers. Yes, we now have free players galore, but at some great personal cost to a number of volunteers thanks to Declan's yellow journalistic tendencies.
What is even more interesting is the number of articles on slashdot that, when posted, mentioned Declan McCullagh as the author by name (effectively promoting his fame), in direct contrast to nearly every other article posted on slashdot then and now. Clearly, for a time at least, he had a cordial relationship with some influencial folks at slashdot despite his reprehensible behavior vis-avis the LiViD project, and despite posts and emails by myself and others trying to get the word out about his behavior wrt LiViD (and quite likely others). Hopefully this has changed, but for the public record, I feel it is important the free software enthusiasts know about this little chapter in LiViD's history, and the casualties and personal losses that resulted.
The article in question was not linked to by us, was not in our headlines, was not endorsed by us, wasn't even known to us until the Slashdot story.
I went back and looked at the article more thoroughly (now that it isn't slashdotted, and the grafics, etc. come up, ie. it is no longer filled with blank spaces). Amazing how much more obvious these relationships become once you can see the whole thing without 10 minute lags (and once someone has pounded you over the head with a clue stick).
You are absolutely right, I was absolutey mistaken, and my comments misaimed. My sincere apologies. The diatribe to which you replied should have been directed at WinInformant, not Security Focus which, as you clearly point out, remained above reproach in this fiasco. Sorry about that... I'm usually better at attributions, and I shouldn't have gotten that one wrong.
Thanks for your reply, and pointing out what should have been obvious (but apparently wasn't, to me at least, on that day).
(although the mockery one would receive for having used Visual Basic would probably detract some from the feeling of accomplishment, but I digress).
Hmm. That was meant to be a toung in cheek jab at Microsoft, but in rereading my post it sounds like a jab at you. Apologies, as that was not the intent. You might as easilly use java, C, C++, or C# if you're feeling particularly masochistic. The point is that you are given choice, which is always a net positive.
Silverware would be a better name... as one can spoon changes back into whichever tree one is following, knife out other changes, and fork the system themself if they wish.
Seriously, this wouldn't give equal weighting to every trivial disagreement any more than free source code does anyway. Whether the control system is subversion, cvs, arch, or plane ole text files, we as individuals choose which fork we want to follow. Indeed, currently the mechanism in use is ftp (or alternatively http/rsync), ie. do you ftp linux-2.4.17.tar.gz, linux-2.4.17-ac3.tar.gz, or linux-2.4.17-myfork.tar.gz. Your decision is based on your trust of Linus, Alan Cox, or myself (probably nil). Using arch wouldn't change this, it would merely give you more flexibility in choosing bits of the Linus kernel, bits of the AC kernel, etc. in creating your own, personal fork that reflects your values and interests, and if others like your choices, they can benefit as well. If they ignore your choices, then who cares? You still benefit in having been able to make and prosper from your choices yourself.
How on earth could that be a bad thing?
That having been said, my wishlist would be support of gnupg signatures and authentication and scp instead of ftp. As to it being written in a shell scripting language, so what. If you really want to run a client or (god forbit) a server under Windows, there is nothing preventing you from writing a compatible client or server in the programming language of your choice (although the mockery one would receive for having used Visual Basic would probably detract some from the feeling of accomplishment, but I digress).
Except for some hokey city in Florida that used to be a HP-UX shop for some reason, a few cheapo small businesses and some enthusiasts, nobody runs Linux as a desktop.
Noboday, huh? Not, say, Brazil? Or China? Or numerous other countries that happen to not be The One Great America(tm)? Guess again.
Either your head has been in the sand the last year and a half, or you are incredibly ethnocentric. Either way, as an American I find your comments emberrassing to say the least.
HAve you noticed That the corp sueing him apparently didn't go through the ICANN name dispute resolution system? Interesting that they realize that ICANN has no real power in those sorts of disputes.
Actually, ICANN does have power, in that possession is often 9/10 of the law, and an ICANN decision will yank the name and put it in the plaintiff's hands right away.
What is really interesting is that they chose not to use the ICANN "arbitration" procedure (I use the term in quotes for a reason), particularly in light of the fact that the ICANN "arbitration" procedure is designed to favor the plaintiff. The plaintiff pays for the procedure, chooses the arbiter out of several competitors (obviously the ones who tend to rule for the plaintiff are outcompeting the more fair alternatives), and the defendent has no recourse once the domain name is taken away (aside from a civil suit to get the name back).
One could speculate either way on why they would go to the courts, rather than use a remedy procedure that costs less and is clearly slanted in their favor. It is interesting, in any event.
We didn't write the article in question, nor are we hosting, nor did we have any opportunity to see it ahead of time. (Or now... still can't see it.)
I'm curious why you would like to an article without reviewing it. If this is to be believed, you linked to an article without even reading it. While I expect that sort of looseness with slashdot to some degree, I confess I'd always held Security Focus in a little higher regard, and consiquently expected more selectivity in what articles they choose to headline and link to.
Unfortunately this thread is already ancient history and probably no longer being followed, but if you see this I would very much like some clarification on exactly how articles like this are selected for inclusion in SecurityFocus' headlines. Following the/. link did make it look like your article to the casual glance (though the/. effect did preclude many of the banners, etc. from ever loading, and a more precise look at the URL does reveal it to be hosted elsewhere).
Links abound, if you're really interested and not just being a smartass over one typo. The entire article was submitted before I finished writing it, thanks to a bug in Mozilla 0.7., and rather than clutter/. with a second posting I let it go as is. The major points were communicated, if not with as much eloquence as I would have liked.
With encryption to the pixels of the screen the only short term solution is going to be putting a camcorder in front of a plasma panel with the lights out and hoping for the best (as another user pointed out). Of course, it won't be long before people tear a monitor apart and wire the decrypted signal directly to their HD-VCRs, but I suspect the Copyright Cartels will make use of the DMCA's more draconian provisions against research and copy protection circumvention to incarcerate such creative engineers before they can upset the "social order" (i.e. their business model).
As an aside, I wonder if they will ever air Max Headroom again. That show, and the future it portrayed (big media interests running everything with the average person impoverished) was profoundly prophetic. Probably hits a little too close to home for comfort for most of the Cartel members, I imagine.
Except this doesn't solve the problem that was presented, which was that there is a point where high bandwidth users are being subsidized by everyone else because they are using so much bandwidth that the ISP is losing money. You solution keeps bandwidth for other people during peek times, but it doesn't either limit the bandwidth, or get the bandwidth paid for.
Except that this misrepresents the problem.
The problem is not that the bandwidth isn't getting paid for. It is.
The problem is that the bandwidth being paid for can't support all of the customers needed to cover its expenses, because of the overuse by a small percentage of the users.
The real problem is that the business model assumed passive consumers (web browsing) rather than the participatory exchange the internet was designed for and facilitates (multi-user games, chats, web hosting, etc.)
The solution the poster presented was that, by limiting the hogs when demand goes up, is perfectly viable, unless the providor is deliberately overselling their bandwidth, in which case they deserve chapter 11, or worse.
In other words, that OC3 doesn't cost any less if no one uses it, so why not let everyone use it to its maximum capacity, as long as they are forced to get out of the way (temporary restrictions during peak usage) when others need it, thus insuring that everyone who paid for access gets it, with reasonable performance, while allowing power users access to the otherwise unused bandwidth during off hours?
These numbers only reflect that GNU/Linux is more open and public in reporting its bugs than Windows, which is not surprising given Bill Gates & Co.'s efforts to suppress information about existing bugs in their operating system (the rightly rediculed notion of achieving security through obscurity).
There is absolutely no correlation between number of bugs reported and number of bugs existing, be they security related or not. This is doubly true when one party (Microsoft) is actively working to suppress such information about their own products.
The incompetence of the author writing this story, and of the Security Focus editorial staff for letting it through, is staggering. With this kind of security "expertise" is it any wonder at all that Nimda worms and the like run rampent across the net?
Indeed, if one wants to draw correlations (always a risky endeavor without corraborating evidence) it would make far more sense to correlate the percentage (vs. installed base) of demonstrably compromized systems running one operating system vs. another. As Code Red, Nimda, etc. have demonstrated, Microsoft's products win this one hands down. Indeed, in this case there is massive corraborating evidence to back up the conclusions of such a correlation... years of it, all in the public record.
The HDCP system can't be broken, however, because only high definition sets will have the HDCP decoder, according to Dan McCarron, national product specialist in JVC's color TV division.
Heh, "can't be broken". Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
DHCP is signal encryption to the screen. All those fancy plasma screens with the firewire interface may have had you thinking "cool, now I can watch my mini-DV camcorder directly on my HDTV without ever doing an analog conversion!"
Nope. That interface will carry an encrypted signal from your receiver/tape deck directly to the screen, with no possibility of tapping into a decrypted signal, anywhere.
If they use military grade encryption (which they might, now that export restrictions have eased) this will take years, perhaps decades to reverse engineer. Not to easy, buggy POS CSS was. What is more, they might even use publicly available, well tested and thoroughly peer-reviewed algorithms to encrypt the signal with very large
3. Such civilizations do not last a long time, and blow themselves up or otherwise fall apart pretty quickly
Or alternatively, civilizations progress at a geometric rate, transcending themselves in a few short generations, so that by the time intersteller travel becomes feasable they have lost interest and moved on to more compelling possibilities (perhaps departing this frame of reference entirely).
Once one hypothesizes a civilization significantly more advanced than our own it becomes difficult to even imagine the technologies they may have, much less what interests they would find compelling, or what goals they might set for themselves. For all we know they are all around us, unrecognized because they operate at levels as far beyond us as we are beyond the simple microbe.
I submitted this on Monday (I mentioned it on my website) I was logged in, not anonymous. So much for logged in users taking precedence over anonymous users:-)
I quit submitting stories to slashdot years ago, when similar things would happen. The submission process is straightforward enough, but the editorial process is about as transparent as crude oil on a moonless night. Who knows why stories get rejected one day, resubmitted and accepted another, with the latecommer getting the credit. Who knows why a site which purports to be pro free software/open source/whatever dumps stories of technical interest in favor of promotions... excuse me... reviews of media releases (DVDs) and movies that encourage free software enthusiasts to go out and put money in the pockets of an industry bent on hamstringing the internet and legislating free software (and the tools to make it) out of existence.
I gave up trying to figure this out years ago, and now content myself to just reading whatever interesting stuff happens to make it through the filter, and posting an occasional diatribe or two.
I recommend anyone discontent with this sort of thing to do the same. It will entail much less frustration and heartache for you, and if enough people do it perhaps the editors will take the hint and become more fair in how they select stories and attribute them. In the meantime, life is too short, so don't let this sort of irritation get to you.
please tell me how you get 6 IDE drives on a pc that gives you any performance in a rad function...
I don't know how he does it, but I have personal experience in doing it two different ways:
1) 3ware IDE RAID controller, has 1 IDE controller per drive on the card (i.e. 8 ide controllers), which the firmware maps to a RAID Device. Depending on the RAID configuration the drives appear as one large SCSI drive to the system.
Performance is on par with SCSI.
2) External IDE-SCSI Raid chassis. Again, 1 IDE controller per hot-swap drive, appearing to the system as one or more big SCSI drives, controlled by a standard SCSI controller. Speed and reliability have surpassed that of a $60,000 SCSI solution sold by Sun I happen to have lying around.
U160 SCSI drives will give you at least a 70% speed increase and a 80% increase in reliability....
If I had to store a terebyte of information I'd be an idiot to use consumer level storage (IDE).
Nonsense, see above. This is simply SCSI bigotry (I know, I was once a SCSI bigot too). What you say is only true if you are using low end cards, with more than one device on each IDE bus, which is untrue for mid- and high-level IDE-SCSI solutions such as 3ware and various external chassis systems. We run our entire enterprise on one, and have done so for well over a year, with much better reliablity and performance than an older, very expensive SCSI solution provided.
But yes, if people are plugging drives into el cheapo IDE "raid" cards like Promise and the like, or worse, into their onboard IDE controllers (most of which are inexpensive knockoffs anyway) then performance will be very suboptimal, and reliability problems (one device taking down the entire IDE bus, etc.) abound.
At least they haven't all brought out their Uzis, like I hear is standard practice in the US.
Our postal workers are good Americans(tm). When they go postal, they use shotguns, like any True American(tm) would. Uzis are for pussies.
:-)
In all seriousness, the professionalism of our postal workers during the Anthrax scare was nothing short of inspiring, and very surprising given all the bad press (and bad events) that have happened over the years, resulting in the phrase "going postal" becoming equivelent to "running amok." A lot of us (myself included) would probably not be inclined to stay at their job and continue working day in and day out with that sort of direct threat hanging over our heads, yet these folks did so, for weeks on end, without missing a beat (at least here in Chicago).
Still, it seems to be more fun to joke about postal workers running amok than high school students, probably because the latter tend to do it a lot more often these days, and not least because we (especially we Americans) love to take the piss out of anyone in uniform.
We already have that, with IBM no less, not to mention a plethora of lesser giants. GNU/Linux will do fine without AOL/Time-Warner, and arguably better.
Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?
It's not about elitism, it is about the dangers of an industry which has as a stated goal the eradication of free software (at least for playing DVDs, and by extention managing digital data of any kind), has attempted to legislate exactly that, and is unlikely to change its ways anytime soon. Remember, this is AOL-Time-Warner we're talking about.
Is the evil of AOL/Time-Warner exaggerated? On the AOL side perhaps, on the Time-Warner side it is understated, if anything. Keep in mind that old-school copyright cartel content providers have been the most zealous, and most effective, opponents of free software (remember the DMCA, deCSS, SSSCA, the Hague Convention, etc.)?
OTOH the loss of Red Hat to the "dark side," if that is in fact how it turns out, won't really impact GNU/Linux all that much. Some other distro (Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Sorcerer, or Slackware perhaps) will take up the slack. More likely all of them will to varying degrees.
Hopefully the talented programmers such as Alan will find gainful employment elsewhere doing exactly what they love to do: working on Linux. IBM comes to mind as an immediate candidate for sponsorship of this kind, as do about a dozen large universities in the US alone.
Apparently Western corporate profits really are more important than 3rd world lives to those who are currently in power.
This is exactly the ethos our government has been subscribing to, openly since the Reagan era of the 1980's and perhaps much longer than that.
It isn't just "third world" lives, either. American profits are deemed much more important than American lives (e.g. Mansanto deliberately polluting an American town's groundwater as recently as a few short years ago, killing many people, maiming many more, and not a single board member, employee, or shareholder will ever see the inside of a jail cell).
We made a conscious choice as a society to subscribe to a system which values wealth above everything else, and rewards greed above every other character trait. Worse, we've decided corporations are to be treated as people, with all of their rights and none of their responsibilities, exacerbating an already poor cultural choice.
Is it really any surprise at all that the natural consiquence of such a system, based upon such a skewed ethical premise, is that Corporate Profits are considered to be vastly more important the human lives?
With the ISO download stalled at 90% (been running since the time of my previous post on the subject) I haven't been able to poke around, but if this is true I am very, very interested.
Can you provide any more details (name of the command, where to poke around for docs, etc.). Even a hint as to what to look for, given that "it is not obvious" would be helpful.:-)
That's what the missile defense system is for. We'll just swat those nasty missiles out of our blue skies like flies.
Though if any are aimed at Hollywood or Redmond we'd be better servered just letting them through.
:-)
It isn't software pirates who would be to blame, but copyright cartels who pushed our government to such a showdown, if it ever came to that.
"Proud to be an American, becuase at least I know I'm free!" *cough*
This is but a symptom of our ongoing decline
on
McOwen Case Settled
·
· Score: 2
If said house keeper is rifling through the papers on my desk in the study which she was explicitly to stay out of, then it wouldn't be unreasonable for her actions to be considered at least trespassing.
Yes, that is unreasonable. It is also absurd.
By giving that person a housekey you have granted them access to your premesis. By definition they cannot be tresspassing.
Violating your privacy, yes. If you locked the drawer and didn't give them a key (they picked the lock, or scrounged the key from another drawer and opened it), then you might have a case for unauthorized access to whatever materials were locked up (breaking into a client's safe isn't legal). However, if you left those papers in an unlocked state, then you'll have to come up with some law other than tresspass or breaking-and-entering to prosecute them on. If there isn't one, and there may not be, then you still have the recourse of firing the offendor and suing for damages (if any).
This case is nothing short of rediculous, and a primary example of one of the most fatal flaws in American justice: the fact that a person can be financially coerced into pleading guilty to something they did not do simply because the financial cost and potential risk of standing by their innocence is too great and their unjust accuser happens to hold all of the (financial and power) cards.
America isn't going to be destroyed by bin laden and his idiot followers, but by lawyers, and governments, like this one. Indeed, if anything such acts of terror breath new life into decaying regimes, delaying the disunity and ultimate demise of a society whose legislative, judicial, and executive systems are so riddled with injustice and corruption that no significant social contract remains. Such a society is ripe for destruction from within, regardless of how draconian the secret police (FBI et al) may become, and this is but one of a myrid of symptoms to that affect.
I was once asked the question as to whether I would prefer to live during the rise or decline of a civilization. I niavely answered that I would prefer the decline, because then I could enjoy the fruits of previous generations' labors while leading a decadent life of my own, without regard to the future. Now that I am in a position to actually observe the dysfunction and decline of my own culture, particularly of the democracy which makes it possible, I have discovered two truths: (1) decadence has nothing whatsoever to do with decline, contrary to popular puritan myth, but corruption and injustice are directly related and (2) decline isn't inevitable, but it is inevitable if the people are too lazy, or too distracted, to be vigilant and root out the injustice and corruption which is its primary cause.
Seriously what more besides apt-get do people need for updates? I mean I was so disenchanted with mandrakeupdater that when I got back into the swing of linux after a dry spell I almost gave up. Now with debian at least I can update things without fear of the kernel segfaulting on the next boot.
I am an avid Debian user, and have moved an entire enterprise over to Debian because apt-get makes a system administrators life so much easier and it halved my work load as a result. For binary distributions apt-get is unmatched, and apt-get source, while not perfect, is a very nice way to get sources and compile them.
However, there are better approaches. FreeBSDs "ports" system comes to mind, where a skeletal directory tree structure and a simple make command are all that are required to automate the download, compilation, and installation procedure for a plethora of third party applications.
No library conflicts. Any necessary patches applied on the fly, optomized and compiled for your system. It was, until this distribution came along, the only installation method I'd ever heard of, much less seen, that beat even apt-get hands down.
If this distribution lives up to its billing, it will be only the second, placing Debian's apt-get, Sorcerer, and FreeBSDs "ports" in a class all their own. Even as an avid Debian user I will be spending much of this weekend playing with Sorcerer.
The real question is, will there be a good replicator or, better yet, automated installation utility so I can build 50 machines on 50 similar but not identical machines, without having to sit in front of each one? Replicator is the one thing that will keep me using Debian at work... building new machines (even slightly different ones than the model) is just too easy to give up... even for this.
With the demise of netvan and the undesirability of purchasing a car solely to go to the grocery store I, for one, would find a mass transit system that would drop me off at my front curb very useful. Add to that the fact that getting a cab at my local food store is next to impossible (while finding one 6 blocks away is easy, go figure), and the physical challenges (read:impossibility) of carrying 15 bags of groceries on foot, and even the most casual, non-knee-jerk-cynical observer can see the usefulness of such a system.
As for it being "out of the question" that such could track systems could be laid down in a major city, don't be absurd (not you, but another poster in this thread). Major cities are exactly where this kind of thing would be most useful. Like Europe, they could be integrated into the existing streetplans a la streetcars. If the traffic implications are too significant (possible during the installation and early use, likely the opposite once such a system were adopted widely) they could be built on an elevated track. Personally, I'd just take lanes away from old-style cars... making traffic a little worse in the short run might be just the kind of incentive that would help speed adoption of such a system.
Of course, entrenched interests such as automobile manufacturers and taxi drivers are likely to raise a stink and do everything they can to slow adoption of such a system, but that sort of thing should be resisted and fought, not pandered to. Alas, in an age where the government spends more time and money trying to preserve the business models of buggie whip manufacturers (c.f RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, SSSCA, Copyright extentions, etc.) rather than promoting the adoption of new technologies and the new capabilities they promise (c.f. universally accessible, virtually cost-free libraries, free sharing of information, etc.) the future we face, at least in the short term, is not an optomistic one at all.
While Linux remains superior to Windows
on
2.4, The Kernel of Pain
·
· Score: 5, Informative
... you are absolutely correct in observing that the 2.4 debacle has used up a great deal of Linux's reputation for being stable. I use 2.4.x with SGI's xfs patches both in production systems at work, and at home (like others, we need various features of 2.4.x not available in 2.2.x), and while it has never been anything close to as flakey as the most stable of Microsoft systems, it has in comparison to 2.2.x (and FreeBSD for that matter) been pretty damn unreliable. In comparison to just about everything else it is still quite stable, so happiness is indeed to some degree relative.
And now for some arm chair quarterbacking, all that having been said, I really think Linus needs to excersize some self discipline and stay away from maintaining even-numbered kernel releases (x.0.x, x.2.x, x.4.x, etc.). By his own admission he isn't good at being a stable kernel maintainer and prefers the more interesting work done in development kernels, and his track record in 2.2 wasn't fantastic (particularly in comparison to 2.0, where he did a fantastic job) and was pretty abysmal in 2.4. As someone who's been using GNU/Linux since the early pre 1.0 days I hope he'll put his efforts where his talents are (managing changes in odd numbered development releases) and leave stable maintenance to Cox and Marcelo (who are very good at maintaining and improving stable releases). But enough commentary from the peanut gallery...
And how to you propose to power this "active cooling" system? If it and your ratchet are both 100% efficient you can break even; otherwise, you'll be operating at a net loss.
Of course, they won't be 100% effecient (2nd law), so it would be a net loss to use active cooling. However, if your system is overheating, then using some of that stored energy to actively cool the components down to an acceptable level may be a reasonable option. Decoupling the ratchet before it reaches such a state would IMHO probably be preferable, though (ie. stop introducing energy into an overheating system).
Such a system can probably be made to work and yield useful results (energy storage and dispensation as required), but you are correct in saying you do not get something for nothing. What we would be doing is tapping into energy which is currently "wasted" (the motion of our atmosphere as it is heated by the sun and cooled by the planet's shadow) and storing it for later use. As with any storage system, there would be operating limits on how much energy can be stored, what its tolerances for waste heat, etc. would be, and so on.
Besides, what in the world does our atmosphere have to do with anything?
The context was "why aren't we taking care of earth as well as we are the other celestial bodies" of our solar system and "its nice we're working so hard to protect europa, but we should have protected earth in the same way" implying the mission should have been scrapped from day one (and the argument used was the, if not completely mythical then certainly vastly overblown by too many orders of magnitude to count, danger the gravitational boost obtained by the craft's flyby of earth posed to those of us living here).
Hence the protection of the earth's atmosphere and the extreme difficulty, if not outright impossibility, of harming terrestrial life even by crashing one of these things into the atmosphere at high speed, is relevant to the thread at hand. With respect to Europa it isn't relevant, as the thing is being sent on a plunge into Jupiter next year anyway as a precaution against such a mishap. But yes, without a protective atmosphere, such as the earth has, then the presence of RTGs would be a very relevant concern wrt an impact.
Slashdot Mirror
Declan McCullagh also lurked in the LiViD newsgroup during its early days, writing a wired story about "rampemt DVD piracy software" with the full knowledge that DeCSS and cssauth were being used to develop a GNU/Linux DVD player and that absolutely no pircacy was going on, anywhere (at that time). This was before burnable DVDs, before DivX, in short, before such piracy was even technically feasable even with easy decryption (without a $4000 DVD burner that could copy DVDs without decrypting them ... unlike later models following the start of the DeCSS court case). His actions were directly responsible for legal troubles by numerous early developers, some of whome were forced to drop out of the project and discontinue their work.
If you do not believe me, feel free to perus the LiViD mailing list archives. The entire ugly incident is well documented in the public record. His behavior was appalling and reprehensible, and very destructive to a number of free software volunteers. Yes, we now have free players galore, but at some great personal cost to a number of volunteers thanks to Declan's yellow journalistic tendencies.
What is even more interesting is the number of articles on slashdot that, when posted, mentioned Declan McCullagh as the author by name (effectively promoting his fame), in direct contrast to nearly every other article posted on slashdot then and now. Clearly, for a time at least, he had a cordial relationship with some influencial folks at slashdot despite his reprehensible behavior vis-avis the LiViD project, and despite posts and emails by myself and others trying to get the word out about his behavior wrt LiViD (and quite likely others). Hopefully this has changed, but for the public record, I feel it is important the free software enthusiasts know about this little chapter in LiViD's history, and the casualties and personal losses that resulted.
The article in question was not linked to by us, was not in our headlines, was not endorsed by us, wasn't even known to us until the Slashdot story.
... I'm usually better at attributions, and I shouldn't have gotten that one wrong.
I went back and looked at the article more thoroughly (now that it isn't slashdotted, and the grafics, etc. come up, ie. it is no longer filled with blank spaces). Amazing how much more obvious these relationships become once you can see the whole thing without 10 minute lags (and once someone has pounded you over the head with a clue stick).
You are absolutely right, I was absolutey mistaken, and my comments misaimed. My sincere apologies. The diatribe to which you replied should have been directed at WinInformant, not Security Focus which, as you clearly point out, remained above reproach in this fiasco. Sorry about that
Thanks for your reply, and pointing out what should have been obvious (but apparently wasn't, to me at least, on that day).
(although the mockery one would receive for having used Visual Basic would probably detract some from the feeling of accomplishment, but I digress).
Hmm. That was meant to be a toung in cheek jab at Microsoft, but in rereading my post it sounds like a jab at you. Apologies, as that was not the intent. You might as easilly use java, C, C++, or C# if you're feeling particularly masochistic. The point is that you are given choice, which is always a net positive.
How about polyfork?
... as one can spoon changes back into whichever tree one is following, knife out other changes, and fork the system themself if they wish.
Silverware would be a better name
Seriously, this wouldn't give equal weighting to every trivial disagreement any more than free source code does anyway. Whether the control system is subversion, cvs, arch, or plane ole text files, we as individuals choose which fork we want to follow. Indeed, currently the mechanism in use is ftp (or alternatively http/rsync), ie. do you ftp linux-2.4.17.tar.gz, linux-2.4.17-ac3.tar.gz, or linux-2.4.17-myfork.tar.gz. Your decision is based on your trust of Linus, Alan Cox, or myself (probably nil). Using arch wouldn't change this, it would merely give you more flexibility in choosing bits of the Linus kernel, bits of the AC kernel, etc. in creating your own, personal fork that reflects your values and interests, and if others like your choices, they can benefit as well. If they ignore your choices, then who cares? You still benefit in having been able to make and prosper from your choices yourself.
How on earth could that be a bad thing?
That having been said, my wishlist would be support of gnupg signatures and authentication and scp instead of ftp. As to it being written in a shell scripting language, so what. If you really want to run a client or (god forbit) a server under Windows, there is nothing preventing you from writing a compatible client or server in the programming language of your choice (although the mockery one would receive for having used Visual Basic would probably detract some from the feeling of accomplishment, but I digress).
Except for some hokey city in Florida that used to be a HP-UX shop for some reason, a few cheapo small businesses and some enthusiasts, nobody runs Linux as a desktop.
Noboday, huh? Not, say, Brazil? Or China? Or numerous other countries that happen to not be The One Great America(tm)? Guess again.
Either your head has been in the sand the last year and a half, or you are incredibly ethnocentric. Either way, as an American I find your comments emberrassing to say the least.
HAve you noticed That the corp sueing him apparently didn't go through the ICANN name dispute resolution system? Interesting that they realize that ICANN has no real power in those sorts of disputes.
Actually, ICANN does have power, in that possession is often 9/10 of the law, and an ICANN decision will yank the name and put it in the plaintiff's hands right away.
What is really interesting is that they chose not to use the ICANN "arbitration" procedure (I use the term in quotes for a reason), particularly in light of the fact that the ICANN "arbitration" procedure is designed to favor the plaintiff. The plaintiff pays for the procedure, chooses the arbiter out of several competitors (obviously the ones who tend to rule for the plaintiff are outcompeting the more fair alternatives), and the defendent has no recourse once the domain name is taken away (aside from a civil suit to get the name back).
One could speculate either way on why they would go to the courts, rather than use a remedy procedure that costs less and is clearly slanted in their favor. It is interesting, in any event.
We didn't write the article in question, nor are we hosting, nor did we have any opportunity to see it ahead of time. (Or now... still can't see it.)
/. link did make it look like your article to the casual glance (though the /. effect did preclude many of the banners, etc. from ever loading, and a more precise look at the URL does reveal it to be hosted elsewhere).
I'm curious why you would like to an article without reviewing it. If this is to be believed, you linked to an article without even reading it. While I expect that sort of looseness with slashdot to some degree, I confess I'd always held Security Focus in a little higher regard, and consiquently expected more selectivity in what articles they choose to headline and link to.
Unfortunately this thread is already ancient history and probably no longer being followed, but if you see this I would very much like some clarification on exactly how articles like this are selected for inclusion in SecurityFocus' headlines. Following the
HDCP
/. with a second posting I let it go as is. The major points were communicated, if not with as much eloquence as I would have liked.
High Definition Copy Protection.
Links abound, if you're really interested and not just being a smartass over one typo. The entire article was submitted before I finished writing it, thanks to a bug in Mozilla 0.7., and rather than clutter
With encryption to the pixels of the screen the only short term solution is going to be putting a camcorder in front of a plasma panel with the lights out and hoping for the best (as another user pointed out). Of course, it won't be long before people tear a monitor apart and wire the decrypted signal directly to their HD-VCRs, but I suspect the Copyright Cartels will make use of the DMCA's more draconian provisions against research and copy protection circumvention to incarcerate such creative engineers before they can upset the "social order" (i.e. their business model).
As an aside, I wonder if they will ever air Max Headroom again. That show, and the future it portrayed (big media interests running everything with the average person impoverished) was profoundly prophetic. Probably hits a little too close to home for comfort for most of the Cartel members, I imagine.
Except this doesn't solve the problem that was presented, which was that there is a point where high bandwidth users are being subsidized by everyone else because they are using so much bandwidth that the ISP is losing money. You solution keeps bandwidth for other people during peek times, but it doesn't either limit the bandwidth, or get the bandwidth paid for.
Except that this misrepresents the problem.
The problem is not that the bandwidth isn't getting paid for. It is.
The problem is that the bandwidth being paid for can't support all of the customers needed to cover its expenses, because of the overuse by a small percentage of the users.
The real problem is that the business model assumed passive consumers (web browsing) rather than the participatory exchange the internet was designed for and facilitates (multi-user games, chats, web hosting, etc.)
The solution the poster presented was that, by limiting the hogs when demand goes up, is perfectly viable, unless the providor is deliberately overselling their bandwidth, in which case they deserve chapter 11, or worse.
In other words, that OC3 doesn't cost any less if no one uses it, so why not let everyone use it to its maximum capacity, as long as they are forced to get out of the way (temporary restrictions during peak usage) when others need it, thus insuring that everyone who paid for access gets it, with reasonable performance, while allowing power users access to the otherwise unused bandwidth during off hours?
Exactly right.
... years of it, all in the public record.
These numbers only reflect that GNU/Linux is more open and public in reporting its bugs than Windows, which is not surprising given Bill Gates & Co.'s efforts to suppress information about existing bugs in their operating system (the rightly rediculed notion of achieving security through obscurity).
There is absolutely no correlation between number of bugs reported and number of bugs existing, be they security related or not. This is doubly true when one party (Microsoft) is actively working to suppress such information about their own products.
The incompetence of the author writing this story, and of the Security Focus editorial staff for letting it through, is staggering. With this kind of security "expertise" is it any wonder at all that Nimda worms and the like run rampent across the net?
Indeed, if one wants to draw correlations (always a risky endeavor without corraborating evidence) it would make far more sense to correlate the percentage (vs. installed base) of demonstrably compromized systems running one operating system vs. another. As Code Red, Nimda, etc. have demonstrated, Microsoft's products win this one hands down. Indeed, in this case there is massive corraborating evidence to back up the conclusions of such a correlation
Heh, "can't be broken". Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
DHCP is signal encryption to the screen. All those fancy plasma screens with the firewire interface may have had you thinking "cool, now I can watch my mini-DV camcorder directly on my HDTV without ever doing an analog conversion!"
Nope. That interface will carry an encrypted signal from your receiver/tape deck directly to the screen, with no possibility of tapping into a decrypted signal, anywhere.
If they use military grade encryption (which they might, now that export restrictions have eased) this will take years, perhaps decades to reverse engineer. Not to easy, buggy POS CSS was. What is more, they might even use publicly available, well tested and thoroughly peer-reviewed algorithms to encrypt the signal with very large
3. Such civilizations do not last a long time, and blow themselves up or otherwise fall apart pretty quickly
Or alternatively, civilizations progress at a geometric rate, transcending themselves in a few short generations, so that by the time intersteller travel becomes feasable they have lost interest and moved on to more compelling possibilities (perhaps departing this frame of reference entirely).
Once one hypothesizes a civilization significantly more advanced than our own it becomes difficult to even imagine the technologies they may have, much less what interests they would find compelling, or what goals they might set for themselves. For all we know they are all around us, unrecognized because they operate at levels as far beyond us as we are beyond the simple microbe.
I submitted this on Monday (I mentioned it on my website) I was logged in, not anonymous. So much for logged in users taking precedence over anonymous users :-)
... excuse me ... reviews of media releases (DVDs) and movies that encourage free software enthusiasts to go out and put money in the pockets of an industry bent on hamstringing the internet and legislating free software (and the tools to make it) out of existence.
I quit submitting stories to slashdot years ago, when similar things would happen. The submission process is straightforward enough, but the editorial process is about as transparent as crude oil on a moonless night. Who knows why stories get rejected one day, resubmitted and accepted another, with the latecommer getting the credit. Who knows why a site which purports to be pro free software/open source/whatever dumps stories of technical interest in favor of promotions
I gave up trying to figure this out years ago, and now content myself to just reading whatever interesting stuff happens to make it through the filter, and posting an occasional diatribe or two.
I recommend anyone discontent with this sort of thing to do the same. It will entail much less frustration and heartache for you, and if enough people do it perhaps the editors will take the hint and become more fair in how they select stories and attribute them. In the meantime, life is too short, so don't let this sort of irritation get to you.
please tell me how you get 6 IDE drives on a pc that gives you any performance in a rad function...
I don't know how he does it, but I have personal experience in doing it two different ways:
1) 3ware IDE RAID controller, has 1 IDE controller per drive on the card (i.e. 8 ide controllers), which the firmware maps to a RAID Device. Depending on the RAID configuration the drives appear as one large SCSI drive to the system.
Performance is on par with SCSI.
2) External IDE-SCSI Raid chassis. Again, 1 IDE controller per hot-swap drive, appearing to the system as one or more big SCSI drives, controlled by a standard SCSI controller. Speed and reliability have surpassed that of a $60,000 SCSI solution sold by Sun I happen to have lying around.
U160 SCSI drives will give you at least a 70% speed increase and a 80% increase in reliability....
If I had to store a terebyte of information I'd be an idiot to use consumer level storage (IDE).
Nonsense, see above. This is simply SCSI bigotry (I know, I was once a SCSI bigot too). What you say is only true if you are using low end cards, with more than one device on each IDE bus, which is untrue for mid- and high-level IDE-SCSI solutions such as 3ware and various external chassis systems. We run our entire enterprise on one, and have done so for well over a year, with much better reliablity and performance than an older, very expensive SCSI solution provided.
But yes, if people are plugging drives into el cheapo IDE "raid" cards like Promise and the like, or worse, into their onboard IDE controllers (most of which are inexpensive knockoffs anyway) then performance will be very suboptimal, and reliability problems (one device taking down the entire IDE bus, etc.) abound.
At least they haven't all brought out their Uzis, like I hear is standard practice in the US.
Our postal workers are good Americans(tm). When they go postal, they use shotguns, like any True American(tm) would. Uzis are for pussies.
:-)
In all seriousness, the professionalism of our postal workers during the Anthrax scare was nothing short of inspiring, and very surprising given all the bad press (and bad events) that have happened over the years, resulting in the phrase "going postal" becoming equivelent to "running amok." A lot of us (myself included) would probably not be inclined to stay at their job and continue working day in and day out with that sort of direct threat hanging over our heads, yet these folks did so, for weeks on end, without missing a beat (at least here in Chicago).
Still, it seems to be more fun to joke about postal workers running amok than high school students, probably because the latter tend to do it a lot more often these days, and not least because we (especially we Americans) love to take the piss out of anyone in uniform.
Linux out in the open, with big company backing?
We already have that, with IBM no less, not to mention a plethora of lesser giants. GNU/Linux will do fine without AOL/Time-Warner, and arguably better.
Or, are we going to start up with the "elitest want Linux to stay small"?
It's not about elitism, it is about the dangers of an industry which has as a stated goal the eradication of free software (at least for playing DVDs, and by extention managing digital data of any kind), has attempted to legislate exactly that, and is unlikely to change its ways anytime soon. Remember, this is AOL-Time-Warner we're talking about.
Is the evil of AOL/Time-Warner exaggerated? On the AOL side perhaps, on the Time-Warner side it is understated, if anything. Keep in mind that old-school copyright cartel content providers have been the most zealous, and most effective, opponents of free software (remember the DMCA, deCSS, SSSCA, the Hague Convention, etc.)?
OTOH the loss of Red Hat to the "dark side," if that is in fact how it turns out, won't really impact GNU/Linux all that much. Some other distro (Suse, Mandrake, Debian, Sorcerer, or Slackware perhaps) will take up the slack. More likely all of them will to varying degrees.
Hopefully the talented programmers such as Alan will find gainful employment elsewhere doing exactly what they love to do: working on Linux. IBM comes to mind as an immediate candidate for sponsorship of this kind, as do about a dozen large universities in the US alone.
Apparently Western corporate profits really are more important than 3rd world lives to those who are currently in power.
This is exactly the ethos our government has been subscribing to, openly since the Reagan era of the 1980's and perhaps much longer than that.
It isn't just "third world" lives, either. American profits are deemed much more important than American lives (e.g. Mansanto deliberately polluting an American town's groundwater as recently as a few short years ago, killing many people, maiming many more, and not a single board member, employee, or shareholder will ever see the inside of a jail cell).
We made a conscious choice as a society to subscribe to a system which values wealth above everything else, and rewards greed above every other character trait. Worse, we've decided corporations are to be treated as people, with all of their rights and none of their responsibilities, exacerbating an already poor cultural choice.
Is it really any surprise at all that the natural consiquence of such a system, based upon such a skewed ethical premise, is that Corporate Profits are considered to be vastly more important the human lives?
With the ISO download stalled at 90% (been running since the time of my previous post on the subject) I haven't been able to poke around, but if this is true I am very, very interested.
:-)
Can you provide any more details (name of the command, where to poke around for docs, etc.). Even a hint as to what to look for, given that "it is not obvious" would be helpful.
That's what the missile defense system is for. We'll just swat those nasty missiles out of our blue skies like flies.
Though if any are aimed at Hollywood or Redmond we'd be better servered just letting them through.
:-)
It isn't software pirates who would be to blame, but copyright cartels who pushed our government to such a showdown, if it ever came to that.
"Proud to be an American, becuase at least I know I'm free!" *cough*
If said house keeper is rifling through the papers on my desk in the study which she was explicitly to stay out of, then it wouldn't be unreasonable for her actions to be considered at least trespassing.
Yes, that is unreasonable. It is also absurd.
By giving that person a housekey you have granted them access to your premesis. By definition they cannot be tresspassing.
Violating your privacy, yes. If you locked the drawer and didn't give them a key (they picked the lock, or scrounged the key from another drawer and opened it), then you might have a case for unauthorized access to whatever materials were locked up (breaking into a client's safe isn't legal). However, if you left those papers in an unlocked state, then you'll have to come up with some law other than tresspass or breaking-and-entering to prosecute them on. If there isn't one, and there may not be, then you still have the recourse of firing the offendor and suing for damages (if any).
This case is nothing short of rediculous, and a primary example of one of the most fatal flaws in American justice: the fact that a person can be financially coerced into pleading guilty to something they did not do simply because the financial cost and potential risk of standing by their innocence is too great and their unjust accuser happens to hold all of the (financial and power) cards.
America isn't going to be destroyed by bin laden and his idiot followers, but by lawyers, and governments, like this one. Indeed, if anything such acts of terror breath new life into decaying regimes, delaying the disunity and ultimate demise of a society whose legislative, judicial, and executive systems are so riddled with injustice and corruption that no significant social contract remains. Such a society is ripe for destruction from within, regardless of how draconian the secret police (FBI et al) may become, and this is but one of a myrid of symptoms to that affect.
I was once asked the question as to whether I would prefer to live during the rise or decline of a civilization. I niavely answered that I would prefer the decline, because then I could enjoy the fruits of previous generations' labors while leading a decadent life of my own, without regard to the future. Now that I am in a position to actually observe the dysfunction and decline of my own culture, particularly of the democracy which makes it possible, I have discovered two truths: (1) decadence has nothing whatsoever to do with decline, contrary to popular puritan myth, but corruption and injustice are directly related and (2) decline isn't inevitable, but it is inevitable if the people are too lazy, or too distracted, to be vigilant and root out the injustice and corruption which is its primary cause.
Seriously what more besides apt-get do people need for updates? I mean I was so disenchanted with mandrakeupdater that when I got back into the swing of linux after a dry spell I almost gave up. Now with debian at least I can update things without fear of the kernel segfaulting on the next boot.
... building new machines (even slightly different ones than the model) is just too easy to give up ... even for this.
I am an avid Debian user, and have moved an entire enterprise over to Debian because apt-get makes a system administrators life so much easier and it halved my work load as a result. For binary distributions apt-get is unmatched, and apt-get source, while not perfect, is a very nice way to get sources and compile them.
However, there are better approaches. FreeBSDs "ports" system comes to mind, where a skeletal directory tree structure and a simple make command are all that are required to automate the download, compilation, and installation procedure for a plethora of third party applications.
No library conflicts. Any necessary patches applied on the fly, optomized and compiled for your system. It was, until this distribution came along, the only installation method I'd ever heard of, much less seen, that beat even apt-get hands down.
If this distribution lives up to its billing, it will be only the second, placing Debian's apt-get, Sorcerer, and FreeBSDs "ports" in a class all their own. Even as an avid Debian user I will be spending much of this weekend playing with Sorcerer.
The real question is, will there be a good replicator or, better yet, automated installation utility so I can build 50 machines on 50 similar but not identical machines, without having to sit in front of each one? Replicator is the one thing that will keep me using Debian at work
With the demise of netvan and the undesirability of purchasing a car solely to go to the grocery store I, for one, would find a mass transit system that would drop me off at my front curb very useful. Add to that the fact that getting a cab at my local food store is next to impossible (while finding one 6 blocks away is easy, go figure), and the physical challenges (read:impossibility) of carrying 15 bags of groceries on foot, and even the most casual, non-knee-jerk-cynical observer can see the usefulness of such a system.
... making traffic a little worse in the short run might be just the kind of incentive that would help speed adoption of such a system.
As for it being "out of the question" that such could track systems could be laid down in a major city, don't be absurd (not you, but another poster in this thread). Major cities are exactly where this kind of thing would be most useful. Like Europe, they could be integrated into the existing streetplans a la streetcars. If the traffic implications are too significant (possible during the installation and early use, likely the opposite once such a system were adopted widely) they could be built on an elevated track. Personally, I'd just take lanes away from old-style cars
Of course, entrenched interests such as automobile manufacturers and taxi drivers are likely to raise a stink and do everything they can to slow adoption of such a system, but that sort of thing should be resisted and fought, not pandered to. Alas, in an age where the government spends more time and money trying to preserve the business models of buggie whip manufacturers (c.f RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, SSSCA, Copyright extentions, etc.) rather than promoting the adoption of new technologies and the new capabilities they promise (c.f. universally accessible, virtually cost-free libraries, free sharing of information, etc.) the future we face, at least in the short term, is not an optomistic one at all.
... you are absolutely correct in observing that the 2.4 debacle has used up a great deal of Linux's reputation for being stable. I use 2.4.x with SGI's xfs patches both in production systems at work, and at home (like others, we need various features of 2.4.x not available in 2.2.x), and while it has never been anything close to as flakey as the most stable of Microsoft systems, it has in comparison to 2.2.x (and FreeBSD for that matter) been pretty damn unreliable. In comparison to just about everything else it is still quite stable, so happiness is indeed to some degree relative.
And now for some arm chair quarterbacking, all that having been said, I really think Linus needs to excersize some self discipline and stay away from maintaining even-numbered kernel releases (x.0.x, x.2.x, x.4.x, etc.). By his own admission he isn't good at being a stable kernel maintainer and prefers the more interesting work done in development kernels, and his track record in 2.2 wasn't fantastic (particularly in comparison to 2.0, where he did a fantastic job) and was pretty abysmal in 2.4. As someone who's been using GNU/Linux since the early pre 1.0 days I hope he'll put his efforts where his talents are (managing changes in odd numbered development releases) and leave stable maintenance to Cox and Marcelo (who are very good at maintaining and improving stable releases). But enough commentary from the peanut gallery...
And how to you propose to power this "active cooling" system? If it and your ratchet are both 100% efficient you can break even; otherwise, you'll be operating at a net loss.
Of course, they won't be 100% effecient (2nd law), so it would be a net loss to use active cooling. However, if your system is overheating, then using some of that stored energy to actively cool the components down to an acceptable level may be a reasonable option. Decoupling the ratchet before it reaches such a state would IMHO probably be preferable, though (ie. stop introducing energy into an overheating system).
Such a system can probably be made to work and yield useful results (energy storage and dispensation as required), but you are correct in saying you do not get something for nothing. What we would be doing is tapping into energy which is currently "wasted" (the motion of our atmosphere as it is heated by the sun and cooled by the planet's shadow) and storing it for later use. As with any storage system, there would be operating limits on how much energy can be stored, what its tolerances for waste heat, etc. would be, and so on.
Besides, what in the world does our atmosphere have to do with anything?
The context was "why aren't we taking care of earth as well as we are the other celestial bodies" of our solar system and "its nice we're working so hard to protect europa, but we should have protected earth in the same way" implying the mission should have been scrapped from day one (and the argument used was the, if not completely mythical then certainly vastly overblown by too many orders of magnitude to count, danger the gravitational boost obtained by the craft's flyby of earth posed to those of us living here).
Hence the protection of the earth's atmosphere and the extreme difficulty, if not outright impossibility, of harming terrestrial life even by crashing one of these things into the atmosphere at high speed, is relevant to the thread at hand. With respect to Europa it isn't relevant, as the thing is being sent on a plunge into Jupiter next year anyway as a precaution against such a mishap. But yes, without a protective atmosphere, such as the earth has, then the presence of RTGs would be a very relevant concern wrt an impact.