It's interesting but some fo the strangest things have Linux drivers, simply because somone took an interest in it. Linux drivers are only as far away as you are willing to hack the box. The neater the box, the more people that want to hack it. The more likely there will be drivers.
One thing that laws fuel is technologies to fight silly laws. For instance, RADAR detectors. The police tend to enforece speed limits as a revenue source first, and for saftey second. Technology gives me a fighting chance, to know where that cop is (Under the bush ten feet past the speed limit change from 45 to 30 when the road goes from 2 lanes to four makes no sense).
I think encryption, spread spectrum wireless and other technologies are responses to governments policing (or repressing depending on your opinion)
It's sad, but in the ever present "WAR ON DRUGS" a lot of civil liberties have been thrown to the way side. In the 1930's a "no knock warrant" would have been laughed out of court. Police dressing up in Ninja suits would have cause a public outrage, but not today. The police say they need more information, and thus more weapons. The pursuit of this information and weaposn fuels some technology.
THen there is the other side of the coin. Drug dealers (if they are smart) employ technology to try and stay one step ahead of the police. Anti-bugging technology super fast scanners and so forth are fueled by concerns that people are being "listened in on". Thousands on boats that have low radar profiles and good top speeds. They even use the "Internet" to communicate which technoliges are successful with each other.
In these examples the Law is fueling a duel between police and drug dealers. So far with BILLIONS wasted, and numerous lives lost the battle still rages on. We could legalize drugs and get off this silly damn merry go round but that would stop the people that are making a profit and doing the R&D into NEW technologies, curtail the DEA's budget and put thousands of hard working drug dealers out of work. (Excuse the run on sentence:)
Just one example of laws fueling technology
The law provides a profit motive for some technologies. Some of the highest profit motive is for technologies that allow people to "skirt" the law.
Good for AMD, they are starting to build higher end machines, and are will give Itel a run for the money in the lucrative "server" market. This modes well for all "server" users. As more competition will eventually lead to tighter margins and lower prices for the consumer.
The specs look pretty good too The AMD 760 MP chipset is a DDR SDRAM solution that can support two 266MHz FSB Athlons. The chipset has advanced buffering to enable maximum transaction concurrency
As with all chip manufacturers these days I'll believe it when I can order it myself. I remember the first high end PIII's. Impossible to get, but strangley reviewers had copies to compare against Athlons.
As with all articles of thsi nature, take it with a grain of salt. I don't expect to see such machine available to any "REAL" people on the street until Dec-Jan time frame. Thats at the earliest.
AMD has yet to finish a chip set that supports SMP. As far as has been reported from TW, no third party is producing an SMP chipset until AMD comes out with it's own chipset. Currently AMD's production is going full bore just to keep up with demand. SMP machines are a small part of the market and AMD is probably concentrating on using their advantage over Itel at this time to get as many chips "In the field".
Plan to see SMP as production exceeds demand or at least keeps abreast of it. Also it has been widely reported that AMD is concentrating on introducing the "Sledgehammer" with an SMP MB chipset almost from introduction.
Why all the hassle about region codes, why does it exist in the first place?
Answer: To try and prevent mass illegal copying of disks (A multi million dollars industry in China and the former soviet union). To also allow DVD players in heavily censored countries (china et al) to only be able to play DVD's that are APPROVED of in that country!!
Actual affect of such codes on the illegal copier? None On the public? Added cost, restricted use (what fair use???), and if you happen to travel a lot, your dvd's are worthless when you go home to show Mom and Dad.
DVD is starting to catch on, but as the MPAA continues to do things that just aren't convenient for the consumer, people will continue to thwart the over zealous copyright/censorship efforts. Viscous circle, the more you make it hard for people to do things they EXPECT to be able to do, the more pressure from the consumer for alternatives. This is just another round in a stupid circle.
Funny how the MPAA and the RIAA say "Don't censor us, censorship bad, blah blah blah". Yet they support region codes so that they can sell censored versions of a movie to some country that thinks that a free press and free thinking public should be banned. No Irony there?
I understand RedHat's dilemma, don't want to ship older versions of GCC after all, isn't every new version supposed to have an update?
What would have been the cost for redhat to wait, say for the 2.4 kernel, kde 2.0 and a stable GCC? After all they have a stable distro out, and people seem to like it. I think the problem is that the money counters and stock watchers are getting nervous ("RedHat sales aren't what they used to be *panic* SELL SELL SELL!") Thus they produce a crappy distro, it says "NEW 7.0!" on it, so people will buy it (fools)
The problem with being a publically held company in todays "new economy" is that stock market investors seem to be incredibly short sighted. Investors only care about making a buck from a move in stock prices. When CEO's and CIO's only worry about stock performance and don't look out for the long term growth of an organization then the company is in deep doo doo.
RedHat should have waited, a more stable solution would have been a better image enhancer, better for the company long term (don't have to issue so many bug fixes) Instead they chose to carry on the great tradition that every RedHat.0 distro is sub par.
The sad thing is some poor guy that can't get a better job is the person calling you. These people are paid very very very little, and the only bonuses they get is when they "make a sale". This is how it is for many telemarketers.
I'm not saying that this is how AT&T works. If it is, I'm sure the reason your "slam" had to do with somone's pay check and not AT&T's policy. It was some poor slob was just trying to get enough in his pay check to be able to afford a car that started!
The practice IS illegal, and you can asked to be removed from their phone list, and by law they CANNOT contact you for the period of 1 year. You can call your local better business bureau, they have the number to report "slamming" and other abuses.
On the lighter side there was a story about a Telecom company in Texas named them selves idontcare. That way when you started service and were asked "Who would you like for your LD provider" people that said "I Don't care" got assigned to this company. Don't know if it's true, but it's funny.
While I agree with what the judge envisions he needs to remember a few things.
In a large corperation the mail server is backed up, and there is usually a storage schedule for backups. Unless you are getting your mail from home, it's most likely on the back up tapes
With SO many people complaining that they "accidently" deleted things (thus the need for a "recycle bin" Can you see whats going to happen when you give the secretary at your law office a "REAL" delete key?
How much overhead does a real delete require?
People save the silliest things (I have email going back 6 years myself) If a company TRULY wants to prevent e-mails from past generatiosn coming back to haunt them they need to teach their users to delete mail older than x number of days (and destroy backup tapes older than the same also!)
Like anything, the solutions isn't as obvious as those non technical people would like it to be.
I've been using Opera for years, although I wish it was open source, I didn't mind paying. Opera allows people that would otherwise NOT use their computer (because it is so slow) a web browser that is functional and useable.
Many of us are lucky, we are running on systems that are less then 3 years old. Others aren't as lucky, and there are a great many people that can't afford even the most basic new computers. In rural areas where I live people spend 350 bucks for an old P100 monitor speaker and modem and they have to make payments on that! Opera at least gives them a Browser they can use. Even see people use it on a 386, that's impessive.
It's a welcome addition to the Linux community. It gives some other browsers competition If Opera is like it's windoze cousin, it's very lite and fast. I'll have to fire it up an old 486 and see how it runs in Linux. It seems Opera is extending the life of some of my hardware;)
It seems that i386 chip sets are almost at the end of their evolutionary road. Here we have the 1.2 gig chips coming out but the performance of the chips doesn't seem to match the super high clock rates. I remember being amazed when I jumped from a P 75 to a P166 years ago. The totally subjective "feel" of the computer was that of a MUCH faster machine. Not to mention that several animated sites really flew. A recent test going from a AMD k6 400 to an AMD thuderbird 850 was not as impressive. In fact the subjective "feel" was about the same until it came time to play DVD's, or compile code (in windoze, didn't test in BSD or Linux yet).
As chip manufacturers continue to up the clock rates, the returns for the end users diminishes because the rest of the mother board is stuck in 5 or 10 year old technology. Memory bandwidth, FSB architecture and even the operating system all play a large roll how a processor performs. While The technology and clock rates are impressive, until other areas of PC architecture catch up the value to the end user isn't the same as a doubling of the clock rate was 3 years ago.
The last time I saw an aurora it was preceeded by blue acrid smoke coming out of the back of my monitor. Then there was this loud flash. Not sure if I can handle to much more Aurora monitoring.
Actually, BINDv9 is a complete rewrite. There is no significant code shared between BINDv8 and BINDv9
This is very good news! The problem that scares me is that bind8 compatability may not be all there. This makes updating a large site to BINDv9 is going to be a problem for many ISP's etc.
There are still a couple of areas where we're deficient in support of standards, e.g., we don't support using DNSSEC with wildcards and a BIND version 9.0.0 slave does not forward dynamic updates to the master as it should according to the RFCs. Our intent is to fully implement the standards (and/or help revise the standards to make them more useful to the Internet community).
While waving off other name server implementations (DjbDNS) by saying it doesn't meet current standards, they admit that Bindv9 WON'T mean some of the current standards! In fact it seems that Mr Conrad is in favor of changing some of the standards. Is that to make them more useful, or make them fit Bindv9?
All in all ANYTHING has to be an improvement over the code of Bindv8. The proof will be after Bindv9 has been "in the wild" for a few months.
As with any operating system you choose what software to install on your system. I don't run sendmail, but qmail which is very secure. I don't like bind as it is poorly written, and there are alternatives out there. I also don't run wu-ftp. The neat thing is that I have the source, so my machine may SAY it's running sendmail, or bind, but it's not. In fact, with apache, I can even make it say that it's running IIS. Great for my honey pot.
Lets recap, the software you install can affect the security of your system. Open source software gives you the chance to fix bugs should you find them, or allows other people to fix bugs when they are found. Also gives you a chance to install alternatives. I'm not saying IIS is bad, nor am I saying open source is perfect, I'm just saying that open source solutions for me have been more secure. Part of that is the sysadmin making an informed descion on the packages he installs or compiles. Microsoft has traditionally been opposed to solutions that compete with their own, and many consumers are poorer for it IMHO.
While microsoft tries again and again to secure their OS, high profile cases like this one make me think that they are in deep doo doo. The biggest advantage to me about Open Source is not that it's free, but that thousands of people are hacking away at it daily. This caeses security problems to come to the surface very quickly, and solutions are almost equally as quick to arrive.
The origianl eye-eye exploit took almost 5 months for a patch. That's scary as it gave total control of the file system to any remote user. 5 months is too long for somone sitting in a production environment to wait for a solution.
Score one for the "ethical hackers", Score one for the anti MS side, Score 2 for those that DON'T run IIS.
Here are a few interesting quips from the CNET article
The government said Microsoft's proposal "is excessive and would delay resolution of this appeal unnecessarily."
Microsoft's proposal also far exceeds what would be considered standard procedure with the appeals court, say legal experts. "The normal statutory period would be 40, 30 and 15 days," said Andy Gavil, an antitrust professor at Howard University Law School. "That's what's normal under the federal rules of appellate procedure."
This begs the following questions : If you make a contract and then break it and are taken to court is the court case thrown out if the other party no longer exists by the time you get through the appeals process?
If you make many changes AFTER said wrong doing does it change the original charge, and should you not be charged with anything?
Can your changes be introduced as new evidence in an appeal?
This is a typical tatic from Microsoft. They got caught doing something wrong, and by using massive delay tatics blunt the prosecution. Technology moves much faster than the court system, and MS has hinted that this case is no longer relevant and should be let go. With this logic if you killed somone 5 years ago you shouldn't be prosecuted.
The sad thing is that MS should have taken the higher ground. Large companies like Intel and Cisco to name a few have changed some of their practices that were considered "anti-competitive". They are still large and thriving companies.
Some of the business practices of MS are the SAME practices that caused many workers to unionize during the industrial age. Long hours with no compensation, lack of insurance etc. Companies like Cisco doesn't hire tons of workers for 364 days and then drop them when it's time to start paying for health insurance. I think that the biggest danger to MS is if it's low level employees unionize. We are in a tight labor market, and a strike of some type would really hurt. Of course that would force MS to start treating it's employees with a modicum of respect.
I do watch PBS and the BBC (both publicly funded). I also have no problems editing out commercials because the advertisers long ago broke the "TV social contract".
Advertisers used to hold certain types of commercials, and certain programming until late at night to avoid exposing children to very adult situations and themes. The problem is that this is no longer the case, and as a responsible parent I am very concerned about what my child watches. I try very hard to control what my child is exposed to, and this is part of my duty as a responsible parent. The problem is that the networks and advertisers don't give a d*mn.
When concerned parents talk about wanting some more control over what is seen on network television they are chided "CENSORSHIP, CENSORSHIP!!! You have the responsibility to monitor your children's viewing, blah, blah blah". Gee sparky, that gets very hard when you are watching what you think is viewing fit for children (say the Olympics) and the advertisements show serial killers in hockey masks, R rated movies with lots of adult innuendo and an announcer screaming about WWF coming to a local arena.
Most so called childrens shows are nothing more than 30 minute advertisements. So much for that contract your talking about. The contract was broken LONG ago by the advertisers and I have no compucttion with deleting commercial content from anything I view.
I hate censorship, and I don't want it. What I would like is the ability to make descions for myself, and to easily control what my child sees. This new device gives me a fighting chance.
I can't wait to get one. An easy way to edit out commercials. Imagine that! There is a LOT of big bussiness out there that hates the idea that I might watch TV un-interupted. I'm not too concerned, I just wonder why the RIAA hasn't stepped in to shut down this potentially harmful technology. I mean DIGITAL copies of copyrighted material? It won't happen until I modify my Tivo with removable hardrives.
In the mean time it should be fun to reverse engineer one of these puppies. I'd like to add an algorythym that detects commercials and automatically zaps them (thus my need for removable Hard Drives). Should be pretty simple, look for the audio signal to jump by 3db and you know that a commercial is starting. (Please note tongue planted in cheek here)
I am very concerned with your product. According to the famous "Wired" magazine your product looks like a marital aid. This of course is of great concern since I actually own the patent on the zippy-fly-teaser. Your product seems to be nothing but a cheap copy of my world renowned self pleaser.
My legal dept. will be in touch, but reverse engineering the shape that took us years of intense study with thousands of subjects is an insult to us! The claim that your product is not designed to provide the same service is propsterous! We take a dim view of attempts to provide products or services based on our hardware!
Sincerly
President of
Zippy marital aid and teaser plasera INC
The net is full of virtual communities. The net is NOT just one virtual community, but many. Look at/. woulnd't it be considered a virtual community?
The net has the ability to connect millions of people, each with their own ideas, and mores. Some people wish to explore differnt ideas, and are open to looking about. Some are very closed minded, and they are able to find other simillairly opinioned people. The white racists can find other racists, but what's interesting is the civil rights leaders can go and talk to those very same racists. He is able to step out of his community and safely (usually) talk to somone, or read about a community where he woulnd't have been welcome.
That my friends is the advantage of the "net community". Interconnection for those that wish to look outside their own world.
What would be really neat is to have an artist module add in for your e-book. That way when your reading a really good book you can choose from your favority artists who have drawn some copy for said book. That way you see the "type" of art you want, plus it gives any book added dimension. A story could have anything from Photos, to Heavy Metal style graphics. Even blues clues for the kids.
It's all about choice, and I think this would be a neat choice for an "e-book" product.
I know this isn't popular here at/. and I'll probably receive more negative Karma for this (as I have for the whole thread, thank you moderators)
BUT You've made some excellent points as well. It's very nice to actually get some insite(sp) and thought out discussion. Also realize that my original comments were posted before 8:00 am......the thought process that produced them may have been a bit shaky! I'd have e-mail you this comment directly, but it's not in your profile.
Now to the meat of the matter
I think the real question is, "What will RIAA's response be if the watermark scheme is broken before or after it is released on the public?"
I think the response will be the same in either case, and that response will be to try again. If somone breaks the watermark 3 days after it's the official standard, so what? I'll bet those nifty SDMI boxes are upgradeable. It takes time for a new format to be accepted in the marketplace, and the recording industry has shown no problems with making your past formats obselete. I don't expect any thing new from them now.
Again, I like your thinking here, I'm just not certain if it is realistic or not
We have to try! There are 2 types of people in the world, people that bitch and moan and do nothing, and people that want to work toward a viable solution. So maybe my idea is a pipe dream. We will never know until we try, and it certainly makes the world think better of us when we ARE trying. Besides I like the idea of an Open Source watermark that is accepted by the masses whose liscence forbids encryption of music, or video or entertainment.:) Next MI film shows Tom Cruise with a his magic watch, with the pengiun logo "Your mission should you choose to accept it!" Open Source watermarked voice messages for secret agents.
I agree completely, but you didn't have to insult my hat.
So we share the same headgear, my problem is that I can't fly with it on.....yet. I still keep that dream alive.
It's nice to see that standing up for your beliefs and convictions is now a flaw.
Standing up for your beliefs is not a flaw. The problem is the dictomy of the situation. Here we have a company doing what many people in this community say should be done. That is TEST your security in an open environment. The thing that they are testing is a way for RIAA to distribute music that is NOT readily copied, which many people hate. You have to give them a nod for part A, even though you vehemently disagree with part B
You can't say you stand for one thing, and then go back on it when somone you don't happen to agree with uses whatever you stand for. Many people are for freedom of speech, as long as the person speaking doesn't disagree with them. It seems some of the boycotters are in that boat.
This isn't about security. This is about an industry wanting to take away the last remains of our rights as consumers and they want to do this with our help. Don't believe the rhetoric, as soon as SDMI is cracked another, tougher to crack scheme will be invented and implemented. Why would we want to help them.
Do you think that for ONE second, boycott or no boycott that SDMI is going to stop trying to develop this. Come on get real! SDMI is only going to change their tune when their product looses in the market place.
Useing your logic and a quote from, (as soon as SDMI is cracked another, tougher to crack scheme will be invented and implemented,) it doesn't really matter if the code is cracked or not now does it. So what's the point, boycott or no boycott? As I said, I hate the idea of the "watermark", but I'm not calling for a boycott on testing the security. I AM calling for a boycott of the final product because that is the ONLY way "we" will win.
This has nothing at all do to with open source software. In fact, in NO way does this contest benefit the Open Source Movement
Imagine this headline "Hacker cracks SDMI watermark" followed closely by "Open Source Community provides super secure watermark" The open source water mark is used to encrypt voice communications. The licsence doesn't allow the encryption of music.
Now we have a VALID (IMHO) use for the technology! Now no one gets that voice message that starts "your mission should you choose to accept it" except for you.
I'm thinking way past what SDMI is trying to do. The idea of a water mark isn't going to go away, no matter how much you whine. So lets find ways to put it to GOOD use, and also lets develop that in the open. If you break SDMI's code you set them back for a short while, but a short while may be all people need to develop an alternative thats acceptable to all.
These are just some ideas, they are not my vision of the future. People in general have to be able to look past their own ranting and see whats down the road. If you really want to change something you have to be realistic. Boycotting SDMI on your own is your business. I'd boycott the final product, I'd also stop buying books from amazon.com if they tried to sell music in that format.
The whole idea of a watermark preventing copying is LAUGHABLE. How easy is it to simply use a program that grabs the audio from your sound card raw, you then write it to any format you see fit, (MP3, WAV, etc) Because something is silly and flawed doesn't mean that companies won't do it. (nee look at the ever popular beenie with a proppelor, still a hot seller!)
You bring up some good point, but in the end watermarks won't go away. The current rants are akin to standing in front of a train holding your hand out telling it to stop as it speeds down the track at 62 MPH (100kph). I prefer to dig up the tracks, and de-rail the sucker. The way to do that is to make sure that SDMI watermarked music fails in the marketplace. The only way to do that is for concerned consumers to band together and NOT buy in droves.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting but some fo the strangest things have Linux drivers, simply because somone took an interest in it. Linux drivers are only as far away as you are willing to hack the box. The neater the box, the more people that want to hack it. The more likely there will be drivers.
I think encryption, spread spectrum wireless and other technologies are responses to governments policing (or repressing depending on your opinion)
It's sad, but in the ever present "WAR ON DRUGS" a lot of civil liberties have been thrown to the way side. In the 1930's a "no knock warrant" would have been laughed out of court. Police dressing up in Ninja suits would have cause a public outrage, but not today. The police say they need more information, and thus more weapons. The pursuit of this information and weaposn fuels some technology.
THen there is the other side of the coin. Drug dealers (if they are smart) employ technology to try and stay one step ahead of the police. Anti-bugging technology super fast scanners and so forth are fueled by concerns that people are being "listened in on". Thousands on boats that have low radar profiles and good top speeds. They even use the "Internet" to communicate which technoliges are successful with each other.
In these examples the Law is fueling a duel between police and drug dealers. So far with BILLIONS wasted, and numerous lives lost the battle still rages on. We could legalize drugs and get off this silly damn merry go round but that would stop the people that are making a profit and doing the R&D into NEW technologies, curtail the DEA's budget and put thousands of hard working drug dealers out of work. (Excuse the run on sentence :)
Just one example of laws fueling technology
The law provides a profit motive for some technologies. Some of the highest profit motive is for technologies that allow people to "skirt" the law.
The specs look pretty good too The AMD 760 MP chipset is a DDR SDRAM solution that can support two 266MHz FSB Athlons. The chipset has advanced buffering to enable maximum transaction concurrency
As with all articles of thsi nature, take it with a grain of salt. I don't expect to see such machine available to any "REAL" people on the street until Dec-Jan time frame. Thats at the earliest.
The Compaq CC compiler specific to Alpha is available for free for Linux. See the compaw web site for the details, sorry no link.
Plan to see SMP as production exceeds demand or at least keeps abreast of it. Also it has been widely reported that AMD is concentrating on introducing the "Sledgehammer" with an SMP MB chipset almost from introduction.
Why all the hassle about region codes, why does it exist in the first place?
Answer: To try and prevent mass illegal copying of disks (A multi million dollars industry in China and the former soviet union). To also allow DVD players in heavily censored countries (china et al) to only be able to play DVD's that are APPROVED of in that country!!
Actual affect of such codes on the illegal copier? None On the public? Added cost, restricted use (what fair use???), and if you happen to travel a lot, your dvd's are worthless when you go home to show Mom and Dad.
DVD is starting to catch on, but as the MPAA continues to do things that just aren't convenient for the consumer, people will continue to thwart the over zealous copyright/censorship efforts. Viscous circle, the more you make it hard for people to do things they EXPECT to be able to do, the more pressure from the consumer for alternatives. This is just another round in a stupid circle.
Funny how the MPAA and the RIAA say "Don't censor us, censorship bad, blah blah blah". Yet they support region codes so that they can sell censored versions of a movie to some country that thinks that a free press and free thinking public should be banned. No Irony there?
Stop the ride I wanna get off.
What would have been the cost for redhat to wait, say for the 2.4 kernel, kde 2.0 and a stable GCC? After all they have a stable distro out, and people seem to like it. I think the problem is that the money counters and stock watchers are getting nervous ("RedHat sales aren't what they used to be *panic* SELL SELL SELL!") Thus they produce a crappy distro, it says "NEW 7.0!" on it, so people will buy it (fools)
The problem with being a publically held company in todays "new economy" is that stock market investors seem to be incredibly short sighted. Investors only care about making a buck from a move in stock prices. When CEO's and CIO's only worry about stock performance and don't look out for the long term growth of an organization then the company is in deep doo doo.
RedHat should have waited, a more stable solution would have been a better image enhancer, better for the company long term (don't have to issue so many bug fixes) Instead they chose to carry on the great tradition that every RedHat .0 distro is sub par.
I'm not saying that this is how AT&T works. If it is, I'm sure the reason your "slam" had to do with somone's pay check and not AT&T's policy. It was some poor slob was just trying to get enough in his pay check to be able to afford a car that started!
The practice IS illegal, and you can asked to be removed from their phone list, and by law they CANNOT contact you for the period of 1 year. You can call your local better business bureau, they have the number to report "slamming" and other abuses.
On the lighter side there was a story about a Telecom company in Texas named them selves idontcare. That way when you started service and were asked "Who would you like for your LD provider" people that said "I Don't care" got assigned to this company.
Don't know if it's true, but it's funny.
Like anything, the solutions isn't as obvious as those non technical people would like it to be.
Many of us are lucky, we are running on systems that are less then 3 years old. Others aren't as lucky, and there are a great many people that can't afford even the most basic new computers. In rural areas where I live people spend 350 bucks for an old P100 monitor speaker and modem and they have to make payments on that! Opera at least gives them a Browser they can use. Even see people use it on a 386, that's impessive.
It's a welcome addition to the Linux community. It gives some other browsers competition If Opera is like it's windoze cousin, it's very lite and fast. I'll have to fire it up an old 486 and see how it runs in Linux. It seems Opera is extending the life of some of my hardware ;)
As chip manufacturers continue to up the clock rates, the returns for the end users diminishes because the rest of the mother board is stuck in 5 or 10 year old technology. Memory bandwidth, FSB architecture and even the operating system all play a large roll how a processor performs. While The technology and clock rates are impressive, until other areas of PC architecture catch up the value to the end user isn't the same as a doubling of the clock rate was 3 years ago.
The last time I saw an aurora it was preceeded by blue acrid smoke coming out of the back of my monitor. Then there was this loud flash. Not sure if I can handle to much more Aurora monitoring.
This is very good news! The problem that scares me is that bind8 compatability may not be all there. This makes updating a large site to BINDv9 is going to be a problem for many ISP's etc.
There are still a couple of areas where we're deficient in support of standards, e.g., we don't support using DNSSEC with wildcards and a BIND version 9.0.0 slave does not forward dynamic updates to the master as it should according to the RFCs. Our intent is to fully implement the standards (and/or help revise the standards to make them more useful to the Internet community).
While waving off other name server implementations (DjbDNS) by saying it doesn't meet current standards, they admit that Bindv9 WON'T mean some of the current standards! In fact it seems that Mr Conrad is in favor of changing some of the standards. Is that to make them more useful, or make them fit Bindv9?
All in all ANYTHING has to be an improvement over the code of Bindv8. The proof will be after Bindv9 has been "in the wild" for a few months.
Lets recap, the software you install can affect the security of your system. Open source software gives you the chance to fix bugs should you find them, or allows other people to fix bugs when they are found. Also gives you a chance to install alternatives. I'm not saying IIS is bad, nor am I saying open source is perfect, I'm just saying that open source solutions for me have been more secure. Part of that is the sysadmin making an informed descion on the packages he installs or compiles. Microsoft has traditionally been opposed to solutions that compete with their own, and many consumers are poorer for it IMHO.
The origianl eye-eye exploit took almost 5 months for a patch. That's scary as it gave total control of the file system to any remote user. 5 months is too long for somone sitting in a production environment to wait for a solution.
Score one for the "ethical hackers", Score one for the anti MS side, Score 2 for those that DON'T run IIS.
The government said Microsoft's proposal "is excessive and would delay resolution of this appeal unnecessarily."
Microsoft's proposal also far exceeds what would be considered standard procedure with the appeals court, say legal experts. "The normal statutory period would be 40, 30 and 15 days," said Andy Gavil, an antitrust professor at Howard University Law School. "That's what's normal under the federal rules of appellate procedure."
This begs the following questions : If you make a contract and then break it and are taken to court is the court case thrown out if the other party no longer exists by the time you get through the appeals process?
If you make many changes AFTER said wrong doing does it change the original charge, and should you not be charged with anything?
Can your changes be introduced as new evidence in an appeal?
This is a typical tatic from Microsoft. They got caught doing something wrong, and by using massive delay tatics blunt the prosecution. Technology moves much faster than the court system, and MS has hinted that this case is no longer relevant and should be let go. With this logic if you killed somone 5 years ago you shouldn't be prosecuted.
The sad thing is that MS should have taken the higher ground. Large companies like Intel and Cisco to name a few have changed some of their practices that were considered "anti-competitive". They are still large and thriving companies.
Some of the business practices of MS are the SAME practices that caused many workers to unionize during the industrial age. Long hours with no compensation, lack of insurance etc. Companies like Cisco doesn't hire tons of workers for 364 days and then drop them when it's time to start paying for health insurance. I think that the biggest danger to MS is if it's low level employees unionize. We are in a tight labor market, and a strike of some type would really hurt. Of course that would force MS to start treating it's employees with a modicum of respect.
Advertisers used to hold certain types of commercials, and certain programming until late at night to avoid exposing children to very adult situations and themes. The problem is that this is no longer the case, and as a responsible parent I am very concerned about what my child watches. I try very hard to control what my child is exposed to, and this is part of my duty as a responsible parent. The problem is that the networks and advertisers don't give a d*mn.
When concerned parents talk about wanting some more control over what is seen on network television they are chided "CENSORSHIP, CENSORSHIP!!! You have the responsibility to monitor your children's viewing, blah, blah blah". Gee sparky, that gets very hard when you are watching what you think is viewing fit for children (say the Olympics) and the advertisements show serial killers in hockey masks, R rated movies with lots of adult innuendo and an announcer screaming about WWF coming to a local arena.
Most so called childrens shows are nothing more than 30 minute advertisements. So much for that contract your talking about. The contract was broken LONG ago by the advertisers and I have no compucttion with deleting commercial content from anything I view.
I hate censorship, and I don't want it. What I would like is the ability to make descions for myself, and to easily control what my child sees. This new device gives me a fighting chance.
In the mean time it should be fun to reverse engineer one of these puppies. I'd like to add an algorythym that detects commercials and automatically zaps them (thus my need for removable Hard Drives). Should be pretty simple, look for the audio signal to jump by 3db and you know that a commercial is starting. (Please note tongue planted in cheek here)
I am very concerned with your product. According to the famous "Wired" magazine your product looks like a marital aid. This of course is of great concern since I actually own the patent on the zippy-fly-teaser. Your product seems to be nothing but a cheap copy of my world renowned self pleaser.
My legal dept. will be in touch, but reverse engineering the shape that took us years of intense study with thousands of subjects is an insult to us! The claim that your product is not designed to provide the same service is propsterous! We take a dim view of attempts to provide products or services based on our hardware!
Sincerly
President of
Zippy marital aid and teaser plasera INC
The net has the ability to connect millions of people, each with their own ideas, and mores. Some people wish to explore differnt ideas, and are open to looking about. Some are very closed minded, and they are able to find other simillairly opinioned people. The white racists can find other racists, but what's interesting is the civil rights leaders can go and talk to those very same racists. He is able to step out of his community and safely (usually) talk to somone, or read about a community where he woulnd't have been welcome.
That my friends is the advantage of the "net community". Interconnection for those that wish to look outside their own world.
It's all about choice, and I think this would be a neat choice for an "e-book" product.
I know this isn't popular here at /. and I'll probably receive more negative Karma for this (as I have for the whole thread, thank you moderators)
BUT You've made some excellent points as well. It's very nice to actually get some insite(sp) and thought out discussion. Also realize that my original comments were posted before 8:00 am......the thought process that produced them may have been a bit shaky! I'd have e-mail you this comment directly, but it's not in your profile.
Now to the meat of the matter
I think the real question is, "What will RIAA's response be if the watermark scheme is broken before or after it is released on the public?"
I think the response will be the same in either case, and that response will be to try again. If somone breaks the watermark 3 days after it's the official standard, so what? I'll bet those nifty SDMI boxes are upgradeable. It takes time for a new format to be accepted in the marketplace, and the recording industry has shown no problems with making your past formats obselete. I don't expect any thing new from them now.
Again, I like your thinking here, I'm just not certain if it is realistic or not
We have to try! There are 2 types of people in the world, people that bitch and moan and do nothing, and people that want to work toward a viable solution. So maybe my idea is a pipe dream. We will never know until we try, and it certainly makes the world think better of us when we ARE trying. Besides I like the idea of an Open Source watermark that is accepted by the masses whose liscence forbids encryption of music, or video or entertainment. :) Next MI film shows Tom Cruise with a his magic watch, with the pengiun logo "Your mission should you choose to accept it!" Open Source watermarked voice messages for secret agents.
I agree completely, but you didn't have to insult my hat.
So we share the same headgear, my problem is that I can't fly with it on.....yet. I still keep that dream alive.
Standing up for your beliefs is not a flaw. The problem is the dictomy of the situation. Here we have a company doing what many people in this community say should be done. That is TEST your security in an open environment. The thing that they are testing is a way for RIAA to distribute music that is NOT readily copied, which many people hate. You have to give them a nod for part A, even though you vehemently disagree with part B
You can't say you stand for one thing, and then go back on it when somone you don't happen to agree with uses whatever you stand for. Many people are for freedom of speech, as long as the person speaking doesn't disagree with them. It seems some of the boycotters are in that boat.
This isn't about security. This is about an industry wanting to take away the last remains of our rights as consumers and they want to do this with our help. Don't believe the rhetoric, as soon as SDMI is cracked another, tougher to crack scheme will be invented and implemented. Why would we want to help them.
Do you think that for ONE second, boycott or no boycott that SDMI is going to stop trying to develop this. Come on get real! SDMI is only going to change their tune when their product looses in the market place.
Useing your logic and a quote from, (as soon as SDMI is cracked another, tougher to crack scheme will be invented and implemented,) it doesn't really matter if the code is cracked or not now does it. So what's the point, boycott or no boycott? As I said, I hate the idea of the "watermark", but I'm not calling for a boycott on testing the security. I AM calling for a boycott of the final product because that is the ONLY way "we" will win.
This has nothing at all do to with open source software. In fact, in NO way does this contest benefit the Open Source Movement
Imagine this headline "Hacker cracks SDMI watermark" followed closely by "Open Source Community provides super secure watermark" The open source water mark is used to encrypt voice communications. The licsence doesn't allow the encryption of music.
Now we have a VALID (IMHO) use for the technology! Now no one gets that voice message that starts "your mission should you choose to accept it" except for you.
I'm thinking way past what SDMI is trying to do. The idea of a water mark isn't going to go away, no matter how much you whine. So lets find ways to put it to GOOD use, and also lets develop that in the open. If you break SDMI's code you set them back for a short while, but a short while may be all people need to develop an alternative thats acceptable to all.
These are just some ideas, they are not my vision of the future. People in general have to be able to look past their own ranting and see whats down the road. If you really want to change something you have to be realistic. Boycotting SDMI on your own is your business. I'd boycott the final product, I'd also stop buying books from amazon.com if they tried to sell music in that format.
The whole idea of a watermark preventing copying is LAUGHABLE. How easy is it to simply use a program that grabs the audio from your sound card raw, you then write it to any format you see fit, (MP3, WAV, etc) Because something is silly and flawed doesn't mean that companies won't do it. (nee look at the ever popular beenie with a proppelor, still a hot seller!)
You bring up some good point, but in the end watermarks won't go away. The current rants are akin to standing in front of a train holding your hand out telling it to stop as it speeds down the track at 62 MPH (100kph). I prefer to dig up the tracks, and de-rail the sucker. The way to do that is to make sure that SDMI watermarked music fails in the marketplace. The only way to do that is for concerned consumers to band together and NOT buy in droves.