Something to point out here - your handrolled radio isn't going to receive the RDS codes in the first place, so why would you care if it can't authenticate them?:)
Picture this: Your radio stores the public keys of the legitimate traffic alert agencies out there. When an alert goes out, the agency signs the RDS codes it's about to transmit, and if the signature checks out, your radio switches over. Boom, bye-bye radio pirates.
This'd probably be really easy to implement in hardware - drive the cost of the radio up a couple bucks, at most.
The case of hacking Office to port it to Linux (that'd be one hell of a feat, by the way) is clearly illegal. You can't distribute Office, only Microsoft can, and if you modify it, you end up with a derived work that still falls under Microsoft's copyright.
DeCSS, though, does not contain any copyrighted code - it contains an independently developed implementation of CSS, and a 40-bit key that unlocks current DVDs. You can't copyright those five bytes.
The situation here is analogous to that faced by the developers of Wine - they aren't hacking individual applications, they're reverse engineering the overall system in order to bring about interoperability. The difference is that the CSS code can also be used to facilitate piracy (though DVD piracy is uneconomical). It has a legitimate use, though, and is therefore IMHO legally protected.
Recall that the moderators are members of the Slashdot community - we're self-regulated here. If you think you're in a community surrounded by morons, why are you here? Nobody's making you read the comments; nobody's making you browse at a level above -1. If you want unregulated Slashdot, go to it - get an account, see all posts, and turn off score display. Takes about five minutes. But you don't do this - you bitch about how moderators are somehow corrupt.
If you disagree with the actions of moderators, you can make a difference - meta moderate, or use your own moderator points to reverse moderations you feel are bad. You don't do this - you gripe about moderators being morons.
There's plenty of real opportunites out there for you to make a difference - or, if you feel that isn't enough, to leave.
Another thing that bothers me about this whole topic: the idea of "karma whoring." You seem to think that people like BOred are posting well-written, well-thought out posts solely to inflate their karma. You are, of course, entirely wrong. Ever consider that these so-called "karma whores" might actually be posting because they want to contribute to the discussion? Are you jealous of correct grammar?
If I turn in a well-written essay for English class, am I "grade whoring?" I guess so - I want a good grade, so I'm willing to do quality work in order to get that grade. If I do exemplary work at my place of employment, am I "salary whoring?" Must be - I want money, so I put in an honest day's work for it.
But that isn't the reason why I write my papers well, or work hard; it's not about the grade or the money, it's about knowing that I can be proud of what I've written or done. Same with posters here - they want to feel pride that they've contributed to a discussion, pride that they're part of a community of intelligent discourse.
You must not feel that pride. You just moan about 'karma whores.' Apparently, polluting the discussion with intelligence and clarity is some kind of breach of etiquette for you.
David Brin's contribution to the Foundation series, Foundation and Chaos, goes deeply into the moral dillemas experienced by robots, guided primarily not by the Three Laws but their own consciences. A good read.
Slashdot is a community, and in a community, there are standards of behavior that are created and enforced. The restrictions on posting are there because we, the community, would rather be subject to rating and moderation than have to read many hundreds of lame, pointless posts like yours.
Your suggestion that you're plastering your crap all over this discussion in order to "SHOW ROB AND THE REST OF THE GANG THEIR STUPIDITY" and "[show] WHAT A POS THE SYSTEM IS" is complete bunk. This is like a vandal smashing windows to demonstrate the fact that the police cannot stop every crime - true, but it's a rationalization for juvenile behavior that completely lacks a logical backing.
If you want to be a part of this community, you're going to have to follow its rules voluntarily - this is why the Slashdot community works, and this is why society works; most people follow the rules despite the fact that they know that the rules may not get enforced.
You suggest the system is broken. That comes from the premise that the system should be able to stop any type of lameness that comes into it, and that's a completely wrong interpretation of what the moderation system is there for. The problem isn't the (very well-thought-out) technology that Rob et al have given us to rate one another, it's the hostile element which doesn't want to contribute, the people who just want to force their immature ranting onto everyone else.
You aren't pointing out what's wrong with the system in your post. You are what's wrong with the system.
Contribute or don't contribute to the Linux community - you still get the benefit of the work of everyone who does. Your benefit does not cause others to receive less gain from Linux.
Contrast a communist system for the production and distribution of material goods. Your car, or house, or loaf of bread, is one less car, or house, or loaf of bread for someone else. Communism doesn't work for a material economy, because of the problem of scarcity.
Linux isn't scarce. The more it's used, the better and more abundant it gets.
But for Amazon-scale operations, this won't really be a problem - Microsoft is selling a license for $2000 that allows unlimited concurrent accesses over the 'Net. That's pretty high for what you're getting (especially considering a Linux server running Apache can serve an unlimited number of users (from a licensing, not technical, standpoint) for zero dollars), but it's a drop in the bucket for any organization that's actually going to need it.
It would sort of suck for your customers to see "Sorry, we can't process your order right now, because there are five other people ordering right now, and despite the fact that our system could easily handle a hundred more, we didn't shell out enough to Microsoft..."
My intro to compsci teacher made a great point the first day of class - once you know how to do something, you should teach it to a computer. This has two benefits for you:
You're certain you know how to do this, because you just described it in the excruciating detail needed for a computer to understand it, and
You no longer have to do it again; you're spared from boring, repetitive work.
The key, of course, is that you know what you're doing first. You haven't learned matrix math because you can type A^-1 into your TI-86 and get back the inverse of A. You haven't learned calculus because you can go to Mathematica's integrator page and tell me what the integral of sine squared of X is.
Using tools is great once you know the underlying stuff, but if you skip that step, you've had all the fundamentals of math abstracted out from under you. You'll never make mathematical progress, because you don't know the basics. Your hand calculator really is better than you, because it was programmed by engineers and mathematicians who knew what they were doing.
Isaac Asimov wrote a truly excellent short story about the consequences of the path you're talking about. Anyone remember the name?
Huh? The 17th is an amendment _to_ the Constitution. Amendments are Constitutional, since the process for amendment is clearly spelled out in Article V.
If the amendment is ratified, it becomes part of the Constitution provided it does not:
Amend Article 1, Section 9, Clauses 1 or 4 prior to 1808. These are, respectively, a prohibition on Congress forbidding states from admitting certain people into their borders (the intent was to keep Congress from abolishing slavery), and a prohibition on direct taxes on the people.
Both of these clauses have since basically been obliterated; Clause 1 is still essentially in effect but its effect has been totally gutted by the 13th-15th Amendments. Clause 4 was amended by the 16th Amendment in 1913.
Remove the "equal suffrage in the Senate" of a state without that state's consent. The 17th amendment leaves each state with two senators, so this provision has not been violated.
So, the 17th Amendment was Constitutional to insert into the Constitution. Now that it's part of the Constitution, it can't be repugnant to the Constitution - that would be saying that the Constitution is repugnant to itself, an obviously impossible condition.
One of the most tried-and-true advertising strategies in a marketroid's playbook is to get the brand name into your consciousness, usually by repeating it over and over again. Next TV commercial you see, count how many times the brand name is said aloud. Contrast that with how many times you'd expect it to be said aloud in normal conversation.
I wonder how many times the words "Pizza Hut" have come up in this discussion alone. Multiply by thousands of people talking about it around the water cooler, a story on every local news station's "...and now, something funny" segment, and kazillions of kilobytes of discussion elsewhere on the 'net.
The fact that only a few people will actually see an image of the Pizza Hut logo on the rocket is far overshadowed by the fact that people will be talking about the act, over and over, and using the words "Pizza Hut," over and over.
I think the advertising is working on me - I want a pizza.
Actually, as long as the search of an area is legal, any illegal items found in that area are fair game, regardless of what the original target of the search was.
The GPL wasn't written by Stallman all by himself. Remember, he lives a few blocks from the country's most prestigious law school - brillant legal minds have looked over the language and declared it enforceable.
I have yet to see any direct legal challenge to the GPL as a general document - perhaps individual implementations of the GPL could be challenged, but the document as a whole is sound, as I understand it.
Exactly what I was thinking after I read this article. Encrypted information could be thought of as secret documents kept in a strongly locked box.
If law enforcement gains probable cause that I have illegal items, or evidence of illegal activity, in my lockbox, they can get a subpoena to force me to open the box. As you pointed out, if I refuse, I go to jail, and I can be kept in jail while the box is being forcibly opened.
Alternatively, with a search warrant the box can be seized as evidence and the law enforcement agency can break open the box without my cooperation. This breaking job would be a forensic activity, and I as the defendant, should the evidence within the box cause me to come to trial, have the right to question the officer who opened the box. The methods used to open the box are perfectly germane to discuss in court; many cases are sunk by reasonable doubt brought on by evidence mishandling.
The fact that my box is strongly or weakly locked should not matter, from a legal standpoint. It could be a massive, bank-quality safe, or an unlocked file cabinet; in either case, law enforcement must leave it alone unless they go through the proper channels to gain the right to sieze the evidence within the box. They certainly don't have the right to tell me how strongly I may lock my private documents - because, again, if it's beyond their capacity to open, they just get a judge to order me to, under penalty of prison.
Applying these principles to crypto, this means that a search warrant (or the equivalent, a wiretap approval from a judge) should be necessary to collect my information, either covertly or by direct siezure of the media on which the information lies. The two activities should be legally equivalent. Once the information has been legally siezed, the law enforcement agency may use its computational or cryptanalytical resources to crack my message, without needing another warrant to do so. (These attacks should only be allowed against data collected legally, of course.)
If it's beyond law enforcement's capacity to crack the crypto in question, or such a crack attack would take unreasonably long (hence denying me my right to a speedy trial), an order should be obtainable from a judge which forces me to decrypt.
If law enforcement took the first option, a cryptanalytic attack, when they bring the evidence gathered by that attack against me at trial, I should have the right to inquire, and get truthful answers, as to how the information was intercepted and how the decryption attack was performed. This goes back to questioning the methods of law enforcement, and it's perfectly valid for me to have this right. To have evidence thrown before me, and me not to have the right to question its source, is a gross infringement on my basic rights of due process.
I think this approach solves several problems with crypto law. The "decrypt it for us or go to jail" provision may seem heavy-handed, but remember that by the time I'm told that, a judge has been informed and has decided on probable cause. And I'm not just rotting in jail - presumably, my lawyer is appealing the order.
At the same time, accountability for law enforcement is maintained; evidence-gathering is subject to public scrutiny, and illegal wiretaps and decrypts of those wiretaps remain illegal, unusable at trial..
According to the PGP DH vs. RSA FAQ, one of the primes used to generate DH keys is selected from a limited set, but the preselection does not severely impact security, and you're given the option to spend the time to generate your own prime.
Neomagic chipsets are fully, free-software supported, by either an XF_Com (using RH/Precision Insight's terms, this means an X server whose license meets the requirements for inclusion into XFree86 proper, but has not yet been included by the XFree developers) or XFree86 >=3.3.3.
The only problem is the audio (the Neomagic 256AV is a combined video/audio chipset); at least on my Dell Inspiron 3500, the software mixer isn't fully lined up with the features of the hardware, so I can't, for instance, turn up the volume on my microphone, leaving that particular piece of hardware basically useless on my laptop.
If they designed it right, probably less battery power per song. The CD could be spun at less than 1x (because an mp3 contains, kilobyte-for-kilobyte, far less bits per minute than does a raw CD audio stream). Keeping the disc spinning is the primary battery drain in a conventional Discman; spinning the CD more slowly equates to burning less battery. I would think that the electrical savings attained from doing this would more than make up for the additional milliwatts spent on powering decoder chips.
Anyone know if there are problems with spinning a CD beneath 1x? (Does it grind to a halt or something below that speed?)
My dad owns a hardware store, and that feature you mentioned is in his computer system already. It even understands what items sell seasonally (garden hoses, lawn mower blades, pipe insulation, what-have-you) and orders more during times of heavy sales.
There is no direct TT font support in XFree86 3.3.3.1, which is what RH6 ships with. XFree86 4.0 will include TTF support.
Until it comes out, you can use the free font server xfstt to use your TTFs. You don't have to move them at all, just mount your Windows partition and tell xfstt to look in your windows/fonts directory.
How do I know it works? Because I read your message in Arial.
Slashdot Mirror
Something to point out here - your handrolled radio isn't going to receive the RDS codes in the first place, so why would you care if it can't authenticate them? :)
This'd probably be really easy to implement in hardware - drive the cost of the radio up a couple bucks, at most.
DeCSS, though, does not contain any copyrighted code - it contains an independently developed implementation of CSS, and a 40-bit key that unlocks current DVDs. You can't copyright those five bytes.
The situation here is analogous to that faced by the developers of Wine - they aren't hacking individual applications, they're reverse engineering the overall system in order to bring about interoperability. The difference is that the CSS code can also be used to facilitate piracy (though DVD piracy is uneconomical). It has a legitimate use, though, and is therefore IMHO legally protected.
6. Bxd3
If you disagree with the actions of moderators, you can make a difference - meta moderate, or use your own moderator points to reverse moderations you feel are bad. You don't do this - you gripe about moderators being morons.
There's plenty of real opportunites out there for you to make a difference - or, if you feel that isn't enough, to leave.
Another thing that bothers me about this whole topic: the idea of "karma whoring." You seem to think that people like BOred are posting well-written, well-thought out posts solely to inflate their karma. You are, of course, entirely wrong. Ever consider that these so-called "karma whores" might actually be posting because they want to contribute to the discussion? Are you jealous of correct grammar?
If I turn in a well-written essay for English class, am I "grade whoring?" I guess so - I want a good grade, so I'm willing to do quality work in order to get that grade. If I do exemplary work at my place of employment, am I "salary whoring?" Must be - I want money, so I put in an honest day's work for it.
But that isn't the reason why I write my papers well, or work hard; it's not about the grade or the money, it's about knowing that I can be proud of what I've written or done. Same with posters here - they want to feel pride that they've contributed to a discussion, pride that they're part of a community of intelligent discourse.
You must not feel that pride. You just moan about 'karma whores.' Apparently, polluting the discussion with intelligence and clarity is some kind of breach of etiquette for you.
The title is Foundation's Triumph.
David Brin's contribution to the Foundation series, Foundation and Chaos, goes deeply into the moral dillemas experienced by robots, guided primarily not by the Three Laws but their own consciences. A good read.
Slashdot is a community, and in a community, there are standards of behavior that are created and enforced. The restrictions on posting are there because we, the community, would rather be subject to rating and moderation than have to read many hundreds of lame, pointless posts like yours.
Your suggestion that you're plastering your crap all over this discussion in order to "SHOW ROB AND THE REST OF THE GANG THEIR STUPIDITY" and "[show] WHAT A POS THE SYSTEM IS" is complete bunk. This is like a vandal smashing windows to demonstrate the fact that the police cannot stop every crime - true, but it's a rationalization for juvenile behavior that completely lacks a logical backing.
If you want to be a part of this community, you're going to have to follow its rules voluntarily - this is why the Slashdot community works, and this is why society works; most people follow the rules despite the fact that they know that the rules may not get enforced.
You suggest the system is broken. That comes from the premise that the system should be able to stop any type of lameness that comes into it, and that's a completely wrong interpretation of what the moderation system is there for. The problem isn't the (very well-thought-out) technology that Rob et al have given us to rate one another, it's the hostile element which doesn't want to contribute, the people who just want to force their immature ranting onto everyone else.
You aren't pointing out what's wrong with the system in your post. You are what's wrong with the system.
I believe it once stood for Stanford User Network, but I could be wrong.
I can just see my grandmother going around her garden, tending to her roses, her marigolds, her ezenias...
"Giving Thanks For The Internet Warfare"
"Descent into Post-Columbine Flamers"
"Beware the Online Net"
Contribute or don't contribute to the Linux community - you still get the benefit of the work of everyone who does. Your benefit does not cause others to receive less gain from Linux.
Contrast a communist system for the production and distribution of material goods. Your car, or house, or loaf of bread, is one less car, or house, or loaf of bread for someone else. Communism doesn't work for a material economy, because of the problem of scarcity.
Linux isn't scarce. The more it's used, the better and more abundant it gets.
But for Amazon-scale operations, this won't really be a problem - Microsoft is selling a license for $2000 that allows unlimited concurrent accesses over the 'Net. That's pretty high for what you're getting (especially considering a Linux server running Apache can serve an unlimited number of users (from a licensing, not technical, standpoint) for zero dollars), but it's a drop in the bucket for any organization that's actually going to need it.
It would sort of suck for your customers to see "Sorry, we can't process your order right now, because there are five other people ordering right now, and despite the fact that our system could easily handle a hundred more, we didn't shell out enough to Microsoft..."
Except for the Collin Street Bakery...
Mmm...donuts...really good donuts...
- You're certain you know how to do this, because you just described it in the excruciating detail needed for a computer to understand it, and
- You no longer have to do it again; you're spared from boring, repetitive work.
The key, of course, is that you know what you're doing first. You haven't learned matrix math because you can type A^-1 into your TI-86 and get back the inverse of A. You haven't learned calculus because you can go to Mathematica's integrator page and tell me what the integral of sine squared of X is.Using tools is great once you know the underlying stuff, but if you skip that step, you've had all the fundamentals of math abstracted out from under you. You'll never make mathematical progress, because you don't know the basics. Your hand calculator really is better than you, because it was programmed by engineers and mathematicians who knew what they were doing.
Isaac Asimov wrote a truly excellent short story about the consequences of the path you're talking about. Anyone remember the name?
If the amendment is ratified, it becomes part of the Constitution provided it does not:
- Amend Article 1, Section 9, Clauses 1 or 4 prior to 1808. These are, respectively, a prohibition on Congress forbidding states from admitting certain people into their borders (the intent was to keep Congress from abolishing slavery), and a prohibition on direct taxes on the people.
- Remove the "equal suffrage in the Senate" of a state without that state's consent. The 17th amendment leaves each state with two senators, so this provision has not been violated.
So, the 17th Amendment was Constitutional to insert into the Constitution. Now that it's part of the Constitution, it can't be repugnant to the Constitution - that would be saying that the Constitution is repugnant to itself, an obviously impossible condition.Both of these clauses have since basically been obliterated; Clause 1 is still essentially in effect but its effect has been totally gutted by the 13th-15th Amendments. Clause 4 was amended by the 16th Amendment in 1913.
IANAL.
One of the most tried-and-true advertising strategies in a marketroid's playbook is to get the brand name into your consciousness, usually by repeating it over and over again. Next TV commercial you see, count how many times the brand name is said aloud. Contrast that with how many times you'd expect it to be said aloud in normal conversation.
I wonder how many times the words "Pizza Hut" have come up in this discussion alone. Multiply by thousands of people talking about it around the water cooler, a story on every local news station's "...and now, something funny" segment, and kazillions of kilobytes of discussion elsewhere on the 'net.
The fact that only a few people will actually see an image of the Pizza Hut logo on the rocket is far overshadowed by the fact that people will be talking about the act, over and over, and using the words "Pizza Hut," over and over.
I think the advertising is working on me - I want a pizza.
I'm calling Papa John's right now :)
Actually, as long as the search of an area is legal, any illegal items found in that area are fair game, regardless of what the original target of the search was.
I have yet to see any direct legal challenge to the GPL as a general document - perhaps individual implementations of the GPL could be challenged, but the document as a whole is sound, as I understand it.
If law enforcement gains probable cause that I have illegal items, or evidence of illegal activity, in my lockbox, they can get a subpoena to force me to open the box. As you pointed out, if I refuse, I go to jail, and I can be kept in jail while the box is being forcibly opened.
Alternatively, with a search warrant the box can be seized as evidence and the law enforcement agency can break open the box without my cooperation. This breaking job would be a forensic activity, and I as the defendant, should the evidence within the box cause me to come to trial, have the right to question the officer who opened the box. The methods used to open the box are perfectly germane to discuss in court; many cases are sunk by reasonable doubt brought on by evidence mishandling.
The fact that my box is strongly or weakly locked should not matter, from a legal standpoint. It could be a massive, bank-quality safe, or an unlocked file cabinet; in either case, law enforcement must leave it alone unless they go through the proper channels to gain the right to sieze the evidence within the box. They certainly don't have the right to tell me how strongly I may lock my private documents - because, again, if it's beyond their capacity to open, they just get a judge to order me to, under penalty of prison.
Applying these principles to crypto, this means that a search warrant (or the equivalent, a wiretap approval from a judge) should be necessary to collect my information, either covertly or by direct siezure of the media on which the information lies. The two activities should be legally equivalent. Once the information has been legally siezed, the law enforcement agency may use its computational or cryptanalytical resources to crack my message, without needing another warrant to do so. (These attacks should only be allowed against data collected legally, of course.)
If it's beyond law enforcement's capacity to crack the crypto in question, or such a crack attack would take unreasonably long (hence denying me my right to a speedy trial), an order should be obtainable from a judge which forces me to decrypt.
If law enforcement took the first option, a cryptanalytic attack, when they bring the evidence gathered by that attack against me at trial, I should have the right to inquire, and get truthful answers, as to how the information was intercepted and how the decryption attack was performed. This goes back to questioning the methods of law enforcement, and it's perfectly valid for me to have this right. To have evidence thrown before me, and me not to have the right to question its source, is a gross infringement on my basic rights of due process.
I think this approach solves several problems with crypto law. The "decrypt it for us or go to jail" provision may seem heavy-handed, but remember that by the time I'm told that, a judge has been informed and has decided on probable cause. And I'm not just rotting in jail - presumably, my lawyer is appealing the order.
At the same time, accountability for law enforcement is maintained; evidence-gathering is subject to public scrutiny, and illegal wiretaps and decrypts of those wiretaps remain illegal, unusable at trial..
According to the PGP DH vs. RSA FAQ, one of the primes used to generate DH keys is selected from a limited set, but the preselection does not severely impact security, and you're given the option to spend the time to generate your own prime.
The only problem is the audio (the Neomagic 256AV is a combined video/audio chipset); at least on my Dell Inspiron 3500, the software mixer isn't fully lined up with the features of the hardware, so I can't, for instance, turn up the volume on my microphone, leaving that particular piece of hardware basically useless on my laptop.
But graphics work just fine.
Anyone know if there are problems with spinning a CD beneath 1x? (Does it grind to a halt or something below that speed?)
My dad owns a hardware store, and that feature you mentioned is in his computer system already. It even understands what items sell seasonally (garden hoses, lawn mower blades, pipe insulation, what-have-you) and orders more during times of heavy sales.
Until it comes out, you can use the free font server xfstt to use your TTFs. You don't have to move them at all, just mount your Windows partition and tell xfstt to look in your windows/fonts directory.
How do I know it works? Because I read your message in Arial.