Bitcoin is the open, decentralized and open-source banking API.
Despite what you may have heard, the technology is thriving and the number of developers, projects and startups in the space is exploding. 2015 is on track to be a $1b investment year for bitcoin, most invested in USD (not bitcoin) in more than 700 startups.
It's a lot more than a currency, it's the Internet of Money, or Money-over-IP (MOIP). Read the Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, every geek should.
Firstly you can disable the chip from BIOS or driver software
Secondly there are some good uses for it: I use it to store web site passwords, keys and certificates. On my laptop (Thinkpad T43) it is connected to the fingerprint scanner so I can enforce two-factor auth. (finger swipe AND passphrase). I also store the keys for encrypted disk volumes in the TPM (also part of the software IBM/Lenovo offers for the TPM).
No software can access the TPM without my consent, because it requires finger and password.
Also notable: This finding is more puzzling because Enceladus is not thought to have "volcanic" activity. It is too small and cold to sustain a molten core, or plate tectonics. Which makes this finding the ultimate irony, since Enceladus is the ancient greek god/giant of volcanos, who was burried under mount Etna, hence the volcano there.
When they named Enceladus, the moon was considered incapable of sustaining volcanic activity, but maybe the name changed all that!
Yeah, why bother paying for something that is free, when you could get a high quality for pay version if they chose to distribute one. It surely is a losing strategy. Imagine for exmaple if people could buy expensive bottled water when they can get decent quality from their tap.. No one would... Oh, hang on, Evian makes billions that way.
Never mind
I have a fully paid HBO on my cable, but no TV set. I pay up for my cable so that I can feel morally safe when I use the Internet as a TIVO. If they sold me good quality fast downloads (DRM unencumbered) I WOULD PAY FOR THEM.
It will only take one of them to break from the herd and the game is over. I'm not ready to boycott HBO yet, but I haven't bought or downloaded music for 4 years because of RIAA. If they want to force consumers to pick sides on a war against the Internet, they should consider the possibility that consumers will not pick their side.
Doubt - On the touchy issue of security, Ballmer also dismissed the notion that Linux is more secure than Windows, saying that Linux would be attacked just as frequently as Windows if the open source operating system had as large a share of the operating system market as Windows.
On an analysis of the concept of "more popular systems just get attacked, that's why they *appear* less secure.. If linux was as popular blah blah" see the following article.
Short story: Apache vs IIS conclusively proves that larger market share does not correspond to more security problems. Eat that!
Read here for more info, half way down the article: http://tinyurl.com/65sxt
Google can leverage its search technology by logging "public" IM conversations and making them indexable. Users can pick if they want their chat room/IM conversation public and have everything indexed.
You could do an interview with someone, and have it captured and indexed. Or the IETF could hold a committe meetting in a public chat room, knowing that there is an instant public archive.
Someone searching might find a snippet of a conversation. From there, Google could provide the full thread by moving backwards or forwards from the snippet that was a hit.
Of course, most conversations would be private, but some might choose to have public discussions. As long as it's not evil.
I have explicitely stated in my will that all intellectual property work that I have created which has not been assigned by me to another party (ie any employers who have rights to the work) shall immediatelly be released under an open source license and the ownership of the copyright shall be transfered to the FSF for them to do as they choose.
I have told my relatives about my wishes and the location of my data. I have put passwords in escrow with a close friend.
I had this exact same problem. I got an offer and got a start date. Then they showed me an employment contract containing IP ownership rules pretty much like you described them. I told them very openly that I had a problem with some of the clauses and would like to make some modifications to the contract. They had no problem. Contrary to what you might see here, many people modify their contracts and it is not assumed that you sign what they give you. For the vast majority of employees that is the case, but they didn't have a problem making reasonable modifications.
My lawyer explicitely exempted a list of 12 areas of intellectual property where I had prior developments. Also exampted were 2 open source projects I was working on. Further modifications were made to the contract to ensure it was in my interest. In the end, my lawyer and their lawyer exchanged ammended contracts a few times and reached an agreements. Finally, we reached a mutually agreeable contract.
I had one of the best employer-employee relationships with this company. When I eventually left a few months ago it was on very good terms and they have even asked for my help occassionally on a 1099 basis.
While we were working on the agreement, I signed a copy of it with all the other parts that I could agree to and the parts I couldn't agree to crossed out and marked "under negotiation". That way they had NDA and liability stuff covered while we haggled over IP,
Overall cost me about $3k in lawyer fees. I would recommend using a lawyer comfortable with IP issues.
Maybe the reason the rates have dropped is because we all already have over 200GB of stuff on our disks and don't need to download anything else published by a RIAA company. Maybe we are only downloading indie stuff from networks they can't see.
Also, here's what I don't see in this report: Did their sales go up? Or did they just manage to turn people off music altogether?
Observe: verb-subject agreement The regular mangling of this greek-derived word is a rather puzzling phenomenon. There are more puzzling phenomena in nature.
"If you have "non-DRM hardware" pretty much all that accomplished is that YOU get locked out. You can't run any of the new software. You can't use any of the new files. You get locked out of more and more websites."
I think you need to remember the 32 to 1 ratio of populations and re-define your concept of "out". If "out" is 32 times bigger than "in", who exactly wants to be "in"?
"Look at the marchers! My son is the only one marching in step! Everyone ELSE is out-of-step"
With the population growth, the Internet adoption growth, the "wiring" groth of places like South Korea and the IT degrees coming out of India, if they are "out" then I want to be "out" too. It's a bit like CompuServe in the old days, trying ot persuade people that their "internet" was better than THE Internet. Eventually, CompuServe people decided they wanted to be "out" with all the cool people. Same thing happened with AOL.
and, yes I know "ethical hacking" is not the "correct" term to use. But this is a politician and this term they will understand. Educating one issue at a time...
I am a constituent in your district. I am writing to thank you for supporting HR 2339 and to tell you how important this issue is to me. When I saw you had co-sponsored the bill, I was very pleased. I recently moved to this area, and previously had the pleasure of Rep. Nadler of NY as my representative. Your voting record indicates that you are representing us very well.
HR2239 is very important to me for two reasons:
As a citizen, I was ashamed of Florida 2000 and found the whole mess reminiscent of a third world country. We are still paying the price of that election with GWB's policies. I fear that next time we won't even know we have had an election stolen.
As a professional, I have been in the computer security business for over 12 years. I currently lead a global consulting practice specialising in computer security (we are based in NYC). I was very supportive of the analysis conducted by John Hopkins and I was glad to finally see someone discuss this serious issue. In my business I am responsible for securing some of the most sensitive systems such as banks, pharmaceutical R&D etc. I have a lot of experience both in securing and in "testing" systems. In our business we call this "ethical hacking" and we get paid to try to break into systems. I have seen how easy it is to subvert the security of many commercial systems. After reading the Johns Hopkins analysis of the Diebold system I was shocked at the level of risk these systems would introduce. I seriously believe that it is possible not only to compromise them, but to do so en-mass in a way that could subvert an entire presidential election. Even worse, I believe this can be done with subtlety so that it is undetected. This means our very system of democracy is at stake. In a way I wonder whether I should be surprised at the fact that republicans do not worry about this, or whether I should be concerned that they have reasons not to worry.
Your actions in this matter are admirable and of great importance. You have my support.
I have upgraded all our RAQs to the newest debian (woody/stable) distribution. The RAQ can be firmware upgraded to support 2.4 kernels. Add to that a modern distribution and it becomes a pretty good server. As for the ssh patch: apt-get upgrade fixed that within an hour of the anouncement. Debian rules!
Actually I'm British and I live in the US. I am just as appalled by the situation here, I can assure you. But I also remember how much of a police state London was in when I left. I lived there for over 10 years. So, I know both the kettle and the pot.
People of Jewish ancestry up to two generations removed must now wear a yellow star on their armband and have it visible at all times. Police assured us that honest jews have nothing to fear as the system will no be used to discriminate against them.
Now imagine if today they wanted to do the same. All they now need is a new database which can correlate jews to license plates and they can effectively follow anyone and efficiently exterminate them.
If you give someone the power to very efficiently track anyone in the country they might not abuise it now. But as soon as an abusive government comes into power you are in a wordl of trouble.
60% of the Internet is used to transfer entertainment content. Some speculate that there is also business content and other types of content hogging the network. ISPs who "built" the Internet are outraged at the fact that they now actually have to transfer data from one customer to another: "We never envisioned people would actually want to use the bandwidth we sold them. Frankly we are shocked"
In related news today, cable and satellite providers have also detected an alarming amount of entertainment content being received by their customers.
No actually, we will all start using the argument about guns.
s/knife/gun/g in your argument above and you will see that the VAST MAJORITY of guns "uses" are illegal and lethal. The police only actually use their guns rarely. Most guns are used (at least in the US for example's sake) illegaly in the commission of crimes. And they don't just result in intellectual property or even tangible property damages. They result in death. Yet they are not only legal, they are constitutionally protected. This is because the non-infringing use (state militias, bearing arms etc. see 2nd Amendment) is presumable important enough. There are several thousand gun deaths in the US (homicide and suicide) every year. The "lawful" use of guns represents a tiny fraction. So to go back to your argument: The point is not what the relative percentage of lawful use is. The point is: "Is there any substantial non-infringing use". Doesn't have to be the primary use. Doesn't have to be the majority of use. It just has to have a substantial use that is non-infringing.
Some examples of important (non-infringing) p2p uses that are being developed (perhaps not receiving as much media coverage) - Hive Cache (distributed backup) - Distributed IM services - Freenet (Censorship free data replication)
Just wait until wireless takes off. P2P is the perfect way to route packets over an ad-hoc wireless network. I foresee a very significant paradigm shift for networking from static to p2p.
Sure, right now it's all about piracy. But there is a lot more to p2p than just that. Several important academic conferences and research institutions are focusing on it.
If you have broadband you can now have a phone line and not pay a single "FCC" surcharge. Vonage offers IP telephony for residential and business. You plug in your normal phone and it routes over IP. The cost is $39.99 a month, with NO surcharges and includes all local/regional/national calls free, voicemail, CLI, CW, forwarding.
Best feature? I don't pay any of the phone companies a cent!
As a consumer of "pirated" movies, I can tell you that the vast majority of new releases are not "cams" (ie camcoder in theater) but "screeners". Screeners are special "preview" DVDs given to movie critics and award critics for "screening" purposes. These then end up ripped and dumped on the file-sharing networks even before the movies hit the theaters. All the movies currently showing this week at my local theater in NY have been available for at least a few weeks as high quality "screeners". As ever, the movie studios cannot solve the real problem behind movie piracy: INSIDERS
Do you know what really pisses me off? For the last two years I have been paying $3 a month on my phone bill for "Number Portability Charge". Whenever I have actually tried to "port" my number there is always a reason why it can't be done.
I'm sick and tired of telcos. This month I am moving to a new home so I did some research into VoIP. I found a service from Vonage which allows me to setup a VoIP connection to a POTS system over broadband. It is SIP and H323 compatible. It costs only $39.99 a month and gives me unlimited free calls everywhere in the US and Canada, anytime. Not only that, but because it isn't classified as a communications service there are no surcharges. Just for comparison, Verizon offers a similar flat fee package for $64.99. The taxes and surcharges that they conveniently separate from the price add another $40 per month.
Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin is the open, decentralized and open-source banking API.
Despite what you may have heard, the technology is thriving and the number of developers, projects and startups in the space is exploding. 2015 is on track to be a $1b investment year for bitcoin, most invested in USD (not bitcoin) in more than 700 startups.
It's a lot more than a currency, it's the Internet of Money, or Money-over-IP (MOIP). Read the Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, every geek should.
Firstly you can disable the chip from BIOS or driver software
Secondly there are some good uses for it: I use it to store web site passwords, keys and certificates. On my laptop (Thinkpad T43) it is connected to the fingerprint scanner so I can enforce two-factor auth. (finger swipe AND passphrase). I also store the keys for encrypted disk volumes in the TPM (also part of the software IBM/Lenovo offers for the TPM).
No software can access the TPM without my consent, because it requires finger and password.
Also notable: This finding is more puzzling because Enceladus is not thought to have "volcanic" activity. It is too small and cold to sustain a molten core, or plate tectonics. Which makes this finding the ultimate irony, since Enceladus is the ancient greek god/giant of volcanos, who was burried under mount Etna, hence the volcano there.
When they named Enceladus, the moon was considered incapable of sustaining volcanic activity, but maybe the name changed all that!
I'm also in NY, but rather than glee I have a better plan:
WHERE CAN I BUY SOME OF THESE WASPS?
I have a plentiful food source for them.
Yeah, why bother paying for something that is free, when you could get a high quality for pay version if they chose to distribute one. It surely is a losing strategy. Imagine for exmaple if people could buy expensive bottled water when they can get decent quality from their tap.. No one would... Oh, hang on, Evian makes billions that way.
Never mind
I have a fully paid HBO on my cable, but no TV set. I pay up for my cable so that I can feel morally safe when I use the Internet as a TIVO. If they sold me good quality fast downloads (DRM unencumbered) I WOULD PAY FOR THEM.
It will only take one of them to break from the herd and the game is over. I'm not ready to boycott HBO yet, but I haven't bought or downloaded music for 4 years because of RIAA. If they want to force consumers to pick sides on a war against the Internet, they should consider the possibility that consumers will not pick their side.
Yeah, but magazines are easier to re-load in a hurry
Doubt - On the touchy issue of security, Ballmer also dismissed the notion that Linux is more secure than Windows, saying that Linux would be attacked just as frequently as Windows if the open source operating system had as large a share of the operating system market as Windows.
On an analysis of the concept of "more popular systems just get attacked, that's why they *appear* less secure.. If linux was as popular blah blah" see the following article.
Short story: Apache vs IIS conclusively proves that larger market share does not correspond to more security problems. Eat that!
Read here for more info, half way down the article:
http://tinyurl.com/65sxt
Google can leverage its search technology by logging "public" IM conversations and making them indexable. Users can pick if they want their chat room/IM conversation public and have everything indexed.
You could do an interview with someone, and have it captured and indexed. Or the IETF could hold a committe meetting in a public chat room, knowing that there is an instant public archive.
Someone searching might find a snippet of a conversation. From there, Google could provide the full thread by moving backwards or forwards from the snippet that was a hit.
Of course, most conversations would be private, but some might choose to have public discussions.
As long as it's not evil.
I have explicitely stated in my will that all intellectual property work that I have created which has not been assigned by me to another party (ie any employers who have rights to the work) shall immediatelly be released under an open source license and the ownership of the copyright shall be transfered to the FSF for them to do as they choose.
I have told my relatives about my wishes and the location of my data. I have put passwords in escrow with a close friend.
I had this exact same problem. I got an offer and got a start date. Then they showed me an employment contract containing IP ownership rules pretty much like you described them. I told them very openly that I had a problem with some of the clauses and would like to make some modifications to the contract. They had no problem. Contrary to what you might see here, many people modify their contracts and it is not assumed that you sign what they give you. For the vast majority of employees that is the case, but they didn't have a problem making reasonable modifications.
My lawyer explicitely exempted a list of 12 areas of intellectual property where I had prior developments. Also exampted were 2 open source projects I was working on. Further modifications were made to the contract to ensure it was in my interest. In the end, my lawyer and their lawyer exchanged ammended contracts a few times and reached an agreements. Finally, we reached a mutually agreeable contract.
I had one of the best employer-employee relationships with this company. When I eventually left a few months ago it was on very good terms and they have even asked for my help occassionally on a 1099 basis.
While we were working on the agreement, I signed a copy of it with all the other parts that I could agree to and the parts I couldn't agree to crossed out and marked "under negotiation". That way they had NDA and liability stuff covered while we haggled over IP,
Overall cost me about $3k in lawyer fees. I would recommend using a lawyer comfortable with IP issues.
Good luck.
Maybe the reason the rates have dropped is because we all already have over 200GB of stuff on our disks and don't need to download anything else published by a RIAA company. Maybe we are only downloading indie stuff from networks they can't see.
Also, here's what I don't see in this report: Did their sales go up? Or did they just manage to turn people off music altogether?
Observe: verb-subject agreement
;-)
The regular mangling of this greek-derived word is a rather puzzling phenomenon.
There are more puzzling phenomena in nature.
I know I'm being pedantic... so sue me!
"If you have "non-DRM hardware" pretty much all that accomplished is that YOU get locked out. You can't run any of the new software. You can't use any of the new files. You get locked out of more and more websites."
I think you need to remember the 32 to 1 ratio of populations and re-define your concept of "out". If "out" is 32 times bigger than "in", who exactly wants to be "in"?
"Look at the marchers! My son is the only one marching in step! Everyone ELSE is out-of-step"
With the population growth, the Internet adoption growth, the "wiring" groth of places like South Korea and the IT degrees coming out of India, if they are "out" then I want to be "out" too. It's a bit like CompuServe in the old days, trying ot persuade people that their "internet" was better than THE Internet. Eventually, CompuServe people decided they wanted to be "out" with all the cool people. Same thing happened with AOL.
you forgot:
/* Full of shit */
#define SCO 8
and, yes I know "ethical hacking" is not the "correct" term to use. But this is a politician and this term they will understand. Educating one issue at a time...
Sir,
I am a constituent in your district. I am writing to thank you for supporting HR 2339 and to tell you how important this issue is to me. When I saw you had co-sponsored the bill, I was very pleased. I recently moved to this area, and previously had the pleasure of Rep. Nadler of NY as my representative. Your voting record indicates that you are representing us very well.
HR2239 is very important to me for two reasons:
As a citizen, I was ashamed of Florida 2000 and found the whole mess reminiscent of a third world country. We are still paying the price of that election with GWB's policies. I fear that next time we won't even know we have had an election stolen.
As a professional, I have been in the computer security business for over 12 years. I currently lead a global consulting practice specialising in computer security (we are based in NYC). I was very supportive of the analysis conducted by John Hopkins and I was glad to finally see someone discuss this serious issue. In my business I am responsible for securing some of the most sensitive systems such as banks, pharmaceutical R&D etc. I have a lot of experience both in securing and in "testing" systems. In our business we call this "ethical hacking" and we get paid to try to break into systems. I have seen how easy it is to subvert the security of many commercial systems. After reading the Johns Hopkins analysis of the Diebold system I was shocked at the level of risk these systems would introduce. I seriously believe that it is possible not only to compromise them, but to do so en-mass in a way that could subvert an entire presidential election. Even worse, I believe this can be done with subtlety so that it is undetected. This means our very system of democracy is at stake. In a way I wonder whether I should be surprised at the fact that republicans do not worry about this, or whether I should be concerned that they have reasons not to worry.
Your actions in this matter are admirable and of great importance. You have my support.
Sincerely,
I have upgraded all our RAQs to the newest debian (woody/stable) distribution. The RAQ can be firmware upgraded to support 2.4 kernels. Add to that a modern distribution and it becomes a pretty good server. As for the ssh patch: apt-get upgrade fixed that within an hour of the anouncement. Debian rules!
Hehe,
Actually I'm British and I live in the US. I am just as appalled by the situation here, I can assure you. But I also remember how much of a police state London was in when I left. I lived there for over 10 years. So, I know both the kettle and the pot.
In other news:
n yonetheywanttotrack/g
People of Jewish ancestry up to two generations removed must now wear a yellow star on their armband and have it visible at all times. Police assured us that honest jews have nothing to fear as the system will no be used to discriminate against them.
Now imagine if today they wanted to do the same. All they now need is a new database which can correlate jews to license plates and they can effectively follow anyone and efficiently exterminate them.
s/jews/communists/g
s/jews/hackers/g
s/jews/a
If you give someone the power to very efficiently track anyone in the country they might not abuise it now. But as soon as an abusive government comes into power you are in a wordl of trouble.
60% of the Internet is used to transfer entertainment content. Some speculate that there is also business content and other types of content hogging the network. ISPs who "built" the Internet are outraged at the fact that they now actually have to transfer data from one customer to another: "We never envisioned people would actually want to use the bandwidth we sold them. Frankly we are shocked"
In related news today, cable and satellite providers have also detected an alarming amount of entertainment content being received by their customers.
No actually, we will all start using the argument about guns.
s/knife/gun/g in your argument above and you will see that the VAST MAJORITY of guns "uses" are illegal and lethal.
The police only actually use their guns rarely. Most guns are used (at least in the US for example's sake) illegaly in the commission of crimes. And they don't just result in intellectual property or even tangible property damages. They result in death. Yet they are not only legal, they are constitutionally protected. This is because the non-infringing use (state militias, bearing arms etc. see 2nd Amendment) is presumable important enough. There are several thousand gun deaths in the US (homicide and suicide) every year. The "lawful" use of guns represents a tiny fraction. So to go back to your argument: The point is not what the relative percentage of lawful use is. The point is: "Is there any substantial non-infringing use". Doesn't have to be the primary use. Doesn't have to be the majority of use. It just has to have a substantial use that is non-infringing.
Some examples of important (non-infringing) p2p uses that are being developed (perhaps not receiving as much media coverage)
- Hive Cache (distributed backup)
- Distributed IM services
- Freenet (Censorship free data replication)
Just wait until wireless takes off. P2P is the perfect way to route packets over an ad-hoc wireless network. I foresee a very significant paradigm shift for networking from static to p2p.
Sure, right now it's all about piracy. But there is a lot more to p2p than just that. Several important academic conferences and research institutions are focusing on it.
If you have broadband you can now have a phone line and not pay a single "FCC" surcharge. Vonage offers IP telephony for residential and business. You plug in your normal phone and it routes over IP. The cost is $39.99 a month, with NO surcharges and includes all local/regional/national calls free, voicemail, CLI, CW, forwarding.
Best feature? I don't pay any of the phone companies a cent!
As a consumer of "pirated" movies, I can tell you that the vast majority of new releases are not "cams" (ie camcoder in theater) but "screeners". Screeners are special "preview" DVDs given to movie critics and award critics for "screening" purposes. These then end up ripped and dumped on the file-sharing networks even before the movies hit the theaters. All the movies currently showing this week at my local theater in NY have been available for at least a few weeks as high quality "screeners". As ever, the movie studios cannot solve the real problem behind movie piracy: INSIDERS
It doesn't matter where you are! You can pick which state your *number* is in, but you can be anywhere!
Do you know what really pisses me off? For the last two years I have been paying $3 a month on my phone bill for "Number Portability Charge". Whenever I have actually tried to "port" my number there is always a reason why it can't be done.
I'm sick and tired of telcos. This month I am moving to a new home so I did some research into VoIP. I found a service from Vonage which allows me to setup a VoIP connection to a POTS system over broadband. It is SIP and H323 compatible. It costs only $39.99 a month and gives me unlimited free calls everywhere in the US and Canada, anytime. Not only that, but because it isn't classified as a communications service there are no surcharges. Just for comparison, Verizon offers a similar flat fee package for $64.99. The taxes and surcharges that they conveniently separate from the price add another $40 per month.
Good riddance...