The idea of digitally signing the client is that there would be a central authority who signs clients, or even better a "web of trust" (many trusted authorities for signing clients). This is how Netrek solved the problem of people writing clients that cheat.
So bascially encrypting the data stream and signing the client should work. Because you can only get a client signed by some "authority" who verifies there are no cheats, if you modify the client then the signature is invalid and the server won't let you play. If you try to use a proxy to cheat, your proxy would have to be able to decrypt the client/server conversation in real-time which would should be sufficiently difficult as to stop people from doing that.
Woudln't encrypting the client/server connection be much easier than auditing each client's requests? I'm not sure I would trust random sampling, though it is a good idea to keep CPU load down (Quake isn't a CPU hog anyways). Random sampling might actually encourage people to try for short lived cheats unless the sampling interval is small enough.
As a few of my other posts on this topic have indicated, I really favour two things:
Digitally sign the quake binaries, and give the server the choice of rejected unsigned clients.
Encrypt the data stream between the client and server so that proxy cheats aren't possible.
I don't understand your argument claiming that "There is absolutely NO MEANINGFUL WAY for the server to verify the blessedness of the client. " The obvious way to avoid booby-trapped DLLs is to statically compile the binaries. Yes they will be big on the hard disk but its not like Quake isn't big already? As an alternative the digital signature that "blesses" the client could actually apply to the client itself and all the libraries on the system too. You can digitally sign anything. There may have to be quite a few "blessings" issued but I think it is manageable; considering the popularity of Quake I'm sure that many voluteers will step forward to do the work.
Defeating proxy cheats are simple. You encrypt your client/server protocol stream. Thus a proxy can't actually rewrite the stream. In fact I'm quite disgusted that more on-line games don't encrypt their streams already. Sure there is a hit to the CPU but it is well worth it. Ultima Online could have saved themselves a lot of hassle by simply encrypting their client/server protocols.
Encryption is the key to preventing cheating:
Use encryption to create digital signatures to "bless" clients. Server can choose to reject all non-blessed clients.
Encrypt all communication between the client and the server so that "proxies" can't site between the two and cheat.
I think that one thing that the open-source development model has shown recently is that it can adapt and meet the needs of many complex situations. So in this case we'll need a way for developers to share their patches and submit them for inclusion in the "blessed" binaries. Isn't this the same way the Linux kernel is developed? Doesn't the Apache project already deal with this tough situation with many developers, many patch submissions, and only a few "official" releases.
People can still created unblessed binaries, and people can still run servers that allow any client, blessed or not, to connect. This method just lets the people that are organizing games have a way to ensure cheating won't take place if they want to.
A "blessed" client is one that has been approved by some group of reviewers and then digitally signed. If anyone alters the binary in any way then the signature is invalid and the server can detect this.
Here is the idea in more detail:
You have the source code available so that people can play with it, improve it, check it for bugs etc. But the problem is that people program their own version of the client that cheats. To prevent cheating, people who run a server can choose to only allow clients whose binaries have been digitally signed to connect. This means you'd have a group of people setup to review the source code of the client and if it contains no cheat they would compile the code, digitally sign the binary and people using the "blessed" (digitally signed) binary wouldn't be rejected by servers.
Of course you could still run a server that doens't care if clients are blessed or not. In fact in the netrek days that was kind of fun sometimes.
This gives you the best of both worlds, open-source software that is free to evolve, and community based servers that have a system to prevent cheating.
Does anyone remember Netrek? The same problem happened with that game. The solution is to cryptographically bless binaries that don't have cheats, and allow people to configure their servers to reject all "non-blessed" clients.
LINUXDOMAINHISTERIA.COM isn't taken yet and neither is IWANTALINUXDOMAINNOW.COM. I'm sure someone will be buy IWANTALINUXDOMAINNOWDAMIT.COM after the shorter version is snatached up.
What we need is a Linux specific TLD: lnx. Of course we'd need to relagate all these investors to a subdomain to keep them out of the way: wannabe.lnx or fauxgeek.lnx perhaps.
I think that nothing will stop open-source software. The success or failure of publicly traded companies who deal in or build upon open-source software is not linked with the future existance of that sofware (though the reverse may be true).
However, it is simple to reason that publicly traded companies will do whatever they can to increase value for the shareholder. They may or may not stick to "open source values"; "open source values" are irrelavant in that if the executives of these companies will be fired by the shareholders unless they perform. I think we'll see lots of cases of these "linux" companies doing things that shock and disgust the community of developers who got them going. I think it isn't a big deal. Keep on developing forgot the stock the market. It has nothing to offer to the realm of software.
I think your probably the first person who has made strong points in favour of color pilots however I still think the "cons" out-weigh the "pros". I've been using a pilot for two years now, and my current pilot (IIIx) goes with me everywhere. I've also had experience with many other palmtop/pdas. I've used extensively a PSION 3, an HP200lx, and I currently own a Sharp Tripad (WinCE tablet style device).
The Sharp Tripad has a color screen (tablet sized) and runs Windows CE. Color displays consume a lot of power I've heard. Certainly to obtain the brightness they need to be readable they suck back the batteries. Color screens aren't very readable except in the best lighting circumstances, and reading from them in the dark (though they have brightness) is actually painful (literally causes slight pain).
On the other hand, the screen of the Pilot IIIx is fantastic! I can read it in all but the most extreme bright lights. It is the best "read in the dark" screen I've encountered to date. Glare is minimized and the images are crisp and clear.
Color could be useful, but I'd rather have long battery life, and easy to read screens. Palm has already delivered this. In a tablet sized device color might be acceptable (obviously I have mixed feelings about the color screen on the Sharp Tripad).
The bottom line is that choice is a good thing. I think I'll choose to stick with what works. The great green-screen of the Palm IIIx.
Thawte also has "offices" in countries all over the world. However when you run into a snag (the local office can't verify your documents, or is taking weeks to verify them) they direct you to deal with their head office.
I've dealt with Thawte for a long time. Most of the time you get great service from the local office (in my case the Toronto branch) but I've had to deal with their head office on three occasions in the last three years.
Thawte services are very different in flavour than Verisigns. Thawte has a "web of trust" system for personal certificates based on the PGP web of trust ideal. Thawte offers wildcard certificates. Thawte certificates are priced reasonably.
Thawte provided signing support for SSLeay keys very early on. Verisign is slow to change.
On the other hand if things get complicated (if your verification documents for a certificate are not "normal") then dealing with Thawte can be a pain. Thawte has its head office in Africa. Have you ever tried to send a long fax to Africa? If you get a clean line you might get one or two pages through at a time.
I could find no mention of Be's "stinger" outside of that press release. The search engine on Be's website yeilded no hits for "stinger". I can't help but interepret this announcment as being a far-reaching "forward looking statement", more or less meaningless to the marketplace.
I'd like to see more operating systems in the marketplace and I like "appliances" (in theory) but this press release is devoid of any information. I'd really like to know which "popular streaming audio and video standards" stinger supports. I'm guessing they mean Quicktime (hmm, calling Quicktime popular borders on a "forward looking statement" too).
Check out the disclaimer of "forward looking statements" at the bottom of the press release.
Well technically no one can stop you but you have to find someone who wants to buy 99 shares. If you trade on-line your order will be defered for manually processing in most cases meaning your order might take quite some time to process. In this wacky world I'm sure you can do it, but I'm not sure how easy it would be.
The on-line trading service I use (Investorline) won't let me trade odd lots easily on some exchanges. Does anyone here have any reasonable amount of experience buying/selling "odd lots"?
You can't necassarily look at a stock split in such a static light. A stock split can be the cause to an effect. For instance when a stock is so highly priced as RedHat's the split may make the stock affordable to "smaller" investors, and the increase in demand could cause the stock's price to rise post-split. On the other hand, when the stock splits each investor ends up with twice as many shares, and if they perceive the stock as volitile they might be inclined to sell as much as half of their holding because the split enables them to keep some and sell some; and that would lower the value of the stock.
I don't know anything about the stock market; this is just my guess.
Stocks don't split all the time, though in this bull market it does happen more often. When a stock splits it makes the stock more affordable and I suspect that it makes the stock price a bit more stable. If you are suddenly given 200 shares where you had 100, you can sell half and keep half where previously you had to sell all or nothing (generally selling anything less than 100 shares is considered an "odd lot" and your not always allowed to sell "odd lots".
I don't know anything about stocks, this is just my guess.
There are several barriers to removing a tracking implant once you've got one. First of all, you need to know you've been implanted. That seems pretty minor. Mental patients, children, and refugees may not know they've been implanted though. The second barrier is locating the implant in your body. This could be tricky but more than likely will be simple.
The most troublesome barrier that I can imagine is the legal one. If prisoners are required to be implanted, it is likely that it will be made a crime to remove the implant. This would be very bad in the situation I proposed in my previous posting where a protestor is arrested on "conspiracy" charges, implanted, and ordered not to associate with other protestors. If they remove their implant then they go to jail, if they associate with protestors they go to jail. [Notice I say prisoners above. It is conceivable that the corrections department might require the implanting of anyone who is in custody, weather guilty or innocent. Their are currently laws (proposed or real I can't remember) that make it illegal to reveal to someone under surveilance that they are in fact being monitored; imagine how that kind of legislation impacts on the use/removal of tracking implants]
Even if NASA had 100% confidence in the systems aboard the "manned space truck" they'd have to worry about all the ground systems. And even if they had 100% confidence in all the ground systems they have to consider that their are factors they cannot control on the ground. What if third-party systems like power and water fail. What if some satellite based communications fail because of third-party ground systems? What if they run out of champagne? (you can't have a dog-and-pony-show celebration without champagne!) And I'm sure their official checklist includes fear of millenial terrorists attacking the space shuttle, and the melissa virus doing some non-descript "bad thing" to their computers.
The bottom line is that, weather the threats are real or imagined, they can't control everything so they should error on the side of caution. It is just good risk management.
Unfortunately prisoners in the custody of the state, children in the custody of guardians (often wards of the state), mental patients, the homeless, refugees, and immigrants have insufficient rights or power to oppose those would implant these devices in them. I suspect the first human victims of tracking implants will be people convicted of "conspiracy" charges in drug related cases.
"Conspiracy" is a charge used by the authorities when they can't convict you of a crime but feel you must be punish you. It has become a very popular charge since the inception of the so-called "drug war". "conspiracy" for instance could possibly be used to convict protestors at the WTO gathering last month. Convicted of conspiracy, and labeled a threat, protestors would be seen as ideal canditates for implanting by the authorities. Implanting would be a fantastic way to discourage protesting, and also convict protestors (if your convicted of conspiracy you can be ordered not to associate with a group of people, and if your implanted they can prove you did associate with them and put you in jail for a longer period of time).
Implanting tracking devices in humans is something that should be opposed.
Oppose innapropriate applications of technology, not technology itself.
The people who choose the "manned space truck" over more effecient useful space craft shouldn't be given an award. Space exploration has been held back by NASA's "dog and pony show" mentality. The accomplishments of NASA are many, but lets face it they don't do the best job they can. The organization doesn't avoid compromise; it is compromised.
I think Amazon.com and the men who brought it to IPO glory is old news. Unfortunately the success of the VA Linux IPO is too new to decide if it is new like Amazon.com.
In the end Time's man of the year is exactly that... they will pick a man that appeals to the kind of people that read Time. Do you? I don't. I doubt what Time has to say matters.
There are technologies that will let us search very large database effectively. Oingo uses what might be called an ontology based approach to searching however its knowledgebase is pretty small right now.
I'm suprised nobody has licensed the Cyc software/ontology for use in web indexing. Actually I could be out of date and someone might have already!
The key to good indexing and search lies in scanning for knowledge and not "words". Unfortunetly more and more webpages are designed to be as noisy as possible and contain little information. For example millions of webpages contain navigation menus however the "knowledge" of what can be navigated is stored as images, which is completely useless... the "knowledge" is completely lost and indexing is difficult.
There needs to be more use of meta-data in web pages if we want to index them for the knowledge they contain. Until we can index them we can't search them.
Just so that we don't all have to read the entire patent, can someone provide a concise and clear summary of how this "Internet over powerlines" stuff works?
I have never felt that Linux is a community though there are many communities formed around supporting it. I've been using Linux since Kernel 0.99pl13 in 1993. "/." on the other hand is a community and it wouldn't hurt for a manager-type at Corel to informally participate here. I'm 100% certain that Corel developers read and participate in the/. community already though they may not have acheived celebrity status like other developers have.
There is a marketplace for Linux, and Corel has been in that marketplace long before it was fashionable or profitable to do so. Corel deserves applause for their long-standing support of applications on the Linux platform, constructive critizisms of their failures and successes, and sharp jab when they anger core members of the open-source community.
Corel certainly has made some mistakes with their heavy-handed licenses however they have been a coporate contributor to the Linux community long before it was fashionable or profitable to do so. Most of the/. readers haven't been around Linux long enough to remember that you could run Wordperfect 5.1 (text mode, blue and yellow screen) under Linux years and years ago.
When they make a mistake and upset hardcore open-source developers they should be criticized but Corel is participating in this community rather than preying on it.
As someone who has been using Linux in a business context since 1994, I can say that Corel was one of the visionaries (not the only one and not the best one) that gave Linux legitmacy early on. The biggest mistake Corel has made is not being nearly as succesful as they promised they'd be in the Linux world.
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So bascially encrypting the data stream and signing the client should work. Because you can only get a client signed by some "authority" who verifies there are no cheats, if you modify the client then the signature is invalid and the server won't let you play. If you try to use a proxy to cheat, your proxy would have to be able to decrypt the client/server conversation in real-time which would should be sufficiently difficult as to stop people from doing that.
As a few of my other posts on this topic have indicated, I really favour two things:
Defeating proxy cheats are simple. You encrypt your client/server protocol stream. Thus a proxy can't actually rewrite the stream. In fact I'm quite disgusted that more on-line games don't encrypt their streams already. Sure there is a hit to the CPU but it is well worth it. Ultima Online could have saved themselves a lot of hassle by simply encrypting their client/server protocols.
Encryption is the key to preventing cheating:
People can still created unblessed binaries, and people can still run servers that allow any client, blessed or not, to connect. This method just lets the people that are organizing games have a way to ensure cheating won't take place if they want to.
Here is the idea in more detail:
You have the source code available so that people can play with it, improve it, check it for bugs etc. But the problem is that people program their own version of the client that cheats. To prevent cheating, people who run a server can choose to only allow clients whose binaries have been digitally signed to connect. This means you'd have a group of people setup to review the source code of the client and if it contains no cheat they would compile the code, digitally sign the binary and people using the "blessed" (digitally signed) binary wouldn't be rejected by servers.
Of course you could still run a server that doens't care if clients are blessed or not. In fact in the netrek days that was kind of fun sometimes.
This gives you the best of both worlds, open-source software that is free to evolve, and community based servers that have a system to prevent cheating.
Does anyone remember Netrek? The same problem happened with that game. The solution is to cryptographically bless binaries that don't have cheats, and allow people to configure their servers to reject all "non-blessed" clients.
What we need is a Linux specific TLD: lnx. Of course we'd need to relagate all these investors to a subdomain to keep them out of the way: wannabe.lnx or fauxgeek.lnx perhaps.
However, it is simple to reason that publicly traded companies will do whatever they can to increase value for the shareholder. They may or may not stick to "open source values"; "open source values" are irrelavant in that if the executives of these companies will be fired by the shareholders unless they perform. I think we'll see lots of cases of these "linux" companies doing things that shock and disgust the community of developers who got them going. I think it isn't a big deal. Keep on developing forgot the stock the market. It has nothing to offer to the realm of software.
The Sharp Tripad has a color screen (tablet sized) and runs Windows CE. Color displays consume a lot of power I've heard. Certainly to obtain the brightness they need to be readable they suck back the batteries. Color screens aren't very readable except in the best lighting circumstances, and reading from them in the dark (though they have brightness) is actually painful (literally causes slight pain).
On the other hand, the screen of the Pilot IIIx is fantastic! I can read it in all but the most extreme bright lights. It is the best "read in the dark" screen I've encountered to date. Glare is minimized and the images are crisp and clear.
Color could be useful, but I'd rather have long battery life, and easy to read screens. Palm has already delivered this. In a tablet sized device color might be acceptable (obviously I have mixed feelings about the color screen on the Sharp Tripad).
The bottom line is that choice is a good thing. I think I'll choose to stick with what works. The great green-screen of the Palm IIIx.
I've dealt with Thawte for a long time. Most of the time you get great service from the local office (in my case the Toronto branch) but I've had to deal with their head office on three occasions in the last three years.
Thawte provided signing support for SSLeay keys very early on. Verisign is slow to change.
On the other hand if things get complicated (if your verification documents for a certificate are not "normal") then dealing with Thawte can be a pain. Thawte has its head office in Africa. Have you ever tried to send a long fax to Africa? If you get a clean line you might get one or two pages through at a time.
Perhaps I'm blind. I could find nothing at http://www.be.com/ that gives details about Stinger. Could you provide a specific URL?
I'd like to see more operating systems in the marketplace and I like "appliances" (in theory) but this press release is devoid of any information. I'd really like to know which "popular streaming audio and video standards" stinger supports. I'm guessing they mean Quicktime (hmm, calling Quicktime popular borders on a "forward looking statement" too).
Check out the disclaimer of "forward looking statements" at the bottom of the press release.
The on-line trading service I use (Investorline) won't let me trade odd lots easily on some exchanges. Does anyone here have any reasonable amount of experience buying/selling "odd lots"?
While it is possible to buy one share, in practice you must generally buy 1 "block" of shares which on most markets is 100 shares.
I don't know anything about the stock market; this is just my guess.
I don't know anything about stocks, this is just my guess.
The most troublesome barrier that I can imagine is the legal one. If prisoners are required to be implanted, it is likely that it will be made a crime to remove the implant. This would be very bad in the situation I proposed in my previous posting where a protestor is arrested on "conspiracy" charges, implanted, and ordered not to associate with other protestors. If they remove their implant then they go to jail, if they associate with protestors they go to jail. [Notice I say prisoners above. It is conceivable that the corrections department might require the implanting of anyone who is in custody, weather guilty or innocent. Their are currently laws (proposed or real I can't remember) that make it illegal to reveal to someone under surveilance that they are in fact being monitored; imagine how that kind of legislation impacts on the use/removal of tracking implants]
The bottom line is that, weather the threats are real or imagined, they can't control everything so they should error on the side of caution. It is just good risk management.
"Conspiracy" is a charge used by the authorities when they can't convict you of a crime but feel you must be punish you. It has become a very popular charge since the inception of the so-called "drug war". "conspiracy" for instance could possibly be used to convict protestors at the WTO gathering last month. Convicted of conspiracy, and labeled a threat, protestors would be seen as ideal canditates for implanting by the authorities. Implanting would be a fantastic way to discourage protesting, and also convict protestors (if your convicted of conspiracy you can be ordered not to associate with a group of people, and if your implanted they can prove you did associate with them and put you in jail for a longer period of time).
Implanting tracking devices in humans is something that should be opposed.
Oppose innapropriate applications of technology, not technology itself.
I think Amazon.com and the men who brought it to IPO glory is old news. Unfortunately the success of the VA Linux IPO is too new to decide if it is new like Amazon.com.
In the end Time's man of the year is exactly that... they will pick a man that appeals to the kind of people that read Time. Do you? I don't. I doubt what Time has to say matters.
I'm suprised nobody has licensed the Cyc software/ontology for use in web indexing. Actually I could be out of date and someone might have already!
The key to good indexing and search lies in scanning for knowledge and not "words". Unfortunetly more and more webpages are designed to be as noisy as possible and contain little information. For example millions of webpages contain navigation menus however the "knowledge" of what can be navigated is stored as images, which is completely useless... the "knowledge" is completely lost and indexing is difficult.
There needs to be more use of meta-data in web pages if we want to index them for the knowledge they contain. Until we can index them we can't search them.
Just so that we don't all have to read the entire patent, can someone provide a concise and clear summary of how this "Internet over powerlines" stuff works?
There is a marketplace for Linux, and Corel has been in that marketplace long before it was fashionable or profitable to do so. Corel deserves applause for their long-standing support of applications on the Linux platform, constructive critizisms of their failures and successes, and sharp jab when they anger core members of the open-source community.
When they make a mistake and upset hardcore open-source developers they should be criticized but Corel is participating in this community rather than preying on it.
As someone who has been using Linux in a business context since 1994, I can say that Corel was one of the visionaries (not the only one and not the best one) that gave Linux legitmacy early on. The biggest mistake Corel has made is not being nearly as succesful as they promised they'd be in the Linux world.