A more important point should be made that encryption is going to be the future of any sort of commerce online. As 'online' can mean the entire world, how can you justify export regulations on strong cryptography? Also, how can you justify these regulations if the knowlege exists outside of the US regardless (think non-US in Debian).
Probably more then you'd want.. But that's a worse-case scenario too. Let's all remember that it didn't take hardcore cryptoanalisys to defeat CSS.. Someone left their keys in plaintext in the executables.
I'm just making the point that there is no way to present encrypted data with no chance of reproduction, despite what the RIAA and MPAA want to do about what they consider the biggest threat to their profits: Fair Use. (ouch, that was a run-on and then some)
I recall. Does anyone remember the shouting and gnashing of Slashdotter teeth back when some USB developers were getting denied access to free and public USB hardware specs.
Then, a lot of Slashdotters started looking below the surface and saw that there was content-protecting crypto in USB. It could go in the monitors, in the speakers, etc etc. But as the many posters pointed out, you CAN'T protect it if it makes ANY unprotected travel.
And that includes from the speakers to your ears.. Think about USB-secured speakers that keep sound encrypted till it hits the speaker.. Just hook up some ADC at the speaker, splice it in. Boom, even though you've secured the signal on the network, across the computer, down to the speaker... Back to the harddrive in MP3 format. It ends up being moot.
You wish.. MPEG1 video decompression is dead cheap for CPU power... A lot of people have spent the last 10 or so years writing assembly decoders for MPEG1 video on the x86.
It probably isn't all that powerful. I'd rather see someone do power-reduction like this on more power-friendly platforms. By the time you get some of the other archs out there down to one-battery power levels, they'll probably put this thing to shame.
His argument stood perfectly well when you considered the following: When DeCSS was developed, Linux lacked any functionality to talk to DVD's as more then ATAPI CDROMs. There was no UDF filesystem support. Jon made this argument in his defense when he took the stand at the DeCSS case.
Also, if they weren't sueing Johansen, why was his house raided and him and his father taken into custody?
Thank you. In all honesty, I only worded my post the way I did because of how so many Red-Blooded Americans worship their Freedom of Whatever and their Democracy. Yet somehow, they label everyone that's fighting to take their rights back from Megacorps as radicals and outcasts.
I admire counties where political parties actually come and go. It shows growth, and not the stagnation that the US system shows.
Megacorps most definitely pay taxes, although they only crop up every election year nowadays. Here we have corporations that pay no tax, save the money they spend on politicians.
You don't have to wonder why the average American is a little disillusioned (sp) with the system these days. Corporate gain is the name of the game. He is the loser in the game too.
However, this lack of faith in the system just keeps the cycle going. Given the choice between apathy and activism, the average Joe will pick apathy. After all, these days activists are Seattle-riot anarchists. Activism has been made a social crime.
And so, the system perpetuates itself on that apathy. Look at the upcoming election. Your choices are Pro-Business #1 or Pro-Business #2. No offense to Mr. Nader, but your average American would have to be a total slave before he'd resort to voting for him. I suppose it's the mentality against moving away from the Two-Party system. That's just as frowned on these days.
So what can you do? People have talked about how communism failed utterly, why do I see democracy doing the exact same?
I'm off. I'm not going to do a Signal 11. I'm not leaving because moderation sucks (although it does). I'm leaving because most of the posters here simply aren't very nice people
To the handful of people who I've had reasonable conversations with: thanks, it's been cool.
To the hundreds of dickheads, mostly ACs, who've sworn at me, called me every name under the sun, moderated me down because I was not 100% pro-Linux, and so on: fuck the lot of you. Your time will come, you arrogant sons of bitches.
This account will remain - someone's going to be trolling with it. I won't say who, just that it's not me... if I ever visit Slashdot again it'll be to check the news links, not to participate in what is jokingly referred to as the "community".
Are those guys nuts? What, they write a basically trivial piece of Windows software (not even an official Mac or Linux port) and run a little server, and they think that makes their net worth $500 million?
If I was the guys who founded Napster, I'd take $50 million and run, happy in the knowledge that (a) I was rich and (b) I'd made waves in the high-tech world.
Yup, this is what's wrong with Slashdot. You spend time writing a long and possibly interesting post in an effort to put something into the community, then some f*cking idiot moderator puts you down a -1: Offtopic because what you're talking about isn't directly related to the story. Meanwhile, you make some stupid trolling quip elsewhere and get a +1: Funny.
Friday is Score 2: Troll Day. Join us!
And if you moderate this down, please email me and tell me exactly what you're trying to prove.
There was, at least a few years ago, a thriving industry making cross-compilers based on GCC, but with much better support for specific CPUs. One company, for instance, did a MIPS-specific backend which blew the open-source MIPS backend out of the water in terms of code size and speed. Perhaps you can find just such a company doing SPARC backends?
Well, there's MS bashing and then there's sucking MS's cock. Are you deliberately going the other way to prove a point, or do you really think.NET is "the future of computing as we know it"?
Oh, hold on, you just said.NET is a "wonderful and proven product which has been out for years". Dammit, I've been trolled;)
But what happens when you and your peers all belong to a clique that have a vested interest in promulgating a particular scientific dogma?
I agree with everything you say. I'd like to know how postmodern literary criticism could be subject to checks, though! But the comment above really strikes a chord with me. Did you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Part of the story is about this guy who is convinced that most western thought is based on a mistake made by Plato which should have been picked up 2,000 years ago, and him thinking through the conclusions of what would have happened if the mistake had been noticed (which eventually sends him to the nuthouse). The theme is exactly this - that a clique of researchers cannot even conceive of an error in their underlying assumptions, let alone address the error, or respond to criticism. And that's even without postulating a vested interest - so where a vested interest exists, you can bet the problem is ten times worse.
Fortunately for the physical sciences, as you say, mistakes can be spotted. Relativity and uncertainty are the two things that come to mind. Which makes me feel that physics, next to mathematics, is the most trustworthy of sciences.
When you're talking about evolutionary biology, you wouldn't be thinking about Richard Dawkins, would you?;) The man who is so sure that his ideas match reality that he's written a library of books convincing people not to believe in God. "Don't accept anything on faith," he says, not realizing he's one of the world's most faithful people (he sure has a lot of faith in his own correctness, despite a staggering lack of scientific evidence).
The only thing I think you have wrong here is where you rubbish statistics. Psychology wouldn't even exist as a science (which might not be so bad...) if it wasn't for statistics. Statistical theory is all about determining what's noise and what isn't. I agree with your sentiment - sometimes I wonder if (for instance) microwave background radiation really proves that the big bang happened. But if statistics tells you there's a 95% chance of a meaningful correlation, that's what it means. Not that there is a correlation, necessarily, but just that if there wasn't a correlation, there's only a 5% chance that the results would look that correlated. Of course, 5% is good odds. If there was a correlation with 99.99999% probability I'd be inclined to accept it. Much psychology is based, as you say, on likelihoods of 5%, and there's significant doubt. Sadly, the popular perception of science is that it's infallible, so if someone publishes a paper that everyone in the scientific community knows is de facto questionable, the majority can still amend their entire world view based on this dodgy "knowledge". Give it a spin so Fox 11 news picks it up, and you've basically created a new "truth".
Witness, for instance, the "fact" of global warming. It's not like the Earth ever suddenly changed temperature before the industrial revolution;) Like, say, in the ice age. I'm not saying global warming isn't happening, but it's highly contentious whether or not it's really due primarily to gaseous emissions. There's no doubt in the public mind to mirror the one in mine, however.
The obvious use, other than the obvious Star Wars fodder, is in air traffic control. Those poor controllers are suffering information overload - maybe 3D visualization might help them out. Mind you, first they'd have to upgrade the systems to at least 1980s technology.
No, I don't believe my assertion is wrong. You're basing your beliefs on circumstantial evidence from the media. I'm basing mine on the actual costs of hiring an H1-B in a real company. So be careful who you're calling 'wrong';)
It has been "demonstrated" by some (if you believe their numbers rather than industry's) that the IT worker shortage is fake.
My take is that, regardless of the absolute truth, the companies involved do actually believe that there is an IT shortage, and they want something done about it. Remember that a single company can only find so many potential employees, and more and more it's becoming that the really good ones are not from the USA.
I'm not laying the blame on the US education system or anywhere else - who knows what the absolute truth is, or what each CEO of each IT company truly believes. But this is what I believe the perception to be inside the industry.
Like I say, point me to these H1-B workers who are on 1/3 of the salary of a US equivalent. Prove me wrong.
Who are these immigrant workers who are paid 1/3 of the American worker's salary?
Do you know how much money it costs a company to bring someone over on an H1-B? For a company, it is vastly cheaper to find someone in the USA than it is to get someone from abroad.
Anyway, if you're an American programmer and you can't get a job, chances are that you're the one with the communication problem. I mean, seriously, are there qualified US programmers here who can't find a job?
That's what you get for being an early adopter, I'm afraid.
Remember when CD *players* cost $1,000 and up? It's now so cheap to make a CD player they can sell a basic model for around $59. It's the same with blank media. Once there's enough people wanting them, and the factories that make them have paid back their investments, competition forces the prices to rock bottom levels. I can comfortably predict that blank DVDs will be cheap-ass in five years too... unless they're taxed to hell by then.
CD-Rs are basically a commodity item - anyone can manufacture them and there's no way to make your product stand out from the others. All commodity items generally drop in price over the years until they either hit the cost of raw materials plus a tiny profit, or else if distributing the items becomes more expensive than making them then the distribution cost becomes the main factor. I think this is where we are with blank CD-Rs. They can now be made for a fraction of a cent each, but sending them to shops is expensive... hence the rise of these spindles, which reduce the distribution costs radically, since the product is far less bulky.
Did anyone read The Mayan Prophecies? The author claims that the Mayan calendar is based on sunspot activity, that the Mayans predicted a grand cycle of sunquakes, and (further) that the Mayans were wiped out by sunspot activity, and even predicted their own civilisation's end.
Seems pretty unlikely, but by the Mayan calender the next grand cycle peaks in 2029, so if their sunspot predictions were on target (and scientific data concurs that there will be major sunspot activity in 2029) it could be the end for our civilisation too!
My money's on 2029. I never believed this end-of-the-world-in-2000 nonsense;)
Yeah, I think you're right. This is the concept I was struggling with. If we want to classify types we need to group dissimilar people together. Well, looked at this way, it's pretty obvious;)
But it still makes me uncomfortable. I mean, I don't mind classifying people as "men" or "women", or where there's some other clear distinction. But it seems that to fall into one MB pot or another might well depend on how you were feeling one particular day, or on exactly how the MB questions are phrased. Then there's the danger that people will make other judgements on you based on your MB result, which aren't entailed by the original answers you gave to the questions. Human nature makes this almost inevitable. This is the thing you mention about "being able to infer things about that person".
If there are 40 yes/no questions in the test, then you already throw away a lot of information by coallescing the answers. If you then map these 16 possibilities into "subversive" or "benign"... I think you can see where I'm going. Sheer paranoia, but it makes me interested in people's views on this. And there's some semi-scientific backing for my viewpoint, in information theory.
In statistical terms, it would be much better to leave the results in the abstract space of 40 binary digits. You can then compare people statistically, and it may turn out that actually only half the "analysis" questions are correlated between people known a priori to be skilled with analysis, whereas the other half are not. Then you might learn something, not only about the people involved, but also about how people in a specific group might affect each other's personalities.
I'm going off on a tangent now, though;) Did Meyers-Brigg do this sort of analysis to determine which questions belonged in the different categories, or did they just "decide" what the categories were and then "design" questions to place people into those categories?
Slashdot Mirror
A more important point should be made that encryption is going to be the future of any sort of commerce online. As 'online' can mean the entire world, how can you justify export regulations on strong cryptography? Also, how can you justify these regulations if the knowlege exists outside of the US regardless (think non-US in Debian).
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
A toy for anyone who ever blows stuff up.. Potato cannons, grit trucks, exploding pumpkins.. All would be far cooler in ultraslomo :)
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Probably more then you'd want.. But that's a worse-case scenario too. Let's all remember that it didn't take hardcore cryptoanalisys to defeat CSS.. Someone left their keys in plaintext in the executables.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
I'm just making the point that there is no way to present encrypted data with no chance of reproduction, despite what the RIAA and MPAA want to do about what they consider the biggest threat to their profits: Fair Use. (ouch, that was a run-on and then some)
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It's a
I recall. Does anyone remember the shouting and gnashing of Slashdotter teeth back when some USB developers were getting denied access to free and public USB hardware specs.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
Then, a lot of Slashdotters started looking below the surface and saw that there was content-protecting crypto in USB. It could go in the monitors, in the speakers, etc etc. But as the many posters pointed out, you CAN'T protect it if it makes ANY unprotected travel.
And that includes from the speakers to your ears.. Think about USB-secured speakers that keep sound encrypted till it hits the speaker.. Just hook up some ADC at the speaker, splice it in. Boom, even though you've secured the signal on the network, across the computer, down to the speaker... Back to the harddrive in MP3 format. It ends up being moot.
Information wants to be free.
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It's a
You wish.. MPEG1 video decompression is dead cheap for CPU power... A lot of people have spent the last 10 or so years writing assembly decoders for MPEG1 video on the x86.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
It probably isn't all that powerful. I'd rather see someone do power-reduction like this on more power-friendly platforms. By the time you get some of the other archs out there down to one-battery power levels, they'll probably put this thing to shame.
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It's a
His argument stood perfectly well when you considered the following: When DeCSS was developed, Linux lacked any functionality to talk to DVD's as more then ATAPI CDROMs. There was no UDF filesystem support. Jon made this argument in his defense when he took the stand at the DeCSS case.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
Also, if they weren't sueing Johansen, why was his house raided and him and his father taken into custody?
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It's a
Thank you. In all honesty, I only worded my post the way I did because of how so many Red-Blooded Americans worship their Freedom of Whatever and their Democracy. Yet somehow, they label everyone that's fighting to take their rights back from Megacorps as radicals and outcasts.
I admire counties where political parties actually come and go. It shows growth, and not the stagnation that the US system shows.
--
It's a
Megacorps most definitely pay taxes, although they only crop up every election year nowadays. Here we have corporations that pay no tax, save the money they spend on politicians. You don't have to wonder why the average American is a little disillusioned (sp) with the system these days. Corporate gain is the name of the game. He is the loser in the game too. However, this lack of faith in the system just keeps the cycle going. Given the choice between apathy and activism, the average Joe will pick apathy. After all, these days activists are Seattle-riot anarchists. Activism has been made a social crime. And so, the system perpetuates itself on that apathy. Look at the upcoming election. Your choices are Pro-Business #1 or Pro-Business #2. No offense to Mr. Nader, but your average American would have to be a total slave before he'd resort to voting for him. I suppose it's the mentality against moving away from the Two-Party system. That's just as frowned on these days. So what can you do? People have talked about how communism failed utterly, why do I see democracy doing the exact same?
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
--
It's a
To the handful of people who I've had reasonable conversations with: thanks, it's been cool.
To the hundreds of dickheads, mostly ACs, who've sworn at me, called me every name under the sun, moderated me down because I was not 100% pro-Linux, and so on: fuck the lot of you. Your time will come, you arrogant sons of bitches.
This account will remain - someone's going to be trolling with it. I won't say who, just that it's not me ... if I ever visit Slashdot again it'll be to check the news links, not to participate in what is jokingly referred to as the "community".
[Not reading responses]
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
If I was the guys who founded Napster, I'd take $50 million and run, happy in the knowledge that (a) I was rich and (b) I'd made waves in the high-tech world.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Friday is Score 2: Troll Day. Join us!
And if you moderate this down, please email me and tell me exactly what you're trying to prove.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Just my $0.02
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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Oh, hold on, you just said .NET is a "wonderful and proven product which has been out for years". Dammit, I've been trolled ;)
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
I agree with everything you say. I'd like to know how postmodern literary criticism could be subject to checks, though! But the comment above really strikes a chord with me. Did you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Part of the story is about this guy who is convinced that most western thought is based on a mistake made by Plato which should have been picked up 2,000 years ago, and him thinking through the conclusions of what would have happened if the mistake had been noticed (which eventually sends him to the nuthouse). The theme is exactly this - that a clique of researchers cannot even conceive of an error in their underlying assumptions, let alone address the error, or respond to criticism. And that's even without postulating a vested interest - so where a vested interest exists, you can bet the problem is ten times worse.
Fortunately for the physical sciences, as you say, mistakes can be spotted. Relativity and uncertainty are the two things that come to mind. Which makes me feel that physics, next to mathematics, is the most trustworthy of sciences.
When you're talking about evolutionary biology, you wouldn't be thinking about Richard Dawkins, would you? ;) The man who is so sure that his ideas match reality that he's written a library of books convincing people not to believe in God. "Don't accept anything on faith," he says, not realizing he's one of the world's most faithful people (he sure has a lot of faith in his own correctness, despite a staggering lack of scientific evidence).
The only thing I think you have wrong here is where you rubbish statistics. Psychology wouldn't even exist as a science (which might not be so bad ...) if it wasn't for statistics. Statistical theory is all about determining what's noise and what isn't. I agree with your sentiment - sometimes I wonder if (for instance) microwave background radiation really proves that the big bang happened. But if statistics tells you there's a 95% chance of a meaningful correlation, that's what it means. Not that there is a correlation, necessarily, but just that if there wasn't a correlation, there's only a 5% chance that the results would look that correlated. Of course, 5% is good odds. If there was a correlation with 99.99999% probability I'd be inclined to accept it. Much psychology is based, as you say, on likelihoods of 5%, and there's significant doubt. Sadly, the popular perception of science is that it's infallible, so if someone publishes a paper that everyone in the scientific community knows is de facto questionable, the majority can still amend their entire world view based on this dodgy "knowledge". Give it a spin so Fox 11 news picks it up, and you've basically created a new "truth".
Witness, for instance, the "fact" of global warming. It's not like the Earth ever suddenly changed temperature before the industrial revolution ;) Like, say, in the ice age. I'm not saying global warming isn't happening, but it's highly contentious whether or not it's really due primarily to gaseous emissions. There's no doubt in the public mind to mirror the one in mine, however.
Oops, I got stuck in wibble mode. Bye!
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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Personally, I'd rather have the patent office decide than the Slashdot herd. At least there would remain some level of objectivity.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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If you had something productive to do, you wouldn't be posting this.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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Wait until you commit. The TCO goes through the roof!
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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The obvious use, other than the obvious Star Wars fodder, is in air traffic control. Those poor controllers are suffering information overload - maybe 3D visualization might help them out. Mind you, first they'd have to upgrade the systems to at least 1980s technology.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
The resolution is great but the response time sucks.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
It has been "demonstrated" by some (if you believe their numbers rather than industry's) that the IT worker shortage is fake.
My take is that, regardless of the absolute truth, the companies involved do actually believe that there is an IT shortage, and they want something done about it. Remember that a single company can only find so many potential employees, and more and more it's becoming that the really good ones are not from the USA.
I'm not laying the blame on the US education system or anywhere else - who knows what the absolute truth is, or what each CEO of each IT company truly believes. But this is what I believe the perception to be inside the industry.
Like I say, point me to these H1-B workers who are on 1/3 of the salary of a US equivalent. Prove me wrong.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Do you know how much money it costs a company to bring someone over on an H1-B? For a company, it is vastly cheaper to find someone in the USA than it is to get someone from abroad.
Anyway, if you're an American programmer and you can't get a job, chances are that you're the one with the communication problem. I mean, seriously, are there qualified US programmers here who can't find a job?
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
--
It's a
Remember when CD *players* cost $1,000 and up? It's now so cheap to make a CD player they can sell a basic model for around $59. It's the same with blank media. Once there's enough people wanting them, and the factories that make them have paid back their investments, competition forces the prices to rock bottom levels. I can comfortably predict that blank DVDs will be cheap-ass in five years too ... unless they're taxed to hell by then.
CD-Rs are basically a commodity item - anyone can manufacture them and there's no way to make your product stand out from the others. All commodity items generally drop in price over the years until they either hit the cost of raw materials plus a tiny profit, or else if distributing the items becomes more expensive than making them then the distribution cost becomes the main factor. I think this is where we are with blank CD-Rs. They can now be made for a fraction of a cent each, but sending them to shops is expensive ... hence the rise of these spindles, which reduce the distribution costs radically, since the product is far less bulky.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Seems pretty unlikely, but by the Mayan calender the next grand cycle peaks in 2029, so if their sunspot predictions were on target (and scientific data concurs that there will be major sunspot activity in 2029) it could be the end for our civilisation too!
My money's on 2029. I never believed this end-of-the-world-in-2000 nonsense ;)
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
But it still makes me uncomfortable. I mean, I don't mind classifying people as "men" or "women", or where there's some other clear distinction. But it seems that to fall into one MB pot or another might well depend on how you were feeling one particular day, or on exactly how the MB questions are phrased. Then there's the danger that people will make other judgements on you based on your MB result, which aren't entailed by the original answers you gave to the questions. Human nature makes this almost inevitable. This is the thing you mention about "being able to infer things about that person".
If there are 40 yes/no questions in the test, then you already throw away a lot of information by coallescing the answers. If you then map these 16 possibilities into "subversive" or "benign" ... I think you can see where I'm going. Sheer paranoia, but it makes me interested in people's views on this. And there's some semi-scientific backing for my viewpoint, in information theory.
In statistical terms, it would be much better to leave the results in the abstract space of 40 binary digits. You can then compare people statistically, and it may turn out that actually only half the "analysis" questions are correlated between people known a priori to be skilled with analysis, whereas the other half are not. Then you might learn something, not only about the people involved, but also about how people in a specific group might affect each other's personalities.
I'm going off on a tangent now, though ;) Did Meyers-Brigg do this sort of analysis to determine which questions belonged in the different categories, or did they just "decide" what the categories were and then "design" questions to place people into those categories?
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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Jesus, you really are a jerk.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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