I succeeded once with this experiment, at least halfway. The trick is to tape buttered toast onto the back of Shrodinger's cat. Then the cat only half falls.
Inspired by this book back in 1993 when it first came out, I decided to conduct an experiment to test the spontaneous creation of life. I had just finished up a mayo and bacon sandwhich, so after scraping the last of the mayo out of the bottom of the mayo jar, I set it next to the window. I reasoned that if life created itself spontaneously, then statistically, somewhere in the universe, life would have to be spontaneously created in a mayo jar sitting next to a window. I figured what are the odds that somebody else has a mayo jar sitting next to a window? So the odds must be pretty good that my mayo jar is the one for life to be created in. Sure enough! Two weeks later the mayo jar was crawling with life. I named the jar planet Mayo, in honor of its original contents, and watched in awe as the alien-looking blue plantlife grew to fruition. Eventually it started to stink though, so I just threw it out. Then I started wondering what God would do if his jar started to stink...
All the military needs to do is use lax security all over the armed forces, and then get strict laws passed with heavy jail-terms for any country that tries to break in. That should do the trick, and it is already in line with the methods the rest of the government has been using.
Nothing fundamental would change. The first domains to be registered under.sucks would of course be she.sucks, teen.sucks, goat.sucks, pamela.sucks, and the new fantasy site, tux.sucks.
It's a natural step for distributions to be sold that match specific hardware configurations. Windows clients have been shipping like this for a while, but the potential for customizing Linux to hardware is even greater, so expect much more interesting things. The common distros now will probably become increasingly used as base distributions for more specific distributions.
I suspect most of the people who are currently linux users will still be customizing their own boxes from one of the base distributions though.
I'm quite fond of C++, but obviously it will eventually be replaced by something much greater. As an established language expert, what elements do you think will be found in the next great language? And are there any existing languages that you think are close to this level?
What we really need is for someone to start writing different programs that do the exact same thing as (the real) DeCSS. The DeCSS trial is a debate over how the program was reverse engineered. If a program is engineered from scratch, with such things as another open source program as a model or perhaps information from a public court record as a model, then what leg do they have to stand on?
Once there are three or four programs out there that do the exact same thing as DeCSS and have different names, there really won't be a battle left to fight. You can't climb three mountains at once.
Re:this is interesting
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
Please, you think the average hired thug searching for sites posting DeCSS is intelligent enough to setup a script to check filesizes or run hashes on everything they're searching for?
It's inherently a part of the Geek Culture to break away from mainstream culture and define our own independent culture. There are many other cultures that do this as well, but we tend to be the most prominent on the internet, for obvious reasons.
Cem Kaner told me a story about how he made a Microsoft lawyer sweat. He said that if Microsoft refuses to offer a refund to take the software back, and the user refuses the license agreement, then that invalidates the license agreement and allows the user to keep the software under no binding license agreement terms. The MS lawyer was made nervous enough that he gave Kaner's client the refund.
It wouldn't mean the death of magazines like that, it would mean the complete corruption of them. No magazine would be able to say anything "BAD" about a piece of software they reviewed. This would be a sad state for journalism if no bad statements could be made. If some no-name company from a city in Washington decides to put a backdoor in an OS, and people discover this, this would hamper their ability to report it. And that is inherently dangerous.
There's a strong movement going on in this country to remove constitutional rights in matters involving technology. This is rationalized by the arguement that technological issues are somehow different from issues not involving technology, so the constitution doesn't apply to them. CDA is an example of this, crypto export regulations are another, this is just yasl (yet another stupid law) designed to undo what we have already been granted.
It sickens me that a law so blatantly stupid even requires protesting. But indeed it does, and strong protesting. I encourage anyone living in those states to make their voice known. Every person who speaks up DOES count in issues like this. Draw the line now while you still can.
Clearly France doesn't actually expect to get any money out of this deal. Negotiations under the table probably went sour, so France has put a small thorn in the side of the U.S. and Britain by drawing mass media attention to Echelon. Projects like Echelon are much less effective, and more despised, when public knowledge of them increases.
You've posted a lot of opinion pieces, and expressed a lot of common ideas, sometimes simple, sometimes slightly thoughtful (almost always provoking someone), but I haven't seen you present many solutions. So my question is hypothetical. If you could change any 5 things in the world, what would they be?
Recently I've purchased somewhere around 14 Dell Laptops (through work, no laptop beowulf). Out of the box, 4 of the 14 had to be completely or partially replaced due to defective hardware. When I first got the laptops and began testing them, I installed the software I purchased from Dell to go with them, and the laptops began crashing after they were on for over an hour, even after reboots, but never when they were cold. I could stick a laptop on ice and it would run fine, they were clearly overheating and malfunctioning because of it.
I called Dell tech support several times, and their wonderful tech support staff tried to tell me that "The overheating is software related". Regardless of the fact that overheating is not a software problem, even if it were, Dell sold the software.
They sent crappy laptops, and most of their tech support personel were extremely unhelpful about it. If you're going to buy a laptop, go anywhere but Dell, Linux or no Linux.
If I can play the sound into my speakers, I can record the same damn thing on a tape to take in my car, or equivalently, record it as an mp3 to play on my computer. The only way they will EVER make an encryption format that prevents copying is if that format cannot be viewed or listened to at all. And then, of course, they will not profit much.
Software is very similar to a book, and the copyright laws have long been established in an acceptable manner regarding books. Software is just a list of instructions, like a book is a list of words. You read a book by examining the words in order, just as you use software by examining the words in order. I know a blind girl who puts her textbooks on a scanner so that her computer can read them out loud to her. In the same manner, a computer reads the instructions in software and performs a task. Saying that people cannot reverse engineer software is like saying that only computers have the right to read books.
I suggest using an analogy similar to this in your letters.
I see tons of posts put up right after this story was released that are surprised at how the slashdot effect didn't destroy it, and responses that the slashdot effect isn't that powerful. Well, it's almost 24 hours after the story was posted, and the site isn't working for me. Does anyone who has been slashdotted have a graph of when or how long peak slashdot effect times are?
Slashdot Mirror
I succeeded once with this experiment, at least halfway. The trick is to tape buttered toast onto the back of Shrodinger's cat. Then the cat only half falls.
Inspired by this book back in 1993 when it first came out, I decided to conduct an experiment to test the spontaneous creation of life. I had just finished up a mayo and bacon sandwhich, so after scraping the last of the mayo out of the bottom of the mayo jar, I set it next to the window. I reasoned that if life created itself spontaneously, then statistically, somewhere in the universe, life would have to be spontaneously created in a mayo jar sitting next to a window. I figured what are the odds that somebody else has a mayo jar sitting next to a window? So the odds must be pretty good that my mayo jar is the one for life to be created in. Sure enough! Two weeks later the mayo jar was crawling with life. I named the jar planet Mayo, in honor of its original contents, and watched in awe as the alien-looking blue plantlife grew to fruition. Eventually it started to stink though, so I just threw it out. Then I started wondering what God would do if his jar started to stink...
http://www.blowthedoto utyourass.com/stats/www2000/stats.html
All the military needs to do is use lax security all over the armed forces, and then get strict laws passed with heavy jail-terms for any country that tries to break in. That should do the trick, and it is already in line with the methods the rest of the government has been using.
How about a counterpaper discussing the economic burden of millions of slashdotters attempting to download a 40 page PDF file?
Nothing fundamental would change. The first domains to be registered under .sucks would of course be she.sucks, teen.sucks, goat.sucks, pamela.sucks, and the new fantasy site, tux.sucks.
It's a natural step for distributions to be sold that match specific hardware configurations. Windows clients have been shipping like this for a while, but the potential for customizing Linux to hardware is even greater, so expect much more interesting things. The common distros now will probably become increasingly used as base distributions for more specific distributions.
I suspect most of the people who are currently linux users will still be customizing their own boxes from one of the base distributions though.
I'm quite fond of C++, but obviously it will eventually be replaced by something much greater. As an established language expert, what elements do you think will be found in the next great language? And are there any existing languages that you think are close to this level?
What we really need is for someone to start writing different programs that do the exact same thing as (the real) DeCSS. The DeCSS trial is a debate over how the program was reverse engineered. If a program is engineered from scratch, with such things as another open source program as a model or perhaps information from a public court record as a model, then what leg do they have to stand on?
Once there are three or four programs out there that do the exact same thing as DeCSS and have different names, there really won't be a battle left to fight. You can't climb three mountains at once.
More like obfusciation of injustice.
Please, you think the average hired thug searching for sites posting DeCSS is intelligent enough to setup a script to check filesizes or run hashes on everything they're searching for?
Lawyer: Your honor, I'd like to read a statement from a webpage I found. It says "Fuck the MPAA" We hold this as evidence that people don't like us.
Judge: Excellent evidence, prosecution automatically wins.
They wouldn't be able to market it as a Universe. I'm pretty sure God has a registered trademark on that.
Do you use ssh or any other cryptographic tools on algore2000?
It's inherently a part of the Geek Culture to break away from mainstream culture and define our own independent culture. There are many other cultures that do this as well, but we tend to be the most prominent on the internet, for obvious reasons.
Cem Kaner told me a story about how he made a Microsoft lawyer sweat. He said that if Microsoft refuses to offer a refund to take the software back, and the user refuses the license agreement, then that invalidates the license agreement and allows the user to keep the software under no binding license agreement terms. The MS lawyer was made nervous enough that he gave Kaner's client the refund.
It wouldn't mean the death of magazines like that, it would mean the complete corruption of them. No magazine would be able to say anything "BAD" about a piece of software they reviewed. This would be a sad state for journalism if no bad statements could be made. If some no-name company from a city in Washington decides to put a backdoor in an OS, and people discover this, this would hamper their ability to report it. And that is inherently dangerous.
There's a strong movement going on in this country to remove constitutional rights in matters involving technology. This is rationalized by the arguement that technological issues are somehow different from issues not involving technology, so the constitution doesn't apply to them. CDA is an example of this, crypto export regulations are another, this is just yasl (yet another stupid law) designed to undo what we have already been granted.
It sickens me that a law so blatantly stupid even requires protesting. But indeed it does, and strong protesting. I encourage anyone living in those states to make their voice known. Every person who speaks up DOES count in issues like this. Draw the line now while you still can.
Clearly France doesn't actually expect to get any money out of this deal. Negotiations under the table probably went sour, so France has put a small thorn in the side of the U.S. and Britain by drawing mass media attention to Echelon. Projects like Echelon are much less effective, and more despised, when public knowledge of them increases.
You've posted a lot of opinion pieces, and expressed a lot of common ideas, sometimes simple, sometimes slightly thoughtful (almost always provoking someone), but I haven't seen you present many solutions. So my question is hypothetical. If you could change any 5 things in the world, what would they be?
Recently I've purchased somewhere around 14 Dell Laptops (through work, no laptop beowulf). Out of the box, 4 of the 14 had to be completely or partially replaced due to defective hardware. When I first got the laptops and began testing them, I installed the software I purchased from Dell to go with them, and the laptops began crashing after they were on for over an hour, even after reboots, but never when they were cold. I could stick a laptop on ice and it would run fine, they were clearly overheating and malfunctioning because of it.
I called Dell tech support several times, and their wonderful tech support staff tried to tell me that "The overheating is software related". Regardless of the fact that overheating is not a software problem, even if it were, Dell sold the software.
They sent crappy laptops, and most of their tech support personel were extremely unhelpful about it. If you're going to buy a laptop, go anywhere but Dell, Linux or no Linux.
If I can play the sound into my speakers, I can record the same damn thing on a tape to take in my car, or equivalently, record it as an mp3 to play on my computer. The only way they will EVER make an encryption format that prevents copying is if that format cannot be viewed or listened to at all. And then, of course, they will not profit much.
Software is very similar to a book, and the copyright laws have long been established in an acceptable manner regarding books. Software is just a list of instructions, like a book is a list of words. You read a book by examining the words in order, just as you use software by examining the words in order. I know a blind girl who puts her textbooks on a scanner so that her computer can read them out loud to her. In the same manner, a computer reads the instructions in software and performs a task. Saying that people cannot reverse engineer software is like saying that only computers have the right to read books.
I suggest using an analogy similar to this in your letters.
I see tons of posts put up right after this story was released that are surprised at how the slashdot effect didn't destroy it, and responses that the slashdot effect isn't that powerful. Well, it's almost 24 hours after the story was posted, and the site isn't working for me. Does anyone who has been slashdotted have a graph of when or how long peak slashdot effect times are?