Somewhere along the line, someone assumed that having Internet access in public libraries and public schools was a good thing. Why? I can't think of very many good reasons to give a K-12 school unmitigated access to the Internet.
So far, the Internet has turned out to be:
Commercial marketing material
Everything you wanted to know and more about the PC industry
Up-to-the-second news; email
Lots of profitibility-or-bust e-commerce sites
Innumerable personal interest pages
Acadamia and research
General entertainment
Adult content
Of the above items, the only two that I think would be useful for a grade- or high-school student would be the news and academic research. And how is accessing this information via the Internet better than picking up the newspaper or research journal?
I agree that filtering software shouldn't be installed at schools and libraries. What libraries and shools need isn't a filter, it's a brick wall. Dissalow all Internet access except for what public schools and libraries are supposed to be used for: academic and intellectual amaterial. All commercial, personal and adult content should be forbidden.
Let's remember what a cracker does this for: the thrill of the chase, the bragging rights to a successful crack, and (more maliciously) any rewards from the compromized site.
Not many crackers are going to waste their time scanning @Home subnets looking for Internet newbies that they can screw with. It isn't worth the time and the "kill value" is negligable. How fun is it to kill someone in Quake with a ping of 500+ who is stuck in a corner? The true glory comes from killing the best guy on the map. (Or, in Slashdot's case, from rooting a/. box and posting a story about it.)
Also, let's assume 90+ percent of @Home users run Windows boxes--Win95 and Win98. Even without firewall software, Win32 is much less likely to be cracked than *nix boxes. I'm not trying to start a huge flame war here--but the facts speak for themselves. Look at all the rootkits out there. Look at all the successful cracks. Were the servers running Unix and variants thereof? Probably.
Now I'm not saying that a Unix box can't be properly secured. But the fact remains that more hacker activity is exerted towards cracking Unix and its siblings than Win32 and other OSes--and with good reason: it's easier.
I signed up for @Home access about a month ago. It's the best you can get out here in the SW Chicago suburbs other than 56K or ISDN--DSL won't be here for another year or so. I have to say that, this article aside, my experience has been pleasant so far. Download speeds average about 300kbps (I'm not kidding). Everyone I talk to enviously says, "Just wait till your neighbors get hooked up." Well, DSL still has to get shared at some junctions as well--it doesn't matter if that switch is at the CO or at the junction box. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but @Home guarantees 144kbps or something like that.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make (badly) is that if you're going to maintain a constant connection to the Internet by all means run some type of firewall if you don't want to get your box compromised. I use ZoneAlarm and couldn't be happier with it. I just passed the Port Probe and "Sheilds Up!" tests at grc.com with flying colors. Some of the scans ZoneAlarm protects me from (as reported by the security checks at GRC):
Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist!
Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
Port 21
FTP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!
23
Telnet
Stealth! There is NO [...]
25
SMTP
Stealth! There is NO [...]
79
Finger
Stealth! There is NO [...]
80
HTTP
Stealth! There is NO [...]
110
POP3
Stealth! There is NO [...]
113
IDENT
Stealth! There is NO [...]
139
Net
BIOS
Stealth! There is NO [...]
143 IMAP Stealth! There is NO [...]
443
HTTPS
Stealth! There is NO [...]
To date (one month) ZoneAlarm has blocked 139 attempts at unauthorized access. --
Sorry Timothy, You're an Idiot
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 1
(Before you moderators get twitchy fingers let me point out that this post is neither intentionally flamebait or a troll.)
This article merely shows the depths to which Slashdot has sunk in its posting of articles. For the second time in as many days, Timothy posts a story which is ALREADY ON THE FRONT PAGE! Furthermore, this book has been out for over a year now: it's not like your review adds anything new. And does Slashdot really need three reviews on the same book?--one by Ellen Knowlton Wilson, one by JonKatz and one by yourself? Is this really necessary?
If the last few [ciphers] are what I think they are, a distributed computing network will be needed to crack them. Anybody volunteering to organize it?
In case you've been living on a different planet for the last year, there already was a group of a thousand or so voluteers gathered at eGroups and various spinoff groups, working on various stages and in groups for Stages 9 (DES) and 10 (RSA).
(Ignore the.sig. It's not supposed to reflect on my posting style.;-) --
(Drats! Every time I really want to post a comment I load the article only to find out that I'm supposed to be moderating. Well, not this time.)
For those of you who haven't read this book but are interested in cryptography, I can't urge you enough to read it. The challenge at the back is especially enticing. I'm not sure if it will lose its appeal now that the answers are published and known, but for me there was something absolutely special about breaking the codes and knowing that I was one of the few people in the world to have done it.
I solved stages 1 - 6 and 9 (I was on the 2nd team to brute force the Stage 9 DES cipher). Stage 7 was the ADFGVX cipher used in WWI and Stage 8 was the infamouse Enigma cipher used in WWII. For those who haven't had a crack at this, it's certainly worth it. IMO there is nothing quite like revealing a code piece by piece. I was privelaged or lucky enough to decipher some of the hints on the eGroups message board and be one of the first few to solve Stage 5, and the elation from seeing--for the first time--what only a few people have ever seen is nearly indescribable.
In summary, this was a wonderful book and an excellent adventure. Best wishes to the Swedish smarties who actually cracked Stage 10 (they had to pick between brute forcing triple DES or 512-bit RSA) and to everyone else who contributed along the way. It has certainly been an excellent experience! --
Your L connector break? Go to www.maytag.com, download the instructions for your 3D printer to construct a new part! Manufacturer's construction costs are eliminated!
You know, I used to read glowing reports like this in Popular Science of new technologies and get really excited. Not anymore. Call me a tech cynic.
Every new technology may solve a few of today's problems, but inevitably brings with it a host of new problems. Now we can get cash at an ATM whenever we want (instead of waiting for weekdays like our parents did) but it costs $1.50 to access our own money. We can use cell phones to call our friends any time of the day, but it costs $30 per month and the phone could also be used to betray our location to someone else (or possibly give us brain tumors at the same time). Computers let us do many things--like write comments such as this one--but require maintenance that the average user doesn't have a clue about.
This 3D printer sounds great. But in conflict with the above comment, when the first consumer version is available I expect to pay $2,000 for the printer, $200 or more for a materials cartridge, $9.95 to Maytag for the "rights" to print an 85 cent part and two hours of my life to print it, not to mention software and hardware issues. So for a while, it just won't be worth it. When a new technology like this appears, count on a few things:
It's always more expensive (new Pentium 4, anyone?)
Hollywood always makes at least one worst-case scenario movie about it (The Net--thanks, Sandra)
People always treat it differently from something which already exists but is the same concept (why is email privacy treated differently than snail mail privacy?)
People assume that "this will change everything!" only to find that "everything" slowly incorporates the new into the old (e-commerce...is anyone actually making money or are they just burning through venture capital and announcing acquisitions through stock deals)
New laws are drafted to deal with this new thing, when old laws could easily be expanded to incorporate it into them (was the DMCA actually necessary in the first place?--or could existing copyright laws have been reworked)
So call me jaded, but I've stopped living in the near future. Yes, the next kernel version is almost here. Yes, flat screen monitors are almost affordable. Yes, Bluetooth-enabled products are almost on the market.
But almost doesn't count. It's not here yet. I'll live in today. --
It gave the US government an overall grade of D- on computer security. The Department of Defense got a D+.
Actually, that's a small typo. The Pentagon was trying out their new structured language, D++, and got it confused with the please-rate-your-network-security form they had to send back to the House Subcommittee.
Well, right now the DVD-CCA is in court attempting to outlaw the livid DVD player, which is software that can only view DVDs, not copy them, so apparently the recording industry disagrees with your viewpoint.
Notice that I bolded a word in your reply that shows that you didn't even take the time to read before writing a reply that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. The discussion was about hardware players. Of course the DVD-CCA is going to have a fit over a software player that isn't licensed, yada yada (why is besides the point).
If I can try to steer you back on course here (way to try to derail your own argument, BTW) the point was that you can't sue hardware manufacturers of DVD players for copyright circumvention when you created a piece of media that will only play on their hardware. It's just a dumb idea. --
This is an extremely interesting theoretical attack on the DMCA.
[...] 3) Send cease and desist orders to one of the established player manufacturers, citing the DMCA. They are producing hardware that can remove the copy protection on your work, without your permission.
[...] Anything I missed?
Yeah--one big, gaping hole: the player manufacturers are not producing hardware "that can remove the copy protection on your work. " They are producing hardware that can view your work. There's a big difference. If you would try to copy it the Macrovision would kick in and scramble the signal.
Furthermore, by producing a DVD you implicitly allow it to be viewed on a DVD player. Duh. How else could you possibly view any type of media except on a player that was designed to view that type of media! --
This MP3 company completely misjudged the price point for their target market.
I don't think they misjudged the price point for the market, but I do think they misjudged the market. What makes PocketPC's good for playing MP3's is that they _already_ have a good processor, like a StrongARM blazing away at 200MHz. PalmOS devices don't. They've been optimized for the Dragonball (Motorola 68xxx family) at 16MHz and the Dragonball EZ at 20MHz.
Component costs for an add-on like this are going to be much higher than for a device where the processor also does other things. And any types of static RAM these days are outrageous. Shortages aren't predicted to let up till 2001. Everyone in the industry (including Palm) is feeling the crunch, and the only ones getting their chips are first-tier vendors that can place the 7- and 8-figure orders and get cozy with their suppliers. That list doesn't include any springboard module makes.
So when most companies sat down at the drawing board last year these components were cheap, and MP3 playing abilities were the rage. But now, no one wants to buy a $300 accessory for a $150 device; sprinboard modules are supposed to be in the $50 - $99 range. Hopefully these prices will come down. --
If you look at the map in that article, the only part of the Philippines that comes close to the equator is the southernmost islands, mainly the island of Mindanao, which is something like 95% Moslem and gives the Philippine government as much trouble as Quebec citizens give Canada (demands for autonomy and all that kind of stuff). The Philippines gets hit with typhoons each year, floods from those typhoons (and rainy seaon in general), earthquakes and two active volcanoes (Mayon and Pinatubo), not to mention the possibility of tidal waves from earthquakes in other places. So generally speaking, the Philippines would be a bad place to locate the elevator.
As far as the Stephenson comparison between the Philippines and America, I haven't read the book but the comment sounds true. The Philippines was a US colony for about 50 years and up to a few years ago was the one of the most pro-US countries in the world. Then around 1992 they traded in their two US bases (Navy: Subic, Air Force: Clark) for a handful of nationalism. Most Filipinos emulate Americans and want to be like them or look like them or move to the US or all of the above.
Anyway, I digress. Short summary: 1. No, you don't want to build the tether there; 2. The Cyrptonimicon comment is on the money. (In this case, a peso.;-) --
A priori, there is no moral reason why copying and sharing pure patterns, regardless of their origin, is immoral. I don't
care if somebody spent a whole lifetime to create a pattern.
Interesting choice of words... I'm assuming then, that we could take the argument one logical step further and say that since you yourself are essentially a pattern of DNA and moluecular mass you would have no problem with stepping into a machine and allowing someone to make a copy of you. How does that fit with your morality? --
Does anyone know if MP3.com was charged per-CD in their MyMP3 database or was it per download of songs? IMO it seems that an infringement would have occurred only when the song was downloaded but it seems from reading the news stories that they were charged for every title in their database, regardless of whether the CD or song was actually used or not. Doesn't distribution have to occur to commit infringement? --
Just so everyone doesn't have to go through the submission process to view a jpeg, here are the links to the high-resolution images:
First
A 64 x 64-pixel Polymer-Dispersed Liquid-Crystal Display
(PDLCD) used to demonstrate the operation of a polymer-based
active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) driver in two complementary
states. The display has a size of 3.5 by 3.5 cm2.
T hird Semiconducting polymers sandwiched between two electrodes
can be used to make large areas that generate light of any colour.
The production process (spincoating) is simple, safe and
inexpensive. In the photograph are shown the different polymer
materials, and their solutions (top), a glass plate with the polymer
thin film after the spin coating process (bottom) and three
operating displays of two different colours (in the middle)
Fifth
Life time test of polymer light-emitting displays and backlights.
Sixth Flexible 3-inch polyimide foil with a variety of components and
electronic test circuits. The circuits still operate when the foil is
sharply bent
Seventh Complete radio-frequency identification transponder integrated on
an antitheft sticker.
Imagine I buy a lot of Anime DVDs. They could note this, and raise the prices by a buck or something.
Or, they could notice that you buy a lot of Anime DVDs and *gasp* lower the price by a buck or two to get your valuable business. Why must we always assume the worst about everything?
I tend not to do real-time price shopping on items like this: I looked at a dozen online stores when I started purchasing, and I settled on the one that had the features & prices I want. But 2 months later they could jack the prices and it would be months before I noticed.
That's one of the worst ways to shop online I've ever heard of. First, decide on what you want. Then, find the lowest price from a reputable dealer and buy it there. Try this: pricewatch.com --
If Slashdot would do some reasearch on their articles before blindly posting whatever an A.C. submits they might have some more integriy in their stories. Kudos to Arstechnica, for example, for doing a much better job in this regard.
Michael Sokolov "maintained" the gcc toolchain (for the PalmOS) much in the same way an armed gunman maintains his hostages in a bank holdup. After hijacking the (Palm) gcc project from John Marshall ("official" maintainer who works for Palm, see his earlier comment) he bombarded the palm-dev-forum incessantly, ranting about how his toolchain was better and personally attacking anyone who voiced an opinion otherwise.
Eventually, the list owners (Palm) banished him from the forum, and hopefully that's the last Palm developers have seen or heard of him. I don't doubt that he's a great programmer, but his back-handed ways of going about "maintaining" the gcc toolchain have made him quite a few enemies. Slashdot would be wise to look these things up before proclaiming him some sort of anti-cygwin hero. --
Anyways, why can't we standardize over here too, I can count about half a dozen 'standards' for wireless com, whereas europe has decided
almost universally to use GSM.
Don't be so quick to jump on the GSM bandwagon. One of the great things about not being "standardized" over here is the competition that non-standardization brings. Look at all the players: AT&T, Sprint, Nextel at the national level and the baby bells and a dozen others at the regional level. What this boils down to is better service and better prices for Joe Consumer, who can get a free phone with his contract for just $29.95/month.
3G networks might take a while to roll out in the States, but when they do they'll be faster (for data) than the GSM networks, which even with GPRS are moving along a slower (read: cheaper) migration path towards 3G. (And some carriers are skipping 3G entirely in favor of 4G, which may be out around 2005/6.)
We might be tricked once, but this time we all know that this just another lie! Most likely just some over-zealous PR guy at the university hyped up the release. Two weeks from now Slashback will report that Professor Welch was actually performing experiments with sunless tanning products on rat skin. --
This is probably going to be marked as Flamebait or a Troll by the moderators today, [...]
Translation: Officially, I'm saying that I expect the post to be moderated into the lower regions of Hades but in reality I know that the moderators will see this and I'm expecting to get moderated to +5 immediately.;-) --
The Cathedral does have a very good ingredient in its mixture that OSS programmers don't have, and that is focus. Corporations have the ability to assign teams of 50, 100, 300 programmers to an enormous project and finish it in 6 months to 1 year, something that would be daunting to the Linux community (look how long the 2.4 kernel update has taken).
Now I know that people will want to jump in and say "But look at all the bugs! Look at the poor quality! 2.4 will be released as better software because of the delay!" but the fact remains that the Cathedral gets products out the door while most OSSers live in the near future. "Just wait till the next version," we say, "when it will have [X] feature."
To a large degree, when we buy a piece of software, like Word 2.0, we don't just buy Word 2.0. We also buy into the idea that we bought a piece of software that works decently now, and the creator is committed to eventually upgrading the software until it's the word processor to end all word processors. And so we're at Word 9 today, and the cycle continues. When software is looked at this way, getting a product out the door becomes more important than waiting for people to finish it in their free time. That's why Cathedrals (read: corporations) will make money and that's why they'll stay in business.
I'll add two caveats to the above:
1: This doesn't necessarily apply to security products. Thank God Microsoft didn't introduce us to sockets.
2: Another reason why the Cathedral will always exist is because of competition. If you have highly sensitive secrets it doesn't make sense to publish your source. Security through obscurity might not be a good thing, but that doesn't mean I go around giving everyone copies of my door key and daring them to find out where I live. --
Slashdot Mirror
So far, the Internet has turned out to be:
- Commercial marketing material
- Everything you wanted to know and more about the PC industry
- Up-to-the-second news; email
- Lots of profitibility-or-bust e-commerce sites
- Innumerable personal interest pages
- Acadamia and research
- General entertainment
- Adult content
Of the above items, the only two that I think would be useful for a grade- or high-school student would be the news and academic research. And how is accessing this information via the Internet better than picking up the newspaper or research journal?I agree that filtering software shouldn't be installed at schools and libraries. What libraries and shools need isn't a filter, it's a brick wall. Dissalow all Internet access except for what public schools and libraries are supposed to be used for: academic and intellectual amaterial. All commercial, personal and adult content should be forbidden.
--
Not many crackers are going to waste their time scanning @Home subnets looking for Internet newbies that they can screw with. It isn't worth the time and the "kill value" is negligable. How fun is it to kill someone in Quake with a ping of 500+ who is stuck in a corner? The true glory comes from killing the best guy on the map. (Or, in Slashdot's case, from rooting a /. box and posting a story about it.)
Also, let's assume 90+ percent of @Home users run Windows boxes--Win95 and Win98. Even without firewall software, Win32 is much less likely to be cracked than *nix boxes. I'm not trying to start a huge flame war here--but the facts speak for themselves. Look at all the rootkits out there. Look at all the successful cracks. Were the servers running Unix and variants thereof? Probably.
Now I'm not saying that a Unix box can't be properly secured. But the fact remains that more hacker activity is exerted towards cracking Unix and its siblings than Win32 and other OSes--and with good reason: it's easier.
Interesting discussion invited; flames to /dev/nul please.
--
Anyway, the point I was trying to make (badly) is that if you're going to maintain a constant connection to the Internet by all means run some type of firewall if you don't want to get your box compromised. I use ZoneAlarm and couldn't be happier with it. I just passed the Port Probe and "Sheilds Up!" tests at grc.com with flying colors. Some of the scans ZoneAlarm protects me from (as reported by the security checks at GRC):
- Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist!
- Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
- Port 21
FTP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!
- 23
Telnet
Stealth! There is NO [...]
- 25
SMTP
Stealth! There is NO [...]
- 79
Finger
Stealth! There is NO [...]
-
80
HTTP
Stealth! There is NO [...]
-
110
POP3
Stealth! There is NO [...]
-
113
IDENT
Stealth! There is NO [...]
-
139
Net
BIOS
Stealth! There is NO [...]
- 143 IMAP Stealth! There is NO [...]
- 443
HTTPS
Stealth! There is NO [...]
To date (one month) ZoneAlarm has blocked 139 attempts at unauthorized access.--
This article merely shows the depths to which Slashdot has sunk in its posting of articles. For the second time in as many days, Timothy posts a story which is ALREADY ON THE FRONT PAGE! Furthermore, this book has been out for over a year now: it's not like your review adds anything new. And does Slashdot really need three reviews on the same book?--one by Ellen Knowlton Wilson, one by JonKatz and one by yourself? Is this really necessary?
If the last few [ciphers] are what I think they are, a distributed computing network will be needed to crack them. Anybody volunteering to organize it?
In case you've been living on a different planet for the last year, there already was a group of a thousand or so voluteers gathered at eGroups and various spinoff groups, working on various stages and in groups for Stages 9 (DES) and 10 (RSA).
(Ignore the .sig. It's not supposed to reflect on my posting style. ;-)
--
For those of you who haven't read this book but are interested in cryptography, I can't urge you enough to read it. The challenge at the back is especially enticing. I'm not sure if it will lose its appeal now that the answers are published and known, but for me there was something absolutely special about breaking the codes and knowing that I was one of the few people in the world to have done it.
I solved stages 1 - 6 and 9 (I was on the 2nd team to brute force the Stage 9 DES cipher). Stage 7 was the ADFGVX cipher used in WWI and Stage 8 was the infamouse Enigma cipher used in WWII. For those who haven't had a crack at this, it's certainly worth it. IMO there is nothing quite like revealing a code piece by piece. I was privelaged or lucky enough to decipher some of the hints on the eGroups message board and be one of the first few to solve Stage 5, and the elation from seeing--for the first time--what only a few people have ever seen is nearly indescribable.
In summary, this was a wonderful book and an excellent adventure. Best wishes to the Swedish smarties who actually cracked Stage 10 (they had to pick between brute forcing triple DES or 512-bit RSA) and to everyone else who contributed along the way. It has certainly been an excellent experience!
--
You know, I used to read glowing reports like this in Popular Science of new technologies and get really excited. Not anymore. Call me a tech cynic.
Every new technology may solve a few of today's problems, but inevitably brings with it a host of new problems. Now we can get cash at an ATM whenever we want (instead of waiting for weekdays like our parents did) but it costs $1.50 to access our own money. We can use cell phones to call our friends any time of the day, but it costs $30 per month and the phone could also be used to betray our location to someone else (or possibly give us brain tumors at the same time). Computers let us do many things--like write comments such as this one--but require maintenance that the average user doesn't have a clue about.
This 3D printer sounds great. But in conflict with the above comment, when the first consumer version is available I expect to pay $2,000 for the printer, $200 or more for a materials cartridge, $9.95 to Maytag for the "rights" to print an 85 cent part and two hours of my life to print it, not to mention software and hardware issues. So for a while, it just won't be worth it. When a new technology like this appears, count on a few things:
- It's always more expensive (new Pentium 4, anyone?)
- Hollywood always makes at least one worst-case scenario movie about it (The Net--thanks, Sandra)
- People always treat it differently from something which already exists but is the same concept (why is email privacy treated differently than snail mail privacy?)
- People assume that "this will change everything!" only to find that "everything" slowly incorporates the new into the old (e-commerce...is anyone actually making money or are they just burning through venture capital and announcing acquisitions through stock deals)
- New laws are drafted to deal with this new thing, when old laws could easily be expanded to incorporate it into them (was the DMCA actually necessary in the first place?--or could existing copyright laws have been reworked)
So call me jaded, but I've stopped living in the near future. Yes, the next kernel version is almost here. Yes, flat screen monitors are almost affordable. Yes, Bluetooth-enabled products are almost on the market.But almost doesn't count. It's not here yet. I'll live in today.
--
And which selected part of the over 2,500 words would you like to name your little one?
--
Actually, that's a small typo. The Pentagon was trying out their new structured language, D++, and got it confused with the please-rate-your-network-security form they had to send back to the House Subcommittee.
--
Hey, what's so bad with D+?--it's passing, right? At least my parents thought so.
--
Notice that I bolded a word in your reply that shows that you didn't even take the time to read before writing a reply that had nothing to do with what I was talking about. The discussion was about hardware players. Of course the DVD-CCA is going to have a fit over a software player that isn't licensed, yada yada (why is besides the point).
If I can try to steer you back on course here (way to try to derail your own argument, BTW) the point was that you can't sue hardware manufacturers of DVD players for copyright circumvention when you created a piece of media that will only play on their hardware. It's just a dumb idea.
--
[...] 3) Send cease and desist orders to one of the established player manufacturers, citing the DMCA. They are producing hardware that can remove the copy protection on your work, without your permission.
[...] Anything I missed?
Yeah--one big, gaping hole: the player manufacturers are not producing hardware "that can remove the copy protection on your work. " They are producing hardware that can view your work. There's a big difference. If you would try to copy it the Macrovision would kick in and scramble the signal.
Furthermore, by producing a DVD you implicitly allow it to be viewed on a DVD player. Duh. How else could you possibly view any type of media except on a player that was designed to view that type of media!
--
I don't think they misjudged the price point for the market, but I do think they misjudged the market. What makes PocketPC's good for playing MP3's is that they _already_ have a good processor, like a StrongARM blazing away at 200MHz. PalmOS devices don't. They've been optimized for the Dragonball (Motorola 68xxx family) at 16MHz and the Dragonball EZ at 20MHz.
Component costs for an add-on like this are going to be much higher than for a device where the processor also does other things. And any types of static RAM these days are outrageous. Shortages aren't predicted to let up till 2001. Everyone in the industry (including Palm) is feeling the crunch, and the only ones getting their chips are first-tier vendors that can place the 7- and 8-figure orders and get cozy with their suppliers. That list doesn't include any springboard module makes.
So when most companies sat down at the drawing board last year these components were cheap, and MP3 playing abilities were the rage. But now, no one wants to buy a $300 accessory for a $150 device; sprinboard modules are supposed to be in the $50 - $99 range. Hopefully these prices will come down.
--
As far as the Stephenson comparison between the Philippines and America, I haven't read the book but the comment sounds true. The Philippines was a US colony for about 50 years and up to a few years ago was the one of the most pro-US countries in the world. Then around 1992 they traded in their two US bases (Navy: Subic, Air Force: Clark) for a handful of nationalism. Most Filipinos emulate Americans and want to be like them or look like them or move to the US or all of the above.
Anyway, I digress. Short summary: 1. No, you don't want to build the tether there; 2. The Cyrptonimicon comment is on the money. (In this case, a peso. ;-)
--
Interesting choice of words... I'm assuming then, that we could take the argument one logical step further and say that since you yourself are essentially a pattern of DNA and moluecular mass you would have no problem with stepping into a machine and allowing someone to make a copy of you. How does that fit with your morality?
--
Does anyone know if MP3.com was charged per-CD in their MyMP3 database or was it per download of songs? IMO it seems that an infringement would have occurred only when the song was downloaded but it seems from reading the news stories that they were charged for every title in their database, regardless of whether the CD or song was actually used or not. Doesn't distribution have to occur to commit infringement?
--
--
Or, they could notice that you buy a lot of Anime DVDs and *gasp* lower the price by a buck or two to get your valuable business. Why must we always assume the worst about everything?
I tend not to do real-time price shopping on items like this: I looked at a dozen online stores when I started purchasing, and I settled on the one that had the features & prices I want. But 2 months later they could jack the prices and it would be months before I noticed.
That's one of the worst ways to shop online I've ever heard of. First, decide on what you want. Then, find the lowest price from a reputable dealer and buy it there. Try this: pricewatch.com
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Michael Sokolov "maintained" the gcc toolchain (for the PalmOS) much in the same way an armed gunman maintains his hostages in a bank holdup. After hijacking the (Palm) gcc project from John Marshall ("official" maintainer who works for Palm, see his earlier comment) he bombarded the palm-dev-forum incessantly, ranting about how his toolchain was better and personally attacking anyone who voiced an opinion otherwise.
Eventually, the list owners (Palm) banished him from the forum, and hopefully that's the last Palm developers have seen or heard of him. I don't doubt that he's a great programmer, but his back-handed ways of going about "maintaining" the gcc toolchain have made him quite a few enemies. Slashdot would be wise to look these things up before proclaiming him some sort of anti-cygwin hero.
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A lot of those craters are our testament to NASA's attempt at a Martian lander.
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Don't be so quick to jump on the GSM bandwagon. One of the great things about not being "standardized" over here is the competition that non-standardization brings. Look at all the players: AT&T, Sprint, Nextel at the national level and the baby bells and a dozen others at the regional level. What this boils down to is better service and better prices for Joe Consumer, who can get a free phone with his contract for just $29.95/month.
3G networks might take a while to roll out in the States, but when they do they'll be faster (for data) than the GSM networks, which even with GPRS are moving along a slower (read: cheaper) migration path towards 3G. (And some carriers are skipping 3G entirely in favor of 4G, which may be out around 2005/6.)
Here are some pertinent articles:
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We might be tricked once, but this time we all know that this just another lie! Most likely just some over-zealous PR guy at the university hyped up the release. Two weeks from now Slashback will report that Professor Welch was actually performing experiments with sunless tanning products on rat skin.
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Translation: Officially, I'm saying that I expect the post to be moderated into the lower regions of Hades but in reality I know that the moderators will see this and I'm expecting to get moderated to +5 immediately. ;-)
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Now I know that people will want to jump in and say "But look at all the bugs! Look at the poor quality! 2.4 will be released as better software because of the delay!" but the fact remains that the Cathedral gets products out the door while most OSSers live in the near future. "Just wait till the next version," we say, "when it will have [X] feature."
To a large degree, when we buy a piece of software, like Word 2.0, we don't just buy Word 2.0. We also buy into the idea that we bought a piece of software that works decently now, and the creator is committed to eventually upgrading the software until it's the word processor to end all word processors. And so we're at Word 9 today, and the cycle continues. When software is looked at this way, getting a product out the door becomes more important than waiting for people to finish it in their free time. That's why Cathedrals (read: corporations) will make money and that's why they'll stay in business.
I'll add two caveats to the above:
1: This doesn't necessarily apply to security products. Thank God Microsoft didn't introduce us to sockets.
2: Another reason why the Cathedral will always exist is because of competition. If you have highly sensitive secrets it doesn't make sense to publish your source. Security through obscurity might not be a good thing, but that doesn't mean I go around giving everyone copies of my door key and daring them to find out where I live.
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Oh no! We're doomed!
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I had thought the name was going to be Episode 2: The Rise of Jar Jar Binks.
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