I do think it's the right of the consumer to use a device they purchased in whatever way they want. I think it's the right of the consumer to not be subject to intentional crippling of their hardware on the part of the manufacturer.
Who gets to decide what is 'crippling'? A proper OS should limit the functions available to users and user programs. For example, blocking user access to the boot table to prevent exploits or inadvertant damage. Should the manufacturer be required to honor your warranty if you circumvent protections and damage the system?
Can you find a definition that would catch all the 'disguised' artificial limits, without false positives for legitimate limitations?
This isn't hypocritical and is internally consistent. Of course the usual caveats apply: I don't have a problem with a manufacturer blocking illegal uses of a device (so long as they do not block legal uses in the process), and I understand that it's legal for a manufacturer to act in the ways I have proscribed above, but still don't think they have a right to it.
So do you think it should be illegal, or do you just disagree with it and want to raise awareness? And again, who gets to decide the difference between legitimate limitations (for safety, reliability, ease of use, fitness for a particular task) and these 'illegitimate' restrictions?
I doubt it. Nowadays, nations aren't populated by a single culture. Even in strongly islamic nations, there is likely enough variation between the Sunni and Shiite populations that it would be difficult (or impossible) to target both in a way that would be effective as a weapon.
Even if you do, these cultural genetic markers don't stop at the borders. It would be silly to launch such an attack that would also inadvertantly target friendly nations (unless you had no friendly nations, but this kind of attack would provoke significant and decisive action against yourself).
As others have mentioned, you are mistaken, since the silver membership was released with the 360.
Xbox 360 will offer a multi-tiered system for its Live component. One of those tiers will be free.
Members of the free tier, dubbed Xbox Live Silver, will have access to the system's online community function, allowing them to chat with other players and freely download game demos. They will not be able to play games with others except during occasional 'free preview' opportunities (much like those that cable movie channels sometimes offer).
Xbox Live Gold members will pay an as-yet undetermined annual or monthly fee to play with or against others. Current Xbox Live members, who currently pay $50 per year, will be able to keep their online nicknames.
Unless you can find a reference to XBL Silver from 2002, your comparison doesn't hold water. XBox Live added free features to its subscription-only service, while Sony is adding for-pay features to its free service.
On the other hand, as long as everyone who uses this kind of spoofing broadcasts exactly the same way those people will all still be less identifiable. You will be able to track the group as a whole, perhaps, but not any particular individual. The trickiest bit would be covering all the bases, including installed fonts.
In other words, it doesn't matter if you broadcast IE9.8 running on Windows ME with the Tickle Me Elmo extension installed, as long as 1 million other people broadcast identical configurations. Sure, one person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask would be identifiable, but not in an entire crowd if everyone is wearing the same mask.
And more to the point: the science of the matter doesn't need to be explained in terms of field theory and electromagnetics. Just say "place all cell phones used as evidence in a 'Faraday' container to prevent suspects from remotely destroying evidence". Now it's just an issue of job training, instead of raw intelligence or education.
The cougar site, however, is relatively unambiguous by name.
Could not be the opposite for young people?
I assume that for a 8 years old child, the name "CougarLife" would seem related to big cats habits.
I expect this is the bigger issue: advertising adult sites with 'generic' keywords. When you search for cougars or bears, the advertisements should be for animals, not older women dating young men or hairy gay men respectively.
Even though I've already abandoned Apple, it's their belief that enough people won't do this that they can retain their clout. The industry as a whole is damaged as a result. Further it sets the precedent that a software company can dictate what other software you run on the same device for business reasons rather than for technical ones (i.e. we're not talking software incompatibility, we're talking rejection because they say so). Apple is the first, if they succeed, you can guarantee that other companies will be looking to shut out their competition simply by refusing to let you run the competition's software. The entire thing is creating an atmosphere of anti-competitiveness.
You're actually 2 decades late. Nintendo did this on the NES back in the 80's, with a lock-out chip. Only Nintendo approved (and licensed) software could be loaded and run, at least without 'jailbreaking' the cartridge to circumvent this. Note: the world of open environments has not collapsed yet.
That said, we're talking about a cell phone, which never had the ability to run user software before anyway. If they want to do the same thing on a PC, then I would begin to worry.
I don't agree. Sure, it's acceptable to have a walled garden, and to even make it the case that by default you can only wander the carefully groomed paths in that space. But if you want to peek over the wall, or even exit the garden, you should be permitted to. Sure, raise a few warning "Oh no's, nobody can tell you whether these apps out there have thorns or not," screens. But don't prevent me from leaving or else what you have is actually a carefully tended prison (it's even called jailbreaking when you exit the approved area).
Why enter the walled garden and complain that you can't peek over the hedge, when you have an alternative right next door (Android) that you didn't choose?
Apple is free to do whatever they want with their walled garden, and you are free to go elsewhere. So, why not just encourage people to go to the solution which isn't a walled garden, rather than trying to break down the walls you know aren't coming down?
I think that was most of my point: it's a huge condition of operation, so it had better do some amazing stuff that other OSs can't if you expect people to switch.
That said, connectivity is much more common now, with most of the US able to reach cell phone data networks. Of course, one wouldn't expect Chrome to be a good choice for those under radio silence, it will never surpass traditional OSs.
While I could see a Chrome laptop with a second Android layer when connectivity is unavailable, at that point you might as well just install Android from the start and be done with it.
For some reason, spending my last moments alive with a really hot woman is better. If life on this planet was about to die, I might actually stand a chance.
Wally: "This is gonna be great."
Dilbert: "What are you talking about? It's gonna be like living under martial law in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare."
Wally: "Exactly. Do you know how desperate women get under martial law in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare?"
Dilbert: "I guess I haven't studied it as extensively as you."
Wally: "You got that right." Dilbert
I think we are getting to the point of over-emphasizing that fact, as if cryptography were unimportant. OK, this might not show up in Outlook Express. But there really ARE important applications for secure wireless transmissions, and there really ARE extremely professional and well-funded researchers on the "other side" who will use every algorithmic trick in the book to crack them. If you look at WWII and the Cold War, cryptography was tremendously important. Even the cryptographic attacks on "everyday" technologies like WiFi and ATMs available to the average script kiddie are quite impressive. So I wouldn't be too blase about cryptography not being the weak link.
The best part is that both weaknesses were used to break the Enigma cipher. They first exploited weaknesses in the cipher itself (letters couldn't be encrypted to themselves) and then weaknesses in the operators (the lazy Nazi would frequently choose Der Fuhrer's birthday for his cipher).
Probably not enough delta-V, since although you have a large impulse it is very brief. Also, a single thrust only puts the vehicle into an eliptical orbit which will continue to pass through the same point in space. That could actually make the satellite more of a hazard. To move to a non-intersecting orbit there would need to be another delta-v, either by thrusters or a second explosion.
Don't forget forces from the solar wind, tidal forces from the moon, and the uneven gravity field of the Earth. There's a reason GEO satellites need propellant to stay in their proper orbit.
You're right, they won't fall back into the atmosphere, but they will (very) slowly eject themselves from the orbit over time, probably to a Lagrangian point.
If it's deprecated and in GEO, it probably has no method to latch onto the other satellite (too much weight for no forseeable purpose) and insufficient propellant (why do you think we deprecate most GEO satellites?). It's a non-starter.
Depending on if the satellite designers anticipated the need for such measures. It could depend on when it was launched (pre-shuttle satellites might not expect anyone to have the capabilities to capture it), what it is for, or have different methods to prevent tampering. Remember, excess weight on a satellite is incredibly expensive, it would take a lot of convincing to put the weight of an explosive in a satellite if you aren't expecting to need to use it.
It's certainly likely, but not the only possible outcome.
The X-37B, the Space Shuttle,... cannot reach far enough to "destroy" the satellite. Such an outcome is not even desirable as it would turn the satellite into a field of orbiting buckshot that would "mostly" remain in the same orbit.
If we wanted to destroy it, we wouldn't use the space shuttle or X-37. That's what missiles are (or would be) for. The Shuttle/X-37 would be used to retreive the satellite and return it to earth, or to 'nudge' it to a graveyard orbit.
This is, of course, assuming we were talking about a satellite in LEO that could be reached by these systems.
How much will it cost us later when we have to clean up all of this damn space debris and avoid collisions
I think you are vastly underestimating the vastness of space.
I think you are vastly overestimating the vastness of geosynchronous/geostationary orbit. We have a belt that's "only" 264,924 km in circumference, miniscule compared the the space we have in the variety of low-earth orbits. Most importantly, this is the only region of space that can be used for geostationary satellites. We can't go somewhere else if we clutter it up.
My first thought when I heard about this satellite was if the X-37 had the propellant to reach geosynchronous orbit (which I highly doubt). Seems to be a job for which a general-purpose reusable craft is designed for: go out of the way, do something rarely attempted (collect a misbehaving sat), and down-mass back to Earth in the process.
It would also be a great proof of concept for future clandestine operations: if you have enough X-37s in the air all the time, it's no longer out of the ordinary to see a launch, so you can't point to that as the reason your satellite went dark. Especially if you can bring it back to Earth with full functionality, you get to look at all those tasty state-secrets residing on board.
Agreed. My complaint is with programs that replace the languages with direct hardware control with a language like JAVA. Between Assembly, C++, and MIPS you have the fundamentals well covered.
In other words, if you learn those languages you can probably program anything. Not necessarily the case with Visual Basic, JAVA, and Perl for example (even though they are useful to know).
C is historic, and not something I think anyone should want to ever use (why use an abacus when you have a calculator).
On many microcontrollers, all you have access to is C. Sure, you might be faster with a calculator than otherwise, but what happens when you don't learn to use anything else and only have access to a slide rule?
That said, what language are you learning that uses pointers? Direct memory access is vital to a thorough CS education.
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I do think it's the right of the consumer to use a device they purchased in whatever way they want. I think it's the right of the consumer to not be subject to intentional crippling of their hardware on the part of the manufacturer.
Who gets to decide what is 'crippling'? A proper OS should limit the functions available to users and user programs. For example, blocking user access to the boot table to prevent exploits or inadvertant damage. Should the manufacturer be required to honor your warranty if you circumvent protections and damage the system?
Can you find a definition that would catch all the 'disguised' artificial limits, without false positives for legitimate limitations?
This isn't hypocritical and is internally consistent. Of course the usual caveats apply: I don't have a problem with a manufacturer blocking illegal uses of a device (so long as they do not block legal uses in the process), and I understand that it's legal for a manufacturer to act in the ways I have proscribed above, but still don't think they have a right to it.
So do you think it should be illegal, or do you just disagree with it and want to raise awareness? And again, who gets to decide the difference between legitimate limitations (for safety, reliability, ease of use, fitness for a particular task) and these 'illegitimate' restrictions?
I doubt it. Nowadays, nations aren't populated by a single culture. Even in strongly islamic nations, there is likely enough variation between the Sunni and Shiite populations that it would be difficult (or impossible) to target both in a way that would be effective as a weapon.
Even if you do, these cultural genetic markers don't stop at the borders. It would be silly to launch such an attack that would also inadvertantly target friendly nations (unless you had no friendly nations, but this kind of attack would provoke significant and decisive action against yourself).
As others have mentioned, you are mistaken, since the silver membership was released with the 360.
Xbox 360 will offer a multi-tiered system for its Live component. One of those tiers will be free.
Members of the free tier, dubbed Xbox Live Silver, will have access to the system's online community function, allowing them to chat with other players and freely download game demos. They will not be able to play games with others except during occasional 'free preview' opportunities (much like those that cable movie channels sometimes offer).
Xbox Live Gold members will pay an as-yet undetermined annual or monthly fee to play with or against others. Current Xbox Live members, who currently pay $50 per year, will be able to keep their online nicknames.
Unless you can find a reference to XBL Silver from 2002, your comparison doesn't hold water. XBox Live added free features to its subscription-only service, while Sony is adding for-pay features to its free service.
it seems like IW did not care about cheaters.. So I will not be buying the new COD game..
Irrelevent, since Treyarch is developing this game, not Infinity Ward...
On the other hand, as long as everyone who uses this kind of spoofing broadcasts exactly the same way those people will all still be less identifiable. You will be able to track the group as a whole, perhaps, but not any particular individual. The trickiest bit would be covering all the bases, including installed fonts.
In other words, it doesn't matter if you broadcast IE9.8 running on Windows ME with the Tickle Me Elmo extension installed, as long as 1 million other people broadcast identical configurations. Sure, one person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask would be identifiable, but not in an entire crowd if everyone is wearing the same mask.
And more to the point: the science of the matter doesn't need to be explained in terms of field theory and electromagnetics. Just say "place all cell phones used as evidence in a 'Faraday' container to prevent suspects from remotely destroying evidence". Now it's just an issue of job training, instead of raw intelligence or education.
The cougar site, however, is relatively unambiguous by name.
Could not be the opposite for young people? I assume that for a 8 years old child, the name "CougarLife" would seem related to big cats habits.
I expect this is the bigger issue: advertising adult sites with 'generic' keywords. When you search for cougars or bears, the advertisements should be for animals, not older women dating young men or hairy gay men respectively.
Even though I've already abandoned Apple, it's their belief that enough people won't do this that they can retain their clout. The industry as a whole is damaged as a result. Further it sets the precedent that a software company can dictate what other software you run on the same device for business reasons rather than for technical ones (i.e. we're not talking software incompatibility, we're talking rejection because they say so). Apple is the first, if they succeed, you can guarantee that other companies will be looking to shut out their competition simply by refusing to let you run the competition's software. The entire thing is creating an atmosphere of anti-competitiveness.
You're actually 2 decades late. Nintendo did this on the NES back in the 80's, with a lock-out chip. Only Nintendo approved (and licensed) software could be loaded and run, at least without 'jailbreaking' the cartridge to circumvent this. Note: the world of open environments has not collapsed yet.
That said, we're talking about a cell phone, which never had the ability to run user software before anyway. If they want to do the same thing on a PC, then I would begin to worry.
I don't agree. Sure, it's acceptable to have a walled garden, and to even make it the case that by default you can only wander the carefully groomed paths in that space. But if you want to peek over the wall, or even exit the garden, you should be permitted to. Sure, raise a few warning "Oh no's, nobody can tell you whether these apps out there have thorns or not," screens. But don't prevent me from leaving or else what you have is actually a carefully tended prison (it's even called jailbreaking when you exit the approved area).
Why enter the walled garden and complain that you can't peek over the hedge, when you have an alternative right next door (Android) that you didn't choose?
Apple is free to do whatever they want with their walled garden, and you are free to go elsewhere. So, why not just encourage people to go to the solution which isn't a walled garden, rather than trying to break down the walls you know aren't coming down?
I think that was most of my point: it's a huge condition of operation, so it had better do some amazing stuff that other OSs can't if you expect people to switch.
That said, connectivity is much more common now, with most of the US able to reach cell phone data networks. Of course, one wouldn't expect Chrome to be a good choice for those under radio silence, it will never surpass traditional OSs.
While I could see a Chrome laptop with a second Android layer when connectivity is unavailable, at that point you might as well just install Android from the start and be done with it.
Unless all written knowledge is wiped clean (I doubt it), then our books would still be around to transfer the knowledge.
At least, until Amazon decides to remove them from our Kindles.
For some reason, spending my last moments alive with a really hot woman is better. If life on this planet was about to die, I might actually stand a chance.
Wally: "This is gonna be great."
Dilbert: "What are you talking about? It's gonna be like living under martial law in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare."
Wally: "Exactly. Do you know how desperate women get under martial law in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare?"
Dilbert: "I guess I haven't studied it as extensively as you."
Wally: "You got that right."
Dilbert
I think we are getting to the point of over-emphasizing that fact, as if cryptography were unimportant. OK, this might not show up in Outlook Express. But there really ARE important applications for secure wireless transmissions, and there really ARE extremely professional and well-funded researchers on the "other side" who will use every algorithmic trick in the book to crack them. If you look at WWII and the Cold War, cryptography was tremendously important. Even the cryptographic attacks on "everyday" technologies like WiFi and ATMs available to the average script kiddie are quite impressive. So I wouldn't be too blase about cryptography not being the weak link.
The best part is that both weaknesses were used to break the Enigma cipher. They first exploited weaknesses in the cipher itself (letters couldn't be encrypted to themselves) and then weaknesses in the operators (the lazy Nazi would frequently choose Der Fuhrer's birthday for his cipher).
Probably not enough delta-V, since although you have a large impulse it is very brief. Also, a single thrust only puts the vehicle into an eliptical orbit which will continue to pass through the same point in space. That could actually make the satellite more of a hazard. To move to a non-intersecting orbit there would need to be another delta-v, either by thrusters or a second explosion.
Add radar absorbing and scattering material, and suddenly the X37 looks a piece of debris...
Don't forget forces from the solar wind, tidal forces from the moon, and the uneven gravity field of the Earth. There's a reason GEO satellites need propellant to stay in their proper orbit.
You're right, they won't fall back into the atmosphere, but they will (very) slowly eject themselves from the orbit over time, probably to a Lagrangian point.
If it's deprecated and in GEO, it probably has no method to latch onto the other satellite (too much weight for no forseeable purpose) and insufficient propellant (why do you think we deprecate most GEO satellites?). It's a non-starter.
Depending on if the satellite designers anticipated the need for such measures. It could depend on when it was launched (pre-shuttle satellites might not expect anyone to have the capabilities to capture it), what it is for, or have different methods to prevent tampering. Remember, excess weight on a satellite is incredibly expensive, it would take a lot of convincing to put the weight of an explosive in a satellite if you aren't expecting to need to use it.
It's certainly likely, but not the only possible outcome.
The X-37B, the Space Shuttle, ... cannot reach far enough to "destroy" the satellite. Such an outcome is not even desirable as it would turn the satellite into a field of orbiting buckshot that would "mostly" remain in the same orbit.
If we wanted to destroy it, we wouldn't use the space shuttle or X-37. That's what missiles are (or would be) for. The Shuttle/X-37 would be used to retreive the satellite and return it to earth, or to 'nudge' it to a graveyard orbit.
This is, of course, assuming we were talking about a satellite in LEO that could be reached by these systems.
How much will it cost us later when we have to clean up all of this damn space debris and avoid collisions
I think you are vastly underestimating the vastness of space.
I think you are vastly overestimating the vastness of geosynchronous/geostationary orbit. We have a belt that's "only" 264,924 km in circumference, miniscule compared the the space we have in the variety of low-earth orbits. Most importantly, this is the only region of space that can be used for geostationary satellites. We can't go somewhere else if we clutter it up.
Good god, man, cable TV signals are at steak here!
Let's not limit ourselves just to worrying about Food Network. Don't be a chicken, there's a whole world of television programming.
My first thought when I heard about this satellite was if the X-37 had the propellant to reach geosynchronous orbit (which I highly doubt). Seems to be a job for which a general-purpose reusable craft is designed for: go out of the way, do something rarely attempted (collect a misbehaving sat), and down-mass back to Earth in the process.
It would also be a great proof of concept for future clandestine operations: if you have enough X-37s in the air all the time, it's no longer out of the ordinary to see a launch, so you can't point to that as the reason your satellite went dark. Especially if you can bring it back to Earth with full functionality, you get to look at all those tasty state-secrets residing on board.
Agreed. My complaint is with programs that replace the languages with direct hardware control with a language like JAVA. Between Assembly, C++, and MIPS you have the fundamentals well covered.
In other words, if you learn those languages you can probably program anything. Not necessarily the case with Visual Basic, JAVA, and Perl for example (even though they are useful to know).
C is historic, and not something I think anyone should want to ever use (why use an abacus when you have a calculator).
On many microcontrollers, all you have access to is C. Sure, you might be faster with a calculator than otherwise, but what happens when you don't learn to use anything else and only have access to a slide rule?
That said, what language are you learning that uses pointers? Direct memory access is vital to a thorough CS education.
Maybe. Fortunately, the lack of a monthly fee makes things relatively cheap.