The Oracle vs. Google case was not about patent trolling, that was about Oracle trying to get money from Google any possible way they could. It turns out that they couldn't, but you can't really blame them for trying (it's their nature). That is distinct from a patent troll, where they go and acquire patents specifically for the sole purpose of extorting other companies. Oracle at least makes legitimate revenue doing legitimate engineering work.
I believe that case wasn't even about patents though, it was about copyright.
I think they're aiming to replace spy satellites with these drones and this was a test to see if a drone can stay up in space for a long duration and still arrive back on ground intact for repairs or to upgrade its system.
That's exactly what I think. Whatever is onboard the ship is almost irrelevant at this point, the cargo is a red herring (and it can change). The impressive capability of the ship, the "new thing" that it brings to the table, is that it is essentially a multi-purpose satellite that can return to earth and be launched again. Like you said, returning to earth would allow people to refuel, repair, offload whatever it collected in space, or upgrade it. If you have a refuelable satellite then you can afford to be less frugal with the maneuvering thrusters, meaning you can avoid anti-satellite weapons more effectively and move to different orbits. The one vehicle can support many missions, it could go up with optical equipment and do some surveillance, land again and get a new electronics package for a different mission, land again and get a weapons package. This is probably why the NRO just gave NASA two spy satellites. They don't need single-purpose satellites any more when they have one that they can land and upgrade.
Much like Libya, when before Obama and NATO intervened the Republicans were screaming that something had to be done. And while the intervention was occurring, they suddenly cared deeply about undeclared wars and demanded he stop. And afterwards, when we were done (in a month, for under a billion dollars, and with none of the men sent to do it suffering so much as a purple nurple) they continued whinging that we never should've intervened in the first place.
Now that's just ridiculous. That would be like them spending all of their time legislating contraception, abortion, and marriage, and then complaining that the president hasn't done enough to help the economy.
In a world of stupid IP laws, at least this judge gets it. (Which surprises the hell out of me).
That's what happens when you have a judge who programs as a hobby. It would be great if all lawsuits that affect an entire industry like this had to be decided by a judge familiar with the industry. Not going to happen of course, but it would be awesome if judges deciding software patent cases had to have some sort of programming background.
Also if the stuff they sent back is smashed to bits from a hard landing, then well they have lots of work to do before sending humans.
The thing landed at 17 feet per second, about 11.5 miles per hour. Future missions call for a touchdown on a launchpad on land with the assistance of rockets, not even a water landing.
Because then you'd just have a TiVo and not a general purpose OS like Windows and OSX? The reason one can have DRM on OSX and Windows is because of protected path, you have a proprietary kernel that feeds the input to proprietary drivers that is decoded by hardware protected by trade secrets which then feeds that signal to a monitor that also follows this proprietary spec and can thus read it.
And in that case the OS doesn't really matter. All the OS does is send the encrypted stream from the source to the driver. Linux is capable of doing that also. Everything else can still be closed and proprietary.
Now do you see why it just can't work in Linux?All it takes is a single one of these things to be open for the entire system to fall apart.
Hence the "system requirements" portion in the hypothetical service you'll be using. You can only use the service if you have the protected path.
Believe me companies like netflix doesn't want to limit their potential customers but if something simply can't be done no matter how much money you spend it just can't be done.
I don't think that's the issue. It might cost Netflix 10 million dollars to create the entire pathway they need to protect content on Linux, but then they have the challenge of convincing Linux users that they need to buy all this additional hardware if they want to use Netflix, and I really doubt they would see a 10 million dollar increase in revenue to offset the cost. It CAN be done, but there's no reason to do it if it's only going to get you another 500 or 1000 customers (how many Linux users are really going to buy a new video card, monitor, and potentially move to a different distribution that the binary drivers support?). The potential customer base, given the hardware requirements, is just not big enough to justify the cost to develop and support the system on Linux. That doesn't mean it can't be done. It means it can't be done profitably.
and as i said the core of the problem is that ALL data ultimately is handled by the kernel which means one could recompile the kernel to simply lie to the DRM and its game over.
Not if the kernel never has access to the decrypted stream. The kernel sends the encrypted stream to the drivers which send it directly to the hardware.
Nooo..I'm asking you to give even the roughest idea of how such a system could possibly work, not just "say its possible".
I don't have enough information to declare that it is definitively not possible, so therefore I assume it's possible. If you can disprove every possible method that anyone can think of, then I'll agree that it's not possible.
this would simply not work as the code for the kernel is freely available and there is simply no hardware to enforce the DRM so it WOULD fail and fail quickly.
Well there's the thing - what if the encrypted stream would only be sent to hardware that supported your proprietary drivers to decrypt the stream? Sort of like how TiVo already works, how it runs Linux, but you need specific drivers and hardware to decrypt the stream.
I'll agree with you that a fully open-source environment can't have protected content like this. I'm assuming there is a way to add proprietary hardware and drivers to an existing open-source environment which will make content protection like this possible. I don't see a reason why that would not be possible.
The FOSSies can waste mod points going "La la la M$ Ninja!" all they want but that still doesn't change the fact you didn't even come close to answering the question which is HOW is it possible? The entire design of Linux is based on data being able to be piped from one interface to another and the kernel can't be locked down so HOW can one implement a DRM system when you could just recompile the kernel to say its outputting to a display when really its outputting to a file?
Sorry, are you asking me to produce a technical specification for a DRM system in an open source operating system, inside a Slashdot post? There's a ton of research and thinking that would be required to even approach that subject, and I'm not familiar enough with the Linux internals (outside of a class on the kernel I took in college 10 years ago) to even attempt to describe a solution off the top of my head. Is it possible in Linux to implement a secure DRM system? I'm sure it is, even if you have to distribute binaries instead of source and your own video and audio drivers, but I'm not going to try and guess how I would expect something to be implemented.
The fact of the matter is that today, with the effort (or lack of) put into it, it's not possible. That doesn't mean that someone wouldn't be able to design a secure DRM system for Linux, just that no one has bothered to put in that level of R&D required in order to see little to no return on investment.
Again you just can't do that on Windows and OSX easily because you don't have the source to the files you'd need to alter but this is available on Linux.
Right, you can't do it easily, but you can do it. The cost for a user to crack might be less on Linux, so they would have to decide if they want to spend more of an effort to support and secure a Linux use case. Since Netflix doesn't have plans to support Linux, then I guess there's your answer. Netflix doesn't see the return on investment that would come from them spending the effort to make their service available for that platform.
Now we invade you. Fucking thousands of deeply warlike Scots, and we are going to take your damn country apart - and you know we could.
"Thousands" of Scots are going to take apart America? How do you figure? Can you name a single city that the Scots could capture without the population shooting at them from "behind every blade of grass?"
Since you don't have the source code to Opera, what makes you think Opera isn't also reporting browsing data, just like Chrome allegedly does?
Just off the top of my head, one reason would be because Opera isn't built and owned by one of the world's largest data collection and mining companies.
I don't get it, the Firefox team is going to spend $15 on each user to buy them 2GB of extra RAM so that they can run Firefox? Or are you suggesting that Firefox is disowning their memory leak problem and making it the users' problem?
I can tell that Fox is desperate because they site copyright violation in their lawsuit over skipping ads. I don't see any connection between the two, they're throwing whatever shit they have at the wall to see what sticks.
Thank you, I had to wade through a massive shitstorm of people hyping and bitching about Yahoo Mail to find the one comment I was interested in. I'm glad it's here, 80% of the way down the page.
I bet I can find the stolen iPhone. I would do what every other LE officer would do. He would walk up to the location and then call the lost iPhone's cell number. Then with probable cause he could seize any phone that rang and was answered matching the audio he heard with his observation of the suspects lips.
But how does he know which floor in the multi-story apartment building he should target? Also, doesn't that assume that the thief is just sort of standing around on the street as if he were a mission target in GTA? What if he's inside one of several houses in the GPS radius? How many times is the thief going to answer calls from that number before he decides to mute the phone?
These guys had GPS from the phone (via consent of the victim or certainly his father) and couldn't find it. That takes a spectacular level of incompetence.
I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.
Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.
Are you missing my point or being deliberately obtuse?
I think it's safe to assume those lasers are computer controlled, given they are using the term "robot" and some other obvious issues. Having the computing and control infrastructure external to the manipulator doesn't stop it from being a robot, it just becomes a remote controlled robot!
So that's my question, when does the bubble stop becoming a robot? Is it still a robot when the laser is off, or is it just a bubble then? What if the liquid isn't moving, it's just a liquid with bubbles in it. Are they still robots? Is my bottle full of robots? If I shoot a laser through my beer have I just created robots?
The lasers are what's important here. The bubbles are just along for the ride, as it were. The bubbles are passive. The liquid moves, the liquid is more of a robot than the bubble, the liquid is responsible for the bubbles being able to move other things because the liquid is moving the bubbles. But none of that could even happen without the lasers shooting as precise as they do, which requires software control. The lasers are the robot, not the liquid, and not the bubbles. The bubbles aren't robots manipulating other objects, the laser is a robot manipulating the bubbles.
Slashdot Mirror
The Oracle vs. Google case was not about patent trolling, that was about Oracle trying to get money from Google any possible way they could. It turns out that they couldn't, but you can't really blame them for trying (it's their nature). That is distinct from a patent troll, where they go and acquire patents specifically for the sole purpose of extorting other companies. Oracle at least makes legitimate revenue doing legitimate engineering work.
I believe that case wasn't even about patents though, it was about copyright.
I think they're aiming to replace spy satellites with these drones and this was a test to see if a drone can stay up in space for a long duration and still arrive back on ground intact for repairs or to upgrade its system.
That's exactly what I think. Whatever is onboard the ship is almost irrelevant at this point, the cargo is a red herring (and it can change). The impressive capability of the ship, the "new thing" that it brings to the table, is that it is essentially a multi-purpose satellite that can return to earth and be launched again. Like you said, returning to earth would allow people to refuel, repair, offload whatever it collected in space, or upgrade it. If you have a refuelable satellite then you can afford to be less frugal with the maneuvering thrusters, meaning you can avoid anti-satellite weapons more effectively and move to different orbits. The one vehicle can support many missions, it could go up with optical equipment and do some surveillance, land again and get a new electronics package for a different mission, land again and get a weapons package. This is probably why the NRO just gave NASA two spy satellites. They don't need single-purpose satellites any more when they have one that they can land and upgrade.
Much like Libya, when before Obama and NATO intervened the Republicans were screaming that something had to be done. And while the intervention was occurring, they suddenly cared deeply about undeclared wars and demanded he stop. And afterwards, when we were done (in a month, for under a billion dollars, and with none of the men sent to do it suffering so much as a purple nurple) they continued whinging that we never should've intervened in the first place.
Now that's just ridiculous. That would be like them spending all of their time legislating contraception, abortion, and marriage, and then complaining that the president hasn't done enough to help the economy.
Assets not to virtualize:
1) Women
2) Beer
3) Profit
In a world of stupid IP laws, at least this judge gets it. (Which surprises the hell out of me).
That's what happens when you have a judge who programs as a hobby. It would be great if all lawsuits that affect an entire industry like this had to be decided by a judge familiar with the industry. Not going to happen of course, but it would be awesome if judges deciding software patent cases had to have some sort of programming background.
If they can solve captchas at 99% accuracy, I hope they develop a browser toolbar or plugin I can use.
Also if the stuff they sent back is smashed to bits from a hard landing, then well they have lots of work to do before sending humans.
The thing landed at 17 feet per second, about 11.5 miles per hour. Future missions call for a touchdown on a launchpad on land with the assistance of rockets, not even a water landing.
Because then you'd just have a TiVo and not a general purpose OS like Windows and OSX? The reason one can have DRM on OSX and Windows is because of protected path, you have a proprietary kernel that feeds the input to proprietary drivers that is decoded by hardware protected by trade secrets which then feeds that signal to a monitor that also follows this proprietary spec and can thus read it.
And in that case the OS doesn't really matter. All the OS does is send the encrypted stream from the source to the driver. Linux is capable of doing that also. Everything else can still be closed and proprietary.
Now do you see why it just can't work in Linux?All it takes is a single one of these things to be open for the entire system to fall apart.
Hence the "system requirements" portion in the hypothetical service you'll be using. You can only use the service if you have the protected path.
Believe me companies like netflix doesn't want to limit their potential customers but if something simply can't be done no matter how much money you spend it just can't be done.
I don't think that's the issue. It might cost Netflix 10 million dollars to create the entire pathway they need to protect content on Linux, but then they have the challenge of convincing Linux users that they need to buy all this additional hardware if they want to use Netflix, and I really doubt they would see a 10 million dollar increase in revenue to offset the cost. It CAN be done, but there's no reason to do it if it's only going to get you another 500 or 1000 customers (how many Linux users are really going to buy a new video card, monitor, and potentially move to a different distribution that the binary drivers support?). The potential customer base, given the hardware requirements, is just not big enough to justify the cost to develop and support the system on Linux. That doesn't mean it can't be done. It means it can't be done profitably.
and as i said the core of the problem is that ALL data ultimately is handled by the kernel which means one could recompile the kernel to simply lie to the DRM and its game over.
Not if the kernel never has access to the decrypted stream. The kernel sends the encrypted stream to the drivers which send it directly to the hardware.
Nooo..I'm asking you to give even the roughest idea of how such a system could possibly work, not just "say its possible".
I don't have enough information to declare that it is definitively not possible, so therefore I assume it's possible. If you can disprove every possible method that anyone can think of, then I'll agree that it's not possible.
this would simply not work as the code for the kernel is freely available and there is simply no hardware to enforce the DRM so it WOULD fail and fail quickly.
Well there's the thing - what if the encrypted stream would only be sent to hardware that supported your proprietary drivers to decrypt the stream? Sort of like how TiVo already works, how it runs Linux, but you need specific drivers and hardware to decrypt the stream.
I'll agree with you that a fully open-source environment can't have protected content like this. I'm assuming there is a way to add proprietary hardware and drivers to an existing open-source environment which will make content protection like this possible. I don't see a reason why that would not be possible.
The FOSSies can waste mod points going "La la la M$ Ninja!" all they want but that still doesn't change the fact you didn't even come close to answering the question which is HOW is it possible? The entire design of Linux is based on data being able to be piped from one interface to another and the kernel can't be locked down so HOW can one implement a DRM system when you could just recompile the kernel to say its outputting to a display when really its outputting to a file?
Sorry, are you asking me to produce a technical specification for a DRM system in an open source operating system, inside a Slashdot post? There's a ton of research and thinking that would be required to even approach that subject, and I'm not familiar enough with the Linux internals (outside of a class on the kernel I took in college 10 years ago) to even attempt to describe a solution off the top of my head. Is it possible in Linux to implement a secure DRM system? I'm sure it is, even if you have to distribute binaries instead of source and your own video and audio drivers, but I'm not going to try and guess how I would expect something to be implemented.
The fact of the matter is that today, with the effort (or lack of) put into it, it's not possible. That doesn't mean that someone wouldn't be able to design a secure DRM system for Linux, just that no one has bothered to put in that level of R&D required in order to see little to no return on investment.
Again you just can't do that on Windows and OSX easily because you don't have the source to the files you'd need to alter but this is available on Linux.
Right, you can't do it easily, but you can do it. The cost for a user to crack might be less on Linux, so they would have to decide if they want to spend more of an effort to support and secure a Linux use case. Since Netflix doesn't have plans to support Linux, then I guess there's your answer. Netflix doesn't see the return on investment that would come from them spending the effort to make their service available for that platform.
A couple hundred soldiers from anywhere wouldn't even be able to capture Witchita, let alone get there.
Now we invade you. Fucking thousands of deeply warlike Scots, and we are going to take your damn country apart - and you know we could.
"Thousands" of Scots are going to take apart America? How do you figure? Can you name a single city that the Scots could capture without the population shooting at them from "behind every blade of grass?"
I read Slashdot because I only want to consume one important story every hour.
if it can be done for android, why not PC?
That's not the right question to ask. It CAN be done for PC. The reason why they chose to do it that way isn't because it can't be done any other way.
Since you don't have the source code to Opera, what makes you think Opera isn't also reporting browsing data, just like Chrome allegedly does?
Just off the top of my head, one reason would be because Opera isn't built and owned by one of the world's largest data collection and mining companies.
I don't get it, the Firefox team is going to spend $15 on each user to buy them 2GB of extra RAM so that they can run Firefox? Or are you suggesting that Firefox is disowning their memory leak problem and making it the users' problem?
This particular feature has no non-infringing use.
How exactly is a copyright infringed upon when I choose to fast forward through a commercial?
I can tell that Fox is desperate because they site copyright violation in their lawsuit over skipping ads. I don't see any connection between the two, they're throwing whatever shit they have at the wall to see what sticks.
Thank you, I had to wade through a massive shitstorm of people hyping and bitching about Yahoo Mail to find the one comment I was interested in. I'm glad it's here, 80% of the way down the page.
I bet I can find the stolen iPhone. I would do what every other LE officer would do. He would walk up to the location and then call the lost iPhone's cell number. Then with probable cause he could seize any phone that rang and was answered matching the audio he heard with his observation of the suspects lips.
But how does he know which floor in the multi-story apartment building he should target? Also, doesn't that assume that the thief is just sort of standing around on the street as if he were a mission target in GTA? What if he's inside one of several houses in the GPS radius? How many times is the thief going to answer calls from that number before he decides to mute the phone?
I bet I could find your stashed phone. It need not even be connected to a network, just powered up and trying to connect.
It's called radio direction finding, and it's actually a damn fun hobby.
Does that assume it's the only thing broadcasting, or can you isolate each source and somehow determine which one is the one you're looking for?
These guys had GPS from the phone (via consent of the victim or certainly his father) and couldn't find it. That takes a spectacular level of incompetence.
I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.
Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.
All of the things this machine can do relate to the surface tension in the bubbles.
I could just as easily say that all of the things this machine can do relate to the lasers heating the liquid.
Are you missing my point or being deliberately obtuse?
I think it's safe to assume those lasers are computer controlled, given they are using the term "robot" and some other obvious issues. Having the computing and control infrastructure external to the manipulator doesn't stop it from being a robot, it just becomes a remote controlled robot!
So that's my question, when does the bubble stop becoming a robot? Is it still a robot when the laser is off, or is it just a bubble then? What if the liquid isn't moving, it's just a liquid with bubbles in it. Are they still robots? Is my bottle full of robots? If I shoot a laser through my beer have I just created robots?
The lasers are what's important here. The bubbles are just along for the ride, as it were. The bubbles are passive. The liquid moves, the liquid is more of a robot than the bubble, the liquid is responsible for the bubbles being able to move other things because the liquid is moving the bubbles. But none of that could even happen without the lasers shooting as precise as they do, which requires software control. The lasers are the robot, not the liquid, and not the bubbles. The bubbles aren't robots manipulating other objects, the laser is a robot manipulating the bubbles.