Actually, thats called a 'permanent test drive', and with a fake drivers license its a pretty simple way to obtain a car that can be stripped for parts or exported. Unless the dumb sales rep comes with, then you have to kill him first.
Note that the best time to pull this at walmart is late at night. Go regularly and get to know which cashers give a crap and actually check inside stuff. Don't go to them when you are ready to check out.
And if you are really serious, invest in a thermal printer and walk out with computers, TVs, lawn tractors, whatever.
A nice PVC card printer with a mag-stripe writer (3k for a good one) can be handy in stores where you swipe your own card. Again, pay attention to which checkers check the siggy.
The number of ways you can use technology against retail stores is scary. Not that I'd ever do those things, but its fun to know how many holes the system has. Kind of an offshoot of finding security holes in software I guess.
Why does everyone want to make a point by starting 'sharing music/vidoes/programs/ebooks is like...'?
Data duplication is fundamentally different from physical goods. The system of laws societies have built up around production and distribution of physical goods simply is not suitable for applying to information that can be duplicated with standard consumer equipment.
The sooner people realize this and find an economically and socially viable solution, the better off humanity will be. As long as people are locked into thinking of information in terms of physical media (eg, a CD instead of music) we'll be stuck with an information economy that spends resources on things that are generally unproductive (copy prevention schemes and lawyers).
Eventually we are going to start making steps toward the general assembler, where regular people at home have a device that can create from raw materials and software nearly anything we need. No one will buy objects made of plastic, glass or metal, these objects will simply be made on demand. New kinds of things will be defined simply with a data file that one could share with ones friends. Electronics won't be far behind simple mechanical devices. Forget buying an MP3 player, just borrow the definition file from a friend and print your own, in whatever color you like.
Imagine what it would be like if large corporations cripple these kinds of technologies with DRM. Thats exactly whats happening now with music and video.
Yes, governments need to protect the rights of content creators, but they also need to be aware of what will eventually be possible with technology in the near and no-so-near future, and plan their course through history as appropriate. Governments exist partially because individuals tend to do what is best for themselves right now, not what will be good for people three or four generations down the line.
Re:Seems like we already have a proof-of-concept
on
Solar Sailing and Physics
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, but for a different reason
The author of the original article seems to be unaware of this:
Crookes' radiometer has invariably rotated in the opposite sense to the expected one. The black side of the paddles invariably recedes from the light, and many explanations have been offered, but not including that which would seem the most obvious: the absence of radiation pressure on the bright side
And how, I ask, would a blind person identify the bubble with the picture of the fish next to it?
Same concept, play an audio file that instructs them to do something simple that would be very difficult to do with a script. E.G., 'choose the link labeled as the sum of the numbers 1 and 3'.
I can't figure out why I can't get a decent navigation system. Is it too much to ask for to have a nice graphical thumbnail image tree of the pages I've visited, so I can have better navigation than this stupid 'back' and 'forward' stuff?
Re:Five Quarks?
on
Pentaquarks
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Does the Anti-Quark have a goatee? I'd like to see that.
The government needs to simplify their regulations.
You can say that again. I work for a company that writes business software that is effected by tobacco and alcohol laws. And let me tell you. Holy Cow. If average consumers only knew, there would be a revolt. The number of organizations that have managed to get their many, many fingers into the pie is truey absurd.
This is a huge deal if you happen to have seen the problem 125m ahead and are taking evasive action other than braking, for example changing lanes or even swerving. The slightest braking during a sharp direction change can throw your car into a skid.
What makes you think that expert car designers would be so dense as to not check the steering angle, break pressure and possibly current vehicle accelerations before mucking around with the controls?
This system probably never engages below a certain speed, if the breaks are already applied, if the steering angle is over a few degrees, and probably under many other conditions we couldn't even speculate about without knowing a hell of a lot more about designing Honda's. This is likely a device that activates only under the carefully selected conditions under which the designers have decided that it would be safe to use (e.g. neutral steering angle, constant speed over the past n minutes etc).
I read in a book that the typical hunter-gatherer worked on average 13 (or 23 I can't remember) hours a week.
Pshh. I can work an hour a day from my computer and I make 60k per year. If you are interested, just send a SASE and $5 to me and the 4 names below, and I'll send you my report on how to make 60k per year in just an hour a day.
I drive to work so I can pay for my car so I can drive to work.
Ha. I drive to work so to pay for my car so I don't have to lug 300 pounds of groceries home on my back twice a month. And because in the summer its 115 degrees and I'd need a shower by the time I got to work (and there is really only one coworked here I'd care to shower with.. mmm........ wait, what was I talking about? oh yeah).
Actually I don't pay for my car, its from 1971 and it was free, but thats beside the point. I spend about 25% of my time in work-related activities (40h/w), and about 25% sleeping. That leaves fully half my time for lesiure activities. I think thats pretty good really. I can spend nearly half my life doing whatever the heck I want (and can afford). How does that compair to other lifestyles?
I think alot of people just don't realize how much time they spend vegging out, and they may underestimate how important it is to veg once in a while.
But life is a trade-off. You just have to choose what you trade for what...
Yes, but ten thousand years ago we all had ultimate freedom, and no security, and we all know that those would would give up freedom for a measure of security deserve neither.
Re:This may be true for some, but it's not for me
on
Robots Without a Cause
·
· Score: 1
Make the little trilobite out of steel, and beef up the power and suspension. Mount a stronger antenna, and make it radio-controllable, so that it'll navigate through, say, a terrorist's cave until it "sees" somebody on infrared, and then hand over control to an operator.
Hey, even better, lets do that, put saws, spikes and rams on them, put them in a big ring and have them beat the crap out of each other!
You are exactly right. I have 5 children, so I know what it takes to maintain a household. I think that many people who question the value of things like automatic vacuums and lawnmowers (but not washing machines, dishwashers or refrigerators, hmm) simply dont' have enough busywork to realize the value of labor saving devices. That, or they are simply total slobs.
A silly little beeping trinket may require the engineers to solve some new, very specialized problem.
Unfortunatly they will probably patent the solution or keep it as a trade secret so that after their company goes under the brilliant solution will vanish with the companies CVS archives.
You act as if music piracy never occured before MP3 or napster.
What? How so?
I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort. My point was that copy protection schemes (of music or software or anything else) are at best a deterant, designed to make copying a little (or a lot) more difficult, but that technology has made distribution so much easier that the relatively few people that go to the trouble of copying are having a greater effect on the market.
Those who return are more likely to rent another title
True, but most places are not going to bother creating an entire video rental system so they can carry the latest blockbusters and cult favorites in a display on the front counter for the benefit of impulse buying customers. The object of this is not to replace existing video rental shops, or to remaster the existing titles to this format. Its to expand into new markets with the high-demand titles.
In the following instructions, where do I lose the average consumer?
You forgot:
Download a p2p client. watch out for the spyware. Search for the DVD rip you want. Make sure its not a fake. Wait 6 weeks while it downloads on your AOL dial up connection. Buy a DVD-R, open your computer and install it. Install the DVD-R software. Learn how to convert the DVD rip format to the format that your PC supports. Burn DVD. Try again because you screwed it up. Put it in your DVD player. Go to store and buy a different brand of DVD because your DVD player doesn't like this brand. Still doesn't work, hire a local geek-boy to fix it (and hope he doesn't screw up your PC in the process). Receive C&D letter from the MPAA because you forgot to turn off p2p client and have been sharing copyrighted material for 2 months.
Self Destructing DVDs will simply not be bought unless the pricing ratio is well worth it.
I expect that they will be pretty popular actually. Its just like a rental, at the same price point, except there are no late fees, and you never have to remember to return it. This lets all regular retail places in on the rental market, because they don't have to maintain customer databases or return procedures. Instead of going to blockbuster, you can just drive down to the 24 hour convienance mart and get any movie you want.
Hell, I wouldn't be suprised to see a system where they have a kiosk with a DVD burner that will put whatever movie you want onto a special chemically limited DVD-R so that stores won't even have to maintain a stock of disks. It would be like an ATM machine, just put it in the store and some guy comes around and services it every couple of weeks, loads up new blank disks and new releases. Put it on a web page, order up your movie before you leave the house, and it will be ready to pick up when you get there.
I'd buy that. Specially when someone comes out with a specially treated wetwipe that prevents/reverses the chemical process that disables the disks after exposure to oxygen.
People take the path of least resistance.
Thats precisely what these companies are counting on. 99+% of the DVD watching population wouldn't know what to do with a DVD rip if it came with instructions. Nor will they care; if a DVD won't play in their consumer player, they'll assume its a bad disk and go get another or get their money back.
Bullpucky. Copy protection is not intended to completely eliminate unathorized duplication or use, anybody who thinks so is being unrealistic. Copy protection is a big fence around an amusement park with a no trespassing sign (soon it will have a 'violators will be shot' clause at the bottom). There will always be ways around for those who are determined, but the point is to keep most of the population out, thereby increasing profits.
The problem right now is that the few people that get in are making very good replicas of the park and giving them away for free.
Thats bad for the current business model of the big media corps. Probably good for society in general though. Keep pirating, and reward the artist who go completely indy. It'll sort itself out eventually.
Good. For every customer that will actually make the effort to sit down and actually write a physical letter, there are about ten thousand more that are pissed off about the same issue. Big companies know this, and they usually take real letters much more seriously than email or those worthless online polls.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, thats called a 'permanent test drive', and with a fake drivers license its a pretty simple way to obtain a car that can be stripped for parts or exported. Unless the dumb sales rep comes with, then you have to kill him first.
Note that the best time to pull this at walmart is late at night. Go regularly and get to know which cashers give a crap and actually check inside stuff. Don't go to them when you are ready to check out.
And if you are really serious, invest in a thermal printer and walk out with computers, TVs, lawn tractors, whatever.
A nice PVC card printer with a mag-stripe writer (3k for a good one) can be handy in stores where you swipe your own card. Again, pay attention to which checkers check the siggy.
The number of ways you can use technology against retail stores is scary. Not that I'd ever do those things, but its fun to know how many holes the system has. Kind of an offshoot of finding security holes in software I guess.
even rock albums by the likes of Pink Floyd must be listend to completely and in order, lest you miss something important
Yes, but generally whilst one is listening to Pink Floyd, one should not be driving. The LSD makes dangerous you see.
Why does everyone want to make a point by starting 'sharing music/vidoes/programs/ebooks is like...'?
Data duplication is fundamentally different from physical goods. The system of laws societies have built up around production and distribution of physical goods simply is not suitable for applying to information that can be duplicated with standard consumer equipment.
The sooner people realize this and find an economically and socially viable solution, the better off humanity will be. As long as people are locked into thinking of information in terms of physical media (eg, a CD instead of music) we'll be stuck with an information economy that spends resources on things that are generally unproductive (copy prevention schemes and lawyers).
Eventually we are going to start making steps toward the general assembler, where regular people at home have a device that can create from raw materials and software nearly anything we need. No one will buy objects made of plastic, glass or metal, these objects will simply be made on demand. New kinds of things will be defined simply with a data file that one could share with ones friends. Electronics won't be far behind simple mechanical devices. Forget buying an MP3 player, just borrow the definition file from a friend and print your own, in whatever color you like.
Imagine what it would be like if large corporations cripple these kinds of technologies with DRM. Thats exactly whats happening now with music and video.
Yes, governments need to protect the rights of content creators, but they also need to be aware of what will eventually be possible with technology in the near and no-so-near future, and plan their course through history as appropriate. Governments exist partially because individuals tend to do what is best for themselves right now, not what will be good for people three or four generations down the line.
Yes, but for a different reason
The author of the original article seems to be unaware of this:
Crookes' radiometer has invariably rotated in the opposite sense to the expected one. The black side of the paddles invariably recedes from the light, and many explanations have been offered, but not including that which would seem the most obvious: the absence of radiation pressure on the bright side
And how, I ask, would a blind person identify the bubble with the picture of the fish next to it?
Same concept, play an audio file that instructs them to do something simple that would be very difficult to do with a script. E.G., 'choose the link labeled as the sum of the numbers 1 and 3'.
I can't figure out why I can't get a decent navigation system. Is it too much to ask for to have a nice graphical thumbnail image tree of the pages I've visited, so I can have better navigation than this stupid 'back' and 'forward' stuff?
Does the Anti-Quark have a goatee? I'd like to see that.
What is the next in the sequence of:
1,2,4,...
The correct answer is of course 6, that being the sequence representing the ages of my children.
What happens when you combine a short attention span with a highly active brain?
ADHD.
What, what was I talking about?
The government needs to simplify their regulations.
You can say that again. I work for a company that writes business software that is effected by tobacco and alcohol laws. And let me tell you. Holy Cow. If average consumers only knew, there would be a revolt. The number of organizations that have managed to get their many, many fingers into the pie is truey absurd.
This is a huge deal if you happen to have seen the problem 125m ahead and are taking evasive action other than braking, for example changing lanes or even swerving. The slightest braking during a sharp direction change can throw your car into a skid.
What makes you think that expert car designers would be so dense as to not check the steering angle, break pressure and possibly current vehicle accelerations before mucking around with the controls?
This system probably never engages below a certain speed, if the breaks are already applied, if the steering angle is over a few degrees, and probably under many other conditions we couldn't even speculate about without knowing a hell of a lot more about designing Honda's. This is likely a device that activates only under the carefully selected conditions under which the designers have decided that it would be safe to use (e.g. neutral steering angle, constant speed over the past n minutes etc).
Hmm, so if you can walk 3 miles and hour and carry 4 people and their luggage about 600 miles a day, it might be worth it to get rid of the car.
I read in a book that the typical hunter-gatherer worked on average 13 (or 23 I can't remember) hours a week.
Pshh. I can work an hour a day from my computer and I make 60k per year. If you are interested, just send a SASE and $5 to me and the 4 names below, and I'll send you my report on how to make 60k per year in just an hour a day.
I drive to work so I can pay for my car so I can drive to work.
... ... wait, what was I talking about? oh yeah).
Ha. I drive to work so to pay for my car so I don't have to lug 300 pounds of groceries home on my back twice a month. And because in the summer its 115 degrees and I'd need a shower by the time I got to work (and there is really only one coworked here I'd care to shower with.. mmm..
Actually I don't pay for my car, its from 1971 and it was free, but thats beside the point. I spend about 25% of my time in work-related activities (40h/w), and about 25% sleeping. That leaves fully half my time for lesiure activities. I think thats pretty good really. I can spend nearly half my life doing whatever the heck I want (and can afford). How does that compair to other lifestyles?
I think alot of people just don't realize how much time they spend vegging out, and they may underestimate how important it is to veg once in a while.
But life is a trade-off. You just have to choose what you trade for what...
Yes, but ten thousand years ago we all had ultimate freedom, and no security, and we all know that those would would give up freedom for a measure of security deserve neither.
Make the little trilobite out of steel, and beef up the power and suspension. Mount a stronger antenna, and make it radio-controllable, so that it'll navigate through, say, a terrorist's cave until it "sees" somebody on infrared, and then hand over control to an operator.
Hey, even better, lets do that, put saws, spikes and rams on them, put them in a big ring and have them beat the crap out of each other!
You are exactly right. I have 5 children, so I know what it takes to maintain a household. I think that many people who question the value of things like automatic vacuums and lawnmowers (but not washing machines, dishwashers or refrigerators, hmm) simply dont' have enough busywork to realize the value of labor saving devices. That, or they are simply total slobs.
A silly little beeping trinket may require the engineers to solve some new, very specialized problem.
Unfortunatly they will probably patent the solution or keep it as a trade secret so that after their company goes under the brilliant solution will vanish with the companies CVS archives.
You act as if music piracy never occured before MP3 or napster.
What? How so?
I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort. My point was that copy protection schemes (of music or software or anything else) are at best a deterant, designed to make copying a little (or a lot) more difficult, but that technology has made distribution so much easier that the relatively few people that go to the trouble of copying are having a greater effect on the market.
Those who return are more likely to rent another title
True, but most places are not going to bother creating an entire video rental system so they can carry the latest blockbusters and cult favorites in a display on the front counter for the benefit of impulse buying customers. The object of this is not to replace existing video rental shops, or to remaster the existing titles to this format. Its to expand into new markets with the high-demand titles.
In the following instructions, where do I lose the average consumer?
You forgot:
Download a p2p client. watch out for the spyware. Search for the DVD rip you want. Make sure its not a fake. Wait 6 weeks while it downloads on your AOL dial up connection. Buy a DVD-R, open your computer and install it. Install the DVD-R software. Learn how to convert the DVD rip format to the format that your PC supports. Burn DVD. Try again because you screwed it up. Put it in your DVD player. Go to store and buy a different brand of DVD because your DVD player doesn't like this brand. Still doesn't work, hire a local geek-boy to fix it (and hope he doesn't screw up your PC in the process). Receive C&D letter from the MPAA because you forgot to turn off p2p client and have been sharing copyrighted material for 2 months.
Imagine the outrage that would happen if one in 10 hamburgers served by mcdonalds was actually made from horsemeat
The actual ratio isn't nearly that high.
Self Destructing DVDs will simply not be bought unless the pricing ratio is well worth it.
I expect that they will be pretty popular actually. Its just like a rental, at the same price point, except there are no late fees, and you never have to remember to return it. This lets all regular retail places in on the rental market, because they don't have to maintain customer databases or return procedures. Instead of going to blockbuster, you can just drive down to the 24 hour convienance mart and get any movie you want.
Hell, I wouldn't be suprised to see a system where they have a kiosk with a DVD burner that will put whatever movie you want onto a special chemically limited DVD-R so that stores won't even have to maintain a stock of disks. It would be like an ATM machine, just put it in the store and some guy comes around and services it every couple of weeks, loads up new blank disks and new releases. Put it on a web page, order up your movie before you leave the house, and it will be ready to pick up when you get there.
I'd buy that. Specially when someone comes out with a specially treated wetwipe that prevents/reverses the chemical process that disables the disks after exposure to oxygen.
People take the path of least resistance.
Thats precisely what these companies are counting on. 99+% of the DVD watching population wouldn't know what to do with a DVD rip if it came with instructions. Nor will they care; if a DVD won't play in their consumer player, they'll assume its a bad disk and go get another or get their money back.
copy protection has NEVER worked
Bullpucky. Copy protection is not intended to completely eliminate unathorized duplication or use, anybody who thinks so is being unrealistic. Copy protection is a big fence around an amusement park with a no trespassing sign (soon it will have a 'violators will be shot' clause at the bottom). There will always be ways around for those who are determined, but the point is to keep most of the population out, thereby increasing profits.
The problem right now is that the few people that get in are making very good replicas of the park and giving them away for free.
Thats bad for the current business model of the big media corps. Probably good for society in general though. Keep pirating, and reward the artist who go completely indy. It'll sort itself out eventually.
I wrote a letter to the record label
Good. For every customer that will actually make the effort to sit down and actually write a physical letter, there are about ten thousand more that are pissed off about the same issue. Big companies know this, and they usually take real letters much more seriously than email or those worthless online polls.