I've always wondered if the FCC's requirements for small radio transmitters/receivers ever had anything to do with keeping TEMPEST technology at the forefront of Big-Brother's Eavesdropping.
For example, check any electronic device such as your computer Monitor, and you will find a required FCC label which reads:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
Now why would anybody care if your home computer monitor was able to accept Interference? And for that matter, what does it mean to be able to 'accept' interference. I don't believe it is illegal to Shield your monitor internally, or to place a Lead cover on all sides, or to Coat the entire thing in copper-sheets and ground them all...
So what does it mean to say, "It must accept interference" - as a whole, if the device itself must accept any radio signals which touch it, but not necessarily alter its operation as a result, well then in that sense - it is impossible to *not* accept interference. Radio waves interfere with all objects and people constantly.
I believe this is worded in such a way as to confuse and scare end-users of electronic equipment into not installing better shielding should they come up with a useful reason to. (ie: Their computer speakers 'pull' their screen to one side). After all, a device which easily accepts radio interference also emits radio interference through the same diminished resistance.
Why would the FCC care if our electronic equipment was all together "quieter"; if anything, it would leave more of the spectrum open for commercial use.
Re:They ain't engineers...
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Beer In Space
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OK, Let me put this argument to rest. The point of me mentioning acceleration is that the only time force acts on an object is under acceleration in a utopian frictionless space.
An object moving in a circle is under constant acceleration. Now whether the 2 forces acting on that object are the string pulling inwards and the object wanting to move perfect 180 degress outwards OR a force 90 degrees to the string in the opposite of the direction the object is moving. There is still force acting on that object which can give the same impression as gravity.
Proof: You can take a bottle of pop, remove the lid and whiz it in a semi-circle over your head completely upside down. The pop will not spew out.
I could draw diagrams of the forces I perceive, but this simple test proves something will imitate gravitational force on that barrel of beer. Please please, let this prove it. 8-)
Re:They ain't engineers...
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Beer In Space
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· Score: 1
"There actually is no outwards force when you wing something around in a circle"
I'm humiliated.
I was under the impression that under circular motion all objects are subject to constant acceleration. Under acceleration, a force exists 180 degrees to the direction of acceleration; which explains why when you step on the gas, you sink back in your seat, or when you turn left, you move to the right.
How can you have tension in a string without force? And if you have force holding the yo yo to the centre of its axis, then you have an equal and opposite force pushing it outwards, away from the centre of its axis.
Can't we all just drink a spacebeer and be friends?
Now, if they were trying to find a way to brew beer in space, that would be different. I'm not sure how, if at all, fermentation would be affected by microgravity.
When you ferment something, Yeast grows exponentially and slowely dies off as the Alcohol content rises. Once a sufficient amount dies, you have to 'rack' the beer/wine/moonshine. This means removing the liquid from the top of the barrel and leaving the dead yeast at the bottom. Otherwise, you end up with a yeasty/moldy smelling drink.
Without gravity the yeast would not drop, and the dead yeast ("lees") would make it a colloid mixture of pretty gross proportions.
On another note, someone mentioned centrifical force would force carbonation to the centre of a barrel, which would be useless. This is only true if the barrel were spun so both ends were cut symmetrically in two: meaning the spinning of the barrel on its own, would force the liquid to both ends, and carbonation to the middle.
If the barrel were placed inside a large circle which spun, then carbonation would rise. During fermentation - yeast would drop. This is due to the fact that the bottom of barrel would be moving fastest, and subject to the largest amount of centrifical force. As you move away from the bottom, each slice of the barrel is moving in a smaller and smaller circle, and is therefore under less centrifical force. This produces force in a downwards-direction, the same as gravity.
I'm speaking of the large circular rooms we all love from 2001.
Ok time for the Canadian to step in. You see, our "metric" system is lot like the 10-based number system we all enjoy so much. When you want to go from one unit of measurement to the next, you simply multiply or divide by ten.
It's a lot like, ummm... what's that word... uh, perfect.
Ok, 10 Millimeters = 1 Centimeter (Lookout Latin!). A Centimeter x 2.54 = 1 Inch. Ok, so divide an inch in half, divide it into three, and your Canadian Centimeter lies between half and 2/3rds. Almost the size of a Dimes face.
That's a little large to be considered microscopic, even if you were to divide that dime's face into 10 - you could still see the divisions.
It seems strange to me that the Internet is being blamed for a lack of "computer clubs". I think the problem really lies in the fact that educational institutions are now providing courses that these clubs originally filled the need for. Also, with so many jobs available now which utilize developers and work on new versions of UNiX and all types of Applications; I think most people just want to get into the workforce and get paid for doing what they like. Whereas before, being assured of getting a job where you get to work on new technology just wasn't possible.
There's a lot to be said for computer clubs, from 1993 - 1996 I was involved in a few local BBS computer clubs, where we created electronic magazines and got writers to contribute while I did the coding and handled small applications that utilized modem communication etc. At that time, I had never met any person I was working with, and when i finally did, it was a social thing; we never felt a need to work from anywhere but our own houses.
"As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc..."
The difference today is that more people accross the world are speaking to each other, and becoming familiar with foreign news sources and foreign languages. Once everyone is using Internet communications globally on the same scale as average daily social interaction -- the problem of a language changing due to isolation is removed. It is quite possible a unified language is forming.
I was surprised to see so many people in support of English dominating language worldwide. On the one hand, I do agree with most of the arguments, a unified language would be beneficial in many respects, on the other hand:
Only very recently have we come to understand the importance of Bio-Diversity to protect life against disease and changing environmental conditions. If all animals (including humans) were as closely related as the Chimpanzee to a Human, then the world as we know it would have been brought to an end many times throughout history. A plague carried by rats, monkeys or sheep, or cows (Bubonic, HIV, Mad Cow Disease) - would devistate all life on earth, and if humans were ever to recover, eliminating these diseases would have been impossible, not to mention the impossibility of finding a food source (including vegetables because i'm Vegan) that was not effected by a lack of all insects; animals; life in direct proportion to each other.
What am I getting at? Well, Linguistics is not just a study of the formation of Languages. It encompasses thought patterns and associations found by groups of people who speak certain languages. Some languages lack synonyms for one subject, and many languages other than english rely on masculine or femenine structures to form sentences.
This is not just a technicality of the language, these subtle differences along with many many others, make the translation of intellectual and artistic concepts such as poetry impossible.
People of different languages will play the 'word association' game in completely different ways, where as in any one language, word association has been found to have higher probabilities of association between different words. This implies people who speak different languages literally *think* differently as a result of both there language and there individuality.
It is my belief that a unified language would have many benefits, but the individuality of each language does lead to diversity in thought, and diversity in approaches to everyday problems. If we unify language, we will also leave behind a diversity of intellect and progress in the world. Language is thought.
"actual alien bacteria dropped into the atmosphere by cometary debris. It remains to be seen whether this is any better than our old friend ALH 84001"...
I'm confused, isn't alien bacteria growing in outter space on the MIR space station?
'Koptev added: "Mir is in such poor condition any of its systems can go at anytime."'
It's good to know we have a large space station hovering over our heads whose orbit could destabalize and crash into us at any time. It's also amazing what you can find out about potential threats to the human population when governments are planning to do something *good*.
Oh well, 2/3rds of the earth are water, so the odds are only 33% against us if it does fail before it can be controlled.
"A MusicDNA Analyzer can be located, for example, on the Web crawler of a large search engine, to ensure that the search engine only points to legal music."
First of all, is this software going to have its own database of every copyrighted work in existance, no. It's going to use some form of CRC or HASH checking which will further limit its functionality. Take into account the number of songs it is going to be required to search through and the number of songs it is going to be required to compare against - and all of a sudden the methods used to discern one song from another become more simple, and less accurate.
"The security breach did not involve a security vulnerability in any Microsoft product."
It's good to know Microsoft isn't even running there own software for there network.
Or perhaps what they mean is, "The security breach was due to our inability to setup a secure network using our own software".
Whatever the case, if they run microsoft software for there network - the security was breached because of that software. Whether it be a hole in the software itself, or due to Microsoft having such horrible standard installations which are loaded with security flaws - it is a result of that software or it's installer.
"Novell NetWare often moved in through the back door, led by departments that said mainframes and minicomputers didn't give operating flexibility or application capability they needed. Before long, NetWare was the dominant network operating system and IT managers complained about unauthorized Windows NT workstations and servers entering the company through that same old door. Now that Windows 2000 and NT are displacing NetWare, IT has Linux to worry about."
Is it just me, or is this article claiming Linux is both a major problem, and the wave of the future?
Maybe those banner ads can pay to send this journalist to school.
"Plant based plastics just might allow a 'compostable VCR', instead of the 'throwaway VCR'."
I'm not a chemist, but its my understanding that plastic is plastic just the same as a methane fuel from cannabis (Whoooo CANNABIS!) is methane all the same.
There's definately a need for environmentally responsible production of everyday items - but we can't ignore that they are still destructive once there lifetime is up. Recycling is good, but its also just another form of 'toss it and forget it'.
Recycling costs resources and takes its toll on the environment and the air we breath just the same. I've heard speculation that for certain metals and/or plastics recycling involves more resources and pollution than mining and production. That's just a rumour.
"Quite frankly is someone can reverse engineer it, odds are it was so damn obvious, it didn't deserve protection in the first place."
I think 'reverse-engineering' in the sense of this article relates to copying and distributing technology in its exact form.
Take a look at DVD players for example (There are many examples though). DVD players are non-programmable devices. They serve no purpose to the consumer other than to take a dvd and throw it straight to a television unencrypted.
When people go to purchase a DVD player, the only thing they really want is something thats affordable and good quality, and lasts for a long time.
Well, if i was Fishbulb Heavy Industries in Sako Japan, and US patent and copyright law didn't quite hold up where I'm living, I could very easily take a nice, popular DVD player and pull it apart.
Inside, I would find a slew of resistors. I could decide there value with a $5.00 ohm meter if they weren't labelled. In fact I could decipher and note the value of all components within the player instantaniously using a multi-meter or just my eyes.
When it comes down to the encryption itself - well that's a hard deal to decipher. Sure its been done and suppressed... but say I don't want to bother looking it up; all I do is take the Programmable Chips (PGA, FPGA, CPLD) and copy them exactly to my own $1.00 chips. In the end, I remove all components and copy the circuit board.
There ya go, I now have a cheap fabricating operation to start-up which will yield millions of dollars; because I sell my DVD players for $50 less, and had to invest 0 dollars in R&D.
This entire scenario applies to graphics cards, sound cards, 3Com hardware, Cisco hardware... it applies to everything. It's only reverse engineering because copying the chips requires pulling them open.
to recap: "If figuring out how something works is a crime, then curosity should be outlawed." - I agree 100%, and I even agree that bad technology shouldn't generate money, it should be open-source. If however, I designed some awesome new doohickey, as i'm sure to do in the future, I don't want it to be stolen by some know-nothing capitalist and sold as "as good as the competition only cheaper".
Curiosity and Cash don't often hold the same moral arguments.
Yeah, it looks like everyone is talking about the first thing that came to my mind when I read the article.
This brings up an interesting point, copyright of software in the future may have require a longer duration, as system speeds go up past the everyday computer users needs / abilities.
But software manufacturers should be considering the artistic nature of their creations and working towards some sort of useful copyright expiration time.
I mean, most of the/. news in past year is revolving around copyright issues with the MPAA, Music, Software (Retro Games, Kevin Mitnick)... etc. We're all going to be seeing some major changes in legal rights over digital mediums - whether those changes are completely fascist like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or a little more humane like "Big Johnson Software" waiving rights to there version of Pong.
Wouldn't it make sense to include a clause in Copyright of Software that states a company has the ability to maintain their rights every five years simply by contacting the Patent Office, and if they don't care enough to do so, the software should fall into the public domain?
What's a few emails or phone calls asserting copyright? The way it is now, most developers of the old games probably don't realize there is a market for their old software, and if they do, some of them still probably don't care enough to bother with the hassle of waiving their rights publicly and legally.
"How's this. Government choses a contractor to build a system. Contractor delivers code to government, government releases code as open source. Government then can choose from any interested parties to manage the code base for them, do one-off mods to the system, etc."
While the popular term, "security through obscurity" isn't actually a *good* thing, consider this.
As the government, or a government sector, would you want any security flaw in your software to be openly available to the general public knowing they, and only they, will be the first ones to find that flaw? Atleast with contract developement, your security problems (and there are *always* security problems) are relatively much much harder to find, and there is always the possability they will be realized before the general public finds them, a la contracted hackers or the original developement company.
"reminds me of what happened during the invasion of Kuwait. Protests were organized saying "No blood for oil," then when the protest was over they got in their cars and drove home."
I want to make it clear, I'm not putting down people's rights to complain about the world. I mean, after all, growing up in the western world it is very hard to live without conforming to the western lifestyle. After all, not having an address is a crime, and not very fun.
If you take a look at what's behind just having an address, you run into a whole slew of things you as a person are absolutely required to do:
- A job for income, or something gen. money
- Heating for your house, using oil
- A job requires transportation, in some areas cars are the only solution
I mean, there's a lot of different ways to live your life -- but some people consider cars a real necessity just the same as breathing, some people consider guns a necessity too... I might not agree with them, but in the end, we're all looking for the same thing: a sustainable lifestyle.
I don't think it's too ludicrous to see people protesting wars over Oil for their own cars. I don't think it's a bad thing that people who eat meat go and protest fur coats.
After all, I would hope that in my own life I could use a minimal amount of resources to make me happy, and if those resources can be from one place or another, I would want the best choice made by the people I purchase from etc.
But you would never catch me arguing that humanity is unworthy of space exploration, cars, houses, murder, slavery, the atomic bomb, lead based paint, polluted water, war and crime.
These are all problems related to the development of a thumb and speech. In my opinion, the abundance of each, and the lack of each in any part of the world is a reason to be proud of the human race, and in most cases - something to strive towards correcting. I couldn't possibly condemn the world to a slow, uneventful death at it's own hands when it is so obvious we could expand and make our time here much more eventful. It is our right, just the same as everything else we do individually and as a race here on earth.
"Christ, we as a species fuck up this planet well and good, and now we're just looking for the best way to go to another planet - and fuck it up for good. Face it people - human infestation is a cancer. The universe would be better off without us going, settling, and polluting another planet."
I always love seeing people who believe so strongly that humanity is a cancerous, selfish, destructive entity.
These people would work their whole lives to destroy any attempt at discovery, or exploration of a potential for the human race....
But they never seem to commit suicide like they'd have everyone else do; They also don't live in forests, mostly all of them are not fruitarian, and the only reasons they have to protest advances in technology are usually cited disastors and abuses of power in the past that "humanity is not above", but somehow they are.
Were these people the only people left on earth, they would multiply just the same, and destroy the earth just the same. We're all from the same race, why don't we all find something positive about the human condition; accepting ourselves as the intelligent, curious and progressive species we are is the only choice we have.
Shouldn't falling space debris and meteorites have already brought this horrible space fungus to earth?
Just to get a little X-files-esque, isn't it also more likely it would have fallen during earth's hay-day as a frozen, useless planet, and therefore be lying in wait under her frozen poles?
"It's irresponsible comparisons between music theft and slavery that makes this "movement" more about selfishness than about fixing the system if it is in fact broken."
If you consider it theft to download music you have the legal right to own in digital form; then yes it is an unfair comparison.
If you look at the idiocy of the law, which is based on the premise that all people are now, "guilty until proven innocent" -- then I think this law is worth dying for. But why bother dying when you don't have to. Ghandi never died for his cause, neither did most civil protestors, and I never claimed they did.
The point of my message was that no law can be removed "through the proper channels" until it simply isn't obeyed. And so many different types of people have broken laws that are ludicrous, or simply wrong -- laws which are now seen as such only because of civil disobedience.
"the law is the law... if you want to change it, change it through the proper channels, don't advocate the blatant violation of it."
Yeah, if we advocate the blatent violation of unjust laws, we would be stooping to the level of so many failures and criminals of the past....
Noam Chompski, Ghandi, slaves (and later freed slaves in civil protests), woman (illegal short skirts and recently, walking topless), People who have started workers unions (Jimmy Hoffa, Canadian Miners who were shot to death along with their families), People who have oral sex (in most states), The government in Calgary - who is responsible for providing a spitoon every 3km along a major road since like 1890, and yet they don't)...
"DeCSS by itself is not a threat to the MPAA - it's the threat of players being built with it."
There's also the threat of players being programmed with that code in them, they too would be able to use a standard DVD rom to decrypt DVDs. Which means the possibility is available to anyone who wishes to persue the project.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always wondered if the FCC's requirements for small radio transmitters/receivers ever had anything to do with keeping TEMPEST technology at the forefront of Big-Brother's Eavesdropping.
For example, check any electronic device such as your computer Monitor, and you will find a required FCC label which reads:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation. "
Now why would anybody care if your home computer monitor was able to accept Interference? And for that matter, what does it mean to be able to 'accept' interference. I don't believe it is illegal to Shield your monitor internally, or to place a Lead cover on all sides, or to Coat the entire thing in copper-sheets and ground them all...
So what does it mean to say, "It must accept interference" - as a whole, if the device itself must accept any radio signals which touch it, but not necessarily alter its operation as a result, well then in that sense - it is impossible to *not* accept interference. Radio waves interfere with all objects and people constantly.
I believe this is worded in such a way as to confuse and scare end-users of electronic equipment into not installing better shielding should they come up with a useful reason to. (ie: Their computer speakers 'pull' their screen to one side). After all, a device which easily accepts radio interference also emits radio interference through the same diminished resistance.
Why would the FCC care if our electronic equipment was all together "quieter"; if anything, it would leave more of the spectrum open for commercial use.
OK, Let me put this argument to rest. The point of me mentioning acceleration is that the only time force acts on an object is under acceleration in a utopian frictionless space.
An object moving in a circle is under constant acceleration. Now whether the 2 forces acting on that object are the string pulling inwards and the object wanting to move perfect 180 degress outwards OR a force 90 degrees to the string in the opposite of the direction the object is moving. There is still force acting on that object which can give the same impression as gravity.
Proof: You can take a bottle of pop, remove the lid and whiz it in a semi-circle over your head completely upside down. The pop will not spew out.
I could draw diagrams of the forces I perceive, but this simple test proves something will imitate gravitational force on that barrel of beer. Please please, let this prove it. 8-)
"There actually is no outwards force when you wing something around in a circle"
I'm humiliated.
I was under the impression that under circular motion all objects are subject to constant acceleration. Under acceleration, a force exists 180 degrees to the direction of acceleration; which explains why when you step on the gas, you sink back in your seat, or when you turn left, you move to the right.
How can you have tension in a string without force? And if you have force holding the yo yo to the centre of its axis, then you have an equal and opposite force pushing it outwards, away from the centre of its axis.
Can't we all just drink a spacebeer and be friends?
Now, if they were trying to find a way to brew beer in space, that would be different. I'm not sure how, if at all, fermentation would be affected by microgravity.
When you ferment something, Yeast grows exponentially and slowely dies off as the Alcohol content rises. Once a sufficient amount dies, you have to 'rack' the beer/wine/moonshine. This means removing the liquid from the top of the barrel and leaving the dead yeast at the bottom. Otherwise, you end up with a yeasty/moldy smelling drink.
Without gravity the yeast would not drop, and the dead yeast ("lees") would make it a colloid mixture of pretty gross proportions.
On another note, someone mentioned centrifical force would force carbonation to the centre of a barrel, which would be useless. This is only true if the barrel were spun so both ends were cut symmetrically in two: meaning the spinning of the barrel on its own, would force the liquid to both ends, and carbonation to the middle.
If the barrel were placed inside a large circle which spun, then carbonation would rise. During fermentation - yeast would drop. This is due to the fact that the bottom of barrel would be moving fastest, and subject to the largest amount of centrifical force. As you move away from the bottom, each slice of the barrel is moving in a smaller and smaller circle, and is therefore under less centrifical force. This produces force in a downwards-direction, the same as gravity.
I'm speaking of the large circular rooms we all love from 2001.
I have too much time on my hands, I know.
Ok time for the Canadian to step in. You see, our "metric" system is lot like the 10-based number system we all enjoy so much. When you want to go from one unit of measurement to the next, you simply multiply or divide by ten.
It's a lot like, ummm... what's that word... uh, perfect.
Ok, 10 Millimeters = 1 Centimeter (Lookout Latin!). A Centimeter x 2.54 = 1 Inch. Ok, so divide an inch in half, divide it into three, and your Canadian Centimeter lies between half and 2/3rds. Almost the size of a Dimes face.
That's a little large to be considered microscopic, even if you were to divide that dime's face into 10 - you could still see the divisions.
It seems strange to me that the Internet is being blamed for a lack of "computer clubs". I think the problem really lies in the fact that educational institutions are now providing courses that these clubs originally filled the need for. Also, with so many jobs available now which utilize developers and work on new versions of UNiX and all types of Applications; I think most people just want to get into the workforce and get paid for doing what they like. Whereas before, being assured of getting a job where you get to work on new technology just wasn't possible.
There's a lot to be said for computer clubs, from 1993 - 1996 I was involved in a few local BBS computer clubs, where we created electronic magazines and got writers to contribute while I did the coding and handled small applications that utilized modem communication etc. At that time, I had never met any person I was working with, and when i finally did, it was a social thing; we never felt a need to work from anywhere but our own houses.
"As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc..."
The difference today is that more people accross the world are speaking to each other, and becoming familiar with foreign news sources and foreign languages. Once everyone is using Internet communications globally on the same scale as average daily social interaction -- the problem of a language changing due to isolation is removed. It is quite possible a unified language is forming.
I was surprised to see so many people in support of English dominating language worldwide. On the one hand, I do agree with most of the arguments, a unified language would be beneficial in many respects, on the other hand:
Only very recently have we come to understand the importance of Bio-Diversity to protect life against disease and changing environmental conditions. If all animals (including humans) were as closely related as the Chimpanzee to a Human, then the world as we know it would have been brought to an end many times throughout history. A plague carried by rats, monkeys or sheep, or cows (Bubonic, HIV, Mad Cow Disease) - would devistate all life on earth, and if humans were ever to recover, eliminating these diseases would have been impossible, not to mention the impossibility of finding a food source (including vegetables because i'm Vegan) that was not effected by a lack of all insects; animals; life in direct proportion to each other.
What am I getting at? Well, Linguistics is not just a study of the formation of Languages. It encompasses thought patterns and associations found by groups of people who speak certain languages. Some languages lack synonyms for one subject, and many languages other than english rely on masculine or femenine structures to form sentences.
This is not just a technicality of the language, these subtle differences along with many many others, make the translation of intellectual and artistic concepts such as poetry impossible.
People of different languages will play the 'word association' game in completely different ways, where as in any one language, word association has been found to have higher probabilities of association between different words. This implies people who speak different languages literally *think* differently as a result of both there language and there individuality.
It is my belief that a unified language would have many benefits, but the individuality of each language does lead to diversity in thought, and diversity in approaches to everyday problems. If we unify language, we will also leave behind a diversity of intellect and progress in the world.
Language is thought.
How long does it take these moons to complete 1 orbit, and will they cause problems in our solar system when they return?
Like, I dunno, smashing a planet and creating an asteroid belt, subsequently causing the extinction of the dinosaurs....
Zacharia Sitchen yo.
"actual alien bacteria dropped into the atmosphere by cometary debris. It remains to be seen whether this is any better than our old friend ALH 84001"...
I'm confused, isn't alien bacteria growing in outter space on the MIR space station?
Is this so hard to believe???
'Koptev added: "Mir is in such poor condition any of its systems can go at anytime."'
It's good to know we have a large space station hovering over our heads whose orbit could destabalize and crash into us at any time. It's also amazing what you can find out about potential threats to the human population when governments are planning to do something *good*.
Oh well, 2/3rds of the earth are water, so the odds are only 33% against us if it does fail before it can be controlled.
"A MusicDNA Analyzer can be located, for example, on the Web crawler of a large search engine, to ensure that the search engine only points to legal music."
First of all, is this software going to have its own database of every copyrighted work in existance, no. It's going to use some form of CRC or HASH checking which will further limit its functionality. Take into account the number of songs it is going to be required to search through and the number of songs it is going to be required to compare against - and all of a sudden the methods used to discern one song from another become more simple, and less accurate.
They should call it NetNazi (tm)
"buoyant magnetized bubbles"
Could somebody explain buoyancy in space?
"The security breach did not involve a security vulnerability in any Microsoft product."
It's good to know Microsoft isn't even running there own software for there network.
Or perhaps what they mean is, "The security breach was due to our inability to setup a secure network using our own software".
Whatever the case, if they run microsoft software for there network - the security was breached because of that software. Whether it be a hole in the software itself, or due to Microsoft having such horrible standard installations which are loaded with security flaws - it is a result of that software or it's installer.
"Novell NetWare often moved in through the back door, led by departments that said mainframes and minicomputers didn't give operating flexibility or application capability they needed. Before long, NetWare was the dominant network operating system and IT managers complained about unauthorized Windows NT workstations and servers entering the company through that same old door. Now that Windows 2000 and NT are displacing NetWare, IT has Linux to worry about."
Is it just me, or is this article claiming Linux is both a major problem, and the wave of the future?
Maybe those banner ads can pay to send this journalist to school.
Wow that baby's even got the patented Burns Sun Shield!
"Plant based plastics just might allow a 'compostable VCR', instead of the 'throwaway VCR'."
I'm not a chemist, but its my understanding that plastic is plastic just the same as a methane fuel from cannabis (Whoooo CANNABIS!) is methane all the same.
There's definately a need for environmentally responsible production of everyday items - but we can't ignore that they are still destructive once there lifetime is up. Recycling is good, but its also just another form of 'toss it and forget it'.
Recycling costs resources and takes its toll on the environment and the air we breath just the same. I've heard speculation that for certain metals and/or plastics recycling involves more resources and pollution than mining and production. That's just a rumour.
"Quite frankly is someone can reverse engineer it, odds are it was so damn obvious, it didn't deserve protection in the first place."
... but say I don't want to bother looking it up; all I do is take the Programmable Chips (PGA, FPGA, CPLD) and copy them exactly to my own $1.00 chips. In the end, I remove all components and copy the circuit board.
I think 'reverse-engineering' in the sense of this article relates to copying and distributing technology in its exact form.
Take a look at DVD players for example (There are many examples though). DVD players are non-programmable devices. They serve no purpose to the consumer other than to take a dvd and throw it straight to a television unencrypted.
When people go to purchase a DVD player, the only thing they really want is something thats affordable and good quality, and lasts for a long time.
Well, if i was Fishbulb Heavy Industries in Sako Japan, and US patent and copyright law didn't quite hold up where I'm living, I could very easily take a nice, popular DVD player and pull it apart.
Inside, I would find a slew of resistors. I could decide there value with a $5.00 ohm meter if they weren't labelled. In fact I could decipher and note the value of all components within the player instantaniously using a multi-meter or just my eyes.
When it comes down to the encryption itself - well that's a hard deal to decipher. Sure its been done and suppressed
There ya go, I now have a cheap fabricating operation to start-up which will yield millions of dollars; because I sell my DVD players for $50 less, and had to invest 0 dollars in R&D.
This entire scenario applies to graphics cards, sound cards, 3Com hardware, Cisco hardware... it applies to everything. It's only reverse engineering because copying the chips requires pulling them open.
to recap: "If figuring out how something works is a crime, then curosity should be outlawed." - I agree 100%, and I even agree that bad technology shouldn't generate money, it should be open-source. If however, I designed some awesome new doohickey, as i'm sure to do in the future, I don't want it to be stolen by some know-nothing capitalist and sold as "as good as the competition only cheaper".
Curiosity and Cash don't often hold the same moral arguments.
Yeah, it looks like everyone is talking about the first thing that came to my mind when I read the article.
/. news in past year is revolving around copyright issues with the MPAA, Music, Software (Retro Games, Kevin Mitnick)... etc. We're all going to be seeing some major changes in legal rights over digital mediums - whether those changes are completely fascist like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or a little more humane like "Big Johnson Software" waiving rights to there version of Pong.
This brings up an interesting point, copyright of software in the future may have require a longer duration, as system speeds go up past the everyday computer users needs / abilities.
But software manufacturers should be considering the artistic nature of their creations and working towards some sort of useful copyright expiration time.
I mean, most of the
Wouldn't it make sense to include a clause in Copyright of Software that states a company has the ability to maintain their rights every five years simply by contacting the Patent Office, and if they don't care enough to do so, the software should fall into the public domain? What's a few emails or phone calls asserting copyright? The way it is now, most developers of the old games probably don't realize there is a market for their old software, and if they do, some of them still probably don't care enough to bother with the hassle of waiving their rights publicly and legally.
"How's this. Government choses a contractor to build a system. Contractor delivers code to government, government releases code as open source. Government then can choose from any interested parties to manage the code base for them, do one-off mods to the system, etc."
While the popular term, "security through obscurity" isn't actually a *good* thing, consider this. As the government, or a government sector, would you want any security flaw in your software to be openly available to the general public knowing they, and only they, will be the first ones to find that flaw? Atleast with contract developement, your security problems (and there are *always* security problems) are relatively much much harder to find, and there is always the possability they will be realized before the general public finds them, a la contracted hackers or the original developement company.
"reminds me of what happened during the invasion of Kuwait. Protests were organized saying "No blood for oil," then when the protest was over they got in their cars and drove home."
... I might not agree with them, but in the end, we're all looking for the same thing: a sustainable lifestyle.
I want to make it clear, I'm not putting down people's rights to complain about the world. I mean, after all, growing up in the western world it is very hard to live without conforming to the western lifestyle. After all, not having an address is a crime, and not very fun.
If you take a look at what's behind just having an address, you run into a whole slew of things you as a person are absolutely required to do:
- A job for income, or something gen. money
- Heating for your house, using oil
- A job requires transportation, in some areas cars are the only solution
I mean, there's a lot of different ways to live your life -- but some people consider cars a real necessity just the same as breathing, some people consider guns a necessity too
I don't think it's too ludicrous to see people protesting wars over Oil for their own cars. I don't think it's a bad thing that people who eat meat go and protest fur coats.
After all, I would hope that in my own life I could use a minimal amount of resources to make me happy, and if those resources can be from one place or another, I would want the best choice made by the people I purchase from etc.
But you would never catch me arguing that humanity is unworthy of space exploration, cars, houses, murder, slavery, the atomic bomb, lead based paint, polluted water, war and crime.
These are all problems related to the development of a thumb and speech. In my opinion, the abundance of each, and the lack of each in any part of the world is a reason to be proud of the human race, and in most cases - something to strive towards correcting. I couldn't possibly condemn the world to a slow, uneventful death at it's own hands when it is so obvious we could expand and make our time here much more eventful. It is our right, just the same as everything else we do individually and as a race here on earth.
"Christ, we as a species fuck up this planet well and good, and now we're just looking for the best way to go to another planet - and fuck it up for good. Face it people - human infestation is a cancer. The universe would be better off without us going, settling, and polluting another planet."
I always love seeing people who believe so strongly that humanity is a cancerous, selfish, destructive entity.
These people would work their whole lives to destroy any attempt at discovery, or exploration of a potential for the human race....
But they never seem to commit suicide like they'd have everyone else do; They also don't live in forests, mostly all of them are not fruitarian, and the only reasons they have to protest advances in technology are usually cited disastors and abuses of power in the past that "humanity is not above", but somehow they are.
Were these people the only people left on earth, they would multiply just the same, and destroy the earth just the same. We're all from the same race, why don't we all find something positive about the human condition; accepting ourselves as the intelligent, curious and progressive species we are is the only choice we have.
I don't see anybody asking this:
Shouldn't falling space debris and meteorites have already brought this horrible space fungus to earth?
Just to get a little X-files-esque, isn't it also more likely it would have fallen during earth's hay-day as a frozen, useless planet, and therefore be lying in wait under her frozen poles?
I'm actually serious.
"It's irresponsible comparisons between music theft and slavery that makes this "movement" more about selfishness than about fixing the system if it is in fact broken."
If you consider it theft to download music you have the legal right to own in digital form; then yes it is an unfair comparison.
If you look at the idiocy of the law, which is based on the premise that all people are now, "guilty until proven innocent" -- then I think this law is worth dying for. But why bother dying when you don't have to. Ghandi never died for his cause, neither did most civil protestors, and I never claimed they did.
The point of my message was that no law can be removed "through the proper channels" until it simply isn't obeyed. And so many different types of people have broken laws that are ludicrous, or simply wrong -- laws which are now seen as such only because of civil disobedience.
"the law is the law ... if you want to change it, change it through the proper channels, don't advocate the blatant violation of it."
...
Yeah, if we advocate the blatent violation of unjust laws, we would be stooping to the level of so many failures and criminals of the past....
Noam Chompski, Ghandi, slaves (and later freed slaves in civil protests), woman (illegal short skirts and recently, walking topless), People who have started workers unions (Jimmy Hoffa, Canadian Miners who were shot to death along with their families), People who have oral sex (in most states), The government in Calgary - who is responsible for providing a spitoon every 3km along a major road since like 1890, and yet they don't)...
let's not end up being one of *those* people
"DeCSS by itself is not a threat to the MPAA - it's the threat of players being built with it."
There's also the threat of players being programmed with that code in them, they too would be able to use a standard DVD rom to decrypt DVDs. Which means the possibility is available to anyone who wishes to persue the project.