Sorry about the title, but I get really frustrated when I hear about continued efforts to pursue DRM. I believe that producers of content should be able to protect their legal rights but DRM is simply flawed from the get-go. I know this has been said and re-said on/., but I'm going to point it out again: the one requirement for all DRM technology is that the legitimate buyer of the content must be able to watch/listen to/read it. The technology is irrelevant; if a buyer can view the content, it can be re-encoded.
I couldn't begin to assess how plausible this theory is; neither could most of the people on Slashdot. However, I do know the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal, which mean that we can't even rely on the peer-review system to gain information on how sound the underlying research is. Many excellent publications appear on arXiv before being published in excellent journals, but some fairly questionable research ends up there as well.
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
From what I have observed in the field that I study (quantum optics), there has been a rapid increase in the number and quality of publications from Chinese institutes. For the moment, they tend to lag behind the labs in more developed economies, filling out the body of information in the field rather than pioneering new techniques. Nonetheless, the research is usually very sound and many institutes are catching up very quickly.
The students from China tend to be very talented and are willing to work extremely hard. As the quality of equipment and infrastructure improves in the Chinese labs and the opportunities there rival the more mature labs the Chinese students will have no problem returning or staying to do doctoral work. I imagine that the situation is similar in other fields and I'm sure that there will soon be an explosion of quality research coming from China.
Oddly, I do the opposite. Being a researcher, I tunnel into the university network to gain access to academic journals that are behind a pay-wall but that the university's IP block has access to. I have also used the university connection to dodge Megavideo's 72 minute per IP limit on streaming (pirating) television but it occurs to me that that may have been a poor choice. On the other hand, much of the student body watches TV at lunch (and in class) anyway so I doubt one more access would set off too many flags.
Very true, 10 years seems very optimistic considering the colossal challenges of reliably growing nano-tubes. The technique presented in the article offers a way to work around defective (conducting) nano-tubes rather than eliminate such defects. The research done here is very interesting, but processors need to be stamped out by the millions; a technique that requires manipulation of tubes that is customized to each circuit based on random yields simply can't be scaled up into full production.
Before nano-tube processors come out, the defect rate would have to be low enough that most processors have zero (or few) defects rather than each requiring careful tuning of each gate to get them functional. I think this is a case where there will be a big gap between the proof-of-principle functional gates in labs and a marketable product. Still, the prospect of three-dimensional nano-tube processors is very exciting even if it's a long way off. The work presented in the article is also very interesting and is certainly a clever technique, even if it may not find commercial application for a long time.
Right. Open-source is about collaboration and donation. Piracy is generally driven by apathy and occasionally greed. If you don't know the difference between the sharing of open material and theft of copyrighted material, you don't get a say on the influence of "open-source culture."
The real 800 pound gorilla in the room is the lack of strong federal privacy laws that dictate what corporations may do with our information.
Yes, corporate third parties must be restricted in the way they handle personal information. Otherwise they may sell it to parties who could use it against us...such as the government.
Of course I agree with you that it is, in general, much worse if that information ends up in the hands of people who would use it maliciously for their own gain rather than in the hands of the government. However, when that information ends up in the hands of the government, the breach of trust is much more fundamental. The government can, under no circumstances, violate the personal rights that they exist to protect. The means and ends are both irrelevant when it comes to the violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens by the government. The breach of trust that occurs when such a violation is committed undermines the legal system and the democratic process.
Sure, the malicious "fourth-party" may be more likely to do damage to an individual than the government, but action can be taken against those who sell out personal information for gain. A few thieves won't do too much damage, but when the government circumvents the laws protecting the rights of it's own citizens, those laws and rights start lose meaning, which is far, far scarier.
It uses bright light to blind the single-photon detectors. Determining that your detectors are saturated isn't that hard; if they get saturated, someone's probably performing this attack and you might not want to use the key. In fact, any reasonable QKD scheme should really try to ensure that the detectors are operating properly throughout the key distribution otherwise it's a giant security hole.
You could use a simple photo-diode inside the LED enclosure to measure reflection off the snow. A snow covered surface would reflect much more than a clear one. Wouldn't even need much processing.
Your wording will probably get you a Troll mod but Impress is certainly weak compared to Powerpoint. May I suggest, however, that you try Latex + Beamer. It will construct very readable, elegant presentations quickly and without any "tax" at all (it's open source of course).
Exactly; businesses make business decisions. This may be a poor business decision (although I agree with you that it also may be a very shrewd one) but nobody should be heaping blame on Bing and Yahoo for censorship. That blame should be directed squarely at the Indian government. Bing and Yahoo (and yes, Google too) are concerned only with revenue streams. You will disappointed if you feel otherwise.
Governments should be accountable for upholding human rights, like free speech, by creating sensible, correct laws. Corporations should be accountable for protecting profits while still acting within the laws. If the two goals become confused there will be conflicts of interest which will undermine human rights. Free speech is the government's responsibility, not that of Bing or Yahoo or Google. People need to be disappointed in the right people (elected officials) in order for change to occur.
P.S. Props for the sig. Le Petit Prince is excellent.
As long as people are willing to execute programs with administrative privileges to get free wallpapers there will be botnets. People should be held accountable for damages caused by their machines, wittingly or unwittingly. Unsafe conditions on property are certainly grounds for a negligence charge and municipalities often compel unsafe or even unsightly conditions to be remedied. Electronic conditions should be handled similarly.
I wonder if fines could be an effective solution to botnets. Certainly the only way to treat the problem is to make people responsible for what their computers are up to. If people were held accountable for spam sent from their machines and were fined appropriately they may be more inclined to watch what ends up on their machines.
Of course, there's a theme among the non-"tech-savvy" public to utterly refuse to understand how the technology they use works. Fines on bots would likely be a boon for virus scan companies but other efforts may be required to convince the general public to care. What's needed is less focus on ill-defined "threats" and more on general understanding.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems like the article is suggesting that all media boxes that run on open source software will be unusable with any kind DRM because, in general, DRM solutions need to be closed. Setting aside whether or not that's correct (see other responses for discussion of that) it seems to be oblivious to the fact that open source players are perfectly capable of using closed-source codecs provided they can license use of the relevant binary blobs. Furthermore, proprietary video players can always be released for Linux.
Sure the BBC could choose to use a format that isn't supported on Linux but there's no fundamental problem with running proprietary software on open source platforms. If the BBC wants to pay for developing a version of a proprietary codec to run on Linux media boxes, they can. DRM will still be a poor choice for reasons that any/. reader knows all about, but it's a choice that isn't fundamentally tied in to interoperability with OSS (even if the philosophies behind DRM and OSS are at odds).
Re:"Openness" defines shift from 20th to 21st cent
on
Google About Openness
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· Score: 1
Now I think that that's an interesting thing to discuss. Not whether companies should act against their best interest for the sake of public good, which is what many on slashdot seem to be promoting, but what is a viable business model as information becomes increasingly easy to exchange. I think that suggesting that companies should act for public good is promoting a system based on conflicts of interest that will usually result in self-interest winning over public good.
The reason that Google is so interesting is that they promote openness to a degree that few other tech companies do because it's in their best interest. If you assume that anyone should put your benefit above theirs, you will be constantly disappointed, but Google has discovered that in many areas peripheral to their core business they can benefit significantly by opening access to everyone and skimming ad revenue off the traffic. Opening source often pulls more people to the core technology, in turn generating ad revenue. It's important to remember that Google can do free thanks to ad revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
Aw damn...missed "off." This is why /. has "preview" for your comments.
No, you get my lawn.
It's for science!
No, it's for "science."
...it's important to consider quality, as well as quantity.
To name a few.
Sorry about the title, but I get really frustrated when I hear about continued efforts to pursue DRM. I believe that producers of content should be able to protect their legal rights but DRM is simply flawed from the get-go. I know this has been said and re-said on /., but I'm going to point it out again: the one requirement for all DRM technology is that the legitimate buyer of the content must be able to watch/listen to/read it. The technology is irrelevant; if a buyer can view the content, it can be re-encoded.
I couldn't begin to assess how plausible this theory is; neither could most of the people on Slashdot. However, I do know the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal, which mean that we can't even rely on the peer-review system to gain information on how sound the underlying research is. Many excellent publications appear on arXiv before being published in excellent journals, but some fairly questionable research ends up there as well.
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
From what I have observed in the field that I study (quantum optics), there has been a rapid increase in the number and quality of publications from Chinese institutes. For the moment, they tend to lag behind the labs in more developed economies, filling out the body of information in the field rather than pioneering new techniques. Nonetheless, the research is usually very sound and many institutes are catching up very quickly.
The students from China tend to be very talented and are willing to work extremely hard. As the quality of equipment and infrastructure improves in the Chinese labs and the opportunities there rival the more mature labs the Chinese students will have no problem returning or staying to do doctoral work. I imagine that the situation is similar in other fields and I'm sure that there will soon be an explosion of quality research coming from China.
Oddly, I do the opposite. Being a researcher, I tunnel into the university network to gain access to academic journals that are behind a pay-wall but that the university's IP block has access to. I have also used the university connection to dodge Megavideo's 72 minute per IP limit on streaming (pirating) television but it occurs to me that that may have been a poor choice. On the other hand, much of the student body watches TV at lunch (and in class) anyway so I doubt one more access would set off too many flags.
Very true, 10 years seems very optimistic considering the colossal challenges of reliably growing nano-tubes. The technique presented in the article offers a way to work around defective (conducting) nano-tubes rather than eliminate such defects. The research done here is very interesting, but processors need to be stamped out by the millions; a technique that requires manipulation of tubes that is customized to each circuit based on random yields simply can't be scaled up into full production.
Before nano-tube processors come out, the defect rate would have to be low enough that most processors have zero (or few) defects rather than each requiring careful tuning of each gate to get them functional. I think this is a case where there will be a big gap between the proof-of-principle functional gates in labs and a marketable product. Still, the prospect of three-dimensional nano-tube processors is very exciting even if it's a long way off. The work presented in the article is also very interesting and is certainly a clever technique, even if it may not find commercial application for a long time.
Jean Chrétien had a lot of flaws, but at least he had the balls to tell the Americans to stop pushing us around.
When he did so, he was mostly trying to make Paul Martin's job harder.
Right. Open-source is about collaboration and donation. Piracy is generally driven by apathy and occasionally greed. If you don't know the difference between the sharing of open material and theft of copyrighted material, you don't get a say on the influence of "open-source culture."
The real 800 pound gorilla in the room is the lack of strong federal privacy laws that dictate what corporations may do with our information.
Yes, corporate third parties must be restricted in the way they handle personal information. Otherwise they may sell it to parties who could use it against us...such as the government.
Of course I agree with you that it is, in general, much worse if that information ends up in the hands of people who would use it maliciously for their own gain rather than in the hands of the government. However, when that information ends up in the hands of the government, the breach of trust is much more fundamental. The government can, under no circumstances, violate the personal rights that they exist to protect. The means and ends are both irrelevant when it comes to the violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens by the government. The breach of trust that occurs when such a violation is committed undermines the legal system and the democratic process.
Sure, the malicious "fourth-party" may be more likely to do damage to an individual than the government, but action can be taken against those who sell out personal information for gain. A few thieves won't do too much damage, but when the government circumvents the laws protecting the rights of it's own citizens, those laws and rights start lose meaning, which is far, far scarier.
It uses bright light to blind the single-photon detectors. Determining that your detectors are saturated isn't that hard; if they get saturated, someone's probably performing this attack and you might not want to use the key. In fact, any reasonable QKD scheme should really try to ensure that the detectors are operating properly throughout the key distribution otherwise it's a giant security hole.
You could use a simple photo-diode inside the LED enclosure to measure reflection off the snow. A snow covered surface would reflect much more than a clear one. Wouldn't even need much processing.
Your wording will probably get you a Troll mod but Impress is certainly weak compared to Powerpoint. May I suggest, however, that you try Latex + Beamer. It will construct very readable, elegant presentations quickly and without any "tax" at all (it's open source of course).
Exactly; businesses make business decisions. This may be a poor business decision (although I agree with you that it also may be a very shrewd one) but nobody should be heaping blame on Bing and Yahoo for censorship. That blame should be directed squarely at the Indian government. Bing and Yahoo (and yes, Google too) are concerned only with revenue streams. You will disappointed if you feel otherwise.
Governments should be accountable for upholding human rights, like free speech, by creating sensible, correct laws. Corporations should be accountable for protecting profits while still acting within the laws. If the two goals become confused there will be conflicts of interest which will undermine human rights. Free speech is the government's responsibility, not that of Bing or Yahoo or Google. People need to be disappointed in the right people (elected officials) in order for change to occur.
P.S. Props for the sig. Le Petit Prince is excellent.
As long as people are willing to execute programs with administrative privileges to get free wallpapers there will be botnets. People should be held accountable for damages caused by their machines, wittingly or unwittingly. Unsafe conditions on property are certainly grounds for a negligence charge and municipalities often compel unsafe or even unsightly conditions to be remedied. Electronic conditions should be handled similarly.
I wonder if fines could be an effective solution to botnets. Certainly the only way to treat the problem is to make people responsible for what their computers are up to. If people were held accountable for spam sent from their machines and were fined appropriately they may be more inclined to watch what ends up on their machines.
Of course, there's a theme among the non-"tech-savvy" public to utterly refuse to understand how the technology they use works. Fines on bots would likely be a boon for virus scan companies but other efforts may be required to convince the general public to care. What's needed is less focus on ill-defined "threats" and more on general understanding.
once people discover how well it works compared to their usual Windows experience.
The big flaw is that internet celebrity doesn't pay nearly as well as drug smuggler.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems like the article is suggesting that all media boxes that run on open source software will be unusable with any kind DRM because, in general, DRM solutions need to be closed. Setting aside whether or not that's correct (see other responses for discussion of that) it seems to be oblivious to the fact that open source players are perfectly capable of using closed-source codecs provided they can license use of the relevant binary blobs. Furthermore, proprietary video players can always be released for Linux.
Sure the BBC could choose to use a format that isn't supported on Linux but there's no fundamental problem with running proprietary software on open source platforms. If the BBC wants to pay for developing a version of a proprietary codec to run on Linux media boxes, they can. DRM will still be a poor choice for reasons that any /. reader knows all about, but it's a choice that isn't fundamentally tied in to interoperability with OSS (even if the philosophies behind DRM and OSS are at odds).
Now I think that that's an interesting thing to discuss. Not whether companies should act against their best interest for the sake of public good, which is what many on slashdot seem to be promoting, but what is a viable business model as information becomes increasingly easy to exchange. I think that suggesting that companies should act for public good is promoting a system based on conflicts of interest that will usually result in self-interest winning over public good.
The reason that Google is so interesting is that they promote openness to a degree that few other tech companies do because it's in their best interest. If you assume that anyone should put your benefit above theirs, you will be constantly disappointed, but Google has discovered that in many areas peripheral to their core business they can benefit significantly by opening access to everyone and skimming ad revenue off the traffic. Opening source often pulls more people to the core technology, in turn generating ad revenue. It's important to remember that Google can do free thanks to ad revenue.
Australia's censorship is awful but at least it's proposed to be a blacklist not a whitelist.
It also probably holds sway over many of the officials who are involved in the censorship decisions.
There are people who post while sober?!? Oh no.