We run this debate about twice a week at work (in terms of security). We have specific "rules" as to marking "blank media".
For instance, if you open a spindle of 50 blank CD's, you have to mark each and every CD a certain way, even though they are blank still and contain no information. Then you may have to relable each one depending on what information gets burned into it. So, we always love makeing the same point about "other" blank media. Such as the 500 page pack of blank "paper" media that usually gets put into a copy machine or printer. Well, that media still needs to get marked, but only "after" something gets put on it, so why should it be different then CD's? Or why should post-it notes be different, or notebooks, or whiteboards. Its all "media" in the definition that was given (a physical device or object which can be used to store information).
I can agree with this, but they insist on "fixing" something. So they can at least spend that time/energy/money fixing the actual place where the problem exists. And in this case, since they feel that there is a problem with the fact that many of the hijackers had a valid license from Virginia, then the actual problem in this case is the issuing authority, not the item being issued. They should be looking at ways of how to possibly change the rules and proceedures required in obtaining a valid license.
For instance, requiring the person to bring an origional birth certificate, certificate of citizenship, or blue card if non-citizen.
Requiring proof of residency (i.e. certified bill of sale of property, government issued mail to you at your address, or your renter's contract with all of these having a 3-7 day processing time for verification).
Now grant it, it will not prevent people who are legally in the state/country from getting the license. But that is the whole point. We don't want people who are not here illegally to be able to get the license as this is used for general identification everywhere in the country.
Now does this stop terriorism? No. But does it make it more difficult for foreign terrorists from getting access to drivers licenses? Yes, as they would need to then go through a lot more steps in terms of needing to be here for valid reasons and/or go through the background checks required to become a citizen.
I mean from the sense that it may be harder to forge the drivers license, then yes maybe it is more secure.
BUT, the licenses that the hijackers had were LEGAL licenses (i.e. they went through the process of getting a license and were granted one). The problem isn't the fact that the license itself is not secure, but the PROCESS which grants the license is NOT SECURE. FIX THE PROBLEM NOT A SYMPTOM.
hmmm... lets take a look at this...
"How many artists would be able to afford to produce quality music without the recording industries willing to take the plunge and invest in them based on a tape of an amateur recording?"
Well, lets see. The whole indy movement has been produced with just this sentiment. Several big name bands didn't want to be a part of the system, and thus setup their own company(s) to do distribution and negotiations. Many did so because they felt that they sould own their own work, not have some company own it. The work itself should be able to sell itself in a true market that is not being stifeled by unfair practices. Economic free market theory and practice shows this to be true excepting in the case of other entities controling the market to their will, which is what we have in the music industry as it currently exists.
"The same goes for getting their music played on the radio and stuff... small artists would be at a great disadvantage when it comes to negotiating contracts and stuff without a label's backing."
This is patently false. Radio is now mostly a "payola" type of broadcasting. Simply put, the radio stations are owned or in-part owned by the same corporations that own or in-part own the music industry. It is in their best interests to simply play their own music. Back in the 50's-70's, independents had a very good chance of being played on the air at their local stations, which would then be picked up at other stations if the songs were recieved well by the listening population. This many times resulted in "One hit wonders", who really only had 1 or 2 good songs, but those 1 or 2 good songs were in deed picked up and played, usually resulting in the band being signed to a label. But now, there are few stations that even HAVE local programming, but simply cindicate shows from other stations. Fewer still even play local bands on the air, and of those, only as part of a scheduled time block and almost never a part of normal day program music mixes. It may very well be true that some of it is due to possibly poorer quality music, but that gap is being shrinking faster each year as home technology becomes increasingly more powerful.
A home studio with a decent computer, studio quality microphone (which are not that expensive anymore), a sound insulated room, and a $300-500 mixing board, can easily record and produce CD's that of equal or greater quality then many industry CD's. Especially now, when many industy studios are mixing/mastering CD's in which the sound dynamics are completely crushed simply to make the overall sound level loud (so that when their songs are played the reference level is up 2-3 db so people in theory will take more notice of the song), when in reality, this destroys the actual musicality of the instruments and vocals by removing the dynamics that truely make music what it is.
Without the RIAA, and the powerlust that exists in the industry, we would hear more bands based on the fact that population likes then, not based on what the industry believes we "should" like.
Go get the venerable "Red Book" (well now it is purple). Its the Unix Systems Admin book. A truely must have reference book if you are going to be dealing with Unix (Solaris, HP-UX), OS X, or Linux.
It does a very good job covering most of the bases of running and configuring systems to do the most common business level jobs and applications (setting up hard drives, raid, networking, email, printing, network file sharing, account management, group management, backups, using tape drives, etc., basically just about all your day to day things that you will have to deal with).
If you havn't read yet. The university is trying to regulate an appartment complex that primarily has students in it, but is not owned or regulated by the university. Since they don't own it, they can't say what you can or can not do there.
There is a MUCH better way to do this. First off, instead of letting users choose their own passwords, assign them for each person. This lets you, the administrator to be entirely in control of all passwords on the system. With this control, you can maintain a master list of all users and passwords securely in either encrypted/secure files (with no permissions to anyone but root). This also allows you to force good passwords onto users. They do not need to be impossible, but something like 2 three letter words or partial words (chosen at random) with 2 other ASCII characters are usually not too hard for people to remember, but are still tough enough to make it hard to guess with password word lists.
Now back to why you want to do this. If the user forgets their password, you have it on file. No need to force change the password to something else, simply allow the user to go to an admin or a "password coordinator", who has the power to lookup a specific user's password. This needs to be done in person, no phone in's or anything of that sort, which allows you to verify with their badge/ID that they truely are who they say they are and then you give them the password for the account. This also relies on the fact that you need physical area level security that does not allow non-employee's into the area, but it is very secure (i.e. no emails, no phone calls, everything is done in person with reguards to passwords).
Now this also allows you to setup forced changes as well and password sync'ing across all systems (unless there is a reason not to, like system x is located in a public area which non-employee's can access). Otherwise with having everything using the same password for that user, they use it all the time and by process of repetition, they remember the password since everything (login screen, email, etc.) all use the same password across any system in the company/branch office.
Yes there is a danger in the sense that if someone gets the password they can access anything that person can do, but this is mitigated by placing a strict 30-45 day policy and running system and network level login logs as well as system based monitoring (i.e. something like SNARE) to track any attempted access to something they should not be looking at or trying to do, with email notification to IT security personnel when something odd occurs (like showing multiple logins at the same time on two physically different systems).
Not everyone can do something like this due to the increased overhead in terms to the IT department, but it is better then having they users pick passwords like "iamagod1" and lets you more easily keep tabs on all account activity to see exactly what may have been accessed.
Since they have their fingers into most news sites, they said, "Get that off the news!!! We don't want people to know this because someone will figure out a way around it."
I mean seriously, all you need is another geek in another country to put up a proxy server on a high speed connection and we have video. Or just stream it on-line themselves with some of the P2P streams out there.
Hey Tim. Its getting there:P Waiting on the benchmarks still from the hpl code, but it blew through the find all prime numbers from 1-10,000,000,000 in under 5 minutes:)
This is most likely a case of the one hand not knowing what the other is doing, since I work as a systems administrator at a different branch. Its always interesting to read about something this big on slashdot before getting a memo about it.
In anycase, it sounds like they have a similar setup there as we do here with most engineers having a Sun system and a PC. I personally have a linux PC and a sunblade, both of which run open office, and I don't see any need at all for a MS PC other then for some website tools that ask/require IE (but are easily spoofed with multi-zilla plugin). It will be interesting what comes of this. I don't actually see us making a change like this away from Sun simply because there are no true replacements for the types of servers we are using from an x86 standpoint. However, as opterons become more and more available in server class systems, then maybe some of the systems will be converted over, but I don't see this happening anytime in the next 3-4 years...
Seriously. If you need some good space (I think the new models are 3 terribyte), its only a couple thousand. The older 1 and 2 terribyte arrays can be had for even cheaper. I personally can't say enough about them. Hardware supported RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, which means no overhead to actual software/cpu for using the different raid levels. I know its not quite what you were asking about, (i.e. not a DIY case), but you will be hard pressed to find something this cheap with these features even if you build it yourself.
Besides, you know you want flashing blue, green, and red LEDs:P
Did you even read what Microsoft actually released? Obviously not by your post. What Microsoft is "giving" away for free is a BETA version only good for some amount of time. This product is in no way, shape, or form committed to being priced at free when the final release is done. The only difference that is being done this time is that Microsoft decided to FINALLY NOT SELL the BETA to end users as a 1.0 product and then proceed to patch the product to fix the fact that it is BETA.
... then again, since I have a TURBO, it all depends on how I drive it:) Seriously, it is rated to 19/26 city/highway, but I get more like 30/38 just because I take it easy most of the time and am not using the turbo (still in negative vacuume air pressure for the engine). Since its a 4 cylendar engine, it gets gas mileage like a 4 cylendar when the boost is not going. But, if I push it to full boost and 7500 RPM, I get ~8 mile per gallon.... so I guess the estimate works out since may people will drive the car hard, and others will drive it like I do for the majority of the time. Its just nice to know that I have the power there if I need it for some unknown reason.
Its simple. THEY OWN THE NEWS! Disney owns stations, Sony owns stations. When you get down to it, there isn't a major news network in the USA that isn't partly or wholly owned by a company/corporation that doesn't also own partly or wholly a major music industry corporation.
Just wondering if the MPAA managed to force non-backwards compatibility into the standard or not so they would get people buying all the favorite movies all over again in the new format in 2-3 years...
They shot themselves in the foot by not having the camera optional in their top of the line pda's. I personally would have been very interested in their clie line, but could not get any pda that had the features I wanted without a camera. The problem with the camera is the fact that where I work, they are not allowed! What is the point in buying the pda only to not be able to bring it into any of the buildings that I work in?
They should have taken a page from HP and released a version of all their pda's that have a camera with a version that does not have the camera. I'm just wanting on HP to release a pda that has 480x640 resolution and I will buy one. This isn't so much HP's faught, but the idot at MS who decided to hard code in the screen resolution at 240x320 into the OS!!! I mean seriously, did they REALLY think that no one would want to use a resolution other then that? Did they believe that LCD screen technology would not continue to inovate and develop higher resolution screens? Or were they simply pressed for time because they were late to market on an immerging new operating system market for mobile devices? I think it was the latter...
Anyway back on topic, I would have been glad to fork over $400-700 for a top of the line clie that had WiFi, bluetooth, a 480x640 3.5" screen, and possibly CF or SDIO memory slot, WITHOUT a camera. Besides if I WANTED a digital camera, I would have just spent the $50 for a similar 1.1 megapixel camera (or modded a Kodak "1 time use" digital camera to a multiuse camera for $25).
The real reason is because of the recent outbreak of HIV that has been rapidly spreading through the porn industry. Basically, one person did a movie somewhere in South America and was infected by someone else on that shoot. That person then infected at least 3 others personally (possibly 15 more). Those that were infected each infected others, etc., etc. Even though HIV tests are mandatory every few months, it can take upwards of 6 months before a person infected will test positive on a test. Leaving a minimum of around 6-9 months before someone finds out that he/she was infected.
The DOJ is most likely cracking down on the industry to find out if there is criminal liability in the incidents and to force the industry to change its practices, which seem to have failed horribily in this case. It only takes one person to not follow the strict rules or one person to lie/fake test results for many of these people to get infected...
Seriously, unless they lockdown ALL current burning software/hardware there is no way to apply this for current generation CD burning technology. This is why macrovision can be defeated simply by using an old VCR. Unless they force firmware/software upgrades to everyone (in which case most people will never do the upgrade given how well they already deal with patches), there is nothing that would truely work.
I mean really, think about it. The only storage mechanism they have available is the local hard drive or the CD itself. Well, the CD itself would only work as a method IF the CD is actually in the burner. I sure don't use my burner READ the CD I am making a copy of, it goes into a DVD-ROM, hense no write laser. That leaves the hard drive, and unless they lockdown the CD to only be used on that 1 computer (which would actually mean it is no longer a CD), you could just:
a) delete the storage file with the current data causing it to believe the CD was never copied before
b) use a different computer
c) wipe your hard drive
d) use linux
e) use BSD
f) make an iso image of the CD and transfer that across the net...
This does nothing at all to stop actuall pirates (as can be proven by letter "f" in the above options). How long do you think it will take our current firmware hackers to do a diff on the updates and remove any "protection" from a fireware, especially in this day when people already have dual layer DVD burner firmware for DVD burners which the companies are not releasing the firmware for 6 months in order to get people to buy their $200 dual layer burner instead of their $80 single layer burner which has the same hardware...
Well, that is what a search warrent is for anyway.
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Safe and Insecure?
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Just that the RIAA doesn't have the rite to issue a search warrent for your computer, only police/FBI, and in this case, it would probably be the FBI, but they are so overworked as it is with terrorism, etc., they do not have the manpower/time needed to execute search warrents on EVERYONE that the RIAA wants to sue (which appears to be anyone who is on any P2P network, weather they are using it legally or not).
Now I won't hold my breath that search warrents will never be issued, but in the normal civil cases, it will be hard to prove who did what in a case such as this, and as a result a judge "could/should" rule in favor of the defendent. But the defendent will still need to make a decent case about not having infringed on copyrighted materials. In civil suits "reasonable doubt" does not exist. But in this day and age where you can hack into a WiFi WEP64 or WEP128 secured system in 2-3 minutes, if you own a device like this, it shouldn't be hard to show a judge that not only is it possible, but very probable in a crowded area/neighborhood/apartment.
Ok, now that software is patentable, where do I apply for a process which decodes digital content which has been encoded in MPEG2 standard?
And while we are at it, what about a process that converts 3 numbers which range in values from 0-255, into visible light?
Or better still, converts a group of eitht(8) ones(1's) and zeros(0's) into human readable text and numbers?
They would have to war drive for those macs as the mac they would see would be from your router/AP not your system... (at least that is what mine shows).
Ummm...dude, that is because the power to weight ratio is so off. Sure, if we put the engine in an open frame, open cockpit, no roof, doors, 1 seat, 4 tires, no floor, no radio, no AC, no heat, no vents, no windows, direct header exhaust, no interior, etc. (like a motocycle) the car would be smoking fast and would easily keep up with the sports bike. Hell, people gutted an old Honda Civic and made 9's on it on the 1/4 mile. Considering the STi makes stock 11's if you drop 1500 pounds, you would see huge improvements.
Seriously. The Subaru 2.5 liter STi engine has the most horsepower for its size/weight ratio in its size class. You are talking about 120 HP per liter, in a 4 cylinder engine, which it freaking MONSTROUS! There are many V8's out there that do not put out that much horsepower!
Only wonder why they wouldn't remove the standard twinscroll turbo and setup a twin turbo setup and gain another 70-150 HP. Its not like there isn't the room in the Camaro engine bay to fit that type of setup. It is one of the only reasons why the Impreza STi doesn't have a TT, because it takes up so much space that other parts would need to be completely redesigned (i.e. no room for the top mount intercooler, so it would need to be front mounted, the water enjection cooling on the intercooler would need to be removed, as well as the windshield wiper pump/resevoir, etc., which on a street/road car, you will need the windshield wiper fluid). I also believe that they have an issue with the 6 spd transmission which runs the STi being able to handle that much extra HP/torque (especially considering people are blowing the transmission with the stock 300HP setup if they drive it hard), let alone the tranny being able to handle the extra 150HP a good twin turbo setup would give you.
I am surprised they wouldn't do alcohol injection or NOS injection to thin the fuel mix and gain 30-50HP. Alcohol would be the easiest and cheapest. The stock engine has already been hardened for alcohol, all that would be needed is the resivoir, pump, hoses and you are good to go.
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For instance, if you open a spindle of 50 blank CD's, you have to mark each and every CD a certain way, even though they are blank still and contain no information. Then you may have to relable each one depending on what information gets burned into it. So, we always love makeing the same point about "other" blank media. Such as the 500 page pack of blank "paper" media that usually gets put into a copy machine or printer. Well, that media still needs to get marked, but only "after" something gets put on it, so why should it be different then CD's? Or why should post-it notes be different, or notebooks, or whiteboards. Its all "media" in the definition that was given (a physical device or object which can be used to store information).
For instance, requiring the person to bring an origional birth certificate, certificate of citizenship, or blue card if non-citizen.
Requiring proof of residency (i.e. certified bill of sale of property, government issued mail to you at your address, or your renter's contract with all of these having a 3-7 day processing time for verification).
Now grant it, it will not prevent people who are legally in the state/country from getting the license. But that is the whole point. We don't want people who are not here illegally to be able to get the license as this is used for general identification everywhere in the country.
Now does this stop terriorism? No. But does it make it more difficult for foreign terrorists from getting access to drivers licenses? Yes, as they would need to then go through a lot more steps in terms of needing to be here for valid reasons and/or go through the background checks required to become a citizen.
BUT, the licenses that the hijackers had were LEGAL licenses (i.e. they went through the process of getting a license and were granted one). The problem isn't the fact that the license itself is not secure, but the PROCESS which grants the license is NOT SECURE. FIX THE PROBLEM NOT A SYMPTOM.
That is just my 2 cents.
hmmm... lets take a look at this... "How many artists would be able to afford to produce quality music without the recording industries willing to take the plunge and invest in them based on a tape of an amateur recording?" Well, lets see. The whole indy movement has been produced with just this sentiment. Several big name bands didn't want to be a part of the system, and thus setup their own company(s) to do distribution and negotiations. Many did so because they felt that they sould own their own work, not have some company own it. The work itself should be able to sell itself in a true market that is not being stifeled by unfair practices. Economic free market theory and practice shows this to be true excepting in the case of other entities controling the market to their will, which is what we have in the music industry as it currently exists. "The same goes for getting their music played on the radio and stuff... small artists would be at a great disadvantage when it comes to negotiating contracts and stuff without a label's backing." This is patently false. Radio is now mostly a "payola" type of broadcasting. Simply put, the radio stations are owned or in-part owned by the same corporations that own or in-part own the music industry. It is in their best interests to simply play their own music. Back in the 50's-70's, independents had a very good chance of being played on the air at their local stations, which would then be picked up at other stations if the songs were recieved well by the listening population. This many times resulted in "One hit wonders", who really only had 1 or 2 good songs, but those 1 or 2 good songs were in deed picked up and played, usually resulting in the band being signed to a label. But now, there are few stations that even HAVE local programming, but simply cindicate shows from other stations. Fewer still even play local bands on the air, and of those, only as part of a scheduled time block and almost never a part of normal day program music mixes. It may very well be true that some of it is due to possibly poorer quality music, but that gap is being shrinking faster each year as home technology becomes increasingly more powerful. A home studio with a decent computer, studio quality microphone (which are not that expensive anymore), a sound insulated room, and a $300-500 mixing board, can easily record and produce CD's that of equal or greater quality then many industry CD's. Especially now, when many industy studios are mixing/mastering CD's in which the sound dynamics are completely crushed simply to make the overall sound level loud (so that when their songs are played the reference level is up 2-3 db so people in theory will take more notice of the song), when in reality, this destroys the actual musicality of the instruments and vocals by removing the dynamics that truely make music what it is. Without the RIAA, and the powerlust that exists in the industry, we would hear more bands based on the fact that population likes then, not based on what the industry believes we "should" like.
Go get the venerable "Red Book" (well now it is purple). Its the Unix Systems Admin book. A truely must have reference book if you are going to be dealing with Unix (Solaris, HP-UX), OS X, or Linux. It does a very good job covering most of the bases of running and configuring systems to do the most common business level jobs and applications (setting up hard drives, raid, networking, email, printing, network file sharing, account management, group management, backups, using tape drives, etc., basically just about all your day to day things that you will have to deal with).
If you havn't read yet. The university is trying to regulate an appartment complex that primarily has students in it, but is not owned or regulated by the university. Since they don't own it, they can't say what you can or can not do there.
Now back to why you want to do this. If the user forgets their password, you have it on file. No need to force change the password to something else, simply allow the user to go to an admin or a "password coordinator", who has the power to lookup a specific user's password. This needs to be done in person, no phone in's or anything of that sort, which allows you to verify with their badge/ID that they truely are who they say they are and then you give them the password for the account. This also relies on the fact that you need physical area level security that does not allow non-employee's into the area, but it is very secure (i.e. no emails, no phone calls, everything is done in person with reguards to passwords).
Now this also allows you to setup forced changes as well and password sync'ing across all systems (unless there is a reason not to, like system x is located in a public area which non-employee's can access). Otherwise with having everything using the same password for that user, they use it all the time and by process of repetition, they remember the password since everything (login screen, email, etc.) all use the same password across any system in the company/branch office.
Yes there is a danger in the sense that if someone gets the password they can access anything that person can do, but this is mitigated by placing a strict 30-45 day policy and running system and network level login logs as well as system based monitoring (i.e. something like SNARE) to track any attempted access to something they should not be looking at or trying to do, with email notification to IT security personnel when something odd occurs (like showing multiple logins at the same time on two physically different systems).
Not everyone can do something like this due to the increased overhead in terms to the IT department, but it is better then having they users pick passwords like "iamagod1" and lets you more easily keep tabs on all account activity to see exactly what may have been accessed.
I mean seriously, all you need is another geek in another country to put up a proxy server on a high speed connection and we have video. Or just stream it on-line themselves with some of the P2P streams out there.
Too bad too few have seen the skit as well...
Hey Tim. Its getting there :P Waiting on the benchmarks still from the hpl code, but it blew through the find all prime numbers from 1-10,000,000,000 in under 5 minutes :)
In anycase, it sounds like they have a similar setup there as we do here with most engineers having a Sun system and a PC. I personally have a linux PC and a sunblade, both of which run open office, and I don't see any need at all for a MS PC other then for some website tools that ask/require IE (but are easily spoofed with multi-zilla plugin). It will be interesting what comes of this. I don't actually see us making a change like this away from Sun simply because there are no true replacements for the types of servers we are using from an x86 standpoint. However, as opterons become more and more available in server class systems, then maybe some of the systems will be converted over, but I don't see this happening anytime in the next 3-4 years...
Besides, you know you want flashing blue, green, and red LEDs :P
Did you even read what Microsoft actually released? Obviously not by your post. What Microsoft is "giving" away for free is a BETA version only good for some amount of time. This product is in no way, shape, or form committed to being priced at free when the final release is done. The only difference that is being done this time is that Microsoft decided to FINALLY NOT SELL the BETA to end users as a 1.0 product and then proceed to patch the product to fix the fact that it is BETA.
... then again, since I have a TURBO, it all depends on how I drive it :) Seriously, it is rated to 19/26 city/highway, but I get more like 30/38 just because I take it easy most of the time and am not using the turbo (still in negative vacuume air pressure for the engine). Since its a 4 cylendar engine, it gets gas mileage like a 4 cylendar when the boost is not going. But, if I push it to full boost and 7500 RPM, I get ~8 mile per gallon.... so I guess the estimate works out since may people will drive the car hard, and others will drive it like I do for the majority of the time. Its just nice to know that I have the power there if I need it for some unknown reason.
Its simple. THEY OWN THE NEWS! Disney owns stations, Sony owns stations. When you get down to it, there isn't a major news network in the USA that isn't partly or wholly owned by a company/corporation that doesn't also own partly or wholly a major music industry corporation.
Just wondering if the MPAA managed to force non-backwards compatibility into the standard or not so they would get people buying all the favorite movies all over again in the new format in 2-3 years...
They should have taken a page from HP and released a version of all their pda's that have a camera with a version that does not have the camera. I'm just wanting on HP to release a pda that has 480x640 resolution and I will buy one. This isn't so much HP's faught, but the idot at MS who decided to hard code in the screen resolution at 240x320 into the OS!!! I mean seriously, did they REALLY think that no one would want to use a resolution other then that? Did they believe that LCD screen technology would not continue to inovate and develop higher resolution screens? Or were they simply pressed for time because they were late to market on an immerging new operating system market for mobile devices? I think it was the latter...
Anyway back on topic, I would have been glad to fork over $400-700 for a top of the line clie that had WiFi, bluetooth, a 480x640 3.5" screen, and possibly CF or SDIO memory slot, WITHOUT a camera. Besides if I WANTED a digital camera, I would have just spent the $50 for a similar 1.1 megapixel camera (or modded a Kodak "1 time use" digital camera to a multiuse camera for $25).
The DOJ is most likely cracking down on the industry to find out if there is criminal liability in the incidents and to force the industry to change its practices, which seem to have failed horribily in this case. It only takes one person to not follow the strict rules or one person to lie/fake test results for many of these people to get infected...
I mean really, think about it. The only storage mechanism they have available is the local hard drive or the CD itself. Well, the CD itself would only work as a method IF the CD is actually in the burner. I sure don't use my burner READ the CD I am making a copy of, it goes into a DVD-ROM, hense no write laser. That leaves the hard drive, and unless they lockdown the CD to only be used on that 1 computer (which would actually mean it is no longer a CD), you could just:
a) delete the storage file with the current data causing it to believe the CD was never copied before
b) use a different computer
c) wipe your hard drive
d) use linux
e) use BSD
f) make an iso image of the CD and transfer that across the net...
This does nothing at all to stop actuall pirates (as can be proven by letter "f" in the above options). How long do you think it will take our current firmware hackers to do a diff on the updates and remove any "protection" from a fireware, especially in this day when people already have dual layer DVD burner firmware for DVD burners which the companies are not releasing the firmware for 6 months in order to get people to buy their $200 dual layer burner instead of their $80 single layer burner which has the same hardware...
Now I won't hold my breath that search warrents will never be issued, but in the normal civil cases, it will be hard to prove who did what in a case such as this, and as a result a judge "could/should" rule in favor of the defendent. But the defendent will still need to make a decent case about not having infringed on copyrighted materials. In civil suits "reasonable doubt" does not exist. But in this day and age where you can hack into a WiFi WEP64 or WEP128 secured system in 2-3 minutes, if you own a device like this, it shouldn't be hard to show a judge that not only is it possible, but very probable in a crowded area/neighborhood/apartment.
Ok, now that software is patentable, where do I apply for a process which decodes digital content which has been encoded in MPEG2 standard? And while we are at it, what about a process that converts 3 numbers which range in values from 0-255, into visible light? Or better still, converts a group of eitht(8) ones(1's) and zeros(0's) into human readable text and numbers?
Go read it for yourself. . You need to be a member, but there are LOTS of people who are having to send their 6spd's back to SOA headquarters in Cherry Hill, NJ with grinding problems. This isn't an isolated incident either. There have been at least 50 people that I have heard from so far with this problem, and considering there are only a few thousand STi's (i.e. less then 5K), that is a significant number of people with the problem, especially since this is only a small portion of the number of people who own the STi.
Ummm...dude, that is because the power to weight ratio is so off. Sure, if we put the engine in an open frame, open cockpit, no roof, doors, 1 seat, 4 tires, no floor, no radio, no AC, no heat, no vents, no windows, direct header exhaust, no interior, etc. (like a motocycle) the car would be smoking fast and would easily keep up with the sports bike. Hell, people gutted an old Honda Civic and made 9's on it on the 1/4 mile. Considering the STi makes stock 11's if you drop 1500 pounds, you would see huge improvements.
Only wonder why they wouldn't remove the standard twinscroll turbo and setup a twin turbo setup and gain another 70-150 HP. Its not like there isn't the room in the Camaro engine bay to fit that type of setup. It is one of the only reasons why the Impreza STi doesn't have a TT, because it takes up so much space that other parts would need to be completely redesigned (i.e. no room for the top mount intercooler, so it would need to be front mounted, the water enjection cooling on the intercooler would need to be removed, as well as the windshield wiper pump/resevoir, etc., which on a street/road car, you will need the windshield wiper fluid). I also believe that they have an issue with the 6 spd transmission which runs the STi being able to handle that much extra HP/torque (especially considering people are blowing the transmission with the stock 300HP setup if they drive it hard), let alone the tranny being able to handle the extra 150HP a good twin turbo setup would give you.
I am surprised they wouldn't do alcohol injection or NOS injection to thin the fuel mix and gain 30-50HP. Alcohol would be the easiest and cheapest. The stock engine has already been hardened for alcohol, all that would be needed is the resivoir, pump, hoses and you are good to go.
It is an interesting idea...