It seems to me that this tale shoots down the government's primary argument for trying to restrict the public's use of cryptography. Their battle cry has been "we must be given the crypto keys, otherwise we won't be able to conduct the sort of wiretaps we've gotten used to". But as this story demonstrates, they can still conduct wiretaps the same way they always have - by physically going out and tapping some wires. Bravo, FBI boys!
The two-party duopoly will most likely continue as long as our plurality system of elections does. There are many better, fairer methods (do a search on "election methods" and don't be afraid to go a few levels deep). But I doubt you'll hear anything about them in the news, for whatever conspiracy-theory reason you care to subscribe to. My favorite is that they might put people into office who are superbly qualified -- rather than bland, safe, and easily bought.
As many helpful people pointed out in the last Netscape article, you can install SSL support into Mozilla pretty easily by choosing "Install PSM" from the Debug menu.
It works, but on my Linux box Mozilla's secure pages leave a bunch of little "psm" processes hanging around doing nothing but sucking up all my CPU until I kill the browser.
See here for a detailed opinion of why Instant Runoff Voting is non-optimal, bordering on outright irrational. My favorite non-ideological objection to IRV is that it can be a bookkeeping nightware.
A less emotional comparison of alternate election methods can be found here.
The whole point of constitutional copyright protection is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts". Kind of a shame that copyright enforcement has led to the disappearance of an invaluable tool to promote science.
Unless CRC claims to have invented some of the math contained in their volume, which could not have been profitably produced without the protection of their copyright.
Difference being that it would take more than 5 seconds to reveal the plot of The Matrix, whereas the entire story of SW episode two will probably fit on the back of the postage stamp that episode one was written on.
The Independent JPEG Group's standard tool package includes "jpegtran" which will do exactly what you want. In fact, depending on your distribution, it might already be sitting on your Linux box.
If not, here's one of many links that came up on Google.
But this device doesn't make you self-sufficient - it only makes you less dependent on the electric grid. You still need a natural gas or propane feed. Now granted you could stockpile your own propane, but you could just as easily stockpile gasoline and have your own generator right now. I don't think this device makes the public any less dependent on a large power distribution network of some kind. Only solar or wind power have any semi-realistic chance of that at the moment.
Well that's very interesting. Is the emission of RF interference the only reason the FCC is allowed to regulate receivers? Because if so, what difference does it make to the emissions if the data contained in a certain band is copyrighted or not? And if the answer is "none" then what the hell is the FCC doing drafting these new requirements based on content licensing when there is no public protection involved?
Isn't that the resource the FCC was created to manage?
The article doesn't mention whether the FCC wants to make it illegal to receive DTV transmissions without government-approved hardware. If so, then the sellout is complete.
Anyone know which candidate is less likely to appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold this kind of crap? Land of the free, my ass. We're headed back to a feudal system of information lords and consumer peasants.
"Product tying" doesn't refer to compatibility or interoperability, it refers to purchasing. The M-M act says that it's illegal for me to take two separately available products like, oh I don't know, say HooverVacuum95 and HooverVacuumBagsIE and demand that you cannot buy one without buying the other. But it doesn't outlaw the fact that HooverVacuum95 won't work without HooverVacuumBagsIE if I am able to buy them separately.
Certainly assuming a good RNG, the odds of repeating k within your lifetime are slim-to-none.
But suppose you have an evil adversary who can screw with your RNG, perhaps for only a limited time. If he compromises it for a few messages that encrypt a random session key with RSA, he's only cracked those few messages. If he compromises it for a couple of messages encrypted with ElGamal, he's got your private key for every message until you retire it.
A very remote possibility for most people, of course. But it makes me uneasy.
but my main one is: does the expiration of the patent mean that RSA will be retroactively included in systems such as GnuPG?
The central advantage of GnuPG and SSH protocol version 2 (as far as I can tell) is simply that they don't use patent-encumbered algorithms, and RSA is "the big one" in that category. Of necessity, the free world has moved on to DSA and ElGamal, but do they have any technical (non-political) advantage?
I'm particularly intrigued by the fact that if you're using ElGamal and for whatever dumb reason (bad RNG or just wild luck) you choose the same k twice, you give away your private key. Do any of the popular cryptosystems keep track of used ks to make sure they don't repeat, or do they just rely on probability? Does RSA have any comparable weakness?
I'm profoundly disturbed by the way "people" and "citizens" have been transformed - both in this discussion and in political discourse at large - into "consumers". I would expect those at the top of the economic food chain to think of the masses as nothing but consumers of product, but it's scary that many (most?) people have come to think of themselves that way.
This is a plea for people to wake up. "Citizens" have rights and responsibilities, minds and talents and souls. "Consumers" have disposable income and a valuable database of spending preferences.
By transforming citizens into consumers, we have laid the foundation for a new government based entirely on money. It's becoming more apparent every day. The frightening part is that we see it coming, but we feel we have no way to stop it, perhaps even no right to stop it.
From what divine or constitutional source did Sony get the right to an uninterrupted "revenue stream"? Where did we as a society come up with the vocabulary that says a corporation has a "right" to anything at all? Particularly since the largest of them don't seem to have very many accompanying responsibilities.
I'm posting this over a (gasp!) 14.4Kbps modem
because my cable modem service has been out for the last 18 hours. (ObIrony: the customer support line is just a recording, and the ISP's advice when your cable modem isn't working is to send e-mail to tech support.)
Meanhile the phone company keeps calling to sell us ADSL, but once the order is placed they forget all about it. (This has happened three times this year already.)
Sure, they sell ads, but it's not like they're charging users a fee. You can hardly say they're profiting
since they're losing money hand-over-fist.
I stand corrected.
...the dirty little secret that the recording
industry has been trying to hide all along: their customers don't agree with copyright restrictions and are happy to
work around them.
Hardly a secret that people would rather expend less money/effort than more. The secret is that the industry's "right" is an artificial constitutional construct intended to benefit the public, not an eternal gift from on high.
...the majority of their users use it to commit copyright
infringement. Should Napster be penalized for providing a tool for a purpose that apparently has huge public support,
from which they do not profit, and which remains within the letter of the law?
Are they within the letter of the law? It's one thing for a common carrier to say "we make a billion phone connections a year and only a few thousand of those are used to commit crimes, so what can we do?". It's quite another for Napster to say "well, the vast majority of people who use our service are using it to commit a crime, but why should that be our problem?" You might have a hard time convincing a judge that they're not a willing accessory.
The fact that there is huge public support for Napster shouldn't, in itself, excuse them. If anything, it should indicate that the law they're breaking may no longer be a good one and should be changed. On the other hand, I'm sure there'd be huge public support for "no more taxes ever" or "free movie admission for everyone", but that doesn't make it right.
Under the DMCA service providers (common carriers) are exempt from prosecution as long as they
remove infringing users when notified. Napster has done so and has followed the letter of the law with regard to
copyright as far as I know.
I'm pretty sure this doesn't apply here. Napster is not a common carrier. Whoever sells them their bandwidth is a common carrier.
The service that Napster provides is very different. They arrange connections between people who want to distribute music files, most of which are probably illegal for them to distribute. They charge a fee for the service of assisting in the commission of what is - with very high probability - a crime. This can be construed as criminal behavior.
This is why Napster is terrible for the cause of intellectual freedom and fair use. It's hard to shout "I didn't do anything" while you're driving the getaway car, even if it's the guys with the guns who deserve most of the blame.
Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices (measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) rose nearly 60%.
Nice choice of years. Now try this one, taken from RIAA's own U.S. market data report: between 1990 and 1999 the average cost of a CD rose by 13%. And yet, sales volume continues to grow by 10% annually. Isn't it a shame that piracy is destroying the CD market?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that this tale shoots down the government's primary argument for trying to restrict the public's use of cryptography. Their battle cry has been "we must be given the crypto keys, otherwise we won't be able to conduct the sort of wiretaps we've gotten used to". But as this story demonstrates, they can still conduct wiretaps the same way they always have - by physically going out and tapping some wires. Bravo, FBI boys!
The two-party duopoly will most likely continue as long as our plurality system of elections does. There are many better, fairer methods (do a search on "election methods" and don't be afraid to go a few levels deep). But I doubt you'll hear anything about them in the news, for whatever conspiracy-theory reason you care to subscribe to. My favorite is that they might put people into office who are superbly qualified -- rather than bland, safe, and easily bought.
It works, but on my Linux box Mozilla's secure pages leave a bunch of little "psm" processes hanging around doing nothing but sucking up all my CPU until I kill the browser.
A less emotional comparison of alternate election methods can be found here.
wget
Unless CRC claims to have invented some of the math contained in their volume, which could not have been profitably produced without the protection of their copyright.
One-click order cancellation
Sorry, Steve and Jeff, I thought of it first and I'm going to transfer the patent to the public domain.
And by third quarter of 2001 I should have another completely new technology ready to patent: one-click stock fraud.
Everyone's a critic. Only now they have stopwatches. :)
Difference being that it would take more than 5 seconds to reveal the plot of The Matrix, whereas the entire story of SW episode two will probably fit on the back of the postage stamp that episode one was written on.
Sorry, the link above is for an old version of the software that doesn't do rotation. Here is a link to a more recent version.
If not, here's one of many links that came up on Google.
But this device doesn't make you self-sufficient - it only makes you less dependent on the electric grid. You still need a natural gas or propane feed. Now granted you could stockpile your own propane, but you could just as easily stockpile gasoline and have your own generator right now. I don't think this device makes the public any less dependent on a large power distribution network of some kind. Only solar or wind power have any semi-realistic chance of that at the moment.
Well that's very interesting. Is the emission of RF interference the only reason the FCC is allowed to regulate receivers? Because if so, what difference does it make to the emissions if the data contained in a certain band is copyrighted or not? And if the answer is "none" then what the hell is the FCC doing drafting these new requirements based on content licensing when there is no public protection involved?
The article doesn't mention whether the FCC wants to make it illegal to receive DTV transmissions without government-approved hardware. If so, then the sellout is complete.
Anyone know which candidate is less likely to appoint Supreme Court justices who will uphold this kind of crap? Land of the free, my ass. We're headed back to a feudal system of information lords and consumer peasants.
"Product tying" doesn't refer to compatibility or interoperability, it refers to purchasing. The M-M act says that it's illegal for me to take two separately available products like, oh I don't know, say HooverVacuum95 and HooverVacuumBagsIE and demand that you cannot buy one without buying the other. But it doesn't outlaw the fact that HooverVacuum95 won't work without HooverVacuumBagsIE if I am able to buy them separately.
But suppose you have an evil adversary who can screw with your RNG, perhaps for only a limited time. If he compromises it for a few messages that encrypt a random session key with RSA, he's only cracked those few messages. If he compromises it for a couple of messages encrypted with ElGamal, he's got your private key for every message until you retire it.
A very remote possibility for most people, of course. But it makes me uneasy.
The central advantage of GnuPG and SSH protocol version 2 (as far as I can tell) is simply that they don't use patent-encumbered algorithms, and RSA is "the big one" in that category. Of necessity, the free world has moved on to DSA and ElGamal, but do they have any technical (non-political) advantage?
I'm particularly intrigued by the fact that if you're using ElGamal and for whatever dumb reason (bad RNG or just wild luck) you choose the same k twice, you give away your private key. Do any of the popular cryptosystems keep track of used ks to make sure they don't repeat, or do they just rely on probability? Does RSA have any comparable weakness?
The Microsoft trial showed that doctored videotapes are admissible, so why not screenshots?
So all you need is two of these vials and you've exceeded 64 bits of address space.
This is a plea for people to wake up. "Citizens" have rights and responsibilities, minds and talents and souls. "Consumers" have disposable income and a valuable database of spending preferences.
By transforming citizens into consumers, we have laid the foundation for a new government based entirely on money. It's becoming more apparent every day. The frightening part is that we see it coming, but we feel we have no way to stop it, perhaps even no right to stop it.
From what divine or constitutional source did Sony get the right to an uninterrupted "revenue stream"? Where did we as a society come up with the vocabulary that says a corporation has a "right" to anything at all? Particularly since the largest of them don't seem to have very many accompanying responsibilities.
I'm posting this over a (gasp!) 14.4Kbps modem because my cable modem service has been out for the last 18 hours. (ObIrony: the customer support line is just a recording, and the ISP's advice when your cable modem isn't working is to send e-mail to tech support.)
Meanhile the phone company keeps calling to sell us ADSL, but once the order is placed they forget all about it. (This has happened three times this year already.)
I stand corrected.
Hardly a secret that people would rather expend less money/effort than more. The secret is that the industry's "right" is an artificial constitutional construct intended to benefit the public, not an eternal gift from on high.
Are they within the letter of the law? It's one thing for a common carrier to say "we make a billion phone connections a year and only a few thousand of those are used to commit crimes, so what can we do?". It's quite another for Napster to say "well, the vast majority of people who use our service are using it to commit a crime, but why should that be our problem?" You might have a hard time convincing a judge that they're not a willing accessory.
The fact that there is huge public support for Napster shouldn't, in itself, excuse them. If anything, it should indicate that the law they're breaking may no longer be a good one and should be changed. On the other hand, I'm sure there'd be huge public support for "no more taxes ever" or "free movie admission for everyone", but that doesn't make it right.
I'm pretty sure this doesn't apply here. Napster is not a common carrier. Whoever sells them their bandwidth is a common carrier.
The service that Napster provides is very different. They arrange connections between people who want to distribute music files, most of which are probably illegal for them to distribute. They charge a fee for the service of assisting in the commission of what is - with very high probability - a crime. This can be construed as criminal behavior.
This is why Napster is terrible for the cause of intellectual freedom and fair use. It's hard to shout "I didn't do anything" while you're driving the getaway car, even if it's the guys with the guns who deserve most of the blame.
Tempest blew my mind, because it was a vector-graphic tube but it was in color. I'd never seen that before. Woohoo!
Nice choice of years. Now try this one, taken from RIAA's own U.S. market data report: between 1990 and 1999 the average cost of a CD rose by 13%. And yet, sales volume continues to grow by 10% annually. Isn't it a shame that piracy is destroying the CD market?