...as long as you remember not to hire anyone who sites [H]ardOCP as their primary news site. They'll have half the servers ripped up and water-cooled before the first day is out, and be looking hungrily at all the workstations with dreams of monster HSFs.
I still think nothing was as touching as the Locke/Rachael/Phoenix scene, to which I also can remember being brought to tears. Still, one of the contributing factors there was the music. I was so disappointed that Nobuo Uematsu didn't do the FF Movie music, after hearing his work in the games for years, and having the cds from several of them. The music wasn't bad, but it wasn't on par with what he can do, either.
The point here is that while such programs may be able to put people's lives in danger, they aren't illegal, nor is it illegal to write, or try to write one. Virii exist which can bring (windows) systems to their knees, but they are still written, traded freely, and it's LEGAL. What is illegal is the USE of such programs for malicious intent. If I want to write virii and try to hack my own computers all day long, no one may complain, but as soon as I try to hack another computer (without permission), or loose my virii upon an unsuspecting soul, then I have comiited a crime. Similarly, writing, musing over, learning from deCSS or other decrypters should be legal, and only using them to make and distribute (illegally) copies should be illegal. DeCSS is a digital crowbar, only arrest the guy if he's using it to break in to a car.
See other posts. Mainly, cd players with digital out, soundcards with digital in. Yeah, may take a little longer to reach a healthy distribution, but not much.
I'm just glad they finally made my mind for me. I used to hear songs on the radio, grab mp3's of the ones I liked, and grab the album's of the one's I liked the most. However, my only cd players are my computers at home and my laptop at work. Now I have no choice but to do all my music listening in mp3 format. Thanks guys, saves me a bunch of money!
This is the primary reason heacker-speak started. Certain phrases had to be avoided so filters and searches wouldn't catch what wsa being written. Unfortunatly, it's also incredibly verstatile. Do you think a filter will catch m3+all1c4 mp3s? No, it will just make those who use Napster have to deal with irritating filenames, irritating searches.
My previous example was indeed a bad one, so I will make a better one. A user creates a web-page of file aliases. He then posts random_file_00416.mp3, adds 5-10s of buffer whitespace to throw off file size checkers, and lists on the webpage that random_file_00416 is indeed a metallica mp3. Once again, the actual name means nothing. Give it a little more time, and a Napster client clone might even incorporate such alising and make it transparent.
A service of that size can't reasonably be required to verify more than the filename or link name within their web page or servers.
Alright, you tell Napster to remove all illegal MP3s. How on earth are they expected to do that? Screen by filename? We've already estblished filename means absolutley nothing. "A rose by any other name..." I can send a number of "This_is_not_a_metallica_song.mp3", which might indeed be picked up by a metallica filter. The only way to know if a submitted mp3 is illegal is to listen to it, adn then ask the company or creator, unless you have prior knowledge. Asking any company to verify ALL content on a public board or file sharing facilitator is foolish. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure Napster isn't transmiting copyrighted material is to shut down completely. Thus for Napster to successfully comply with the injunction, they must go completely offline, and the injuction is effectively against Napster, and ceases to have anything to do with whether a given user is posting copyrighted material.
Ebay has the right to request legally that someone be denied all internet access for a time? The offender has been given a 'time-out'? Our do yuo suggest that it is the ISPs responsibility to make sure a given user cannot access ebay, which is impossible. Even if you mandate that they have to track all users and their banned sites, and not allow direct access, some will decide it's too much hassle and won't take the customer, hence we're back to the time out. If you either force them to take the customer, or they do of their own choice, thre is still no way to prevent a person to get to a site from anything but an endpoint. The person can either use one of a number of a number of anonymizing software packages, or just use one of the hundreds if not thousands of public proxies. They could even go so far as setting up a VPN and routing port 80 through it. You can sue the person for harrassment, or the government could say it's ebay's responsibility to deal with troublesome customers, or you could toss them in jail. Either way, this is NOT the responsibility of the ISP, as policing a dial-ups web usage is IMPOSSIBLE.
Not sure why this showed up here, I meant to make it a response to another post I can't find, basically ammounting to "they are animals, not rational beings, therefor we can eat them".
While I agree with you wholeheartedly, my first thought was that someone would attack the whole "rational beings" argument. This troubled me for a moment, until I realized it doesn't buy them anything. If either we are just glorified animals, or animals are slightly less intelligent rational beings, then we should be subject to the same rules. While certainly suffering isn't in order, eating meat has to be. Ever seen a bear out fishing for salmon, or tigers munching on anything they can catch, or vultures picking at the remains of a corpse? Either animals are our inferiors, and we are free to use them as food, or they are our equals, and we can act in the same manner as they, and hunt and kill for our food.
Re:Freenet encryption, not yet
on
Publius
·
· Score: 1
True, I was basically bickering about the use of "does," instead of what I believe would be better as "will." Freenet is obviously still a work in progress, though it is actually rather usable, if not a bit cryptic at the moment. It would be more usable if there were a few more servers out there at the moment.
OT: definition of equality
on
Publius
·
· Score: 1
"We currently have more than enough evidence to show that the races are equal..."
Define equal as you use it here. Do you suggest that in every way, every black man/woman is equal to every white, japanese, hispanic, etc., etc., etc., man/woman? That obviously is not the case, as even two siblings can be of differing intelligence. More likely, you suggest that the racial averages of intelligence quotient, physical ability, etc., given equal oppurtunity, would be equal across the board. While I honestly doubt this would be true, given more than enough evidence to show that races are not genetically equal (hence that whole issure of color of the skin), here we really have NO evidence. It's difficult to find two people of precisely the same oppurtunity within the same racial group, not to mention across them. Hence our difficulty in defining just how a child should be raised. We really can't claim any physical/mental equality without more information.
As far as I understand it, there are plans for some form of freenet "browser", whereby you can read a document on freenet, with links in it to other freenet keys/files. If the concept is taken to completion, you could develop an entire www-type feel to it, while maintaining encrypted files and anonymity, as in not knowing where the files you're reading are located. There is no difference between serving "files," and serving "words." The only difference may be an ascii vs: binary file, and even binary files can have readable portions.
My only gripes with freenet's goal are the potential slow links (me right now, on isdn), and the unique-key system.
Freenet encryption, not yet
on
Publius
·
· Score: 2
All that is changed so far is the name. I run the linux "file" command on anything on my server, and decide what I may want to look at for myself. The key is hashed, and while there are plans for it, no data is yet modified. Even then, if the data is stored locally, any system-wide encryption can be broken, and there will be a mehtod to read locally stored files.
In agreement with Kinshala, most of the misconceptions here come from not holding a _real_ sword, or just one that feels heavier from it's poor balance. With a large portion of even the supposedly knowledgeable population incorrcet on the weights of these weapons, many of the replicas are created abnormally heavy. I have indeed held a 15 lb sword, albeit a very large one, at a Ren Fest. While something along the lines of a 40-50 lb sword would be downright painful, some swords, mainly the larger 2-hand claymores, do reach over 10 lbs. As Kintanon, i also concede to grossly overestimating the weights of swords, but after some more research, I believe the above post is substantially correct.
i never claimed ot be a sword master. your words, not mine.
And in insulting spring steel, keep in mind, in order to get carbon into the katanas, the Japanese would forge them in what amounted to a dirty fire. Spring steel, at least that of good quality, may or may not have the right proportions, but has the advantage or pure carbon.
I want to see what our tech can do with a katana. The Japanese managed to create (IMHO) the most beautiful, powerful bladed weapons in existence. As was mentioned, even some of the recent tech couldn't do more than match the meticulous forgings of the Japanese. I wonder how far they were from our "structurally perfect" swords. As you say though, you don't slay a dragon with a rapier, or a katana.
Not a single katana or tachi i've ever held has been that light, and while many were simple 440 steel display pieces, a few were well-wrought damascus or even the proper differentially-temepered higher-carbon blades.
Claymores as well, of all types, weighed more than 10 pounds. Though I know less of scottish weapons, my friends wallace-style claymore and his lighter basket-hilt claymore are easily over your 10 lbs.
I'd have to disagree with this point alone. My wakizashi can't be more than 8 or 9. Admittedly, it is a japnese "short sword," according to Mayamoto Musashi, but it is still a sword.
I didn't know about MP3Board.com either, until the lawsuits started. So when looking for an MP3, i now check mp3board as well. Guess what, i'm not downloading MORE illegal MP3s, thanks to the lawsuits. Granted, i've also bought more cds as a result, being able to sample some of the music, and decide i like it enough to buy. Maybe the RIAA knows what this will do, and they want the publicity any way they cna get it. Even bad publicity is good publicity?
As i've posted before, not only is a page a file, but until you click on something, it is impossible to tell which it is. A directory can look like a file very easily. http://prettypictures.com/mountain_stream.jpg can be replaced with mountain_stream.jpg/ which is an entire directory of illegal mp3s. The problem with requiring a page to be responsible for the type of links, is that without downloading at least part of them, it is impossible to tell what the link is to. If every page out there starts downloading even a porton of it's links on a regular basis, the internet will get slower than it already is.
I'm not sure everyone would have sue for this, but a pci card that used the bus for little (if anything) more than power and a fast lan connection. Plug a p3+ram+video+?sound card into a pci slot, plug in a keyboard, mouse, monitor, maybe speakers, and you've got a dual (or more) mobo case. You could either mount a filesystem from the "host" mobo, or toss an IDE connection on the baord as well. Sound too small to be true? The EspressoPC did it, and while it would obviously have some nasty power requirements, and while it wouldn't be for everyone, it would have a wide number of potential uses: 1: Simply a multi-mobo case. 2: High-bandwidth clustering (run the cards headless ) 3: Multi-processor environment, offload jobs to separate environs with their own memory, real and virtual. 4: Multi-OS. Use a monitor switch and some neat cross-mounted filesystems, or Wine/VMWare/whatever for os-in-a-window without emulation.
There are obviously more. It would take some work to make sure it wasn't used as a mere novelty, but in specialized applications could be increidbly powerful.
The Tyan board i mentioned is indeed i840, but looking at the spec, uses pc100 dimms. Glad to see we're not entirely forced into Rambus. You're right though, for a $600 board, rimms would be much less of an issue.
Tyan has at least one motherboard with 2 64-bit slots on it, but not being familiar with the spec, I don't know what windows can do with it. Nice motherboard though, their newest scsi-on-board mobo.
One of the best ways to deal with bad laws is to use them for your own advantage, and make the courts choose. My line of thinking had been on something like freenet or other "anonymous" file sharing utilities. Encrypt the data, copyright the method of encryption. Include as part of the EULA for the software that any attempt to gather information about users for copyright purposes, any attempt to discern someone's identity, or something else dangerous to the project is a violation of the EULA and grounds for termination of the license. They either have to use the software and obey the EULA, or reverse engineer or get around the encryption, which, thanks to the DMCA, is a violation of the copyright and illegal.
I may have some of the details wrong, but the idea is to use the laws against them, which they either have to suck up and take, or get repealed so they can't use them either.
Slashdot Mirror
...as long as you remember not to hire anyone who sites [H]ardOCP as their primary news site. They'll have half the servers ripped up and water-cooled before the first day is out, and be looking hungrily at all the workstations with dreams of monster HSFs.
I still think nothing was as touching as the Locke/Rachael/Phoenix scene, to which I also can remember being brought to tears. Still, one of the contributing factors there was the music. I was so disappointed that Nobuo Uematsu didn't do the FF Movie music, after hearing his work in the games for years, and having the cds from several of them. The music wasn't bad, but it wasn't on par with what he can do, either.
The point here is that while such programs may be able to put people's lives in danger, they aren't illegal, nor is it illegal to write, or try to write one. Virii exist which can bring (windows) systems to their knees, but they are still written, traded freely, and it's LEGAL. What is illegal is the USE of such programs for malicious intent. If I want to write virii and try to hack my own computers all day long, no one may complain, but as soon as I try to hack another computer (without permission), or loose my virii upon an unsuspecting soul, then I have comiited a crime. Similarly, writing, musing over, learning from deCSS or other decrypters should be legal, and only using them to make and distribute (illegally) copies should be illegal. DeCSS is a digital crowbar, only arrest the guy if he's using it to break in to a car.
See other posts. Mainly, cd players with digital out, soundcards with digital in. Yeah, may take a little longer to reach a healthy distribution, but not much.
I'm just glad they finally made my mind for me. I used to hear songs on the radio, grab mp3's of the ones I liked, and grab the album's of the one's I liked the most. However, my only cd players are my computers at home and my laptop at work. Now I have no choice but to do all my music listening in mp3 format. Thanks guys, saves me a bunch of money!
-Tannin Kal
This is the primary reason heacker-speak started. Certain phrases had to be avoided so filters and searches wouldn't catch what wsa being written. Unfortunatly, it's also incredibly verstatile. Do you think a filter will catch m3+all1c4 mp3s? No, it will just make those who use Napster have to deal with irritating filenames, irritating searches.
My previous example was indeed a bad one, so I will make a better one. A user creates a web-page of file aliases. He then posts random_file_00416.mp3, adds 5-10s of buffer whitespace to throw off file size checkers, and lists on the webpage that random_file_00416 is indeed a metallica mp3. Once again, the actual name means nothing. Give it a little more time, and a Napster client clone might even incorporate such alising and make it transparent.
A service of that size can't reasonably be required to verify more than the filename or link name within their web page or servers.
Alright, you tell Napster to remove all illegal MP3s. How on earth are they expected to do that? Screen by filename? We've already estblished filename means absolutley nothing. "A rose by any other name..." I can send a number of "This_is_not_a_metallica_song.mp3", which might indeed be picked up by a metallica filter. The only way to know if a submitted mp3 is illegal is to listen to it, adn then ask the company or creator, unless you have prior knowledge. Asking any company to verify ALL content on a public board or file sharing facilitator is foolish. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure Napster isn't transmiting copyrighted material is to shut down completely. Thus for Napster to successfully comply with the injunction, they must go completely offline, and the injuction is effectively against Napster, and ceases to have anything to do with whether a given user is posting copyrighted material.
WHAT!!!
Ebay has the right to request legally that someone be denied all internet access for a time? The offender has been given a 'time-out'? Our do yuo suggest that it is the ISPs responsibility to make sure a given user cannot access ebay, which is impossible. Even if you mandate that they have to track all users and their banned sites, and not allow direct access, some will decide it's too much hassle and won't take the customer, hence we're back to the time out. If you either force them to take the customer, or they do of their own choice, thre is still no way to prevent a person to get to a site from anything but an endpoint. The person can either use one of a number of a number of anonymizing software packages, or just use one of the hundreds if not thousands of public proxies. They could even go so far as setting up a VPN and routing port 80 through it.
You can sue the person for harrassment, or the government could say it's ebay's responsibility to deal with troublesome customers, or you could toss them in jail. Either way, this is NOT the responsibility of the ISP, as policing a dial-ups web usage is IMPOSSIBLE.
Not sure why this showed up here,
I meant to make it a response to another post I can't find, basically ammounting to "they are animals, not rational beings, therefor we can eat them".
hrm.
While I agree with you wholeheartedly, my first thought was that someone would attack the whole "rational beings" argument. This troubled me for a moment, until I realized it doesn't buy them anything. If either we are just glorified animals, or animals are slightly less intelligent rational beings, then we should be subject to the same rules. While certainly suffering isn't in order, eating meat has to be. Ever seen a bear out fishing for salmon, or tigers munching on anything they can catch, or vultures picking at the remains of a corpse?
Either animals are our inferiors, and we are free to use them as food, or they are our equals, and we can act in the same manner as they, and hunt and kill for our food.
True, I was basically bickering about the use of "does," instead of what I believe would be better as "will." Freenet is obviously still a work in progress, though it is actually rather usable, if not a bit cryptic at the moment. It would be more usable if there were a few more servers out there at the moment.
"We currently have more than enough evidence to show that the races are equal..."
Define equal as you use it here. Do you suggest that in every way, every black man/woman is equal to every white, japanese, hispanic, etc., etc., etc., man/woman? That obviously is not the case, as even two siblings can be of differing intelligence. More likely, you suggest that the racial averages of intelligence quotient, physical ability, etc., given equal oppurtunity, would be equal across the board. While I honestly doubt this would be true, given more than enough evidence to show that races are not genetically equal (hence that whole issure of color of the skin), here we really have NO evidence. It's difficult to find two people of precisely the same oppurtunity within the same racial group, not to mention across them. Hence our difficulty in defining just how a child should be raised. We really can't claim any physical/mental equality without more information.
As far as I understand it,
there are plans for some form of freenet "browser",
whereby you can read a document on freenet,
with links in it to other freenet keys/files.
If the concept is taken to completion,
you could develop an entire www-type feel to it,
while maintaining encrypted files and anonymity,
as in not knowing where the files you're reading are located.
There is no difference between serving "files,"
and serving "words." The only difference may be
an ascii vs: binary file, and even binary files
can have readable portions.
My only gripes with freenet's goal are the
potential slow links (me right now, on isdn),
and the unique-key system.
All that is changed so far is the name.
I run the linux "file" command on anything on my server,
and decide what I may want to look at for myself.
The key is hashed, and while there are plans for it,
no data is yet modified.
Even then, if the data is stored locally, any
system-wide encryption can be broken,
and there will be a mehtod to read locally stored files.
In agreement with Kinshala, most of the misconceptions here come from not holding a _real_ sword, or just one that feels heavier from it's poor balance. With a large portion of even the supposedly knowledgeable population incorrcet on the weights of these weapons, many of the replicas are created abnormally heavy. I have indeed held a 15 lb sword, albeit a very large one, at a Ren Fest.
While something along the lines of a 40-50 lb sword would be downright painful, some swords, mainly the larger 2-hand claymores, do reach over 10 lbs.
As Kintanon, i also concede to grossly overestimating the weights of swords, but after some more research, I believe the above post is substantially correct.
i never claimed ot be a sword master.
your words, not mine.
And in insulting spring steel, keep in mind,
in order to get carbon into the katanas,
the Japanese would forge them in what amounted
to a dirty fire. Spring steel, at least that
of good quality, may or may not have the right
proportions, but has the advantage or pure
carbon.
I want to see what our tech can do with
a katana. The Japanese managed to create
(IMHO) the most beautiful, powerful
bladed weapons in existence. As was mentioned,
even some of the recent tech couldn't do
more than match the meticulous forgings
of the Japanese. I wonder how far they
were from our "structurally perfect" swords.
As you say though, you don't slay a dragon
with a rapier, or a katana.
adamantium claws anyone?
Not a single katana or tachi i've ever
held has been that light, and while many
were simple 440 steel display pieces, a
few were well-wrought damascus or even
the proper differentially-temepered
higher-carbon blades.
Claymores as well, of all types, weighed more
than 10 pounds. Though I know less of scottish
weapons, my friends wallace-style claymore and
his lighter basket-hilt claymore are easily
over your 10 lbs.
"The only 10 lb sword there was [sic.] a rapier."
I'd have to disagree with this point alone.
My wakizashi can't be more than 8 or 9.
Admittedly, it is a japnese "short sword,"
according to Mayamoto Musashi, but it is
still a sword.
I didn't know about MP3Board.com either,
until the lawsuits started. So when looking
for an MP3, i now check mp3board as well.
Guess what, i'm not downloading MORE illegal
MP3s, thanks to the lawsuits. Granted, i've
also bought more cds as a result, being able
to sample some of the music, and decide i
like it enough to buy.
Maybe the RIAA knows what this will do, and
they want the publicity any way they cna get it.
Even bad publicity is good publicity?
As i've posted before, not only is a page a file, but until you click on something, it is impossible to tell which it is. A directory can look like a file very easily.
http://prettypictures.com/mountain_stream.jpg can be replaced with mountain_stream.jpg/ which is an entire directory of illegal mp3s. The problem with requiring a page to be responsible for the type of links, is that without downloading at least part of them, it is impossible to tell what the link is to. If every page out there starts downloading even a porton of it's links on a regular basis, the internet will get slower than it already is.
Linking simply cannot be illegal.
I'm not sure everyone would have sue for this, but a pci card that used the bus for little (if anything) more than power and a fast lan connection. Plug a p3+ram+video+?sound card into a pci slot, plug in a keyboard, mouse, monitor, maybe speakers, and you've got a dual (or more) mobo case. You could either mount a filesystem from the "host" mobo, or toss an IDE connection on the baord as well. Sound too small to be true? The EspressoPC did it, and while it would obviously have some nasty power requirements, and while it wouldn't be for everyone, it would have a wide number of potential uses:
1: Simply a multi-mobo case.
2: High-bandwidth clustering (run the cards headless )
3: Multi-processor environment, offload jobs to separate environs with their own memory, real and virtual.
4: Multi-OS. Use a monitor switch and some neat cross-mounted filesystems, or Wine/VMWare/whatever for os-in-a-window without emulation.
There are obviously more. It would take some work to make sure it wasn't used as a mere novelty, but in specialized applications could be increidbly powerful.
The Tyan board i mentioned is indeed i840,
but looking at the spec, uses pc100 dimms.
Glad to see we're not entirely forced into
Rambus. You're right though, for a $600
board, rimms would be much less of an issue.
Tyan has at least one motherboard with 2 64-bit slots on it, but not being familiar with the spec, I don't know what windows can do with it. Nice motherboard though, their newest scsi-on-board mobo.
One of the best ways to deal with bad laws is to use them for your own advantage, and make the courts choose. My line of thinking had been on something like freenet or other "anonymous" file sharing utilities. Encrypt the data, copyright the method of encryption. Include as part of the EULA for the software that any attempt to gather information about users for copyright purposes, any attempt to discern someone's identity, or something else dangerous to the project is a violation of the EULA and grounds for termination of the license. They either have to use the software and obey the EULA, or reverse engineer or get around the encryption, which, thanks to the DMCA, is a violation of the copyright and illegal.
I may have some of the details wrong, but the idea is to use the laws against them, which they either have to suck up and take, or get repealed so they can't use them either.
That or support HavenCO i guess.