A zillion P2P users may not be right, but neither can they simply be told to go to their rooms and behave themselves. As you said, "That ain't right", but it is also definitely beyond the -AA's power to stop.
Mob rule does not in itself justify mob rules. Thousands of black people felt that 3 cops beating on Rodney King was a good enough reason to loot stores in LA. Thousands of WTO protestors thought the issue of 3rd world debt relief was a good enough reason to loot stores in Seattle. Millions of Germans felt that excessive war reparations after WWI was a good enough reason to invade Poland, not to mention a few other details. Think of the -AA's as a particularly vicious loan agency. They charge ridiculous interest rates, are ruthless in their collections, and, unfortunately, are about the only game in town. However, in recent years, the development of matter transporters has made stealing from the vault a very simple prospect.
And you know what else? The same Internet that made music piracy very efficient also makes it possible for musicians to sell their music online without signing to a label. This same Internet created a generation of dot-com millionaires with a conscience who could be out there right now founding ethical record labels. But how often do you hear these points raised, as opposed to "Music piracy is justified because I don't want to spend $20 for a CD. Oh yeah, and the artists are getting ripped off too."
The entire speech is about the economics and politics that arise from open source! First he said that traditionally, we've been working with bad metaphors. Cathedrals and bazaars make some kind of sense, but a real writer would never choose those metaphors because so many of the resonances of the symbols are just plain wrong. So he talks about closed-source software and users like it's a really bad girlfriend/boyfriend relationship - you know, where each person has something that the other one wants (hint: one of those things is wealth). Then he talks about the VALUE PROPOSITIONS that keep these bad relationships together.
Actually, I think the speech was more of a Rorschach test. He basically repeated all the arguments and open source cliches that you hear bandied about on Slashdot all the time, like "information wants to be free" and "Microsoft is a monopoly" and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", all the time subtlely poking fun at each of them. Since he talked about everything, and you only remember one thing, the speech works like a Rorschach test for what you were focusing on. You didn't even notice that he wasn't even arguing for or against anything in particular. I, for one, thought the first half of the speech was very entertaining, although the second half was boring and I scanned over most of it.
Ignore the parent post, since it is wrong. The previous poster did a much better job of explaining the concept of polynomial time.
An NP-complete problem does not take 8 times the age of the universe to solve. This completely missed the point. Every P or NP problem can be expressed in terms of a variable "n", which represents the input size. There are many practical problems where the best-known P algorithm is slower than the best NP algorithm for typical values of n. However, computational theory tells us that as n increases, the P algorithm will eventually beat the NP one.
Out of interest, will this finding have any impact on the effectiveness of present day cryptography?
Probably not. While it is possible that this research could lead to results in speeding up factoring, a faster algorithm for determining whether a number is prime is not going to compromise the security of RSA.
Your RSA key pair is derived from 2 large primes. The way we generate keys is to randomly test large random numbers to see if any of them are prime. Ergo, we must already have an efficient formula for determining if a number is prime or not.
FYI, the most commonly used algorithm is Euler's formula. Euler's formula doesn't actually tell you if a number is prime, but it will usually give a non-zero output if the number is not prime, so if you run it enough times with different inputs, you can be 99.99999% sure that a number is prime. However, a small percentage of numbers are "pseudoprimes" -- numbers that are not prime but which will also satisfy Euler's formula. Therefore, after you discover a candidate prime, you should use a different (slower) formula to double-check.
Since this is fairly common knowledge among geeks who use encryption, I'm somewhat surprised that so many people here jumped to the same conclusion you did.
Well, encryption based on the multiplication of large primes, anyway.
Yeah... that step in key generation where you check whether a candidate key is prime or not will now be performed with 100% confidence instead of that annoying 99.999999999999999% confidence we used to have.
Bah.... so what? I have developed an algorithm that will determine if any number less than a google is prime in O(1). Above a google it degrades pretty fast, though.
Problem 1: Students' incomes are quite low, and not continuous all year long. Problem 2: I need to buy books. Textbooks are expensive. Problem 3: 10 DVDs * $20 each = $200. 200 bucks is a large percentage (don't laugh) of my annual income.
$200 is a large percentage of your income? That's BS. It's a good thing you can play DVDs on your $5 computer. It's also lucky that you can leech free electricty from the building next to the cardboard box where you live. And you must be getting one hell of an education with the other $200.
Clearly $200 is only a large part of your disposable income. Someone (most likely your parents) is paying for your expensive education (unless you're stealing that too). Why don't you quit whining and ask them to buy you some DVDs for Christmas? And while you're at it, ask for a raise in your allowance.
I don't think I can curl up with an I-Paq and get any studying done. The left side of a book is designed so you can rest your head on it and read the right side. Then you fall asleep. Falling asleep on a I-Paq = time for a new I-Paq.
There are also a few issues from an ergonomic standpoint. If you're going to attend a paperless university you will absolutely need to have a laptop. My laptop emits a high-pitched buzzing noise. If I didn't listen to music with the headphones on all day I swear it would drive me crazy. Can you imagine a small classroom filled with 50 of those? Ouch!
Then there's the heat. I can't sit on my couch with my laptop on my lap because it burns. Therefore, I have to interpose a cushion, which puts me in a really awkward position. Some of those college textbooks were pretty heavy, but they were lap friendly.
And finally, no one has really convinced me that the long term effects of radiation from cell phones, wavelans, etc. are safe. I'm not sure I want to be the guinea pig that sits in a room with 50 wavelan-enabled computers 5 days a week for 4 (or more) years.
Not that I really enjoy debating semantics, but...
cartel: association of independent firms or individuals for the purpose of exerting some form of restrictive or monopolistic influence on the production or sale of a commodity or group of commodities." -- Britannica
I.e. a cartel is not a monopoly per se, but a cartel is monopolistic.
(On the other hand, the reason I used the word "monopolistic" instead of "monopoly" is that I couldn't remember the word "cartel", so I guess your rebuttal did me some good.)
A collusion among multiple companies to fix the price of a product (even at $0) is a monopolistic practice. Predatory pricing (e.g. selling a product at a loss to gain leverage) is also a monopolistic practice.
While I will undoubtedly get modded down for stating my opinion, I still find it ironic that a group of people can whine and moan about Microsoft's monopoly, and all the while they are promoting a product license that is itself monopolistic. In the glorious sysadmin's paradise in which everyone is using Linux, the fact that you can "buy" the one true OS from multiple companies hardly makes it less of a monopoly.
That's odd. I've had my card/number stolen multiple times. Every time, it has been the credit card company that has noticed first and they either call me or cancel the card right away. One time they called me while a spending spree was in progress and they gave me the distinct impression that they were trying to trap the perp. (i.e. they authorized the charge when it was a 25 cent phone call in the hopes that he would try to make another department store purchase)
RIAA or MPAA come a knockin on my machine with the 'l33t0 toolz' they have, i'm perfectly within my rights to retaliate... afterall I dont live in the US of A.
Hacks will always exist, and you can save more money by giving up after being hacked the first time -- the people buying your tech to pirate your programming, or in this case games, are just not the customers you need to take care of.
Yeah, that's basically what they told me in prison: "I'm going to anally rape you whether you like it or not, so you might as well sell your body for some cigarettes."
There is no doubt in my mind that the tragedy of the commons is a real phenomenon. I think this guy really is a communist. But I'm intrigued about the drug research issue. Rather than simply complaining about how unfair it is, could we get a statement from a government representative to explain their side to the story. Surely there is a reason why they would grant free profits to a company that did very little of the research!
One thing that occurs to me is this: the treatments are largely developed with American money, even if some of it is charitable donations. If the manufactured drugs are sold at low cost (especially in foreign countries), very little of that money will come back to the US. If they are sold at high cost, then a lot of that money will be returned to the governement as taxes. Remember, the American government has a vested interest in seeing American companies succeed overseas.
Based on your post, I wonder if you've ever worked for a large company. I work for a big company, and it certainly doesn't feel like a single entity. Departments compete with each other and there is internal accounting. Product managers have complained to me that it's harder to sell our product to another business unit than to sell it to a whole different company. I would be surprised if the CEO had ever even heard of our product.
Since you brought up speeding laws, let me point out how that's a dramatic oversimplification. The speed limit is set artificially low because the government knows that people will always speed. Most police officers won't pull you over for speeding unless a) you don't appear to have control of the vehicle, or b) they are behind on their quota. In fact, many police officers are just regular people who themselves enjoy speeding. The fact that the speed limit is artificially low gives them a lot of discretion in whether to pull you over and how much to fine you.
Now, let's consider pizza delivery franchise. Some of them have a "30 minutes or its free(*)" rule. This would tend to make them liable if their drivers break the law. Consequently, if you read the fine print on the flyer it usually says "* In order to promote safe driving, our drivers do not have to pay for the free pizza out of their own pocket." Having taken these precautions, I don't believe the franchise should be held liable if the driver breaks traffic laws.
As you point out, the problem is when a company consistently hires people who violate traffic laws. In the same way, you can't really argue that a company has a certain position (e.g. pro-DMCA or anti-DMCA) until they consistently apply that position. Anyway, the fact remains that companies are multifaceted, whether or not you think the law should treat them as such.
Well mine's an x86, but it's also a laptop. For some reason, Toshiba laptops have problems. I still have to start the ethernet drivers manually. And I can't run it without framebuffer support, but I get all sorts of garbage on the screen.
"Today was much like any other day" is an honest and concise summary of my life, and yet it leads to frequent mundane conversations with my parents, who think I am secretive. The fact is, an article that says "x and y have their place" simply isn't news, just like you wouldn't post a story "cold fusion not discovered today" or "freebsd not hacked today."
I also disagree with your thread acitivity. This story would no doubt get more responses if it wasn't posted late in the evening.
Why should a government that tolerates (even encourages) junk mail pass laws against spam? It's simply a matter of proportion.
Junk mail gets discount postage rates, but it still costs money to send; therefore it is self-regulating. Also, a moderate portion of junk mail is stuff that people might actually want, like supermarket flyers. Finally, you can put a sign on your door requesting not to receive junk mail and the postman will respect it. Spam costs almost nothing for the spender, but it uses up a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth to deliver it. I receive much more spam than junk mail, and my automated spam filters are much less reliable than my ability to sort my mail (which I do in the elevator on the way up to my apartment so there is no time wasted).
Anyway, I'm sure that the $100 figure is mean to represent punative damages rather than compensatory ones.
Just think that in a few years you will be able to refer to the year 2002 as aught-two! By the way the Websters Thesaurus also lists ought as an alternate spelling to aught.
Yikes. The year is more than half over and I don't find this out 'til now. So much lost time!
Yes, Henry Spencer was a major contributer to the FreeSWAN project, although he is no longer employed by them. He also wrote a popular regexp package (if you're running regex, try typing "man 7 regex").
Slashdot Mirror
A zillion P2P users may not be right, but neither can they simply be told to go to their rooms and behave themselves. As you said, "That ain't right", but it is also definitely beyond the -AA's power to stop.
Mob rule does not in itself justify mob rules. Thousands of black people felt that 3 cops beating on Rodney King was a good enough reason to loot stores in LA. Thousands of WTO protestors thought the issue of 3rd world debt relief was a good enough reason to loot stores in Seattle. Millions of Germans felt that excessive war reparations after WWI was a good enough reason to invade Poland, not to mention a few other details.
Think of the -AA's as a particularly vicious loan agency. They charge ridiculous interest rates, are ruthless in their collections, and, unfortunately, are about the only game in town. However, in recent years, the development of matter transporters has made stealing from the vault a very simple prospect.
And you know what else? The same Internet that made music piracy very efficient also makes it possible for musicians to sell their music online without signing to a label. This same Internet created a generation of dot-com millionaires with a conscience who could be out there right now founding ethical record labels. But how often do you hear these points raised, as opposed to "Music piracy is justified because I don't want to spend $20 for a CD. Oh yeah, and the artists are getting ripped off too."
-a
The entire speech is about the economics and politics that arise from open source! First he said that traditionally, we've been working with bad metaphors. Cathedrals and bazaars make some kind of sense, but a real writer would never choose those metaphors because so many of the resonances of the symbols are just plain wrong. So he talks about closed-source software and users like it's a really bad girlfriend/boyfriend relationship - you know, where each person has something that the other one wants (hint: one of those things is wealth). Then he talks about the VALUE PROPOSITIONS that keep these bad relationships together.
Actually, I think the speech was more of a Rorschach test. He basically repeated all the arguments and open source cliches that you hear bandied about on Slashdot all the time, like "information wants to be free" and "Microsoft is a monopoly" and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", all the time subtlely poking fun at each of them. Since he talked about everything, and you only remember one thing, the speech works like a Rorschach test for what you were focusing on. You didn't even notice that he wasn't even arguing for or against anything in particular. I, for one, thought the first half of the speech was very entertaining, although the second half was boring and I scanned over most of it.
-a
No. I was just using the fact that any algorithm is O(1) if you specify an upper bound on n.
The algorithm is:
Precompute Tmax = number of seconds to determine if a number near 10^100 is prime.
1. Compute if x is prime, taking T seconds.
2. Sleep for Tmax-T seconds.
3. Output answer.
-a
Ignore the parent post, since it is wrong. The previous poster did a much better job of explaining the concept of polynomial time.
An NP-complete problem does not take 8 times the age of the universe to solve. This completely missed the point. Every P or NP problem can be expressed in terms of a variable "n", which represents the input size. There are many practical problems where the best-known P algorithm is slower than the best NP algorithm for typical values of n. However, computational theory tells us that as n increases, the P algorithm will eventually beat the NP one.
-a
Out of interest, will this finding have any impact on the effectiveness of present day cryptography?
Probably not. While it is possible that this research could lead to results in speeding up factoring, a faster algorithm for determining whether a number is prime is not going to compromise the security of RSA.
Your RSA key pair is derived from 2 large primes. The way we generate keys is to randomly test large random numbers to see if any of them are prime. Ergo, we must already have an efficient formula for determining if a number is prime or not.
FYI, the most commonly used algorithm is Euler's formula. Euler's formula doesn't actually tell you if a number is prime, but it will usually give a non-zero output if the number is not prime, so if you run it enough times with different inputs, you can be 99.99999% sure that a number is prime. However, a small percentage of numbers are "pseudoprimes" -- numbers that are not prime but which will also satisfy Euler's formula. Therefore, after you discover a candidate prime, you should use a different (slower) formula to double-check.
Since this is fairly common knowledge among geeks who use encryption, I'm somewhat surprised that so many people here jumped to the same conclusion you did.
-a
Well, encryption based on the multiplication of large primes, anyway.
Yeah... that step in key generation where you check whether a candidate key is prime or not will now be performed with 100% confidence instead of that annoying 99.999999999999999% confidence we used to have.
-a
Bah.... so what? I have developed an algorithm that will determine if any number less than a google is prime in O(1). Above a google it degrades pretty fast, though.
-a
Problem 1: Students' incomes are quite low, and not continuous all year long.
Problem 2: I need to buy books. Textbooks are expensive.
Problem 3: 10 DVDs * $20 each = $200. 200 bucks is a large percentage (don't laugh) of my annual income.
$200 is a large percentage of your income? That's BS. It's a good thing you can play DVDs on your $5 computer. It's also lucky that you can leech free electricty from the building next to the cardboard box where you live. And you must be getting one hell of an education with the other $200.
Clearly $200 is only a large part of your disposable income. Someone (most likely your parents) is paying for your expensive education (unless you're stealing that too). Why don't you quit whining and ask them to buy you some DVDs for Christmas? And while you're at it, ask for a raise in your allowance.
-a
I don't think I can curl up with an I-Paq and get any studying done. The left side of a book is designed so you can rest your head on it and read the right side. Then you fall asleep. Falling asleep on a I-Paq = time for a new I-Paq.
There are also a few issues from an ergonomic standpoint. If you're going to attend a paperless university you will absolutely need to have a laptop. My laptop emits a high-pitched buzzing noise. If I didn't listen to music with the headphones on all day I swear it would drive me crazy. Can you imagine a small classroom filled with 50 of those? Ouch!
Then there's the heat. I can't sit on my couch with my laptop on my lap because it burns. Therefore, I have to interpose a cushion, which puts me in a really awkward position. Some of those college textbooks were pretty heavy, but they were lap friendly.
And finally, no one has really convinced me that the long term effects of radiation from cell phones, wavelans, etc. are safe. I'm not sure I want to be the guinea pig that sits in a room with 50 wavelan-enabled computers 5 days a week for 4 (or more) years.
-a
Not that I really enjoy debating semantics, but...
cartel: association of independent firms or individuals for the purpose of exerting some form of restrictive or monopolistic influence on the production or sale of a commodity or group of commodities." -- Britannica
I.e. a cartel is not a monopoly per se, but a cartel is monopolistic.
(On the other hand, the reason I used the word "monopolistic" instead of "monopoly" is that I couldn't remember the word "cartel", so I guess your rebuttal did me some good.)
-a
Products don't have monopolies. Companies do.
A collusion among multiple companies to fix the price of a product (even at $0) is a monopolistic practice. Predatory pricing (e.g. selling a product at a loss to gain leverage) is also a monopolistic practice.
-a
While I will undoubtedly get modded down for stating my opinion, I still find it ironic that a group of people can whine and moan about Microsoft's monopoly, and all the while they are promoting a product license that is itself monopolistic. In the glorious sysadmin's paradise in which everyone is using Linux, the fact that you can "buy" the one true OS from multiple companies hardly makes it less of a monopoly.
-a
That's odd. I've had my card/number stolen multiple times. Every time, it has been the credit card company that has noticed first and they either call me or cancel the card right away. One time they called me while a spending spree was in progress and they gave me the distinct impression that they were trying to trap the perp. (i.e. they authorized the charge when it was a 25 cent phone call in the hopes that he would try to make another department store purchase)
-a
Right. Now all you have to do is send them a letter that interests them enough that they actually want to make a copy.
-a
RIAA or MPAA come a knockin on my machine with the 'l33t0 toolz' they have, i'm perfectly within my rights to retaliate... afterall I dont live in the US of A.
The correct expression is the USS of A.
-a
"An eye for an eye and the whole world would be blind." -- M. Gandhi
(And yes, I did write "M. Gandhi" because I don't know how to spell his first name)
-a
Hacks will always exist, and you can save more money by giving up after being hacked the first time -- the people buying your tech to pirate your programming, or in this case games, are just not the customers you need to take care of.
Yeah, that's basically what they told me in prison: "I'm going to anally rape you whether you like it or not, so you might as well sell your body for some cigarettes."
-a
There is no doubt in my mind that the tragedy of the commons is a real phenomenon. I think this guy really is a communist. But I'm intrigued about the drug research issue. Rather than simply complaining about how unfair it is, could we get a statement from a government representative to explain their side to the story. Surely there is a reason why they would grant free profits to a company that did very little of the research!
One thing that occurs to me is this: the treatments are largely developed with American money, even if some of it is charitable donations. If the manufactured drugs are sold at low cost (especially in foreign countries), very little of that money will come back to the US. If they are sold at high cost, then a lot of that money will be returned to the governement as taxes. Remember, the American government has a vested interest in seeing American companies succeed overseas.
-a
Based on your post, I wonder if you've ever worked for a large company. I work for a big company, and it certainly doesn't feel like a single entity. Departments compete with each other and there is internal accounting. Product managers have complained to me that it's harder to sell our product to another business unit than to sell it to a whole different company. I would be surprised if the CEO had ever even heard of our product.
Since you brought up speeding laws, let me point out how that's a dramatic oversimplification. The speed limit is set artificially low because the government knows that people will always speed. Most police officers won't pull you over for speeding unless a) you don't appear to have control of the vehicle, or b) they are behind on their quota. In fact, many police officers are just regular people who themselves enjoy speeding. The fact that the speed limit is artificially low gives them a lot of discretion in whether to pull you over and how much to fine you.
Now, let's consider pizza delivery franchise. Some of them have a "30 minutes or its free(*)" rule. This would tend to make them liable if their drivers break the law. Consequently, if you read the fine print on the flyer it usually says "* In order to promote safe driving, our drivers do not have to pay for the free pizza out of their own pocket." Having taken these precautions, I don't believe the franchise should be held liable if the driver breaks traffic laws.
As you point out, the problem is when a company consistently hires people who violate traffic laws. In the same way, you can't really argue that a company has a certain position (e.g. pro-DMCA or anti-DMCA) until they consistently apply that position. Anyway, the fact remains that companies are multifaceted, whether or not you think the law should treat them as such.
-a
Well mine's an x86, but it's also a laptop. For some reason, Toshiba laptops have problems. I still have to start the ethernet drivers manually. And I can't run it without framebuffer support, but I get all sorts of garbage on the screen.
-a
"Today was much like any other day" is an honest and concise summary of my life, and yet it leads to frequent mundane conversations with my parents, who think I am secretive. The fact is, an article that says "x and y have their place" simply isn't news, just like you wouldn't post a story "cold fusion not discovered today" or "freebsd not hacked today."
I also disagree with your thread acitivity. This story would no doubt get more responses if it wasn't posted late in the evening.
-a
Why should a government that tolerates (even encourages) junk mail pass laws against spam? It's simply a matter of proportion.
Hmmm... your message confused me until I realized that my earlier statement was completely ambiguous and could be read either way.
I meant that governments should treat junk mail differently than spam because of the difference in proportion.
P.S. lose the HTML.
-a
Why should a government that tolerates (even encourages) junk mail pass laws against spam? It's simply a matter of proportion.
Junk mail gets discount postage rates, but it still costs money to send; therefore it is self-regulating. Also, a moderate portion of junk mail is stuff that people might actually want, like supermarket flyers. Finally, you can put a sign on your door requesting not to receive junk mail and the postman will respect it. Spam costs almost nothing for the spender, but it uses up a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth to deliver it. I receive much more spam than junk mail, and my automated spam filters are much less reliable than my ability to sort my mail (which I do in the elevator on the way up to my apartment so there is no time wasted).
Anyway, I'm sure that the $100 figure is mean to represent punative damages rather than compensatory ones.
-a
Just think that in a few years you will be able to refer to the year 2002 as aught-two! By the way the Websters Thesaurus also lists ought as an alternate spelling to aught.
Yikes. The year is more than half over and I don't find this out 'til now. So much lost time!
-a
Yes, Henry Spencer was a major contributer to the FreeSWAN project, although he is no longer employed by them. He also wrote a popular regexp package (if you're running regex, try typing "man 7 regex").
-a