Has anyone checked to see if SDMI is legally allowed to "encourage the circumvention" of the technology? Isn't this inciting people to breaking the DMCA?
What does happen if somebody cracks their protection? Do they go back to the drawing board, or do they buy the rights to the crack for $10,000, patent it, and then refuse to publish it?
My advide to anyone who thinks about taking up the challenge is to read the agreement very carefully. My hunch is that they will try to buy the rights to the crack.
I think you mistake me. I am not "totally against science" in any sense. I am against the construal of science as a panacea, I am against bowing down at the altar of science and technology as though they can explain all and ultimately lead to my own divinization. Take a look at game theory and psychology - these scientific analyses would like to use science to get to the bottom of which color is better and whether to buy a car now or later. Science has even tried to explain why prayer for the sick helps them. The problem I see here is that too many people think that everything is reducible to electrons, quarks, photons, and their interactions. Nothing is more depressing to me than the philosophy that all human choices are dictated by random quantum events. Can I disprove that explanation? Maybe not, in the sense that "prove" is taken by those raised in our system of modern rationalism, but can I propose alternate, self-consistent explanations that lack only an interface with conventional "scientific understanding?" Yes, I can, and that is what modern man must realize. We must take care not to lose our humanity by becoming slaves to the god of reason.
I am definitely going to read this book. It seems to be hitting on one of the biggest problems facing humanity today, which is the elevation to a religion of the scientific method of observation. I agree with some of you that technology itself is only a tool, and that attacking technology is pointless. However, the faith that human beings put in their technology, and in the skills and logics that produce it, is profoundly disturbing. I agree with the reviewer - it's always good to have a reminder that the Tower of Babel will always be somewhere lurking in our collective consciousness.
The real problem with this idea is that it doesn't work on a fundamental level. Most recursive fractal patterns are such that although a very small version of it would cut through something, it still wouldn't be as good as a straight edge.
However, substances such as this which are durable and hard on a very small scale are potentially useful in the creation of blades with monomolecular edges, which would be quite good at cutting things apart.
For the most part, I agree with Landley, that content providers should embrace new technology that the market wants. However, there are two crucial differences between the current (digital download) technological evolution and previous ones (e.g. VHS, casette tapes).
First, there is the fact (often stated by the recording indudstry) that digital files replicate with minimal loss of data quality. This is of little importance to the philosophical debate about copy protection, since bad copies and good copies are all still copies.
The second twist is much more interesting in light of Landley's arguments. MP3 technology and the file sharing phenomena have not been developed in an R&D lab with the potential for industrial exploitation and growth. They are out there, right now, being used to trade information for free. This was never the case before when industry groups tried to stop technological expansion, and it changes the game in two key ways. One, the industry is all the more determined to stop it, and two, they will fail.
For schools with, for whatever reason, low IT budgets, Campus Pipeline seems like a workable and cost-effective solution. It will not spam the users with promotional email, and it sounds like the banners will be discreet and in every way normal, much like the ones I can see on/. right now. Since universities aren't in the business of generating cash from their intrnets to begin with, there is no reason to complain that Pipeline takes the revenue. The only cost is the learning curve associated with integrating the Pipeline software into the individual environment. And then there is the difficulty, as with any intranet, of getting people to use it (especially faculty, as any of you know who have worked in academic IT).
BTW, the post is misleading in that it sounded at first like schools would be harvesting their students' organs and trading them for an intranet. Makes a great futuristic thriller/social commentary, though.
One of the most intersting things about the Higgs theory is that it is somewhat analogous to G.W. Leibniz's philosophy of monads. Leibniz was, as I'm sure many of you know, a rigorously scientific thinker, as well as a philosopher, and he spent a lot of time thinking about questions similar to those before modern quantum physicists, such as the present question of what provides particles with mass.
Leibniz would almost certainly like the Higgs idea, because in his mind, nothing intereacts directly with anything else - interaction is always between a monad (a single thing) and an underlying essence, which then transmits the information to another monad. The Higgs field does something like this for mass.
THe problem is that some malfeasant party could send you an email pretending to be someone else and say "oops, I lost my private key. Here's the new public key." And you go on sending them stuff, none the wiser to the ADK.
Napster should pull up stakes, move their machines to Sealand, and put up a big flag that says: "Down with the RIAA." I doubt the RIAA can muster the kind of military might it will take to defeat the indomitable Prince Roy!
Slashdot Mirror
What does happen if somebody cracks their protection? Do they go back to the drawing board, or do they buy the rights to the crack for $10,000, patent it, and then refuse to publish it?
My advide to anyone who thinks about taking up the challenge is to read the agreement very carefully. My hunch is that they will try to buy the rights to the crack.
I think you mistake me. I am not "totally against science" in any sense. I am against the construal of science as a panacea, I am against bowing down at the altar of science and technology as though they can explain all and ultimately lead to my own divinization. Take a look at game theory and psychology - these scientific analyses would like to use science to get to the bottom of which color is better and whether to buy a car now or later. Science has even tried to explain why prayer for the sick helps them. The problem I see here is that too many people think that everything is reducible to electrons, quarks, photons, and their interactions. Nothing is more depressing to me than the philosophy that all human choices are dictated by random quantum events. Can I disprove that explanation? Maybe not, in the sense that "prove" is taken by those raised in our system of modern rationalism, but can I propose alternate, self-consistent explanations that lack only an interface with conventional "scientific understanding?" Yes, I can, and that is what modern man must realize. We must take care not to lose our humanity by becoming slaves to the god of reason.
I am definitely going to read this book. It seems to be hitting on one of the biggest problems facing humanity today, which is the elevation to a religion of the scientific method of observation. I agree with some of you that technology itself is only a tool, and that attacking technology is pointless. However, the faith that human beings put in their technology, and in the skills and logics that produce it, is profoundly disturbing. I agree with the reviewer - it's always good to have a reminder that the Tower of Babel will always be somewhere lurking in our collective consciousness.
However, substances such as this which are durable and hard on a very small scale are potentially useful in the creation of blades with monomolecular edges, which would be quite good at cutting things apart.
For the most part, I agree with Landley, that content providers should embrace new technology that the market wants. However, there are two crucial differences between the current (digital download) technological evolution and previous ones (e.g. VHS, casette tapes). First, there is the fact (often stated by the recording indudstry) that digital files replicate with minimal loss of data quality. This is of little importance to the philosophical debate about copy protection, since bad copies and good copies are all still copies. The second twist is much more interesting in light of Landley's arguments. MP3 technology and the file sharing phenomena have not been developed in an R&D lab with the potential for industrial exploitation and growth. They are out there, right now, being used to trade information for free. This was never the case before when industry groups tried to stop technological expansion, and it changes the game in two key ways. One, the industry is all the more determined to stop it, and two, they will fail.
For schools with, for whatever reason, low IT budgets, Campus Pipeline seems like a workable and cost-effective solution. It will not spam the users with promotional email, and it sounds like the banners will be discreet and in every way normal, much like the ones I can see on /. right now. Since universities aren't in the business of generating cash from their intrnets to begin with, there is no reason to complain that Pipeline takes the revenue. The only cost is the learning curve associated with integrating the Pipeline software into the individual environment. And then there is the difficulty, as with any intranet, of getting people to use it (especially faculty, as any of you know who have worked in academic IT).
BTW, the post is misleading in that it sounded at first like schools would be harvesting their students' organs and trading them for an intranet. Makes a great futuristic thriller/social commentary, though.
One of the most intersting things about the Higgs theory is that it is somewhat analogous to G.W. Leibniz's philosophy of monads. Leibniz was, as I'm sure many of you know, a rigorously scientific thinker, as well as a philosopher, and he spent a lot of time thinking about questions similar to those before modern quantum physicists, such as the present question of what provides particles with mass. Leibniz would almost certainly like the Higgs idea, because in his mind, nothing intereacts directly with anything else - interaction is always between a monad (a single thing) and an underlying essence, which then transmits the information to another monad. The Higgs field does something like this for mass.
THe problem is that some malfeasant party could send you an email pretending to be someone else and say "oops, I lost my private key. Here's the new public key." And you go on sending them stuff, none the wiser to the ADK.
Napster should pull up stakes, move their machines to Sealand, and put up a big flag that says: "Down with the RIAA." I doubt the RIAA can muster the kind of military might it will take to defeat the indomitable Prince Roy!