The detainee is not under arrest. But he is being detained.. Hmm....
I recall a story from years ago (early 90's?) where a black lawyer from LA was 'detained' at LAX. He was on his way for a month's vacation in Hawaii (or some such place). He had a few thousand dollars cash on him. They searched him, found the cash, and detained him on suspicion of drug trafficking, because he fit their 'profile'. Black, mid-30's, lots of cash on his person.
This might come as a shock.. but Hydrogen is not 'highly explosive'. It will burn, yes, but only with the appropriate supply of oxygen. It's not like tnt, or other explosives that are ready to explode; they just need a certain amount of energy to start the reaction.
Hydrogen will burn.. you might think of the Hinenberg disaster? I turns out, after all these years, that what caused the explosive burning of the Hindenberg was not the hydrogen, but actually the coating used on the canvas covering of the blimp. It contained the ingredients for solid rocket fuel (unknown at the time).
Also, fuel cells like these don't have large supplies of compressed Hydrogen; they extract it from a hydrocarbon, methanol in this case I think. It's more efficient to carry fuel, and you don't mess with compressed canisters.
Yes, linux can bring new life into old hardware... I used a little P90 laptop with a text console for the longest time....
If you want to run netscape (or mozilla), play video/mp3, use all the gnome shit and whatnot, you need a decent machine, similar to what you run windows on. Sure you can cut corners here and there.. but you still need new hardware.
The real point of this is that hardware has currently surpassed software; people don't need Ghz machines at home; the apps they have run just fine on something half that speed. We're at a point where the cycles are just plain wasted.
Yeah... everyone likes to blindly shout the mantra 'Security through Obscurity is no security at all!'.
Well... that all too often gets taken out of context.
What it means is, if your only security is the fact that nobody knows anything about your security measures, then you are deluding yourself. This is most commonly quoted due to the mass numbers of security loopholes in software in the last 15 years; companies keeping it 'queiet' that there was a bug, hoping nobody would find out, and hence, keeping things secure. That's the kind of bad 'obscurity' we don't need.
On the other hand, obscurity can be an important aspect of a system's security. Take any old job. The supermaket I used to work in (and my family owned). Due to the fact that my family owned it, I got to observe who what and when with regards to handling large amounts of cash. That's not to say that we had no security, but the fact that the common person who might want to rip us off has no idea how the money handling process works is *part* of that security. If he knew what I knew, he'd be at an advantage.
And take system security. Why on earth would I publish my security? Certainly, if I have sensitive documents that are encrypted, I'm also going to keep it a secret which algorithms I used...that's part of the system.
Just because a corporation sues somebody doesn't make them think they are 'above the law'. They are just using the law to the fullest extent to try to get what they want; something that, although it seems unfair, everyone has a right to do. Of course, it takes money to do that.. so really only corporations and the rich can take this to the fullest extent, which is where the injustice kicks in.
Before you slam all corporations, realize that corporate officers are merely protecting the assetts of the corporation, something they are required BY LAW to do, lest they be the personal and direct target of a class action lawsuit from their shareholders. So blame the shareholders!
There's another mistake that the computer-savvy tend to make when talking about digital transmission as well: In telecom, you always refer to bits/second. A T1? Fiber? They transmit a bit at a time, so speaking in any other terms is irrelevant. (Except when dealing with frames/second or cells/second, but that's more protocol-specific).
Also, in telecom, a Kbit = 1000 bits (not 1024), and a Mbit = 1000000 bits (not 1024*1024). A gigabit is 1000000000 bits.
Speaking in bytes is a handy conversion to put some perspective on it, but not the appropriate term to describe the medium.
Also..... I don't know what a Kbs is.... it should be Kbps (Kilobits per second). or Kb/s.
You want the young sysadmins? That's easy..you just don't do stupid shit in public, and don't spam them with marketroid crap.
But is that who you have to sell to in order to move your product? Who do you really need to convince. I'd bet a big portion of your market will be non-technical senior IT staff (yes, there is such a thing) or higher. People who know what kind of system they want, but not a clue how to do it; or think it's really expensive.
How you get good PR? Be honest, be true, and don't spam.
According to the DMCA, anyway... it's not enough that the thing *could* be used to circumvent protection.. it's when it's primary purpose is to do so.
So if I make a device, like a video stabilizer for removing macrovision protection.... if I'm selling a video stabilizer, I might be okay. It *does* have legitimate uses.
If I advertise 'remove macrovision! copy macrovision protected movies with our device!'...then it's fair to say that the purpose for this device existing is to circumvent copy protection, making it illegal.
I maintain that if DeCSS had made an actual DVD player instead of just something that removes the CSS encoding, they would have been okay, as obviously the main purpose is to play video...
In pure mathematics, significant digits are not relevant? Pure math, 1 = 1.0 = 1.000000000000 = 1.00000... It's not relevant to your math class. What class was it, anyway? What 'upper-level' math class teaches trig? That's highschool...
Significant digits come into play when doing real-world calculations/measurements so as not to introduce useless error, or not to provide an apparently 'highly accurate' answer when in fact, everything past the first 2 digits is totally meaningless.
This is sensationalized, like everything else lately.
MS Said that 'Media player will not record mp3's at above 56kbps, because MS does not want to pay royalties to Fraunhoffer/whoever...'
They also mentioned that 'Current recording software seems buggy under WinXP... of *course* it does, with MS changing api's and shit. LOTS of stuff is buggy. Wait for it to finish, and for software to catch up.
This is no big deal; it just means MS isn't putting it's corporate support behind mp3, and will instead try to push their own medium (they did all along; they just put mp3 support in so people woudl hopefully stop using winamp, because winamp could have taken over the media player market... look how MS came out with skins as well). MS hates to lose any sort of mindshare, even on their little built-in utilities.
This is not a conspiracy to sabotage the OS into refusing to play mp3... or refusing to record it.
This is reporters just sensationalizing over nothing, just like the Linus -vs- OS-X fiasco.
Yes, because the point is, they didn't discover it on theri own; you gave them an explicit instruction & tool to violate the control mechanism. Your intent was clear.
There should be some law against knowingly threatening legal harassment.
This is all funny.. but there is absolutely *no way* any competent lawyer (and we can only assume mastercard has good lawyers) would even suggest that a trademark suit would be successful here. Given that, is the lawyer not fraudulently claiming, on his knowledge as a lawyer, that a common non-lawyer citizen is breaking the law?
Actually...
though it is true that sound travels faster through dense objects....
The speed of sound through the atmosphere is chiefly regulated by temperature.
The speed of sound at high altitude is quite similar to the speed of sound at sea level, though the amount of drag involved is greatly reduced (this is why the concorde does it's thing at 60,000 feet rather than sea level; too much drag)
Though I recall hearing about this before, I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. (I know there is one...)
He wrote Hotline, he worked for HCL, who he assigned all rights of hotline to, and then he left the company.....
and now he has no rights to Hotline, but the company does...
By 'market' I assume you mean the stock market? (might be a dangerous assumption).
People are losing their jobs, not because the stock market is failing, or because their company is losing funding, but because *their company is not profitable, and hence, not sustainable*.
You know... I've been trying to find simple ways to stay more anonymous, to protect my privacy in the online and real world, without inconveniencing myself too much, and without being paranoid. Here are a few of my thoughts for consideration.
Bills. This one is not entirely privacy related, but you can see how it could lead there. I was at a friends when a lady from the electricity company came by to tell him that he hadn't paid his bill (his roommate forgot or something I guess) and that his power would be cut off at 4pm (a couple hours away) unless he paid immediately. He grumbled, said okay, and fetched his wallet. He asked how much, she said something around 50 dollars. He pulled 50 out of his wallet and said 'here you go. Sorry for the inconvenience'. She said 'Oh sir! I'm sorry. I can't accept cash, I can only accept a cheque or major credit card'.
What's that? Cash is supposed to be 'legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private'. Hmm.
Which leads me to.. hotels. Now, I *do* have a credit card.. but I always try to check into hotels with cash only. I mean, why shouldn't I be able to? It's the only real legal tender we have in this country. Here's what I find. Usually, they get really upset at first. Then they say they won't let me use the phone or watch movies without a deposit. Usually they are really nervous about asking for a deposit as well. I told one guy 'how much? 50 bucks? 500 bucks? Just spit it out...'. You see, I don't care how much it is. But these people are unable to do business with cash! It's quite scary.
Bank machines. I don't use debit/credit/atm's everywehre I go. I carry a decent amount of cash on me most of the time.
The common theme here is cash. I put pressure on people to accept cash as payment, whether they like it or not. I'll be damned if I'm going to feel put out because I'm spending the *only legal tender I know of*.
Another thing: People asking or my name. Radio shack,pay-as-you-go cellular phones, everything else. Anytime any clerk asks for my name, I say 'Why?' and also 'Do I have to tell you?'. Usually the answer is 'no sir, you don't'. If they insist, I politely leave my purchase on the counter and walk out of the store.
Email addresses. I don't worry about this one as much, believe it or not. Once it gets out there, people have it forever.. so you might as well not fight it.
Internet. Folks, for the purposes of privacy, you shoudl always consider the Internet a public medium. Every packet you generate is going to go places you don't control. You should *not* have an expectation of privacy. Use encryption if you care. I use pgp for messages that have sensitive information in them, and otherwise, I don't send anything sensitive.
This is one for lawyers. It all boils down to the contract.
The best outcome would probably be for you to find out that they probably breached the contract by demanding more money for somethign that is part of 'administration' and simply get a pro-rated refund, and move your service elsewhere.
Linus wasn't even *asked* about OS-X, and he's not judging it whatsoever.
He was asked specifically about Mach, and he says it's a piece of crap, and he has his reasons. This does not reflect on the quality of the OS, it's stability, or anything else.. not even the particular implementation in OSX. It has only to do with MACH.
In fact, that's one of the worst pieces of sensationalized journalism I've ever seen. They very effectively make it look like linux says OS-X is a piece of crap, when in fact, he said no such thing.
Is RISC cooler? Yes. Does that mean a chip is better because it's risc? No.
Are there pros and cons between microkernels and monolithic kernels? Certainly, of course there are. Does that mean that linux is better than OSX simply because one is monolithic? No.
IT's the normal everyday sheeple that don't get this. THe fact that it's true doesn't make them understand any better...
You and I and lots of others know how the internet works.. we don't like the 'centralized broadcast' way it's starting to be used.. and don't like how people insist that p2p is something 'new'.. but think about this.
For mom & pop jones out there.. it IS something new. Sure they could have always done it.. but are just now realizing it. To them, it's NEW. The applications are new... everything is new. So it'
s good to have articles like this....
but it's apples and oranges. I don't see how they are even related... other than having to do with domain names.
That's like saying "I'm glad they punished that mass murderer, but I hope it doesn't lead to punishing innocent schoolchildren because they disobeyed their teachers."
Slashdot Mirror
The detainee is not under arrest. But he is being detained.. Hmm....
I recall a story from years ago (early 90's?) where a black lawyer from LA was 'detained' at LAX. He was on his way for a month's vacation in Hawaii (or some such place). He had a few thousand dollars cash on him. They searched him, found the cash, and detained him on suspicion of drug trafficking, because he fit their 'profile'. Black, mid-30's, lots of cash on his person.
Hmm...
This might come as a shock.. but Hydrogen is not 'highly explosive'. It will burn, yes, but only with the appropriate supply of oxygen. It's not like tnt, or other explosives that are ready to explode; they just need a certain amount of energy to start the reaction.
Hydrogen will burn.. you might think of the Hinenberg disaster? I turns out, after all these years, that what caused the explosive burning of the Hindenberg was not the hydrogen, but actually the coating used on the canvas covering of the blimp. It contained the ingredients for solid rocket fuel (unknown at the time).
Also, fuel cells like these don't have large supplies of compressed Hydrogen; they extract it from a hydrocarbon, methanol in this case I think. It's more efficient to carry fuel, and you don't mess with compressed canisters.
Yes, linux can bring new life into old hardware... I used a little P90 laptop with a text console for the longest time....
If you want to run netscape (or mozilla), play video/mp3, use all the gnome shit and whatnot, you need a decent machine, similar to what you run windows on. Sure you can cut corners here and there.. but you still need new hardware.
The real point of this is that hardware has currently surpassed software; people don't need Ghz machines at home; the apps they have run just fine on something half that speed. We're at a point where the cycles are just plain wasted.
Yeah... everyone likes to blindly shout the mantra 'Security through Obscurity is no security at all!'.
Well... that all too often gets taken out of context.
What it means is, if your only security is the fact that nobody knows anything about your security measures, then you are deluding yourself. This is most commonly quoted due to the mass numbers of security loopholes in software in the last 15 years; companies keeping it 'queiet' that there was a bug, hoping nobody would find out, and hence, keeping things secure. That's the kind of bad 'obscurity' we don't need.
On the other hand, obscurity can be an important aspect of a system's security. Take any old job. The supermaket I used to work in (and my family owned). Due to the fact that my family owned it, I got to observe who what and when with regards to handling large amounts of cash. That's not to say that we had no security, but the fact that the common person who might want to rip us off has no idea how the money handling process works is *part* of that security. If he knew what I knew, he'd be at an advantage.
And take system security. Why on earth would I publish my security? Certainly, if I have sensitive documents that are encrypted, I'm also going to keep it a secret which algorithms I used...that's part of the system.
Your first post did sound like a raving maniac.
Seriously though...
Just because a corporation sues somebody doesn't make them think they are 'above the law'. They are just using the law to the fullest extent to try to get what they want; something that, although it seems unfair, everyone has a right to do. Of course, it takes money to do that.. so really only corporations and the rich can take this to the fullest extent, which is where the injustice kicks in.
Before you slam all corporations, realize that corporate officers are merely protecting the assetts of the corporation, something they are required BY LAW to do, lest they be the personal and direct target of a class action lawsuit from their shareholders. So blame the shareholders!
Yes...
There's another mistake that the computer-savvy tend to make when talking about digital transmission as well: In telecom, you always refer to bits/second. A T1? Fiber? They transmit a bit at a time, so speaking in any other terms is irrelevant. (Except when dealing with frames/second or cells/second, but that's more protocol-specific).
Also, in telecom, a Kbit = 1000 bits (not 1024), and a Mbit = 1000000 bits (not 1024*1024). A gigabit is 1000000000 bits.
Speaking in bytes is a handy conversion to put some perspective on it, but not the appropriate term to describe the medium.
Also..... I don't know what a Kbs is.... it should be Kbps (Kilobits per second). or Kb/s.
Who do you have to sell to?
You want the young sysadmins? That's easy..you just don't do stupid shit in public, and don't spam them with marketroid crap.
But is that who you have to sell to in order to move your product? Who do you really need to convince. I'd bet a big portion of your market will be non-technical senior IT staff (yes, there is such a thing) or higher. People who know what kind of system they want, but not a clue how to do it; or think it's really expensive.
How you get good PR? Be honest, be true, and don't spam.
Not really.
According to the DMCA, anyway... it's not enough that the thing *could* be used to circumvent protection.. it's when it's primary purpose is to do so.
So if I make a device, like a video stabilizer for removing macrovision protection.... if I'm selling a video stabilizer, I might be okay. It *does* have legitimate uses.
If I advertise 'remove macrovision! copy macrovision protected movies with our device!'...then it's fair to say that the purpose for this device existing is to circumvent copy protection, making it illegal.
I maintain that if DeCSS had made an actual DVD player instead of just something that removes the CSS encoding, they would have been okay, as obviously the main purpose is to play video...
In pure mathematics, significant digits are not relevant? Pure math, 1 = 1.0 = 1.000000000000 = 1.00000... It's not relevant to your math class. What class was it, anyway? What 'upper-level' math class teaches trig? That's highschool...
Significant digits come into play when doing real-world calculations/measurements so as not to introduce useless error, or not to provide an apparently 'highly accurate' answer when in fact, everything past the first 2 digits is totally meaningless.
This is sensationalized, like everything else lately.
MS Said that 'Media player will not record mp3's at above 56kbps, because MS does not want to pay royalties to Fraunhoffer/whoever...'
They also mentioned that 'Current recording software seems buggy under WinXP... of *course* it does, with MS changing api's and shit. LOTS of stuff is buggy. Wait for it to finish, and for software to catch up.
This is no big deal; it just means MS isn't putting it's corporate support behind mp3, and will instead try to push their own medium (they did all along; they just put mp3 support in so people woudl hopefully stop using winamp, because winamp could have taken over the media player market... look how MS came out with skins as well). MS hates to lose any sort of mindshare, even on their little built-in utilities.
This is not a conspiracy to sabotage the OS into refusing to play mp3... or refusing to record it.
This is reporters just sensationalizing over nothing, just like the Linus -vs- OS-X fiasco.
Yes, because the point is, they didn't discover it on theri own; you gave them an explicit instruction & tool to violate the control mechanism. Your intent was clear.
There should be some law against knowingly threatening legal harassment.
This is all funny.. but there is absolutely *no way* any competent lawyer (and we can only assume mastercard has good lawyers) would even suggest that a trademark suit would be successful here. Given that, is the lawyer not fraudulently claiming, on his knowledge as a lawyer, that a common non-lawyer citizen is breaking the law?
Actually...
though it is true that sound travels faster through dense objects....
The speed of sound through the atmosphere is chiefly regulated by temperature.
The speed of sound at high altitude is quite similar to the speed of sound at sea level, though the amount of drag involved is greatly reduced (this is why the concorde does it's thing at 60,000 feet rather than sea level; too much drag)
Though I recall hearing about this before, I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. (I know there is one...)
He wrote Hotline, he worked for HCL, who he assigned all rights of hotline to, and then he left the company.....
and now he has no rights to Hotline, but the company does...
Seriously.. how? This is common knowledge.
Security is not a product, it's a procedure.
That doens't mean you shouldn't use pgp.
Will pgp prevent my officemate hacker boy from reading my email? not if he really wants to.. he'll figure out how to spy on me and get my key.
Will it keep some guy who roots my mail server from getting at the secure email stored there? Sure it will.. he's out of luck.
Wow. You must be smart, I bet they didn't know that!
Seriously. They just don't *care*. Or maybe it's that they only test with ie & netscape.. and the netscape one does okay for otehr browsers.
All it says is they called the second stylesheet for non-MS browsers 'nn_global.css'. It doesn't say 'if you don't have netscape, fuck off'
Besides.. I bet they don't care anyway.
It's not really an upgrade, just a new set of apt-sources and some neat packages for building a nice coherent desktop.
Why not? It *IS* debian. It's 100% debian compatable, they just provide some extra packages to do things that are a pain with debian.
Really, it's just a pre-set confiuration of debian.
By 'market' I assume you mean the stock market? (might be a dangerous assumption).
People are losing their jobs, not because the stock market is failing, or because their company is losing funding, but because *their company is not profitable, and hence, not sustainable*.
You know... I've been trying to find simple ways to stay more anonymous, to protect my privacy in the online and real world, without inconveniencing myself too much, and without being paranoid. Here are a few of my thoughts for consideration.
Bills. This one is not entirely privacy related, but you can see how it could lead there. I was at a friends when a lady from the electricity company came by to tell him that he hadn't paid his bill (his roommate forgot or something I guess) and that his power would be cut off at 4pm (a couple hours away) unless he paid immediately. He grumbled, said okay, and fetched his wallet. He asked how much, she said something around 50 dollars. He pulled 50 out of his wallet and said 'here you go. Sorry for the inconvenience'. She said 'Oh sir! I'm sorry. I can't accept cash, I can only accept a cheque or major credit card'.
What's that? Cash is supposed to be 'legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private'. Hmm.
Which leads me to.. hotels. Now, I *do* have a credit card.. but I always try to check into hotels with cash only. I mean, why shouldn't I be able to? It's the only real legal tender we have in this country. Here's what I find. Usually, they get really upset at first. Then they say they won't let me use the phone or watch movies without a deposit. Usually they are really nervous about asking for a deposit as well. I told one guy 'how much? 50 bucks? 500 bucks? Just spit it out...'. You see, I don't care how much it is. But these people are unable to do business with cash! It's quite scary.
Bank machines. I don't use debit/credit/atm's everywehre I go. I carry a decent amount of cash on me most of the time.
The common theme here is cash. I put pressure on people to accept cash as payment, whether they like it or not. I'll be damned if I'm going to feel put out because I'm spending the *only legal tender I know of*.
Another thing: People asking or my name. Radio shack,pay-as-you-go cellular phones, everything else. Anytime any clerk asks for my name, I say 'Why?' and also 'Do I have to tell you?'. Usually the answer is 'no sir, you don't'. If they insist, I politely leave my purchase on the counter and walk out of the store.
Email addresses. I don't worry about this one as much, believe it or not. Once it gets out there, people have it forever.. so you might as well not fight it.
Internet. Folks, for the purposes of privacy, you shoudl always consider the Internet a public medium. Every packet you generate is going to go places you don't control. You should *not* have an expectation of privacy. Use encryption if you care. I use pgp for messages that have sensitive information in them, and otherwise, I don't send anything sensitive.
This is one for lawyers. It all boils down to the contract.
The best outcome would probably be for you to find out that they probably breached the contract by demanding more money for somethign that is part of 'administration' and simply get a pro-rated refund, and move your service elsewhere.
Linus wasn't even *asked* about OS-X, and he's not judging it whatsoever.
He was asked specifically about Mach, and he says it's a piece of crap, and he has his reasons. This does not reflect on the quality of the OS, it's stability, or anything else.. not even the particular implementation in OSX. It has only to do with MACH.
In fact, that's one of the worst pieces of sensationalized journalism I've ever seen. They very effectively make it look like linux says OS-X is a piece of crap, when in fact, he said no such thing.
Just like every other argument of this nature.
Risc -vs -Cisc
Microkernel -vs- Monolithic kernel...
There's a theoretical side, and a 'reality' side.
Is RISC cooler? Yes. Does that mean a chip is better because it's risc? No.
Are there pros and cons between microkernels and monolithic kernels? Certainly, of course there are. Does that mean that linux is better than OSX simply because one is monolithic? No.
IT's the normal everyday sheeple that don't get this. THe fact that it's true doesn't make them understand any better...
You and I and lots of others know how the internet works.. we don't like the 'centralized broadcast' way it's starting to be used.. and don't like how people insist that p2p is something 'new'.. but think about this.
For mom & pop jones out there.. it IS something new. Sure they could have always done it.. but are just now realizing it. To them, it's NEW. The applications are new... everything is new. So it'
s good to have articles like this....
but it's apples and oranges. I don't see how they are even related... other than having to do with domain names.
That's like saying "I'm glad they punished that mass murderer, but I hope it doesn't lead to punishing innocent schoolchildren because they disobeyed their teachers."