well this marks one of the first times, given all the whining on k5 about how they don't want to mirror slashdot, that i have seen a story migrate the other way (albeit i haven't been on k5 long)
that's an aside though...here's what i thought last night about the prospects of a DIY "HeadEnd" (what a wonderful term).
Well certainly hooking up a home network of PCs (in the personal computer sense, i.e. whatever OS, architechture is not a job that requires said millions and large groups of routers.
However, setting up a home network to interface with your home still seems to me a formiadable job.
First, the simple stuff, like lights. I don't know much about the ethernet protocol, but i'm assuming it would be easiest to hack something together that controlled the lights with a
fluctuation in simple voltage, i.e. a relay. Still, you have a wire per light to run, presumably. Of course you could just use x10 light controls, and i remember my father used to program some of the lights in our house on an old IBM 286, but if you want every light in every room to be controlled, perhaps a hack like this would be better...i have no experience with x10.
but that of course immediately leads to the question: "but what about dimmers." For that, perhaps another Ethernet/usual electrical circuits kludge would do, i.e. have the light brighten
quicker the pulse to the switch. As a goal you of course want as much computer as possible to be done on the "server," not at the aparati, but still, e.g. hacking the networking to pulse
an IR LED to interface your stereo through the remote receiver instead of having a proper node of the network with some computation done at the stereo.
But the heating system! I'm guessing servos of some sort but this would definitely require a bit more EE than the stuff already discussed, not to mention all the different things that
would need to be controlled in order to effect the desired change...a plug into the thermostat would be the simplest, and least needing of motors etc., but if you want full room by room
control you either get an expensive heating system or build expensive (i'm guestimating) interfaces thereto.
And of course controlling the system itself...i'm assuming a PDA with a self-written program communicating via IR. The program's the easy part, you still need IR receivers in every room
running back to your computer.
So even with a small house you're talking about a lot of wires, though perhaps, with ingenuity, you will barely need any true nodes to the network at the execution end (i.e. a jerryrigged
ethernet card to run your toaster).
There's a substantial difference betweeen "owning" a domain name and owning a house or property.
Unless your house is especially garish, there's no embarassment or recrimination to fear for people knowing your name. If, however, you are the owner of a domain on a controversial subject, i.e. abortion homosexuality etc., then would be right in leaning on the side of privacy
If your message is so important that you are willing to pay a regular fee and obtain the appropriate resources to make it available, it should be worth making it possible to contact you. but it is fully possible to print and publish a newspaper or newsletter espousing any belief without losing anonymity.
so being required to give out contact information could be seen as having a negative effect on free speech, something the anonymity of the internet has been a bastion for. but then again you can always have someone unrelated put their name.
Admittedly this is a matter of taste, but as someone who listens to almost entirely independent artists I've found that over the past year or so, with no conscious act of RIAA avoidance, have only bought 2 or CDs out of around 100 from RIAA members. These are primarily new albumns from bands that just went to big labels like epic (modest mouse) or WB (built to spill)
Speaking of specific labels, if anyone's concerned:
Warp Records: Home of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Plaid etc. Unfortunately most of their major acts (the first two of the above list) are released in US by Nothing, which is RIAA, but most other stuff is released by Matador, which is not.
Matador: Home of pavement, sleator kinney and others.
Thrill Jockey: Home of Mouse on Mars US Releases, Oval, Tortoise, Sam Prekop etc.
Others: jetset, road cone, kranky (GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR! = gnosis), Drag City ad infinitum.
There are so many great bands out there that are no where near the RIAA in any genre you can think of but glossy crappy pop, and I for one don't and won't miss that.
Personal records aside, the advertising practice I find most annoying (and admittedly there's stiff competition) is mathching ads to search terms
There are few things that more clearly state the stupidity of ad-matching than searching for "sexually transmitted diseases" (for a project, i swear) and getting a banner ad "Hot Sex Kittens want your LOVE!"
While it is true that these so called "grey hat" hackers are doing something completely ethically questionable by creating these scripts, it's shifting the blame away from the truly responsible parties. It's akin to asking a robber "why did you tell every criminal in the city my house is unlocked?" The reply, in the analogy and in computer security, is to ask "but why is your house unlocked?"
The proliferation of security holes that are more often than not the result of buggy coding rather than actual security shortcomings is the true problem. Encryption routines exist that can not feasably be broken, but still people use simple XOR and create trust models that open themselves up to attack
True, returning to the above analogy, in some case the people reporting that the "house is unlocked" are in fact the "police" of the given situation, and that is contemptable, but double agents have existed literally since the beginning of recorded history, and so this is not some new aberration of the computer age.
Linux is a perfect example of how full-disclosure can create a very secure set of programs. Often security holes will be openly discussed and fixed as soon as possible, instead of M$ (and the numerous other guilty parties) who try and deny accountability and blame the user (or in the case of ILOVEYOU their competitors).
While it is also true that since the beginning of recorded history people have practiced obfuscation (the king moving from castle to castle secretly) it is never the complete solution, because you can never prevent a hole from being discovered, no matter how much concealment there is. The best approach is to try and write code without holes, and fix them when the come up. True people write progs for the scrip kiddies as soon as the realize the hole is there, but by the time the script kiddies get the proggies, why the hole still there?
There have been a dirth of high-bandwidth transmission schemes to come out in the past few years, but each has only met with limited if any applications for two reasons, practicality (cost, installation, etc.) and inertia, after all a great majority of people still connect to the internet on twisted pair. As wonderful as these developments are, i gradually get dissillusioned and thing at this point that we probably won't ever see this on a network for a good long while.
i.e. whatever happened to IBM's laser computing, and micromagnetic disks that stored over 1G?
First of all, the art is often part of the code. Art is not limited to the skins on the models and the textures on the wall, but also includes the mechanisms of the game itself. For example, the notion of a RTS game, or an FPS game, when first devised, were certainly artistic creations, and the code simply implemented that creation. Obviously, given the proliferation of clones in any genre, that type of "art" has always, for better or worse, been "open-source": you know the rules of the game, otherwise it would be unplayable.
secondly, perhaps the most pressing problem with making a game even partially open-source, in the case of online multi-player games, would of course be cheating. Given the ridiculous amount of cheating and patching required for games either pre- or post-SDK release (i.e. half-life (counterstrike), qIII, diablo (trainers) etc. etc.) releasing the "graphics engine" and other aspects to the public would only provide more ammunition for cheating attacks. Of course security on open source projects (linux) is often better than closed source counterparts (m$), but given the complexity of any security model for multiplayer games and the game software itself, in many ways the more obfuscated the game code the better.
Yes that explains why authors like Nabokov and Joseph Conrad were able to write great works of Literature in the English language when neither spoke a lick of English until after they were 10...I can identify Conrad from 40 paces; to call their style bland would be lunacy.
the type of identification talked about in the article is not just syntactical and diction oriented, but also, especially in the case of the unabomber, centered around access to particular information and environments (i.e. at which library he researched). A foriegn language also can not at all cover that up.
Slashdot Mirror
that's an aside though...here's what i thought last night about the prospects of a DIY "HeadEnd" (what a wonderful term).
Well certainly hooking up a home network of PCs (in the personal computer sense, i.e. whatever OS, architechture is not a job that requires said millions and large groups of routers. However, setting up a home network to interface with your home still seems to me a formiadable job.
First, the simple stuff, like lights. I don't know much about the ethernet protocol, but i'm assuming it would be easiest to hack something together that controlled the lights with a fluctuation in simple voltage, i.e. a relay. Still, you have a wire per light to run, presumably. Of course you could just use x10 light controls, and i remember my father used to program some of the lights in our house on an old IBM 286, but if you want every light in every room to be controlled, perhaps a hack like this would be better...i have no experience with x10.
but that of course immediately leads to the question: "but what about dimmers." For that, perhaps another Ethernet/usual electrical circuits kludge would do, i.e. have the light brighten quicker the pulse to the switch. As a goal you of course want as much computer as possible to be done on the "server," not at the aparati, but still, e.g. hacking the networking to pulse an IR LED to interface your stereo through the remote receiver instead of having a proper node of the network with some computation done at the stereo.
But the heating system! I'm guessing servos of some sort but this would definitely require a bit more EE than the stuff already discussed, not to mention all the different things that would need to be controlled in order to effect the desired change...a plug into the thermostat would be the simplest, and least needing of motors etc., but if you want full room by room control you either get an expensive heating system or build expensive (i'm guestimating) interfaces thereto.
And of course controlling the system itself...i'm assuming a PDA with a self-written program communicating via IR. The program's the easy part, you still need IR receivers in every room running back to your computer.
So even with a small house you're talking about a lot of wires, though perhaps, with ingenuity, you will barely need any true nodes to the network at the execution end (i.e. a jerryrigged ethernet card to run your toaster).
arthhhhhhhhur
Unless your house is especially garish, there's no embarassment or recrimination to fear for people knowing your name. If, however, you are the owner of a domain on a controversial subject, i.e. abortion homosexuality etc., then would be right in leaning on the side of privacy
If your message is so important that you are willing to pay a regular fee and obtain the appropriate resources to make it available, it should be worth making it possible to contact you.
but it is fully possible to print and publish a newspaper or newsletter espousing any belief without losing anonymity.
so being required to give out contact information could be seen as having a negative effect on free speech, something the anonymity of the internet has been a bastion for. but then again you can always have someone unrelated put their name.
Speaking of specific labels, if anyone's concerned:
There are so many great bands out there that are no where near the RIAA in any genre you can think of but glossy crappy pop, and I for one don't and won't miss that.
There are few things that more clearly state the stupidity of ad-matching than searching for "sexually transmitted diseases" (for a project, i swear) and getting a banner ad "Hot Sex Kittens want your LOVE!"
The proliferation of security holes that are more often than not the result of buggy coding rather than actual security shortcomings is the true problem. Encryption routines exist that can not feasably be broken, but still people use simple XOR and create trust models that open themselves up to attack
True, returning to the above analogy, in some case the people reporting that the "house is unlocked" are in fact the "police" of the given situation, and that is contemptable, but double agents have existed literally since the beginning of recorded history, and so this is not some new aberration of the computer age.
Linux is a perfect example of how full-disclosure can create a very secure set of programs. Often security holes will be openly discussed and fixed as soon as possible, instead of M$ (and the numerous other guilty parties) who try and deny accountability and blame the user (or in the case of ILOVEYOU their competitors).
While it is also true that since the beginning of recorded history people have practiced obfuscation (the king moving from castle to castle secretly) it is never the complete solution, because you can never prevent a hole from being discovered, no matter how much concealment there is. The best approach is to try and write code without holes, and fix them when the come up. True people write progs for the scrip kiddies as soon as the realize the hole is there, but by the time the script kiddies get the proggies, why the hole still there?
i.e. whatever happened to IBM's laser computing, and micromagnetic disks that stored over 1G?
secondly, perhaps the most pressing problem with making a game even partially open-source, in the case of online multi-player games, would of course be cheating. Given the ridiculous amount of cheating and patching required for games either pre- or post-SDK release (i.e. half-life (counterstrike), qIII, diablo (trainers) etc. etc.) releasing the "graphics engine" and other aspects to the public would only provide more ammunition for cheating attacks. Of course security on open source projects (linux) is often better than closed source counterparts (m$), but given the complexity of any security model for multiplayer games and the game software itself, in many ways the more obfuscated the game code the better.
not to stop mods though.
the type of identification talked about in the article is not just syntactical and diction oriented, but also, especially in the case of the unabomber, centered around access to particular information and environments (i.e. at which library he researched). A foriegn language also can not at all cover that up.