Shocking as it may seem on Slashdot, this is an example of "security through obscurity" being a good thing. It has been demonstrated that current "real" security methods (namely, encryption) haven't worked on a grand scale for the purpose of credit cards. This will work.
Of course, the back-end (credit card companies) are still responsible for the true security implementation, but they're very very good at that. An example of how paranoid they are: when consultants for my company go on-site at our credit-card vendor customers, they literally have to stand behind the certified operator and tell them what keys to press. No one touches their machines without passing internal security certification procedures.
Doesn't this seem like a lot of overhead for the card companies? Now, not only do they have to keep track of millions of cards and billions of dollars spent through them, but they also have to ensure that the right cards are being used by the right retailers.
Nah, it's not that much of a difference. Think of it in database terms: if they currently identify your account by your CC#, they will just have to change that to some other general ID. They'll have to keep a relationship table going between the real ID and the disposable CC#'s, along with valid vendor and timeframe information, but it won't really change the way they do business that much. The conversion to the new system will cost a pretty penny, but believe me, they can afford it.
Same concept with the one-use cards, it seems like they'd exhaust the card # space a lot quicker if each person can use 500 card numbers in a year as opposed to 1 every 5 years...
The system has room for each of 6 billion people to have almost 2 million numbers. Not a problem.
You can be sure the credit card companies have considered all of these issues. They don't screw around. Due diligence is a way of life for these people; their line of business leaves no room for error.
I thought about that too . . . but since they're disposable, I think it's safe to say that you still won't be able to guess a good credit card number. Chances are you'll get a number that was only good for Bob Smith on Amazon.com on 2/3/02.
So, the only danger is actually using up all the numbers. No problem there either . . . if we say there are 6 billion people in the world, the current 16-digit system still gives each of them somewhere on the order of 2 million numbers to use.
Re-inventing the wheel is not only stupid, it is in efficient.
True in the real world. However, the purpose of the real world is to get work done efficiently, and the purpose of academia is to educate students.
If the referenced code was the core of the problem to be solved, and therefore the lesson to be learned, it's a problem. If it was just generic support code that the students could have written after their third semester in CS, it shouldn't matter.
If that maneuver is successful, they plan to launch all 66 satellites again from the surface, route one more phone call, then crash them into the asteroid for good.
Millner also told Australia's Daily Telegraph he intended to do the jump because, "well, there are no more mountains to climb, the seas have been done, so it's time to go straight up."
Sorry Millner, but the seas ain't been done. We know more about the rings of Saturn than we do about our own ocean floor . . . low pressure is much easier for us to deal with than high pressure.
This is not any significant milestone. This is just a multi-million dollar thrill ride for some egomaniac.
I found the references to the Betamax case very interesting ("Capable of substantial noninfringing uses" section). Obviously, Betamax and Napster both are "capable of substantial noninfringing uses", but the key difference seems to be that VCR's are seen as "tools designed for substantial noninfringing uses", and Napster is seen (by the courts at least) as a "tool designed for substantial copyright infringement".
Bottom line is, if your product or service is used primarily for copyright infringement, and everyone knows it, you're screwed.
This is nothing new . . . the "eradication through release of great numbers of sterile insects" method has worked before on fruit flies, both in Florida, South America and Africa, and Australia. They weren't developed through direct genetic alteration, but the theory is the same.
the script kiddiot defacer and others I've spoken with use the curtain of "hacktivism" to solely get attention, nothing more.
Not suprising. General activism attracts these types as well . . . whenever I see the TV news interviewing some protestors at [whatever protest is currently going on in downtown DC], I get the impression that many of them are there to be cool with their friends.
"Uh, we're protesting, uh, bad corporations, and, uh, the effect on, uh, world politics. Yo, check it out, I got beat up by a cop!"
The CD-R format has significant error correction built in. Many of the CD's you have may already have suffered considerable damage, but still work because of the error correction.
More info: geeky, geekier, geekiest. An interesting tidbit is that the data is interleaved serially, meaning the data and the parity codes are spread across wide arcs of disc. That's why it's recommended to clean discs from the center out, not around the discs (so if you scratch it, you damage unrelated segments).
So, I think the idea of duplicating your CD-Rs and sending them to your relatives is a good one. For more fault tolerance, just send some more copies to some more relatives.
Wow, you got it right! So many people stick that unnecessary B A in there. True, it works both ways, but you only need one (for Contra and LifeForce, at least).
I see a lot of people whining in this thread about how the Internet is going to hell, it's not as cool as it once was now that all the sheep are online, etc. Get over it. The world has changed.
The Internet still has at least as much hardcore computing information as ever (in fact much, much more). If you don't like the fact that the Web is now more of an entertainment source than a forum for computer geeks, don't visit entertainment sites. The beauty of the Web is the fact that you are in control . . . if you only ever visit the übergeekiest sites out there, as far as you're concerned the Internet can be just as geeky as ever.
Being on the Internet at all used to make you "digerati". Now that everyone's on, you just have to find something else to feed your elitist complex. Learn to program Smalltalk. Get into nanorobotics. Learn to troubleshoot assembler for some obscure platform. There are plenty of areas to get into with a small, geeky, "elite" audience.
Even if everyone has them, the people who get the most from their cars are the people who have the time, skill, effort and money to maintain the cars themselves.
I have to disagree with your point . . . knowing how to rebuild your camshaft has no bearing on how much, or how well, you drive your car. As with any field, there are the professionals, and the consumers. Most people are consumers (in any field). This is not what the so-called "digital divide" issue deals with.
The digitial divide is the fact that (until recently) very few people were online; specifically those with money and technical backgrounds. Very few of the general public had the ability to become Internet consumers. The professionals will always be the professionals.
Don't worry, Granny isn't threatening your l337 h4x0r status . . . the point of the article is just that she's online.
When people hear about Atari 2600 games being ported to DOS/Linux/PDA/toaster/etc, often the first thing they say is "Oh joy, now I can play Pong!".
Pong is an Atari arcade game released in the early 70s. It had such variations as Pong Doubles and Quadrapong, all arcade cabinet games (Pong Doubles was actually a tabletop game). Home Pong was released in 1974. It played one game: Pong.
The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, for the purpose of playing games other than Pong. Pong was old news by '77. People wanted color.
So, to my knowledge, Pong was never released for the 2600. Pong Sports is an old cart, and Mondo Pong is a new development (yes, people still write games for the 2600), but no original Pong cart for the 2600.
Maybe its better to assume people are innocent unless proven guilty.
Napster doesn't have to meet any burden of proof at all to ban you. They can ban you just 'cause they don't like you. The framers of the US Constitution wouldn't have it any other way.
With that out of the way, I'll attack specific points:
The only other evidence they have is that those files are available on Napster, which everyone knows is a hotbed of piracy, just ask the RIAA.
Just ask anybody. Don't even try to claim with a straight face that Napster is not a hotbed of piracy.
We don't arrest people for walking through neighborhoods where drugs deals take place, even if "99.9%" of the people in the neighborhood are there for the drugs.
No one's getting arrested. Just as it's perfectly legal for a restaurant to kick you out for not wearing shoes, or talking too loudly, or because the manager thinks you might eat n' run, Napster has the right to ban anyone for anything at any time.
Is that worth suspending constitutional protections?
The Napster user has no "constitutional protections" here. The user can plead a case with Napster for reinstatement, and Napster has the sole discretion to accept, reject, laugh at, or just ignore the user. Again, this is not a matter of law.
If anyone has constitutional protections here, it's Napster. Since when do we force an organization to serve those which it has deemed "undesirable"?
Copyright cannot be enforced without destroying the first amendment and concurrently destroying the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'.
Whoa there, buckaroo. The first amendment has nothing at all to do with this issue. The first amendment merely states that you can {speak|write|play} original material, and distribute the product as you see fit, without hindrance. The amendment does not provide anyone the right to steal the intellectual property of someone else.
As for the second point, these people are not going on trial, they are merely being banned from a private company.
To put it in perspective, it's Slashdot's policy to ban trolls. By my reckoning, this would violate both of your points.
Whether you force 100% of 10,000 people to pay for something, or whether 10% of 1,000,000 people pay one tenth of the amount, makes little difference to the producer of the information.
Where do you get the conclusion that lifting copyright and switching to SPP will increase interest in each artist by a factor of 100? Artists that don't sell a lot of CD's now are not going to suddenly become hugely popular just because they start accepting micropayments.
And yet you expect to read Slashdot everyday for free.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. The agreement is that I get to read Slashdot for free, while allowing myself to be exposed to banner ads. Spending my time doing field research for the ad agencies does not work into the agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the back-end (credit card companies) are still responsible for the true security implementation, but they're very very good at that. An example of how paranoid they are: when consultants for my company go on-site at our credit-card vendor customers, they literally have to stand behind the certified operator and tell them what keys to press. No one touches their machines without passing internal security certification procedures.
Nah, it's not that much of a difference. Think of it in database terms: if they currently identify your account by your CC#, they will just have to change that to some other general ID. They'll have to keep a relationship table going between the real ID and the disposable CC#'s, along with valid vendor and timeframe information, but it won't really change the way they do business that much. The conversion to the new system will cost a pretty penny, but believe me, they can afford it.
Same concept with the one-use cards, it seems like they'd exhaust the card # space a lot quicker if each person can use 500 card numbers in a year as opposed to 1 every 5 years...
The system has room for each of 6 billion people to have almost 2 million numbers. Not a problem.
You can be sure the credit card companies have considered all of these issues. They don't screw around. Due diligence is a way of life for these people; their line of business leaves no room for error.
So, the only danger is actually using up all the numbers. No problem there either . . . if we say there are 6 billion people in the world, the current 16-digit system still gives each of them somewhere on the order of 2 million numbers to use.
True in the real world. However, the purpose of the real world is to get work done efficiently, and the purpose of academia is to educate students.
If the referenced code was the core of the problem to be solved, and therefore the lesson to be learned, it's a problem. If it was just generic support code that the students could have written after their third semester in CS, it shouldn't matter.
Kudos to the NSA!
If that maneuver is successful, they plan to launch all 66 satellites again from the surface, route one more phone call, then crash them into the asteroid for good.
The world is shocked and overwhelmed by this revelation, and people finally can stop worrying about getting a nasty case of "Melissa".
Please, this isn't news.
Also, I like the Sims-esque 3D image. I bet it's a farking blast to watch your coworkers on this thing in realtime.
Sorry Millner, but the seas ain't been done. We know more about the rings of Saturn than we do about our own ocean floor . . . low pressure is much easier for us to deal with than high pressure.
This is not any significant milestone. This is just a multi-million dollar thrill ride for some egomaniac.
Is this how they plan to dispose of the occasional screwed-up Mickey Mouse?
Bottom line is, if your product or service is used primarily for copyright infringement, and everyone knows it, you're screwed.
This is nothing new . . . the "eradication through release of great numbers of sterile insects" method has worked before on fruit flies, both in Florida, South America and Africa, and Australia. They weren't developed through direct genetic alteration, but the theory is the same.
Not suprising. General activism attracts these types as well . . . whenever I see the TV news interviewing some protestors at [whatever protest is currently going on in downtown DC], I get the impression that many of them are there to be cool with their friends.
"Uh, we're protesting, uh, bad corporations, and, uh, the effect on, uh, world politics. Yo, check it out, I got beat up by a cop!"
More info: geeky, geekier, geekiest. An interesting tidbit is that the data is interleaved serially, meaning the data and the parity codes are spread across wide arcs of disc. That's why it's recommended to clean discs from the center out, not around the discs (so if you scratch it, you damage unrelated segments).
So, I think the idea of duplicating your CD-Rs and sending them to your relatives is a good one. For more fault tolerance, just send some more copies to some more relatives.
Ctrl-Alt-F. It works with Netscape 4.0 and later, and Mozilla.
Wow, you got it right! So many people stick that unnecessary B A in there. True, it works both ways, but you only need one (for Contra and LifeForce, at least).
The Internet still has at least as much hardcore computing information as ever (in fact much, much more). If you don't like the fact that the Web is now more of an entertainment source than a forum for computer geeks, don't visit entertainment sites. The beauty of the Web is the fact that you are in control . . . if you only ever visit the übergeekiest sites out there, as far as you're concerned the Internet can be just as geeky as ever.
Being on the Internet at all used to make you "digerati". Now that everyone's on, you just have to find something else to feed your elitist complex. Learn to program Smalltalk. Get into nanorobotics. Learn to troubleshoot assembler for some obscure platform. There are plenty of areas to get into with a small, geeky, "elite" audience.
I have to disagree with your point . . . knowing how to rebuild your camshaft has no bearing on how much, or how well, you drive your car. As with any field, there are the professionals, and the consumers. Most people are consumers (in any field). This is not what the so-called "digital divide" issue deals with.
The digitial divide is the fact that (until recently) very few people were online; specifically those with money and technical backgrounds. Very few of the general public had the ability to become Internet consumers. The professionals will always be the professionals.
Don't worry, Granny isn't threatening your l337 h4x0r status . . . the point of the article is just that she's online.
When people hear about Atari 2600 games being ported to DOS/Linux/PDA/toaster/etc, often the first thing they say is "Oh joy, now I can play Pong!".
Pong is an Atari arcade game released in the early 70s. It had such variations as Pong Doubles and Quadrapong, all arcade cabinet games (Pong Doubles was actually a tabletop game). Home Pong was released in 1974. It played one game: Pong.
The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, for the purpose of playing games other than Pong. Pong was old news by '77. People wanted color.
So, to my knowledge, Pong was never released for the 2600. Pong Sports is an old cart, and Mondo Pong is a new development (yes, people still write games for the 2600), but no original Pong cart for the 2600.
Is that what the girl at the bar told you when you asked for her number?
Napster doesn't have to meet any burden of proof at all to ban you. They can ban you just 'cause they don't like you. The framers of the US Constitution wouldn't have it any other way.
With that out of the way, I'll attack specific points:
The only other evidence they have is that those files are available on Napster, which everyone knows is a hotbed of piracy, just ask the RIAA.
Just ask anybody. Don't even try to claim with a straight face that Napster is not a hotbed of piracy.
We don't arrest people for walking through neighborhoods where drugs deals take place, even if "99.9%" of the people in the neighborhood are there for the drugs.
No one's getting arrested. Just as it's perfectly legal for a restaurant to kick you out for not wearing shoes, or talking too loudly, or because the manager thinks you might eat n' run, Napster has the right to ban anyone for anything at any time.
Is that worth suspending constitutional protections?
The Napster user has no "constitutional protections" here. The user can plead a case with Napster for reinstatement, and Napster has the sole discretion to accept, reject, laugh at, or just ignore the user. Again, this is not a matter of law.
If anyone has constitutional protections here, it's Napster. Since when do we force an organization to serve those which it has deemed "undesirable"?
In closing, I can't believe this drivel got +5.
Whoa there, buckaroo. The first amendment has nothing at all to do with this issue. The first amendment merely states that you can {speak|write|play} original material, and distribute the product as you see fit, without hindrance. The amendment does not provide anyone the right to steal the intellectual property of someone else.
As for the second point, these people are not going on trial, they are merely being banned from a private company.
To put it in perspective, it's Slashdot's policy to ban trolls. By my reckoning, this would violate both of your points.
Where do you get the conclusion that lifting copyright and switching to SPP will increase interest in each artist by a factor of 100? Artists that don't sell a lot of CD's now are not going to suddenly become hugely popular just because they start accepting micropayments.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. The agreement is that I get to read Slashdot for free, while allowing myself to be exposed to banner ads. Spending my time doing field research for the ad agencies does not work into the agreement.