I'm pretty sure any manufacturers who tried to do this would get the snot sued out of them by the Evil Copy Prevention Coalition. They probably have lots of patents and licensing agreements with clauses stating "Licensee agrees to implement all copy control schemes as a condtion of this license." There will be ways around it, such as secret codes like those on some DVD players to bypass CSS, or hacked firmware updates.
Getting around this CPRM scheme should be easy enough, just create a driver that has a hard disk emulation layer that traps all ATA calls to the hard disk and passes them through, minus the copy control codes. The emulation layer can go so far as encrypting the copy controlled data, but leaving the keys in an accessible file, where a simple utility can be used to decrypt and copy the file. The software making the copy control requests wouldn't know it was circumvented.
<flame>Apparently you have failed to understand the mechanisms of ethical thought and action, so let me explain one of them to you as simply as possible.
Evolutionary process != moral imperitive.
Natural selection is a cruel, nasty and destructive process. Under no circumstances should we model our society after such a process, as it makes people cruel, nasty and destructive.
Now that you understand this, go grow a fscking heart.</flame>
I did get my eyes checked, and found that though I technically have 20/20 vision, I am slightly farsighted. The thing that bites is I'm not farsighted enough to really impair my reading - I can focus on something six inches in front of my eyes, but it takes more work and strain to do it, and glasses are more of a hinderance than a help for me. I also have a condition where my eyes have trouble tracking close objects together - I have to concentrate or my eyes drift, causing double images. This creates more strain, and glasses can do nothing to fix this.
Other than getting a better monitor - with a high refresh rate, you also might want to do an ergonomics check. Make sure the monitor is about an arm's reach from your eyes, have the top of the screen about even with your eyes, make sure lights or windows aren't causing glare.
On top of that, soon after I paid extra for digital cable, which includes an onscreen guide, they changed the guide so half the screen is ads, a much smaller portion of the screen is the guide, and the picture elements of the ads and the other gratuitous eye candy cause the guide to render on screen extremely slowly. I want my old guide back. I shouldn't have to put up with ads on a service I PAID FOR.
Actually, this idea, with a few refinements, is a good plan. The idea is to have the browser ask you if you want to see this pop-up, and then remember what you selected, so once you've told the browser to reject popups from geocities.com, you'll never see them again. The ideal dialog box should have the choices:
My last two jobs, I was expected to work alone most of the time, and put into a spare cube that was not being used at the time. I got incredibly bored and lonely, and my productivity suffered. I don't like cubicles the way they're done in most companies, I find them isolating.
While critics contend there is no privacy in a warroom, I contend there is no privacy in cubicles either. They're invariably arranged so your back is to the door and the monitor is facing the door, so your boss and cow-orkers can snoop on you without you noticing. You can also hear every speakerphone call, every nail clipping, every silly noise from every other cubicle, and every other cubicle can hear all the noises from your own cube.
At least in a warroom, all the cards are on the table. There is no privacy, but there is no false expectation of privacy in a warroom. The war-room does have the effect of encouraging communication and feedback, and removing isolation. My ideal work environment would be a war-room, plus private spaces for people to retreat to (probably be cubicles, but plush offices would be nice too:) I would prefer to arrange things so people are encouraged to work in the warroom 98% of the time - have all the good fast computers in the warroom, put crappy, barely-adequate-for-email computers in the cubes. Also put whiteboards, games, food, comfy recliners in the warroom so people enjoy the warroom and just go to their cubes when they need to do private stuff. Of course there are ways to screw up the warroom: make it too small, having a pointy-haired-boss hovering over people's shoulders, having nasty coworkers, etc.
There is that aspect of it. I just attended an object-oriented design class by a teacher who's big on Extreme Programming. He had all of us pair up and do our assignments by Pair Programming. In general, it helps if both partners are motivated to get work done, and both partners are willing to speak plainly with each other when necessary. That way, when one guy gets tired and feels like slacking, the other one smacks him upside the head.
I've found pair programming to be very helpful in my experience. When one of us gets stuck, either the other one knows how to get unstuck, or both partners can throw ideas at each other to solve the problem faster, thus there is less time staring at the screen stumped. There are always two sets of eyeballs looking at the code, so more bugs will be caught, and fewer stupid design mistakes will be allowed to survive. That and I do feel guilty letting my partner do all the work while I read/.;)
Sounds like discussion of a Vogon poetry reading.
on
On The Dune Miniseries
·
· Score: 1
Most of you are acting as if you just endured a Vogon poetry reading. (Under no circumstances should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you...) while I am reacting like Arthur Dent. (Actually, I kind of liked it.)
The mini-series actually got it right. Harkonnen is a Germanic sounding name, it is pronounced like the German "Harkönnen" (that's an o with an umlaut, pronounced like "could".)
Special effects are not as expensive as they were a decade ago. It looks like much of the movies are going to be actors standing in front of a bluescreen, with CGI effects. Don't get me wrong, it's a good technique. It's cheap and it works - look at how far it was taken with Babylon 5.
I have a good feeling about this movie. Yes, bits are going to be left out, and things are going to be changed somewhat. I was hoping to see how well the crew did ornithopters, but it looks like they did more "conventional" spaceships.
This is probably one of the few discussions where Godwin's Law should not be invoked.;)
In any case I'd have to disagree with you about censoring Nazi related stuff. To quote Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I don't like Nazism. I think Nazis are barbaric thugs who are responsible for the most horrible acts of mass murder, destruction and totalitarianism the world has ever seen. (Stalin's USSR comes in a close second.) However, if Nazis want to spout their views on the web, it is their right. I draw the line when they go past stating opinions and start harming others. There are lots of web sites out there that fight fire with fire and discredit Nazi views specifically by linking to their sites and rebutting their statements. That is the best way to fight Nazism.
Oh and I agree with you on one point - the U.S. is way too puritan.
There are multiple justices, which makes it less likely one person with an agenda decides the issue. They are no longer motivated by conventional politics, as they are appointed for life and don't have to fund reelections. Consequently, the politics among them are much different. They have 3 factions - the conservatives, the modern liberals (think Democrats) and the classical liberals (think Thoreau.) If this case went up to the Supreme Court, it would be much more likely to get a judgement based on the facts.
External SCSI cables are carefully arranged to minimize the interference. The cable is arranged in layers. The ground lines are all placed on the outside layer, with the data lines on the next layer, so the data lines are all close to ground lines to minimize crosstalk, and so the ground lines protect the data lines from external interference. It would take a lot of hand cramping work to rearrange a ribbon cable to mimic this arrangement.
Re:voting from the comfort of your own home -bad
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Here's an alternative to absentee voting that is almost as convenient, but has fewer security problems. With computer kiosk voting technology as described in other posts, a voter who can't report to his precinct to vote can report to the nearest voting station - even if it's overseas at a U.S. embassy or military base, and be able vote remotely over a secure network. IMHO, this should only be done at certified voting stations, so officials can check identification and maintain election security, and set him up with a ballot display from his home precinct. This way he still gets the advantages of a secret ballot, but doesn't have to go to too much trouble to be able to vote. Also, a voter who feels intimidated going to his nearest precinct (think of the Fla. State Troopers hassling and ticketing blacks in front of voting stations) can go to any other location to vote.
The catch is that voting stations throughout the entire U.S. must be standardized and be able to talk to vote servers at any place in the U.S. This must also be done securely - using encrypted protocols as well as digital and real-life authentication, coupled with anonymity of the actual votes. Encryption is a good thing, but in many cases can't entirely substitute for an official seeing for himself that things are secure.
Rhetoric aside, your argument is that some people's votes should inherently be worth more than others,...
As a matter of fact, this is how it should go. The Electoral College has an accidental benefit - it amplifies the voting power of minority groups (whether they are farmers, blacks, geeks, people from Wyoming, etc.) and thus helps to prevent them from being squashed by the majority. This is a good thing. Read the mathematician's article linked here for a more thorough discussion of this effect. Essentially the Electoral College is a good thing for the same reason that the World Series is composed of several games instead of one game.
(2) Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsoleteness.
Nowhere in that document did I see anything that stated that malfunction or damage couldn't be intentional. Here's a step-by-step set of instructions for legally circumventing access protection for DVD's.
Buy two DVD players for your system, set one player's region code to North America, the other one to a different region (such as Japan if you like anime.)
Smash the Japan region-coded DVD player with a large hammer. (You may wish to remove the player from your system first.)
Since the player can no longer permit access to Japanese DVD's because of damage, feel free to crack the region coding legally through the LOC excemption.
(2) Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsoleteness.
Nowhere in that document did I see anything that stated that malfunction or damage couldn't be intentional.
Another advantage of CD-RW is error correction. CD-ROMs, CD-R's and CD-RW's have far more than the stated 650 MB or so of space that is available to the user (less for a CD-RW because of formatting). That extra space is used for error correction codes. Most, if not all CD-ROMs have some flaws in them that scramble a few bits of data here and there, but the error correction silently corrects the errors for you. I've found CD-ROMs to be far more reliable than floppies.
CD-RWs are still maturing. DirectCD is pretty cool - allows you to format your CD-RW and transparently read and write to it as if it was a gigantic floppy. I don't know if similar functionality is available in Linux, though I know that UDF (DirectCD's and DVD format) read functionality is there for CD-RW and DVD. The Windoze drivers have had some bugs that cause occasional crashes and data corruption. I'm hoping that CD-RW replaces the floppy in a few years.
What many people don't realize is the troubles that most IT staff have to go through to maintain sanity in a typical company network. Many sysadmins I've met are responsible for keeping hundreds or thousands of machines on speaking terms with each other and the rest of the internet, within corporate policies, and ready to do work at all times. To do this, he uses scripts and other automated tools, and makes assumptions about how each machine is set up - it has the Company's OS, applications, network settings and security measures installed. Unauthorized OS's and applications break these scripts and tools, cause mayhem in the networks and drive sysadmins completely insane.
When some schmuck decides to install something unauthorized on his machine for gits and shiggles, he risks not only his own time and money, but he may be putting the entire network at risk. A misconfigured machine could break entire networks and cost the company thousands of dollars before it is fixed. When this happens, don't be surprised when the BOFH sysadmin rises up in righteous anger and takes his furious vengence upon the luser.
Some sysadmins do make allowances for staffers such as programmers to install Linux and other software on "sandbox systems". Presumably, there is a business need for this software, and it won't fight with present software. They always make it clear that if the software breaks, it is the user's problem to solve, not IT's, and if it causes problems for others, the user is expected to pull the plug and find a solution immediately.
Many of you and your running mates have mentioned filtering programs such as CyberPatrol and Net Nanny as a way to keep children from seeing objectionable material on the internet.
Are you aware of the deficiencies of internet filter software? Filter software is known to block material that should not be blocked (example: a filter rule that blocks the word "breast" would block legitimate discussions of breast cancer, as well as recipes for cooking chicken breasts,) and failing to block sites that do have objectionable material. Additionally, there is great controversy as to what should and should not be blocked.
How do your policies for mandating internet filtering in public places such as libraries address these concerns? Also how can your policies protect the rights of consenting adults who should be able to choose for themselves what they wish to create and view?
Remember that many computers these days come with microphones and cameras, which will become even more ubiquitous in the future. Most people absent-mindedly leave the microphone and camera connected when they're not using them, so if the FBI wanted to, they could use Carnivore (see the documents about remote control of a system) to covertly install software to take pictures and sound recordings and silently transmit the data to them - as compressed sound or still pictures for low bandwidth connections, or streaming video for high bandwidth connections. This becomes more feasible now that persistent high-speed net connections are available and affordable to more people.
Your computer may be transmitting everything you say and do to the three-letter-agencies, and most people won't even notice. Welcome to 1984 ladies and gentlemen.
Before people make a big deal out of this, realize that an e-mail is not a legal document. If you receive one, by all means get legal counsel, but do not reply to the letter as you can plausibly claim that you never received it.
The only way a cease and desist letter can be legally acknowledged as delivered to you is if the MPAA sends it by certified mail and you sign for it.
It is bad enough that Microsoft is sending unsolicited commercial email. Yes, boys and girls, this is spam - unsolicited because neither the user or the people in his Outlook address book explicitly asked for it - the user just sent a change of address request, and it is commercial it nature.
Worse, Microsoft makes a statement in the email in the user's name ("I am using MSN and would like for you to try it!") without his permission. This is incredibly arrogant and possibly illegal. If Microsoft doesn't remove this "feature" it will have another lawsuit added to it's stack of legal troubles.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure any manufacturers who tried to do this would get the snot sued out of them by the Evil Copy Prevention Coalition. They probably have lots of patents and licensing agreements with clauses stating "Licensee agrees to implement all copy control schemes as a condtion of this license." There will be ways around it, such as secret codes like those on some DVD players to bypass CSS, or hacked firmware updates.
Getting around this CPRM scheme should be easy enough, just create a driver that has a hard disk emulation layer that traps all ATA calls to the hard disk and passes them through, minus the copy control codes. The emulation layer can go so far as encrypting the copy controlled data, but leaving the keys in an accessible file, where a simple utility can be used to decrypt and copy the file. The software making the copy control requests wouldn't know it was circumvented.
<flame>Apparently you have failed to understand the mechanisms of ethical thought and action, so let me explain one of them to you as simply as possible.
Evolutionary process != moral imperitive.
Natural selection is a cruel, nasty and destructive process. Under no circumstances should we model our society after such a process, as it makes people cruel, nasty and destructive.
Now that you understand this, go grow a fscking heart.</flame>
I did get my eyes checked, and found that though I technically have 20/20 vision, I am slightly farsighted. The thing that bites is I'm not farsighted enough to really impair my reading - I can focus on something six inches in front of my eyes, but it takes more work and strain to do it, and glasses are more of a hinderance than a help for me. I also have a condition where my eyes have trouble tracking close objects together - I have to concentrate or my eyes drift, causing double images. This creates more strain, and glasses can do nothing to fix this.
Other than getting a better monitor - with a high refresh rate, you also might want to do an ergonomics check. Make sure the monitor is about an arm's reach from your eyes, have the top of the screen about even with your eyes, make sure lights or windows aren't causing glare.
Oops, I posted anonymously by mistake...
Oops 2, I think I just invoked Godwin's Law. ;)
On top of that, soon after I paid extra for digital cable, which includes an onscreen guide, they changed the guide so half the screen is ads, a much smaller portion of the screen is the guide, and the picture elements of the ads and the other gratuitous eye candy cause the guide to render on screen extremely slowly. I want my old guide back. I shouldn't have to put up with ads on a service I PAID FOR.
Actually, this idea, with a few refinements, is a good plan. The idea is to have the browser ask you if you want to see this pop-up, and then remember what you selected, so once you've told the browser to reject popups from geocities.com, you'll never see them again. The ideal dialog box should have the choices:
So get earmuffs. I've had several coworkers who use earmuffs to help them concentrate.
My last two jobs, I was expected to work alone most of the time, and put into a spare cube that was not being used at the time. I got incredibly bored and lonely, and my productivity suffered. I don't like cubicles the way they're done in most companies, I find them isolating.
While critics contend there is no privacy in a warroom, I contend there is no privacy in cubicles either. They're invariably arranged so your back is to the door and the monitor is facing the door, so your boss and cow-orkers can snoop on you without you noticing. You can also hear every speakerphone call, every nail clipping, every silly noise from every other cubicle, and every other cubicle can hear all the noises from your own cube.
At least in a warroom, all the cards are on the table. There is no privacy, but there is no false expectation of privacy in a warroom. The war-room does have the effect of encouraging communication and feedback, and removing isolation. My ideal work environment would be a war-room, plus private spaces for people to retreat to (probably be cubicles, but plush offices would be nice too :) I would prefer to arrange things so people are encouraged to work in the warroom 98% of the time - have all the good fast computers in the warroom, put crappy, barely-adequate-for-email computers in the cubes. Also put whiteboards, games, food, comfy recliners in the warroom so people enjoy the warroom and just go to their cubes when they need to do private stuff. Of course there are ways to screw up the warroom: make it too small, having a pointy-haired-boss hovering over people's shoulders, having nasty coworkers, etc.
There is that aspect of it. I just attended an object-oriented design class by a teacher who's big on Extreme Programming. He had all of us pair up and do our assignments by Pair Programming. In general, it helps if both partners are motivated to get work done, and both partners are willing to speak plainly with each other when necessary. That way, when one guy gets tired and feels like slacking, the other one smacks him upside the head.
I've found pair programming to be very helpful in my experience. When one of us gets stuck, either the other one knows how to get unstuck, or both partners can throw ideas at each other to solve the problem faster, thus there is less time staring at the screen stumped. There are always two sets of eyeballs looking at the code, so more bugs will be caught, and fewer stupid design mistakes will be allowed to survive. That and I do feel guilty letting my partner do all the work while I read /. ;)
Most of you are acting as if you just endured a Vogon poetry reading. (Under no circumstances should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you...) while I am reacting like Arthur Dent. (Actually, I kind of liked it.)
Geez, some people need to get a life.
The mini-series actually got it right. Harkonnen is a Germanic sounding name, it is pronounced like the German "Harkönnen" (that's an o with an umlaut, pronounced like "could".)
Special effects are not as expensive as they were a decade ago. It looks like much of the movies are going to be actors standing in front of a bluescreen, with CGI effects. Don't get me wrong, it's a good technique. It's cheap and it works - look at how far it was taken with Babylon 5.
I have a good feeling about this movie. Yes, bits are going to be left out, and things are going to be changed somewhat. I was hoping to see how well the crew did ornithopters, but it looks like they did more "conventional" spaceships.
This is probably one of the few discussions where Godwin's Law should not be invoked. ;)
In any case I'd have to disagree with you about censoring Nazi related stuff. To quote Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I don't like Nazism. I think Nazis are barbaric thugs who are responsible for the most horrible acts of mass murder, destruction and totalitarianism the world has ever seen. (Stalin's USSR comes in a close second.) However, if Nazis want to spout their views on the web, it is their right. I draw the line when they go past stating opinions and start harming others. There are lots of web sites out there that fight fire with fire and discredit Nazi views specifically by linking to their sites and rebutting their statements. That is the best way to fight Nazism.
Oh and I agree with you on one point - the U.S. is way too puritan.
There are multiple justices, which makes it less likely one person with an agenda decides the issue. They are no longer motivated by conventional politics, as they are appointed for life and don't have to fund reelections. Consequently, the politics among them are much different. They have 3 factions - the conservatives, the modern liberals (think Democrats) and the classical liberals (think Thoreau.) If this case went up to the Supreme Court, it would be much more likely to get a judgement based on the facts.
External SCSI cables are carefully arranged to minimize the interference. The cable is arranged in layers. The ground lines are all placed on the outside layer, with the data lines on the next layer, so the data lines are all close to ground lines to minimize crosstalk, and so the ground lines protect the data lines from external interference. It would take a lot of hand cramping work to rearrange a ribbon cable to mimic this arrangement.
Here's an alternative to absentee voting that is almost as convenient, but has fewer security problems. With computer kiosk voting technology as described in other posts, a voter who can't report to his precinct to vote can report to the nearest voting station - even if it's overseas at a U.S. embassy or military base, and be able vote remotely over a secure network. IMHO, this should only be done at certified voting stations, so officials can check identification and maintain election security, and set him up with a ballot display from his home precinct. This way he still gets the advantages of a secret ballot, but doesn't have to go to too much trouble to be able to vote. Also, a voter who feels intimidated going to his nearest precinct (think of the Fla. State Troopers hassling and ticketing blacks in front of voting stations) can go to any other location to vote.
The catch is that voting stations throughout the entire U.S. must be standardized and be able to talk to vote servers at any place in the U.S. This must also be done securely - using encrypted protocols as well as digital and real-life authentication, coupled with anonymity of the actual votes. Encryption is a good thing, but in many cases can't entirely substitute for an official seeing for himself that things are secure.
Nowhere in that document did I see anything that stated that malfunction or damage couldn't be intentional. Here's a step-by-step set of instructions for legally circumventing access protection for DVD's.
Nowhere in that document did I see anything that stated that malfunction or damage couldn't be intentional.
Another advantage of CD-RW is error correction. CD-ROMs, CD-R's and CD-RW's have far more than the stated 650 MB or so of space that is available to the user (less for a CD-RW because of formatting). That extra space is used for error correction codes. Most, if not all CD-ROMs have some flaws in them that scramble a few bits of data here and there, but the error correction silently corrects the errors for you. I've found CD-ROMs to be far more reliable than floppies.
CD-RWs are still maturing. DirectCD is pretty cool - allows you to format your CD-RW and transparently read and write to it as if it was a gigantic floppy. I don't know if similar functionality is available in Linux, though I know that UDF (DirectCD's and DVD format) read functionality is there for CD-RW and DVD. The Windoze drivers have had some bugs that cause occasional crashes and data corruption. I'm hoping that CD-RW replaces the floppy in a few years.
What many people don't realize is the troubles that most IT staff have to go through to maintain sanity in a typical company network. Many sysadmins I've met are responsible for keeping hundreds or thousands of machines on speaking terms with each other and the rest of the internet, within corporate policies, and ready to do work at all times. To do this, he uses scripts and other automated tools, and makes assumptions about how each machine is set up - it has the Company's OS, applications, network settings and security measures installed. Unauthorized OS's and applications break these scripts and tools, cause mayhem in the networks and drive sysadmins completely insane.
When some schmuck decides to install something unauthorized on his machine for gits and shiggles, he risks not only his own time and money, but he may be putting the entire network at risk. A misconfigured machine could break entire networks and cost the company thousands of dollars before it is fixed. When this happens, don't be surprised when the BOFH sysadmin rises up in righteous anger and takes his furious vengence upon the luser.
Some sysadmins do make allowances for staffers such as programmers to install Linux and other software on "sandbox systems". Presumably, there is a business need for this software, and it won't fight with present software. They always make it clear that if the software breaks, it is the user's problem to solve, not IT's, and if it causes problems for others, the user is expected to pull the plug and find a solution immediately.
This one is for all the candidates.
Many of you and your running mates have mentioned filtering programs such as CyberPatrol and Net Nanny as a way to keep children from seeing objectionable material on the internet.
Are you aware of the deficiencies of internet filter software? Filter software is known to block material that should not be blocked (example: a filter rule that blocks the word "breast" would block legitimate discussions of breast cancer, as well as recipes for cooking chicken breasts,) and failing to block sites that do have objectionable material. Additionally, there is great controversy as to what should and should not be blocked.
How do your policies for mandating internet filtering in public places such as libraries address these concerns? Also how can your policies protect the rights of consenting adults who should be able to choose for themselves what they wish to create and view?
Remember that many computers these days come with microphones and cameras, which will become even more ubiquitous in the future. Most people absent-mindedly leave the microphone and camera connected when they're not using them, so if the FBI wanted to, they could use Carnivore (see the documents about remote control of a system) to covertly install software to take pictures and sound recordings and silently transmit the data to them - as compressed sound or still pictures for low bandwidth connections, or streaming video for high bandwidth connections. This becomes more feasible now that persistent high-speed net connections are available and affordable to more people.
Your computer may be transmitting everything you say and do to the three-letter-agencies, and most people won't even notice. Welcome to 1984 ladies and gentlemen.
Before people make a big deal out of this, realize that an e-mail is not a legal document. If you receive one, by all means get legal counsel, but do not reply to the letter as you can plausibly claim that you never received it.
The only way a cease and desist letter can be legally acknowledged as delivered to you is if the MPAA sends it by certified mail and you sign for it.
It is bad enough that Microsoft is sending unsolicited commercial email. Yes, boys and girls, this is spam - unsolicited because neither the user or the people in his Outlook address book explicitly asked for it - the user just sent a change of address request, and it is commercial it nature.
Worse, Microsoft makes a statement in the email in the user's name ("I am using MSN and would like for you to try it!") without his permission. This is incredibly arrogant and possibly illegal. If Microsoft doesn't remove this "feature" it will have another lawsuit added to it's stack of legal troubles.