I have to disagree with the "deaf community". Being deaf is a defect. The vast majority of people on the planet can hear. Being without hearing or having poor hearing is a defect that can lead to all kinds of problems. (Trust me on this, I know people who suffer from occassional recurring hearing loss. It sucks big time when you go from hearing normally to not being able to hear anything for minutes or hours at a time. And the one deaf guy I know would love this thing.)
Now, personally, I'm waiting for full-colour, crisp picture cyber-eyes. But then, I suffer from deteriorating vision... (And hey, if they can throw in some of the cyber-eye mods from Shadowrun, so much the better...)
I don't. The Russians had an amazing track record of blowing up their own spacecraft or having other spectacular failures. Notable points include the Oct. 24, 1960 explosion of the R-16 ICBM in Baikonur (which was pretty much hushed up for 3 decades), the July 14, 1968 explosion of the Proton launch complex, multiple failures of the N1-L2 rockets either at launch or shortly thereafter in 1969, and the Salyut space station not reaching orbit due to Proton rocket failure in 1972. The Cosmos-557 space station would fail in orbit the next year. (Mir would not get launched until 1986.)
But, they were also logging some successes, including the first probe to enter the atmosphere of Venus (Venera-4 - June 12, 1967), the Venera-7 lander sending data from the surface of Venus in 1970, and so on.
I have to wonder... if it hadn't been for that one Star Trek episode (the one with the Horta), would anyone say "silicon-based life" with a straight face? Because that's, as far as I can figure, the first place I ever heard it. (Of course, I haven't read every last bit of science fiction, so it's possible/probable that Rodenberry was ripping it off from somewhere else.)
Considering how low on the government funding totem pole NASA is, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see them hype anything to get money out of GWB.
Of course, if they could "develop" a space death ray that takes out incoming missiles, then they could probably ride that pork-project all the way to the end.
Think about it. Increased government funding comes from success (or really, really, spectacular failure). It doesn't come from admitting you were wrong about something (well, unless you're the FBI). Now, it cuts both ways: if they said they found life and later had to retract that statement, they look just as stupid as if they had to say the opposite. Their "best" course of action is to keep with the story they first gave (i.e. there is no life on Mars).
Well, yeah... if you wanted to use the same C code on different systems it would be impractical. But if you wanted the same effects on different systems, you could just as easily write X different virii: one for Windows, one for Mac, one for BeOS (wouldn't that be a waste!)...
Okay, maybe it's still impractical. But interesting, from a theoretical "my computer isn't infected" standpoint.
But it is also entirely acceptable to believe that a mailer can and will execute HTML-embedded code that is placed in it. It has happened before, it will happen again. I'm just really surprised that it doesn't happen more often. Of course, considering how many virii are spread by script kiddies, maybe it isn't that surprising.
But they have had some part in getting it up there, and I believe that they have had more cosmonaut hours in the silly thing then Americans have had astronaut hours in it. Furthermore, how is it hurting NASA to have a space tourist or two up there? It gets the ISS and the space program more publicity (always a good thing when you go for more funding), it helps keep the Russian side of things on track (the 20 million from Tito might have been "chump change" compared to the total cost, but it was 20 million), and it gives hope that one day people besides the NASA elite might be up there.
And the ISS is not the U.S.'s either. International means just that.
There most certainly are, but the idea was to get people working during the "most productive hours" of the day, which managers seem to view as those hours they can hover behind the employees and micro-manage them.
If they had three shifts of programmers working in the same facility it might be more effective (it also might not), but you'd also need to hire three shifts of managers (I'm sure someone in the company would insist upon it), and have three shifts of support personnel (cafeteria people, janitors, whatever), and in the long run, it would probably be much more expensive.
Above and beyond all that, what if there is not a whole lot going on? You'd probably have 1 or 2 of the shifts not doing a whole lot, probably playing Quake or Half-life, and getting paid for it. (Not that this doesn't happen now, but bored employees at 3 a.m. tend to find many more things to do.)
It, however, is a flawed law. It not only makes it a crime to talk about circumventing copy-protection (quick, have you _ever_ done that? it's now against the law!) or develop any program or device that circumvents copy-protection (not just use, develop... imagine how much that may hurt any new companies that don't have large legal budgets) among other things.
You could be arrested for giving a speech on how bad software security is for a certain product (which, gee, is what happened), even if giving the speech will help people by pointing out hideous security holes.
I believe the India programming plants are there because of the ill-fated "24-hours of programming each day" plan, where one shift of programmers would send the code to the next shift several time zones away, who would continue coding.
It works if all your coders are on the same page with regards to coding style, commenting style, speed, accuracy, efficiency, are all using the same tools (a no-brainer, you'd think) and speak a common language.
Obviously, it didn't work. I believe IBM tried this a couple decades ago too and found that it didn't work then.
Besides which, M$ is multi-national and has been for some time. Given the number of Indian and Pakistani students I've seen in Comp. Sci. it probably wasn't a bad idea to have some plants over there to acquire the local talent. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some programming plants in Mexico either, based on land costs and labour costs.
Actually, if you look back over the last several Presidencies, you'll notice that if a President didn't like certain laws, those laws either soon ceased to exist or weren't prosecuted as heavily unless the defendant was being charged with other things. Also, if a President "liked" certain laws the opposite was true. Look at how much got swept under the rug with eight years of Clinton.
It's all about currying favour with the current administration.
And if you really want to get the story in the Top 10, mod down the other stories on their top 10 list. It might not be nice, but if it gets more of the mainstream readers of msnbc reading this, it helps.
True, but it's not like it is a major difficulty in and of itself to find the DeCSS code somewhere out there. If nothing else, someone must have bought one of those 2600 DeCSS t-shirts.
Do you suppose, assuming Dmitri goes to trial, that they will make the same mistake and post the exact method of decryption in this case? Or can lawyers learn too?
Actually, according to the DMCA, whether he gave it away for free or sold it, he was in violation.
And he wasn't charging for access to the e-Book reader. His program allowed you (as I understand it) to convert Adobe e-Book files to.pdf files so you could copy them. He was charging for the converter. Although, if the encryption scheme really is as crappy as has been said, it's almost certainly overpriced. (But overpriced software is nothing new.)
However, in Russia, it is Adobe who is breaking the law with their e-Book reader because you cannot make a backup copy, which Russian law requires on any software.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Russian gov't to start the civil suit against Adobe for that, and then start another civil suit for all the crap that the Feds have been pulling on this one (Christ, the FBI has already screwed up so many times in the recent past, do you suppose it's on purpose?), and there's probably also going to be some interesting conversations in and around the White House about this before it's over.
But the FBI can't arrest everyone who uses Netscape. It's not like we're talking about Napster users (based on the probably low numbers of users in the future compared to their past numbers)... a lot of people use various versions of Netscape.
Now, theoretically, they could arrest the people who provide Netscape.... hrmm... we may be on to something here...
Maybe I'm missing something incredibly obvious here, but unless they have some goober checking every last file that is coverted to a.nap, what is keeping someone from renaming Metallica.mp3s, converting them to.naps, and sharing them with people they don't know?
And if enough people do this, Napster will not be able to keep up. Regardless of how many people use (or not use, as the case may be) Napster can't possibly check every file that is coming in over their servers. So what's the next step, assuming the Napster is "successful" enough to have a next step? Bit checking every file? 5-day waiting periods while they listen to all your.nap files before letting you share them?
I'm tempted to sign up for Napster just to see how they do things and how people abuse the system.
Exactly. No link to the info somewhere else on the Internet = no story appearing on/.
It doesn't matter if you have the secret decryption documents of the NSA as a hardcopy. If you can't put a link with the submission, it's not going to show up here.
Now, back on topic. Any bets on how many days before Napster relaunches that a.nap to.mp3 converter program is released?
Think of it as an indirect approach. For example, I was reading somewhere (cannot recall the source, but it was some magazine) about a scientist who decided to figure out why it was that coffee spills always dried with a dark ring around the outside. A whole lot of research later, science now knows a lot more about how molecules interact in fluids, which has led to practical applications such as (among many others that I cannot remember) fast-drying paint.
That's as may be, but I always figured that it was because the ring was where the coffee cup was touching the counter top. The coffee pools slightly around the edge of the cup, and dries there. Simple.
Some scientists have way too much time on their hands.
You're right. However, we can assume all we want without proof. Yes, water is an incredibly simple compound, and it's fairly easy for hydrogen and oxygen to combine to form it. But this is proof.
It's like we can reasonably be sure there is intelligent life somewhere else in the universe (there's not much here, what with all the ACs running around), but we have no proof. It's incredibly unlikely that humanity is the only sentient life in the universe, but until SETI@home finds something or E.T. lands in Southern California (although, if he did, who'd notice?) we can't be sure if we're alone or not.
Nah, that is supposed to be in the Pacific... and it's not supposed to look natural, much the opposite (wierd non-Euclidean geometry that always looks odd to human eyes no mattor how you look at it).
I tend to think that (1) a relocation tax would be the most asinine thing ever, and it wouldn't stand a chance in court, and (2) if they're moving into a southern state, how the heck is that discriminatory? Because they're moving away from a heavily Hispanic and African-American area to a heavily Hispanic and African-American area? (South Carolina's largest growing minority is Hispanics, and Asians are not that far behind. Besides which, I tend to think the Hispanic population percentages in states like Texas and Louisiana rival that of California's...)
But, yes, this is California, land of my birth, and I'm crazy as a loon, and I haven't even lived there for decades! They are a goofy bunch, by and large, and in the long run it's hurting them.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to disagree with the "deaf community". Being deaf is a defect. The vast majority of people on the planet can hear. Being without hearing or having poor hearing is a defect that can lead to all kinds of problems. (Trust me on this, I know people who suffer from occassional recurring hearing loss. It sucks big time when you go from hearing normally to not being able to hear anything for minutes or hours at a time. And the one deaf guy I know would love this thing.)
Now, personally, I'm waiting for full-colour, crisp picture cyber-eyes. But then, I suffer from deteriorating vision... (And hey, if they can throw in some of the cyber-eye mods from Shadowrun, so much the better...)
Kierthos
I don't. The Russians had an amazing track record of blowing up their own spacecraft or having other spectacular failures. Notable points include the Oct. 24, 1960 explosion of the R-16 ICBM in Baikonur (which was pretty much hushed up for 3 decades), the July 14, 1968 explosion of the Proton launch complex, multiple failures of the N1-L2 rockets either at launch or shortly thereafter in 1969, and the Salyut space station not reaching orbit due to Proton rocket failure in 1972. The Cosmos-557 space station would fail in orbit the next year. (Mir would not get launched until 1986.)
But, they were also logging some successes, including the first probe to enter the atmosphere of Venus (Venera-4 - June 12, 1967), the Venera-7 lander sending data from the surface of Venus in 1970, and so on.
Kierthos
I have to wonder... if it hadn't been for that one Star Trek episode (the one with the Horta), would anyone say "silicon-based life" with a straight face? Because that's, as far as I can figure, the first place I ever heard it. (Of course, I haven't read every last bit of science fiction, so it's possible/probable that Rodenberry was ripping it off from somewhere else.)
Kierthos
Considering how low on the government funding totem pole NASA is, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see them hype anything to get money out of GWB.
Of course, if they could "develop" a space death ray that takes out incoming missiles, then they could probably ride that pork-project all the way to the end.
Kierthos
Think about it. Increased government funding comes from success (or really, really, spectacular failure). It doesn't come from admitting you were wrong about something (well, unless you're the FBI). Now, it cuts both ways: if they said they found life and later had to retract that statement, they look just as stupid as if they had to say the opposite. Their "best" course of action is to keep with the story they first gave (i.e. there is no life on Mars).
Kierthos
Well, yeah... if you wanted to use the same C code on different systems it would be impractical. But if you wanted the same effects on different systems, you could just as easily write X different virii: one for Windows, one for Mac, one for BeOS (wouldn't that be a waste!)...
Okay, maybe it's still impractical. But interesting, from a theoretical "my computer isn't infected" standpoint.
Kierthos
But it is also entirely acceptable to believe that a mailer can and will execute HTML-embedded code that is placed in it. It has happened before, it will happen again. I'm just really surprised that it doesn't happen more often. Of course, considering how many virii are spread by script kiddies, maybe it isn't that surprising.
Kierthos
Sounds like NASA needs some space tourists then.
How about 20 million for Bill Gates to go up, and another 20 million to bring him back down?
Kierthos
But they have had some part in getting it up there, and I believe that they have had more cosmonaut hours in the silly thing then Americans have had astronaut hours in it. Furthermore, how is it hurting NASA to have a space tourist or two up there? It gets the ISS and the space program more publicity (always a good thing when you go for more funding), it helps keep the Russian side of things on track (the 20 million from Tito might have been "chump change" compared to the total cost, but it was 20 million), and it gives hope that one day people besides the NASA elite might be up there.
And the ISS is not the U.S.'s either. International means just that.
Kierthos
There most certainly are, but the idea was to get people working during the "most productive hours" of the day, which managers seem to view as those hours they can hover behind the employees and micro-manage them.
If they had three shifts of programmers working in the same facility it might be more effective (it also might not), but you'd also need to hire three shifts of managers (I'm sure someone in the company would insist upon it), and have three shifts of support personnel (cafeteria people, janitors, whatever), and in the long run, it would probably be much more expensive.
Above and beyond all that, what if there is not a whole lot going on? You'd probably have 1 or 2 of the shifts not doing a whole lot, probably playing Quake or Half-life, and getting paid for it. (Not that this doesn't happen now, but bored employees at 3 a.m. tend to find many more things to do.)
Kierthos
Yes, he did.
It, however, is a flawed law. It not only makes it a crime to talk about circumventing copy-protection (quick, have you _ever_ done that? it's now against the law!) or develop any program or device that circumvents copy-protection (not just use, develop... imagine how much that may hurt any new companies that don't have large legal budgets) among other things.
You could be arrested for giving a speech on how bad software security is for a certain product (which, gee, is what happened), even if giving the speech will help people by pointing out hideous security holes.
Kierthos
I believe the India programming plants are there because of the ill-fated "24-hours of programming each day" plan, where one shift of programmers would send the code to the next shift several time zones away, who would continue coding.
It works if all your coders are on the same page with regards to coding style, commenting style, speed, accuracy, efficiency, are all using the same tools (a no-brainer, you'd think) and speak a common language.
Obviously, it didn't work. I believe IBM tried this a couple decades ago too and found that it didn't work then.
Besides which, M$ is multi-national and has been for some time. Given the number of Indian and Pakistani students I've seen in Comp. Sci. it probably wasn't a bad idea to have some plants over there to acquire the local talent. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some programming plants in Mexico either, based on land costs and labour costs.
Kierthos
Actually, if you look back over the last several Presidencies, you'll notice that if a President didn't like certain laws, those laws either soon ceased to exist or weren't prosecuted as heavily unless the defendant was being charged with other things. Also, if a President "liked" certain laws the opposite was true. Look at how much got swept under the rug with eight years of Clinton.
It's all about currying favour with the current administration.
Kierthos
And if you really want to get the story in the Top 10, mod down the other stories on their top 10 list. It might not be nice, but if it gets more of the mainstream readers of msnbc reading this, it helps.
Kierthos
True, but it's not like it is a major difficulty in and of itself to find the DeCSS code somewhere out there. If nothing else, someone must have bought one of those 2600 DeCSS t-shirts.
Do you suppose, assuming Dmitri goes to trial, that they will make the same mistake and post the exact method of decryption in this case? Or can lawyers learn too?
Kierthos
Actually, according to the DMCA, whether he gave it away for free or sold it, he was in violation.
.pdf files so you could copy them. He was charging for the converter. Although, if the encryption scheme really is as crappy as has been said, it's almost certainly overpriced. (But overpriced software is nothing new.)
And he wasn't charging for access to the e-Book reader. His program allowed you (as I understand it) to convert Adobe e-Book files to
However, in Russia, it is Adobe who is breaking the law with their e-Book reader because you cannot make a backup copy, which Russian law requires on any software.
Personally, I'm waiting for the Russian gov't to start the civil suit against Adobe for that, and then start another civil suit for all the crap that the Feds have been pulling on this one (Christ, the FBI has already screwed up so many times in the recent past, do you suppose it's on purpose?), and there's probably also going to be some interesting conversations in and around the White House about this before it's over.
Kierthos
You realize you may be on to something here...
.pdfs....
Hrm... I think the entire staff of every Kinko's in the USA is going to jail then... they have a program that converts other files to
Kierthos
But the FBI can't arrest everyone who uses Netscape. It's not like we're talking about Napster users (based on the probably low numbers of users in the future compared to their past numbers)... a lot of people use various versions of Netscape.
Now, theoretically, they could arrest the people who provide Netscape.... hrmm... we may be on to something here...
Kierthos
Hrm... perhaps that information should be made available to the lawyers on both sides, the judge, and the jury...
Anyone have any contact information for a lawyer on either side of this yet? Or has that not been formally taken care of yet?
Kierthos
Maybe I'm missing something incredibly obvious here, but unless they have some goober checking every last file that is coverted to a .nap, what is keeping someone from renaming Metallica .mp3s, converting them to .naps, and sharing them with people they don't know?
.nap files before letting you share them?
And if enough people do this, Napster will not be able to keep up. Regardless of how many people use (or not use, as the case may be) Napster can't possibly check every file that is coming in over their servers. So what's the next step, assuming the Napster is "successful" enough to have a next step? Bit checking every file? 5-day waiting periods while they listen to all your
I'm tempted to sign up for Napster just to see how they do things and how people abuse the system.
Kierthos
Exactly. No link to the info somewhere else on the Internet = no story appearing on /.
.nap to .mp3 converter program is released?
It doesn't matter if you have the secret decryption documents of the NSA as a hardcopy. If you can't put a link with the submission, it's not going to show up here.
Now, back on topic. Any bets on how many days before Napster relaunches that a
Kierthos
Think of it as an indirect approach. For example, I was reading somewhere (cannot recall the source, but it was some magazine) about a scientist who decided to figure out why it was that coffee spills always dried with a dark ring around the outside. A whole lot of research later, science now knows a lot more about how molecules interact in fluids, which has led to practical applications such as (among many others that I cannot remember) fast-drying paint.
That's as may be, but I always figured that it was because the ring was where the coffee cup was touching the counter top. The coffee pools slightly around the edge of the cup, and dries there. Simple.
Some scientists have way too much time on their hands.
Kierthos
You're right. However, we can assume all we want without proof. Yes, water is an incredibly simple compound, and it's fairly easy for hydrogen and oxygen to combine to form it. But this is proof.
It's like we can reasonably be sure there is intelligent life somewhere else in the universe (there's not much here, what with all the ACs running around), but we have no proof. It's incredibly unlikely that humanity is the only sentient life in the universe, but until SETI@home finds something or E.T. lands in Southern California (although, if he did, who'd notice?) we can't be sure if we're alone or not.
Nice sarcasm though.
Kierthos
Nah, that is supposed to be in the Pacific... and it's not supposed to look natural, much the opposite (wierd non-Euclidean geometry that always looks odd to human eyes no mattor how you look at it).
Kierthos
I tend to think that (1) a relocation tax would be the most asinine thing ever, and it wouldn't stand a chance in court, and (2) if they're moving into a southern state, how the heck is that discriminatory? Because they're moving away from a heavily Hispanic and African-American area to a heavily Hispanic and African-American area? (South Carolina's largest growing minority is Hispanics, and Asians are not that far behind. Besides which, I tend to think the Hispanic population percentages in states like Texas and Louisiana rival that of California's...)
But, yes, this is California, land of my birth, and I'm crazy as a loon, and I haven't even lived there for decades! They are a goofy bunch, by and large, and in the long run it's hurting them.
Kierthos