So true. An individual or corporation should know that guaranteeing their profits is the proper function of the legislative branch, so they should send lobbyists to congress, not lawyers to the courts.
Generally, movies are more easily available for purchase than TV shows, which might explain a lot about these findings. It would have been very nice if NPD could subdivide their categories into content which is available online or on DVD, and that which is not. Then we could see the extent to which legal distribution channels cut piracy.
How do DRM and fingerprinting have the same issues involved? One is trying to prevent you from decoding a file you possess, and the other is trying to recognize it. The usually stated problem with DRM is that they have to give you both the content and the key, thus it really just amounts to security by obscurity.
While it would certainly be a difficult AI problem to write software that can recognize music or video as well as a human can, I see no reason why it should be theoretically impossible. If you try to change the file so much that it is no longer recognizable to the software, what guarantee is there that it will still be recognizable to humans? When I download the latest episode of my favorite TV show, I want it to be a high fidelity copy, not a badly distorted mess.
I concede that the level of distortion necessary to defeat recognition by today's technology is probably very minor and not noticeable by humans, but unlike DRM, there is no fundamental guarantee that software recognition will always be so lame.
"Backed by the US Government" means what, exactly? What does the US Government guarantee about its currency? Is it a stronger guarantee than you will get from Linden Labs?
I can't commment on how much information density people may find useful, but it is possible to say what the physical limits of information density are. A researcher named Seth Lloyd did some calculations and determined that given 1 Kg of mass and 1 L of space, you could create a computer with about 10^31 bits of information.
Nature -- "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation" (vol. 406, no. 6788, 31 August 2000, pp. 1047-1054)
Way back in 1986 I had a summer job as an airport screener. Back then it was all private companies, of course, and we all got minimum wage. We didn't have the fancy computerized tests, but the supervisors (and occasionally FAA inspectors), had a collection of fake weapons/bombs that they could slip onto somebody's x-ray machine.
The operator would observe the item, stop the machine, look up, and the supervisor would then inform them it was a test. If you failed the test, you'd be disciplined. Fail too many, and you'd be fired.
You might think that this test would be too easy because you would see the supervisor approaching, but most of the time the operator is so focused on their screen that they don't look at the passengers. Still, there were only a limited number of fake items so you got good at recognizing them. It seems like these new electronic tests have the advantage of offering a much larger variety of images.
On the plus side, if you actually caught somebody trying to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, you were eligible for a massive $100 reward. I always thought the risk/reward ratio of X-ray work was too low, so I preferred to do less stressful jobs like escorting children and disabled passengers.
Sounds to me like the problem is poor hardware and/or software design. The RAID controller ought to recover from having its drives randomly reordered. I don't know whether any of them actually do this, but it seems like an obvious feature for a device which whose primary purpose is failure prevention.
Yeah, I'll bet that if I called them up I'd have to spend forever on hold, only to talk to a surly rep in another country whose only idea of how to fix my problem is to tell me to reboot. Oh wait, that's my current ISP. Never mind.
The guards in my office building already have to stop at electronic checkpoints while they are on patrol, so the supervisors know the guards are actually patrolling. RFID would just make this more continuous.
I started off writing a post about how the winds on Mars would be too weak to generate useful power, but had a momentary lapse of Slashdot protocol and decided to do a few seconds of Google research first.
To my suprise, I found that NASA is indeed looking at wind power. Some scientists believe that Mars' dust storms contain enough force to generate power.
See this page for more details: http://www.memagazine.org/supparch/mepow er03/marsn eeds/marsneeds.html
I'll give them credit for a good effort in storing only the hash of the PIN, but in reality that is little more than security through obscurity. Given that most PINs are only 4 digits, it would be trivial for anyone who knew the hash function to recover the plaintext from the hash by simple bruteforce methods.
IBM, at least, does not advertise a mini-PCI slot. I'm sure if you dig deep enough you can find that information, but the main product summary in their store just says the laptop has integrated IBM or Intel WiFi.
Actually, international treaties mostly regulate frequencies below 30 MHz (HF and below). These frequencies can have worldwide propagation, so it is important that everybody coordinate them. VHF, UHF, and higher frequencies tend to be fairly localized so each country can make their own rules about it.
Unless you live within a few miles of an international border, it is unlikely that spectrum users in another country will interfere with your Wi-Fi.
I don't know about Iphtashu Fitz, but when I hear a message saying "this call may be monitored", I generally assume it is there for a reason, i.e. this call may be monitored. Are there really people who are suprised that some of their calls are in fact monitored?
This is fairly universal among call centers, because call center managers never trust their employees to do the right thing without first-hand supervision.
To be fair, I was suprised about the on-hold part. What is the point of listening to that?
I agree that it would be nice if computers could sort the same way a human would, but I'm not convinced we have the technology to fix this right, and partially fixing it could be make it worse.
The author is essentially asking for the computer to be able to do reliable lexical analysis to determine what parts of a string are supposed to be a date, for example. If it sees "1/7", it has to guess if you mean "January 7", "July 1", "0.14", or something else. If it guesses wrong, how would I be able to correct it?
At least with the ASCII sort, the results are entirely predictable and it is obvious how I can tweak my strings to sort correctly.
Generally, I'd rather that my computer be stupid then that it try to be smart and fail.
You say that you had a strategy that would always cooperate if playing against itself, and would play tit-for-tat otherwise, but tit-for-tat will already always cooperate with itself. In what way does this make the winner "less nice" to foreigners?
I've only heard of hand counting being done in election where there were a small number of races (often one) on the ballot. A typical ballot in my area requires me to cast votes for dozens of local and state offices and several issues. That makes hand counting a much more arduous task.
I looked at the site, and didn't see any indication of which version of lattitude/longitude they want people to use. There are several different models which can give slightly different coordinates for the same physical point (e.g. NAD 27, NAD 83, WGS 84).
Admittedly, the confluences under each grid are almost always within 100 meters of each other, which is what the project organizers consider acceptable accuracy, but it is still suprising that they don't make it explicit.
So you're in favor of RFID then? After all, if tickets are auto-generated then there would be no more discrimination. Everyone who speeds would get a ticket, from the mayor down to the out-of-town tourist.
If speed limits are set too low, then thousands of annoyed drivers would petition to raise them rather than just ignoring them and hoping that they are in the group that doesn't get singled out for selective enforcement.
Slashdot Mirror
"... have any right to come into court ..."
So true. An individual or corporation should know that guaranteeing their profits is the proper function of the legislative branch, so they should send lobbyists to congress, not lawyers to the courts.
The important question is, does this black hole have a warning label?
WARNING: do not drop spaceship keys into black hole
Generally, movies are more easily available for purchase than TV shows, which might explain a lot about these findings. It would have been very nice if NPD could subdivide their categories into content which is available online or on DVD, and that which is not. Then we could see the extent to which legal distribution channels cut piracy.
How do DRM and fingerprinting have the same issues involved? One is trying to prevent you from decoding a file you possess, and the other is trying to recognize it. The usually stated problem with DRM is that they have to give you both the content and the key, thus it really just amounts to security by obscurity.
While it would certainly be a difficult AI problem to write software that can recognize music or video as well as a human can, I see no reason why it should be theoretically impossible. If you try to change the file so much that it is no longer recognizable to the software, what guarantee is there that it will still be recognizable to humans? When I download the latest episode of my favorite TV show, I want it to be a high fidelity copy, not a badly distorted mess.
I concede that the level of distortion necessary to defeat recognition by today's technology is probably very minor and not noticeable by humans, but unlike DRM, there is no fundamental guarantee that software recognition will always be so lame.
"Backed by the US Government" means what, exactly? What does the US Government guarantee about its currency? Is it a stronger guarantee than you will get from Linden Labs?
I can't commment on how much information density people may find useful, but it is possible to say what the physical limits of information density are. A researcher named Seth Lloyd did some calculations and determined that given 1 Kg of mass and 1 L of space, you could create a computer with about 10^31 bits of information.
Nature -- "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation" (vol. 406, no. 6788, 31 August 2000, pp. 1047-1054)
Way back in 1986 I had a summer job as an airport screener. Back then it was all private companies, of course, and we all got minimum wage. We didn't have the fancy computerized tests, but the supervisors (and occasionally FAA inspectors), had a collection of fake weapons/bombs that they could slip onto somebody's x-ray machine.
The operator would observe the item, stop the machine, look up, and the supervisor would then inform them it was a test. If you failed the test, you'd be disciplined. Fail too many, and you'd be fired.
You might think that this test would be too easy because you would see the supervisor approaching, but most of the time the operator is so focused on their screen that they don't look at the passengers. Still, there were only a limited number of fake items so you got good at recognizing them. It seems like these new electronic tests have the advantage of offering a much larger variety of images.
On the plus side, if you actually caught somebody trying to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, you were eligible for a massive $100 reward. I always thought the risk/reward ratio of X-ray work was too low, so I preferred to do less stressful jobs like escorting children and disabled passengers.
Probably because people feel motivated to review the books they like, and not the ones the ones that sit on their shelf and never get used.
Sounds to me like the problem is poor hardware and/or software design. The RAID controller ought to recover from having its drives randomly reordered. I don't know whether any of them actually do this, but it seems like an obvious feature for a device which whose primary purpose is failure prevention.
Perhaps these "scientists" chose their careers after a well-lubricated encounter at a bar?
Yeah, I'll bet that if I called them up I'd have to spend forever on hold, only to talk to a surly rep in another country whose only idea of how to fix my problem is to tell me to reboot. Oh wait, that's my current ISP. Never mind.
The guards in my office building already have to stop at electronic checkpoints while they are on patrol, so the supervisors know the guards are actually patrolling. RFID would just make this more continuous.
I started off writing a post about how the winds on Mars would be too weak to generate useful power, but had a momentary lapse of Slashdot protocol and decided to do a few seconds of Google research first.
w er03/marsn eeds/marsneeds.html
To my suprise, I found that NASA is indeed looking at wind power. Some scientists believe that Mars' dust storms contain enough force to generate power.
See this page for more details:
http://www.memagazine.org/supparch/mepo
Given that the suit was filed in a US district court, I'm not sure why you think Napoleonic law is relevant.
I'll give them credit for a good effort in storing only the hash of the PIN, but in reality that is little more than security through obscurity. Given that most PINs are only 4 digits, it would be trivial for anyone who knew the hash function to recover the plaintext from the hash by simple bruteforce methods.
IBM, at least, does not advertise a mini-PCI slot. I'm sure if you dig deep enough you can find that information, but the main product summary in their store just says the laptop has integrated IBM or Intel WiFi.
Wonderful. Now even if I don't download anything the RIAA will sue me for violating Cage's copyright on silence.
Actually, international treaties mostly regulate frequencies below 30 MHz (HF and below). These frequencies can have worldwide propagation, so it is important that everybody coordinate them. VHF, UHF, and higher frequencies tend to be fairly localized so each country can make their own rules about it.
Unless you live within a few miles of an international border, it is unlikely that spectrum users in another country will interfere with your Wi-Fi.
I don't know about Iphtashu Fitz, but when I hear a message saying "this call may be monitored", I generally assume it is there for a reason, i.e. this call may be monitored. Are there really people who are suprised that some of their calls are in fact monitored?
This is fairly universal among call centers, because call center managers never trust their employees to do the right thing without first-hand supervision.
To be fair, I was suprised about the on-hold part. What is the point of listening to that?
I agree that it would be nice if computers could sort the same way a human would, but I'm not convinced we have the technology to fix this right, and partially fixing it could be make it worse.
The author is essentially asking for the computer to be able to do reliable lexical analysis to determine what parts of a string are supposed to be a date, for example. If it sees "1/7", it has to guess if you mean "January 7", "July 1", "0.14", or something else. If it guesses wrong, how would I be able to correct it?
At least with the ASCII sort, the results are entirely predictable and it is obvious how I can tweak my strings to sort correctly.
Generally, I'd rather that my computer be stupid then that it try to be smart and fail.
You say that you had a strategy that would always cooperate if playing against itself, and would play tit-for-tat otherwise, but tit-for-tat will already always cooperate with itself. In what way does this make the winner "less nice" to foreigners?
I've only heard of hand counting being done in election where there were a small number of races (often one) on the ballot. A typical ballot in my area requires me to cast votes for dozens of local and state offices and several issues. That makes hand counting a much more arduous task.
Never mind, they say it's WGS84 in the very first paragraph of the information page. I'm just blind.
I looked at the site, and didn't see any indication of which version of lattitude/longitude they want people to use. There are several different models which can give slightly different coordinates for the same physical point (e.g. NAD 27, NAD 83, WGS 84).
Admittedly, the confluences under each grid are almost always within 100 meters of each other, which is what the project organizers consider acceptable accuracy, but it is still suprising that they don't make it explicit.
So you're in favor of RFID then? After all, if tickets are auto-generated then there would be no more discrimination. Everyone who speeds would get a ticket, from the mayor down to the out-of-town tourist.
If speed limits are set too low, then thousands of annoyed drivers would petition to raise them rather than just ignoring them and hoping that they are in the group that doesn't get singled out for selective enforcement.