3. Being able to wave your credit card while simultaneously keeping your CC data more secure than ever.
Don't mind the story submitter, (s)he's just making wild claims. This is probably contactless smartcard technology, which is far more secure than RFID. How secure you ask? Well, the card is only supposed to return crytographically secure results. i.e. You submit information to the card, it returns signed results. No data that could be usefully stolen is transferred. At least, that's the theory, but at least it's had a few decades to mature.:-)
The article doesn't give too many details, but my guess is that this is nothing more than a SmartCard, similar to the American Express "Blue" card. SmartCards have had contactless technology for nearly a decade that utilize induction technology to communicate back and forth. The reader on the terminal is then able to talk to the microprocessor on the card, usually sending information that is then verified using encryption technology. (Think: public key encryption.) As a result, it's not possible to just run around and collect the info from cards, because they'll never give out secure information. They only give back cryptographically secure results. (At least, that's how it's supposed to work.)
Note that existing contactless technology is sufficient for this credit card, with a maximum range of up to 10cm. Such technology is supposedly already in use in Europe. (Europeans care to share your experiences?)
That's my guess anyway. I'm sure someone else can add a few details or make corrections.
I understood your point, I was just adding that IT can make a difference if properly focused. But that's the real problem, isn't it? IT/IS departments exist for reasons that no one remembers other than "keeping up with the Joneses". The fact that the Joneses are dead and buried doesn't seem to quite percolate through to company mentality.
There are no "new rules" and you don't have to have *everything* on the web in all businesses. What you do have to do is keep an eye on the market and make sure that your company stays relevant.
Sounds like you guys made a seious impact on the business... that's a CEO's wet dream.
I'm not sure that our President would have appreciated your terminology, but yes, he did appreciate our work.:-)
Having "great IT" isn't worth a warm bucket of spit as a key differentiator these days.
One of the best jobs I ever worked at was a small company that had a three man IT department. Technically, our job was only to keep the mainframe and PCs up and running, but we got creative. After replacing the PC infrastructure with a Citrix Winframe infrastructure, we used the free time to apply technological solutions to the company's competition problems.
It wasn't long before we had the entire inventory order process streamlined into an online site, the full product data from the USDA (plus advertising materials) processed and published in one day (outdoing our competitors by two weeks!), and reduced our international paperwork down to a few automatic processes. Our President explicitly recognized the value of the company's IT department at every opportunity as we were a key factor in making things run so smoothly.
Of course, companies are so outwardly focused today that they don't even realize that the best technology usage is *internal*, not external. Remember, your customer is rating you on your efficiency of transaction first, then pretty websites next.
the only reason the shuttle costs so much to yse is because of the damn military interfering demanding such a large payload capacity.
Right reason, wrong fall guy. It was actually Nixon who demanded that NASA and the military work together to produce a singular craft. He wanted to "save money" by reducing the number of space vehicles. Both sides (NASA and the USAF) were pretty unhappy with the arrangement but couldn't do much about it. Thus we have an expensive spacecraft that can *almost* put military craft into orbit, has an extensive cross range ability, and has sufficient life support to carry a full crew for over a month.
FWIW, if the military develops Nuclear Thermal Rockets or Orion Nuclear Pulse craft, then I'm all for militarization. Maybe they can push things through where NASA can't.:-)
OK, this is great. So how does one go about enforcing such a law?
It won't help from outright viruses, but it could result in massive punitive damages for semi-legitimate corporations. e.g. Gator would be effectively banned from doing business in the state of Washington, under the penalty of heafty fines and/or criminal charges. (Sorry, I didn't read the law in any detail. I didn't catch if it was considered a criminal action or not.)
As for finding someone to prosecute these companies, that may not be as hard as it seems. Lawyers love to make money by bringing forward any cases they can. In the absense of money, they love high-profile cases that make a name for themselves.
Except for scientific aplications and video work, what can use this?
I seriously doubt that scientists would use these cards. The "performance" level drivers tend to intentionally make various minute errors to make things run as fast as possible. In most scientific applications, precision is a requirement.
As for video work, I'm not sure that anyone would bother with spending TOO much on a card. The drivers tend to be very one way, making the return of the image very slow. Since there's a hugh bottleneck in the AGP transfer rates, you might as well use the extra time to render a better quality image. No super-pricey card needed. Now if NVidia released a card with high AGP retrieval speed...
To pile on damages to people who are especially egregious violators of the law. They may serve as deterrants, but that is not the grounds on which they are piled on, nor the purpose of them.
No, that is *exactly* the reason why they're piled on. In the US, the law is designed so that the punishment must fit the crime. The more egregious the crime, the more harsh the punishment. This is done under the theory that legal punishment is intended as a deterent against future acts of disobediance of the law. The only other legal theory regarding punishment is that the death sentence and jail time are intended to remove an individual who poses a danger to society.
Let me know if you'd like to exchange more monosyllabic expressions of contempt. I watch Family Guy, I learned from the best.
It's called "punative" damages. That money is intended to deter people from the act of theft. (Similar to the fines charged to speeders.) If punative fines didn't exist, then someone might figure that they would only have to pay for stuff that they were caught stealing.
Mark Cuban is arguing over at Blog Maverick that with the introduction of Yahoo!'s new $5 per month music service that this needs to become the new de facto 'damages' that the RIAA ought to be able to claim when suing kids.
That's a nice sentiment, but I'm afraid the law doesn't work that way. Part of the damages are punative, and part of the damages are intended to offset losses from a chain of piracy started by the individual. i.e. Because he didn't pay his $5, now hundreds of others won't pay their five dollars, and may even incite others to not pay their five dollars.
I'm not saying that the current laws are good (the music industry did make their own problem by not responding to market pressures), but they aren't as cut and dry as suggested either.
BTW, FSF is american... and my system is full of GNU tools - downloaded from Debian. Does that means that FSF is violating US laws, because a third party reexported their tools?. In fact, openoffice.org, sponsored [mainly] by Sun, is free. Are they also violating US laws because Debian reexports openoffice.org?
Depends. Depending on the laws governing the export to your country, they may very well be violating them. OTOH, the issue may be the encryption software contained in the JVM, in which case Sun can give you OpenOffice, but not Java.
How did the Generator Fail? [...] I'm left to sit here and think "the machine just broke, not worth trying to fix?"
They didn't say how the generator failed, but the article did state that they had attempted repair and failed. The [Astro|Cosmo]nauts and Ground control have come to the joint conclusion that "it's dead Jim!" and have decided that they just need a replacement. I can imagine that there are quite a few unfixable things that can happen to the unit. Without replacement parts, there's nothing that can be done. And when your life depends on the equipment, it makes a lot of sense just to replace the entire unit rather than just send the spare parts.
I case it wasn't clear enough... Sun's licence is more restrictive that US law (because its used to extend the law to countries where it would be void otherwise). With FOSS (see the DFSG, points 1 and 5), it might be illegal for you to share it with me, but I could, for instance, download from Europe, and no law (US or not) would be violated by any party.
If that were true, Sun could redistribute it from their European divisions. Simply uploading OSS software to European servers so that embargoed nations can access the software can get an American in just as much trouble as if he had just exported it directly. The same thing can happen if a US citizen knowingly allows a foreigner to reexport to an embargoed country. (That's why Sun's license has a clause requiring that you not take the software to an embargoed country.)
In short, your argument is irrelevant to the topic at hand. I feel sorry for you, I really do, but these issues trancend our squabbles over free or not free Java.
Video was stored on LD as an analog signal, while audio could be stored in either analog or digital format and in a variety of surround sound formats. Like on a CD, the surface of the disc is an aluminium foil covered by pits and lands, but whereas on a audio CD (or DVD) the pits and lands will signify binary codes, on an LD the pits are created using frequency modulation of an analog signal.
I always assumed that LD stored information in a manner similar to CDs. Turns out that Laser Disc is an OLDER technology than CDs, going all the way back to 1958! I used to have a Laser Disc player and never knew this. Guess you learn something new every day. Thanks for the info!:-)
It's more likely that they're balking at the fact that on-demand video won't supply them with the repeat fees that they get when shows are rebroadcast by traditional means.
That's a good point. I'm not too familar with British styles of acting compensation, but if I had royalties, I'd definitely like to hold onto them. Once the time-shifting issue is figured out, I suppose what they'd need to do for pay-per-view is make sure that royalties are properly earmarked for each download. This would give actors a similar income, but probably more frequent payments. Plus, actors might see royalties for shows that have all but disappeared from reruns.
If the BBC essentially runs a public domain service anyway, why are the shows deleted after seven days?
I don't think it's that simple. For one, I believe that BBC doesn't own all the shows they broadcast. (Although they do own quite a few.) As such, they are licensed to provide public distribution of the shows, but are not necessary able to just give them away. This would seem to be backed by the article's mention of Hollywood and independent studios.
In addition, it also mentions that the acting unions are "acting up"^H^H balking at the idea of Internet distribution. They don't give any details, but my guess is that actors are concerned that rampant piracy would result in lower wages and fewer acting jobs. It's probably pretty hard to convince them that if given a good for-pay alternative, the majority of people will use the convenient pay service. (The only reason why Napster ever appeared was that the music industry failed to respond to market pressures. What did they THINK was going to happen?)
Dang. This is just a beta to 5000 homes. BTW, anyone notice this:
Laser disc This early forerunner to the DVD used giant 12-inch discs and was a conspicious flop.
That's like saying that oversized cassette cartriges were failures. Yeah, no one used them at home, but Laser Disks are still used at the industrial level to store master digital recordings of movies. Without laser disk technology, we'd probably still be splicing film!
Slashdot Mirror
??? Why did you just repeat what I said?
but what about the *money*?
Because all your money is stored on your credit card, right? Think about it.
How about option 3?
:-)
3. Being able to wave your credit card while simultaneously keeping your CC data more secure than ever.
Don't mind the story submitter, (s)he's just making wild claims. This is probably contactless smartcard technology, which is far more secure than RFID. How secure you ask? Well, the card is only supposed to return crytographically secure results. i.e. You submit information to the card, it returns signed results. No data that could be usefully stolen is transferred. At least, that's the theory, but at least it's had a few decades to mature.
The article doesn't give too many details, but my guess is that this is nothing more than a SmartCard, similar to the American Express "Blue" card. SmartCards have had contactless technology for nearly a decade that utilize induction technology to communicate back and forth. The reader on the terminal is then able to talk to the microprocessor on the card, usually sending information that is then verified using encryption technology. (Think: public key encryption.) As a result, it's not possible to just run around and collect the info from cards, because they'll never give out secure information. They only give back cryptographically secure results. (At least, that's how it's supposed to work.)
Note that existing contactless technology is sufficient for this credit card, with a maximum range of up to 10cm. Such technology is supposedly already in use in Europe. (Europeans care to share your experiences?)
That's my guess anyway. I'm sure someone else can add a few details or make corrections.
I understood your point, I was just adding that IT can make a difference if properly focused. But that's the real problem, isn't it? IT/IS departments exist for reasons that no one remembers other than "keeping up with the Joneses". The fact that the Joneses are dead and buried doesn't seem to quite percolate through to company mentality.
:-)
There are no "new rules" and you don't have to have *everything* on the web in all businesses. What you do have to do is keep an eye on the market and make sure that your company stays relevant.
Sounds like you guys made a seious impact on the business... that's a CEO's wet dream.
I'm not sure that our President would have appreciated your terminology, but yes, he did appreciate our work.
Having "great IT" isn't worth a warm bucket of spit as a key differentiator these days.
One of the best jobs I ever worked at was a small company that had a three man IT department. Technically, our job was only to keep the mainframe and PCs up and running, but we got creative. After replacing the PC infrastructure with a Citrix Winframe infrastructure, we used the free time to apply technological solutions to the company's competition problems.
It wasn't long before we had the entire inventory order process streamlined into an online site, the full product data from the USDA (plus advertising materials) processed and published in one day (outdoing our competitors by two weeks!), and reduced our international paperwork down to a few automatic processes. Our President explicitly recognized the value of the company's IT department at every opportunity as we were a key factor in making things run so smoothly.
Of course, companies are so outwardly focused today that they don't even realize that the best technology usage is *internal*, not external. Remember, your customer is rating you on your efficiency of transaction first, then pretty websites next.
the only reason the shuttle costs so much to yse is because of the damn military interfering demanding such a large payload capacity.
:-)
Right reason, wrong fall guy. It was actually Nixon who demanded that NASA and the military work together to produce a singular craft. He wanted to "save money" by reducing the number of space vehicles. Both sides (NASA and the USAF) were pretty unhappy with the arrangement but couldn't do much about it. Thus we have an expensive spacecraft that can *almost* put military craft into orbit, has an extensive cross range ability, and has sufficient life support to carry a full crew for over a month.
FWIW, if the military develops Nuclear Thermal Rockets or Orion Nuclear Pulse craft, then I'm all for militarization. Maybe they can push things through where NASA can't.
Did the Opera CEO have to go for a swim?
OK, this is great. So how does one go about enforcing such a law?
It won't help from outright viruses, but it could result in massive punitive damages for semi-legitimate corporations. e.g. Gator would be effectively banned from doing business in the state of Washington, under the penalty of heafty fines and/or criminal charges. (Sorry, I didn't read the law in any detail. I didn't catch if it was considered a criminal action or not.)
As for finding someone to prosecute these companies, that may not be as hard as it seems. Lawyers love to make money by bringing forward any cases they can. In the absense of money, they love high-profile cases that make a name for themselves.
Except for scientific aplications and video work, what can use this?
I seriously doubt that scientists would use these cards. The "performance" level drivers tend to intentionally make various minute errors to make things run as fast as possible. In most scientific applications, precision is a requirement.
As for video work, I'm not sure that anyone would bother with spending TOO much on a card. The drivers tend to be very one way, making the return of the image very slow. Since there's a hugh bottleneck in the AGP transfer rates, you might as well use the extra time to render a better quality image. No super-pricey card needed. Now if NVidia released a card with high AGP retrieval speed...
I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, I've read plenty. Curious George Goes to the Mall was my favorite.
:-)
;-)
BWHAHAHAHA! Ok, good one.
My favorite, BTW, is when Curious George accidently ends up in the space program.
To pile on damages to people who are especially egregious violators of the law. They may serve as deterrants, but that is not the grounds on which they are piled on, nor the purpose of them.
No, that is *exactly* the reason why they're piled on. In the US, the law is designed so that the punishment must fit the crime. The more egregious the crime, the more harsh the punishment. This is done under the theory that legal punishment is intended as a deterent against future acts of disobediance of the law. The only other legal theory regarding punishment is that the death sentence and jail time are intended to remove an individual who poses a danger to society.
Let me know if you'd like to exchange more monosyllabic expressions of contempt. I watch Family Guy, I learned from the best.
Riiiigghhht. Try a book or two instead.
They are not a deterrant, they are specifically intended as an additional punishment for notably egregious, willful, or wanton violation of the law.
Ahem. And what is the purpose of the extra punishment?
It's called "punative" damages. That money is intended to deter people from the act of theft. (Similar to the fines charged to speeders.) If punative fines didn't exist, then someone might figure that they would only have to pay for stuff that they were caught stealing.
Mark Cuban is arguing over at Blog Maverick that with the introduction of Yahoo!'s new $5 per month music service that this needs to become the new de facto 'damages' that the RIAA ought to be able to claim when suing kids.
That's a nice sentiment, but I'm afraid the law doesn't work that way. Part of the damages are punative, and part of the damages are intended to offset losses from a chain of piracy started by the individual. i.e. Because he didn't pay his $5, now hundreds of others won't pay their five dollars, and may even incite others to not pay their five dollars.
I'm not saying that the current laws are good (the music industry did make their own problem by not responding to market pressures), but they aren't as cut and dry as suggested either.
BTW, FSF is american... and my system is full of GNU tools - downloaded from Debian. Does that means that FSF is violating US laws, because a third party reexported their tools?. In fact, openoffice.org, sponsored [mainly] by Sun, is free. Are they also violating US laws because Debian reexports openoffice.org?
Depends. Depending on the laws governing the export to your country, they may very well be violating them. OTOH, the issue may be the encryption software contained in the JVM, in which case Sun can give you OpenOffice, but not Java.
Where is that quote in the article?
Second page. Click on "Next >" and you'll find it.
Nice troll.
Dvorak's specialty.
And I don't want to take your stupid little javascript survey either
You lost me there.
How did the Generator Fail? [...] I'm left to sit here and think "the machine just broke, not worth trying to fix?"
They didn't say how the generator failed, but the article did state that they had attempted repair and failed. The [Astro|Cosmo]nauts and Ground control have come to the joint conclusion that "it's dead Jim!" and have decided that they just need a replacement. I can imagine that there are quite a few unfixable things that can happen to the unit. Without replacement parts, there's nothing that can be done. And when your life depends on the equipment, it makes a lot of sense just to replace the entire unit rather than just send the spare parts.
I case it wasn't clear enough... Sun's licence is more restrictive that US law (because its used to extend the law to countries where it would be void otherwise). With FOSS (see the DFSG, points 1 and 5), it might be illegal for you to share it with me, but I could, for instance, download from Europe, and no law (US or not) would be violated by any party.
If that were true, Sun could redistribute it from their European divisions. Simply uploading OSS software to European servers so that embargoed nations can access the software can get an American in just as much trouble as if he had just exported it directly. The same thing can happen if a US citizen knowingly allows a foreigner to reexport to an embargoed country. (That's why Sun's license has a clause requiring that you not take the software to an embargoed country.)
In short, your argument is irrelevant to the topic at hand. I feel sorry for you, I really do, but these issues trancend our squabbles over free or not free Java.
Laser Disks does not store video digitally.
:-)
Seems you're right. From Wikipedia:
Video was stored on LD as an analog signal, while audio could be stored in either analog or digital format and in a variety of surround sound formats. Like on a CD, the surface of the disc is an aluminium foil covered by pits and lands, but whereas on a audio CD (or DVD) the pits and lands will signify binary codes, on an LD the pits are created using frequency modulation of an analog signal.
I always assumed that LD stored information in a manner similar to CDs. Turns out that Laser Disc is an OLDER technology than CDs, going all the way back to 1958! I used to have a Laser Disc player and never knew this. Guess you learn something new every day. Thanks for the info!
It's more likely that they're balking at the fact that on-demand video won't supply them with the repeat fees that they get when shows are rebroadcast by traditional means.
That's a good point. I'm not too familar with British styles of acting compensation, but if I had royalties, I'd definitely like to hold onto them. Once the time-shifting issue is figured out, I suppose what they'd need to do for pay-per-view is make sure that royalties are properly earmarked for each download. This would give actors a similar income, but probably more frequent payments. Plus, actors might see royalties for shows that have all but disappeared from reruns.
The new-ish group for it is alt.binaries.doctorwho (IIRC)
;-)
BBC: The DOC-TOR shows? EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
If the BBC essentially runs a public domain service anyway, why are the shows deleted after seven days?
I don't think it's that simple. For one, I believe that BBC doesn't own all the shows they broadcast. (Although they do own quite a few.) As such, they are licensed to provide public distribution of the shows, but are not necessary able to just give them away. This would seem to be backed by the article's mention of Hollywood and independent studios.
In addition, it also mentions that the acting unions are "acting up"^H^H balking at the idea of Internet distribution. They don't give any details, but my guess is that actors are concerned that rampant piracy would result in lower wages and fewer acting jobs. It's probably pretty hard to convince them that if given a good for-pay alternative, the majority of people will use the convenient pay service. (The only reason why Napster ever appeared was that the music industry failed to respond to market pressures. What did they THINK was going to happen?)
Dang. This is just a beta to 5000 homes. BTW, anyone notice this:
Laser disc This early forerunner to the DVD used giant 12-inch discs and was a conspicious flop.
That's like saying that oversized cassette cartriges were failures. Yeah, no one used them at home, but Laser Disks are still used at the industrial level to store master digital recordings of movies. Without laser disk technology, we'd probably still be splicing film!
I'm off to see if I can get the good Doctor here in the states! Cherrio!