In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work
You can't??? How about the fact that practically all other creative work is STATIC, and most databases are DYNAMIC??? See the problem now? It's relatively easy to define a copied work of a static object, but how do you define a copy of a dynamic object? It would be a nightmare. This is a serious problem.
I remember reading about a do-it-yourself electronic lock that worked pretty much exactly the same way in popular electronics at least 30 years ago. It's actually kind of an obvious method.. the only new wrinkle is using light instead of current. What's the advantage to THAT?
Well, somebody elsewhere mentioned jitter as a piracy prevention method, but there is going to be jitter in ANY manually swiped card as well. I'm not sure how easy that would be to deal with at 16 bits of resolution from your average sound card, but it's possible, I guess. My only point (originally) was that it isn't a TRIVIAL thing to do. I don't know if it's necessary to futz with the bias either. Etc.
Not brain surgery but more sophisticated than a tape head connected to a serial port. Since the speed of the card over the head is expected to have a wide speed range, the reader has to have its own adaptive clock circuitry in it to decode the card, and THEN it's converted to rs-232 or CMOS level signals.
Re:I jam cell phone conversation MY WAY
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 1
I jam cell phone conversation MY WAY with a swift kick to the nuts!
I don't have a problem with that. If someone is being rude, I don't have a problem with responding rudely. The idea of hiding behind some pocket-jammer would only appeal to some passive-aggressive control freak anyway. If it's worth getting upset about, it's worth actually being ASSERTIVE about. If you don't have the balls to be assertive, then quit whining.
I'm tired as fuck of all the self-righteous pricks running around who think their one-on-one conversations are more important than my conversation over the phone.
Those are my feelings EXACTLY. The only difference that I've thought of is the tendency for some morons to talk a lot more loudly on a cell call than during a one-on-one conversation. I've found that imitating them puts a stop to that, usually.
Halliburton on Mars: Take me to your CEO
When President Bush inspires us onward and upward to Mars this week, his political calculations may be more earthly. Expanding space exploration is a wonderful aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for the Houston economy, the national aerospace industry, and one company in particular that has long pondered exploration of the red planet: Halliburton.
Yes, the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney -- fabled beneficiary of no-bid multibillion-dollar military contracts and high-priced provider of Kuwaiti oil -- is determined to drill on Mars and the moon. Surely this scheme has nothing to do with the Bush space initiative. But somehow, no matter what worthy motivations lie behind the president's policies, he and Cheney always appear to be shilling for their corporate clientele.
[Click Here]
(Consider former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill's revelations about early Iraq war planning, which included a March 2001 memo -- titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" -- that mapped out potential post-Saddam petroleum exploration.)
Dreams about drilling on Mars date back several years at least. In 1998, a handful of top firms, including Halliburton, Shell and Schlumberger, showed up for a NASA "workshop" at Los Alamos, N.M., to discuss the prospects. Research seems to have intensified since 2001, with Halliburton and other firms engaged in proprietary research on such advanced technologies as laser-powered drills. They appear to have been awaiting this week's announcement, according to this old clip from Petroleum News, which reported: "The earliest drilling opportunity would be 2007... Deeper drilling, into the multi-kilometer range, might occur as part of a 2014 Mars mission which would put astronauts on the planet to assist."
No, but you missed the point. At least with a malformed punch card, there is proof of an attempt to vote. There is no such thing with the e-voting machines, and that's ridiculous, because it would be so trivial to add that feature.
A-hem. I resent that. And go clean your room, it's a mess.
The BEST thing about BBS's, at least in the early days, was that it wasn't something that just ANYBODY could figure out how to do... it sure kept the riff-raff out. We had an actually COMMUNITY of users who, for the most part, knew each other personally and weren't above getting together regularly for all-night drunks. We had our share of devil-worshippers and wife swappers (and of course, devil-worshipping-wife-swappers) but get a few beers into 'em and they could be a lot of fun. There were also warez-kiddeez with their grocery sacks full of debo'd C64 crap on 5-1/4" floppies... but I think the average IQ among 'em still hovered near the genius range, much unlike their equivalent today... God bless their pointy little heads.
Did you know that they only control about 8% of the radio stations in the United States?
I don't know about that, but according to their own web page, they have about a 20% share of ad revenue, which probably says a hell of a lot more about their market penetration than "number of stations owned"; a total which includes college, ethnic, AM, religious, and other stations which each have a miniscule share of available listeners. In any case, their clout with labels, promoters, POLITICIANS, and to a lesser extent, artists, gives them power WAY out of proportion to any meaningless numbers you might want to conjur up to prove what great guys they really are. Aside from employees (which I assume you to be), a few investors, and their current stable of crooked legislators, pretty much NOBODY has ANYTHING good to say about them.
That they have inflicted a stifling blandness on FM radio is without question. I'm just waiting for the day when our local CC affiliate drops all pretense of old fashioned programming and plays nothing but AC/DC, Van Hagar, Ozzie, and Metallica. It's pretty close to that right now.
Blockbuster and other rental places would obviously object. Therefore, I wouldn't expect a movie to available for download legally until a few weeks after the rental release.
Yeah, but don't you imagine that the movie industry is pretty anxious to escape the control that blockbuster is able to exert on them now?
Wolves aren't particularly dangerous. They rarely attack humans... rarely ENCOUNTER humans for that matter, and being at the top of the food chain, wouldn't be in much of a position to pass the virus (virii?) on to other species. I'd guess any wolf that began to have symptoms of such a serious disease would simply starve to death in fairly short order.
I'm not sure what you mean, but I think my answer would be "I don't know", in any case.
From what I've read about hacking sat tv, it's a fairly sophisticated operation, requiring equipment that's only available in a few labs.. (tunnelling scanning electron microscopes, lasers that can peel away protective layers one molecule at a time, etc), definitely NOT for amateurs. (I am assuming that's for reverse-engineering the encryption, when can then be used to create smart cards using regular readers, but I don't know for sure.)
I use smart cards for fairly mundane purposes; primarily payroll systems, time-lock cash vaults, and building security. I just hate that DirectTV has had the power to associate smart cards so strongly with hacking their product, because that's such an insignificant factor in the grand scheme of things. They have used drama and intimidation, a-la RIAA, to further their goals in a very unsavory way, and worst of all, they seem to have pretty much gotten away with it.
This is totally beside the point and has nothing to do with the PVR discussion. What legitimate use does a hacked smart card have on the DirecTV network? Why shouldn't a company sue or press charges against a user who is not only violating their terms of service, but also depriving them of revenue by using such a device?
Actually, it's neither off-topic nor beside the point. DirectTV hasn't been suing people for having hacked smart cards... they've been suing people for buy smart card writers, which are only used for hacking smart cards in incredibly rare instances. It's EXACTLY the same as if MPAA were suing owners of DVD recorders, with no proof (even indirect) of any illegal activity. I have two smart card writers sitting on my desk now, and I've never owned a dish of any type. You should understand what you're ranting about before you post. DirecTV has , in fact, been extremely obnoxious in that regard.
No, but it's a meta-language, and they usually don't include a space to include the meta-languages you are proficient in. It's easier (arguably safer) to just throw "HTML" in with C, C++, etc, and take a chance on having a nit-picker down you for it, rather than take the chance of it being a keyword some HR drone is looking for and not finding.
Believe me, the music industry is aware of the so-called "a-hole" (analog hole in DRM.) They've gone so far as to propose DRM be built into speakers and microphones. Don't bet the farm that it won't eventually happen, either.
I am looking forward to Cringley's next column where he proposes to answer the question of why auditing capabilities were not inlcuded in the touch screen voting machines.
I can answer THAT for you right now. He's going to (correctly) assert that the reason there is no paper-trail requirement is that the political establishment DOES NOT WANT ONE. The original vote tally is a one-time process, but the recount process can drag on forever, and THAT is what "they" want to avoid forever more.
I still can't figure out how peoplepc gives you a nice Gateway computer for the price of your dial up connection.
They don't. Did you read the details? It's a four-year contract, and the "$299" figure is only if you have perfect credit. It's financed through a bank, and by the time your four year contract is up, you HAVE paid pretty much full retail price for it, plus interest... and meanwhile you've gotten (essentially) a free dialup account. Whee.
>Oh crap (pun intended), two comments above me for the same thing. Score: -1,
>Redundant, here I come!
I doubt it. This is Slashdot - home of redundant, duplicate information (or at least, data).
Re:Aluminum foil hat time again
on
Mafia Tech Support
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The whole point of the PATRIOT Act was to apply RICO-syle tactics of enforcement (which have already been used against the mob for years now) against suspected terrorists. You've got it exactly backwards.
Uh, No.
That was how it was sold, but some of the new patriot powers ARE being used against "regular" criminals, much to the surprise of many of those in the house and congress who naively assumed that it would be otherwise. I guess they didn't have time to read the fine print in the couple of hours they had to read it before they voted on it.
Where have you been? This isn't exactly news; I'm constantly amazed at how little notice this has gotten. One problem may be that the abuses against the public are so blatant and egregious that there isn't much anyone can offer as criticism that doesn't come off as cliche. (Although surprisingly in the case of eavesdropping over OnStar, they have met some resistance in the courts... so far.)
I dunno. If it didn't have Simson Garfinkle's byline, I'd think the whole thing was pure bullshit made up by a Bushie purely as propoganda to prove the need to use their patriot muscle to crack down on "regular" crime. It reads like a "what's what" list of things that probably kill the boner Ashcroft gets every time he thinks about how great it is to track people with their OnStar systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, except that he said he couldn't get the Xerox cartriges at ANY price, since he lives in Argentina.
In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work
You can't??? How about the fact that practically all other creative work is STATIC, and most databases are DYNAMIC??? See the problem now? It's relatively easy to define a copied work of a static object, but how do you define a copy of a dynamic object? It would be a nightmare. This is a serious problem.
"To a boy with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail".
I remember reading about a do-it-yourself electronic lock that worked pretty much exactly the same way in popular electronics at least 30 years ago. It's actually kind of an obvious method.. the only new wrinkle is using light instead of current. What's the advantage to THAT?
Well, somebody elsewhere mentioned jitter as a piracy prevention method, but there is going to be jitter in ANY manually swiped card as well. I'm not sure how easy that would be to deal with at 16 bits of resolution from your average sound card, but it's possible, I guess. My only point (originally) was that it isn't a TRIVIAL thing to do. I don't know if it's necessary to futz with the bias either. Etc.
Not brain surgery but more sophisticated than a tape head connected to a serial port. Since the speed of the card over the head is expected to have a wide speed range, the reader has to have its own adaptive clock circuitry in it to decode the card, and THEN it's converted to rs-232 or CMOS level signals.
I jam cell phone conversation MY WAY with a swift kick to the nuts!
I don't have a problem with that. If someone is being rude, I don't have a problem with responding rudely. The idea of hiding behind some pocket-jammer would only appeal to some passive-aggressive control freak anyway. If it's worth getting upset about, it's worth actually being ASSERTIVE about. If you don't have the balls to be assertive, then quit whining.
I'm tired as fuck of all the self-righteous pricks running around who think their one-on-one conversations are more important than my conversation over the phone.
Those are my feelings EXACTLY. The only difference that I've thought of is the tendency for some morons to talk a lot more loudly on a cell call than during a one-on-one conversation. I've found that imitating them puts a stop to that, usually.
It will happen if HP sells enough of them to get some clout with Apple.
From Joe Conason in Salon: (Jan. 12, 2004)
... Deeper drilling, into the multi-kilometer range, might occur as part of a 2014 Mars mission which would put astronauts on the planet to assist."
Halliburton on Mars: Take me to your CEO When President Bush inspires us onward and upward to Mars this week, his political calculations may be more earthly. Expanding space exploration is a wonderful aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for the Houston economy, the national aerospace industry, and one company in particular that has long pondered exploration of the red planet: Halliburton. Yes, the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney -- fabled beneficiary of no-bid multibillion-dollar military contracts and high-priced provider of Kuwaiti oil -- is determined to drill on Mars and the moon. Surely this scheme has nothing to do with the Bush space initiative. But somehow, no matter what worthy motivations lie behind the president's policies, he and Cheney always appear to be shilling for their corporate clientele. [Click Here] (Consider former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill's revelations about early Iraq war planning, which included a March 2001 memo -- titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" -- that mapped out potential post-Saddam petroleum exploration.) Dreams about drilling on Mars date back several years at least. In 1998, a handful of top firms, including Halliburton, Shell and Schlumberger, showed up for a NASA "workshop" at Los Alamos, N.M., to discuss the prospects. Research seems to have intensified since 2001, with Halliburton and other firms engaged in proprietary research on such advanced technologies as laser-powered drills. They appear to have been awaiting this week's announcement, according to this old clip from Petroleum News, which reported: "The earliest drilling opportunity would be 2007
Not casting a vote is not always a screw up.
No, but you missed the point. At least with a malformed punch card, there is proof of an attempt to vote. There is no such thing with the e-voting machines, and that's ridiculous, because it would be so trivial to add that feature.
A-hem. I resent that. And go clean your room, it's a mess.
The BEST thing about BBS's, at least in the early days, was that it wasn't something that just ANYBODY could figure out how to do... it sure kept the riff-raff out. We had an actually COMMUNITY of users who, for the most part, knew each other personally and weren't above getting together regularly for all-night drunks. We had our share of devil-worshippers and wife swappers (and of course, devil-worshipping-wife-swappers) but get a few beers into 'em and they could be a lot of fun. There were also warez-kiddeez with their grocery sacks full of debo'd C64 crap on 5-1/4" floppies... but I think the average IQ among 'em still hovered near the genius range, much unlike their equivalent today... God bless their pointy little heads.
1:3612/112
Did you know that they only control about 8% of the radio stations in the United States?
I don't know about that, but according to their own web page, they have about a 20% share of ad revenue, which probably says a hell of a lot more about their market penetration than "number of stations owned"; a total which includes college, ethnic, AM, religious, and other stations which each have a miniscule share of available listeners. In any case, their clout with labels, promoters, POLITICIANS, and to a lesser extent, artists, gives them power WAY out of proportion to any meaningless numbers you might want to conjur up to prove what great guys they really are. Aside from employees (which I assume you to be), a few investors, and their current stable of crooked legislators, pretty much NOBODY has ANYTHING good to say about them.
That they have inflicted a stifling blandness on FM radio is without question. I'm just waiting for the day when our local CC affiliate drops all pretense of old fashioned programming and plays nothing but AC/DC, Van Hagar, Ozzie, and Metallica. It's pretty close to that right now.
Blockbuster and other rental places would obviously object. Therefore, I wouldn't expect a movie to available for download legally until a few weeks after the rental release.
Yeah, but don't you imagine that the movie industry is pretty anxious to escape the control that blockbuster is able to exert on them now?
Wolves aren't particularly dangerous. They rarely attack humans... rarely ENCOUNTER humans for that matter, and being at the top of the food chain, wouldn't be in much of a position to pass the virus (virii?) on to other species. I'd guess any wolf that began to have symptoms of such a serious disease would simply starve to death in fairly short order.
I'm not sure what you mean, but I think my answer would be "I don't know", in any case.
From what I've read about hacking sat tv, it's a fairly sophisticated operation, requiring equipment that's only available in a few labs.. (tunnelling scanning electron microscopes, lasers that can peel away protective layers one molecule at a time, etc), definitely NOT for amateurs. (I am assuming that's for reverse-engineering the encryption, when can then be used to create smart cards using regular readers, but I don't know for sure.)
I use smart cards for fairly mundane purposes; primarily payroll systems, time-lock cash vaults, and building security. I just hate that DirectTV has had the power to associate smart cards so strongly with hacking their product, because that's such an insignificant factor in the grand scheme of things. They have used drama and intimidation, a-la RIAA, to further their goals in a very unsavory way, and worst of all, they seem to have pretty much gotten away with it.
Winux? Ok with me. Go for it, Bill.
This is totally beside the point and has nothing to do with the PVR discussion. What legitimate use does a hacked smart card have on the DirecTV network? Why shouldn't a company sue or press charges against a user who is not only violating their terms of service, but also depriving them of revenue by using such a device?
Actually, it's neither off-topic nor beside the point. DirectTV hasn't been suing people for having hacked smart cards... they've been suing people for buy smart card writers, which are only used for hacking smart cards in incredibly rare instances. It's EXACTLY the same as if MPAA were suing owners of DVD recorders, with no proof (even indirect) of any illegal activity. I have two smart card writers sitting on my desk now, and I've never owned a dish of any type. You should understand what you're ranting about before you post. DirecTV has , in fact, been extremely obnoxious in that regard.
First, HTML is not a programming language
No, but it's a meta-language, and they usually don't include a space to include the meta-languages you are proficient in. It's easier (arguably safer) to just throw "HTML" in with C, C++, etc, and take a chance on having a nit-picker down you for it, rather than take the chance of it being a keyword some HR drone is looking for and not finding.
Believe me, the music industry is aware of the so-called "a-hole" (analog hole in DRM.) They've gone so far as to propose DRM be built into speakers and microphones. Don't bet the farm that it won't eventually happen, either.
I am looking forward to Cringley's next column where he proposes to answer the question of why auditing capabilities were not inlcuded in the touch screen voting machines.
I can answer THAT for you right now. He's going to (correctly) assert that the reason there is no paper-trail requirement is that the political establishment DOES NOT WANT ONE. The original vote tally is a one-time process, but the recount process can drag on forever, and THAT is what "they" want to avoid forever more.
I still can't figure out how peoplepc gives you a nice Gateway computer for the price of your dial up connection.
They don't. Did you read the details? It's a four-year contract, and the "$299" figure is only if you have perfect credit. It's financed through a bank, and by the time your four year contract is up, you HAVE paid pretty much full retail price for it, plus interest... and meanwhile you've gotten (essentially) a free dialup account. Whee.
>Oh crap (pun intended), two comments above me for the same thing. Score: -1, >Redundant, here I come! I doubt it. This is Slashdot - home of redundant, duplicate information (or at least, data).
The whole point of the PATRIOT Act was to apply RICO-syle tactics of enforcement (which have already been used against the mob for years now) against suspected terrorists. You've got it exactly backwards.
Uh, No.
That was how it was sold, but some of the new patriot powers ARE being used against "regular" criminals, much to the surprise of many of those in the house and congress who naively assumed that it would be otherwise. I guess they didn't have time to read the fine print in the couple of hours they had to read it before they voted on it.
Where have you been? This isn't exactly news; I'm constantly amazed at how little notice this has gotten. One problem may be that the abuses against the public are so blatant and egregious that there isn't much anyone can offer as criticism that doesn't come off as cliche. (Although surprisingly in the case of eavesdropping over OnStar, they have met some resistance in the courts... so far.)
I dunno. If it didn't have Simson Garfinkle's byline, I'd think the whole thing was pure bullshit made up by a Bushie purely as propoganda to prove the need to use their patriot muscle to crack down on "regular" crime. It reads like a "what's what" list of things that probably kill the boner Ashcroft gets every time he thinks about how great it is to track people with their OnStar systems.