FinalScratch does the same thing, without any special sensors or electronics. You just use your standard turntable, a vinyl LP with a special audio signal, and plug the output into your computer. Software does the rest.
IMHO this is the best solution, because software (and disk space) is much easier to upgrade. Plus, you don't need to find space for One More Gadget. Instead you can slake your gadgethirst by purchasing a niftier computer.
Hey, the people who figure out how to crack copy protection methods are not "sharing... Beck songs and downloading Simpsons episodes." either. They're cryptologists, whose work is important to the development of security systems.
You're falsely confusing those who cryptanalyze security systems with those who use the results to break the law---a common misrepresentation of the scientific community by copyright brokers and their apologists.
A science education is exactly what pirates use to figure out how to crack codes and make unauthorized copies of DVDs. Oh sure, it's nice to have a cure for smallpox, but that was then; now, science provides the public with tools of thievery, such as computers, the Internet, compression, and the math skills necessary to tell when CDs are grossly overpriced.
Here at the MPAA we believe that science, while somewhat useful, has simply got to go if we are to protect our property in the digital age. Literacy is bad enough, driving criminals to "public libraries" where they can read books as often as they want without paying anyone; teach these ethically challenged consumers how to program computers and crack codes, and we have a real crisis on our hands. Not to mention the fact that an educated, discerning public requires us to spend considerably more money and effort producing quality entertainment. We can't figure out exactly who's at fault there, but clearly some kind of theft is taking place.
A literate, educated public may be necessary for a democracy, but it is represents a severe threat to the entertainment industry. In this time of national crisis, we all need to chip in, for instance by spending 8 dollars or so to see a total piece of crap like "The Scorpion King." An "educated" person would probably stay at home reading Paradise Lost, without spending a dime to reimburse copyright holders. It's a shame that our government not only permits such acts, but tacitly encourages them by failing to enforce real, effective copyright controls (which, by the way, "science" claims to be impossible.)
Proponents of "scientific literacy" should ask themselves how they would feel if someone stole their wallets and then murdered them.
This is a common mistake/fast-one used by critics of science, who attempt to lump science in with myth and other belief systems: the assumption that science's purpose is to explain things, which it doesn't seem to do perfectly, or much better than, say, religion.
The goal of science is not merely to explain the universe around us. If we just wanted an explanation, myth would probably work just as well. Science is different because it has predictive power. It leads us to new discoveries by (correctly and precisely) predicting future observations.
Science doesn't have to "explain everything" in order to be accepted as valid versus, say, creationism. If science was way off about the way things worked, your CD player wouldn't work, you wouldn't be able to read this, and likely you'd be dead by now. It is simply untenable to regard our scientific knowledge as one possible (but possibly wrong) explanation, unless you can find a way to explain how we accidentally built all these working computers and nuclear reactors.
Two other notes: firstly, your statement of Goedel's incompleteness theorem is incorrect, and doesn't really apply to fuzzy issues of science vs religion anyway. Goedel's theorem is a statement about formal systems. Secondly, you start by claiming all these various schools of thought "complement each other, rather than conflict." You then go on to claim that the schools of thought you don't particularly like do conflict with one another, and in fact are internally inconsistent.
This is complete and utter bullshit. Massoud (the rebel leader) is a freedom fighter endeavoring on the quest for civil
liberties and democratic government in Afghanistan.
Several people have posted about a mysterious fellow in alt.prophesies.nostradamus, who stated on Sept 4th that he would be gone for good in one week. His other posts predicted a big terrible event, with religious overtones and a suggestion that he was endangering himself by warning of it.
Keep in mind, however, that self-proclaimed prophets post to this newsgroup repeatedly, making predictions of vague events on specific dates, over and over, playing the odds. This fellow, for instance, posted that something big would happen on 9/01, and became evasive when nothing big occurred on that date. Then the 9/11 prediction.
Usenet regulars are also familiar with Daniel Min, who spent the past few years repeatedly predicting the end of the world by specific dates. Every few weeks he was sure we'd be hit by a comet on a specific date a few weeks later. Then we have Sollog, who claims just about every news item to be a "hit" for one of his predictions.
So, take these with a grain of salt. I certainly do hope the gov't investigates this one fellow, but it could very easily be a dead end.
If Christianity were a minority religion in the United States, Bush would not talk about his professed belief in a Christian God. He would make references to Allah or Krishna, or point out that he is an athiest, or whatever resonates with the majority of voters.
The president's persona is a carefully crafted reflection of the American public's views and beliefs. It is true that the media feels uncomfortable letting that stuff on the air; I wonder why, if it was considered popular enough to help win an election.
That being said, I couldn't help but get the impression that Bush didn't rise to the occasion on his public statements. The first one I heard on the radio sounded hollow, not heartfelt, almost as if he was still in campaign mode, using buzzwords, making calculated references to his religion.
Maybe it just seemed that way because every other voice on the radio was clearly, audibly shaken.
Well, by that logic, MS isn't a software company either. Strictly speaking, they are a software and hardware company, selling Natural Keyboards and nifty optical mice.
Microsoft Research the first research lab started by a computer company???
This is so obviously false, that it's hard to imagine someone would dare to post it to, of all places, Slashdot. It's harder to imagine that Slashdot passed it along.
Of course there were research centers before 1991. In particular there was the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which pioneered the windows-based interface expanded upon by Apple and MicroSoft.
But let's think back even further. IBM has been putting up research labs all over the world, and decades earlier:
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, est. 1961
IBM Almaden Research Center, established 1955
IBM Haifa Research Lab, established 1972
IBM Tokyo Research Lab, established 1982
IBM Zurich Research Lab, established 1956
Next thing you know, some Microsoft shill will be claiming that MS invented the Internet, 5 years ago.
Your post didn't just say dynamite was illegal, but that explosives in general, and parts used in explosives, were illegal. Again, this is false. Totally false.
It is legal to buy fertilizer and fuel, it is legal to buy timers and electronics.
Your point that I can't go out and buy dynamite does not somehow imply that all explosives are illegal, including their parts.
I never had any need to buy dynamite, or make explosives; but I assure you that I can purchase a microcontroller.
Secondly, you stated flat out that, Because by creating an explosive, you have an intent to either kill someone or destroy property. Sorry, but this is a false statement. You tried to qualify it later, but this is sentence is just plain objectively false. It's not true even you read it twice or look at it funny or examine it in the context of your entire post: someone who creates an explosive does not necessarily have an intent to kill someone or destroy property.
Indeed, this is the logical flaw behind most of your post: you're jumping to the conclusion that people have intent to do harm. In the US, possession can be illegal if there is intent to commit a crime, and here you are basically saying the same thing backwards: that owning or making explosives/etc implies intent. Towit:
you have no right owning and/or distributing a rootkit because you have INTENT to illegally gain
access to someone else's computer.
I have no intent to illegally gain access to anyone else's computer. Woops, your logic didn't work.
While we're at it, please cite a single reference stating that I have no right to own a rootkit.
Is obtaining explosives or parts used in explosives illegal? Should it be illegal? Well, it is illegal.
From what country are you posting? In the USA, it is not illegal to obtain components for explosives. There are restrictions governing the possession and use of them, yes, but they are not plainly illegal.
Because by creating an explosive, you have an intent to either kill someone or destroy property.
Amazingly false. Of course explosives have a legitimate use, or else there wouldn't be legitimate manufacturers. You yourself mention several legitimate uses just a few paragraphs later. Miners do not have an intent to destroy property or kill people. Furthermore, private individuals can have a legitimate use for explosives, just like companies; this is why the US Govt publishes instructions on how to make explosives --- the "Blaster's Handbook."
Finally:
...there is a point where freedom oversteps the bounds of good moral and common sense.
Freedom is not to be limited simply because it violates anyone's morals or local common sense. This is just the age-old argument that freedoms and rights need to be trimmed to "separate the wheat from the chaff,"
for instance to ban speech which is "clearly" undeserving of protection.
Freedoms tend to be limited only when they infringe on the freedoms of others, and this is a boundary far beyond that of mere moral questionability or offensiveness. Show me how someone else's possession of a rootkit (not use, but possession) infringes on your rights.
Firstly, we definitely have to start regarding software manufacturers, such as MS, as potentially liable for damage caused by viruses and hacker exploits. Indeed, even the general public is starting to become aware that MS shares the blame for massive losses caused by Outlook viruses.
Before you fire off a response, notice the term "potentially." I'm not saying that software writers are generally responsible for hacks, but that some companies can be extremely negligent when designing software for which security obviously matters.
The analogy (yes, another analogy) is to burglar alarms. Is the maker of your burglar alarm at fault if you're burglarized? Not in general, not usually, but if the alarm system turns out to have a zillion defects then yes, the maker is partially at fault.
Secondly, as someone who does research in crypto, I am quite sick of any analogy to firearms. Actually, I'm not fond of analogies to anything, but firearms in particular. No, that piece of software is not like a gun. Maybe it's like a crowbar, or a lockpick, or a safe, OK, I'll buy that; but nothing in the software world comes close to a gun, in terms of its purpose or dangerous nature.
This is especially important when you are describing these concepts to a layperson utterly unfamiliar with software. "What is a 'debugger'?" "Well, it's like a gun, because etc etc." Now you have someone who has no idea what a "debugger" is, whether it's a computer program or a garden tool, and the first thing you drop in that conceptual hole is "gun." Such analogies should be reserved for people who fully understand what a debugger is, who have used one, who know that you can't kill someone with a debugger, and that it's safe to have a debugger in the house if you have children.
I'm not saying we should lay off firearms analogies because they're too scary or will cause the general public to react too strongly. I'm saying we should lay off firearms analogies because they're stupidly inaccurate.
Aside from the notion appearing in science-fiction as mentioned above, it has also been proposed by a columnist in (GAAK, GAAAAAK) Discover Magazine. Or maybe (GAAAAAK, GAK) Popular Science. It's hard to remember which because it was maybe 4 years ago. In fact, it's difficult to distinguish between those magazines in general.
Anyways, the columnist proposed using the moon rather than an asteroid, under the assumption that humanity will figure out how to push the moon around long before we'll ever need to move the Earth. The moon was also central to the heating problem: if we also had unlimited energy pretty much figured out, we could blast light from the surface of the moon using huge lamps, as the moon just happens to seem as large as the sun from an observer on Earth. The column was half-joking, but he did work out the physics.
Very keen observations, all of them.
The intended model for SDMI, presently, is that
all music will have the same kind of watermarks for which all players will be screening. These
will be used in a general infrastructure by which the marks will instruct players/recorders to not accept marked music under certain conditions, for instance if it is or has been compressed.
Watermarking with secret keys to detect rather than directly prevent unauthorized distribution is technologically feasible. Using a secret key would make it more secure, and with no detector to use as an oracle one could not tell if their music is marked or not. There is still a serious problem with this technology however: if detection is automated, people could still perform tricks to misalign the music with a
detector. Simply encrypting an MP3 and providing the key will scramble it beyond the ability of a webcrawler to find it.
Nothing you do in the contest becomes the intellectual property of SDMI until you sign it away.
In particular, to be eligible for the prize money you would probably have to sign away your intellectual property rights. That's probably where the idea first arose that attacks are their property.
Nobody in our group signed any such document, and we're pretty sure we can just publish all the details.
We're compiling on our FAQ a list of any other groups we know of who have analytic results on SDMI's system. If you have a site detailing your results we'll happy add a link.
Point by point (keep in mind I don't speak for the group here:)
No, we did not ignore the ethical or political issues involved. In fact, if anyone understands those issues it's an expert in the technology, not some angry anonymous B1FF. The very fact that you think "damage is done" shows that you don't understand the serious technological problems behind what SDMI is trying to do. Just how do you think SDMI is now a step ahead?
No, we are not helping SDMI restrict fair use
by making them (and everyone else) aware of weaknesses in the system.
Keeping mum about ways to circumvent the system will hurt everyone, as a flawed SDMI in deployment hurts everyone a lot more than no SDMI at all.
Here's an ethical question for you: what about Diamond Multimedia? First they were sued by the recording industry over their MP3 players. Now if we let SDMI deploy a flawed system they're going to get screwed again, having to blow tons of money by putting these SDMI ASICs in their portable devices. That make them drain more battery power and otherwise suck. This is an okay scenario to you?
And what about users? A circumventable system
on your portable devices may not stop people with the right utilities from
making copies, but it will forever get in the way and generally annoy the heck out of people.
This is also okay for you?
Acceptible losses,
friendly fire, if it will help you teach SDMI a lesson?
If SDMI is never going to work, the right thing to do is to keep it on the drawing board.
Anything else will yield an awful end result.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO this is the best solution, because software (and disk space) is much easier to upgrade. Plus, you don't need to find space for One More Gadget. Instead you can slake your gadgethirst by purchasing a niftier computer.
I doubt oil companies will see this as a real threat.
All they have to do is keep people using oil until the island is underwater.
(Score: -1, Duh, duh dur DUH DUHHHHURRRHEY DUH)
You're falsely confusing those who cryptanalyze security systems with those who use the results to break the law---a common misrepresentation of the scientific community by copyright brokers and their apologists.
Here at the MPAA we believe that science, while somewhat useful, has simply got to go if we are to protect our property in the digital age. Literacy is bad enough, driving criminals to "public libraries" where they can read books as often as they want without paying anyone; teach these ethically challenged consumers how to program computers and crack codes, and we have a real crisis on our hands. Not to mention the fact that an educated, discerning public requires us to spend considerably more money and effort producing quality entertainment. We can't figure out exactly who's at fault there, but clearly some kind of theft is taking place.
A literate, educated public may be necessary for a democracy, but it is represents a severe threat to the entertainment industry. In this time of national crisis, we all need to chip in, for instance by spending 8 dollars or so to see a total piece of crap like "The Scorpion King." An "educated" person would probably stay at home reading Paradise Lost, without spending a dime to reimburse copyright holders. It's a shame that our government not only permits such acts, but tacitly encourages them by failing to enforce real, effective copyright controls (which, by the way, "science" claims to be impossible.)
Proponents of "scientific literacy" should ask themselves how they would feel if someone stole their wallets and then murdered them.
The goal of science is not merely to explain the universe around us. If we just wanted an explanation, myth would probably work just as well. Science is different because it has predictive power. It leads us to new discoveries by (correctly and precisely) predicting future observations.
Science doesn't have to "explain everything" in order to be accepted as valid versus, say, creationism. If science was way off about the way things worked, your CD player wouldn't work, you wouldn't be able to read this, and likely you'd be dead by now. It is simply untenable to regard our scientific knowledge as one possible (but possibly wrong) explanation, unless you can find a way to explain how we accidentally built all these working computers and nuclear reactors.
Two other notes: firstly, your statement of Goedel's incompleteness theorem is incorrect, and doesn't really apply to fuzzy issues of science vs religion anyway. Goedel's theorem is a statement about formal systems. Secondly, you start by claiming all these various schools of thought "complement each other, rather than conflict." You then go on to claim that the schools of thought you don't particularly like do conflict with one another, and in fact are internally inconsistent.
A million dollars in venture capital is easier to obtain than 5 points on a combinatorics test.
http://www.janes.com/security/international_securi ty/news/jir/jir010911_1_n.shtml
Certainly an eventful month for the Taliban.
Several people have posted about a mysterious fellow in alt.prophesies.nostradamus, who stated on Sept 4th that he would be gone for good in one week. His other posts predicted a big terrible event, with religious overtones and a suggestion that he was endangering himself by warning of it.
Keep in mind, however, that self-proclaimed prophets post to this newsgroup repeatedly, making predictions of vague events on specific dates, over and over, playing the odds. This fellow, for instance, posted that something big would happen on 9/01, and became evasive when nothing big occurred on that date. Then the 9/11 prediction.
Usenet regulars are also familiar with Daniel Min, who spent the past few years repeatedly predicting the end of the world by specific dates. Every few weeks he was sure we'd be hit by a comet on a specific date a few weeks later. Then we have Sollog, who claims just about every news item to be a "hit" for one of his predictions.
So, take these with a grain of salt. I certainly do hope the gov't investigates this one fellow, but it could very easily be a dead end.
Etc etc
Well, you can also give money to the Red Cross, to help them overcome the logistics problems of transporting all that blood.
Ahem.
If Christianity were a minority religion in the United States, Bush would not talk about his professed belief in a Christian God. He would make references to Allah or Krishna, or point out that he is an athiest, or whatever resonates with the majority of voters.
The president's persona is a carefully crafted reflection of the American public's views and beliefs. It is true that the media feels uncomfortable letting that stuff on the air; I wonder why, if it was considered popular enough to help win an election.
That being said, I couldn't help but get the impression that Bush didn't rise to the occasion on his public statements. The first one I heard on the radio sounded hollow, not heartfelt, almost as if he was still in campaign mode, using buzzwords, making calculated references to his religion.
Maybe it just seemed that way because every other voice on the radio was clearly, audibly shaken.
Well, by that logic, MS isn't a software company either. Strictly speaking, they are a software and hardware company, selling Natural Keyboards and nifty optical mice.
This is so obviously false, that it's hard to imagine someone would dare to post it to, of all places, Slashdot. It's harder to imagine that Slashdot passed it along.
Of course there were research centers before 1991. In particular there was the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which pioneered the windows-based interface expanded upon by Apple and MicroSoft.
But let's think back even further. IBM has been putting up research labs all over the world, and decades earlier:
Next thing you know, some Microsoft shill will be claiming that MS invented the Internet, 5 years ago.
Your post didn't just say dynamite was illegal, but that explosives in general, and parts used in explosives, were illegal. Again, this is false. Totally false. It is legal to buy fertilizer and fuel, it is legal to buy timers and electronics.
Your point that I can't go out and buy dynamite does not somehow imply that all explosives are illegal, including their parts. I never had any need to buy dynamite, or make explosives; but I assure you that I can purchase a microcontroller.
Secondly, you stated flat out that, Because by creating an explosive, you have an intent to either kill someone or destroy property. Sorry, but this is a false statement. You tried to qualify it later, but this is sentence is just plain objectively false. It's not true even you read it twice or look at it funny or examine it in the context of your entire post: someone who creates an explosive does not necessarily have an intent to kill someone or destroy property.
Indeed, this is the logical flaw behind most of your post: you're jumping to the conclusion that people have intent to do harm. In the US, possession can be illegal if there is intent to commit a crime, and here you are basically saying the same thing backwards: that owning or making explosives/etc implies intent. Towit:
you have no right owning and/or distributing a rootkit because you have INTENT to illegally gain access to someone else's computer.
I have no intent to illegally gain access to anyone else's computer. Woops, your logic didn't work. While we're at it, please cite a single reference stating that I have no right to own a rootkit.
From what country are you posting? In the USA, it is not illegal to obtain components for explosives. There are restrictions governing the possession and use of them, yes, but they are not plainly illegal.
Because by creating an explosive, you have an intent to either kill someone or destroy property.
Amazingly false. Of course explosives have a legitimate use, or else there wouldn't be legitimate manufacturers. You yourself mention several legitimate uses just a few paragraphs later. Miners do not have an intent to destroy property or kill people. Furthermore, private individuals can have a legitimate use for explosives, just like companies; this is why the US Govt publishes instructions on how to make explosives --- the "Blaster's Handbook."
Finally:
Freedom is not to be limited simply because it violates anyone's morals or local common sense. This is just the age-old argument that freedoms and rights need to be trimmed to "separate the wheat from the chaff," for instance to ban speech which is "clearly" undeserving of protection.
Freedoms tend to be limited only when they infringe on the freedoms of others, and this is a boundary far beyond that of mere moral questionability or offensiveness. Show me how someone else's possession of a rootkit (not use, but possession) infringes on your rights.
Firstly, we definitely have to start regarding software manufacturers, such as MS, as potentially liable for damage caused by viruses and hacker exploits. Indeed, even the general public is starting to become aware that MS shares the blame for massive losses caused by Outlook viruses.
Before you fire off a response, notice the term "potentially." I'm not saying that software writers are generally responsible for hacks, but that some companies can be extremely negligent when designing software for which security obviously matters. The analogy (yes, another analogy) is to burglar alarms. Is the maker of your burglar alarm at fault if you're burglarized? Not in general, not usually, but if the alarm system turns out to have a zillion defects then yes, the maker is partially at fault.
Secondly, as someone who does research in crypto, I am quite sick of any analogy to firearms. Actually, I'm not fond of analogies to anything, but firearms in particular. No, that piece of software is not like a gun. Maybe it's like a crowbar, or a lockpick, or a safe, OK, I'll buy that; but nothing in the software world comes close to a gun, in terms of its purpose or dangerous nature.
This is especially important when you are describing these concepts to a layperson utterly unfamiliar with software. "What is a 'debugger'?" "Well, it's like a gun, because etc etc." Now you have someone who has no idea what a "debugger" is, whether it's a computer program or a garden tool, and the first thing you drop in that conceptual hole is "gun." Such analogies should be reserved for people who fully understand what a debugger is, who have used one, who know that you can't kill someone with a debugger, and that it's safe to have a debugger in the house if you have children.
I'm not saying we should lay off firearms analogies because they're too scary or will cause the general public to react too strongly. I'm saying we should lay off firearms analogies because they're stupidly inaccurate.
Anyways, the columnist proposed using the moon rather than an asteroid, under the assumption that humanity will figure out how to push the moon around long before we'll ever need to move the Earth. The moon was also central to the heating problem: if we also had unlimited energy pretty much figured out, we could blast light from the surface of the moon using huge lamps, as the moon just happens to seem as large as the sun from an observer on Earth. The column was half-joking, but he did work out the physics.
Very keen observations, all of them. The intended model for SDMI, presently, is that all music will have the same kind of watermarks for which all players will be screening. These will be used in a general infrastructure by which the marks will instruct players/recorders to not accept marked music under certain conditions, for instance if it is or has been compressed.
Watermarking with secret keys to detect rather than directly prevent unauthorized distribution is technologically feasible. Using a secret key would make it more secure, and with no detector to use as an oracle one could not tell if their music is marked or not. There is still a serious problem with this technology however: if detection is automated, people could still perform tricks to misalign the music with a detector. Simply encrypting an MP3 and providing the key will scramble it beyond the ability of a webcrawler to find it.
In particular, to be eligible for the prize money you would probably have to sign away your intellectual property rights. That's probably where the idea first arose that attacks are their property.
Nobody in our group signed any such document, and we're pretty sure we can just publish all the details.
We're compiling on our FAQ a list of any other groups we know of who have analytic results on SDMI's system. If you have a site detailing your results we'll happy add a link.
No, we did not ignore the ethical or political issues involved. In fact, if anyone understands those issues it's an expert in the technology, not some angry anonymous B1FF. The very fact that you think "damage is done" shows that you don't understand the serious technological problems behind what SDMI is trying to do. Just how do you think SDMI is now a step ahead?
No, we are not helping SDMI restrict fair use by making them (and everyone else) aware of weaknesses in the system. Keeping mum about ways to circumvent the system will hurt everyone, as a flawed SDMI in deployment hurts everyone a lot more than no SDMI at all.
Here's an ethical question for you: what about Diamond Multimedia? First they were sued by the recording industry over their MP3 players. Now if we let SDMI deploy a flawed system they're going to get screwed again, having to blow tons of money by putting these SDMI ASICs in their portable devices. That make them drain more battery power and otherwise suck. This is an okay scenario to you?
And what about users? A circumventable system on your portable devices may not stop people with the right utilities from making copies, but it will forever get in the way and generally annoy the heck out of people. This is also okay for you? Acceptible losses, friendly fire, if it will help you teach SDMI a lesson?
If SDMI is never going to work, the right thing to do is to keep it on the drawing board. Anything else will yield an awful end result.