entirely possible for a single company to maintain the secrecy of important encryption keys That's the key point here. A system like this CAN work with a single authenticating entity, but that's not what was described. What was describes was a system whereby multiple entities would have parent keys. And many companies would be wary of putting their entire revenue stream in the hands of a third party that could easily screw them.
however, amongst those group of toddlers, amongst any group of toddlers, you will find cheating and lying. these negative qualities are a much more basic building block of essential human character. Yes, people lie and cheat, but we don't normally consider the solution to be electronic "shock collars" that electrocute you every time you lie. Mainly because this wouldn't work.
We use social conditioning. There simply isn't strong social conditioning against online cheating but there IS strong social conditioning against cheating in Vegas, because you stand a good chance of getting thrown out of the casino and/or roughed up by security if you cheat. People don't cheat in Vegas not because they don't want to, but because they fear being banned from the casinos. That's social conditioning. All the online services have to do is make cheaters actually fear being banned.
The market is perfectly free. How does "government enforced monopoly" translate to "free market"? The telcoms and cable companies ARE monopolies (by ANY definition of that term) and these monopolies are granted to them by the federal and state government in exchange for providing public interest services, like reduced fees for low income people, public access television, rural telephone service, etc. Much of the infrastructure they use (telephone poles, cable lines, etc.) were/are constructed and maintained by the government.
It's just expensive to provide the service.
Without government subsidy they'd collapse within days. Why should taxpayers support private enterprise that stay afloat without massive government aid? Is it better to have private for-profit corporations heavily subsidized by the government (airlines for example) or is it better to simply have the government take over the corporations?
I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing. What, like the Post Office, interstate highway system, Social Security, and national parks? And the system we have NOW is run by the government, it's just contracted out to telcoms and cable companies. It's like claiming the US military is a "free market" because their weapons are provided by private contractors.
So you can't "wrap the chip in software" like you suggested. Your software won't have the necessary private keys to produce authentic-looking reports from the TPM. You could definitely physically break open the chip and try to extract the private key. You might even be successful if you've got a lot of equipment and education. But that would have to be done on a PC-by-PC basis since each PC will have its own TPM and each TPM will have its own private key. Two points:
1) There exist, right now, software emulators for the TPM.
2) How will "the internet" or individual services like Valve or ISPs determine the authenticity of the private keys?
This is a very key point. While it is likely there is a fixed format for the keys, I think it's every unlikely that there will be a secure method developed to distribute a list of which keys are valid. Key distribution is the Achilles heel of public key cryptography and it's weaknesses are glaringly apparent here. Look at the similar situation with AACS. As long as there are non-revocable keys and there is no secure means to distribute blacklists and whitelists this system will break if only ONE key is compromised.
Many people don't seem to get this. You can't sling private keys around to dozens of companies and thousands of engineers and not expect one of those companies to leak the keys, either though weak implementation or direct leaking. Secrets shared by thousands of people aren't secret.
Time and time again we've shown that to change human nature is very very difficult. Nonsense. You may have noticed that people are no longer urinating in the streets, as was customary 100 years ago. Your average 3-year-old today behaves better than adults did a century ago. There's all that civil rights stuff too. Contrary to what some people seem to think, human behavior is in fact extremely malleable.
Online cheating is not "human nature". It needs to be considered "socially unacceptable" to cheat and there needs to be tangible punishments associated with doing it. Take the behavior of purchasing characters, items, gold, etc. for MMORPGs on Ebay. This is cheating, pure and simple. Using aim-bots is also cheating and Valve, Microsoft, and other online game providers should be zero-tolerance on this. They should stick in their bullshit license agreements that if they cheat on the service they have to pay a $50 "reactivation fee" EVERY time you cheat. And not just MMOs. If you cheat they block your CD key and you have to either purchase a new key or a new copy of the game. Sure a few whiners might sue, but I suspect that most cheaters are little brats and unlikely to defend themselves in court.
The reason they're not doing this now is that they fear lost revenue. As gamers we should pressure them to bring the hammer down.
(I always figured what's the point since it's just a glorified PC in the shape of a games console) A) This isn't true of the 360 which uses a custom PowerPC-based CPU, etc. It's quite similar to the PS3.
B) Why is this a bad thing? As it turns out, Microsoft's decision to make what amounted to a modded PC turned out to be a boon for consumers allowing cross-development on PC and XBOX games (something that continues with the 360), with lots of great PC games ported to the console. And the design made the XBOX the most hackable console in history, having more emulators and hacked software than any console. XBOX Media Center is the shit.
I suspect more likely he has it jammed into an entertainment center with tons of other electronics that is causing the whole entertainment center (and 360) to heat up.
The XBOX360, especially early versions, has a known problem with overheating due to poor heatsink design for the CPU and inadequate ventilation for the power brick. Any ambient environment above 65 degrees is suspect for the 360.
But you compared a $99 phone to a $600 phone without marking price as a point in the Blackberry's favor. Browsing and media are better on th iPhone (so I'm told, I haven't used it) but email is better on the Blackberry. Blackberry's ARE basically mobile Exchange clients, and that's not a bad thing.
Re:The battery is not replaceable by design.
on
Apple iPhone Dissected
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So it takes a soldering iron to change the battery. That's not exactly making it a challenge for most people on Slashdot, right?
No, this is a major hassle and introduces the distinct possibility of frying the motherboard when trying to change the battery. You'll probably be able to send it off to Apple for a nominal fee (or third parties) but it's still hassle. There's also the critical issue of not being able to swap batteries if necessary. For an MP3 player, this doesn't mean much. For a critical business tool like a cellphone/PDA, this is much more significant.
Not enough storage capacity to be useful as an iPod. I wouldn't mind at all having a hard drive in my phone, I want 80GB, not 8. Weight. Try holding an iPod up to your head (in most respects the form factor is similar to the iPhone). The only HD-based cellphones we are likely to see will be "media" devices (a bit like the iPhone) that REQUIRE a Bluetooth headset.
As has already been mentioned, the purpose of these laws is to generate revenue for the city and keep the sidewalk / pavement clear. No, the purpose of the laws is to give police another club to use against "people filming that they don't like". In particular, they are worried about people filming large public protests and police misconduct.
Just smashing the cameras is getting harder. In the past, they would just smash and confiscate the photographers equipment (pro or amateur), but the TV crews were safe because the police could never be sure if they were transmitting live or not. Not that they don't try, ask anyone who works in a TV van how many times they've been told to "move their van".
But the internet has changed things. Now anyone with a webcam and a laptop can stream video live to the internet. Smashing the cameras won't work as well. Remember the Rodney King video? Remember how it was taken a great distance away for the action? That's because the videographer was hiding from the police, had he been exposed his camera would have been taken and his footage destroyed. That's the main reason you don't see a lot more Rodney King-style videos.
But now, with cheap wireless webcams, this is a much more serious problem so they're using this additional threat of fines to discourage photographers.
you do not need a passport to leave. Incorrect. According to case law, American citizens have Nazi-style "internal passports". For example, in most states you are required to carry your identification (driver's license or state identification) AT ALL TIMES. Police have the right to ask to to present your identity card at any time, for any reason (in practice, this also means the police have the right to search your person at any time, for any reason as well) AND they have the right to detain you indefinitely if you are not carrying the card. In theory, you could be detained for the rest of your life this way if you refused to get an identity card. The federal national ID card is just an extension of these practices.
This is nonsense.
Did you never try to fly on a plane with nail clippers prior to 9-11? Yes. EVERY TIME I flew before 9/11 I carried nail clippers, a pocketknife, razor blades, and flammable liquids. The world did not come to an end.
And the restrictions on liquids were not because of 9-11, they were because of a later plot (about a year ago I believe) that was going to use explosives in liquids. ALL of the liquid explosives I am aware of are too volatile for this purpose, and most of them also emit deadly fumes. I challenge you to show one successful non-military bomb attack in recent history involving liquid explosives. And even if this WAS a real threat, the terrorists would just conceal the explosives as breast milk or one of the medicines on the approved list. This rule is moronic.
The airline restrictions passed in response to 9-11 were that you couldn't bring box-cutters on the plane, which is considered perfectly reasonable by most people. No it's not. A "boxcutter" is a razor blade with a plastic handle. The 9/11 hijackers DID NOT hijack planes with shaving implements. They hijacked the planes with either the THREAT of explosives, or ACTUAL explosives. We don't know which exactly. We do know the hijackers threated to blow up the planes.
But if you would rather have 9000 people die each year just so you can pack your pair of box cutters in your carry on, well I guess we have vastly different belief systems. Not one person has ever been killed with explosive liquids, boxcutters, pocket knives, etc. on a commercial aircraft.
I will refrain from explaining the real cause of higher than normal car theft in Winnipeg, those who live there know why. Let me guess: The "real cause" is black people.
Another good point: Most inkjet printers have lousy Postscript support. Most laser printers have good Postscript support. So if you're using Linux or MacOS you're almost certainly better off with a laser. I also seem to remember that their used to be inkjet "Winprinters" (particularly from Lexmark) that would only work with Windows.
the majority, maybe, vast? Not especially. It takes a combination of factors, of which intelligence and education only help. Studies show that over 80% of those that make over $100k per year have college degrees. I translate that to "smart and educated". Your assumptions are simply WRONG. Wealthy people simply ARE NOT spendthrift.
Just referring to a sales tax as regressive doesn't hit it quite right, since it depends on so many choices. If it's regressive for 99% of the population, it's regressive. The tiny percentage of wealthy spendthrift people are not significant and I challenge to to provide any study or statistic that supports this assertion. Even libertarian think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and CATO don't seriously make this claim.
restraint on trade or commerce. I'm sure their argument is going to be that, since this change puts them out of business, that this is an unreasonable restraint on trade. They'd also argue "breach of contract", that the DVD forum deliberately did not give lengthy advance notice (like 5 years) to manufacturers in a deliberate attempt to force them out of business. They had to spent millions in capital investment for their devices based on backups, and now all that money goes down the drain because of this change.
If you don't print a lot, then you either blow out your ink cleaning the heads, or your heads crust up and you have to replace the print head PLEASE mod the parent up. This is a CRUCIAL point. Inkjets are useless for occasional printing for exactly this reason, the carts dry out and become useless after a short period. 3 months on the outside. This means that you MUST replace your carts every 3 months, empty or not, or your printer will not work.
Really, the above poster is dead on. Get a cheap b/w laser printer. If you need color prints, you can got to Kinkos or countless other printers. And the quality will be better than anything you can get from a cheap inkjet, especially photos.
No, but an amazing number of them are.... Smart educated people tend to have better money management skills as well. This results in increased savings for future goals. Meanwhile the dumb uneducated people make poor choices and end up living paycheck to paycheck. How are these statements not contradictory? Aren't the vast majority of wealthy people smart and educated?
Mac gaming is almost certainly doomed. Most commentators have pointed out dual-booting (and eventually VM allowing DirectX apps to work in MacOS) will be the nail in the coffin of Mac gaming. And as others have pointed out, the only system in Apple's lineup capable of using aftermarket video cards is the $2500 Mac Pro which also doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Apple basically ceded this market a while ago.
You're forgetting that Richard eats out while Paul eats at home*. That Richard spends $100k on clothes a year while Paul pays $300/year for his clothing. That Richard goes to the dealership for his maintenance while Paul does his own for the most part. And wtf is Paul doing buying a car costing a whole year's income? This line of thinking doesn't track. It is just a simple fact that consumption simply DOES NOT increase proportionately to income in the United States. Someone who makes $500,000 simply does not use 10x as much fuel, food, clothing, and resources annually as someone who makes $50,000. You, and other "trickle-down" economists make the strange assumption that the wealthier people become, the more spendthrift they become despite all evidence to the contrary. Most wealthy people are not Michael Jackson.
Sales taxes are regressive unless you can demonstrate that consumption increases proportionately to income.
Your argument hinges on the notion that police officers, in the United States, are subject to meaningful oversight and/or rarely engage in misconduct. This is not the case. Only a tiny fraction of police misconduct is prosecuted, easily less than 1%. You can't sue the police in civil courts. Finally, police in the United States have the legal right to lie to you in any way they see fit. Given these facts, a REASONABLE American must assume that if he's subject to police misconduct he's completely on his own since that's true in 99.9% of cases.
Normally the best solution is not to meekly submit and hope to don't get robbed, raped (incredibly widespread), or beaten down. That's a great way to get yourself killed. Dead people don't file complaints.
If for any reason you are afraid of the police, RUN. If you're in your car, DRIVE OFF. Most cops who are doing bad things don't want the extra scrutiny, so they will rarely pursue. They also tend to be lazy and just don't want to do the work. Statistics show that you have a much better chance of dodging a "resisting arrest" charge by claiming you were being threatened (especially if you weren't actually doing anything) than successfully pursuing any misconduct charges with the police.
I had no real serious dealings with police, Which is why you have the attitude you do.
It is my understanding that this audio was only recently "discovered." Why are you knee-jerk talking the National Guard's side? Not one NG member was injured in any way. Not one witness present, except the NG, claims anyone fired at the NG. There is video, audio, and numerous photographs of the incident and not one shows any protester holding or firing a firearm. There is unanimity from those present, even some of the NG members, that the killing were unprovoked.
And frankly, what makes you think its EVER acceptable under ANY circumstances to fire rifles into an unarmed crowd? Even if we concede to the NG's argument that a few protesters fired at them (and it would have to be a very few, since there is no record of them), how did it help the situation for the NG to fire blindly into the crowd? Rationallity and common sense should have told the NG that if they fired into the crowd the would almost certainly not hit the "attackers" but they WOULD definitely kill innocent people. So the only conclusion we can reach is that either the NG was grossly incompetent to the point where they shouldn't be trusted with firearms or that they deliberately attacked the crowd thinking it was somehow justified.
with the greatest economy growth and potential. How does "making lots of money" translate to "good"? Certainly economic development in China is "good" for the Chinese people in the sense that it's pulling some of them out of the abject poverty caused by the PRC. Of course, this same economic development is further entrenching the people in power who caused the hardship to begin with. So the relatively good economy is itself a double-edged sword.
Fundamentally, the People's Republic of China is an evil state run by evil men. Not as evil as North Korea, but SIMILAR. North Korea is basically like China used to be before Western development.
I think is unwise and unethical for the United States to invest so much money in a vicious totalitarian state. There are plenty of struggling democracies that need our help much more, and (almost as important) show a lot more promise in accepting Western values.
China is no more or less evil than the United States is evil. Um, no. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and China. China is a vicious totalitarian state. No formal political dissent is tolerated (opposition parties, for example) by the state. There is no freedom of religion, all religions must have state-approved doctrine and are closely monitored. There is no freedom of expression or press in China. All media is state-run and heavily controlled, academic criticism is stifled (through imprisonment and murder), and any public protest is violently suppressed by government thugs firing machineguns at unarmed people. The Chinese government practices slavery. In China, the death penalty is the official punishment for criticizing the government and it is widely applied. China has one of the worst human rights records of any nation on Earth, only beaten by the likes of North Korea and Usbekistan.
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We use social conditioning. There simply isn't strong social conditioning against online cheating but there IS strong social conditioning against cheating in Vegas, because you stand a good chance of getting thrown out of the casino and/or roughed up by security if you cheat. People don't cheat in Vegas not because they don't want to, but because they fear being banned from the casinos. That's social conditioning. All the online services have to do is make cheaters actually fear being banned.
It's just expensive to provide the service.
Without government subsidy they'd collapse within days. Why should taxpayers support private enterprise that stay afloat without massive government aid? Is it better to have private for-profit corporations heavily subsidized by the government (airlines for example) or is it better to simply have the government take over the corporations? I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing. What, like the Post Office, interstate highway system, Social Security, and national parks? And the system we have NOW is run by the government, it's just contracted out to telcoms and cable companies. It's like claiming the US military is a "free market" because their weapons are provided by private contractors.
1) There exist, right now, software emulators for the TPM.
2) How will "the internet" or individual services like Valve or ISPs determine the authenticity of the private keys?
This is a very key point. While it is likely there is a fixed format for the keys, I think it's every unlikely that there will be a secure method developed to distribute a list of which keys are valid. Key distribution is the Achilles heel of public key cryptography and it's weaknesses are glaringly apparent here. Look at the similar situation with AACS. As long as there are non-revocable keys and there is no secure means to distribute blacklists and whitelists this system will break if only ONE key is compromised.
Many people don't seem to get this. You can't sling private keys around to dozens of companies and thousands of engineers and not expect one of those companies to leak the keys, either though weak implementation or direct leaking. Secrets shared by thousands of people aren't secret.
Online cheating is not "human nature". It needs to be considered "socially unacceptable" to cheat and there needs to be tangible punishments associated with doing it. Take the behavior of purchasing characters, items, gold, etc. for MMORPGs on Ebay. This is cheating, pure and simple. Using aim-bots is also cheating and Valve, Microsoft, and other online game providers should be zero-tolerance on this. They should stick in their bullshit license agreements that if they cheat on the service they have to pay a $50 "reactivation fee" EVERY time you cheat. And not just MMOs. If you cheat they block your CD key and you have to either purchase a new key or a new copy of the game. Sure a few whiners might sue, but I suspect that most cheaters are little brats and unlikely to defend themselves in court.
The reason they're not doing this now is that they fear lost revenue. As gamers we should pressure them to bring the hammer down.
B) Why is this a bad thing? As it turns out, Microsoft's decision to make what amounted to a modded PC turned out to be a boon for consumers allowing cross-development on PC and XBOX games (something that continues with the 360), with lots of great PC games ported to the console. And the design made the XBOX the most hackable console in history, having more emulators and hacked software than any console. XBOX Media Center is the shit.
I suspect more likely he has it jammed into an entertainment center with tons of other electronics that is causing the whole entertainment center (and 360) to heat up.
The XBOX360, especially early versions, has a known problem with overheating due to poor heatsink design for the CPU and inadequate ventilation for the power brick. Any ambient environment above 65 degrees is suspect for the 360.
But you compared a $99 phone to a $600 phone without marking price as a point in the Blackberry's favor. Browsing and media are better on th iPhone (so I'm told, I haven't used it) but email is better on the Blackberry. Blackberry's ARE basically mobile Exchange clients, and that's not a bad thing.
No, this is a major hassle and introduces the distinct possibility of frying the motherboard when trying to change the battery. You'll probably be able to send it off to Apple for a nominal fee (or third parties) but it's still hassle. There's also the critical issue of not being able to swap batteries if necessary. For an MP3 player, this doesn't mean much. For a critical business tool like a cellphone/PDA, this is much more significant. Not enough storage capacity to be useful as an iPod. I wouldn't mind at all having a hard drive in my phone, I want 80GB, not 8. Weight. Try holding an iPod up to your head (in most respects the form factor is similar to the iPhone). The only HD-based cellphones we are likely to see will be "media" devices (a bit like the iPhone) that REQUIRE a Bluetooth headset.
Just smashing the cameras is getting harder. In the past, they would just smash and confiscate the photographers equipment (pro or amateur), but the TV crews were safe because the police could never be sure if they were transmitting live or not. Not that they don't try, ask anyone who works in a TV van how many times they've been told to "move their van".
But the internet has changed things. Now anyone with a webcam and a laptop can stream video live to the internet. Smashing the cameras won't work as well. Remember the Rodney King video? Remember how it was taken a great distance away for the action? That's because the videographer was hiding from the police, had he been exposed his camera would have been taken and his footage destroyed. That's the main reason you don't see a lot more Rodney King-style videos.
But now, with cheap wireless webcams, this is a much more serious problem so they're using this additional threat of fines to discourage photographers.
Veiled racism is still racism.
Another good point: Most inkjet printers have lousy Postscript support. Most laser printers have good Postscript support. So if you're using Linux or MacOS you're almost certainly better off with a laser. I also seem to remember that their used to be inkjet "Winprinters" (particularly from Lexmark) that would only work with Windows.
Really, the above poster is dead on. Get a cheap b/w laser printer. If you need color prints, you can got to Kinkos or countless other printers. And the quality will be better than anything you can get from a cheap inkjet, especially photos.
MythTV can run on hardware you can buy on eBay for $50 total. The only expensive bit is the capture card.
Mac gaming is almost certainly doomed. Most commentators have pointed out dual-booting (and eventually VM allowing DirectX apps to work in MacOS) will be the nail in the coffin of Mac gaming. And as others have pointed out, the only system in Apple's lineup capable of using aftermarket video cards is the $2500 Mac Pro which also doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Apple basically ceded this market a while ago.
Sales taxes are regressive unless you can demonstrate that consumption increases proportionately to income.
Normally the best solution is not to meekly submit and hope to don't get robbed, raped (incredibly widespread), or beaten down. That's a great way to get yourself killed. Dead people don't file complaints.
If for any reason you are afraid of the police, RUN. If you're in your car, DRIVE OFF. Most cops who are doing bad things don't want the extra scrutiny, so they will rarely pursue. They also tend to be lazy and just don't want to do the work. Statistics show that you have a much better chance of dodging a "resisting arrest" charge by claiming you were being threatened (especially if you weren't actually doing anything) than successfully pursuing any misconduct charges with the police. I had no real serious dealings with police, Which is why you have the attitude you do.
And frankly, what makes you think its EVER acceptable under ANY circumstances to fire rifles into an unarmed crowd? Even if we concede to the NG's argument that a few protesters fired at them (and it would have to be a very few, since there is no record of them), how did it help the situation for the NG to fire blindly into the crowd? Rationallity and common sense should have told the NG that if they fired into the crowd the would almost certainly not hit the "attackers" but they WOULD definitely kill innocent people. So the only conclusion we can reach is that either the NG was grossly incompetent to the point where they shouldn't be trusted with firearms or that they deliberately attacked the crowd thinking it was somehow justified.
Fundamentally, the People's Republic of China is an evil state run by evil men. Not as evil as North Korea, but SIMILAR. North Korea is basically like China used to be before Western development.
I think is unwise and unethical for the United States to invest so much money in a vicious totalitarian state. There are plenty of struggling democracies that need our help much more, and (almost as important) show a lot more promise in accepting Western values.