Are you sure? What sort of enforcement is going to be used? When the systems prove unworkable, will the law be scrapped, or will more onerous constraints be forced onto the manufacturers? How many people who use their computers for work and have to deal with bosses will leave their computers unmodified? And how many of them, upon seeing an odd 404 message, will go ahead and crack their crypto just to find out if it was the government that did it?
Let's set aside whether we should have the right to back-up or trade intellectual property. Admittedly it's important, but I have some bigger concerns.
The universal implementation of digital rights protection would be enormously dangerous to free speech as a whole.
Let's just say, years in the future, World Net Daily publishes an article containing information that is very embarassing to the government. Officials want the story squelched.
So, just register a signature for the page in the Digital Rights MAnagement system, and call it proprietary. Pooft! No one can access it. No one can email it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, excepting for those who have broken the protection system on their hardware.
Oddtodd's animation is obviously fictional and hyperbolic. It isn't a videotape, and there is no guarantee it matches reality. I hope the Department of Labor has better proof than the Flash file.
Besides, setting up a website that generates lots of traffic in order to promote oneself is in my opinion an EXCELLENT way to seek employment.:-)
The most effective solution for fighting spam is NOT legal; it is also not honeypots, or open server bans. It's community action.
Did you receive a spam directing you to a website? Good. Surf there. Reload. Reload a few hundred times. 800 number? Call it and complain. When they hang up on you, call back.
Multiply this by even a small fraction of the people the company sent spam to and swamp their lines and slashdot their servers. They won't be making any sales, and any earnings they do make won't come close to paying their bandwidth or phone bills.
They're putting the encryption on the DIGITAL connection. Analog connections will NOT be deliberately obsoleted. My HDTV is connected via analog; is yours?
The article predicts that hardware with analog outputs will become harder to find in the future, but that doesn't mean they'll disappear completely, and by the time they've nearly gone, I'll bet I'll have reason to upgrade anyway.
Let's all get together and rent a cargo plane, load up all our newly obsolete HDTV equipment, and drop it on the MPAA's headquarters. It's pretty heavy stuff; should make a lot of nice holes in the roof, and will hopefully squash some of those responsible.
It all depends on what application it is you want to dedicate the cluster to, and whether tools are already available.
If you wanted a cluster to do animation rendering and were based on 3D Studio, then you'd probably want your farm to run Windows. Web work could go either way, with Linux being a less expensive solution. A custom coded app would probably be best implemented under *ix, though I could see situations where there might be some resources more readily available under Windows.
The Flash Advance Linker is the first professionial mass produced development device for the Gameboy(TM) Advance.
Just like a Cradle for your Palm or other Handheld Computer, the GBA Flash Advance Linker is plugged in to the printer port of your PC. Once connected, it can simply send and receive game ROM data from or to the plugged in game or Flash Cartridge.
Reading out game ROM data (dumping): Once your original GBA game has been plugged in to the Flash Advance Linker, you can use the provided software to read out the rom data and save it to your local PC harddrive as a so-called ROM file. The Flash Advance Linker also lets you read out the savegame to store it in an extra file - you won't use any game data, e.g. when the battery in your original GBA game gets empty.
Sending ROM files to your empty cartridge (Flash Advance 64/128/256M): Simply use the provided software to open the ROM file from your harddrive, it will then send the data through the printer port to the Flash Advance Linker, which will store the data in the Cartridge - just as when you connect your MP3 Player to your PC to 'fill' it with songs. Totally easy!
***
Yup, this can be used to pirate games. It can also be used to back them up, too... But hey, the DMCA doesn't care about that.
One of the requirements of obtaining a copyright is that you send a copy to the Library of Congress. This is even true, technically, if you take a de facto copyright by labelling your work as copyrighted; in fact, it is a violation of law if you don't, though I've never heard of it being enforced. This is done in hardcopy, though, not digitally.
Umm... Dude. A share of stock, whether it's a certificate or a book entry in a broker's ledger, isn't in itself tangible, but the share of the company it represents is entirely tangible. A future is a contract, and contracts are based on tangible property (unless the contractees are idiots, which happens all too often). Insurance is also a contract that again, unless you're stupid, you've checked to see that it is based on tangible assets. Interest is money, which is tangible (sorta). A piece of software is intangible, in that nothing makes it unique, or limits its duplication; a copy is a copy is an original.
Please remember that the system of capitalism is founded on the concept of an element of trade being a tangible item. I own an apple. I sell the apple. I now have money, but no longer have an apple. The buyer has lost money, but now has an apple.
"Intellectual property", a recently coined term, is very different. I own a program. I sell a copy of the program. I now have money, and I still have my program. The buyer has lost money, but now has a program.
I disagree that the idea of capitalism even covers "intellectual property", and believe that espousing freedom of information is not communist. It is also my opinion that having a system in place to protect it does more harm than good.
Well, up in Canada they do have a few ways to cut costs; for instance, it often takes months or longer before a patient can receive the diagnostic tests needed to determine the extent of a problem. Many patients die before it's determined they need a transplant. Despite these measures, the government is slowly going bankrupt over the bills for the procedures that ARE performed. If it continues, then I still stand by my words; Canada will turn into a socialist state, and most everyone there will live in squalor.
Point one: Bandwidth limitations aren't entirely artificial, and are undeniably there for people who don't have DSL or cable connections. A network where everyone has a 20-way connection would require something like 100K/s (800kbps) of throughput per user. Multiply that by the number of users suggested, and the nation's current infrastructure would collapse under its weight.
Point two: Hybrid Napster/Gnutellas would be no more legally impossible than current peer-to-peer systems are now. Every node is involved in relaying search terms around, and is therefore technically involved in contributory copyright infringement. The only reason Napster went down was because its servers were fixed targets. Volunteer-run servers tied together using a Gnutella-like network could spring up and drop out as necessary, and the network would remain up.
So this guy effectively punishes the hospital, its employees, and its patients, because his son can't receive a heart transplant.
So who's to blame?
The insurance company? Maybe, if the policy was actually supposed to cover such operations. Take 'em to court.
The government? Feh. If the government had to pay for heart transplants for everyone, we'd be living in a socialist state, and everyone would be lucky to have a roof over their heads, much less healthcare.
Can't be the hospital; if they gave out free heart transplants, they'd be out of business and have to close.
As a drama about a desparate man, maybe it has value. As a political statement, it's thoroughly evil.
This sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately, it's dead wrong.
Moving to a higher order of dimensions of course makes the maximum path length shorter; but it also makes the number of edges per vertex increase. Or, in other words, the number of simultaneous connections needed. Most GNet users have already pushed the number of simultaneous connections up to the maximum they can handle, thanks to bandwidth limitations, and are still experiencing the scaling problem.
I'm convinced the ultimate solution is a hybrid between Napster and Gnutella, with most end users connecting up like Napster clients, and a few volunteering to be index nodes, with a GNet-type organization between them.
But you could resell that CD legally, if you wanted to. With a EULA governing your actions, even if you uninstalled the software and erased all backups you STILL couldn't legally resell a software package. That's what's being fought over.
Mythic wants to keep "cheaters" out of Camelot, because they feel newcomers who don't have a lot of cash will be miffed at not having the real goodies, and won't subscribe to their service. They don't want the game to turn into something like "Magic: The Gathering".
On the other hand, look at how successful Magic cards have been. Maybe they ought to rethink their strategy.
TheSHAD0W's law of Magic Card games: The winner will be the person with the most disposable income.
Following all the trends in case mods, the next step will be to drill holes in the hard drive's platters and glue multicolored LEDs inside the holes. It'll mean having to reopen the drive periodically to change batteries, but it'll sure look cool!
But they do self-organize; that's exactly what stem cells do. And while we may not be able to prime those cells to grow a complete kidney, the article reports growing kidney tissue and extracting urine. Exactly what quality the urine shows, whether the cultured tissue doesn't reabsorb sugar or water properly, or if it doesn't regulate the blood chemistry properly, still has to be determined.
You'd either culture the kidney from the recipient's own stem cells, or warehouse organs of various types that would be near matches for most recipients.
The article is rather pessimistic, stating that it's unlikely for the scientist to have duplicated the complex design of a kidney, and that they might've generated something that would produce urine but wouldn't be practical.
I'm more optimistic. A kidney consists of nephrons arranged with one end attached to a capillary, able to access the blood stream, and the other to a duct eventually leading to the ureter. While it would be difficult, using current technology, to grow an exact replacement of a kidney, growing a sheet or row of nephrons would be much simpler and would still be effective.
Assuming this announcement isn't a complete hoax, I believe we're closer to culturing kidneys than the article indicates.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure? What sort of enforcement is going to be used? When the systems prove unworkable, will the law be scrapped, or will more onerous constraints be forced onto the manufacturers? How many people who use their computers for work and have to deal with bosses will leave their computers unmodified? And how many of them, upon seeing an odd 404 message, will go ahead and crack their crypto just to find out if it was the government that did it?
Let's set aside whether we should have the right to back-up or trade intellectual property. Admittedly it's important, but I have some bigger concerns.
The universal implementation of digital rights protection would be enormously dangerous to free speech as a whole.
Let's just say, years in the future, World Net Daily publishes an article containing information that is very embarassing to the government. Officials want the story squelched.
So, just register a signature for the page in the Digital Rights MAnagement system, and call it proprietary. Pooft! No one can access it. No one can email it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, excepting for those who have broken the protection system on their hardware.
Oddtodd's animation is obviously fictional and hyperbolic. It isn't a videotape, and there is no guarantee it matches reality. I hope the Department of Labor has better proof than the Flash file.
:-)
Besides, setting up a website that generates lots of traffic in order to promote oneself is in my opinion an EXCELLENT way to seek employment.
I'm wondering how long it'll take for someone to hack apart the ktsplayer executable and rework it as a Winamp module?
Most advertisers won't pay for multiple hits from the same user. ;-)
The most effective solution for fighting spam is NOT legal; it is also not honeypots, or open server bans. It's community action.
Did you receive a spam directing you to a website? Good. Surf there. Reload. Reload a few hundred times. 800 number? Call it and complain. When they hang up on you, call back.
Multiply this by even a small fraction of the people the company sent spam to and swamp their lines and slashdot their servers. They won't be making any sales, and any earnings they do make won't come close to paying their bandwidth or phone bills.
They're putting the encryption on the DIGITAL connection. Analog connections will NOT be deliberately obsoleted. My HDTV is connected via analog; is yours?
The article predicts that hardware with analog outputs will become harder to find in the future, but that doesn't mean they'll disappear completely, and by the time they've nearly gone, I'll bet I'll have reason to upgrade anyway.
Message to HDTV equipment owners:
Let's all get together and rent a cargo plane, load up all our newly obsolete HDTV equipment, and drop it on the MPAA's headquarters. It's pretty heavy stuff; should make a lot of nice holes in the roof, and will hopefully squash some of those responsible.
> .37 * 365 = $135.
So if someone gets a speeding ticket, that means he speeds 365 days a year.
Does that also mean if you get two speeding tickets, you must be speeding 730 days a year, so your insurance bill should go up $400?
It all depends on what application it is you want to dedicate the cluster to, and whether tools are already available.
If you wanted a cluster to do animation rendering and were based on 3D Studio, then you'd probably want your farm to run Windows. Web work could go either way, with Linux being a less expensive solution. A custom coded app would probably be best implemented under *ix, though I could see situations where there might be some resources more readily available under Windows.
http://www.visoly.com/fa_linker.php
The Flash Advance Linker is the first professionial mass produced development device for the Gameboy(TM) Advance.
Just like a Cradle for your Palm or other Handheld Computer, the GBA Flash Advance Linker is plugged in to the printer port of your PC. Once connected, it can simply send and receive game ROM data from or to the plugged in game or Flash Cartridge.
Reading out game ROM data (dumping):
Once your original GBA game has been plugged in to the Flash Advance Linker, you can use the provided software to read out the rom data and save it to your local PC harddrive as a so-called ROM file. The Flash Advance Linker also lets you read out the savegame to store it in an extra file - you won't use any game data, e.g. when the battery in your original GBA game gets empty.
Sending ROM files to your empty cartridge (Flash Advance 64/128/256M):
Simply use the provided software to open the ROM file from your harddrive, it will then send the data through the printer port to the Flash Advance Linker, which will store the data in the Cartridge - just as when you connect your MP3 Player to your PC to 'fill' it with songs. Totally easy!
***
Yup, this can be used to pirate games. It can also be used to back them up, too... But hey, the DMCA doesn't care about that.
One of the requirements of obtaining a copyright is that you send a copy to the Library of Congress. This is even true, technically, if you take a de facto copyright by labelling your work as copyrighted; in fact, it is a violation of law if you don't, though I've never heard of it being enforced. This is done in hardcopy, though, not digitally.
Just try looking up something at the LoC, though.
What???
Umm... Dude. A share of stock, whether it's a certificate or a book entry in a broker's ledger, isn't in itself tangible, but the share of the company it represents is entirely tangible. A future is a contract, and contracts are based on tangible property (unless the contractees are idiots, which happens all too often). Insurance is also a contract that again, unless you're stupid, you've checked to see that it is based on tangible assets. Interest is money, which is tangible (sorta). A piece of software is intangible, in that nothing makes it unique, or limits its duplication; a copy is a copy is an original.
Please remember that the system of capitalism is founded on the concept of an element of trade being a tangible item. I own an apple. I sell the apple. I now have money, but no longer have an apple. The buyer has lost money, but now has an apple.
"Intellectual property", a recently coined term, is very different. I own a program. I sell a copy of the program. I now have money, and I still have my program. The buyer has lost money, but now has a program.
I disagree that the idea of capitalism even covers "intellectual property", and believe that espousing freedom of information is not communist. It is also my opinion that having a system in place to protect it does more harm than good.
Well, up in Canada they do have a few ways to cut costs; for instance, it often takes months or longer before a patient can receive the diagnostic tests needed to determine the extent of a problem. Many patients die before it's determined they need a transplant. Despite these measures, the government is slowly going bankrupt over the bills for the procedures that ARE performed. If it continues, then I still stand by my words; Canada will turn into a socialist state, and most everyone there will live in squalor.
Point one: Bandwidth limitations aren't entirely artificial, and are undeniably there for people who don't have DSL or cable connections. A network where everyone has a 20-way connection would require something like 100K/s (800kbps) of throughput per user. Multiply that by the number of users suggested, and the nation's current infrastructure would collapse under its weight.
Point two: Hybrid Napster/Gnutellas would be no more legally impossible than current peer-to-peer systems are now. Every node is involved in relaying search terms around, and is therefore technically involved in contributory copyright infringement. The only reason Napster went down was because its servers were fixed targets. Volunteer-run servers tied together using a Gnutella-like network could spring up and drop out as necessary, and the network would remain up.
So this guy effectively punishes the hospital, its employees, and its patients, because his son can't receive a heart transplant.
So who's to blame?
The insurance company? Maybe, if the policy was actually supposed to cover such operations. Take 'em to court.
The government? Feh. If the government had to pay for heart transplants for everyone, we'd be living in a socialist state, and everyone would be lucky to have a roof over their heads, much less healthcare.
Can't be the hospital; if they gave out free heart transplants, they'd be out of business and have to close.
As a drama about a desparate man, maybe it has value. As a political statement, it's thoroughly evil.
This sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately, it's dead wrong.
Moving to a higher order of dimensions of course makes the maximum path length shorter; but it also makes the number of edges per vertex increase. Or, in other words, the number of simultaneous connections needed. Most GNet users have already pushed the number of simultaneous connections up to the maximum they can handle, thanks to bandwidth limitations, and are still experiencing the scaling problem.
I'm convinced the ultimate solution is a hybrid between Napster and Gnutella, with most end users connecting up like Napster clients, and a few volunteering to be index nodes, with a GNet-type organization between them.
But you could resell that CD legally, if you wanted to. With a EULA governing your actions, even if you uninstalled the software and erased all backups you STILL couldn't legally resell a software package. That's what's being fought over.
Mythic wants to keep "cheaters" out of Camelot, because they feel newcomers who don't have a lot of cash will be miffed at not having the real goodies, and won't subscribe to their service. They don't want the game to turn into something like "Magic: The Gathering".
On the other hand, look at how successful Magic cards have been. Maybe they ought to rethink their strategy.
TheSHAD0W's law of Magic Card games: The winner will be the person with the most disposable income.
Following all the trends in case mods, the next step will be to drill holes in the hard drive's platters and glue multicolored LEDs inside the holes. It'll mean having to reopen the drive periodically to change batteries, but it'll sure look cool!
Those pics of the 802.11b hub's emissions were from a spectrum analyzer, not an oscilloscope.
But they do self-organize; that's exactly what stem cells do. And while we may not be able to prime those cells to grow a complete kidney, the article reports growing kidney tissue and extracting urine. Exactly what quality the urine shows, whether the cultured tissue doesn't reabsorb sugar or water properly, or if it doesn't regulate the blood chemistry properly, still has to be determined.
:-)
I'm still going to be optimistic.
You'd either culture the kidney from the recipient's own stem cells, or warehouse organs of various types that would be near matches for most recipients.
The article is rather pessimistic, stating that it's unlikely for the scientist to have duplicated the complex design of a kidney, and that they might've generated something that would produce urine but wouldn't be practical.
I'm more optimistic. A kidney consists of nephrons arranged with one end attached to a capillary, able to access the blood stream, and the other to a duct eventually leading to the ureter. While it would be difficult, using current technology, to grow an exact replacement of a kidney, growing a sheet or row of nephrons would be much simpler and would still be effective.
Assuming this announcement isn't a complete hoax, I believe we're closer to culturing kidneys than the article indicates.