What would be more intersting, IMHO, would be if the files were 'encrypted' -- it just has to be some absurdly simple encryption. However, to install the encoder/decoder, you have to agree to a list of terms that include agreeing to not pursue (or threaten to pursue) legal action against anyone seen on the network, or attempting to obtain any information about them without their permission.
In theory, you can then have the RIAA arrested for violating the DMCA, or at least try to get your case thrown out. (The "evidence" that you had the MP3 is inadmissible if they obtain it illegally, is it not?)
And if they convince the judge that my idea is total crap, haven't they just set a precedent weakening the DMCA? Might as well fight fire with fire.:)
That's insane; the prices are listed on the main page of their site; I'm not aware of anyone paying more. Advertising 100 Mbps for 1 grand a month then offering half of it for 10 grand a month... is insane. *would like to think that maybe you e-mailed the wrong people, but knows it's unlikely*
And before you flame, those joining the military agree under oath to accept these different laws upon joining.
I know very little about the Armed Forces, but this leads me to a question: If I'm drafted (forced) into service, does this still apply? Because then they're essentially taking away my rights, and I'm not consenting to it? (Again, not criticizing you, just trying to understand this.)
First off, it took me like 30 seconds to be 'refused'. I can't think of a bigger turn-off for a website than having to wait 30+ seconds to be 'approved' (or, in this case, rejected) just to visit -- I'll be at someone else's site long before this thing refuses me.
What I REALLY don't get is why the text it displays is set as an 'argument' -- you can make it say different things by changing the argument specified in the URL: All my base are belong to them?
For the longest time, I've wanted to get a 100 Mbps Cogent line ($3,000 month if you're reselling it) and share it with my neighbors. The math actually seems to work out -- if I can get 60 people to pay me $50/month, I'll break even. (I'm not looking to make money, just a way to reduce the pain of having a 100 Mbps line...) I could use 802.11b to give them 11 Mbps (up or download), and maybe, for $100/month, use 802.11a for 54-72 Mbps. (Keep in mind that this is 'broadband' -- I'm not guaranteeing anyone that they'll be able to use the whole 72 Mbps that 'Turbo' 802.11a offers...)
I'm convinced that if Cogent ever starts providing lines in my area, I'd be able to do this without losing too much money. Has anyone tried anything of this sort?
I used to buy CDs. I'd download a song from Napster, like it, and buy the CD. Honestly.
Now I'm afraid to buy CDs. Will it work in my computer? Will it damage my computer? And on top of that, I'm upset by their foolish antics. Yes, Gnutella/Kazaa/etc. are driving their profits into the ground. But it was the RIAA themselves that caused it. I'd have a lot more CDs on my desk (and even more on my Christmas 'list') right now if I wasn't so worried about buying CDs. I wish they would look more closely at what they're doing -- they're essentially driving themselves out of business, and then passing legislation to try to cure their bad business moves, which only drives them further into the ground...
I'm not sure that's quite legal. If I see an old lady trying to put a lot of groceries into her trunk, and say "Can I help you with that?," and she obliges, I don't think she'd have any obligation to pay me when I ask for $50 for my help. If there's no agreement established, I don't think they have to pay.
What can we do about this nusiance?
I don't get a lot of spam (yet?), but what I do get is almost ALWAYS in a foreign language, typically a 'non-Western' character set -- and, when viewed as plaintext, it essentially displays as random ASCII. I've always wanted to simply filter out anything that contained non-ASCII characters... or, at least, anything that declares itself to use a foreign character set. Not sure how possible this is, but if I can't even READ the spam, I have nooooo desire to receive it. It could, in theory, make a great way to filter it out, too?
This is a neat idea, although I can't honestly say I'd have any use for it -- I don't use any wireless products. (Although I do have a long-standing obsession with starting a wireless ISP...)
If you happen to put up a webpage on it or something, I'd love it if you'd send me a link. (But don't make it just for me or anything.)
Is it receive-only?
That was sort of my point -- omnis don't have the gain of a directional antenna. You can get a fairly high-gain omni (11 dBi+), but they're things like stacked collinear, and I'm not sure if anyone makes anything of that sort for the 2.4 GHz (802.11b) band. (I suppose it'd be pretty short, though.)
Anyway, sorry if I wasn't too clear in my original post. If you find one, I'll buy a few too.;)
This might "work," but it seems rather farfetched... Isn't there a huge potential for interference as well? And it seems ridiculous to have people going around with massive high-gain (which usually, though not necessarily, infers a highly-directional antenna) antennas trying to find people sniffing their networks. Unless you have *really* secret data, this is probably overkill; if I was going to do this, I'd just run fiber...:)
That's funny, I'm working on a similar whitepaper: Detecting 802.11 Detector Detectors, to detect people trying to detect people trying to detect 802.11 networks. Including is some sample code to detect the detector detectors, but it seems to get into a nasty infinite loop, and I can't figure out why.
I read the article, which only served to confuse me further. Are these people saying that software funded with government money should *not* be under the GPL, or are they saying that these people are trying to put an outright ban on the use/making of software by anyone? The story (both here and on NewsForge) seems to be a bit exaggerated, or is it correct? Can someone please clarify what is actually going on? Thanks.
An idea just popped into my head. Lemme know if it would work. (By the way, I know that random people don't host the 'root servers' of the Internet on their cable modems, it's just an example.)
Suppose that the root nameservers were to only allow connections from certain hosts. In other words, if I run one of the root nameservers, everyone but certain DNS servers is blocked at the router level. This makes it more difficult to attack a root server, as you'd have to either take over a nameserver I allow connections from, or somehow exploit my router which blocks you.
This does have a potential problem -- say I charged $100,000/year to be able to use my root nameserver. Suddenly, only the largest ISPs can connect -- the whole DNS system could potentially become highly commercialized. (I suppose the wealthy ISPs could "resell" access, but...) But if it's carefully planned, I think this might be a rather effective method of preventing problems with the root nameservers. It seems strange to have a handful of "essential" servers just sitting out there on the web.
Heh, just the other day... There was a call down the street from where I live about a chimney fire. I heard the fire trucks radio back, explaining that the smoke coming from the chimney... was from a woodstove.
If people call the fire department when they see smoke coming from a chimney, imagine what will happen if it's coming from windows or something.
I think a better analogy would be if your kid arrived home three weeks late because the train stopped in the tracks where he was waiting to cross, and did not move for weeks.
Clearly, this is an exaggeration -- but my point is that it was completely unexpected that his visa application would be rejected.
BTW -- to state that he could have stayed in a prison is absurd. I don't know anyone who would want to stay in a prison for about six months while awaiting trial, particularly not with the shining example of justice he's been given. I think just about any of us would have gone back to Russia, too. Frankly, I hope Dmitri never comes back -- not that he's not welcome, but that I don't think he would possibly *want* to come back.
It might be minutia, but I don't understand why the D30 is consider crap because it's not brand new. Yes, it's been out for a few years, but no, it's not exactly "prosumer" equipment. I've been looking at getting one, and they go for about $2,000 on eBay. (Used.) Yes, there are plenty of cameras that have surpassed the D30, but not being the best doesn't suddenly demote it to "prosumer at best."
I made this point in reply to another thread: If your photo is really good / significant, it will be preserved. Plus, in the not-TOO-distant future (next, say, 50 years), I'm sure people will be able to read JPEG, much as I can read archaic file formats -- people simply are interested in preserving history. Someone I know installed Windows 1 (yes, 1) on a GHz Duron not too long ago. My point is that millions of years from now, they may not be able to read a CD, but then again, will your paper photos survive either? People have succeeded in cracking all sorts of historic "codes" and languages, the people of the future can probably figure out our image formats, especially if we plan for the future and demonstrate how to do it. Technology's only going to advance further.
Another issue is that... If your photos warrant it, they'll be copied over when new media comes around. The original Declaration of Independence, if left on my kitchen table for a few hundred years, would most likely have deteriorated beyond recognition by now, but nearly any American citizen knows what it means.
Anyway, my point is that really important media will be copied over. For example, if I have something on a floppy disk that I want to preserve, I'm probably going to copy it over to my hard drive, and maybe onto a CD as well. Granted, I may not repeat this for all 493 photos of my nephew's birthday party, but if it's really worth saving, it will probably be copied over anyway.
I think that digital and film can both last for quite a long time.
You really should use some capitalization for "partsexpress," I was wondering what a "sex press" might be, and how you could only have part of one. It took me a while to realize that it was PartsExpress.:)
Nothing really stops you, I suppose, except for ethics.
Not that I'd do either, but stealing something from a vending machine is petty theft (and vandalism if you have you break into it...). Throwing a cinder block "through the convenience store worker's head" is murder. I've seen people trying to "tip" machines to get free food, and my only thought was "How pathetic is it that they spend twenty minutes brutally attacking a machine... for a pack of LifeSavers?" But I think I'd have a very different reaction to an armed robbery.
Your point is good too, it's just that there are probably people who wouldn't think twice of vandalizing a machine and stealing some things, but who wouldn't think for a second of armed robbery.
This has happened to me before... I just ate 'em anyway (it was candy, so it didn't seem too bad... Not sure I'd want to drink month-old milk or anything, though).
I'd like to think that you could call the machine operator and ask for a refund/exchange (particularly if you haven't opened it). I suppose some might refuse, but threatening to call the Better Business Bureau and the FDA to report that they're selling out-of-date food might change their mind;)
They seem to be making a big deal of how they're much less likely to be robbed -- you can shoplift, and you can't hold up a vending machine.
But what's to stop someone determined from throwing a cinder block through the glass panel? Maybe it's really strong Plexiglass or something, but I'm sure a really determined person can get right through it. It'd be very obvious that you were robbing it (people chucking cinder blocks through windows don't tend to go unnoticed...), but I think it would be definitely possible. I'd actually be more worried about theft from this than I would from a store.
I'm going to skip over the most obvious privacy issues, and mention the two major problems I see.
First, if this is something else they're trying to use 9/11 as an example for... It won't do a bit of good. "Oh, there's one of the terrorists getting out of his car..." Six months after the fact, you can't stop the crime, and they've had six months to flee the country. Yes, maybe it'll catch a criminal or two, but I think actively trying to stop crime is more important than watching it happen six months in the past.
Another issue is the sheer amount of space ~180 days of logs could take up. Let's take the example of a camera... A really good time-lapse camera might be able to squeeze 24 hours onto a single tape. But now rather than having a couple tapes and rotating them, you now need 180 tapes, and somewhere to store them. Storing the URL of every file I access could grow really quickly. And if they're investigating truly illegal use, the URLs might not even work six months later. So are they now going to save local copies of all the pages I visit? I have 3 Mbps. In 8 seconds, I could get 3 MB of space. My entire neighborhood could fill up a few terabytes real quick. This is going to add massive costs to ISPs, and a lot of them seem to be in financial trouble anyway.
On a side note, if I advocated that the US Postal Service photocopy every envelope you send/receive (I won't even say that they open it), I don't think even the most conservative people would consider this a good idea. But why is it different if it's on the Internet?
Slashdot Mirror
In theory, you can then have the RIAA arrested for violating the DMCA, or at least try to get your case thrown out. (The "evidence" that you had the MP3 is inadmissible if they obtain it illegally, is it not?)
And if they convince the judge that my idea is total crap, haven't they just set a precedent weakening the DMCA? Might as well fight fire with fire. :)
That's insane; the prices are listed on the main page of their site; I'm not aware of anyone paying more. Advertising 100 Mbps for 1 grand a month then offering half of it for 10 grand a month... is insane. *would like to think that maybe you e-mailed the wrong people, but knows it's unlikely*
And before you flame, those joining the military agree under oath to accept these different laws upon joining. I know very little about the Armed Forces, but this leads me to a question: If I'm drafted (forced) into service, does this still apply? Because then they're essentially taking away my rights, and I'm not consenting to it? (Again, not criticizing you, just trying to understand this.)
What I REALLY don't get is why the text it displays is set as an 'argument' -- you can make it say different things by changing the argument specified in the URL: All my base are belong to them?
I'm convinced that if Cogent ever starts providing lines in my area, I'd be able to do this without losing too much money. Has anyone tried anything of this sort?
I used to buy CDs. I'd download a song from Napster, like it, and buy the CD. Honestly.
Now I'm afraid to buy CDs. Will it work in my computer? Will it damage my computer? And on top of that, I'm upset by their foolish antics. Yes, Gnutella/Kazaa/etc. are driving their profits into the ground. But it was the RIAA themselves that caused it. I'd have a lot more CDs on my desk (and even more on my Christmas 'list') right now if I wasn't so worried about buying CDs. I wish they would look more closely at what they're doing -- they're essentially driving themselves out of business, and then passing legislation to try to cure their bad business moves, which only drives them further into the ground...
I'm not sure that's quite legal. If I see an old lady trying to put a lot of groceries into her trunk, and say "Can I help you with that?," and she obliges, I don't think she'd have any obligation to pay me when I ask for $50 for my help. If there's no agreement established, I don't think they have to pay.
What can we do about this nusiance? I don't get a lot of spam (yet?), but what I do get is almost ALWAYS in a foreign language, typically a 'non-Western' character set -- and, when viewed as plaintext, it essentially displays as random ASCII. I've always wanted to simply filter out anything that contained non-ASCII characters... or, at least, anything that declares itself to use a foreign character set. Not sure how possible this is, but if I can't even READ the spam, I have nooooo desire to receive it. It could, in theory, make a great way to filter it out, too?
This is a neat idea, although I can't honestly say I'd have any use for it -- I don't use any wireless products. (Although I do have a long-standing obsession with starting a wireless ISP...) If you happen to put up a webpage on it or something, I'd love it if you'd send me a link. (But don't make it just for me or anything.) Is it receive-only?
That was sort of my point -- omnis don't have the gain of a directional antenna. You can get a fairly high-gain omni (11 dBi+), but they're things like stacked collinear, and I'm not sure if anyone makes anything of that sort for the 2.4 GHz (802.11b) band. (I suppose it'd be pretty short, though.) Anyway, sorry if I wasn't too clear in my original post. If you find one, I'll buy a few too. ;)
This might "work," but it seems rather farfetched... Isn't there a huge potential for interference as well? And it seems ridiculous to have people going around with massive high-gain (which usually, though not necessarily, infers a highly-directional antenna) antennas trying to find people sniffing their networks. Unless you have *really* secret data, this is probably overkill; if I was going to do this, I'd just run fiber... :)
That's funny, I'm working on a similar whitepaper: Detecting 802.11 Detector Detectors, to detect people trying to detect people trying to detect 802.11 networks. Including is some sample code to detect the detector detectors, but it seems to get into a nasty infinite loop, and I can't figure out why.
I read the article, which only served to confuse me further. Are these people saying that software funded with government money should *not* be under the GPL, or are they saying that these people are trying to put an outright ban on the use/making of software by anyone? The story (both here and on NewsForge) seems to be a bit exaggerated, or is it correct? Can someone please clarify what is actually going on? Thanks.
Suppose that the root nameservers were to only allow connections from certain hosts. In other words, if I run one of the root nameservers, everyone but certain DNS servers is blocked at the router level. This makes it more difficult to attack a root server, as you'd have to either take over a nameserver I allow connections from, or somehow exploit my router which blocks you.
This does have a potential problem -- say I charged $100,000/year to be able to use my root nameserver. Suddenly, only the largest ISPs can connect -- the whole DNS system could potentially become highly commercialized. (I suppose the wealthy ISPs could "resell" access, but...) But if it's carefully planned, I think this might be a rather effective method of preventing problems with the root nameservers. It seems strange to have a handful of "essential" servers just sitting out there on the web.
If people call the fire department when they see smoke coming from a chimney, imagine what will happen if it's coming from windows or something.
I think you might be a troll, but I'll bite.
I think a better analogy would be if your kid arrived home three weeks late because the train stopped in the tracks where he was waiting to cross, and did not move for weeks.
Clearly, this is an exaggeration -- but my point is that it was completely unexpected that his visa application would be rejected.
BTW -- to state that he could have stayed in a prison is absurd. I don't know anyone who would want to stay in a prison for about six months while awaiting trial, particularly not with the shining example of justice he's been given. I think just about any of us would have gone back to Russia, too. Frankly, I hope Dmitri never comes back -- not that he's not welcome, but that I don't think he would possibly *want* to come back.
I made this point in reply to another thread: If your photo is really good / significant, it will be preserved. Plus, in the not-TOO-distant future (next, say, 50 years), I'm sure people will be able to read JPEG, much as I can read archaic file formats -- people simply are interested in preserving history. Someone I know installed Windows 1 (yes, 1) on a GHz Duron not too long ago. My point is that millions of years from now, they may not be able to read a CD, but then again, will your paper photos survive either? People have succeeded in cracking all sorts of historic "codes" and languages, the people of the future can probably figure out our image formats, especially if we plan for the future and demonstrate how to do it. Technology's only going to advance further.
Anyway, my point is that really important media will be copied over. For example, if I have something on a floppy disk that I want to preserve, I'm probably going to copy it over to my hard drive, and maybe onto a CD as well. Granted, I may not repeat this for all 493 photos of my nephew's birthday party, but if it's really worth saving, it will probably be copied over anyway.
I think that digital and film can both last for quite a long time.
The site is really slow...
:)
Can you guess what major news site he'll probably sue next?
You really should use some capitalization for "partsexpress," I was wondering what a "sex press" might be, and how you could only have part of one. It took me a while to realize that it was PartsExpress. :)
(And, as a side-note -- I love your sig! :)
Not that I'd do either, but stealing something from a vending machine is petty theft (and vandalism if you have you break into it...). Throwing a cinder block "through the convenience store worker's head" is murder. I've seen people trying to "tip" machines to get free food, and my only thought was "How pathetic is it that they spend twenty minutes brutally attacking a machine... for a pack of LifeSavers?" But I think I'd have a very different reaction to an armed robbery.
Your point is good too, it's just that there are probably people who wouldn't think twice of vandalizing a machine and stealing some things, but who wouldn't think for a second of armed robbery.
I'd like to think that you could call the machine operator and ask for a refund/exchange (particularly if you haven't opened it). I suppose some might refuse, but threatening to call the Better Business Bureau and the FDA to report that they're selling out-of-date food might change their mind ;)
But what's to stop someone determined from throwing a cinder block through the glass panel? Maybe it's really strong Plexiglass or something, but I'm sure a really determined person can get right through it. It'd be very obvious that you were robbing it (people chucking cinder blocks through windows don't tend to go unnoticed...), but I think it would be definitely possible. I'd actually be more worried about theft from this than I would from a store.
First, if this is something else they're trying to use 9/11 as an example for... It won't do a bit of good. "Oh, there's one of the terrorists getting out of his car..." Six months after the fact, you can't stop the crime, and they've had six months to flee the country. Yes, maybe it'll catch a criminal or two, but I think actively trying to stop crime is more important than watching it happen six months in the past.
Another issue is the sheer amount of space ~180 days of logs could take up. Let's take the example of a camera... A really good time-lapse camera might be able to squeeze 24 hours onto a single tape. But now rather than having a couple tapes and rotating them, you now need 180 tapes, and somewhere to store them. Storing the URL of every file I access could grow really quickly. And if they're investigating truly illegal use, the URLs might not even work six months later. So are they now going to save local copies of all the pages I visit? I have 3 Mbps. In 8 seconds, I could get 3 MB of space. My entire neighborhood could fill up a few terabytes real quick. This is going to add massive costs to ISPs, and a lot of them seem to be in financial trouble anyway.
On a side note, if I advocated that the US Postal Service photocopy every envelope you send/receive (I won't even say that they open it), I don't think even the most conservative people would consider this a good idea. But why is it different if it's on the Internet?