It's sad that a lot of people condemn JenniCam as being some sort of porn for perverts in denial or something. Most of them seem to be acting on secondhand knowledge, having heard some stories about a girl who gets naked on camera for all the world to see. If they read her journals, &c., which she posts online, or looked at the images a few times, they'd know that this is not about n3kkid l4diez.
JenniCam is more about intimacy than sex. In many places you can go to see a woman get naked; there are plenty of porn sites which fill that demand. What Jenni does is let the viewer into her life, in honest, intimate detail; and that her life is just a normal life, not the exploits of a porn star or anysuch.
(Of course, that she's pretty cute also helps her traffic, no doubt. Though I doubt that much of the traffic is from the dirty-raincoat brigade, who wouldn't waste their time watching a fully clothed woman typing or folding her laundry or whatever when there are actual porn sites for them to visit.)
There is a very distinct line between criticising the Christian Coalition and criticising Christians in general. The Christian Coalition is an extremist, authoritarian group, hungry for power. It has an ends-justify-the-means mentality; its leaders are on record advocating anti-democratic measures when they think the press isn't watching. Their legislative agenda would turn the US into a fundamentalist theocracy, imposing their narrow, judgmental morality on everyone. If they had the power, there would be stonings of fornicators, sodomists and blasphemers in town squares.
Furthermore, they are not representative of all Christians, or even the majority. There are many Christians who are content to live out Christ's message of judge-not-lest-ye-should-be-judged and being generally decent to their fellow human beings without declaring holy war against those whose values don't match theirs. And if I remember correctly, Christ had something to say about the hypocrites who make a point of wearing their "righteousness" as a badge of pride.
I'm not a Christian myself, but I have the greatest respect for those who are and live a decent life, rather than using their Christianity as an excuse to hate or condemn those who don't share it. Unfortunately, that's what most of the Religious Right seem to do.
Why are all the new registrars only located in WIPO-signatory nations?
It'll ease the adoption of treaties governing Internet connectivity, and allowing countries that don't adopt and enforce uniform IP laws to be disconnected from the Internet. Otherwise Libya or someone would set up a bomb-proof data haven, fill it with servers and allow anyone to download Microsoft Office and MP3s.
Some 97% of all public space in London (the city with the most surveillance cameras in the world) is covered by video cameras.
The cameras can read number plates automatically. They were also experimenting with software that could automatically identify faces from a list (of known criminals/terrorist suspects/fugitives/missing persons presumably) a while ago. Not sure how far that has gotten.
The question is whether the function/class names count as a purely functional component or as part of the documentation or intellectual property. Common sense says the former, though AFAIK this hasn't been tested in court.
On the other hand, magic signatures are sometimes copyrighted and used to enforce control of platforms. This is the case with video game console cartridges (for example to develop and market a Nintendo game, you have to put a copyrighted string in the cartridge ROM, and to license this string you have to meet all sorts of onerous demands).
Hot on the heels of their successful injunction against GNUSTEP developers and distribution sites, Apple slaps a look-and-feel lawsuit on GNOME and Enlightenment.
Does the Mozilla licence allow AOL to withdraw the open-source project once its fruits are realised? If AOL (prone to putting advertising and promotional tie-ins everywhere) face competition from a free version of their browser that doesn't show banner ads, can they do anything about it without resorting to UCITA's license-revocation provisions?
Re:Hmmm not an explosion, but what about melting ?
on
Your CPU Will Explode
·
· Score: 2
I think it's called a "Nth complexity binary loop".
In the novel Fight Club, a character is assassinated with an exploding monitor. The assassin drilled a hole in the picture tube and poured petrol into it; when it was next switched on, it went kaboom.
No idea how accurate that is, though it'd be a bit hard to do remotely.
Will it allow you to develop in 68000 assembly language, using a trap-based AmigaOS API? Maybe they can make this an embeddable library, sort of like a scripting engine only based on a 68K emulator...
Then why don't you write your own? Do something about it.
Because if you did so, you would not be able to legally release it, as the DeCSS case has shown. DeCSS has been ruled illegal (though is going up for appeal), and even if the ruling is overturned, not many people are willing to be crucified by Hollywood's lawyers.
Porting a software-only DVD player to Linux sounds like a minefield. On one hand, the company is no doubt sworn to protect DVD keys as if they were nuclear launch codes; on the other hand, this is impossible to do. They can trap breakpoints and grab ptrace, but an enterprising hacker can code up a debugging kernel that bypasses any software protections.
My guess is that the binary would have to run as root, and would use NMIs or somesuch to enforce unhackability. Or else that the DVD CCA are clueless about technical things (not necessarily a bad thing).
The MPAA has had a word with them and they will be disabling the hack RSN. In fact, such hackable players will probably disappear from the market within the year.
3.You can't claim the PS2 is in any way a DVD-copying machine, any more than a standard, fully-region-encoded DVD player is.
Though DVD players which allow titles from any region to be played back violate the DVD licensing agreement. And the DVDCCA is already cracking down on manufacturers who put in hidden menu options or ways to modify the players.
Given that software development and publishing are tightly controlled by Sony (who have to approve each title that is manufactured), they could change the format of new titles so that it breaks the old units, and update the firmware of the new units to work around the introduced "defect". You can keep your old unit, but say goodbye to any plans to play new PS2 games on it.
Who owns the Mozilla copyright?
on
Netscape 6
·
· Score: 2
Does AOL own the copyrights to Mozilla? If so, it could be dangerous when UCITA becomes law. AOL has a philosophy of leveraging everything for promotion and advertising. You've already seen the "Shop" button in Netscape 4.7 where the "Stop" button used to be, taking you to AOL's shopping portal. Future Netscapes are likely to do other things, such as download/run AOL ads.
The problem for AOL is that they have an open-source version (perhaps minus a few gimmicks) which is identical for features to Netscape only without their advertising/promotional code, leeching their already slight market share.
Conveniently enough, UCITA will allow copyright holders to relicence their code, invalidating prior licences. There will likely be a faction in AOL pushing to do this to Mozilla for practical business reasons. Once the open-source media hype dies down, their hand will be strengthened. If they get their way, posting Mozilla source code or binaries will become a copyright violation.
If your actions affect US citizens, they fall under US laws. I.e., why is former Panamanian president Manuel Noriega in a US prison?
If you post something that violates US copyright laws where Americans can download it, best not take any plane trips with stopovers on US soil if you value your freedom. It is routine for the FBI to check passenger manifests for wanted criminals.
Apparently, to suppress such devices, Macrovision built one and patented it, purely to sue anyone who makes them for infringement.
Does the patent apply to all "picture stabilisers", or are they "prior art"; or does the new Macrovision (on DVDs, as opposed to the one on commercial tapes) thwart this hack?
Under the DMCA, circumventing copy protection is illegal, unless you're doing legitimate security research (a defense that, as the DeCSS case shows, one pretty much has to be a respectable research facility to use).
Apparently the copy protection on VHS tapes can be circumvented with "signal amplifiers". Are these now illegal, or do they have a legitimate purpose? Does this trick apply to the DVD implementation of Macrovision?
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad that a lot of people condemn JenniCam as being some sort of porn for perverts in denial or something. Most of them seem to be acting on secondhand knowledge, having heard some stories about a girl who gets naked on camera for all the world to see. If they read her journals, &c., which she posts online, or looked at the images a few times, they'd know that this is not about n3kkid l4diez.
JenniCam is more about intimacy than sex. In many places you can go to see a woman get naked; there are plenty of porn sites which fill that demand. What Jenni does is let the viewer into her life, in honest, intimate detail; and that her life is just a normal life, not the exploits of a porn star or anysuch.
(Of course, that she's pretty cute also helps her traffic, no doubt. Though I doubt that much of the traffic is from the dirty-raincoat brigade, who wouldn't waste their time watching a fully clothed woman typing or folding her laundry or whatever when there are actual porn sites for them to visit.)
Now, if only Babbage or one of his contemporaries had designed a telegraph modem of some sort, the prospect of a Victorian Internet would be raised.
There is a very distinct line between criticising the Christian Coalition and criticising Christians in general. The Christian Coalition is an extremist, authoritarian group, hungry for power. It has an ends-justify-the-means mentality; its leaders are on record advocating anti-democratic measures when they think the press isn't watching. Their legislative agenda would turn the US into a fundamentalist theocracy, imposing their narrow, judgmental morality on everyone. If they had the power, there would be stonings of fornicators, sodomists and blasphemers in town squares.
Furthermore, they are not representative of all Christians, or even the majority. There are many Christians who are content to live out Christ's message of judge-not-lest-ye-should-be-judged and being generally decent to their fellow human beings without declaring holy war against those whose values don't match theirs. And if I remember correctly, Christ had something to say about the hypocrites who make a point of wearing their "righteousness" as a badge of pride.
I'm not a Christian myself, but I have the greatest respect for those who are and live a decent life, rather than using their Christianity as an excuse to hate or condemn those who don't share it. Unfortunately, that's what most of the Religious Right seem to do.
Why are all the new registrars only located in WIPO-signatory nations?
It'll ease the adoption of treaties governing Internet connectivity, and allowing countries that don't adopt and enforce uniform IP laws to be disconnected from the Internet. Otherwise Libya or someone would set up a bomb-proof data haven, fill it with servers and allow anyone to download Microsoft Office and MP3s.
A device made out of individual transistors and capable of running MINIX would be... interesting, to say the least.
Some 97% of all public space in London (the city with the most surveillance cameras in the world) is covered by video cameras.
The cameras can read number plates automatically. They were also experimenting with software that could automatically identify faces from a list (of known criminals/terrorist suspects/fugitives/missing persons presumably) a while ago. Not sure how far that has gotten.
The Panopticon is a reality in London.
The question is whether the function/class names count as a purely functional component or as part of the documentation or intellectual property. Common sense says the former, though AFAIK this hasn't been tested in court.
On the other hand, magic signatures are sometimes copyrighted and used to enforce control of platforms. This is the case with video game console cartridges (for example to develop and market a Nintendo game, you have to put a copyrighted string in the cartridge ROM, and to license this string you have to meet all sorts of onerous demands).
Hot on the heels of their successful injunction against GNUSTEP developers and distribution sites, Apple slaps a look-and-feel lawsuit on GNOME and Enlightenment.
Does the Mozilla licence allow AOL to withdraw the open-source project once its fruits are realised? If AOL (prone to putting advertising and promotional tie-ins everywhere) face competition from a free version of their browser that doesn't show banner ads, can they do anything about it without resorting to UCITA's license-revocation provisions?
I think it's called a "Nth complexity binary loop".
In the novel Fight Club, a character is assassinated with an exploding monitor. The assassin drilled a hole in the picture tube and poured petrol into it; when it was next switched on, it went kaboom.
No idea how accurate that is, though it'd be a bit hard to do remotely.
Will it allow you to develop in 68000 assembly language, using a trap-based AmigaOS API? Maybe they can make this an embeddable library, sort of like a scripting engine only based on a 68K emulator...
Also, will it come with a BCPL compiler?
Then why don't you write your own? Do something about it.
Because if you did so, you would not be able to legally release it, as the DeCSS case has shown. DeCSS has been ruled illegal (though is going up for appeal), and even if the ruling is overturned, not many people are willing to be crucified by Hollywood's lawyers.
Technically, decrypting and playing a DVD involves copying it (temporarily) to memory, which may be covered by copyright.
Porting a software-only DVD player to Linux sounds like a minefield. On one hand, the company is no doubt sworn to protect DVD keys as if they were nuclear launch codes; on the other hand, this is impossible to do. They can trap breakpoints and grab ptrace, but an enterprising hacker can code up a debugging kernel that bypasses any software protections.
My guess is that the binary would have to run as root, and would use NMIs or somesuch to enforce unhackability. Or else that the DVD CCA are clueless about technical things (not necessarily a bad thing).
Only because they slipped past the lawyers. Manufacturers don't sell them as non-regional models.
Or do you mean stuff in 19" rackmount enclosures, intended for studio use?
The MPAA has had a word with them and they will be disabling the hack RSN. In fact, such hackable players will probably disappear from the market within the year.
3.You can't claim the PS2 is in any way a DVD-copying machine, any more than a standard,
fully-region-encoded DVD player is.
Though DVD players which allow titles from any region to be played back violate the DVD licensing agreement. And the DVDCCA is already cracking down on manufacturers who put in hidden menu options or ways to modify the players.
Given that software development and publishing are tightly controlled by Sony (who have to approve each title that is manufactured), they could change the format of new titles so that it breaks the old units, and update the firmware of the new units to work around the introduced "defect". You can keep your old unit, but say goodbye to any plans to play new PS2 games on it.
Does AOL own the copyrights to Mozilla? If so, it could be dangerous when UCITA becomes law. AOL has a philosophy of leveraging everything for promotion and advertising. You've already seen the "Shop" button in Netscape 4.7 where the "Stop" button used to be, taking you to AOL's shopping portal. Future Netscapes are likely to do other things, such as download/run AOL ads.
The problem for AOL is that they have an open-source version (perhaps minus a few gimmicks) which is identical for features to Netscape only without their advertising/promotional code, leeching their already slight market share.
Conveniently enough, UCITA will allow copyright holders to relicence their code, invalidating prior licences. There will likely be a faction in AOL pushing to do this to Mozilla for practical business reasons. Once the open-source media hype dies down, their hand will be strengthened. If they get their way, posting Mozilla source code or binaries will become a copyright violation.
How are the other free browsers going?
No matter how much you encrypt/decrypt this data, there are at least 2 points along the way where the raw RGB is available:
After DeCSS and before encryption by the video card
Isn't the whole point to leave the RGB encrypted by at least one layer through the entire path?
After decryption in the tv/monitor and before it hits the analog tube control.
I don't think Hollywood's particularly worried about anyone copying their precious intellectual property by digitising the voltage on their CRT.
Wasn't it something like "don't just do it -- PS2 it"?
If your actions affect US citizens, they fall under US laws. I.e., why is former Panamanian president Manuel Noriega in a US prison?
If you post something that violates US copyright laws where Americans can download it, best not take any plane trips with stopovers on US soil if you value your freedom. It is routine for the FBI to check passenger manifests for wanted criminals.
Apparently, to suppress such devices, Macrovision built one and patented it, purely to sue anyone who makes them for infringement.
Does the patent apply to all "picture stabilisers", or are they "prior art"; or does the new Macrovision (on DVDs, as opposed to the one on commercial tapes) thwart this hack?
Under the DMCA, circumventing copy protection is illegal, unless you're doing legitimate security research (a defense that, as the DeCSS case shows, one pretty much has to be a respectable research facility to use).
Apparently the copy protection on VHS tapes can be circumvented with "signal amplifiers". Are these now illegal, or do they have a legitimate purpose? Does this trick apply to the DVD implementation of Macrovision?