... we may have the highest ratio of lawyers to non-lawyers in the world [here in the U.S.], but there's some actual content in all that legislative noise.
The whole point of law is to legislate morality. Society/culture determines that some things are desireable (life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness), and that others things less so (murder, theft, arson). Where society begins to engage in activities that some folks do not like, but others do like, there is the resort of torts (suing the pants off someone). The conduct of corporations has been affected quite well lately by lawsuits, and occasionally results in the sorts of things that get made into popular movies starring Julia Roberts.
So, the whole point of suing someone is to say, "yes, you can legally act that way, but it is still morally wrong." The judge and jury get to decide who's in the right. Eventually Legislative acts may follow, and make such behaviour illegal. It is impossible for any Legislative body to write rules that apply perfectly to all situations. It's then that the tool of civil courts and lawsuits becomes wonderful, and one of the things unavailble in more restrictive societies. (The old saying, "If you want peace, work for justice.")
And I know. I worked for someone who never paid me (I was young, poor, and really stupid to keep working like that without getting paid). I sued. I won. I paid for six months of college with the award. It wasn't much, but it came when I most needed it.
I'm not saying there aren't frivolous lawsuits. Lawyers are a lot like guns. Most of us hope we never have cause to use one. Some people want to use them for good, and some for evil. Some never want anything to do with one, and some covet them -- perhaps having an unhealthy fascination.
But most of all, we hope no one aims one in our direction.
Actually, I wasn't referring to the copy of DNA in organic form. I was referring to digital versions of gene sequences. Since it's a decoded version of something someone owns, and it's on a computer -- it just seems to open the door for problems. Maybe I'm just a DMCA basket case. *grin*
If it's a limited time frame, then let's shift patents down to 10-20 years limit. The old standard was conceived in an era when innovation happened far less often, and with far more effort, and the payoff period wasn't 2-3 years. The Pharms may balk at this, but I think most people will agree that businesses have a right to a profit, but not a right to unlimited profits. Unlimited profits tends to go hand in hand with gouging.
The really scary thing is that there are some really bright people out there who are asking, "how can we get people to pay for things they already own." The DMCA was a step in that direction, and Pharms owning rights to something that is part and parcel of my being sounds like they're trying to charge me for something I already own.
...it might be illegal to do any sort of gene sequencing, or decoding, for diagnosing a disease without first first getting permission from the pharms, who "own" the encoded sequence. And even then, there will be a fee. Factor that in when you're trying to get diagnosed for a disease.
I can no more patent a comet than I can patent a genetic sequence. They are discoveries, and not inventions.
I mean, if a bunch of young ruffians harasses some old lady on the way to market, The Police will at least stop by and tell the ruffians to stop doing that.
If the same bunch of young ruffians were to harass someone of the same age, most police would do nothing -- because there is nothing illegal or culturally untoward about the act.
Bullying in the workplace is illegal (or at least you can get fired for it, or sue if the bully isn't). Bullying at home is illegal. Bullying strangers on the street is illegal.
Now comes the strange part. Teenagers bullying adults is illegal, but teenagers bullying teenagers isn't.
Until it is illegal, or until one of these afflicted kids decides to sue, and sue big (rather than killing themselves), this will continue.
I concede that the desktop is beginning to become cluttered. Not my choice. However, the new fascination with externalizing everything (like the iPaq's modem) in a large case is frustrating.
Your motherboard may come with a built-in modem. Why can't you replace it with a modem made by a different manufacturer? Or the built-in NIC? Or the built-in sound card. Swap that cheapo 16-bit soundcard for something more powerful. If the onboard (insert component here) fails, why do you have to junk the entire motherboard?
If we want to get PC's to be smaller, we need to get something smaller than the PCI or AGP bus. MicroATX, FlexATX and MiniNLX aren't small enough.
What this will do is clutter the desktop (the physical one), which is always the one thing I hated about Macs. The drive was external. The floppy was exteral. The CD was external. The modem was external. You have a dozen things plugged in, and they consume more space, and more power, than they would have had the computer case been a little bit bigger.
Plus, how the hell are you supposed to keep the system quiet when there's a dozen little fans spinning away cooling all those external devices.
If you want to make it modular, make it internally modular. Here's where the modem plugs directly onto the motherboard, and it's this big, with the connectors in exactly this spot. Boom, it snaps on like adding RAM.
Building more into the motherboard is nice, but when built-in components fail, it's more expensive. Modularity = Low Price.
If all this is a beef against device drivers (which I recall MS as claiming was the single biggest source of problems), then have higher device driver standards.
Try to find, using the Google Directory, pictures of Yellowstone National Park, taken by me. No fair using the search function. (However searching the directory for "pictures of yellowstone and scott purl" will result in two misses, and nothing else.)
Yes, it's "Vanity Web Surfing", but if Google indexes my site, why doesn't it automatically categorize it? (whine whine)
So, yes, Google is pretty derned good. But it's still not a directory, and the directory it does have covers, what, 1% of the web? 0.01%?
Seven of the first ten have nothing to do with automo repair. Two of them are iffy at best. My grading of One right and two half-right out of 10 answers is still an "F".
Them satellite images cost money, as does bandwidth. And it's adds to the "superpowers" bragging list. India has nukes, a blue water navy, subs, troops, satellites, etc. etc.
The real thing is to get a satellite up into geosynchronous orbit is a heckuva lot harder than to just get one into low orbit. Anyone with money to buy a SCUD missle can get something out of the atmosphere. Factor in the difficulty of space-hardening something that isn't explosive in nature, and is designed to last long enough to make a few bucks....
What the web REALLY needs is a directory. An honest-to-goodness, telephone/yellow pages style directory. This whole nonsense about keyword searching is providing people who just want traffic with a lot of free advertising and listings.
The phone company provides you with one free listing (unlisted is optional), and makes you pay for each extra category (like in the Yellow Pages -- and if you're not from the U.S., please see http://www.bigyellow.com/supertopics for an example) that you want something listed in. Search engines ought to be replaced with something similar.
Yes, I know Yahoo and Dmoz try, but they don't go out and actively index sites, making their use limited, and the number of sites even more limited. If Google were to create a Yahoo/Dmoz style directory, that would help. Better yet, if people were forced to provide either META tags, or some information when they acquired their domain (part of whois?)....
For example, where can I get my oil changed in Paris, France?
I know that sounds backwards, but it's the approach several successful writers, like Piers Anthony, have followed. You get an agent, you present a very short draft of the story, and the agent shops it around. You keep coming up with story drafts until one sells.
The difference here is that pretty soon, everything you write sells, because you're only writing what has been sold. And since the project is still in conception, it can be more easily made marketable, or fixed, or even the rough edges of your inexperience honed better. That's the same as getting VC backing. You shop the idea around, they mold it slightly, you get paid, you produce. If they don't buy it, you keep your other job, and keep thinking. You want the idea, not the labor, to produce the income. Ideas come faster than product.
Sounds really dumb, I know, but TV shows are based upon pilots, movie scripts upon 30 page script summaries, and on and on. You have to get in the door before you can write what you want.
I've got a Microsoft Natural, a Logitech Deluxe 104, a PC-Concepts i-MMT ($10), and a Honeywell 101WN sitting here. The Logitech has the lightest touch of all of them, even compared to the keyboard on my Dell laptop. I actually went to several office stores, and compared keyboards before I found one that I liked. Must confess that I fell in love with the Kinesis keyboard at a UW computer fair years ago, but could never bring myself to spend that much.
You might also consider building forearm strength. It's easy to do, prevents carpal tunnel, reduces arthritis, and you'd have to actually work at it for a couple of years to get Popeye's forearms. I've known several women with incredible grip strength (one rock-climber, one nurse, and one pastry chef), and they all had slender arms. If you want some tips (clean ones, I promise), post back to the forum.
Engineer, eh? Napping during your materials science class? *grin*
Only corrodes in a monoatomic layer, so it never really "rusts" more than an atom or two thick. Dull finish, so it's not as enchanting as stainless steel (many of which still corrode). Might be recycled by someone, but I wouldn't exactly call that an insult. Now, if your stone tombstone were ground up and used for road construction.... Magnesium is in the same category, but, well, a bit tempting to ignite for those who can identify it.
The real problem with tombstones is that they are not acid-resistant. Not a problem a centuries ago, but with the advent of fossil fuels and acid rain, probably quartz would be a good choice. You can make your own by passing large amounts of current through things, and they're experimenting with this now as a way of permanently and intertly dealing with nasty chemicals. Maybe just cast yourself something in glass.
The problem here is that rain is mildly acidic (something like 5.6) even when clean and not polluted.
The solution? You need to become such a person among humanity that society will pick up the bill of maintaining your tombstone forever.
I mean, you're going to be accessing state-owned Mainframes.
What you need is a little password synchronization to simplify things.
First, install the Notes password synch services, which logs you in to Notes if your NT password matches the Notes password.
Next, use Samba to synchronize NT and Unix passwords. Set up Unix so that you're using NIS. Now we're up to 3 systems using the same password. Lotus Notes can be configured to use NT authentication, via IIS, but it's not easy. There's also several third-party products, but we frankly wrote our own.
As for "unified login" products, I've seen and used several, and they all sucked. Most of them just cache your password locally with encryption, then use the Windows APIs with calls to intercept logins, and present your credentials for you. There was no attempt to use the same credentials database on the back end. Think of it as a pluggable authentication module. Every one of your products should use the same authentication on the back end. Each time you eliminate one of those credential databases, you elminate jobs, complexity, software, problems, password-resets, hardware, and you save money.
If you can ditch either NT or Novell (more likely Novell), then you can reduce the number of logins. Most folks I've seen using Novell are using NDS for just basic authentication, and adding only complexity (meaning, they don't get what NDS is for). That, or they're just doing print spooling, which Samba, NT, or a decent LAN card for a printer can all do.
Biometrics, dongles, java buttons, SecureID cards, and all that are interesting, but if you either forgot your little device, or the computer doesn't have a way to read that device, you can't log in. That's why the use of passwords and login names will be the norm for about 15 more years.
Keep in mind most Congressmen pay attention to the voters rougly like this:
1. PACs
2. Rich/Influential Folk (not you or anyone you know)
3. People who write letters by hand (e.g. Old Folks)
4. People who write letters (the rest of us)
Several Congressmen have stated that they flat out ignore emailed messages and Internet petitions. Remember that they are old technology, with old habits. Email is for biznesses and for getting pictures of the grandkids.
A keyboard tray is a modern kludge to avoid having a real computer desk.
My old desk was a piece of 4'x8' plywood (A-C), cut down to 4'x6'. I varnished it (7 coats), and added some cheap folding legs. I think $30 for the whole thing, plus some of my time.
The extra depth meant I could rest my entire forearm on the desk when typing, and plenty of room for my 17" Sony monitor. If I pushed the monitor back as far as it would go, it was actually too far away.
They have old "writing" desks, which are only 20" deep. That was fine for a typewriter (when those came along), but now that we have monitors....
I want a PC in the size of a Palm. Hook up a keyboard and some Sony Glasstrons when I want to watch a movie or do some serious coding. Maybe play MP3's on it while I'm flying somewhere, and catch up on my reading while I'm at it. When I land, I'll use the GPS, figure out where I am (cities all begin to look alike at some point), grab a map off the web via the wireless modem, and off I go. Maybe watch the live TV coverage of the earthquake that cut the power that stuck me in this elevator.
Make sure you go for not just 100% of your salary current salary during the non-compete timeline (if you have to), but enough extra to keep your insurance current, payments into your retirement going, and everything else.
Using Steganography to Undo Steganography
on
eBook Security?
·
· Score: 2
take for example, http://www.askjesus.org, which provides a comical steganographic trick on the text of a web site.
Why couldn't I take a stegan'd text from the publisher, run it through my own stegan engine (encrypting their encryption in a very readable format), then freely distribute the result? (aside from being illegal)
Sure, the text might be strange, and if done poorly it'd be like hearing a joke told that you've heard before.
freeloading is an old, old tradition
on
eBook Security?
·
· Score: 4
Consider that before people were sneaking into movies, they were sneaking into sporting events and plays. I'll be they had gate crashers even in ancient Rome.
The higher-ups need to take a look at the expense and hassle of an encryption technology, and what losses they reasonably expect if your product were presented in plain ASCII text. Reasonable losses is a concept lost on many MBAs. You base your estimates upon past losses, not upon imagined future losses. For example, one of the software publishing groups takes the number of PCs sold, the number of software titles sold, and since the number of PCs is greater, assumes that their software was installed on all those PCs (and were thus pirated). It never enters their minds that not every PC gets commercial software installed on it, or that PCs break, or that not every software title gets installed on every new PC.
Fifty years ago, how did publishers deal with pirated works? Why won't those same techniques work now? (Don't give me that line about the new economy. People still buy things, and it's still illegal to pirate copyrighted works.) Why put yourself in the position of being the police force, including the added expense and hassle. If you're still making money, then you're OK. Turn the evidence over to the Feds, and let them handle it (and the expense).
An easy way to prevent piracy? Make it cheap to be a member who can access eBooks, and provide the eBooks in a variety of formats (including ASCII). Provide a two year free membership for people who turn in other people that are distributing pirated works. Use tiered pricing, where the average person (who is a light reader), can get a title per month for their $20/year fee. For heavier readers, step the price up gently. For libraries and schools, offer a flat, unlimited download fee (like $500/year) but restrict them to one account and password assigned to someone on staff. Talk to the big porn web sites, and find out how they track and identify logins that are fake, or have been shared amongst several users. I'll bet there's a company out there right now that makes software that does access log profiling -- and it wouldn't be that different than the pattern monitoring that many credit card companies offer for tracking purchases.
I think you can make money at $20/year. There's no printing costs, no distributing, no spoilage, no transportation, and no wasted copies. You can still charge vanity press or estimated low sales authors a fee for "sharing in the risk of publication."
The simple truth is that you can't make your product popular and easy to use if there are any requirements for its use. The simple fact that it must be decoded so that it can be read means that every watermarking, steganographic, or encryption method will fail (and the DVD/HDTV folks are spending a lot of money trying to ignore this). Until you can inject your works directly into the brain of the consumer, I doubt that you can avoid piracy. (And even then, some pirate will likely figure out how to use the consumer's brain as the master copy for duplication.)
Be a farmer. Accept that some of the crop is lost every year, and that you've got to make money on the good part of the crop.
Heck, try my model for a year. If you don't make money, you will at least have a bug-free distribution system.
Slashdot Mirror
... we may have the highest ratio of lawyers to non-lawyers in the world [here in the U.S.], but there's some actual content in all that legislative noise.
The whole point of law is to legislate morality. Society/culture determines that some things are desireable (life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness), and that others things less so (murder, theft, arson). Where society begins to engage in activities that some folks do not like, but others do like, there is the resort of torts (suing the pants off someone). The conduct of corporations has been affected quite well lately by lawsuits, and occasionally results in the sorts of things that get made into popular movies starring Julia Roberts.
So, the whole point of suing someone is to say, "yes, you can legally act that way, but it is still morally wrong." The judge and jury get to decide who's in the right. Eventually Legislative acts may follow, and make such behaviour illegal. It is impossible for any Legislative body to write rules that apply perfectly to all situations. It's then that the tool of civil courts and lawsuits becomes wonderful, and one of the things unavailble in more restrictive societies. (The old saying, "If you want peace, work for justice.")
And I know. I worked for someone who never paid me (I was young, poor, and really stupid to keep working like that without getting paid). I sued. I won. I paid for six months of college with the award. It wasn't much, but it came when I most needed it.
I'm not saying there aren't frivolous lawsuits. Lawyers are a lot like guns. Most of us hope we never have cause to use one. Some people want to use them for good, and some for evil. Some never want anything to do with one, and some covet them -- perhaps having an unhealthy fascination.
But most of all, we hope no one aims one in our direction.
Actually, I wasn't referring to the copy of DNA in organic form. I was referring to digital versions of gene sequences. Since it's a decoded version of something someone owns, and it's on a computer -- it just seems to open the door for problems. Maybe I'm just a DMCA basket case. *grin*
If it's a limited time frame, then let's shift patents down to 10-20 years limit. The old standard was conceived in an era when innovation happened far less often, and with far more effort, and the payoff period wasn't 2-3 years. The Pharms may balk at this, but I think most people will agree that businesses have a right to a profit, but not a right to unlimited profits. Unlimited profits tends to go hand in hand with gouging.
The really scary thing is that there are some really bright people out there who are asking, "how can we get people to pay for things they already own." The DMCA was a step in that direction, and Pharms owning rights to something that is part and parcel of my being sounds like they're trying to charge me for something I already own.
...it might be illegal to do any sort of gene sequencing, or decoding, for diagnosing a disease without first first getting permission from the pharms, who "own" the encoded sequence. And even then, there will be a fee. Factor that in when you're trying to get diagnosed for a disease.
I can no more patent a comet than I can patent a genetic sequence. They are discoveries, and not inventions.
I mean, if a bunch of young ruffians harasses some old lady on the way to market, The Police will at least stop by and tell the ruffians to stop doing that.
If the same bunch of young ruffians were to harass someone of the same age, most police would do nothing -- because there is nothing illegal or culturally untoward about the act.
Bullying in the workplace is illegal (or at least you can get fired for it, or sue if the bully isn't). Bullying at home is illegal. Bullying strangers on the street is illegal.
Now comes the strange part. Teenagers bullying adults is illegal, but teenagers bullying teenagers isn't.
Until it is illegal, or until one of these afflicted kids decides to sue, and sue big (rather than killing themselves), this will continue.
I concede that the desktop is beginning to become cluttered. Not my choice. However, the new fascination with externalizing everything (like the iPaq's modem) in a large case is frustrating.
Your motherboard may come with a built-in modem. Why can't you replace it with a modem made by a different manufacturer? Or the built-in NIC? Or the built-in sound card. Swap that cheapo 16-bit soundcard for something more powerful. If the onboard (insert component here) fails, why do you have to junk the entire motherboard?
If we want to get PC's to be smaller, we need to get something smaller than the PCI or AGP bus. MicroATX, FlexATX and MiniNLX aren't small enough.
What this will do is clutter the desktop (the physical one), which is always the one thing I hated about Macs. The drive was external. The floppy was exteral. The CD was external. The modem was external. You have a dozen things plugged in, and they consume more space, and more power, than they would have had the computer case been a little bit bigger.
Plus, how the hell are you supposed to keep the system quiet when there's a dozen little fans spinning away cooling all those external devices.
If you want to make it modular, make it internally modular. Here's where the modem plugs directly onto the motherboard, and it's this big, with the connectors in exactly this spot. Boom, it snaps on like adding RAM.
Building more into the motherboard is nice, but when built-in components fail, it's more expensive. Modularity = Low Price.
If all this is a beef against device drivers (which I recall MS as claiming was the single biggest source of problems), then have higher device driver standards.
not taken of me.
Try to find, using the Google Directory, pictures of Yellowstone National Park, taken by me. No fair using the search function. (However searching the directory for "pictures of yellowstone and scott purl" will result in two misses, and nothing else.)
Yes, it's "Vanity Web Surfing", but if Google indexes my site, why doesn't it automatically categorize it? (whine whine)
So, yes, Google is pretty derned good. But it's still not a directory, and the directory it does have covers, what, 1% of the web? 0.01%?
Seven of the first ten have nothing to do with automo repair. Two of them are iffy at best. My grading of One right and two half-right out of 10 answers is still an "F".
I'm not asking the moderators to mod this poster up (your own discretion).
However, I do wish to comment that this is a well-reasoned, well-written post. Quite enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Them satellite images cost money, as does bandwidth. And it's adds to the "superpowers" bragging list. India has nukes, a blue water navy, subs, troops, satellites, etc. etc.
The real thing is to get a satellite up into geosynchronous orbit is a heckuva lot harder than to just get one into low orbit. Anyone with money to buy a SCUD missle can get something out of the atmosphere. Factor in the difficulty of space-hardening something that isn't explosive in nature, and is designed to last long enough to make a few bucks....
What the web REALLY needs is a directory. An honest-to-goodness, telephone/yellow pages style directory. This whole nonsense about keyword searching is providing people who just want traffic with a lot of free advertising and listings.
The phone company provides you with one free listing (unlisted is optional), and makes you pay for each extra category (like in the Yellow Pages -- and if you're not from the U.S., please see http://www.bigyellow.com/supertopics for an example) that you want something listed in. Search engines ought to be replaced with something similar.
Yes, I know Yahoo and Dmoz try, but they don't go out and actively index sites, making their use limited, and the number of sites even more limited. If Google were to create a Yahoo/Dmoz style directory, that would help. Better yet, if people were forced to provide either META tags, or some information when they acquired their domain (part of whois?)....
For example, where can I get my oil changed in Paris, France?
I know that sounds backwards, but it's the approach several successful writers, like Piers Anthony, have followed. You get an agent, you present a very short draft of the story, and the agent shops it around. You keep coming up with story drafts until one sells.
The difference here is that pretty soon, everything you write sells, because you're only writing what has been sold. And since the project is still in conception, it can be more easily made marketable, or fixed, or even the rough edges of your inexperience honed better. That's the same as getting VC backing. You shop the idea around, they mold it slightly, you get paid, you produce. If they don't buy it, you keep your other job, and keep thinking. You want the idea, not the labor, to produce the income. Ideas come faster than product.
Sounds really dumb, I know, but TV shows are based upon pilots, movie scripts upon 30 page script summaries, and on and on. You have to get in the door before you can write what you want.
I've got a Microsoft Natural, a Logitech Deluxe 104, a PC-Concepts i-MMT ($10), and a Honeywell 101WN sitting here. The Logitech has the lightest touch of all of them, even compared to the keyboard on my Dell laptop. I actually went to several office stores, and compared keyboards before I found one that I liked. Must confess that I fell in love with the Kinesis keyboard at a UW computer fair years ago, but could never bring myself to spend that much.
You might also consider building forearm strength. It's easy to do, prevents carpal tunnel, reduces arthritis, and you'd have to actually work at it for a couple of years to get Popeye's forearms. I've known several women with incredible grip strength (one rock-climber, one nurse, and one pastry chef), and they all had slender arms. If you want some tips (clean ones, I promise), post back to the forum.
Engineer, eh? Napping during your materials science class? *grin*
Only corrodes in a monoatomic layer, so it never really "rusts" more than an atom or two thick. Dull finish, so it's not as enchanting as stainless steel (many of which still corrode). Might be recycled by someone, but I wouldn't exactly call that an insult. Now, if your stone tombstone were ground up and used for road construction.... Magnesium is in the same category, but, well, a bit tempting to ignite for those who can identify it.
The real problem with tombstones is that they are not acid-resistant. Not a problem a centuries ago, but with the advent of fossil fuels and acid rain, probably quartz would be a good choice. You can make your own by passing large amounts of current through things, and they're experimenting with this now as a way of permanently and intertly dealing with nasty chemicals. Maybe just cast yourself something in glass.
The problem here is that rain is mildly acidic (something like 5.6) even when clean and not polluted.
The solution? You need to become such a person among humanity that society will pick up the bill of maintaining your tombstone forever.
I mean, you're going to be accessing state-owned Mainframes.
What you need is a little password synchronization to simplify things.
First, install the Notes password synch services, which logs you in to Notes if your NT password matches the Notes password.
Next, use Samba to synchronize NT and Unix passwords. Set up Unix so that you're using NIS. Now we're up to 3 systems using the same password. Lotus Notes can be configured to use NT authentication, via IIS, but it's not easy. There's also several third-party products, but we frankly wrote our own.
As for "unified login" products, I've seen and used several, and they all sucked. Most of them just cache your password locally with encryption, then use the Windows APIs with calls to intercept logins, and present your credentials for you. There was no attempt to use the same credentials database on the back end. Think of it as a pluggable authentication module. Every one of your products should use the same authentication on the back end. Each time you eliminate one of those credential databases, you elminate jobs, complexity, software, problems, password-resets, hardware, and you save money.
If you can ditch either NT or Novell (more likely Novell), then you can reduce the number of logins. Most folks I've seen using Novell are using NDS for just basic authentication, and adding only complexity (meaning, they don't get what NDS is for). That, or they're just doing print spooling, which Samba, NT, or a decent LAN card for a printer can all do.
Biometrics, dongles, java buttons, SecureID cards, and all that are interesting, but if you either forgot your little device, or the computer doesn't have a way to read that device, you can't log in. That's why the use of passwords and login names will be the norm for about 15 more years.
Keep in mind most Congressmen pay attention to the voters rougly like this:
1. PACs
2. Rich/Influential Folk (not you or anyone you know)
3. People who write letters by hand (e.g. Old Folks)
4. People who write letters (the rest of us)
Several Congressmen have stated that they flat out ignore emailed messages and Internet petitions. Remember that they are old technology, with old habits. Email is for biznesses and for getting pictures of the grandkids.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /space_gear_13.html
that one's for a phone of some sort
That was pretty good joke about flat panels. If I had mod points, you'd get one from me.
But, yes, I'm drooling over the flat-panels, and once Sony gets some 20"-ers down into my price range ($500), I'm buying two of them.
A keyboard tray is a modern kludge to avoid having a real computer desk.
My old desk was a piece of 4'x8' plywood (A-C), cut down to 4'x6'. I varnished it (7 coats), and added some cheap folding legs. I think $30 for the whole thing, plus some of my time.
The extra depth meant I could rest my entire forearm on the desk when typing, and plenty of room for my 17" Sony monitor. If I pushed the monitor back as far as it would go, it was actually too far away.
They have old "writing" desks, which are only 20" deep. That was fine for a typewriter (when those came along), but now that we have monitors....
I want a PC in the size of a Palm. Hook up a keyboard and some Sony Glasstrons when I want to watch a movie or do some serious coding. Maybe play MP3's on it while I'm flying somewhere, and catch up on my reading while I'm at it. When I land, I'll use the GPS, figure out where I am (cities all begin to look alike at some point), grab a map off the web via the wireless modem, and off I go. Maybe watch the live TV coverage of the earthquake that cut the power that stuck me in this elevator.
Make sure you go for not just 100% of your salary current salary during the non-compete timeline (if you have to), but enough extra to keep your insurance current, payments into your retirement going, and everything else.
take for example, http://www.askjesus.org, which provides a comical steganographic trick on the text of a web site.
Why couldn't I take a stegan'd text from the publisher, run it through my own stegan engine (encrypting their encryption in a very readable format), then freely distribute the result? (aside from being illegal)
Sure, the text might be strange, and if done poorly it'd be like hearing a joke told that you've heard before.
Consider that before people were sneaking into movies, they were sneaking into sporting events and plays. I'll be they had gate crashers even in ancient Rome.
The higher-ups need to take a look at the expense and hassle of an encryption technology, and what losses they reasonably expect if your product were presented in plain ASCII text. Reasonable losses is a concept lost on many MBAs. You base your estimates upon past losses, not upon imagined future losses. For example, one of the software publishing groups takes the number of PCs sold, the number of software titles sold, and since the number of PCs is greater, assumes that their software was installed on all those PCs (and were thus pirated). It never enters their minds that not every PC gets commercial software installed on it, or that PCs break, or that not every software title gets installed on every new PC.
Fifty years ago, how did publishers deal with pirated works? Why won't those same techniques work now? (Don't give me that line about the new economy. People still buy things, and it's still illegal to pirate copyrighted works.) Why put yourself in the position of being the police force, including the added expense and hassle. If you're still making money, then you're OK. Turn the evidence over to the Feds, and let them handle it (and the expense).
An easy way to prevent piracy? Make it cheap to be a member who can access eBooks, and provide the eBooks in a variety of formats (including ASCII). Provide a two year free membership for people who turn in other people that are distributing pirated works. Use tiered pricing, where the average person (who is a light reader), can get a title per month for their $20/year fee. For heavier readers, step the price up gently. For libraries and schools, offer a flat, unlimited download fee (like $500/year) but restrict them to one account and password assigned to someone on staff. Talk to the big porn web sites, and find out how they track and identify logins that are fake, or have been shared amongst several users. I'll bet there's a company out there right now that makes software that does access log profiling -- and it wouldn't be that different than the pattern monitoring that many credit card companies offer for tracking purchases.
I think you can make money at $20/year. There's no printing costs, no distributing, no spoilage, no transportation, and no wasted copies. You can still charge vanity press or estimated low sales authors a fee for "sharing in the risk of publication."
The simple truth is that you can't make your product popular and easy to use if there are any requirements for its use. The simple fact that it must be decoded so that it can be read means that every watermarking, steganographic, or encryption method will fail (and the DVD/HDTV folks are spending a lot of money trying to ignore this). Until you can inject your works directly into the brain of the consumer, I doubt that you can avoid piracy. (And even then, some pirate will likely figure out how to use the consumer's brain as the master copy for duplication.)
Be a farmer. Accept that some of the crop is lost every year, and that you've got to make money on the good part of the crop.
Heck, try my model for a year. If you don't make money, you will at least have a bug-free distribution system.