Whatever encryption support Transmeta is planning
to include will have to be in CMS (which is
firmware) until they can add hardware support to
the design, which would probably take about
a year before they'd have anything in silicon.
Y'see, the Crusoe isn't just a drop-in replacement
for the processor. No! It's a whole subsystem,
capable of including the functionality of several
peripheral chips as their most recently announced
product does. Why not crypto too? It's better
than having another chip sapping battery power.
So what Transmeta's announcement amounts
to is, "Our processor will be able to do that
crypto stuff (DRM or not) without adding
another chip to your design." That's all.
-Rick
Is "Content Ownership" Backed by Law?
on
Real DRM
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Did anyone else notice how in the very beginning
of the PDF describing this "Digital Rights
Management" product they take for granted that
there can be such a thing as a "content owner"?
A DRM is supposed to manage copy-rights.
Precedent has established that those rights (to copy the stuff) can be owned,
but not the content itself.
That's why we have fair use; because when you buy
a copy of a book, CD, or video, you own
that copy. You can enjoy it as many times as you
wish. You can lend it to whomever you wish, as
many times as you wish, as long as you don't ask
for money in return. You can sell it too, if you
delete or destroy any fair-use copies you may
have... because you own it.
Is this idea of "content ownership" a DMCA thing?
I'd like to see them explain to us why we should
not be allowed to loan out our favorite music CD
or play a recorded Simpsons episode during a
party.
And how does "content ownership" apply to
broadcast media like TV and radio, whose audience
doesn't pay and isn't accountable to the
broadcaster in any way? I expect these DRM
supporters will be trying to plug that hole
real soon now.
You're saying it's legal for police to take a
blood sample from a bandaid in my garbage, just
because it's set out on the street,
...even while at the same the Privacy Act makes
it illegal for them to record what I say on my
cheap cordless phone, broadcasting to the whole
block. According to the law, they're not even
allowed to try to listen.
Well, does that make any sense? They can't
listen to my "private" conversations but they
can take tissue samples any time they want??
Now I know most comments on this article are
talking about the legality of taking someone's
garbage... but the real issue here is deeper.
The article (which was kindly copied by a decent
slashdotter) said that the police not only took
a fellow officer's garbage without her
permission...
they went further against the privacy
of her body itself by using a bloody tampon as
a drug test sample which led to her
dismissal!
Folks, this is not a case of stolen "property".
This is an involuntary medical examination; an
invasion of privacy to the highest degree.
I don't see how what a blogger posts could be any different from a person who posts a web-page discussing their personal beliefs or opinions. [...]
Exactly so! These "surprising" ramifications of posting derogatory or revealing comments about people have been appearing in courts ever since Netscape became popular. There is no difference for legal purposes between a blog and a hand-written web page. The difference is what you say.
It may only be that the whole purpose of a blog is to enter day-to-day personal details that runs them into this trouble more often than static pages of whatever a person's hobby interest happens to be. My flute-making pages (plug-plug-plug) aren't likely to get me into any trouble, but don't read my Slashdot journal!
What happened to you today? You probably went to work, had private conversations, and if you're lucky you got a little nookie too. Now since you didn't likely get the written consent of other participants to publish the procedings of your encounters, most countries' understanding of "privacy" would put you at legal risk if you do publish.
He never filed for any kind of trademark to protect the name for his product type, but that's not all...
He used to run an auto parts store before he got into computers. "Nissan Auto Parts". Handy, huh? Having the name "Nissan" and selling parts for import cars? His original complaints claimed that he was using the name before the Japanese corporation, but that was a lie.
Despite my dislike for multinational corporations in general, I think that the Nissan corporation has a legitimate case against this guy. He has a provable history of riding on the coattails of their name.
It does raise the issue though, that there's a descrepancy between Trademark law and the Domain Naming System. I think that if a company wants to claim "ownership" of a trademark, then they should reflect the Trademark's artificial namespace in their DNS name. Nissan Motors should get "nissan-automotive.com" or something like that and Mr. Nissan should get "nissan-computers.com". Then maybe Nissan Motors could make a case against Mr. Nissan based on the likelihood of which "Nissan" people all over the world would be looking for if they just typed in "nissan.com".
Archimedes wrote that he had done something similar to this.
After having several of his discoveries published by unscrupulous collegues as their own, he began introducing flaws and leaving out the proofs when discussing his ideas. On one occasion, he passed off something completely false for one such plagiarist to filch.
FYI, PDF is an open document format. Adobe released it a while back. Anyone can create or view PDFs without licensing or purchasing anything from Adobe.
Look closely at Appendix E of the PDF Reference Do you see the requirement to register all plug-in names with Adobe? Do they publish those anywhere?
And how did Adobe treat Dmitri Skylarov when he "opened" one of their PDF-compatible formats for them?
Or perhaps you'd like to become the first person to publicly document the PDF format's default encryption filter? Although the Reference encourages the use of it's first optional filter (an RSA-developed and patented algorithm), the default remains part of the spec, undocumented.
Does this seem "open" to you?
The goal of Adobe's PDF format has little to do with facilitating the open exchange of information and more to do with promoting the brand name of Adobe Systems Inc.
I know several people who described identical
experiences buying DVDs in China.
It seemed too good to be true, near-cost prices
and titles which had sometimes only been rumored
to be in production. The labels
looked authentic at first glance but often
contained spelling errors... possibly composed
of images gleaned from promotional material.
The movie inside was not at all the one
which was advertised. Usually it was an old
movie with a similar theme.
just don't be shocked if you see some beer cans sitting around
[at a home construction site]
Beer cans would be pretty tame.
For those who are thinking about building, here's a clue: have one of those outdoor public toilets placed on the site, at least until the indoor commodes are working. That way the subcontractors won't be so likely to use your basement sump.
No, bridges are not "open" in the sense that you seem to think they are. Looking at a bridge will give you a similar level of understanding of the engineering behind it as you'd get from a block of object code.
What kinds of steel were the supports and cables made of? What was the mix of the paving materials and how thick are their layers? Did the contractors skimp on the re-bar? How deep were the foundations sunk?
Just try to get this information about any big public bridge. They'll say, "We can't tell you for security reasons."...just like certain software vendors we know.
Your customer wants to see the source code but
you don't want them to run off with it like it's
free, eh?
That's how UNIX(tm) has been licensed for years.
You used to buy a license for just the binary
run-time stuff, or else a license which
also gave you the source code. You needed the
source code if you were going to do driver
development, for example.
Just because you let your customer see the source
doesn't mean your project is "Open Source". Yours
most certainly is not.
As for your "maintenance contract", well, my
guess is that your customer doesn't want to get
stuck with no options if your company goes under.
And let's face it... if you're claiming to be
a software developer but you're this
unclear on what "Open Source" is, they've probably
got good reason to doubt your company's viability.
VMWare isn't a solution to the problem the fellow
was asking about.
If you run Windows under VMWare, you
still have to pay for Windows.
The poster seemed to be asking how he could move
his kids completely over to Linux so he wouldn't
have to pay for it, which (unfortunately) isn't
likely to work for him.
I think he might as well re-install the old
Win98 that he had. That would get his games
working again and still be able to browse all
those MS-crippled web sites. He can do his
"office" stuff under Linux.
What I don't get, is why he bought WinXP in the
first place! Everything seemed to be
working fine under Win98, so why pay to break it?
Well then, that's the ticket! Keep a Win98
partition for games and MS-specific web sites,
and install a nice Linux distro for everything
else. The free "office" tools are pretty good,
except for the lack of a decent MSProject clone.
Just having a copy of the latest MS
OS doesn't obligate you to use it. Stash that
WinXP CD-ROM away for later, when MS stops
supporting Win98.
I still have a Win98 partition because
it's compatible with the older games, updates
keep it compatible with the latest web media
formats, and it plays DVDs better than Win2k.
I can't think of any reason why I
would want to buy WinNT/2k/XP while I already
have Win98.
Katz was an excellent promotor and had good
networking skills.
You must mean Hildegard Katz,
Phil's mom, who was the VP of PKWare.
There used to be a photo on the wall of PKWare's
boardroom that said volumes... It showed a
beautifully done show-booth at some convention,
with Phil buried in a laptop on a small podium
completely ignoring all the convention-goers
milling around him.
If anyone promoted and networked for PKWare,
it probably wasn't Phil.
"First, we take an ordinary transit system, then
we immerse it in deadly vacuum! It may be safer!"
These tubes are at least as dangerous as
ordinary mass transit because they're moving
people at high speed inside heavy machinery.
Then there's all these fun differences to keep in
mind:
With so few people per car, they'd have to
have quadruple the usual number of security
personnel, maybe more (and they'd be taking up
a significantly larger percentage of salable seats).
What if your car/capsule springs a leak?
Not only will it suffocate you, but it'll screw
up the whole line.
Say your car gets stuck. How long will your
air last? How will they get you out? Do you think
they'd bother putting emergency food or a toilet
in a six-person car?
One big crack, and ALL the
cars on the line will be shoved with about 56
tons of atmostpheric pressure until they
ram into the airlock!
It may be time to develop more of the qualities
that the Internet Protocol was supposed to
make possible:
Routing around network faults
Network traffic load sharing
Distributed network management
It's time, I think, that radially managed
services (like DNS) should be replaced with more
P2P-like services where everyone talks to their
network neighbors and where there is no "root"
server nor critical list of top-tier servers.
Every node should be capable of participating in
the same ways; searching, routing, serving...
Okay, so it may not be as "set in stone" as the
URLs we've grown used to... but does anyone reading
this remember when URLs didn't appear in SuperBowl
ads? It wasn't so bad, y'know.
-Rick
Worse than stereographic, at the same bandwidth
on
3D TV For The Masses?
·
· Score: 1
takes existing 2D film and creates a
"depth map" for each frame
A depth-map isn't good enough for real 3D.
When something is close, one eye sees things
behind it which the other eye
can't see. That's how stereographic 3D images
work, and that's how your brain needs the data
presented. Because of this, any manufactured
depth perception based only on a depth-map will
necessarily be a poor trade-off between depth and
quality.
The processing which would be required
to present this "depth" data in a viewable form
would be considerable as well.
Since a depth-map is going to require just as
many pixels (perhaps with a lesser bit-depth) as a
full image, why not just transmet full stereoscopic
images instead? They'd require only slightly more
bandwidth and almost no additional processing,
and they'd result in a real
3D image.
The password for the database has
been found, it was as simple as 'ladepujd',
the name of the database's creator spelt
backwards
So it took them what, maybe an hour to figure
this out? but the plea has been circulating for
several days...
It's been true since I can remember:
the larger
the audience from which you beg a clue, the sooner
you'll find it yourself, and the dumber you'll
look because of it!
How much ya wanna bet the folks who panicked
wish they had just asked one or two buddies
to help them out?:-D
If your shop has you anxious about the benefits of upgrading a mere sixty, 400MHz machines, then seriously dude... it's time to bail!
Okay, let's look...
State of the art is nearing 2GHz.
Any machine at $1k is considered "cheap". You can hardly even find a "computer" for that price at Fry's, they call that sort of box a "game system" now.
You probably make an hourly wage which makes spending time quibbling over a few hundred dollars a losing game.
If your supervisors (yeah, you probably have more than one boss, right?) are pushing you to consider this, then it's plainly time for you to bail out and find a Real Job.
Slashdot Mirror
Y'see, the Crusoe isn't just a drop-in replacement for the processor. No! It's a whole subsystem, capable of including the functionality of several peripheral chips as their most recently announced product does. Why not crypto too? It's better than having another chip sapping battery power.
So what Transmeta's announcement amounts to is, "Our processor will be able to do that crypto stuff (DRM or not) without adding another chip to your design." That's all.
-Rick
A DRM is supposed to manage copy-rights. Precedent has established that those rights (to copy the stuff) can be owned, but not the content itself.
That's why we have fair use; because when you buy a copy of a book, CD, or video, you own that copy. You can enjoy it as many times as you wish. You can lend it to whomever you wish, as many times as you wish, as long as you don't ask for money in return. You can sell it too, if you delete or destroy any fair-use copies you may have... because you own it.
Is this idea of "content ownership" a DMCA thing?
I'd like to see them explain to us why we should not be allowed to loan out our favorite music CD or play a recorded Simpsons episode during a party.
And how does "content ownership" apply to broadcast media like TV and radio, whose audience doesn't pay and isn't accountable to the broadcaster in any way? I expect these DRM supporters will be trying to plug that hole real soon now.
-Rick
You're saying it's legal for police to take a blood sample from a bandaid in my garbage, just because it's set out on the street,
Well, does that make any sense? They can't listen to my "private" conversations but they can take tissue samples any time they want??
The article (which was kindly copied by a decent slashdotter) said that the police not only took a fellow officer's garbage without her permission... they went further against the privacy of her body itself by using a bloody tampon as a drug test sample which led to her dismissal!
Folks, this is not a case of stolen "property". This is an involuntary medical examination; an invasion of privacy to the highest degree.
Exactly so! These "surprising" ramifications of posting derogatory or revealing comments about people have been appearing in courts ever since Netscape became popular. There is no difference for legal purposes between a blog and a hand-written web page. The difference is what you say.
It may only be that the whole purpose of a blog is to enter day-to-day personal details that runs them into this trouble more often than static pages of whatever a person's hobby interest happens to be. My flute-making pages (plug-plug-plug) aren't likely to get me into any trouble, but don't read my Slashdot journal!
What happened to you today? You probably went to work, had private conversations, and if you're lucky you got a little nookie too. Now since you didn't likely get the written consent of other participants to publish the procedings of your encounters, most countries' understanding of "privacy" would put you at legal risk if you do publish.
-Rick
He used to run an auto parts store before he got into computers. "Nissan Auto Parts". Handy, huh? Having the name "Nissan" and selling parts for import cars? His original complaints claimed that he was using the name before the Japanese corporation, but that was a lie.
Despite my dislike for multinational corporations in general, I think that the Nissan corporation has a legitimate case against this guy. He has a provable history of riding on the coattails of their name.
It does raise the issue though, that there's a descrepancy between Trademark law and the Domain Naming System. I think that if a company wants to claim "ownership" of a trademark, then they should reflect the Trademark's artificial namespace in their DNS name. Nissan Motors should get "nissan-automotive.com" or something like that and Mr. Nissan should get "nissan-computers.com". Then maybe Nissan Motors could make a case against Mr. Nissan based on the likelihood of which "Nissan" people all over the world would be looking for if they just typed in "nissan.com".
Guess who'd win?
-Rick
After having several of his discoveries published by unscrupulous collegues as their own, he began introducing flaws and leaving out the proofs when discussing his ideas. On one occasion, he passed off something completely false for one such plagiarist to filch.
-Rick
Go to http://www.fcc.gov/ and look at their documentation page. It's all MSWord and PDF files listed.
-Rick
Look closely at Appendix E of the PDF Reference Do you see the requirement to register all plug-in names with Adobe? Do they publish those anywhere?
And how did Adobe treat Dmitri Skylarov when he "opened" one of their PDF-compatible formats for them?
Or perhaps you'd like to become the first person to publicly document the PDF format's default encryption filter? Although the Reference encourages the use of it's first optional filter (an RSA-developed and patented algorithm), the default remains part of the spec, undocumented.
Does this seem "open" to you?
The goal of Adobe's PDF format has little to do with facilitating the open exchange of information and more to do with promoting the brand name of Adobe Systems Inc.
-Rick
Is there any reason they should be using proprietary formats for plain text?
Is there any reason that everyone reading this Slashdot article couldn't take a few minutes to send a complaint to one or more of their commissioners?
-Rick
I know several people who described identical experiences buying DVDs in China. It seemed too good to be true, near-cost prices and titles which had sometimes only been rumored to be in production. The labels looked authentic at first glance but often contained spelling errors... possibly composed of images gleaned from promotional material.
The movie inside was not at all the one which was advertised. Usually it was an old movie with a similar theme.
-Rick
Interesting...
Beer cans would be pretty tame.
For those who are thinking about building, here's a clue: have one of those outdoor public toilets placed on the site, at least until the indoor commodes are working. That way the subcontractors won't be so likely to use your basement sump.
-Rick
What kinds of steel were the supports and cables made of? What was the mix of the paving materials and how thick are their layers? Did the contractors skimp on the re-bar? How deep were the foundations sunk?
Just try to get this information about any big public bridge. They'll say, "We can't tell you for security reasons." ...just like certain software vendors we know.
-Rick
That's how UNIX(tm) has been licensed for years.
You used to buy a license for just the binary run-time stuff, or else a license which also gave you the source code. You needed the source code if you were going to do driver development, for example.
Just because you let your customer see the source doesn't mean your project is "Open Source". Yours most certainly is not.
As for your "maintenance contract", well, my guess is that your customer doesn't want to get stuck with no options if your company goes under. And let's face it... if you're claiming to be a software developer but you're this unclear on what "Open Source" is, they've probably got good reason to doubt your company's viability.
-Rick
I think he might as well re-install the old Win98 that he had. That would get his games working again and still be able to browse all those MS-crippled web sites. He can do his "office" stuff under Linux.
What I don't get, is why he bought WinXP in the first place! Everything seemed to be working fine under Win98, so why pay to break it?
Well then, that's the ticket! Keep a Win98 partition for games and MS-specific web sites, and install a nice Linux distro for everything else. The free "office" tools are pretty good, except for the lack of a decent MSProject clone.
Just having a copy of the latest MS OS doesn't obligate you to use it. Stash that WinXP CD-ROM away for later, when MS stops supporting Win98.
I still have a Win98 partition because it's compatible with the older games, updates keep it compatible with the latest web media formats, and it plays DVDs better than Win2k. I can't think of any reason why I would want to buy WinNT/2k/XP while I already have Win98.
-Rick
You must mean Hildegard Katz, Phil's mom, who was the VP of PKWare.
There used to be a photo on the wall of PKWare's boardroom that said volumes... It showed a beautifully done show-booth at some convention, with Phil buried in a laptop on a small podium completely ignoring all the convention-goers milling around him.
If anyone promoted and networked for PKWare, it probably wasn't Phil.
These tubes are at least as dangerous as ordinary mass transit because they're moving people at high speed inside heavy machinery.
Then there's all these fun differences to keep in mind:
Safer? Sheesh.
It's time, I think, that radially managed services (like DNS) should be replaced with more P2P-like services where everyone talks to their network neighbors and where there is no "root" server nor critical list of top-tier servers.
Every node should be capable of participating in the same ways; searching, routing, serving...
Okay, so it may not be as "set in stone" as the URLs we've grown used to... but does anyone reading this remember when URLs didn't appear in SuperBowl ads? It wasn't so bad, y'know.
-Rick
A depth-map isn't good enough for real 3D. When something is close, one eye sees things behind it which the other eye can't see. That's how stereographic 3D images work, and that's how your brain needs the data presented. Because of this, any manufactured depth perception based only on a depth-map will necessarily be a poor trade-off between depth and quality.
The processing which would be required to present this "depth" data in a viewable form would be considerable as well.
Since a depth-map is going to require just as many pixels (perhaps with a lesser bit-depth) as a full image, why not just transmet full stereoscopic images instead? They'd require only slightly more bandwidth and almost no additional processing, and they'd result in a real 3D image.
So it took them what, maybe an hour to figure this out? but the plea has been circulating for several days...
It's been true since I can remember: the larger the audience from which you beg a clue, the sooner you'll find it yourself, and the dumber you'll look because of it!
How much ya wanna bet the folks who panicked wish they had just asked one or two buddies to help them out? :-D
Ironically, one of the best materials for protecting astronauts from cosmic radiation would be water.
Okay, let's look...
You probably make an hourly wage which makes spending time quibbling over a few hundred dollars a losing game.
If your supervisors (yeah, you probably have more than one boss, right?) are pushing you to consider this, then it's plainly time for you to bail out and find a Real Job.