If you can see it, it's exportable analog. If you can hear it, it's exportable analog.
Microphones can record. Camcorders can record.
Anything that cuts off recording when it senses a DRM "violation" won't be accepted for very long if it's a recording device. Why? Here's WHY.
You record your nephew's singing a song for his Grandfather who's dying so he can hear it. There's a DRMed blip of music that sneaks in because the radio's on and can be heard. That portion of that precious song is LOST because the anti-copy provision cut in.
Do YOU think that something like that would be tolerated for very long?
This is all garbage anyway. We all need to present this picture to everyone in terms they an clearly understand (Like above...) so they can also tell the lawmakers that enough is enough right along with us.
You autograph your work at book signings- like authors have always done for years. That, and if you're good, get to be a Guest of Honor at a convention.
I'll admit, it's a little more difficult to get money that way than it'd be for a musician, but it's doable if done right- and for print, there's ways of accomplishing things in this day and age that make it still profitable for an author. After all, e-books haven't taken off for the very reason that DRM on an e-book is obnoxious (You mean I can't use this e-book on another reader (Part of what killed the eBookman, Rocket, etc...)? Oh, you mean that this e-book's tied to an old credit card number I no longer have; I'll have to re-purchase the thing? Forget it.). Yeah, they sell locked e-books. They don't sell anywhere near as many of those as they do the unlocked ones. And publishers like Baen seem to do just fine with unlocked books, and even more "insane" things like...giving the things away for nothing online and bundled in huge honking collections on CD with select hard-bound books.
DRM is NOT an answer. The old models that the media producers have been pulling their plays out of aren't an answer for this day and age either. The legislation that we're discussing is dead-wrong and not an answer- and shouldn't be done as it's just simply a prop-up for a business model that's been outmoded. In earlier times, they'd have been told by the government to pound sand and come up with a new business model. If we were coming up with Autos in this day and age, they'd probably legislate them out of existence to protect the buggy whip and tack manufacturers' business.
Since it needs to be made into an analog signal, somewhere along the line it needs to be put to a speaker. From there, it can be tapped off the speaker or recorded with a microphone. They won't put DRM in microphones because of the danger factor (already covered numerous times on this site...).
"Plugging the Analog Hole" can't. In order for you to be able to hear/see it, it HAS to go through an analog hole they can't realistically plug.
It's all friggin' stupid and we need to just remove from office all the twits pushing this BS as it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, etc. to be even discussing this as a law in Congress.
Speaking as a software engineer of some 19 years in the industry, I find that your post is silly.
1) MacOS X is actually more secure than Windows. In reality, almost all OSes out there are more secure than Windows (What else is lurking within Windows XP like the WMF design flaw?) right now- just because it was patched recently doesn't make it any less likely to have other nice n' nasty zero day's lurking in it's design and makeup. An OS that doesn't have security as job one when it's designed isn't anywhere near as secure as one that has it that way. That is a fact of life. It's roughly analogous to having a hollow cored door on your front door with no locks whatsoever and then putting a deadbolt on the thing without replacing the door with at least a solid one or a steel bodied one when someone breaks into your house. That is what MS has been doing with Windows and Vista- you can bet your bottom dollar on that one.
2) Profitability doesn't factor into this. This is the same tired old "it's not as popular" argument that keeps getting shot down time and time again. Apache's got MUCH more market share than IIS- most of the worst and prevalent defacings and exploits regarding websites seem to come from...wait for it...IIS. Gee. Which one's more profitable? Apache. Which one's getting attacked more? IIS. Next time, skip that one- it was a never ran.
If this were any other place other than Slashdot, you'd probably not have gotten moderated up as being "insightful" as what you posted was neither accurate (I can pretty much back up the two items with more than anecdotes...) nor was it insightful.
However, there is an answer if you can scare up a 486 or better with 32Mb of RAM, 400Mb of HD, etc.
IPCop will do modem dialouts (manually initiated and on-demand) and provide firewalling, caching, etc. for the same with any hardware and many software Modems out there. In fact, when Verizon fubared my DSL pending my FiOS install, I had to resort to that by popping in a hardware PCI modem (yeah, they DO make 'em) into the box instead of my Red NIC and plugged in my road warrior ISP. While it was dialup (with all the concomittant slowness...), it DID work well with all the setup in the house (incl. my firewalled and VPNed wireless leg...).
Basic configurations will work, esp. with an external modem and are largely no-brainer setups.
However, having said all the above, the original article poster's "friend" wasn't doing him any favors by making very misleading statements like he did. Most of the malware flatly doesn't care if you're not always on and high-speed. It'll zap you even on dialup (Remember Blaster?) and it may zap you in such a way that you can't even get on (Remember Blaster?). If your OS is insecure, it matters little what bandwidth you have- it's still insecure. Just because you're not as useful for a botnet doesn't mean you won't get trojaned or zoomed by a worm/virus all the same. The exploits and their use don't discriminate in a manner like dialup versus broadband- they attempt to zap EVERYONE.
The original poster should just get broadband of some kind- a goodly portion of the Internet has become painful to use because developers are assuming broadband like access and do all kinds of stupid things to their bandwidth and latency from off of their sites.
GE missed their earnings mark for 4Q- I watched as the Dow and to a lesser extent, NASDAQ, went into a short freefall at the time of the financials statement from GE. Nearly everything got pasted in the market yesterday.
Isn't it though? I just wish someone would field it more aggressively than they've been doing it. There's some modes of BPL that don't interfere with longwave communications (Yes, there IS some out there that work amazingly well that don't interfere...) and WiMax that could allow people to have the connectivity that many places in Europe and Asia currently enjoy (At least 10Mbits bidirectional, 100Mbits in some places...)- the current state of affairs here in the states is pathetic and can only be explained by way of extreme greed.
They're charging $70-ish for 400-700kbits average with burst to 2Mbits. That's...tolerable...if you're in an area that isn't going to get Cable, DSL, Fiber, or fixed Wireless anytime soon. But, they pile some extra restrictions on top of it- you can't use it for gameplay, servers, etc.- the service in all cases of the providers is intended to do light-duty web surfing and email reading ONLY. You might be able to avoid being "caught" on a breach of the TOS for a while, but they have better tracking frameworks to see what your useage actually is- and if you're hitting it HEAVY, then you might get the plug pulled on you.
Basically, the providers of data connectivity think there's a goldmine out there and their greed's getting in the way of actually GETTING that gold- and you're going to just have to get the best deal you can manage. It may be that you'll have to step up to a business account- you'll definitely get less sillybuggers out of the ISPs that way. Of course, if they do this stupidity and it flies, you'll just have to scream along with the rest of the business users.
I know I will- and I'll sue the hell out of them if they DO this to me and my stuff. I paid my fair share (business account...) by my subscription to MY data provider, Verizon. Any data from me through their damn network, most of the time, came from a request from one of THEIR subscribers, who allegedly paid for that privilege- if not, it's because I'm contacting a data supplier that's one of THEIR subscribers. If they're not charging enough because of market pressures, perhaps they shouldn't be offering the service or consider it solely as a loss-leader for the rest. You're not guaranteed a business model- ever. If you can't keep it going within the legal means allowed you, it's perhaps time to change to another one or shutter the doors.
Okay... Think that statement through for a moment...
A separate thread sets up code execution that is ran in another thread. And depending on where it is in the rendering process, different abort procs may need to be called...
Okay... WHY do you need different abort procs that are callable on the say-so of a DATA file? The abort process should be the same one for all stages with indicators as to where the GDI (or whatever else you want to use...) is at in the execution of the batch. Had I implemented the process, I'd have allowed the GDI processor call to set a single callback for completion/abort at the call to render that can _only_ be in your own process space with all it's concomittant restrictions- and the escape functionality would have ID tags for what stage it was in. With the spec the way it currently is, you can tell it to GO ANYWHERE in the system memory. Think about that one for a long moment- it's WHY there was a problem with this spec that could be exploited. This isn't a buffer overflow we're talking about here- it's a design misfeature. And you shouldn't be defending it with statements about WHY you use it the way it's implemented- you should be asking yourself and Microsoft WHY they implemented it that way instead of the way I mentioned or a dozen different ways.
Windows -> Boot from Knoppix CD (either access assumes that CD boot is turned on), mount the NTFS volume accordingly. From there you have read-only access unless you use Captive NTFS to mount the volume. But, typically, that one works NICELY so it's almost a no-brainer from there to mangle the system, steal data, etc.
If you've got physical access for any substantive length of time, all bets are off as far as security for pretty much any OS unless the filesystem's encrypted.
You didn't NEED this functionality in the framework to begin with. It's data, combining GDI call scripting in a batch- why do you need to be making arbitrary code calls from within data? If you're doing that sort of thing, shouldn't you be doing that in CODE?
This should have never even been in the WMF specification in the first place.
It was a bad idea then. It's a bad idea now.
What else is in their specs that's a bad idea?
Something like this WMF exploit, or perhaps less problematic but still annoying, like GetTempFileName- where in 16 bits, you used a zero for the main drive and a 1, 2, or so forth for the drive you wanted it to and in 32 bits, it's a string with a canonical path to the place you want the temp file to be generated. Oh, and by the way, zero's what most people used for their 16-bit code and a null (zero on machines of the day...) produced undetermined results from the 32-bit version of the API. Sometimes it'd work, sometimes it wouldn't. To be sure, that sort of problem code wouldn't have gotten out the door. But if they've done that sort of thing with their API's, I wouldn't trust that something never went out with issues due to lurkers in the API's and specs that will come back to bite someone on the ass down the line.
What else is lurking in MS' products that we don't know about? If they didn't design it with security in mind then, what possesses you to think that they can go back after the fact and bolt it on afterwards without causing it's own set of problems? That'd be like using a hollow core door on the entry or exit of a house, and not having a lock or deadbolt on the door- and then putting just a deadbolt on the selfsame door when your house gets entered and people take things from you.
MS just simply needs to work at some solution to the issue of backwards compatibility for their current OS products and start fresh with security in mind when they do things. Anything else is like the door analogy I just gave.
Considering that the net value to people is low and the "payoff" to pirate is high, perhaps, while it's wrong to be infringing the work, the media companies need to re-evaluate their business model so that it becomes almost valueless to be infringing. That's how you stop it. Not by locking excrement of varying qualities into safes- which is what they're largely doing right now.
This is considering that they already have one available to their users if they only add X11 support to the machine and install OpenOffice 2.0 for MacOS- yes, I know, it's not as well supported as the Windows, Linux, or Solaris versions. If they want it a little more robust or fully supporting Aqua, then all they need do is deploy the resources to it like they did with Safari and they'll have a real working, largely interoperable Office suite in no time.
At least with the UK version of the Acadamy, they typically don't vote for nomination on titles they've not seen. Seems that Munich won't get nominated except perhaps by the narrowest margins there. If not, while it's not a "big" deal financially, it's a snub from Hell to Speilberg- and it's not their fault nor his. It's his publishing and distribution group's fault- and worrying about "piracy" taken to great and obnoxious lengths.
Million Dollar Baby didn't get a single one, even though it won tons of Acadamy Awards. Why? The precisely stated reason was that the distributor chose to not send Screener copies to the Bafta members and therefore it wasn't seen by them- not seen equates to NO nominations at least with the UK version of the Acadamy Awards.
It's going to hurt Spielberg very little in the long run, but it's still very annoying to him all the same- and it's over paranoia about "piracy"...
And there'd been nothing wrong with it, so long as they didn't implement the Escape function. But they DID that one- so it became an unsafe beastie. I'd have patched it so that the code could still fucntion, but if it relied on that one unsafe feature, it'd be broken for you. I'm hoping that is what they did. If so, they did the fix right. If not, shame on them.
That it shouldn't have been an Ex Parte re-examination of the Patent.
There's problems with the whole lot- not to mention funny business with possible prior art and all.
An Ex Parte re-exam means that MS gets to stack the deck and no substantive prior art search will be applied to the whole process- because I can assure you that the USPTO won't be bothering with that one as it costs money unless other interested parties perform the work for you.
The choking is because the thumb.db::encryptable would be part of Windows being injected onto the filesystem. Part of the bookkeeping that XP uses on alien filesystems. Deleting it, you deleted part of what XP needs to use the ext2 filesystem on that drive.
WMF is wired into the GDI- it's a GDI playback script is what it really is. This means that printers use it to do the WYSIWYG printing work unless you're using Postscript printing or force the GDI to print to a RAW spool (in which the printer driver renders the print job to the spool as printer commands- which is MUCH more inefficient...).
Just because you don't think you're using it, doesn't mean Microsoft's not using it for you.
They're subject to magnetic drift as well... Longer lifespan, yes, but only measured in years of effective lifespan as thermal variation causes loss of magnetic domains on the media as does all the magnetic fields around and about in our world these days.
It's...difficult...to be making statements about media stability. Mechanical recordings (i.e. Vinyl or Acetate recordings) have an extremely long shelf life compared to most of the other medias- as long as they are properly stored. Unfortunately, until recently, with laser based read heads, to play the media was to degrade it slowly. It's also much more fragile than the CD and bulky- thermal extremes will trash the discs and improper storage will render them unreadable by way of warpage. And, worse, they didn't make 'em for other digital media formats right at the moment.
So, what do you use?
I'd say that you're likely to find that phase change media or Flash storage being the ones that might happen to have the lifespans and data integrity that we're all looking for.
If it were me, I'd use Hard Disks for actively used media that doesn't need portability. For portability, it seems Flash is the way to go- no real apparent risks of degredation over time and it's WAAAY portable. For things that exceed current storage capacities for Flash media, I'd probably use DVD+/-RW media as it's the current best phase-change media format and is liable to be closer to the represented exepected lifespan of the media (>100yrs...). Don't re-write, just burn ONCE to the media. Yes, it's slower and the media is more expensive, but it's higher integrity because of the nature of the media.
...not that a given someone got a submission put up. You know, that's kind of petty, really- it doesn't (and shouldn't matter WHO submitted it, it's a valid story...). What I have a small beef about on story submission is that with all of your claims of format, etc. I've submitted stories in the past that met your apparent criteria that got rejected, only to have the same story approved for some other submitter a day or so later. Now, to be sure, some of the stories in question that I've submitted over time weren't accepted at all- I've little problem with that because you can't post everything. But, the ones I've submitted and got rejected only to have it show up from someone else days later... You can't tell me that they submitted in the queue before me or that the topic all of a sudden became news- days later's not believeable unless your editorial staff's that far behind in the bin. What gives with that CmdrTaco?
Anyhow...
No, you should post the story and have the editorial staff and the mods forcibly mod down stuff that has nothing to do with the story as offtopic. Yes, it's a cesspool, but only to people that're viewing below 1 or 0. In all honesty, it's all you can do, Rob, in light of all the prior choices. They've all been lesser evil choices, but they've all been good ones over time. This needs to have the same class of treatment. It may not be what you're envisioning, but it's your only option now that you've gone down the road you have.
I can attest to this, folks. My experience wasn't with the loss of vision (and it runs in the family, so while it was a surprise to me, it wasn't due to working in front of a computer all the time...) but with only one of the other symptoms. I'd checked into the ER with a blood sugar of 600mg/dl- you run the risk of a coma past 300-400. As the glucose levels dropped, I went suddenly far-sighted. I'm fine now, not needing glasses.
Oh, and one should note: Unless you've got a degenerative condition of the eye, a severe injury of the eye, or are Diabetic, you should probably see an Optometrist first. However, having said this, sudden changes (over 2-4 weeks or less...) is typically a symptom of Type I or II Diabetes hitting you hard. You need to see your primary care provider posthaste if something like that happens to you.
I didn't have any of the classic symptoms save frequent urination (Not even thirst, really...); but once my blood sugars came down from the coma levels (605's a bell-ringer...) that I'd not previously known about before my ER visit, I went suddenly far-sighted. Not enough to be overly problematic, but enough to not be able to see clearly without glasses. Spent about $400 on glasses... Four weeks later, I didn't need them. If it weren't for me starting a new job at the same time I had my nasty surprise, I'd have left it alone. I suspect I'll be needing glasses as the years progress, but it was upsetting when I had had perfect vision prior to that.
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Again, you missed the point.
If you can see it, it's exportable analog.
If you can hear it, it's exportable analog.
Microphones can record.
Camcorders can record.
Anything that cuts off recording when it senses a DRM "violation" won't be accepted for very long if it's a
recording device. Why? Here's WHY.
You record your nephew's singing a song for his Grandfather who's dying so he can hear it.
There's a DRMed blip of music that sneaks in because the radio's on and can be heard.
That portion of that precious song is LOST because the anti-copy provision cut in.
Do YOU think that something like that would be tolerated for very long?
This is all garbage anyway. We all need to present this picture to everyone in terms they
an clearly understand (Like above...) so they can also tell the lawmakers that enough is
enough right along with us.
You autograph your work at book signings- like authors have always done for years. That, and if you're good, get to be a Guest of Honor at a convention.
I'll admit, it's a little more difficult to get money that way than it'd be for a musician, but it's doable if done right- and for print, there's ways of accomplishing things in this day and age that make it still profitable for an author. After all, e-books haven't taken off for the very reason that DRM on an e-book is obnoxious (You mean I can't use this e-book on another reader (Part of what killed the eBookman, Rocket, etc...)? Oh, you mean that this e-book's tied to an old credit card number I no longer have; I'll have to re-purchase the thing? Forget it.). Yeah, they sell locked e-books. They don't sell anywhere near as many of those as they do the unlocked ones. And publishers like Baen seem to do just fine with unlocked books, and even more "insane" things like...giving the things away for nothing online and bundled in huge honking collections on CD with select hard-bound books.
DRM is NOT an answer. The old models that the media producers have been pulling their plays out of aren't an answer for this day and age either. The legislation that we're discussing is dead-wrong and not an answer- and shouldn't be done as it's just simply a prop-up for a business model that's been outmoded. In earlier times, they'd have been told by the government to pound sand and come up with a new business model. If we were coming up with Autos in this day and age, they'd probably legislate them out of existence to protect the buggy whip and tack manufacturers' business.
Since it needs to be made into an analog signal, somewhere along the line it needs to be put to a speaker. From there, it can be tapped off the speaker or recorded with a microphone. They won't put DRM in microphones because of the danger factor (already covered numerous times on this site...).
"Plugging the Analog Hole" can't. In order for you to be able to hear/see it, it HAS to go through an analog hole they can't realistically plug.
It's all friggin' stupid and we need to just remove from office all the twits pushing this BS as it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, etc. to be even discussing this as a law in Congress.
Speaking as a software engineer of some 19 years in the industry, I find that your post is silly.
1) MacOS X is actually more secure than Windows. In reality, almost all OSes out there
are more secure than Windows (What else is lurking within Windows XP like the WMF design
flaw?) right now- just because it was patched recently doesn't make it any less likely to have other
nice n' nasty zero day's lurking in it's design and makeup. An OS that doesn't have security as job
one when it's designed isn't anywhere near as secure as one that has it that way. That is a fact of
life. It's roughly analogous to having a hollow cored door on your front door with no locks whatsoever
and then putting a deadbolt on the thing without replacing the door with at least a solid one or a
steel bodied one when someone breaks into your house. That is what MS has been
doing with Windows and Vista- you can bet your bottom dollar on that one.
2) Profitability doesn't factor into this. This is the same tired old "it's not as popular" argument
that keeps getting shot down time and time again. Apache's got MUCH more market share than IIS-
most of the worst and prevalent defacings and exploits regarding websites seem to come from...wait
for it...IIS. Gee. Which one's more profitable? Apache. Which one's getting attacked more?
IIS. Next time, skip that one- it was a never ran.
If this were any other place other than Slashdot, you'd probably not have gotten moderated up
as being "insightful" as what you posted was neither accurate (I can pretty much back up the
two items with more than anecdotes...) nor was it insightful.
However, there is an answer if you can scare up a 486 or better with 32Mb of RAM, 400Mb of HD, etc.
IPCop will do modem dialouts (manually initiated and on-demand) and provide firewalling, caching, etc. for the same with any hardware and many software Modems out there. In fact, when Verizon fubared my DSL pending my FiOS install, I had to resort to that by popping in a hardware PCI modem (yeah, they DO make 'em) into the box instead of my Red NIC and plugged in my road warrior ISP. While it was dialup (with all the concomittant slowness...), it DID work well with all the setup in the house (incl. my firewalled and VPNed wireless leg...).
Basic configurations will work, esp. with an external modem and are largely no-brainer setups.
However, having said all the above, the original article poster's "friend" wasn't doing him any favors by making very misleading statements like he did. Most of the malware flatly doesn't care if you're not always on and high-speed. It'll zap you even on dialup (Remember Blaster?) and it may zap you in such a way that you can't even get on (Remember Blaster?). If your OS is insecure, it matters little what bandwidth you have- it's still insecure. Just because you're not as useful for a botnet doesn't mean you won't get trojaned or zoomed by a worm/virus all the same. The exploits and their use don't discriminate in a manner like dialup versus broadband- they attempt to zap EVERYONE .
The original poster should just get broadband of some kind- a goodly portion of the Internet has become painful to use because developers are assuming broadband like access and do all kinds of stupid things to their bandwidth and latency from off of their sites.
GE missed their earnings mark for 4Q- I watched as the Dow and to a lesser extent, NASDAQ, went into a short freefall at the time of the financials statement from GE. Nearly everything got pasted in the market yesterday.
Isn't it though? I just wish someone would field it more aggressively
than they've been doing it. There's some modes of BPL that don't interfere
with longwave communications (Yes, there IS some out there that work amazingly
well that don't interfere...) and WiMax that could allow people to have
the connectivity that many places in Europe and Asia currently enjoy
(At least 10Mbits bidirectional, 100Mbits in some places...)- the current state
of affairs here in the states is pathetic and can only
be explained by way of extreme greed.
They're charging $70-ish for 400-700kbits average with burst to 2Mbits. That's...tolerable...if you're in an area that isn't going to get Cable, DSL, Fiber, or fixed Wireless anytime soon. But, they pile some extra restrictions on top of it- you can't use it for gameplay, servers, etc.- the service in all cases of the providers is intended to do light-duty web surfing and email reading ONLY . You might be able to avoid being "caught" on a breach of the TOS for a while, but they have better tracking frameworks to see what your useage actually is- and if you're hitting it HEAVY, then you might get the plug pulled on you.
Basically, the providers of data connectivity think there's a goldmine out there and their greed's getting in the way of actually GETTING that gold- and you're going to just have to get the best deal you can manage. It may be that you'll have to step up to a business account- you'll definitely get less sillybuggers out of the ISPs that way. Of course, if they do this stupidity and it flies, you'll just have to scream along with the rest of the business users.
I know I will- and I'll sue the hell out of them if they DO this to me and my stuff. I paid my fair share (business account...) by my subscription to MY data provider, Verizon. Any data from me through their damn network, most of the time, came from a request from one of THEIR subscribers, who allegedly paid for that privilege- if not, it's because I'm contacting a data supplier that's one of THEIR subscribers. If they're not charging enough because of market pressures, perhaps they shouldn't be offering the service or consider it solely as a loss-leader for the rest. You're not guaranteed a business model- ever. If you can't keep it going within the legal means allowed you, it's perhaps time to change to another one or shutter the doors.
Okay... Think that statement through for a moment...
A separate thread sets up code execution that is ran in another thread. And depending on where it is in the rendering process, different abort procs may need to be called...
Okay... WHY do you need different abort procs that are callable on the say-so of a DATA file? The abort process should be the same one for all stages with indicators as to where the GDI (or whatever else you want to use...) is at in the execution of the batch. Had I implemented the process, I'd have allowed the GDI processor call to set a single callback for completion/abort at the call to render that can _only_ be in your own process space with all it's concomittant restrictions- and the escape functionality would have ID tags for what stage it was in. With the spec the way it currently is, you can tell it to GO ANYWHERE in the system memory. Think about that one for a long moment- it's WHY there was a problem with this spec that could be exploited. This isn't a buffer overflow we're talking about here- it's a design misfeature. And you shouldn't be defending it with statements about WHY you use it the way it's implemented- you should be asking yourself and Microsoft WHY they implemented it that way instead of the way I mentioned or a dozen different ways.
Would be:
Windows -> Boot from Knoppix CD (either access assumes that CD boot is turned on), mount the NTFS volume accordingly. From there you have read-only access unless you use Captive NTFS to mount the volume. But, typically, that one works NICELY so it's almost a no-brainer from there to mangle the system, steal data, etc.
If you've got physical access for any substantive length of time, all bets are off as far as security for pretty much any OS unless the filesystem's encrypted.
You didn't NEED this functionality in the framework to begin with. It's data, combining GDI call scripting in a batch- why do you need to be making arbitrary code calls from within data? If you're doing that sort of thing, shouldn't you be doing that in CODE?
This should have never even been in the WMF specification in the first place .
It was a bad idea then.
It's a bad idea now.
What else is in their specs that's a bad idea?
Something like this WMF exploit, or perhaps less problematic but still annoying,
like GetTempFileName- where in 16 bits, you used a zero for the main drive and
a 1, 2, or so forth for the drive you wanted it to and in 32 bits, it's a string
with a canonical path to the place you want the temp file to be generated. Oh,
and by the way, zero's what most people used for their 16-bit code and a null
(zero on machines of the day...) produced undetermined results from the 32-bit
version of the API. Sometimes it'd work, sometimes it wouldn't. To be sure,
that sort of problem code wouldn't have gotten out the door. But if they've done
that sort of thing with their API's, I wouldn't trust that something never went
out with issues due to lurkers in the API's and specs that will come back to
bite someone on the ass down the line.
What else is lurking in MS' products that we don't know about? If they didn't design
it with security in mind then, what possesses you to think that they can go back
after the fact and bolt it on afterwards without causing it's own set of problems?
That'd be like using a hollow core door on the entry or exit of a house, and
not having a lock or deadbolt on the door- and then putting just a deadbolt on the
selfsame door when your house gets entered and people take things from you.
MS just simply needs to work at some solution to the issue of backwards compatibility
for their current OS products and start fresh with security in mind when they
do things. Anything else is like the door analogy I just gave.
Considering that the net value to people is low and the "payoff" to pirate is high, perhaps, while it's wrong to be infringing the work, the media companies need to re-evaluate their business model so that it becomes almost valueless to be infringing. That's how you stop it. Not by locking excrement of varying qualities into safes- which is what they're largely doing right now.
Not at all. In fact, I think it says something (and a very important something, at that...) if you're using it. Be my guest.
This is considering that they already have one available to their users if they only add X11 support to the machine and install OpenOffice 2.0 for MacOS- yes, I know, it's not as well supported as the Windows, Linux, or Solaris versions. If they want it a little more robust or fully supporting Aqua, then all they need do is deploy the resources to it like they did with Safari and they'll have a real working, largely interoperable Office suite in no time.
At least with the UK version of the Acadamy, they typically don't vote for nomination on titles they've not seen. Seems that Munich won't get nominated except perhaps by the narrowest margins there. If not, while it's not a "big" deal financially, it's a snub from Hell to Speilberg- and it's not their fault nor his. It's his publishing and distribution group's fault- and worrying about "piracy" taken to great and obnoxious lengths.
Million Dollar Baby didn't get a single one, even though it won tons of Acadamy Awards. Why? The precisely stated reason was that the distributor chose to not send Screener copies to the Bafta members and therefore it wasn't seen by them- not seen equates to NO nominations at least with the UK version of the Acadamy Awards.
It's going to hurt Spielberg very little in the long run, but it's still very annoying to him all the same- and it's over paranoia about "piracy"...
And there'd been nothing wrong with it, so long as they didn't implement the Escape function. But they DID that one- so it became an unsafe beastie. I'd have patched it so that the code could still fucntion, but if it relied on that one unsafe feature, it'd be broken for you. I'm hoping that is what they did. If so, they did the fix right. If not, shame on them.
That it shouldn't have been an Ex Parte re-examination of the Patent.
There's problems with the whole lot- not to mention funny business with possible prior art and all.
An Ex Parte re-exam means that MS gets to stack the deck and no substantive prior art search will be applied to the whole process- because I can assure you that the USPTO won't be bothering with that one as it costs money unless
other interested parties perform the work for you.
The choking is because the thumb.db::encryptable would be part of Windows being injected onto the filesystem. Part of the bookkeeping that XP uses on alien filesystems. Deleting it, you deleted part of what XP needs to use the ext2 filesystem on that drive.
WMF is wired into the GDI- it's a GDI playback script is what it really is. This means that printers use it to do the WYSIWYG printing work unless you're using Postscript printing or force the GDI to print to a RAW spool (in which the printer driver renders the print job to the spool as printer commands- which is MUCH more inefficient...).
Just because you don't think you're using it, doesn't mean Microsoft's not using it for you.
They're subject to magnetic drift as well... Longer lifespan, yes, but only measured in years of effective lifespan as thermal variation causes loss of magnetic domains on the media as does all the magnetic fields around and about in our world these days.
It's...difficult...to be making statements about media stability. Mechanical recordings (i.e. Vinyl or Acetate recordings) have an extremely long shelf life compared to most of the other medias- as long as they are properly stored. Unfortunately, until recently, with laser based read heads, to play the media was to degrade it slowly. It's also much more fragile than the CD and bulky- thermal extremes will trash the discs and improper storage will render them unreadable by way of warpage. And, worse, they didn't make 'em for other digital media formats right at the moment.
So, what do you use?
I'd say that you're likely to find that phase change media or Flash storage being the ones that might happen to have the lifespans and data integrity that we're all looking for.
If it were me, I'd use Hard Disks for actively used media that doesn't need portability. For portability, it seems Flash is the way to go- no real apparent risks of degredation over time and it's WAAAY portable. For things that exceed current storage capacities for Flash media, I'd probably use DVD+/-RW media as it's the current best phase-change media format and is liable to be closer to the represented exepected lifespan of the media (>100yrs...). Don't re-write, just burn ONCE to the media. Yes, it's slower and the media is more expensive, but it's higher integrity because of the nature of the media.
...not that a given someone got a submission put up. You know, that's kind of petty, really- it doesn't (and shouldn't matter WHO submitted it, it's a valid story...). What I have a small beef about on story submission is that with all of your claims of format, etc. I've submitted stories in the past that met your apparent criteria that got rejected, only to have the same story approved for some other submitter a day or so later . Now, to be sure, some of the stories in question that I've submitted over time weren't accepted at all- I've little problem with that because you can't post everything. But, the ones I've submitted and got rejected only to have it show up from someone else days later... You can't tell me that they submitted in the queue before me or that the topic all of a sudden became news- days later's not believeable unless your editorial staff's that far behind in the bin. What gives with that CmdrTaco?
Anyhow...
No, you should post the story and have the editorial staff and the mods forcibly mod down stuff that has nothing to do with the story as offtopic. Yes, it's a cesspool, but only to people that're viewing below 1 or 0. In all honesty, it's all you can do, Rob, in light of all the prior choices. They've all been lesser evil choices, but they've all been good ones over time. This needs to have the same class of treatment. It may not be what you're envisioning, but it's your only option now that you've gone down the road you have.
...had a physical in a while.
I can attest to this, folks. My experience wasn't with the loss of vision (and it runs in the family, so while it was a surprise to me, it wasn't due to working in front of a computer all the time...) but with only one of the other symptoms. I'd checked into the ER with a blood sugar of 600mg/dl- you run the risk of a coma past 300-400. As the glucose levels dropped, I went suddenly far-sighted. I'm fine now, not needing glasses.
If you show any of the symptoms- and I do mean any of them, you may want to get in for a physical immediately.
He probably did...
Oh, and one should note: Unless you've got a degenerative condition of the eye, a severe injury of the eye, or are Diabetic, you should probably see an Optometrist first. However, having said this, sudden changes (over 2-4 weeks or less...) is typically a symptom of Type I or II Diabetes hitting you hard . You need to see your primary care provider posthaste if something like that happens to you.
I didn't have any of the classic symptoms save frequent urination (Not even thirst, really...); but once my blood sugars came down from the coma levels (605's a bell-ringer...) that I'd not previously known about before my ER visit, I went suddenly far-sighted. Not enough to be overly problematic, but enough to not be able to see clearly without glasses. Spent about $400 on glasses... Four weeks later, I didn't need them. If it weren't for me starting a new job at the same time I had my nasty surprise, I'd have left it alone. I suspect I'll be needing glasses as the years progress, but it was upsetting when I had had perfect vision prior to that.