The problem, as the article seems to say, is that the people who developed the standard left the crypto people out of the process. That seems to me to have been a pretty stupid decision.
As an aside, taking a cab through New York with an iPaq and a Wavelan card, it's pretty amazing how many 802.11 LANs you'll pick up (I counted 6 in 40 blocks). I assume I was only getting the unencrypted ones, but if it is really easy to crack the WEP protected ones, this standard is probably going to disappear fast from business use. Or something.
What's it like in the USA ? Are AirPorts really popping up in every Starbucks ?
Actually, Starbucks is unrolling some sort of plan just like that. It's not available yet, and when it is it'll probably have a bunch of restrictions on it. But that's about the shape of it.
Of course since Microsoft doesn't make sound cards, top priority really isn't all that important, is it?
Don't be obtuse. Microsoft has close working relationships with several soundcard vendors. They currently go out of their way to provide advantages to these companies; for instance, giving them early access to new APIs and code. Extend this a little and it's pretty friggin' obvious that these companies would get some sort of priority in this system. Take at least a second to think about it and you'd realize that companies who were not sympathetic to the MS DRM mission, or who were not strategically as valuable to MS, would probably not fare as well. And do you really think it's out of the question that MS might someday buy a soundcard manufacturer? It's not exactly unheard of.
I read the article. Wardell also says that he believes Apple may be stepping over the line with this action. That's the gist of most posters' complaints. The "apple has rights" quote you mentioned sounded like a blatant appeasment effort made by a small company trying not to get trampled on by a larger company with a big legal department.
Of course Apple has rights-- the question is, do they have the right to own every interface that uses the same screen colors as theirs? Put that in front of a court and I don't think they (Apple) would make out very well. But who needs courts when you can threaten a company with endless expensive litigation? Those tactics are ugly and unfair, and-- excepting the unlikely possibility of legal reform-- the only check on Apple's activity is customers like us voicing their displeasure.
I don't feel great about this, but only because I'm asking myself what happened to the Internet where users used to care, not mindlessly destroy each other's networks...
It got taken over by the likes of ICANN.
Hmm, maybe that's another good argument against this.
I would tend to think this is a pretty narrow patent.
Ummmm... with the exception of the phrase "wireless communication device", this claim describes everything from the first releases of NCSA Mosaic onward. I'll assume your post was a joke.
Patents cost a decent amount of money to prepare, file and defend. They're prepared by lawyers, and not just your garden-variety lawyers, but IP-law specialists. I've heard that a large corporation spends around $20,000 per patent. This may be high, and of course it includes a certain amount of research to insure that there's no prior art-- I suppose you could just skip that, seems like everyone else does.
It's a great idea, but how do you get people to adopt it? It should be designed to handle RPMs, and distributed as a replacement for the rpm utility. Better yet, rpm could just be extended to do this sort of thing.
There is a real Trademark, and it is quite reasonable.
I think the issue is that Trademarks are not supposed to be granted for commonly used english phrases (and ostensibly, commonly used symbols.) This case shows that either the Trademark office was asleep at the switch, or they clearly don't go online very much. Either one is sort of disturbing.
this is a great PR thing for them with the general hacker/computer interested people community.
The cost is very much the point. Hackers can take this one of two ways-- they can take their newfound respect for DirectTV and leave them alone, or they can get really interested and launch a full-scale attack on the technology. At some point this gets expensive for DirectTV.
One wonders how much it costs DirectTV to wage this "war", and whether it's really cost effective. The real goal, it would seem, would be to make it so inconvenient to hack that 99.9% of all potential customers would go the legitimate route. When you start spending a lot of money to get at that last 0.01%, you may be pushing it a little too far to be good business. Only DirectTV knows the real percentages (and their own finances), but if the hacker/cracker community fights back hard it may turn out that this was a poor business decision. Let's not forget that this is a content protection technology that, like all others, can and will be broken. For each DirectTV success, their opponents only get smarter and more determined.
Is there somewhere we could find the opposing side's briefs? Are they made public anywhere? I could read this stuff all day, but it's hard to feel good about a case when you have no idea how the other side is responding.
MP3 is only one of a handful of related formats, including AC3 and AAC. MP3 is probably the worst of the three, which is why it's loose on the internet while Dolby et all keep AC3 and AAC under tight control. The reason for this is that both sound better than MP3 at the same bitrates (particularly AAC, this is what Liquid Audio uses.) If you use AAC at 160kbps, most golden-ears will be satisfied with the quality. Let's not forget that even MP3 can sound pretty good if you crank up the bitrate enough. I have DSL-- it doesn't take that long to download a 128kpbs file, why shouldn't I look for 256kpbs files?
Does anyone know what filtering solution(s) they're planning to use? I didn't see anything in the PDF file, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. More generally, do they plan to use web filters that block based on a list of "unsuitable" URLs or addresses chosen by some organization, or will they just filter for keywords? While I'm fishing, does anyone know anything about libraries' existing policies for determining what is and isn't suitable for display in a public institution?
Are interpolation frames being generated? It's hard to tell from the clips. Otherwise, it's just "stick a bunch of cameras on the field and rotate the views quickly." Neat, but hardly the Matrix.
If you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that an image is a fake and not genuine
Huh? I thought our criminal system worked the other way around. See, I thought the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a criminal has indeed committed a crime. As long as the first amendment covers artistic expression (and really, how is this different from painting realistic images on a canvas?), then virtual child-pornography can't be criminalized. In that case, the burden would be on the prosecutor to prove that a real, live child was indeed exploited to create the images.
if the fakes are legal you can't prosecute for the real thing - which I don't think the majority of slashdotters (or the community at large) wants.
Sure, let's follow that logic out. Give me a break! Where does that end? You outlaw any fictionalized image or document with a subject that's vaguely criminal? Or do we just throw anyone who posseses an image into jail, unless they can prove that it's fake. Lawyers would have a field day if you tried that.
If I had a penny for every time I heard some activist say the Ozone hole will lead to global warming, I'd be a very rich person. So for those of you who still don't get it, the Ozone hole problem and global warming are entirely different issues!. Do yourself a favor and don't mention them in the same sentence ever unless you want to look like a fool.
Really? I've heard theories that increased UV input from the ozone hole might exacerbate the effects of global warming. I don't know if it's true-- heck, it's only a theory. But you seem awfully excited about disconnecting the two. Can you demonstrate that the above is not possible, so I'll feel confident that the situations are not at all intertwined?
The one thing I really like about this system is that they seem to be doing everything over IP. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Cable companies traditionally use MPEG transport to move their digital video signals; when they want to send IP, they wrap the IP up inside MPEG TS packets. The big advantage of using IP-for-everything is that it's much easier to route, making on-demand services easier to implement-- and I think this is the future of cable TV.
What's to stop a manager of these DNA systems fabricating a DNA 'print' to fit the crime circumstances?
Much more realistically, what's to stop a criminal from leaving someone else's DNA at a crime scene? I've heard that this has actually begun to happen. Why go to the trouble of fabricating a DNA fingerprint when you can just borrow a couple of hairs from somebody's comb?
The disadvantage of DNA evidence-- and I think this will become apparent to attorneys and juries within a few years-- is that it can reliably be planted without the knowledge of the owner. Fingerprints, on the other hand, are much more tightly linked to a human being. Except in cases of rape, where semen or other fluids have clearly been left behind by the perpetrator, DNA evidence is going to become decreasingly reliable. Will that stop DAs from prosecuting based on DNA evidence? Probably not.
Yes, you're right. Just found the Discover article, which does indeed say that the lab-grown black holes wouldn't be the real thing. They would instead be "a small and completely safe vortex of cold atoms" that would let researchers study the effects of black holes.
Re:Artificial Black Holes
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 2
So what would happen if you dropped your black hole? Would it careen through the planet, slowly gathering mass until it got big enough to do some real damage?
Artificial Black Holes
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 3
I've heard that this capability might allow scientists to create artificial black holes. Apparently if you can slow light down enough, you might be able to create a situation in which a singularity comes into existence. I wish I had more information on this-- I think I read it in Discover a few months back. I have no idea if this discovery would make such a thing possible. Anyone with more information? I'm obviously fairly ignorant in this area, but the article I read seemed to take the possibility seriously enough.
Slashdot Mirror
As an aside, taking a cab through New York with an iPaq and a Wavelan card, it's pretty amazing how many 802.11 LANs you'll pick up (I counted 6 in 40 blocks). I assume I was only getting the unencrypted ones, but if it is really easy to crack the WEP protected ones, this standard is probably going to disappear fast from business use. Or something.
Actually, Starbucks is unrolling some sort of plan just like that. It's not available yet, and when it is it'll probably have a bunch of restrictions on it. But that's about the shape of it.
Don't be obtuse. Microsoft has close working relationships with several soundcard vendors. They currently go out of their way to provide advantages to these companies; for instance, giving them early access to new APIs and code. Extend this a little and it's pretty friggin' obvious that these companies would get some sort of priority in this system. Take at least a second to think about it and you'd realize that companies who were not sympathetic to the MS DRM mission, or who were not strategically as valuable to MS, would probably not fare as well. And do you really think it's out of the question that MS might someday buy a soundcard manufacturer? It's not exactly unheard of.
From the article:
Features and benefits of "bind-members" status will include:
1. Private access to the CVS pool where bind4, bind8 and bind9 live
It's hard to know for sure, but that seems to be exactly what the article's saying.
Of course Apple has rights-- the question is, do they have the right to own every interface that uses the same screen colors as theirs? Put that in front of a court and I don't think they (Apple) would make out very well. But who needs courts when you can threaten a company with endless expensive litigation? Those tactics are ugly and unfair, and-- excepting the unlikely possibility of legal reform-- the only check on Apple's activity is customers like us voicing their displeasure.
It got taken over by the likes of ICANN.
Hmm, maybe that's another good argument against this.
Ummmm... with the exception of the phrase "wireless communication device", this claim describes everything from the first releases of NCSA Mosaic onward. I'll assume your post was a joke.
The patent office is horribly backed up right now. A patent filed today probably wouldn't be granted for two to three years.
Patents cost a decent amount of money to prepare, file and defend. They're prepared by lawyers, and not just your garden-variety lawyers, but IP-law specialists. I've heard that a large corporation spends around $20,000 per patent. This may be high, and of course it includes a certain amount of research to insure that there's no prior art-- I suppose you could just skip that, seems like everyone else does.
It's a great idea, but how do you get people to adopt it? It should be designed to handle RPMs, and distributed as a replacement for the rpm utility. Better yet, rpm could just be extended to do this sort of thing.
I think the issue is that Trademarks are not supposed to be granted for commonly used english phrases (and ostensibly, commonly used symbols.) This case shows that either the Trademark office was asleep at the switch, or they clearly don't go online very much. Either one is sort of disturbing.
The cost is very much the point. Hackers can take this one of two ways-- they can take their newfound respect for DirectTV and leave them alone, or they can get really interested and launch a full-scale attack on the technology. At some point this gets expensive for DirectTV.
One wonders how much it costs DirectTV to wage this "war", and whether it's really cost effective. The real goal, it would seem, would be to make it so inconvenient to hack that 99.9% of all potential customers would go the legitimate route. When you start spending a lot of money to get at that last 0.01%, you may be pushing it a little too far to be good business. Only DirectTV knows the real percentages (and their own finances), but if the hacker/cracker community fights back hard it may turn out that this was a poor business decision. Let's not forget that this is a content protection technology that, like all others, can and will be broken. For each DirectTV success, their opponents only get smarter and more determined.
Is there somewhere we could find the opposing side's briefs? Are they made public anywhere? I could read this stuff all day, but it's hard to feel good about a case when you have no idea how the other side is responding.
MP3 is only one of a handful of related formats, including AC3 and AAC. MP3 is probably the worst of the three, which is why it's loose on the internet while Dolby et all keep AC3 and AAC under tight control. The reason for this is that both sound better than MP3 at the same bitrates (particularly AAC, this is what Liquid Audio uses.) If you use AAC at 160kbps, most golden-ears will be satisfied with the quality. Let's not forget that even MP3 can sound pretty good if you crank up the bitrate enough. I have DSL-- it doesn't take that long to download a 128kpbs file, why shouldn't I look for 256kpbs files?
Does anyone know what filtering solution(s) they're planning to use? I didn't see anything in the PDF file, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. More generally, do they plan to use web filters that block based on a list of "unsuitable" URLs or addresses chosen by some organization, or will they just filter for keywords? While I'm fishing, does anyone know anything about libraries' existing policies for determining what is and isn't suitable for display in a public institution?
Are interpolation frames being generated? It's hard to tell from the clips. Otherwise, it's just "stick a bunch of cameras on the field and rotate the views quickly." Neat, but hardly the Matrix.
Huh? I thought our criminal system worked the other way around. See, I thought the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a criminal has indeed committed a crime. As long as the first amendment covers artistic expression (and really, how is this different from painting realistic images on a canvas?), then virtual child-pornography can't be criminalized. In that case, the burden would be on the prosecutor to prove that a real, live child was indeed exploited to create the images.
if the fakes are legal you can't prosecute for the real thing - which I don't think the majority of slashdotters (or the community at large) wants.
Sure, let's follow that logic out. Give me a break! Where does that end? You outlaw any fictionalized image or document with a subject that's vaguely criminal? Or do we just throw anyone who posseses an image into jail, unless they can prove that it's fake. Lawyers would have a field day if you tried that.
Methane has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than does CO2. Several orders of magnitude shorter, I believe.
Really? I've heard theories that increased UV input from the ozone hole might exacerbate the effects of global warming. I don't know if it's true-- heck, it's only a theory. But you seem awfully excited about disconnecting the two. Can you demonstrate that the above is not possible, so I'll feel confident that the situations are not at all intertwined?
The one thing I really like about this system is that they seem to be doing everything over IP. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Cable companies traditionally use MPEG transport to move their digital video signals; when they want to send IP, they wrap the IP up inside MPEG TS packets. The big advantage of using IP-for-everything is that it's much easier to route, making on-demand services easier to implement-- and I think this is the future of cable TV.
Much more realistically, what's to stop a criminal from leaving someone else's DNA at a crime scene? I've heard that this has actually begun to happen. Why go to the trouble of fabricating a DNA fingerprint when you can just borrow a couple of hairs from somebody's comb?
The disadvantage of DNA evidence-- and I think this will become apparent to attorneys and juries within a few years-- is that it can reliably be planted without the knowledge of the owner. Fingerprints, on the other hand, are much more tightly linked to a human being. Except in cases of rape, where semen or other fluids have clearly been left behind by the perpetrator, DNA evidence is going to become decreasingly reliable. Will that stop DAs from prosecuting based on DNA evidence? Probably not.
Yes, you're right. Just found the Discover article, which does indeed say that the lab-grown black holes wouldn't be the real thing. They would instead be "a small and completely safe vortex of cold atoms" that would let researchers study the effects of black holes.
So what would happen if you dropped your black hole? Would it careen through the planet, slowly gathering mass until it got big enough to do some real damage?
I've heard that this capability might allow scientists to create artificial black holes. Apparently if you can slow light down enough, you might be able to create a situation in which a singularity comes into existence. I wish I had more information on this-- I think I read it in Discover a few months back. I have no idea if this discovery would make such a thing possible. Anyone with more information? I'm obviously fairly ignorant in this area, but the article I read seemed to take the possibility seriously enough.