Aside from mathematical concerns specific to the particular implementation, the username/password concept is basically just a virtual implementation of possibly the oldest security mechanism in existance, the lock and key.
Lock and key is nowhere near secure enough for a lot of things, like classified military data, or whatever. That determination is up to the owner of the data.
Lock and key is, however, extremely simple, and more than effective enough for a whole boatload of day to day considerations. We shouldn't be looking to replace the system altogether (until retinal scans from every terminal device become feasable;). We should always be looking for more effective methods to provide authentication for data that requires higher levels of security.
My ssh client uses passphrases and RSA keys. I'm pretty happy with this combination. Then again, I'm not dealing with highly classified data most of the time...
but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation. It was conceived as an open model, developed as such, and still tends to exist as such to a wide extent. So why all the fuss?
In principle, I agree with you. I'm only about half way through reading the paper, but from what I've gathered so far, I think they would agree with you too.
What they seem to be saying is that this merger (in a way they haven't explained yet) threatens the open nature of the net as we currently know it, and that a little bit of regulation now may be a far preferable alternative to a lot of regulation later.
It seems to me that so long as the protocols and the underlying network architecture are not controlled by one source (remember, the network was originally designed to withstand a nuclear attack...), things should go more or less okay.
I wonder what Micros~1's reaction to this will be. Portable, hand held devices are the holy grail of the industry at the moment. As The Great Convergence nears, portable, wireless devices will become increasingly prevalent in our lives. They're basically the next PC platform.
If Micros~1 doesn't assert their platform dominance early on in this market space, they risk missing the "next big thing", and their precious profit margin.
I'm curious about the "binary compatibility with PalmOS" that it claims. While I haven't the faintest clue about what it took to port Linux to the Palm, I'd like some more info about this aspect of the technology.
Also, anyone know about the licencing of the product?
Right fscking on man:) My previous post covers basically the same points. We (the people;) should be looking to do a major overhaul of the patent system in the coming years. It is becoming more of a hinderance than a help in its current incarnation.
I'm sure serious discussions of this are already underway. Anyone got pointers or recommendations for these kinds of resources? I saw a link on an earlier post to a T-shirt designed by Alan Cox at www.thinkgeek.com which I found simply delicious:)
It is becoming rapidly apparent to me that the Patent system as we know it is in need of serious modification. I'm open to argument about what exactly is wrong (IANAL), but if something like this can actually get patented then *something* is definitely wrong
I suspect the patent office clerks (or whoever actually reviews and issues these things) lack the technical knowhow they require to properly evaluate (or, hell, even understand) these things and look for prior art. This unfairly allows those with $$ to take advantage of their ignorance and engage in the kind of frivolous litigation we so love here in the U.S.
To my understanding (and again, IANAL. do we have any lawyers here on Slashdot? any care to comment on the basics of patent law?) patents are basically a legal monopoly for a set time period to allow the inventor of a particular 'technique' to profit from his labor, at least in an intellectual sense. Generally speaking, this is a reasonable idea, imho. I seem to remember that the time period allotted is 7 years (someone correct me please?), and while this may be fine for real world (meatspace) inventions, that's simply aeons in computer time. It's like a 200 year patent in the real world. Perhaps we should consider some modifications to our patent system to account for the rapid pace of modern technology?
Has this type of practice always been common in patent litigation? A lot of it seems blatantly sleazy and deceptive. I've only noticed it recently, but then again, I've only been paying attention recently...
No matter how big and powerful your organization is it can never be perfect. Not to mention theres lot to be said about how the bigger you get the less secure you become.
Exactly!
That's the very reason for spreading as much disinformation as you can in the first place. Disinformation begats more disinformation.
Heh, this guy defines crackpot.
Oh yes he certainly does...
I always thought of him as an ignorant new-age version of RA Heilein.
I always thought of Heinlein as a humorously over-idealistic old-school-sci-fi version of RA Wilson. You grok?;-P Either way, Wilson was actually killed by the CIA several years ago and replaced by a robot programmed not to know the difference.
Now, considering that the telecom industry has been in bed with the NSA since the days of morse code, it goes without saying that there exists a worldwide monitoring network the likes of which will make grown men cry.
However, it may also be useful to note that if the NSA is anywhere near as powerful as we have been led (or have led ourselves) to believe, we probably wouldn't know about it. Organizations (like the NSA) that operate on the perception of power have it in their best interest to spread disinformation about themselves, especially if they wish to remain obscure and secret.
This concept is explored at great length in Robert Anton Wilson'sIlluminatus trilogy.
The essence of the idea is this: people tend to dismiss the rantings of crackpots and paranoid conspiracy theorists.
So, let's say (just for example of course) you have a worldwide listening network, and you want to keep it low key. You're pretty smart, so you know you can't keep something that big a secret forever. What do you do?
You go out and spread rumors about it being all-powerful, and that it can monitor everything. If you're good, you even plant a story or two in some underground zines about how it's running stolen technology from the planet Vulcan, and was really created by occultists (or Masons) who traveled through time from the 13th century.
The rumor takes on a life of its own. You only have to plant the seeds, and the imaginations of the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople will do the rest for you. In no time at all, anyone who believes it is obviously some kind of lunatic, and your mission is accomplished.
Without getting too deeply into the idealism of the subject, they really should have expected this.
Simply speaking, copy protection schemes just don't work. If you allow access to the data to anyone for any reason, someone is going to find a crack for it. I don't care how good your copy protection scheme is. I don't care what kind of information you're trying to protect, or what kind of media it's on, be it CD, DVD, casette, diskette, whatever. Information wants to be free.
They've tried so many tricks and schemes over the years. Remember the "What is the second word on page 153 of the manual" ones? Or what about software that would only let you install it twice.
I still use numbers like 123-1234-1234567 for Micros~1 product keys even when I have the legit numbers. Always good for a chuckle.
The way they accomplished the crack was hilarious 'though. RealNetworks (or whatever subsidiary that was) must be pretty embarassed right now... forgot to encrypt their decryption key. Morons:)
I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe.
It makes me sad to see my beloved Slashdot censoring itself so childishly and pointlessly. Certainly, I would not advocate the use of the word nigger in a derogatory context, but the notion that replacing the word nigger with "n-word" will either save you from being offensive or confuse me as to what "n-word" means is simply ridiculous.
F*ck: I wonder what that says. Fpck? Ftck? Golly, it's sure a good thing it doesn't say Fuck because *that* would be a"bad word". Sh*t.
I was under the impression that we were a bright bunch here at/. Words have no more power than you give them and can not be evaluated out of context. The notion that in and of themselves words can be "good" or "bad" is entirely a creation of your own imagination.
Nigger is not a "bad word." Hate to burst your bubble, there's no such thing as a "bad word." If you were to call someone a nigger, then you would be a racist and ignorant piece of sh*t, but the word by itself is just the letters n-i-g-g-e-r in order. The sound of someone saying it is just a vibration in the air. Which waveforms are "wrong" again?
In Context (like, say, a headline) even "bad" words can be fine, or maybe even useful. This is why National Geographic can publish pictures of topless tribal women (and oh how the sight of nipples will scar the children anyway).
"\"N-Word\"" != "nigger"
The NAACP does not own "n-word".com, hell, " isn't even a valid character for a domain name. The NAACP does, however, own nigger.com, and if you can't just come out and say that, then may almighty g*sh will d*rn you all to h*ck.
I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
Government is based on fear. The general population must believe that there is a threat to their well being, or they'd rapidly realize that government is not necessary.
As such, the government must parade a continual stream of "threats" before the eyes of the people. Those damn red commies aren't a threat any more. The arabs are more of an annoyance than a threat now.
Now they're trying to convince us that *we* are a threat to *ourselves*.
And we're going to buy it.
Democratic governments supposedly act as the will of the people. When ours was set up, the communications capabilities did not exist to allow true democracy, so we have a Representative Democracy, wherein we elect a small group of people to carry out our will, and take 1/3 of our paychecks.
They're like a leech. And they're clinging for dear life, trying to tell us that we need them because we're supposedly a threat to ourselves.
The internet has ushered in a new age. Someone in the old school fucked up big time. *De-centralization*??! *gasp* what a horror, why, people might start thinking for themselves.
Yeah, pity it's still the most horribly designed, bug ridden, crash prone piece of shit ever called an operating system and spoon fed to an unsuspecting unknowing computer illiterate populace so used to it that they don't even suspect there could be something better...
er, was that out loud?:)
seriously 'though, linux is still quite lacking in that respect, imho. the fonts in my Netscape are always screwy.
i've heard word that XFree86 will be handling fonts differently in later releases. anyone have any info on that? i'm probably talking out my ass
I'm so sick of people whining about how they are being victimized I could puke blood. Katz, I enjoy your articles, but I have to break it to you that this is the kind of thinking that leads to the restrictive and beaurocratic bullshit that you complain about so much.
The internet knows no physical identifiers. Nobody I communicate with knows if I'm a 19 year old white male or a 34 year old black woman unless *I* want them to. The net is no place to whine about racial discrimination.
We've lost the concept of individual responsibility, imho primarily as the result of the "me generation." Our generation has grown up with so much "guidance councelling" and "awareness training" bullshit that we don't know how to think properly any more. Any time anything goes wrong, instead of trying to figure out ways to fix it or do it better the next time around, we start looking for ways we've been victimized by the big bad [insert ok-to-hate group here].
Victim mentality is just a way to avoid the (ghastly) thought that each individual person is (gasp) individually responsible for their own actions. "Oh, [insert anything here] didn't work out for me because I'm [insert victim group here]."
(I can just hear my 5th grade guidance counselor saying in her prozac and vailum drone "but that's oooohhhh-kaaaayyy")
Wake up. Quit whining about how you've been shit on. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Realize that there's no such thing as a group, there is only the individual. The group is in your head.
Yet again the United States Government demonstrates its utter lack of any technical knowledge or understanding whatsoever.
These people still haven't realized one simple thing: they can't legislate the internet. It's not *theirs*. Current political models are based around geography, the concept of physical borders. The internet transcends physical geography. "Cyberspace" (i hate that word) doesn't exist in the U.S., it doesn't exist in Brazil, it doesn't exist in England. It doesn't exist in physical space, and thus political and legislative models based in physical space can not and will not apply to it.
The simplest solution to this dilemma is to simply ignore them.:)
To further my rant, not only do their concepts of "laws" not apply in any way, but they can never hope to keep up with the rapid pace of the net. Anything they can come out and declare "illegal" we can re-package, re-route, and re-work in a thousand different ways before they even get the law through their aging and increasingly disconnected legal system.
This government claims to represent the will of the people. I say that the net itself is the only true representation of the will of the people. They're becoming more and more irrelevant every day and losing ground steadily.
Even if Janet Reno wants encryption software removed from public networks, there's not a chance in hell she'll get it.
The day the United States Govt. declares encryption software illegal, I will personally go out and write a simple utility to do RSA encryption/decryption. I will then take said utility, and distribute it until I'm blue in the face on every #w4r3z IRC channel, every script-kiddie hotline server, every usenet newsgroup I can uuencode and post it to. If I don't, I'm sure a thousand other people will.
They (meaning the U.S. Govt.) still have this silly delusion that they have some kind of control over the internet. They don't. Aside from the fact that the physical internet spans international borders, and therefore isn't subject to anyone's laws as a whole, information space itself isn't subject to the same laws as meatspace. As more and more of our lives take place in information space they (again meaning the U.S. Govt.) will become increasingly irrelevant, and hopefully in a few decades we'll all forget about them.
I can dream, can't I?
Either way, we do need to fight this one with every ounce of strength we've got. This is not a battle we can afford to lose.
Some friends and I recently registered the domain "lies.org," not really sure what we were going to do with it.
Slightly thereafter, the FDIC proposed its Know Your Customer policy, an extremely invasive proposal concerning bank records. They requested public comment, and received >250,000 replies, all but 72 of which were opposed. Email provided the medium for most of this response. The FDIC accordingly dropped the whole thing.
I personally was awestruck at how well people came together, and how well the strategy worked. The inspiration came to us at that point to center lies.org around the leverage that internet communicaiton allows in political situations.
We seek input. "lies.org" is too cool a domain name to use for some boring personal site, we'd much rather it be used for the public good in some way.
At present we envision it as a slashdot with a political twist. By "a slashdot" I mean a dynamic, community driven and moderated site, updated as frequently as possible.
We have at our fingertips the greatest communications medium in the whole of recorded history. Collective action (and collaboration) is now possible on a scale never before imagined. IMHO we spend too much time receiving information and not enough time sending it. A website with as many readers as Slashdot that kept up minute-to-minute with relevant political issues and included mailto: (or other) links to make your opinion known to the important parties would be politically unstoppable.
Imagine the/. effect in this context...
So, if you have ideas, suggestions, comments, criticisms, etc. please pass them our way. You can email me at adimarco@gwi.net.
SDMI will fail. It could be said that it has already failed. On a basic level the technology just doesn't make any sense.
I don't care how well you encrypt the music, or what copy protection scheme you whip up. If the end result is music coming through my sound card, then I can duplicate it on a digital level. Someone will whip up a basic SDMI-copying utility in no time, and if they don't I will.
The RIAA isn't scared of piracy, nor are they trying to protect artists' rights. If they were scared of piracy then they'd be fighting casette tapes and CDRs. The RIAA is scared of a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, which is the only real service they provide. With digital music and the internet, we're all a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, and it suddenly doesn't make sense to sell your soul to them for something anyone can do in their living room.
Did you know that of the $15 or $16 you spend on a CD in most CD stores, about $1 of that actually goes to the artist? I have no problem paying for music (free speech not beer), especially if I'm paying the artist and not financing some VP's new yacht. Details aside, an artist (say, Public Enemy) could distribute their own music over the net, charge $2-$5 for the album, thereby getting 2-5 times what they would have from the RIAA per album. I'd be happy to send an artist I like a few bucks for their new album. It's a win-win situation for everyone but the RIAA.
The RIAA (and all middle-men, for that matter) are becoming obsolete, and they're just starting to realize it.
Let's cut straight through the bullshit here and stop even pretending that the Govt. is telling us the truth.
They don't want to ban strong crypto because it allows criminals to hide their activities. Don't fall for that crap. Don't even give it a second thought. It's the same line they always use. "Child Pornographers! Murderers! Rapists! Save the children! Save the children! Save the Children!"
They want to ban strong crypto because it would ensure that they can always listen in on us as easily as they can now.
Their argument doesn't even make sense. If they ban strong crypto, I'll go out and write some crude non-key-escrow RSA utility, and if I don't, a thousand other people will.
I'm no paranoid conspiracy theorist. You don't have to be. Hell, I don't even blame them for doing what they are. If I was in their position I'm sure I'd be as paranoid as they are.
My question is, why do we put up with them lying to us like that?
To quote Bill Hicks, "All governments are lying cocksuckers." If you don't subscribe to that theory, let's have a long talk about the ballistics of the Kennedy assasination.;)
Current political structures are dependant upon the concept of geographical location and borders. Laws, government, etc. only apply within a set geographic region that you call your territory.
The net transcends the concept of physical location. On the net, your 'location' becomes your IP, it's really the only valid descriptor of location on the net, and it shares no ties to real physical location.
Attempts to apply legal models centered around physical geography to something entirely outside the realm of physical geography will only produce more confusion, and more instances like this.
To take it a step further, we are now moving into the information age with an alarming pace. All societal transformations of this magnitude (the industrial revolution, for example) have taken hundreds (if not thousands) of years to occur. This one will happen primarily in a few decades. One generation.
There will be growing pains.
Some of us scream about the deterioration of "society." From the old perspective, yes, many of our tried and true institutions (ways of ordering the chaos around us) are crumbling. This is because they are no longer relevant to modern day life. They must be abandoned if real progress (wtf does that mean?) is to occur.
While I haven't read this book yet, I suspect that its subject matter runs in close parallel with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics which attempts to demonstrate the alarming similarities between the conclusions of modern theoretical physics, and Eastern (and other) mysticism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read.
From the brief skimming I have done of the other comments posted so far in this discussion, I can see that most of them embody the same knee-jerk reaction that die hard science-types (such as myself) tend to have when non-scientific possibilities are even mentioned.
Anyone who believes that science and mathematics are the answer to everything, and can possibly describe the totality of existance should do some reading on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Alfred Korzybski's (sp?) General Semantics, and contemplate the implications of a set containing itself (a theory [a member of the set of "real" things, "Reality"] describing the "reality" [set] that contains it, FNORD).
The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."
The similarities between the conclusions of modern physics and those of ancient mysticism (and those of acid-heads) are too numerous and large to ignore. Two seemingly diametrically opposite methods of modeling reality have come to extremely similar conclusions. These include observer created reality, the illusion of indivisible particles, the interconnectedness of all existance, etc. etc. etc. I'll let you do the reading so as not to come off sounding like some new-age lunatic;) The point being that we shouldn't be looking to pick sides on the issue, but to back up and see that they're both sides of the same coin.
R. Buckminster Fuller (imho, one of the greatest thinking minds of the century) once decided to test one of the theories of General Semantics, that we continually 'hypnotize' ourselves with our speech, by not talking for a full year. When he started talking again, he had a completely new way of modelling reality (and created some very interesting geometric shapes that seem to be 3 dimensional projections of 4th dimensional gemoetries). His patterns of speech also changed radically, for example he refused to say "the universe" and instead insisted on saying simply "universe" to emphasize that what he was referring to was a process, not a thing, as the language leads us to think of it. He also said "I seem to be a verb," and "God is a verb," which have thoroughly confused and enlightened many people since.
I'll conclude before I get too far off on a tangent, and encourage you to at least do some reasearch on the similarities here. There's a wealth of information out there on the 'net, and in print. I would highly recommend The Tao of Physics, Godel, Escher, Bach, and Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.
-Anthony DiMarco "If you don't see the FNORD it can't eat you. Dont' see the FNORD. Don't see the FNORD."
In my mind, this calls into question some rather large industry alliances. Where does AOL officially stand with regard to Micros~1? Possibly more important, where does AOL stand with relation to the RIAA? Anyone have semi-detailed information on either of these?
To my knowledge, Micros~1 is signed on with the SDMI, which would put them on the side of the RIAA.
Hmmmmm...
With the impending release of Micros~1's new mp3-capable Media Player, AOL now owns (at least) two large (in terms of users) pieces of software that directly compete with Micro$oft. I'm curious to see what Microsoft's reaction to this will be, and even more curious about their current relations with AOL.
Despite my personal distaste (slight understatement) for AOL, unless they're up to something really senaky, I can see some very good things coming from their ownership of the most popular mp3 player in the world. At a bare minimum, this should result in more people using the mp3 format, which will hopefully bury the SDMI before they can even release it.
Does AOL really have this much balls? Do they dare stand opposed to both Micros~1 and the RIAA?
Not only is faster than light travel possible, but I believe it has been demonstrated.
Information travels faster than light. (because information doesn't actually travel, for a normal definition of that word) Would someone with a heavier physics background please correct me here? I'm pulling this from memory:
Two particles can be bonded such that their collective spin state is always 0. knowledge (or lack thereof) of a particle's spin state is information. once these particles are bonded, the space seperating them is irrelevant. they can be next to each other or on opposite ends of the universe, and as soon as you change (observe) the spin state of one, the spin state of the other *instantly* becomes defined. the information travels without actually entering the space seperating the particles, which means that it isn't subject to the usual limitations placed on physical objects (namely a ~186,202 miles/sec speed limit).
i'm not sure how modern physics handles this. i believe einstein rejected it, but i think it's actually been experimentally confirmed in the past several years. you could incorporate yet another dimension into your conception of existance (5? 6? n?).
the curious part is how closely this resembles what mystics have been saying for millenia: space is an illusion.
another curious side effect of this is that the speed of light (in very much simplified laymans terms) seperates the "past" from the "future" and keeps them both out of the ever-present "present" (be here now). if you allow for faster than light travel, the chain of causality as we know it must be abandoned. the past and the future get all mixed up, and you have cause following effect etc.
i will cease my rambling now and get back to work:)
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from mathematical concerns specific to the particular implementation, the username/password concept is basically just a virtual implementation of possibly the oldest security mechanism in existance, the lock and key.
;). We should always be looking for more effective methods to provide authentication for data that requires higher levels of security.
Lock and key is nowhere near secure enough for a lot of things, like classified military data, or whatever. That determination is up to the owner of the data.
Lock and key is, however, extremely simple, and more than effective enough for a whole boatload of day to day considerations. We shouldn't be looking to replace the system altogether (until retinal scans from every terminal device become feasable
My ssh client uses passphrases and RSA keys. I'm pretty happy with this combination. Then again, I'm not dealing with highly classified data most of the time...
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Pardom my libertarianism
:) Please pardon mine...
Done
but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation. It was conceived as an open model, developed as such, and still tends to exist as such to a wide extent. So why all the fuss?
In principle, I agree with you. I'm only about half way through reading the paper, but from what I've gathered so far, I think they would agree with you too.
What they seem to be saying is that this merger (in a way they haven't explained yet) threatens the open nature of the net as we currently know it, and that a little bit of regulation now may be a far preferable alternative to a lot of regulation later.
It seems to me that so long as the protocols and the underlying network architecture are not controlled by one source (remember, the network was originally designed to withstand a nuclear attack...), things should go more or less okay.
Time to finish reading it...
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
I wonder what Micros~1's reaction to this will be. Portable, hand held devices are the holy grail of the industry at the moment. As The Great Convergence nears, portable, wireless devices will become increasingly prevalent in our lives. They're basically the next PC platform.
If Micros~1 doesn't assert their platform dominance early on in this market space, they risk missing the "next big thing", and their precious profit margin.
I'm curious about the "binary compatibility with PalmOS" that it claims. While I haven't the faintest clue about what it took to port Linux to the Palm, I'd like some more info about this aspect of the technology.
Also, anyone know about the licencing of the product?
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Right fscking on man :) My previous post covers basically the same points. We (the people ;) should be looking to do a major overhaul of the patent system in the coming years. It is becoming more of a hinderance than a help in its current incarnation.
:)
I'm sure serious discussions of this are already underway. Anyone got pointers or recommendations for these kinds of resources? I saw a link on an earlier post to a T-shirt designed by Alan Cox at www.thinkgeek.com which I found simply delicious
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
It is becoming rapidly apparent to me that the Patent system as we know it is in need of serious modification. I'm open to argument about what exactly is wrong (IANAL), but if something like this can actually get patented then *something* is definitely wrong
I suspect the patent office clerks (or whoever actually reviews and issues these things) lack the technical knowhow they require to properly evaluate (or, hell, even understand) these things and look for prior art. This unfairly allows those with $$ to take advantage of their ignorance and engage in the kind of frivolous litigation we so love here in the U.S.
To my understanding (and again, IANAL. do we have any lawyers here on Slashdot? any care to comment on the basics of patent law?) patents are basically a legal monopoly for a set time period to allow the inventor of a particular 'technique' to profit from his labor, at least in an intellectual sense. Generally speaking, this is a reasonable idea, imho. I seem to remember that the time period allotted is 7 years (someone correct me please?), and while this may be fine for real world (meatspace) inventions, that's simply aeons in computer time. It's like a 200 year patent in the real world. Perhaps we should consider some modifications to our patent system to account for the rapid pace of modern technology?
Has this type of practice always been common in patent litigation? A lot of it seems blatantly sleazy and deceptive. I've only noticed it recently, but then again, I've only been paying attention recently...
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
No matter how big and powerful your organization is it can never be perfect. Not to mention theres lot to be said about how the bigger you get the less secure you become.
;-P Either way, Wilson was actually killed by the CIA several years ago and replaced by a robot programmed not to know the difference.
Exactly!
That's the very reason for spreading as much disinformation as you can in the first place. Disinformation begats more disinformation.
Heh, this guy defines crackpot.
Oh yes he certainly does...
I always thought of him as an ignorant new-age version of RA Heilein.
I always thought of Heinlein as a humorously over-idealistic old-school-sci-fi version of RA Wilson. You grok?
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Now, considering that the telecom industry has been in bed with the NSA since the days of morse code, it goes without saying that there exists a worldwide monitoring network the likes of which will make grown men cry.
However, it may also be useful to note that if the NSA is anywhere near as powerful as we have been led (or have led ourselves) to believe, we probably wouldn't know about it. Organizations (like the NSA) that operate on the perception of power have it in their best interest to spread disinformation about themselves, especially if they wish to remain obscure and secret.
This concept is explored at great length in Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy.
The essence of the idea is this: people tend to dismiss the rantings of crackpots and paranoid conspiracy theorists.
So, let's say (just for example of course) you have a worldwide listening network, and you want to keep it low key. You're pretty smart, so you know you can't keep something that big a secret forever. What do you do?
You go out and spread rumors about it being all-powerful, and that it can monitor everything. If you're good, you even plant a story or two in some underground zines about how it's running stolen technology from the planet Vulcan, and was really created by occultists (or Masons) who traveled through time from the 13th century.
The rumor takes on a life of its own. You only have to plant the seeds, and the imaginations of the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpeople will do the rest for you. In no time at all, anyone who believes it is obviously some kind of lunatic, and your mission is accomplished.
Just something to consider.
Anthony
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Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Without getting too deeply into the idealism of the subject, they really should have expected this.
:)
Simply speaking, copy protection schemes just don't work. If you allow access to the data to anyone for any reason, someone is going to find a crack for it. I don't care how good your copy protection scheme is. I don't care what kind of information you're trying to protect, or what kind of media it's on, be it CD, DVD, casette, diskette, whatever. Information wants to be free.
They've tried so many tricks and schemes over the years. Remember the "What is the second word on page 153 of the manual" ones? Or what about software that would only let you install it twice.
I still use numbers like 123-1234-1234567 for Micros~1 product keys even when I have the legit numbers. Always good for a chuckle.
The way they accomplished the crack was hilarious 'though. RealNetworks (or whatever subsidiary that was) must be pretty embarassed right now... forgot to encrypt their decryption key. Morons
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Repeat After Me:
I would rather be FREE than SAFE. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe. I would rather be free than safe.
Anthony
er,
s/g\*sh will d\*rn/g\*sh d\*rn/;
:)
Anthony
Golly, what could the "n-word" be?
/. Words have no more power than you give them and can not be evaluated out of context. The notion that in and of themselves words can be "good" or "bad" is entirely a creation of your own imagination.
It makes me sad to see my beloved Slashdot censoring itself so childishly and pointlessly. Certainly, I would not advocate the use of the word nigger in a derogatory context, but the notion that replacing the word nigger with "n-word" will either save you from being offensive or confuse me as to what "n-word" means is simply ridiculous.
F*ck: I wonder what that says. Fpck? Ftck? Golly, it's sure a good thing it doesn't say Fuck because *that* would be a"bad word". Sh*t.
I was under the impression that we were a bright bunch here at
Nigger is not a "bad word." Hate to burst your bubble, there's no such thing as a "bad word." If you were to call someone a nigger, then you would be a racist and ignorant piece of sh*t, but the word by itself is just the letters n-i-g-g-e-r in order. The sound of someone saying it is just a vibration in the air. Which waveforms are "wrong" again?
In Context (like, say, a headline) even "bad" words can be fine, or maybe even useful. This is why National Geographic can publish pictures of topless tribal women (and oh how the sight of nipples will scar the children anyway).
"\"N-Word\"" != "nigger"
The NAACP does not own "n-word".com, hell, " isn't even a valid character for a domain name. The NAACP does, however, own nigger.com, and if you can't just come out and say that, then may almighty g*sh will d*rn you all to h*ck.
Anthony
I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
I would rather be FREE than SAFE.
Government is based on fear. The general population must believe that there is a threat to their well being, or they'd rapidly realize that government is not necessary.
As such, the government must parade a continual stream of "threats" before the eyes of the people. Those damn red commies aren't a threat any more. The arabs are more of an annoyance than a threat now.
Now they're trying to convince us that *we* are a threat to *ourselves*.
And we're going to buy it.
Democratic governments supposedly act as the will of the people. When ours was set up, the communications capabilities did not exist to allow true democracy, so we have a Representative Democracy, wherein we elect a small group of people to carry out our will, and take 1/3 of our paychecks.
They're like a leech. And they're clinging for dear life, trying to tell us that we need them because we're supposedly a threat to ourselves.
The internet has ushered in a new age. Someone in the old school fucked up big time. *De-centralization*??! *gasp* what a horror, why, people might start thinking for themselves.
Fuck censorship. Fuck the government. Fuck you.
Yeah, pity it's still the most horribly designed, bug ridden, crash prone piece of shit ever called an operating system and spoon fed to an unsuspecting unknowing computer illiterate populace so used to it that they don't even suspect there could be something better...
:)
er, was that out loud?
seriously 'though, linux is still quite lacking in that respect, imho. the fonts in my Netscape are always screwy.
i've heard word that XFree86 will be handling fonts differently in later releases. anyone have any info on that? i'm probably talking out my ass
i must need coffee.
anthony
i knew someone was going to call me on that.
:)
details aside, i'm assuming you get the point.
Esmerelda Rachisnivitchenstien
I'm so sick of people whining about how they are being victimized I could puke blood. Katz, I enjoy your articles, but I have to break it to you that this is the kind of thinking that leads to the restrictive and beaurocratic bullshit that you complain about so much.
The internet knows no physical identifiers. Nobody I communicate with knows if I'm a 19 year old white male or a 34 year old black woman unless *I* want them to. The net is no place to whine about racial discrimination.
We've lost the concept of individual responsibility, imho primarily as the result of the "me generation." Our generation has grown up with so much "guidance councelling" and "awareness training" bullshit that we don't know how to think properly any more. Any time anything goes wrong, instead of trying to figure out ways to fix it or do it better the next time around, we start looking for ways we've been victimized by the big bad [insert ok-to-hate group here].
Victim mentality is just a way to avoid the (ghastly) thought that each individual person is (gasp) individually responsible for their own actions. "Oh, [insert anything here] didn't work out for me because I'm [insert victim group here]."
(I can just hear my 5th grade guidance counselor saying in her prozac and vailum drone "but that's oooohhhh-kaaaayyy")
Wake up. Quit whining about how you've been shit on. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Realize that there's no such thing as a group, there is only the individual. The group is in your head.
kum-ba-ya my lord
kum ba ya
Pissed.
Anthony DiMarco
Yet again the United States Government demonstrates its utter lack of any technical knowledge or understanding whatsoever.
:)
These people still haven't realized one simple thing: they can't legislate the internet. It's not *theirs*. Current political models are based around geography, the concept of physical borders. The internet transcends physical geography. "Cyberspace" (i hate that word) doesn't exist in the U.S., it doesn't exist in Brazil, it doesn't exist in England. It doesn't exist in physical space, and thus political and legislative models based in physical space can not and will not apply to it.
The simplest solution to this dilemma is to simply ignore them.
To further my rant, not only do their concepts of "laws" not apply in any way, but they can never hope to keep up with the rapid pace of the net. Anything they can come out and declare "illegal" we can re-package, re-route, and re-work in a thousand different ways before they even get the law through their aging and increasingly disconnected legal system.
This government claims to represent the will of the people. I say that the net itself is the only true representation of the will of the people. They're becoming more and more irrelevant every day and losing ground steadily.
Bye! *wave* We don't need you any more! See-ya!
Anthony DiMarco
Even if Janet Reno wants encryption software removed from public networks, there's not a chance in hell she'll get it.
The day the United States Govt. declares encryption software illegal, I will personally go out and write a simple utility to do RSA encryption/decryption. I will then take said utility, and distribute it until I'm blue in the face on every #w4r3z IRC channel, every script-kiddie hotline server, every usenet newsgroup I can uuencode and post it to. If I don't, I'm sure a thousand other people will.
They (meaning the U.S. Govt.) still have this silly delusion that they have some kind of control over the internet. They don't. Aside from the fact that the physical internet spans international borders, and therefore isn't subject to anyone's laws as a whole, information space itself isn't subject to the same laws as meatspace. As more and more of our lives take place in information space they (again meaning the U.S. Govt.) will become increasingly irrelevant, and hopefully in a few decades we'll all forget about them.
I can dream, can't I?
Either way, we do need to fight this one with every ounce of strength we've got. This is not a battle we can afford to lose.
Some friends and I recently registered the domain "lies.org," not really sure what we were going to do with it.
/. effect in this context...
Slightly thereafter, the FDIC proposed its Know Your Customer policy, an extremely invasive proposal concerning bank records. They requested public comment, and received >250,000 replies, all but 72 of which were opposed. Email provided the medium for most of this response. The FDIC accordingly dropped the whole thing.
I personally was awestruck at how well people came together, and how well the strategy worked. The inspiration came to us at that point to center lies.org around the leverage that internet communicaiton allows in political situations.
We seek input. "lies.org" is too cool a domain name to use for some boring personal site, we'd much rather it be used for the public good in some way.
At present we envision it as a slashdot with a political twist. By "a slashdot" I mean a dynamic, community driven and moderated site, updated as frequently as possible.
We have at our fingertips the greatest communications medium in the whole of recorded history. Collective action (and collaboration) is now possible on a scale never before imagined. IMHO we spend too much time receiving information and not enough time sending it. A website with as many readers as Slashdot that kept up minute-to-minute with relevant political issues and included mailto: (or other) links to make your opinion known to the important parties would be politically unstoppable.
Imagine the
So, if you have ideas, suggestions, comments, criticisms, etc. please pass them our way. You can email me at adimarco@gwi.net.
Anthony DiMarco
adimarco@gwi.net
SDMI will fail. It could be said that it has already failed. On a basic level the technology just doesn't make any sense.
I don't care how well you encrypt the music, or what copy protection scheme you whip up. If the end result is music coming through my sound card, then I can duplicate it on a digital level. Someone will whip up a basic SDMI-copying utility in no time, and if they don't I will.
The RIAA isn't scared of piracy, nor are they trying to protect artists' rights. If they were scared of piracy then they'd be fighting casette tapes and CDRs. The RIAA is scared of a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, which is the only real service they provide. With digital music and the internet, we're all a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, and it suddenly doesn't make sense to sell your soul to them for something anyone can do in their living room.
Did you know that of the $15 or $16 you spend on a CD in most CD stores, about $1 of that actually goes to the artist? I have no problem paying for music (free speech not beer), especially if I'm paying the artist and not financing some VP's new yacht. Details aside, an artist (say, Public Enemy) could distribute their own music over the net, charge $2-$5 for the album, thereby getting 2-5 times what they would have from the RIAA per album. I'd be happy to send an artist I like a few bucks for their new album. It's a win-win situation for everyone but the RIAA.
The RIAA (and all middle-men, for that matter) are becoming obsolete, and they're just starting to realize it.
Bye! We don't need you any more.
Anthony DiMarco
the kennedy thing was a joke, thus the ;)
;)
i've never even seen JFK, for that matter...
Anthony DiMarco
Let's cut straight through the bullshit here and stop even pretending that the Govt. is telling us the truth.
;)
They don't want to ban strong crypto because it allows criminals to hide their activities. Don't fall for that crap. Don't even give it a second thought. It's the same line they always use. "Child Pornographers! Murderers! Rapists! Save the children! Save the children! Save the Children!"
They want to ban strong crypto because it would ensure that they can always listen in on us as easily as they can now.
Their argument doesn't even make sense. If they ban strong crypto, I'll go out and write some crude non-key-escrow RSA utility, and if I don't, a thousand other people will.
I'm no paranoid conspiracy theorist. You don't have to be. Hell, I don't even blame them for doing what they are. If I was in their position I'm sure I'd be as paranoid as they are.
My question is, why do we put up with them lying to us like that?
To quote Bill Hicks, "All governments are lying cocksuckers." If you don't subscribe to that theory, let's have a long talk about the ballistics of the Kennedy assasination.
Anthony DiMarco
Here's the problem:
;)
Current political structures are dependant upon the concept of geographical location and borders. Laws, government, etc. only apply within a set geographic region that you call your territory.
The net transcends the concept of physical location. On the net, your 'location' becomes your IP, it's really the only valid descriptor of location on the net, and it shares no ties to real physical location.
Attempts to apply legal models centered around physical geography to something entirely outside the realm of physical geography will only produce more confusion, and more instances like this.
To take it a step further, we are now moving into the information age with an alarming pace. All societal transformations of this magnitude (the industrial revolution, for example) have taken hundreds (if not thousands) of years to occur. This one will happen primarily in a few decades. One generation.
There will be growing pains.
Some of us scream about the deterioration of "society." From the old perspective, yes, many of our tried and true institutions (ways of ordering the chaos around us) are crumbling. This is because they are no longer relevant to modern day life. They must be abandoned if real progress (wtf does that mean?) is to occur.
Open your eyes
Anthony DiMarco
While I haven't read this book yet, I suspect that its subject matter runs in close parallel with Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics which attempts to demonstrate the alarming similarities between the conclusions of modern theoretical physics, and Eastern (and other) mysticism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read.
;) The point being that we shouldn't be looking to pick sides on the issue, but to back up and see that they're both sides of the same coin.
From the brief skimming I have done of the other comments posted so far in this discussion, I can see that most of them embody the same knee-jerk reaction that die hard science-types (such as myself) tend to have when non-scientific possibilities are even mentioned.
Anyone who believes that science and mathematics are the answer to everything, and can possibly describe the totality of existance should do some reading on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Alfred Korzybski's (sp?) General Semantics, and contemplate the implications of a set containing itself (a theory [a member of the set of "real" things, "Reality"] describing the "reality" [set] that contains it, FNORD).
The important thing to stress is that science, mysticism, philosophy, etc. are only models of the "reality" we observe. We too often mistake our models of reality for that which they describe. This misperception has been described as "The map is not the territory," or "The menu is not the meal."
The similarities between the conclusions of modern physics and those of ancient mysticism (and those of acid-heads) are too numerous and large to ignore. Two seemingly diametrically opposite methods of modeling reality have come to extremely similar conclusions. These include observer created reality, the illusion of indivisible particles, the interconnectedness of all existance, etc. etc. etc. I'll let you do the reading so as not to come off sounding like some new-age lunatic
R. Buckminster Fuller (imho, one of the greatest thinking minds of the century) once decided to test one of the theories of General Semantics, that we continually 'hypnotize' ourselves with our speech, by not talking for a full year. When he started talking again, he had a completely new way of modelling reality (and created some very interesting geometric shapes that seem to be 3 dimensional projections of 4th dimensional gemoetries). His patterns of speech also changed radically, for example he refused to say "the universe" and instead insisted on saying simply "universe" to emphasize that what he was referring to was a process, not a thing, as the language leads us to think of it. He also said "I seem to be a verb," and "God is a verb," which have thoroughly confused and enlightened many people since.
I'll conclude before I get too far off on a tangent, and encourage you to at least do some reasearch on the similarities here. There's a wealth of information out there on the 'net, and in print. I would highly recommend The Tao of Physics, Godel, Escher, Bach, and Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising.
-Anthony DiMarco
"If you don't see the FNORD it can't eat you. Dont' see the FNORD. Don't see the FNORD."
This is very interesting.
:)
In my mind, this calls into question some rather large industry alliances. Where does AOL officially stand with regard to Micros~1? Possibly more important, where does AOL stand with relation to the RIAA? Anyone have semi-detailed information on either of these?
To my knowledge, Micros~1 is signed on with the SDMI, which would put them on the side of the RIAA.
Hmmmmm...
With the impending release of Micros~1's new mp3-capable Media Player, AOL now owns (at least) two large (in terms of users) pieces of software that directly compete with Micro$oft. I'm curious to see what Microsoft's reaction to this will be, and even more curious about their current relations with AOL.
Despite my personal distaste (slight understatement) for AOL, unless they're up to something really senaky, I can see some very good things coming from their ownership of the most popular mp3 player in the world. At a bare minimum, this should result in more people using the mp3 format, which will hopefully bury the SDMI before they can even release it.
Does AOL really have this much balls? Do they dare stand opposed to both Micros~1 and the RIAA?
I can't wait to see how this one plays out
Not only is faster than light travel possible, but I believe it has been demonstrated.
:)
Information travels faster than light. (because information doesn't actually travel, for a normal definition of that word) Would someone with a heavier physics background please correct me here? I'm pulling this from memory:
Two particles can be bonded such that their collective spin state is always 0. knowledge (or lack thereof) of a particle's spin state is information. once these particles are bonded, the space seperating them is irrelevant. they can be next to each other or on opposite ends of the universe, and as soon as you change (observe) the spin state of one, the spin state of the other *instantly* becomes defined. the information travels without actually entering the space seperating the particles, which means that it isn't subject to the usual limitations placed on physical objects (namely a ~186,202 miles/sec speed limit).
i'm not sure how modern physics handles this. i believe einstein rejected it, but i think it's actually been experimentally confirmed in the past several years. you could incorporate yet another dimension into your conception of existance (5? 6? n?).
the curious part is how closely this resembles what mystics have been saying for millenia: space is an illusion.
another curious side effect of this is that the speed of light (in very much simplified laymans terms) seperates the "past" from the "future" and keeps them both out of the ever-present "present" (be here now). if you allow for faster than light travel, the chain of causality as we know it must be abandoned. the past and the future get all mixed up, and you have cause following effect etc.
i will cease my rambling now and get back to work