Because its ultimate success depends on ubiquity, Palladium is either going to be a home run or a mortifying whiff. "We have to ship 100 million of these before it really makes a difference," says Microsoft vice president Will Poole... Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have signed on to produce special security chips that are integral to the system. "It's a groundswell change," says AMD's Geoffrey Strongin. "A whole new class of processors not differentiated by speed, but security."... And the new additions will make your next computer a little more expensive.
So basically, consumers have figured out that more Mhz does not make a better computer. The industry has milked that one for all it's worth, so the next "innovative" step is to get people to buy new computers with "secure chips" that don't really provide any extra protection for 99.9% of users.
Let's take a look at these new innovations:
The system uses high-level encryption to "seal" data so that snoops and thieves are thwarted. It also can protect the integrity of documents so that they can't be altered without your knowledge.
So MS is going to claim it invented encryption and checksumming in 2002.
Palladium won't run unauthorized programs, so viruses can't trash protected parts of your system.
Most Windows users get viruses via email scripts, which aren't programs. So this won't cut down on viruses (why would MS want to when they can claim that the virus writers are just getting savvyer and that you need to buy a more secure system to stay one step ahead).
Eventually, commercial pitches for recycled printer cartridges and barnyard porn can be stopped before they hit your inbox--while unsolicited mail that you might want to see can arrive if it has credentials that meet your standards.
I've seen the "unsolicited mail you might want to see." Hotmail calls them newsletters and prevents you from blocking them.
With Palladium, it's possible not only to seal data on your own computer, but also to send it out to "agents" who can distribute just the discreet pieces you want released to the proper people. Microsofties have nicknamed these services "My Man." If you apply for a loan, you'd say to the lender, "Get my details from My Man," which, upon your authorization, would then provide your bank information, etc. Best part: Da Man can't read the information himself, and neither can a hacker who breaks into his system.
Bull$hit. No company is going to spend the money to store, manage and distribute your information if they aren't getting paid or reading your information. If you're already talking to the lender, why can't you give them the information yourself... or are people really too lazy to write down their name, address and phone number?
...Palladium could help introduce DRM to business and just plain people. "It's a funny thing," says Bill Gates. "We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains." For instance, Palladium might allow you to send out e-mail so that no one (or only certain people) can copy it or forward it to others. Or you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week.
Yeah, it's funny how people didn't buy into DRM the first time around, kinda like pay-per-view DVDs. But if we sugar-coat it and convince consumers that they can benefit from DRM (after all, a reader of a protected Word document can't copy its contents down while he has access to it and redistribute it later), they will accept it, the music industry will turn to us for DRM-formatted CDs and MS will control the audio CD format.
In 1997, Peter Biddle, a Microsoft manager who used to run a paintball arena, was the company's liason to the DVD-drive world. Naturally, he began to think of ways to address Hollywood's fear of digital copying. He hooked up with ' Softie researchers Paul England and John Manferdelli, and they set up a skunkworks operation, stealing time from their regular jobs to pursue a preposterously ambitious idea--creating virtual vaults in Windows to protect information.
Great. The future of the PC redefined by a paintball arena manager.
There will also be components that encrypt information as it moves from keyboard to computer (to prevent someone from wiretapping or altering what you type) and from computer to screen (to prevent someone from generating a phony output to your monitor that can trick you into OKing something you hadn't intended to).
Because terrorists and hackers keep welding antenna-laden black boxes to my keyboard and monitor.
Others will note that the Windows-only Palladium will, at least in the short run, further bolster the Windows monopoly. In time, says Microsoft, Palladium will spread out. "We don't blink at the thought of putting Palladium on your Palm... on the telephone, on your wristwatch," says software architect Brian Willman.
Now that's innovative... convincing consumers that someone is trying to wiretap their watches so they will pay more to hardware-encrypt data between the crystal and LCD.
And what if some government thinks that Palladium protects information too much? So far, the United States doesn't seem to have a problem...
With the current U.S. push to chip away at privacy rights in the name of preventing terrorism, the FBI/the CIA/Ashcroft would be speaking out against this if it really protected the individual's privacy.
according to this article at MSNBC, Microsoft has an ambitious new plan...
Please note that this is a Newsweek article, not an MSNBC article. Newsweek's parent, The Washington Post Company, cut a deal with Microsoft about two years ago in which MSNBC would publish Newsweek.com in a more cost-effective way than the WashPostCo could.
Whether you want to trust Newsweek's articles about Microsoft any more than you would trust a MSNBC article about Microsoft is up to you.
But who will watch those watchers? And who will watch them?
Duh, you sell tickets to watch Echelon and use the proceeds to fund <insert hotly-debated congressional project here>.
Who would pony up the dough to watch this great show?
marketing titans (Chiat-Day, Coca Cola, etc.)
insurance companies
brokerages
governments that distrust their own citizens (China, Australia, etc.)
governments that distrust their neighbors (India, Pakistan, etc.)
terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.)
Of course, this would probably decimate the market for cookie-wielding banner ads.
Re:Yeah, we think highly of foreigners here.
on
Greenbacks No More
·
· Score: 2
foreigners have a hard time differenciating between the bills
Connect the dots:
U.S. currency changed to be "foreigner-friendly"
terrorists encouraged to use cash (previously they had to survive a grueling 6-week course on distinguishing singles from twenties)
FBI loses what little ability it has to track suspected terrorists' activities through their bank accounts ("Hmm... $500 spent at fertilizer shop, $250 spent at Avis, $250 spent at driving school, Six one-way tickets from Karachi to Newark, $300 spent at enlargeyourpenis.com... this guy could be up to something")
No pesky whistle-blowers proclaiming "the FBI had all the information it needed to thwart terrorist attacks but certain unnamed people further up the food chain ordered us to stand down for reasons unknown"
Once again, an asteroid-threat article's graphic blows the story out of proportion (yes, they included "Not to scale" this time, but how many people noticed?).
At any rate, our scientists are getting better. Last time they didn't know about the asteroid until four days after it missed us. This time they learned of the asteroid three days after the fact. At this rate, they should be able to tell us when we've been hit by a killer asteroid on the same day it hits us.
Remember kids. Use a nickname, and change it frequently if you ever want to run for any kind of office.
20 years later...
MTV: "PresidentNeal, have you ever posted on Slashdot?" PresidentNeal: "Yes, but I never inhaled controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh modded anyone down for being a troll." MTV: "Mr. President, control-H doesn't work on Microsoft TV. It looks like you think you're using Linux."
A number of people who don't want their content archived by the Internet Archiver may still want search engines to direct traffic to their sites (The Washington Post does this). If that's the case, use this in your robots.txt file:
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
Most (all?) search engines provide information on how to specifically exclude their spiders (while allowing everyone else). Just go to the engine's site and search for info on how they treat robots.txt.
DOJ wants local garbage men nationwide to store all residential and commercial trash in marked bins for 10 years so the FBI can research an individual's lifestyle
DOJ wants power companies to keep detailed records of household power usage so the FBI can determine what time of day is best to break in and plant listening devices
DOJ wants all White House officials to publish full transcripts of their meetings so the public knows just how much of Bush's energy policy was written by Enron
DOJ wants all ISPs to log and retain all of your email headers and browsing history so the FBI can go through your trash without feeling nauseous.
Which of the above seems reasonable to you, your Honor?
The prospect of "fewer regulations" is not a uniformly "good thing." There may be regulations that [are|seem to be] overzealous and overbearing, but many regulations are designed to protect you.
The pharmaceutical industry would like fewer regulations so it could lower its costs, but the regulations set quality requirements for your safety. You can walk into any drug store and the generic drugs are just as high quality as the name brands. Without the regulations, you'd be betting your health on the abilities of a corporation's marketing team.
The airline industry would like fewer regulations so it could lower the cost of maintaining and flying planes, but the regulations require certain maintenance procedures for your safety. The pilots and mechanics of the airline may not want to cut corners, but executives are forever pushing for that extra dollar of profit. Without the regulations, planes would be falling out of the sky because some exec who knows nothing about aviation pushed too far.
Peter Pan may get away without regulations in Never Land, but in the real world regulations serve a purpose.
Bottom line: If you're going to criticize regulations that serve specific interests (as opposed to the whole of society), fine, but don't trivialize regulations.
A great collection of entertaining/insightful anecdotes about Bill Gates and the group of CEOs Nathan Myhrvold calls "Captain Ahab's Club" (Ray Noorda, Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, Philippe Kahn, Jim Manzi, Marc Andreesen, et al) -- CEOs who are so consumed with taking down Gates they risk destroying their companies in the process.
If you're interested in the business end of IT, you're going to run into Microsoft eventually (the first question Silicon Valley venture capitalists ask aspiring entrepreneurs is usually something like "So what's to stop Microsoft from doing the same thing and putting you out of business?"). If you want to learn from the successes and failures of companies that took on Microsoft, this book is a must-read.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ogg seems to take significantly more processing power to decode. The media player manufacturers probably don't want to spend extra money to handle Ogg when 99% of the market just wants to play MP3s.
the reason to shutdown netcafes is for safety and license inspection, it has nothing to do with squeezing free of speech and human right
In the United States, there are those who want to see journalists licensed. The theory is that if the only people who can [report|comment on] the news are certified as properly trained, there will be fewer instances of libel.
The reason this has not happened is because the license would become a tool to restrict freedom of speech. Criticize the president and you lose your license. Report on Camp X-Ray detainees' claims that they are being mistreated and you lose your license. Etc.
China makes no secret of the fact that it doesn't want its citizens to have access to publications not controlled by the government (it blocks access to major Western newspapers including the NY Times and Washington Post). I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the Chinese government has been waiting for something like this to happen to give it an excuse to close the cafes. I would go so far as to keep my mind open to the possibility that the Chinese government set the fire to create this convenient excuse.
How does mandatory licensing ensure protection against a fire in a cafe? Why does this new licensing apply only to Internet cafes and not barber shops? Both use electronic equipment that could start a fire, but only one has the potential to introduce uncensored information to the masses in a shielded society. I think what the Chinese government is really worried about is the fact that ideas spread like forest fires.
Yeah, my best friend had it. The "wow" factor wore off after we discovered two things:
The system was more gullible than any substitute teacher we ever met. If you select the long jump event, run, jump off the pad, land on the floor next to the pad and leave the room, the game thinks you're Superman. Once a kid outsmarts a game it's no longer fun.
Participating in the same events in the backyard was healthier, more educational and more fun.
To: yog
From: Ministry of Love
Subject: Re: I'm not getting in one of those things
Why is it that you are the only person in your office who continues to resist teleportation? Society doesn't care whether it's the "real you" or a "duplicate you" that walks off the pad so long as that entity can contribute to the GDP the same way you do. Stop thinking about yourself for a minute and report to room 13B for political re-education. The two men standing behind you will show you the way.
Image [sic] if you were buying a bed and you were asked to sign an agreement first. It stated that someone else actually would own your bed, could watch what you do in it, come over and use your bed when you aren't in it, and sell anything they found out about your activities in your bed, would you be comfortable buying that bed?
Kids these days just don't put as much effort into work as they used to. A lazy salesman attatches an EULA to your bed (or couch, or carpet, or the back seat of your car) stating that anything you make in their bed (or whatever) belongs to them. Back in the old days one had to spin straw into gold to snatch someone's child. You had to work at thievery...
It's a sign that the music labels are going to try to deal with the P2P phenomenon on its own terms, not in the courts.
Not quite. You're assuming that the labels only focus on one thing at a time, but a large company with a lot of money is more like an octopus. One tentacle of the organization is trying this tactic to crack P2P while another pursues the issue in court. Another tentacle funds research to prevent CDs from playing on computers. What are the other five tentacles doing?
OK, it's time to call out the big guns. Who do we know Down Under? We need Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin to do an expose on the Australian government.
Irwin picks the prime minister up by the neck...
"Wow! Look at this beauty! What we have here is a rare Australian Brown-Nosed Prime Minister. Very valuable too, large corporations will pay big bucks for a fella like this one here."
The prime minister starts gagging and choking...
"You're all right, Mate. You're all right. You have to be careful when dealing with these buggers. I don't want to let go of the neck because then he could call his elite guard and then I'd be in a world of trouble. They'd come running and attack me with their projectile defense mechanisms. They wouldn't understand that I'm not trying to hurt the prime minister, I'm only trying to educate the public."
The PM is grasping for his computer, but Irwin holds him out of reach...
"Let's walk over to his computer and take a look at how he survives. Notice the program he uses to search his prey's email and telephone conversations. Very sneaky, but it's that survival instinct that allows him to maintain his dominance in the political jungle. That's why we call him the prime minister. Yeah? OK, I'm gonna let him down slowly, and hopefully he'll be too busy gasping for air to call for help and I can make my retreat."
Flash's major shortcoming/abuse still exists: it takes control away from the user and places it in the hands of a "designer" who may not have any experience in building user interfaces.
So Nielsen's partnering with Macromedia to educate people on proper Flash design. It's a PR gesture on Macromedia's part to silence one of Flash's most vocal critics, but it's not going to accomplish much in the real world. The real Flash offenders are not going to attend a Macromedia seminar on usability or study Nielsen's guidelines. That would restrain their "creativity" -- most of them use Flash specifically because they want to be different, which is the antithesis of Nielsen's usability mantra.
My browser filters out all swf files, so if you use Flash and you don't provide an HTML alternative (most sites don't), I'll never see your content. That's a good thing. I don't want to play "chase the links as they fly across the screen" or listen to your music blended with the mp3 I'm playing.
Fireworks are exciting, pretty toys too, but each July 4 police scour the streets for people who set them off because they're dangerous in the hands of most people.
...the best way to deal with the whole manual issue is to design your product better. You know how you're not supposed to remove a game cartridge while you're playing? If you look at the SNES and the GameBoy, you are physically prevented from removing the cartridge because the power switch moves a piece that blocks the exit of the cartridge.
You obviously haven't heard Nintendo's horror stories about the thousands of angry parents who called customer support to complain that their cartridges were stuck.
Support: Just turn the machine off, Sir. Parent: I'm not going to fall for that one. That other Redmond company told me turning my machine off would fix the problem, but then I couldn't get it to respond at all. At least now Jimmy can play his game.
Ever wonder why the N64 didn't include such a brilliant feature?
Slashdot Mirror
Let's take a look at these new innovations:
So MS is going to claim it invented encryption and checksumming in 2002. Most Windows users get viruses via email scripts, which aren't programs. So this won't cut down on viruses (why would MS want to when they can claim that the virus writers are just getting savvyer and that you need to buy a more secure system to stay one step ahead). I've seen the "unsolicited mail you might want to see." Hotmail calls them newsletters and prevents you from blocking them. Bull$hit. No company is going to spend the money to store, manage and distribute your information if they aren't getting paid or reading your information. If you're already talking to the lender, why can't you give them the information yourself... or are people really too lazy to write down their name, address and phone number? Yeah, it's funny how people didn't buy into DRM the first time around, kinda like pay-per-view DVDs. But if we sugar-coat it and convince consumers that they can benefit from DRM (after all, a reader of a protected Word document can't copy its contents down while he has access to it and redistribute it later), they will accept it, the music industry will turn to us for DRM-formatted CDs and MS will control the audio CD format. Great. The future of the PC redefined by a paintball arena manager. Because terrorists and hackers keep welding antenna-laden black boxes to my keyboard and monitor. Now that's innovative... convincing consumers that someone is trying to wiretap their watches so they will pay more to hardware-encrypt data between the crystal and LCD. With the current U.S. push to chip away at privacy rights in the name of preventing terrorism, the FBI/the CIA/Ashcroft would be speaking out against this if it really protected the individual's privacy. Please note that this is a Newsweek article, not an MSNBC article. Newsweek's parent, The Washington Post Company, cut a deal with Microsoft about two years ago in which MSNBC would publish Newsweek.com in a more cost-effective way than the WashPostCo could.Whether you want to trust Newsweek's articles about Microsoft any more than you would trust a MSNBC article about Microsoft is up to you.
Who would pony up the dough to watch this great show?
- marketing titans (Chiat-Day, Coca Cola, etc.)
- insurance companies
- brokerages
- governments that distrust their own citizens (China, Australia, etc.)
- governments that distrust their neighbors (India, Pakistan, etc.)
- terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.)
Of course, this would probably decimate the market for cookie-wielding banner ads.Anyone remember this FUD from CNN three months and one day ago? That asteroid came from the direction of the sun as well.
At any rate, our scientists are getting better. Last time they didn't know about the asteroid until four days after it missed us. This time they learned of the asteroid three days after the fact. At this rate, they should be able to tell us when we've been hit by a killer asteroid on the same day it hits us.
MTV: "PresidentNeal, have you ever posted on Slashdot?"
PresidentNeal: "Yes, but I never inhaled controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh controlh modded anyone down for being a troll."
MTV: "Mr. President, control-H doesn't work on Microsoft TV. It looks like you think you're using Linux."
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
Most (all?) search engines provide information on how to specifically exclude their spiders (while allowing everyone else). Just go to the engine's site and search for info on how they treat robots.txt.
- DOJ wants local garbage men nationwide to store all residential and commercial trash in marked bins for 10 years so the FBI can research an individual's lifestyle
- DOJ wants power companies to keep detailed records of household power usage so the FBI can determine what time of day is best to break in and plant listening devices
- DOJ wants all White House officials to publish full transcripts of their meetings so the public knows just how much of Bush's energy policy was written by Enron
- DOJ wants all ISPs to log and retain all of your email headers and browsing history so the FBI can go through your trash without feeling nauseous.
Which of the above seems reasonable to you, your Honor?The pharmaceutical industry would like fewer regulations so it could lower its costs, but the regulations set quality requirements for your safety. You can walk into any drug store and the generic drugs are just as high quality as the name brands. Without the regulations, you'd be betting your health on the abilities of a corporation's marketing team.
The airline industry would like fewer regulations so it could lower the cost of maintaining and flying planes, but the regulations require certain maintenance procedures for your safety. The pilots and mechanics of the airline may not want to cut corners, but executives are forever pushing for that extra dollar of profit. Without the regulations, planes would be falling out of the sky because some exec who knows nothing about aviation pushed too far.
Peter Pan may get away without regulations in Never Land, but in the real world regulations serve a purpose.
Bottom line: If you're going to criticize regulations that serve specific interests (as opposed to the whole of society), fine, but don't trivialize regulations.
If you get one of these devices implanted, it will probably be unlawful for you to drive in certain U.S. states.
can one patent a technique for making other patents irrelevant?
A great collection of entertaining/insightful anecdotes about Bill Gates and the group of CEOs Nathan Myhrvold calls "Captain Ahab's Club" (Ray Noorda, Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, Philippe Kahn, Jim Manzi, Marc Andreesen, et al) -- CEOs who are so consumed with taking down Gates they risk destroying their companies in the process.
If you're interested in the business end of IT, you're going to run into Microsoft eventually (the first question Silicon Valley venture capitalists ask aspiring entrepreneurs is usually something like "So what's to stop Microsoft from doing the same thing and putting you out of business?"). If you want to learn from the successes and failures of companies that took on Microsoft, this book is a must-read.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ogg seems to take significantly more processing power to decode. The media player manufacturers probably don't want to spend extra money to handle Ogg when 99% of the market just wants to play MP3s.
The reason this has not happened is because the license would become a tool to restrict freedom of speech. Criticize the president and you lose your license. Report on Camp X-Ray detainees' claims that they are being mistreated and you lose your license. Etc.
China makes no secret of the fact that it doesn't want its citizens to have access to publications not controlled by the government (it blocks access to major Western newspapers including the NY Times and Washington Post). I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the Chinese government has been waiting for something like this to happen to give it an excuse to close the cafes. I would go so far as to keep my mind open to the possibility that the Chinese government set the fire to create this convenient excuse.
How does mandatory licensing ensure protection against a fire in a cafe? Why does this new licensing apply only to Internet cafes and not barber shops? Both use electronic equipment that could start a fire, but only one has the potential to introduce uncensored information to the masses in a shielded society. I think what the Chinese government is really worried about is the fact that ideas spread like forest fires.
I will be impressed when someone develops a "Running Laps" game that kids are fighting to play.
From: Ministry of Love
Subject: Re: I'm not getting in one of those things
Why is it that you are the only person in your office who continues to resist teleportation? Society doesn't care whether it's the "real you" or a "duplicate you" that walks off the pad so long as that entity can contribute to the GDP the same way you do. Stop thinking about yourself for a minute and report to room 13B for political re-education. The two men standing behind you will show you the way.
Irwin picks the prime minister up by the neck...
"Wow! Look at this beauty! What we have here is a rare Australian Brown-Nosed Prime Minister. Very valuable too, large corporations will pay big bucks for a fella like this one here."
The prime minister starts gagging and choking...
"You're all right, Mate. You're all right. You have to be careful when dealing with these buggers. I don't want to let go of the neck because then he could call his elite guard and then I'd be in a world of trouble. They'd come running and attack me with their projectile defense mechanisms. They wouldn't understand that I'm not trying to hurt the prime minister, I'm only trying to educate the public."
The PM is grasping for his computer, but Irwin holds him out of reach...
"Let's walk over to his computer and take a look at how he survives. Notice the program he uses to search his prey's email and telephone conversations. Very sneaky, but it's that survival instinct that allows him to maintain his dominance in the political jungle. That's why we call him the prime minister. Yeah? OK, I'm gonna let him down slowly, and hopefully he'll be too busy gasping for air to call for help and I can make my retreat."
<TARGET-SITE> is offering a free showing of <POPULAR-RECENT-MOVIE>
Let's see... destroy undesirable Web site... check...
So Nielsen's partnering with Macromedia to educate people on proper Flash design. It's a PR gesture on Macromedia's part to silence one of Flash's most vocal critics, but it's not going to accomplish much in the real world. The real Flash offenders are not going to attend a Macromedia seminar on usability or study Nielsen's guidelines. That would restrain their "creativity" -- most of them use Flash specifically because they want to be different, which is the antithesis of Nielsen's usability mantra.
My browser filters out all swf files, so if you use Flash and you don't provide an HTML alternative (most sites don't), I'll never see your content. That's a good thing. I don't want to play "chase the links as they fly across the screen" or listen to your music blended with the mp3 I'm playing.
Fireworks are exciting, pretty toys too, but each July 4 police scour the streets for people who set them off because they're dangerous in the hands of most people.