As more and more governments and business turn to biometric data for confirming identity, and identity theft becomes a more and more prevalent problem, Canon's solution is to embed your biometric data in publicly distributed images?
Someone would just navigate to your flickr page, do a quick google search to find your real name (or read it from your page), look you up in publicly accessible databases to acquire your address etc, and then just rip your biometric information right out of the images you post! As wikipedia points out there are commercially available fake iris contact lenses designed to defeat these scanners - previously, the problem was only in acquiring someone's iris. Not to mention that in the future as biometrics become more popular we're likely to see people's irises, fingerprints, and other information used in household readers for providing authentication to software and internet applications - much like the fingerprint scanners we're seeing on more and more laptops.
Publically distributing your iris is a bad idea now, but a terrible idea in the future.
When their website references retarded 4chan memes like "MOAR" (the link is to preview their moderations of content).
The whole point of filtering stupidity is to get rid of these mindless un-humorisms, not reinforce them. Using these tired jokes on their site is the equivalent of claiming to fight spam but having one of those FWD: FWD: FWD: SEND THIS TO 20 PEOPLE FOR GOOD LUCK!!! emails as your homepage.
Do you know why you need Apple's bootcamp to use another OS on a Mac? Because Apple uses Intel's next-gen BIOS replacement, EFI. Almost nobody else uses EFI.
BootCamp adds in legacy BIOS support, which is necessary for Windows. Tell Microsoft to pull its head out of its ass and support EFI.
Apple contributes a lot to the open source community. Safari/khtml is perhaps the best example of that, but they open source their kernel (darwin), quicktime streaming server (darwin streaming server), OpenDirectory, bonjour (mDNSresponder) and a number of other tools and software packages. Apple also owns CUPS, though they bought that and didn't develop it in house (it's GPL2).
On top of that Apple regularly credits security researchers and links to their websites in software updates when they report vulnerabilities to Apple. They work with the community, not against it.
You can work with Apple on these open source projects. The fact that you don't, and that you don't know about them in the first place probably means you aren't a programmer, and aren't really serious about contributing to open source. What you really like doing is feeling superior.
It's perhaps most telling that you use the iPhone as an example of why you're upset at Apple's lack of security. You have it all backwards. The issue with the iPhone was that there were security vulnerabilities. The iPhone was cracked with a buffer overflow exploit. Apple fixed the exploit, which broke hacked phones. They did not intentionally brick phones, and instead told people not to update if they had hacked phones. You're probably remembering the whole thing wrong because you were too smug to learn the facts. Hint: fixing buffer overflows is good security, not bad. Apple is under no obligation to preserve a buffer overflow on a product they ship. If you don't want a security hole patched, don't update the product.
Apple hasn't violated the terms of any open source license. They give back to the community. They maintain a number of open source products. You can be mad about the iPhone being locked, but that's a separate issue from security or open source.
This kind of piracy hurts the US, so we really should be all for enforcement. Counterfeit software from American companies that is sold abroad means that the money is not flowing back into the US, and is instead entirely in foreign pockets. That means fewer taxes for the US GOVT, which in turn means that your personal taxes are higher in some small way.
You taxes pay for the US infrastructure that allowed companies like microsoft to arise, and thus companies pay back into the tax system. But when foreign counterfeiters reap the benefits of the labor of American companies, your taxes are paying for their profits. Busting counterfeiters is good for taxes, and a good use of government money, not bad.
Now, I know slashdot hates copyright enforcement, and the tactics of the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA are deplorable. Microsoft certainly benefits in some way from software adoption due to piracy. But before you crucify me for supporting police action against counterfeiters, keep this in mind:
This is not piracy as you know it.
These counterfeiters were selling what appeared to be genuine software, at normal retail prices. They forged the holograms, faked the boxes, and generated the serial numbers. The consumers buying the software were unaware of what was going on.
Imagine buying a copy of Micrsoft Vista, and shelling out the full $250 or whatever for VistaFlavorX(tm). You install it and everything runs fine. Then, six months later the computer locks you out when Microsoft realizes it's pirated.
Putting aside the issue of WGA, can you not realize how much that would suck for the mom and pop consumer? These chinese counterfeiters were not the "little guys," and they were certainly not "sticking it to the man."
They were profiting off American companies, American labor, American tax dollars, and in the end they were screwing over the little guy.
Before people start jumping on you (oh, too late) they should look at any of Apple's security updates. Apple routinely credits the people who report vulnerabilities. The majority of "bugs" in security updates are patches to third party stuff from the OSS community, and Apple finds stuff internally, but if you report a vulnerability and Apple patches it they credit you.
Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.9, Mac OS X Server v10.4.9
A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service or arbitrary code execution
Description: A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device Standardized Device Control Protocol) code used to create Port Mappings on home NAT gateways in the OS X mDNSResponder implementation. By sending a maliciously crafted packet, a remote attacker can trigger the overflow which may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation when processing UPnP protocol packets. This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X v10.4. Credit to Michael Lynn of Juniper Networks for reporting this issue.
and
VPN
CVE-ID: CVE-2007-0753
Available for: Mac OS X v10.3.9, Mac OS X Server v10.3.9,Mac OS X v10.4.9, Mac OS X Server v10.4.9
Impact: A local user may obtain system privileges
Description: A format string vulnerability exists in vpnd. By running the vpnd command with maliciously crafted arguments, a local user can trigger the vulnerability which may lead to arbitrary code execution with system privileges. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of the arguments passed to vpnd. Credit to Chris Anley of NGSSoftware for reporting this issue.
So shut up and read up before making up claims about how Apple hates security researchers.
I hope they win. All too often copyright is being used as the tool of large corporations against the little man. It's time the individual fought back against the big companies.
Turnitin.com plays on the rampant fears of plagiarism to sell a service students really don't have any choice of using. The teacher submits the papers, and the students have no control over their copyrighted material. You essay, your intellectual property, disappears into the black hole of turnitin.com and never comes out.
It seems that the concurrence Microsoft Corp. is facing is getting tighter and tighter. The Penguin gets more and more support from the two biggest rivals that Microsoft have ever had."
Concurrence?
concurrence Pronunciation Key (kn-kûrns, -kr-)
n.
Agreement in opinion.
Cooperation, as of agents, circumstances, or events.
Simultaneous occurrence; coincidence.
I imagine that competition was meant. You don't talk about "tight concurrence"--"tight" is usually used in conjunction with "competition" to describe particularly a particularly fierce and aggressive competitive environment. Of course, the sentence which immediately follows is also a fragment, adding grammatical insult to the vocabulary injury.
I know it's hard to moderate the thousands of user submitted articles we get here, but these are concepts taught in English classes at the elementary school level.
Most high quality audio cards are extrenal, and use FW400 or FW800. The Digi002 is a great example of this--the 001 used a PCI card, but the 002 is Firewire.
Firewire carries all the bandwidth you need, and lets you put your audio interface in a rack or console where it belongs.
It was called "ClarisWorks" then. Apple had a strange homoerotic relationship with this company called "Claris" that involved a leather collar, a leash, random booty calls, and public neglect in favor of Microsoft.
Apple bought back claris and changed the name of the stuff to "Appleworks." Nothing happened for a few years, and the product line died a slow death. ClarisWorks 4 supported some amazing features, like Adobe Photoshop Plugin support, that were never documented and never really used. After that, however, there were really no changes beside UI look and feel.
I'm really amazed by how badly they conducted this test. Some of the reasons why their procedure is horrible have already been touched upon:
Statistically insignificant sample size.
Bad choice of problems.
Arbitrary Grading.
These problems are even more ridiculous when you look at what they did to their apple laptop. As a reference point, Apple has the highest ranked Tech Support by Consumer Reports for both desktops and laptops. In one phone call, they decided this was not the case--apparently conducting surveys of thousands of people is unnecessary.
They also chose different problems for the mac--booting off a non-existent network drive? How is this even remotely a real-world problem? Furthermore, holding down option while rebooting lets you choose the drive your computer will boot from--which is a fix for the problem. If they reset the preference after they booted so that it broke again, that's not Apple's fault.
Misconfiguring wi-fi is also an amazingly horrible test. There's no way to know what settings someone's wireless network and router use, unless you're the LAN administrator. Apple was more than correct to refer them to the manufacturer of the router--could you tell me, right now, what my IP, DNS, Gateway, and hostmask settings should be? What about the SSID and password for my router?
The test was stupidly conducted, and worse yet, only conducted once. Their results were meaningless.
The courts struck down the broadcast flag because the FCC was getting too big for their britches. They got all up in there, and the Judge was like "no you didn't." Judges do that a lot--watch Judge Mathis to see what I mean.
The courts didn't say that the broadcast flag was illegal because it interfered with fair use rights. While the effects of this ruling are to encourage consumer rights, that hardly seems to be the intent of the judgement. The fact is, the FCC was never supposed to make these kinds of rules--and someone finally called their bluff.
You're full of Bullshit. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but it's true.
I've been a longtime user and administrator of Apple machines. I don't work for Apple, as you seem to point out in every single one of your Slashdot posts, but I do know something about the company.
...and Mac OS 10.0 was a JOKE.
10.0 should have been the "Public Beta." Sure, Apple was going through an important transition period, but 10.0 was so incredibly bad that it perpetrated myths about OS X which still haunt Apple. Eye candy grinding the system to a halt? Spinning rainbow of doom? Unresponsive Finder? God forbid we begin to discuss the developer releases and betas. Apple menu? No Apple menu? ah HA! Lets put a blue Apple in the middle of the menubar where it can be covered up by text.
Give me a break. Apple's fucked things up, and recently. In production software, no less. It's all fine and good to make fun of Microsoft on Beer nights, but when you come home to the company that released iTunes 2.0 (aka iDelete) you should be a little humble.
The main advantages are that dual core machines (as compared to dual processor machines) are cheaper to manufacture and operate, in terms of wattage, transistor count, silicon, size, and so on.
You make a good point. I'd go further, and say that it's stupid to be rendered bewildered by the concept of multiple cores or processors. You're able to run more than one thread simultaneously--that is, in a nutshell, the advantage of such a setup. It's nothing particularly new, or even newsworthy. There's nothing, really, to debate, unless you want to touch on how some developers don't like multi-threading their applications.
This article is essentially proclaiming, Two processors process two things! Pundits debate the value of simultaneous operations!
This is a visualization technology, and not actually connected to the idea of moving around literal molecules. That is to say, the technology on display here allows you to move around molecules in a computer model, but those molecules are computer constructs and don't actually exist.
Right, but it's on the way towards creating actual molecule manipulation. If they work on the physics of the molecule interactions (the current system doesn't really allow for this, but perhaps more dynamic future developments would incorporate this feature), then you could actually feel how the molecules move around in space and interact with each other via various forces (e.g. van-der-waals interactions in real time as you 'push' molecules around). This, coupled with some understanding of how to "put things together" in the real world, would go a ways towards actually allowing molecular design. If you're able to create something that 'snaps' together on its own, it's that much easier to implement in a laboratory.
there's also Darwin, which is the BSD-core of Apple's Mac OS X. Darwin is Open Source, though Apple is pretty finnicky about who they let contribute for obvious reasons (it's the core of a commercial Operating System). There's also OpenDarwin which is basically a community controlled branch of Darwin that occasionally serves as a testbed for standard Darwin features. Darwin is based on a Mach 3.0 microkernel, though it's more of a hybrid than that simplistic description would suggest.
Once again, we see a real advancement predicted by a science fiction author.
In his work The Diamond Age (which was published, I believe, in 1995), Neal Stephenson predicted that nanotech engineers would manipulate molecules by hand, maneuvering them into position to create microscopic engines, rod-based logic elements, and other devices. John Percival Hackworth, one of the semi-protagonists of the novel (Stephenson has a nasty tendency to complicate his writing with multiple protagonists who follow divergent paths), is such an engineer, an individual who creates 'bespoke' nanotech designs.
The central conceit of the novel is that Nanotechnology has entirely replaced conventional manufacturing through the use of a "feed"--a dedicated line of raw materials which couples with computers to create almost any object desired. How long until such things become reality? Only time will tell. Obviously though, we're on our way.
I posted a simple guide on Mac Update to using the Quicktime FLAC plugin. I'm working on an Applescript to simplify the process of batch converting FLAC files into various AAC/MP4 files (without QTpro or iTunes) and still preserve the tag information, but I haven't quite ironed out the kinks (it crashes with some tag info, for some reason).
Go to MacUpdate to download the plugin if you don't have it.
(1) Once you've downloaded and uncompressed the file, you'll see two items in the plugin folder. One is a copy of the open source license, and the other is the FLAC_Decoder.component quicktime plugin.
(2) Move the FLAC_Decoder.component file into
/Library/Quicktime
or if you don't have root access
~/Library/Quicktime
if you don't have either of these folders, feel free to create them, either with the Finder (Command-Shift-N) or with Terminal (mkdir/Library/Quicktime)
(3) Restart Quicktime if it's open--otherwise, open Quicktime (if you've deleted the link in your Dock, look in the/Applications folder).
(4) Find a.flac file that you want to open--it should have no icon. Make sure it ends in the.flac extension--this will be important later. Using the Finder, select the file by left clicking on the file icon, and hit Apple-I (or select "Get Info" from the File menu).
(5) In the file's info window, you'll see the heading "Open With:" Click the triangle next to the heading, and pull down the "Open With:" menu--select "Other..." from the "Open With:" menu.
(6) You should now see a dialog box asking you to choose an application to open the unknown.flac file with--from the "Enable" menu, choose "All Applications" (the default setting is "Recommended Applications"). Navigate to/Applications and select Quicktime Player. If you didn't change the enabled applications to "All," then Quicktime Player will be grayed out and you will not be able to select it.
(7) Once you've successfully changed the file binding so that it opens with Quicktime Player, go back to the Info menu on your.flac file. Under "Open With:" you should now see "Quicktime Player" as the selected choice. If this is not the case, retreat to Step 6 and try again. Otherwise, click on "Change All..." to instruct your computer to "Use this Application to open all documents like this." There should be a brief pause, and a dialog box box will appear asking you if you really want to open all your.flac files with Quicktime Player. Click continue at the dialog.
(8) You now have installed the FLAC component and successfully bound quicktime to the.flac file extension. If you own Quicktime Pro, you can also convert and export.flac files into other formats.
(9) You can play the flac files in iTunes if you rename them to.mov and drop them on the iTunes icon. You should be able to convert them to mp3/aac via iTunes. Most of iTunes' functions, however, won't work... and it will hog CPU and memory. I'd recommend converting them via quicktime or a similar application.
It's also worth noting that if you convert the FLAC files into WMA lossless, iTunes will convert them automatically for you into ALAC (apple lossess) and preserve tag information.
iPods ignore the fairplay DRM on iTunes.m4p aac encoded files. There are already methods out there to get around the encryption, but with the iPod firmware the possibilities are rendered much more elegant. In other words, the iPod firmware contains a backdoor to apple's DRM: a backdoor now in the hands of hackers.
Also, I suspect the above will make Apple a little peevish, and might incur the wrath of Apple legal. The legal status of these actions under the DMCA is unclear to me, but I suspect it's not favorable.
Slashdot Mirror
As more and more governments and business turn to biometric data for confirming identity, and identity theft becomes a more and more prevalent problem, Canon's solution is to embed your biometric data in publicly distributed images?
Someone would just navigate to your flickr page, do a quick google search to find your real name (or read it from your page), look you up in publicly accessible databases to acquire your address etc, and then just rip your biometric information right out of the images you post! As wikipedia points out there are commercially available fake iris contact lenses designed to defeat these scanners - previously, the problem was only in acquiring someone's iris. Not to mention that in the future as biometrics become more popular we're likely to see people's irises, fingerprints, and other information used in household readers for providing authentication to software and internet applications - much like the fingerprint scanners we're seeing on more and more laptops.
Publically distributing your iris is a bad idea now, but a terrible idea in the future.
This worked because your hand was touching the trackpad button on boot, which causes the drive to eject the disk.
When their website references retarded 4chan memes like "MOAR" (the link is to preview their moderations of content).
The whole point of filtering stupidity is to get rid of these mindless un-humorisms, not reinforce them. Using these tired jokes on their site is the equivalent of claiming to fight spam but having one of those FWD: FWD: FWD: SEND THIS TO 20 PEOPLE FOR GOOD LUCK!!! emails as your homepage.
Do you know why you need Apple's bootcamp to use another OS on a Mac? Because Apple uses Intel's next-gen BIOS replacement, EFI. Almost nobody else uses EFI.
BootCamp adds in legacy BIOS support, which is necessary for Windows. Tell Microsoft to pull its head out of its ass and support EFI.
Apple contributes a lot to the open source community. Safari/khtml is perhaps the best example of that, but they open source their kernel (darwin), quicktime streaming server (darwin streaming server), OpenDirectory, bonjour (mDNSresponder) and a number of other tools and software packages. Apple also owns CUPS, though they bought that and didn't develop it in house (it's GPL2).
On top of that Apple regularly credits security researchers and links to their websites in software updates when they report vulnerabilities to Apple. They work with the community, not against it.
You can work with Apple on these open source projects. The fact that you don't, and that you don't know about them in the first place probably means you aren't a programmer, and aren't really serious about contributing to open source. What you really like doing is feeling superior.
It's perhaps most telling that you use the iPhone as an example of why you're upset at Apple's lack of security. You have it all backwards. The issue with the iPhone was that there were security vulnerabilities. The iPhone was cracked with a buffer overflow exploit. Apple fixed the exploit, which broke hacked phones. They did not intentionally brick phones, and instead told people not to update if they had hacked phones. You're probably remembering the whole thing wrong because you were too smug to learn the facts. Hint: fixing buffer overflows is good security, not bad. Apple is under no obligation to preserve a buffer overflow on a product they ship. If you don't want a security hole patched, don't update the product.
Apple hasn't violated the terms of any open source license. They give back to the community. They maintain a number of open source products. You can be mad about the iPhone being locked, but that's a separate issue from security or open source.
You taxes pay for the US infrastructure that allowed companies like microsoft to arise, and thus companies pay back into the tax system. But when foreign counterfeiters reap the benefits of the labor of American companies, your taxes are paying for their profits. Busting counterfeiters is good for taxes, and a good use of government money, not bad.
Now, I know slashdot hates copyright enforcement, and the tactics of the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA are deplorable. Microsoft certainly benefits in some way from software adoption due to piracy. But before you crucify me for supporting police action against counterfeiters, keep this in mind:
These counterfeiters were selling what appeared to be genuine software, at normal retail prices. They forged the holograms, faked the boxes, and generated the serial numbers. The consumers buying the software were unaware of what was going on.
Imagine buying a copy of Micrsoft Vista, and shelling out the full $250 or whatever for VistaFlavorX(tm). You install it and everything runs fine. Then, six months later the computer locks you out when Microsoft realizes it's pirated.
Putting aside the issue of WGA, can you not realize how much that would suck for the mom and pop consumer? These chinese counterfeiters were not the "little guys," and they were certainly not "sticking it to the man."
They were profiting off American companies, American labor, American tax dollars, and in the end they were screwing over the little guy.
for example, in Security Update 2007-5 and
So shut up and read up before making up claims about how Apple hates security researchers.
I hope they win. All too often copyright is being used as the tool of large corporations against the little man. It's time the individual fought back against the big companies.
Turnitin.com plays on the rampant fears of plagiarism to sell a service students really don't have any choice of using. The teacher submits the papers, and the students have no control over their copyrighted material. You essay, your intellectual property, disappears into the black hole of turnitin.com and never comes out.
If there is no port in sight, why would I donate? Once they announce a port and start making headway, that's when my wallet will become interested.
Concurrence?
I imagine that competition was meant. You don't talk about "tight concurrence"--"tight" is usually used in conjunction with "competition" to describe particularly a particularly fierce and aggressive competitive environment. Of course, the sentence which immediately follows is also a fragment, adding grammatical insult to the vocabulary injury.
I know it's hard to moderate the thousands of user submitted articles we get here, but these are concepts taught in English classes at the elementary school level.
Apple makes a competitor to Finale. It's called Logic.
Most high quality audio cards are extrenal, and use FW400 or FW800. The Digi002 is a great example of this--the 001 used a PCI card, but the 002 is Firewire.
Firewire carries all the bandwidth you need, and lets you put your audio interface in a rack or console where it belongs.
It was called "ClarisWorks" then. Apple had a strange homoerotic relationship with this company called "Claris" that involved a leather collar, a leash, random booty calls, and public neglect in favor of Microsoft. Apple bought back claris and changed the name of the stuff to "Appleworks." Nothing happened for a few years, and the product line died a slow death. ClarisWorks 4 supported some amazing features, like Adobe Photoshop Plugin support, that were never documented and never really used. After that, however, there were really no changes beside UI look and feel.
These problems are even more ridiculous when you look at what they did to their apple laptop. As a reference point, Apple has the highest ranked Tech Support by Consumer Reports for both desktops and laptops. In one phone call, they decided this was not the case--apparently conducting surveys of thousands of people is unnecessary.
They also chose different problems for the mac--booting off a non-existent network drive? How is this even remotely a real-world problem? Furthermore, holding down option while rebooting lets you choose the drive your computer will boot from--which is a fix for the problem. If they reset the preference after they booted so that it broke again, that's not Apple's fault.
Misconfiguring wi-fi is also an amazingly horrible test. There's no way to know what settings someone's wireless network and router use, unless you're the LAN administrator. Apple was more than correct to refer them to the manufacturer of the router--could you tell me, right now, what my IP, DNS, Gateway, and hostmask settings should be? What about the SSID and password for my router?
The test was stupidly conducted, and worse yet, only conducted once. Their results were meaningless.
The courts struck down the broadcast flag because the FCC was getting too big for their britches. They got all up in there, and the Judge was like "no you didn't." Judges do that a lot--watch Judge Mathis to see what I mean.
The courts didn't say that the broadcast flag was illegal because it interfered with fair use rights. While the effects of this ruling are to encourage consumer rights, that hardly seems to be the intent of the judgement. The fact is, the FCC was never supposed to make these kinds of rules--and someone finally called their bluff.
Apple's cafeteria is, in fact, really really nice.
They have sushi, pizza, delicious salads, and lots of other incredibly yummy stuff. Ive and a bunch of other apple brass eat there all the time.
I've been a longtime user and administrator of Apple machines. I don't work for Apple, as you seem to point out in every single one of your Slashdot posts, but I do know something about the company.
10.0 should have been the "Public Beta." Sure, Apple was going through an important transition period, but 10.0 was so incredibly bad that it perpetrated myths about OS X which still haunt Apple. Eye candy grinding the system to a halt? Spinning rainbow of doom? Unresponsive Finder? God forbid we begin to discuss the developer releases and betas. Apple menu? No Apple menu? ah HA! Lets put a blue Apple in the middle of the menubar where it can be covered up by text.
Give me a break. Apple's fucked things up, and recently. In production software, no less. It's all fine and good to make fun of Microsoft on Beer nights, but when you come home to the company that released iTunes 2.0 (aka iDelete) you should be a little humble.
The main advantages are that dual core machines (as compared to dual processor machines) are cheaper to manufacture and operate, in terms of wattage, transistor count, silicon, size, and so on.
I believe that this is the link you meant to post.
(AnandTech: Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look)
You make a good point. I'd go further, and say that it's stupid to be rendered bewildered by the concept of multiple cores or processors. You're able to run more than one thread simultaneously--that is, in a nutshell, the advantage of such a setup. It's nothing particularly new, or even newsworthy. There's nothing, really, to debate, unless you want to touch on how some developers don't like multi-threading their applications.
This article is essentially proclaiming, Two processors process two things! Pundits debate the value of simultaneous operations!
there's also Darwin, which is the BSD-core of Apple's Mac OS X. Darwin is Open Source, though Apple is pretty finnicky about who they let contribute for obvious reasons (it's the core of a commercial Operating System). There's also OpenDarwin which is basically a community controlled branch of Darwin that occasionally serves as a testbed for standard Darwin features. Darwin is based on a Mach 3.0 microkernel, though it's more of a hybrid than that simplistic description would suggest.
Once again, we see a real advancement predicted by a science fiction author.
In his work The Diamond Age (which was published, I believe, in 1995), Neal Stephenson predicted that nanotech engineers would manipulate molecules by hand, maneuvering them into position to create microscopic engines, rod-based logic elements, and other devices. John Percival Hackworth, one of the semi-protagonists of the novel (Stephenson has a nasty tendency to complicate his writing with multiple protagonists who follow divergent paths), is such an engineer, an individual who creates 'bespoke' nanotech designs.
The central conceit of the novel is that Nanotechnology has entirely replaced conventional manufacturing through the use of a "feed"--a dedicated line of raw materials which couples with computers to create almost any object desired. How long until such things become reality? Only time will tell. Obviously though, we're on our way.
Go to MacUpdate to download the plugin if you don't have it.
It's also worth noting that if you convert the FLAC files into WMA lossless, iTunes will convert them automatically for you into ALAC (apple lossess) and preserve tag information.
iPods ignore the fairplay DRM on iTunes .m4p aac encoded files. There are already methods out there to get around the encryption, but with the iPod firmware the possibilities are rendered much more elegant. In other words, the iPod firmware contains a backdoor to apple's DRM: a backdoor now in the hands of hackers.
Also, I suspect the above will make Apple a little peevish, and might incur the wrath of Apple legal. The legal status of these actions under the DMCA is unclear to me, but I suspect it's not favorable.