Well, checking facts before posting would have helped in this case.
What the hey, I'm not an encyclopedia. I figured someone like you would clear things up if my information was outdated. It sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I'll defer. My info was out of date.
Except for one thing - red LEDs. Whoever said YHBT is a bonehead. This is for real, but apparently it doesn't apply to home electronics. I've worked for several companies who built computers for use in telephone company central offices or that would generally only be appearing in large computer labs; we went to lengths to ensure that the machines would *not* have red LEDs in front so they could be sold in Germany. We were allowed to put them in back, but not the front. I belive that's because red lights were by law supposed to signify danger, so using one as a power or disk activty indicator or somesuch was not allowed.
BTW, to the guy who accused me of being a troll, why don't you look at someone's posting history before doing that? You'll look like less of a loser if you only label someone a troll who actually is one.
I really wish Germany would stop trying to do shit like this. And I thought their technology laws were always so much better, with their good stance on
crypto and such. Makes me very sad to see this.
Their technology laws better? Where it costs ten times more for Internet connectivity than it does in the US? Where the government runs the ISPs? For chrissake, you can't even have red LEDs on the front of equipment there because it's against the law!
Admittedly, some of this may have changed since I last checked, since I don't live in Germany. But even so, they're still in the stone age in many ways when it comes to this stuff. Sorry if I sound like I'm Germany-bashing, but this is the topic at hand. Besides, the US gets a lot of bashing, so it's about time we spread it around a little.:) It's so easy to bash the US's stupid technology laws. It's nice to see that other countries are just as capable of making stupid technology laws as US lawmakers. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Get a "Powerfile" unit from powerfile.com, throw all your CDs in there, get a command-line ripper and write a short script to load/unload the drive, and voila. It will take a little work, but it's doable. The trick is that the Powerfile does SCSI over firewire, so you get true CD ROM capabilities from the external changer. And there are two drives in the unit, so you can rip two discs simultaneously.
The bad news is that it only works on Windows or Mac. Actually, if it works on OS X then it shouldn't be too ugly to do this. Don't know if it does though. Oh yeah, the other bad news is that the Powerfile costs $1800, last time I checked.:(
This is a very good book, but is far from her best. I found it a touch depressing, so I put it down for a while before finishing. I was glad when I finally did, but it took a little effort.
Of LeGuin's sci-fi, nothing compares to "The Lathe of Heaven", which stands as a true classic. I would suggest that anyone thinking of reading LeGuin for the first time read this book first.
If you're more into fantasy, her "Wizard of Earthsea" trilogy (which is now up to 6 books:)
is also a true classic. It's one of those fantasy tales that has that spark of quality you don't find often.
I recently met LeGuin at a book reading, which was, for me, almost like meeting Tolkien. (Not quite on the same scale, of course, more like meeting a demigod.) When asked about what inspired her to write the Earthsea books, she said her publisher asked her to write a fantasy book. Lord of the Rings had just become very popular about that time in the 60's, and her publisher wanted to capitalize on the Tolkien fans' hunger. She said she always wondered what Gandalf must have been like when he was a boy (though us diehard LOTR fans know he never actually was a boy), so she created Ged, the main character in the Earthsea novels, as her interpretation of a young Gandalf.
In the end, I think Ged ends up being quite different from Gandalf, which is probably for the better because the books don't feel like LOTR rehashed. They are quite creative and original, with an amazing quality all their own.
Oh, forgot to mention the other cool things about the APR chip. Not only does it boost my engine power, but it has multiple programs you can select from using the existing cruise control buttons! It doesn't interfere with the cruise control in any way, and it allows me to choose "factory" mode (which is useful for when you bring the car in for service - so you don't tip them off that you've done something to void your engine warranty), "boost mode", and "valet mode" to keep those pedal-happy valets from abusing your car.
It may be more difficult to install some cheap gadget you buy at Kragen or somesuch junky auto supply store, agreed. Cars are getting more complex. But it's that very complexity that is making it more and more possible to get into the guts of the car with electronic/software mods. As some have mentioned here, Audis and VWs are prime examples.
In the past, if you wanted to change valve timing, turbo boost, etc., you had to buy and install more aggressive valve cams, more powerful turbos or other parts. You had to do intrusive surgery to your car to put in these aftermarket components.
Nowadays, drive-by-wire cars like Audis can be hacked, literally. Many of the engine performance characteristics are entirely software-controlled, so by changing the software you can achieve much in the way of performance improvements that used to only be possible by swapping engine parts. Not only can you modify performance, you can also modify the behavior of things like the door locks, radio, etc., with PC software that lets you configure your car's computer.
I have an Audi A4 1.8T that had a stock 170 HP engine. I bought an APR chip "upgrade" for the car's computer, and suddenly my car has 207 HP. Not only that, the torque curve has shot up to 250 foot-pounds at 3600 RPM - a 50% increase. That torque is dramatic, and lets me beat "more powerful" cars off the line consistently. And now that it's raining a lot here, I can beat *any* car off the line that only has two-wheel drive when the ground is wet.
All this achieved in a simple one-hour soldering procedure. There are limits, of course, beyond which you need better parts, but who says cars are less hackable nowadays?!
Actually, while the 'rights' are not perhaps yours, they are the very real rights of the people who create content to be suitably rewarded for their work.
I agree with you completely on this statement. I was not advocating theft. I think anyone who redistributes copyrighted works is breaking the law. But we users of copyrighted materials *do* have rights, by law. One of those is the right to make backup copies of copyrighted works we have purchased. If copyright holders remove that ability through technical means, effectively circumventing the law, then they're just as evil as those who steal their work. The "fair use" sections of copyright law are extremely important and nobody should be allowed to nullify them just because they've discovered an extralegal way of doing so.
A prime example of this is the new copy protection schemes the music labels are starting to use on CDs. Those schemes won't stop skilled, determined users from encoding and distributing them. They will, however, stop your average user from making copies for any reason. Why do the labels do this then, if the copy protection is full of holes? Because they hope to sell digital copies to those users who can't make or acquire their own digital copies from CDs they've already purchased. In other words, they want to sell you the same music twice.
That's the kind of loss of control of your rights that I'm talking about. That's why DRM should really be called DPM, "Digital Profits Management".
Re:Phase Three: Profit!
on
Electronic Paper
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Digital Rights Management isn't such a horrible thing, provided they respect the right of first sale throughout the process (meaning, I can buy something and
they can't restrict my right to sell it to someone else). However, the cynic in me says this is just one of many ways to eliminate that right.
I think the cynic in you is correct. DRM is merely a euphemism for "Digital Profit Management", and has little to do with *your* rights at all. The concept of digital paper is cool beyond words, but the potential loss of personal control over works you purchase will probably nullify the coolness. When I buy a book or newspaper, I like to know that I've actually bought it rather than licensed it for some term, and that I will always have the ability to read it whenever I desire. Anyone who believes that when electronic paper is available publishers will play by the same rules that they follow now is naive.
Not to mention that books don't go blank when their batteries run out.:)
just don't hook one single system up to the Internet. Establish a private network (not VPN - actually private) for the entire thing.
I realize you were being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but what about internal security? All it takes is for someone to tap into the network at any one of thousands of potential points, or to insert a virus-infected floppy into one of the 5000 nodes, and they score. And if they use wireless anywhere at all, it's open season.
You can't have physical security *everywhere* on the network, because presumably it stretches across a large open area. If someone wants to tap in bad enough, they will. There has to be significant internal security so that soft chewy center becomes hard-boiled, making it harder for intruders to break through from the inside.
You're right that the only good solution using IDE is some sort of RAID controller. However, I don't think RAID5 is a good choice if you want the performance of SCSI. RAID0, RAID1 or some combination of both are probably going to perform well, but my experience with RAID5 controllers (expensive ones, even) are that they have severe performance limitations. My only guess is that all of that xor-ing of data degrades their performance. I have benchmarked AMI, Adaptec and DPT RAID cards in numerous, sometimes very expensive, configurations, and they are all less than optimal. I recently benchmarked an external RAID solution (forget the brand) that cost something like $10k and it was slow too. They were all beaten hands down by software RAID0+1. (Didn't try any of the cards in RAID0+1 configs, so I don't know how they would perform. I'm guessing they'd be okay.)
Some of these used IDE and some used SCSI; all were slow. I don't know what one has to do to get a fast hardware RAID5 solution, but I haven't found it yet.
To add to the volumes of fact others have written in response to your uninformed statement, SCSI blows away IDE. And, believe it or not, the problem gets worse the faster the IDE drive gets. The problem is all those damn interrupts that force the CPU to attend to the drive with IDE. You just don't have those with SCSI, not at the same level (of course, that varies somewhat from controller to controller - in the olden days of SCSI the dumber controller chips spewed out interrupts for each phase change, etc. But now, it's generally one interrupt or less for each I/O.)
Ever looked at CPU utilization during heavy I/O activity on an IDE drive vs. SCSI? With SCSI, the CPU load is negligible or even unnoticable; with IDE, it can be positively gruesome. And the faster those little drives get, the more I/O operations you pump through them, the more work the CPU has to do to keep the drive busy. If your CPU is busy (or even not so busy), the net effect is that your disks can slow down (as well as your CPU-bound application that's eating CPU in the first place).
Another fact that people seem to overlook is that transfer rate is relatively unimportant. Give me higher RPM any day, or anything that reduces seek time. That's what *really* speeds up a disk. The actual transfer of data accounts for a relatively small part of an entire disk I/O transaction compared to waiting for the disk head to get to the right cylinder and the right sector to end up underneath it. Even if you totally removed data transfer time (i.e. infinitely fast data transfer rate), you still wouldn't get tons more speed out of a drive because seeks are still measured in milliseconds. Also, there are other things that go on in setting up a data transfer that aren't improved by increasing the transfer rate of the I/O bus.
Not to mention that fast transfer rate is irrelevant if the RPMs aren't there to keep up. If the disk doesn't spin fast enough, the transfer rate doesn't matter because the disk can't sustain the transfer even in sequential operations. In that case, the transfer rate is only kept up for short bursts, then idle time ensues while you wait for the disk to catch up. (And all computers wait at the same speed!:) Even if you had a drive with terahertz transfer rates (and a system with fast enough buses to handle it), it would make little difference if your drive only ran at 10k RPMs. It could be that drives have enough sectors/track and high enough RPM that increasing the transfer rate to 133 would actually buy you something, but I'm not sure (haven't done the math in a few years).
So, even on the lamest desktop computer, SCSI drives are noticably faster. If you're doing word processing, you probably don't care what type of drive you've got. But if you do even simple stuff like copy your directory full of MP3 files from one disk to another, you can see the difference. For this reason alone, SCSI won't die. Of course, SCSI is the backbone of Fibre Channel and other I/O buses, which guarantees its existence for a long time to come if that's not enough.
I *do* have ACLs set up, and I *do* have WEP set up, and I *do* use ssh. I also have my wireless subnet in my DMZ. That still won't stop someone from cracking my key and hijacking one of my MAC addresses and using it when that host is otherwise idle. That gives them the ability to at least surf the web using my pipe, and also gives them the opportunity to try to exploit the ssh daemon or other services open to the DMZ which they normally wouldn't be able to even touch. Existing tools make it all too easy, because WEP is fucked up.
Sure, you can change your password daily, but I send a lot more than a million packets a day over the wire. It's simply a race. Automated tools for updating the WEP password are not a true solution, because they have to update nodes over the wireless network. If someone cracks your password one day, then he can observe future password changes. Changing the password on the device locally, by hand, is impractical because there can potentially be zillions of nodes to update (And in some cases they might be physically difficult to reach. Imagine remote cameras or devices in the trunk of your car, both of which I have done.)
And your analogy to hanging an Ethernet cable out of your office isn't even close. Nobody makes a hub that requires you to hang a cable out your window; if they did, then they would be to blame. But they don't, because that would be stupid. However, when you use a wireless network, you have no choice but to hang a cable out your window. Granted, the cable takes a little work to reach, but there it is. That's what I'm complaining about. If they fixed WEP, then perhaps you'd need a crane to reach that cable instead of a stepladder.
what does that matter? What people want more is *any* bandwidth (and 802.11b can do 11mps anyhow) - where there is none, what does
speed matter when its > than a slow modem anyway?
For the average home user, you're right. 11mbps is plenty good, since that's significantly faster than your usual DSL or modem connection. 54 mbps will be very useful, however, for corporate networks where you have lots of users banging on the wireless space at the same time, often communicating between corporate hosts and not surfing the web. Remember that wireless is not switched like most Ethernet networks. Everyone shares the network space, and bandwidth utilization increases dramatically as you add more active users. The most *any one* user can get out of the network is 11mbps, but if you have 10 people using it at once then they would, at best, get 1.1mbps on the average. At full tilt, though, the throughput would probably be much lower due to collisions, etc.
And for corporate sites with very fat pipes, even one user could benefit from more than 11mbps, because the wireless link ends up being the bottleneck to the Internet.
Unless 802.11a fixes the totally broken WEP security used with "better" 802.11b products, I don't view this as an improvement. I'm pissed that I spent so many $$ on wireless products with "128 bit encryption", only for that encryption standard to be found practically useless due to fundamental implementation flaws. I sincerely hope a new generation of wireless users aren't faced with the same bogus problems. The link to the Intel site provides no useful info on this subject, nor do any of the articles on the web that I dug up.
Even if 802.11a fixes those problems, I'll still be pissed if they don't come out with a new standard for 802.11b (and a firmware upgrade for my Lucent wireless cards that implements the fix). I don't feel like throwing my expensive wireless hardware in the trash just yet.
If the quality of their customer service, billing practices, etc., are any indication of the company as a whole, I would not suggest associating with them in any way. I absolutely refuse to use them for any services whatsoever after the crap they've put me through as a cell phone customer.
I used to be a Cellular One customer, then MCI bought them out. All went to hell in a handbasket. They triple-billed sometimes, and though they were kind enough to warn you that they were having billing problems, it was still *your problem*. Getting through to a customer service drone on the phone sometimes took as much as 1.5 hours of holding. And canceling my cell service after getting fed up with this garbage took *5 months*. I called their customer service people repeatedly (after waiting in the queue for an hour or so each time) to cancel, and each time they'd tell me I had never cancelled and would I please pay the outstanding bill for the months since I originally cancelled service. And each time I'd have to re-explain that, no, I won't pay because I cancelled long ago and would you please stop sending me bills. And we'd go back and forth for a while and they'd finally say, okay, your balance has been wiped and your account cancelled. And subsequently I'd get another bill (or two or three, if they were having the multi-billing problem that month).
Finally, magically, one month it all stopped, and I have since been MCI-free. Never again do I have to deal with them, except when an MCI telemarketer calls to sell me something. And that tends to be somewhat enjoyable anyway, because I get to inform them that they work for the devil and to tell them to begone to whatever pit of hell they crawled out of.
So, unless you want to be one of *them*, I wouldn't suggest going to work there.
Gates and Ballmer exude pure arrogance in the way they take credit for everything from the BIOS to free software. The victor is the one who writes history, eh? Good thing they're not the victor yet, and their attempts at writing the history books come off as lies.
Gee, I didn't know Gates was responsible for all that free software I used to use back in the CPM days before M$ even existed. Even the stuff I wrote too! Thank you, Bill Gates! Without you, I wouldn't exist today!
I think you're right in that people are doing it just to get free music. No question about that. That's why I'm doing it too, at least up front. I'm just saying that perhaps there are potentially *more* people doing it these days than before because some people, like me, aren't holding back any longer.
Maybe there are only few of us, I can't really say. But there is at least one, me, and that's part of the "reality of the situation".
Admittedly, though, I have bought several CDs because of stuff I found using Morpheus that I never would have bought otherwise. I don't end up buying crappy CDs any more either, because I can listen to the whole thing first. Yes, you can listen to clips on Amazon, etc., but not all songs are available and they're short and sucky quality.
If the recording industry eventually starts copy protecting CDs, then I might go fully over to the dark side and just burn my own CDs from stuff I download off Morpheus.
I fully support the RIAA's right to not have music stolen and distributed for free. Downloading music you haven't paid for is just plain wrong.
I also support the right of services like Morpheus to exist. Internet users should have the absolute right to distribute their files via the Internet, and whether they do it via FTP, HTTP or FastTrack technology is irrelevant. They're all one and the same.
What I don't support is users distributing copyrighted works. You shouldn't do that! Bad copyright infringer!! That said, shouldn't it be the fault of the copyright infringer, not the developer of the technology that allows file sharing? Else, FTP, HTTP, etc. would all be illegal, and we know how stupid an argument that is. While we're at it, why not ban TCP/IP too, because that's how all the data gets passed around. And ISPs and Internet backbones should also be nuked because they are the ones responsible for enabling users to pass around TCP packets.
It seems plain and obvious to me, but unfortunately legal issues rarely end up being simple. I could actually see the RIAA winning a case against Music City. The stupidity of our legal system cannot be underestimated.
It's for that reason that I think the RIAA should go to hell. They would gladly snuff out anything they consider detrimental to business, regardless of how legitimate it is; and they would do so using any underhanded legal method available to them (and even possibly illegal methods, if some of the RIAA memos floating around can be believed). I sympathized with their stance against Napster, mainly because Napster could only work with MP3 files and was plainly designed for stealing music for free. Services like Music City work with any file type, and are so general-purpose that they cannot be faulted. Until the RIAA comes up with a way for file sharing services to determine the copyright ownership of a music file, generic file sharing services should be allowed to list any file they want. Until such capability is made available to them by copyright owners, they should be bound by all the same rules as bind any other file transfer protocol.
In other words, if a user lists illegal files via a web site, FTP site or Morpheus node, it's that user's responsibility and nobody else's. Music City has no way to tell what's legal and what isn't. And frankly, neither does the RIAA, since the technology does not exist to verify music with reasonable accuracy and in a timely fashion. You can't use filenames alone, for obvious reasons.
My internal conflict rages on. Even though I feel the RIAA has a right to not be ripped off, their methods of protecting themselves are beyond evil. We've heard all about their exploits over the years, but the one that really pushed me over the edge is their plan to copy-protect all CDs produced after Q1 2002. That's right, they are planning on releasing only CDs that, in theory, can't be ripped. That effectively stops my ability as an actual paying customer to make personal copies of music I've paid for. The most evil part is that not only are they doing this in a vain attempt to keep people from distributing music illegally, they're also trying to force consumers to buy their music a *second* time if they want a digital copy. And, of course, if you do buy that second copy, it will be protected via some DRM mechanism that makes actually listening to it on your own computer or digital playback device a chore.
It's because of this that I've actually started using Morpheus. I'm sorry to say, but I've caved in. I never used Napster for ethical reasons, but even people of principle sometimes have their limits. I just can't stomach supporting a cause which is so evil, even if the evil springs from a legitimate grievance. Spank me, I'm a copyright infringer.
No single disk can support 48 bits of data, so the statement that Linux has broken some sort of barrier is rather academic.
In any case, OSes with 63 bit addressing effectively get large file capability by spanning multiple disks merged into one logical striped/concatenated disk. This isn't anything new, and Linux isn't the first.
File descriptors themselves have no "sign". What matters is how large the "off_t" type used for seeking within a file is. If it's 64 bits signed, then you effectively get 63 bits. The odd bit is used for indicating an error from the return of lseek().
The number of bytes addressible with 63 bits is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 or 8
exabytes.
This paper on general web server vulnerabilities is quite good for those of you who would like to know the basics of what to look for in an attack on your web server. Covers the fundamentals well enough to give anyone an idea of how to detect if someone's trying to compromise your web server. If you're just reading (or writing) comments here and you haven't read it yet, go back now and do so!!
You can blame Jim Gabbert, a SF bay area TV personality/former TV station owner/airline pilot/radio talk show host for those annoying little logos in the bottom corner of your screen. As he's won't to point out whenever he gets the chance, he invented those little f***ers. At least that's what he says. If *I* had invented them, I'd keep my mouth shut and lay low.
What I hate the most is when some station takes footage from another station w/o removing the original logo first. You then get to see two overlaid logos, making for a totally useless logo jumble.
I guess I'd hate the minilogos less if they'd only show them periodically instead of all the damn time, on top of your favorite show no less! I guess some stations do that, but not all.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, checking facts before posting would have helped in this case.
What the hey, I'm not an encyclopedia. I figured someone like you would clear things up if my information was outdated. It sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I'll defer. My info was out of date.
Except for one thing - red LEDs. Whoever said YHBT is a bonehead. This is for real, but apparently it doesn't apply to home electronics. I've worked for several companies who built computers for use in telephone company central offices or that would generally only be appearing in large computer labs; we went to lengths to ensure that the machines would *not* have red LEDs in front so they could be sold in Germany. We were allowed to put them in back, but not the front. I belive that's because red lights were by law supposed to signify danger, so using one as a power or disk activty indicator or somesuch was not allowed.
BTW, to the guy who accused me of being a troll, why don't you look at someone's posting history before doing that? You'll look like less of a loser if you only label someone a troll who actually is one.
I really wish Germany would stop trying to do shit like this. And I thought their technology laws were always so much better, with their good stance on crypto and such. Makes me very sad to see this.
:) It's so easy to bash the US's stupid technology laws. It's nice to see that other countries are just as capable of making stupid technology laws as US lawmakers. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Their technology laws better? Where it costs ten times more for Internet connectivity than it does in the US? Where the government runs the ISPs? For chrissake, you can't even have red LEDs on the front of equipment there because it's against the law!
Admittedly, some of this may have changed since I last checked, since I don't live in Germany. But even so, they're still in the stone age in many ways when it comes to this stuff. Sorry if I sound like I'm Germany-bashing, but this is the topic at hand. Besides, the US gets a lot of bashing, so it's about time we spread it around a little.
Get a "Powerfile" unit from powerfile.com, throw all your CDs in there, get a command-line ripper and write a short script to load/unload the drive, and voila. It will take a little work, but it's doable. The trick is that the Powerfile does SCSI over firewire, so you get true CD ROM capabilities from the external changer. And there are two drives in the unit, so you can rip two discs simultaneously.
:(
The bad news is that it only works on Windows or Mac. Actually, if it works on OS X then it shouldn't be too ugly to do this. Don't know if it does though. Oh yeah, the other bad news is that the Powerfile costs $1800, last time I checked.
This is a very good book, but is far from her best. I found it a touch depressing, so I put it down for a while before finishing. I was glad when I finally did, but it took a little effort.
:)
is also a true classic. It's one of those fantasy tales that has that spark of quality you don't find often.
Of LeGuin's sci-fi, nothing compares to "The Lathe of Heaven", which stands as a true classic. I would suggest that anyone thinking of reading LeGuin for the first time read this book first.
If you're more into fantasy, her "Wizard of Earthsea" trilogy (which is now up to 6 books
I recently met LeGuin at a book reading, which was, for me, almost like meeting Tolkien. (Not quite on the same scale, of course, more like meeting a demigod.) When asked about what inspired her to write the Earthsea books, she said her publisher asked her to write a fantasy book. Lord of the Rings had just become very popular about that time in the 60's, and her publisher wanted to capitalize on the Tolkien fans' hunger. She said she always wondered what Gandalf must have been like when he was a boy (though us diehard LOTR fans know he never actually was a boy), so she created Ged, the main character in the Earthsea novels, as her interpretation of a young Gandalf.
In the end, I think Ged ends up being quite different from Gandalf, which is probably for the better because the books don't feel like LOTR rehashed. They are quite creative and original, with an amazing quality all their own.
Oh, forgot to mention the other cool things about the APR chip. Not only does it boost my engine power, but it has multiple programs you can select from using the existing cruise control buttons! It doesn't interfere with the cruise control in any way, and it allows me to choose "factory" mode (which is useful for when you bring the car in for service - so you don't tip them off that you've done something to void your engine warranty), "boost mode", and "valet mode" to keep those pedal-happy valets from abusing your car.
Now that's what I call a software hack!
It may be more difficult to install some cheap gadget you buy at Kragen or somesuch junky auto supply store, agreed. Cars are getting more complex. But it's that very complexity that is making it more and more possible to get into the guts of the car with electronic/software mods. As some have mentioned here, Audis and VWs are prime examples.
In the past, if you wanted to change valve timing, turbo boost, etc., you had to buy and install more aggressive valve cams, more powerful turbos or other parts. You had to do intrusive surgery to your car to put in these aftermarket components.
Nowadays, drive-by-wire cars like Audis can be hacked, literally. Many of the engine performance characteristics are entirely software-controlled, so by changing the software you can achieve much in the way of performance improvements that used to only be possible by swapping engine parts. Not only can you modify performance, you can also modify the behavior of things like the door locks, radio, etc., with PC software that lets you configure your car's computer.
I have an Audi A4 1.8T that had a stock 170 HP engine. I bought an APR chip "upgrade" for the car's computer, and suddenly my car has 207 HP. Not only that, the torque curve has shot up to 250 foot-pounds at 3600 RPM - a 50% increase. That torque is dramatic, and lets me beat "more powerful" cars off the line consistently. And now that it's raining a lot here, I can beat *any* car off the line that only has two-wheel drive when the ground is wet.
All this achieved in a simple one-hour soldering procedure. There are limits, of course, beyond which you need better parts, but who says cars are less hackable nowadays?!
Actually, while the 'rights' are not perhaps yours, they are the very real rights of the people who create content to be suitably rewarded for their work.
I agree with you completely on this statement. I was not advocating theft. I think anyone who redistributes copyrighted works is breaking the law. But we users of copyrighted materials *do* have rights, by law. One of those is the right to make backup copies of copyrighted works we have purchased. If copyright holders remove that ability through technical means, effectively circumventing the law, then they're just as evil as those who steal their work. The "fair use" sections of copyright law are extremely important and nobody should be allowed to nullify them just because they've discovered an extralegal way of doing so.
A prime example of this is the new copy protection schemes the music labels are starting to use on CDs. Those schemes won't stop skilled, determined users from encoding and distributing them. They will, however, stop your average user from making copies for any reason. Why do the labels do this then, if the copy protection is full of holes? Because they hope to sell digital copies to those users who can't make or acquire their own digital copies from CDs they've already purchased. In other words, they want to sell you the same music twice.
That's the kind of loss of control of your rights that I'm talking about. That's why DRM should really be called DPM, "Digital Profits Management".
Digital Rights Management isn't such a horrible thing, provided they respect the right of first sale throughout the process (meaning, I can buy something and they can't restrict my right to sell it to someone else). However, the cynic in me says this is just one of many ways to eliminate that right.
:)
I think the cynic in you is correct. DRM is merely a euphemism for "Digital Profit Management", and has little to do with *your* rights at all. The concept of digital paper is cool beyond words, but the potential loss of personal control over works you purchase will probably nullify the coolness. When I buy a book or newspaper, I like to know that I've actually bought it rather than licensed it for some term, and that I will always have the ability to read it whenever I desire. Anyone who believes that when electronic paper is available publishers will play by the same rules that they follow now is naive.
Not to mention that books don't go blank when their batteries run out.
Am i forgetting something here?
9) Friendlies
Don't want to be hitting your own ordnance on the way out to the enemy!
just don't hook one single system up to the Internet. Establish a private network (not VPN - actually private) for the entire thing.
I realize you were being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but what about internal security? All it takes is for someone to tap into the network at any one of thousands of potential points, or to insert a virus-infected floppy into one of the 5000 nodes, and they score. And if they use wireless anywhere at all, it's open season.
You can't have physical security *everywhere* on the network, because presumably it stretches across a large open area. If someone wants to tap in bad enough, they will. There has to be significant internal security so that soft chewy center becomes hard-boiled, making it harder for intruders to break through from the inside.
I agree with you on most of the other stuff tho.
You're right that the only good solution using IDE is some sort of RAID controller. However, I don't think RAID5 is a good choice if you want the performance of SCSI. RAID0, RAID1 or some combination of both are probably going to perform well, but my experience with RAID5 controllers (expensive ones, even) are that they have severe performance limitations. My only guess is that all of that xor-ing of data degrades their performance. I have benchmarked AMI, Adaptec and DPT RAID cards in numerous, sometimes very expensive, configurations, and they are all less than optimal. I recently benchmarked an external RAID solution (forget the brand) that cost something like $10k and it was slow too. They were all beaten hands down by software RAID0+1. (Didn't try any of the cards in RAID0+1 configs, so I don't know how they would perform. I'm guessing they'd be okay.)
Some of these used IDE and some used SCSI; all were slow. I don't know what one has to do to get a fast hardware RAID5 solution, but I haven't found it yet.
To add to the volumes of fact others have written in response to your uninformed statement, SCSI blows away IDE. And, believe it or not, the problem gets worse the faster the IDE drive gets. The problem is all those damn interrupts that force the CPU to attend to the drive with IDE. You just don't have those with SCSI, not at the same level (of course, that varies somewhat from controller to controller - in the olden days of SCSI the dumber controller chips spewed out interrupts for each phase change, etc. But now, it's generally one interrupt or less for each I/O.)
:) Even if you had a drive with terahertz transfer rates (and a system with fast enough buses to handle it), it would make little difference if your drive only ran at 10k RPMs. It could be that drives have enough sectors/track and high enough RPM that increasing the transfer rate to 133 would actually buy you something, but I'm not sure (haven't done the math in a few years).
Ever looked at CPU utilization during heavy I/O activity on an IDE drive vs. SCSI? With SCSI, the CPU load is negligible or even unnoticable; with IDE, it can be positively gruesome. And the faster those little drives get, the more I/O operations you pump through them, the more work the CPU has to do to keep the drive busy. If your CPU is busy (or even not so busy), the net effect is that your disks can slow down (as well as your CPU-bound application that's eating CPU in the first place).
Another fact that people seem to overlook is that transfer rate is relatively unimportant. Give me higher RPM any day, or anything that reduces seek time. That's what *really* speeds up a disk. The actual transfer of data accounts for a relatively small part of an entire disk I/O transaction compared to waiting for the disk head to get to the right cylinder and the right sector to end up underneath it. Even if you totally removed data transfer time (i.e. infinitely fast data transfer rate), you still wouldn't get tons more speed out of a drive because seeks are still measured in milliseconds. Also, there are other things that go on in setting up a data transfer that aren't improved by increasing the transfer rate of the I/O bus.
Not to mention that fast transfer rate is irrelevant if the RPMs aren't there to keep up. If the disk doesn't spin fast enough, the transfer rate doesn't matter because the disk can't sustain the transfer even in sequential operations. In that case, the transfer rate is only kept up for short bursts, then idle time ensues while you wait for the disk to catch up. (And all computers wait at the same speed!
So, even on the lamest desktop computer, SCSI drives are noticably faster. If you're doing word processing, you probably don't care what type of drive you've got. But if you do even simple stuff like copy your directory full of MP3 files from one disk to another, you can see the difference. For this reason alone, SCSI won't die. Of course, SCSI is the backbone of Fibre Channel and other I/O buses, which guarantees its existence for a long time to come if that's not enough.
I *do* have ACLs set up, and I *do* have WEP set up, and I *do* use ssh. I also have my wireless subnet in my DMZ. That still won't stop someone from cracking my key and hijacking one of my MAC addresses and using it when that host is otherwise idle. That gives them the ability to at least surf the web using my pipe, and also gives them the opportunity to try to exploit the ssh daemon or other services open to the DMZ which they normally wouldn't be able to even touch. Existing tools make it all too easy, because WEP is fucked up.
Sure, you can change your password daily, but I send a lot more than a million packets a day over the wire. It's simply a race. Automated tools for updating the WEP password are not a true solution, because they have to update nodes over the wireless network. If someone cracks your password one day, then he can observe future password changes. Changing the password on the device locally, by hand, is impractical because there can potentially be zillions of nodes to update (And in some cases they might be physically difficult to reach. Imagine remote cameras or devices in the trunk of your car, both of which I have done.)
And your analogy to hanging an Ethernet cable out of your office isn't even close. Nobody makes a hub that requires you to hang a cable out your window; if they did, then they would be to blame. But they don't, because that would be stupid. However, when you use a wireless network, you have no choice but to hang a cable out your window. Granted, the cable takes a little work to reach, but there it is. That's what I'm complaining about. If they fixed WEP, then perhaps you'd need a crane to reach that cable instead of a stepladder.
what does that matter? What people want more is *any* bandwidth (and 802.11b can do 11mps anyhow) - where there is none, what does speed matter when its > than a slow modem anyway?
For the average home user, you're right. 11mbps is plenty good, since that's significantly faster than your usual DSL or modem connection. 54 mbps will be very useful, however, for corporate networks where you have lots of users banging on the wireless space at the same time, often communicating between corporate hosts and not surfing the web. Remember that wireless is not switched like most Ethernet networks. Everyone shares the network space, and bandwidth utilization increases dramatically as you add more active users. The most *any one* user can get out of the network is 11mbps, but if you have 10 people using it at once then they would, at best, get 1.1mbps on the average. At full tilt, though, the throughput would probably be much lower due to collisions, etc.
And for corporate sites with very fat pipes, even one user could benefit from more than 11mbps, because the wireless link ends up being the bottleneck to the Internet.
Unless 802.11a fixes the totally broken WEP security used with "better" 802.11b products, I don't view this as an improvement. I'm pissed that I spent so many $$ on wireless products with "128 bit encryption", only for that encryption standard to be found practically useless due to fundamental implementation flaws. I sincerely hope a new generation of wireless users aren't faced with the same bogus problems. The link to the Intel site provides no useful info on this subject, nor do any of the articles on the web that I dug up.
Even if 802.11a fixes those problems, I'll still be pissed if they don't come out with a new standard for 802.11b (and a firmware upgrade for my Lucent wireless cards that implements the fix). I don't feel like throwing my expensive wireless hardware in the trash just yet.
If the quality of their customer service, billing practices, etc., are any indication of the company as a whole, I would not suggest associating with them in any way. I absolutely refuse to use them for any services whatsoever after the crap they've put me through as a cell phone customer.
I used to be a Cellular One customer, then MCI bought them out. All went to hell in a handbasket. They triple-billed sometimes, and though they were kind enough to warn you that they were having billing problems, it was still *your problem*. Getting through to a customer service drone on the phone sometimes took as much as 1.5 hours of holding. And canceling my cell service after getting fed up with this garbage took *5 months*. I called their customer service people repeatedly (after waiting in the queue for an hour or so each time) to cancel, and each time they'd tell me I had never cancelled and would I please pay the outstanding bill for the months since I originally cancelled service. And each time I'd have to re-explain that, no, I won't pay because I cancelled long ago and would you please stop sending me bills. And we'd go back and forth for a while and they'd finally say, okay, your balance has been wiped and your account cancelled. And subsequently I'd get another bill (or two or three, if they were having the multi-billing problem that month).
Finally, magically, one month it all stopped, and I have since been MCI-free. Never again do I have to deal with them, except when an MCI telemarketer calls to sell me something. And that tends to be somewhat enjoyable anyway, because I get to inform them that they work for the devil and to tell them to begone to whatever pit of hell they crawled out of.
So, unless you want to be one of *them*, I wouldn't suggest going to work there.
Gates and Ballmer exude pure arrogance in the way they take credit for everything from the BIOS to free software. The victor is the one who writes history, eh? Good thing they're not the victor yet, and their attempts at writing the history books come off as lies.
Gee, I didn't know Gates was responsible for all that free software I used to use back in the CPM days before M$ even existed. Even the stuff I wrote too! Thank you, Bill Gates! Without you, I wouldn't exist today!
I think you're right in that people are doing it just to get free music. No question about that. That's why I'm doing it too, at least up front. I'm just saying that perhaps there are potentially *more* people doing it these days than before because some people, like me, aren't holding back any longer.
Maybe there are only few of us, I can't really say. But there is at least one, me, and that's part of the "reality of the situation".
Admittedly, though, I have bought several CDs because of stuff I found using Morpheus that I never would have bought otherwise. I don't end up buying crappy CDs any more either, because I can listen to the whole thing first. Yes, you can listen to clips on Amazon, etc., but not all songs are available and they're short and sucky quality.
If the recording industry eventually starts copy protecting CDs, then I might go fully over to the dark side and just burn my own CDs from stuff I download off Morpheus.
Should have posted this message to the current topic instead: why I now use Morpheus. Maybe people's anger at the RIAA has something to do with it.
I fully support the RIAA's right to not have music stolen and distributed for free. Downloading music you haven't paid for is just plain wrong.
I also support the right of services like Morpheus to exist. Internet users should have the absolute right to distribute their files via the Internet, and whether they do it via FTP, HTTP or FastTrack technology is irrelevant. They're all one and the same.
What I don't support is users distributing copyrighted works. You shouldn't do that! Bad copyright infringer!! That said, shouldn't it be the fault of the copyright infringer, not the developer of the technology that allows file sharing? Else, FTP, HTTP, etc. would all be illegal, and we know how stupid an argument that is. While we're at it, why not ban TCP/IP too, because that's how all the data gets passed around. And ISPs and Internet backbones should also be nuked because they are the ones responsible for enabling users to pass around TCP packets.
It seems plain and obvious to me, but unfortunately legal issues rarely end up being simple. I could actually see the RIAA winning a case against Music City. The stupidity of our legal system cannot be underestimated.
It's for that reason that I think the RIAA should go to hell. They would gladly snuff out anything they consider detrimental to business, regardless of how legitimate it is; and they would do so using any underhanded legal method available to them (and even possibly illegal methods, if some of the RIAA memos floating around can be believed). I sympathized with their stance against Napster, mainly because Napster could only work with MP3 files and was plainly designed for stealing music for free. Services like Music City work with any file type, and are so general-purpose that they cannot be faulted. Until the RIAA comes up with a way for file sharing services to determine the copyright ownership of a music file, generic file sharing services should be allowed to list any file they want. Until such capability is made available to them by copyright owners, they should be bound by all the same rules as bind any other file transfer protocol.
In other words, if a user lists illegal files via a web site, FTP site or Morpheus node, it's that user's responsibility and nobody else's. Music City has no way to tell what's legal and what isn't. And frankly, neither does the RIAA, since the technology does not exist to verify music with reasonable accuracy and in a timely fashion. You can't use filenames alone, for obvious reasons.
My internal conflict rages on. Even though I feel the RIAA has a right to not be ripped off, their methods of protecting themselves are beyond evil. We've heard all about their exploits over the years, but the one that really pushed me over the edge is their plan to copy-protect all CDs produced after Q1 2002. That's right, they are planning on releasing only CDs that, in theory, can't be ripped. That effectively stops my ability as an actual paying customer to make personal copies of music I've paid for. The most evil part is that not only are they doing this in a vain attempt to keep people from distributing music illegally, they're also trying to force consumers to buy their music a *second* time if they want a digital copy. And, of course, if you do buy that second copy, it will be protected via some DRM mechanism that makes actually listening to it on your own computer or digital playback device a chore.
It's because of this that I've actually started using Morpheus. I'm sorry to say, but I've caved in. I never used Napster for ethical reasons, but even people of principle sometimes have their limits. I just can't stomach supporting a cause which is so evil, even if the evil springs from a legitimate grievance. Spank me, I'm a copyright infringer.
No single disk can support 48 bits of data, so the statement that Linux has broken some sort of barrier is rather academic. In any case, OSes with 63 bit addressing effectively get large file capability by spanning multiple disks merged into one logical striped/concatenated disk. This isn't anything new, and Linux isn't the first.
File descriptors themselves have no "sign". What matters is how large the "off_t" type used for seeking within a file is. If it's 64 bits signed, then you effectively get 63 bits. The odd bit is used for indicating an error from the return of lseek(). The number of bytes addressible with 63 bits is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 or 8 exabytes.
This paper on general web server vulnerabilities is quite good for those of you who would like to know the basics of what to look for in an attack on your web server. Covers the fundamentals well enough to give anyone an idea of how to detect if someone's trying to compromise your web server. If you're just reading (or writing) comments here and you haven't read it yet, go back now and do so!!
Oh, and yes, that should have been "wont" instead of "won't".
You can blame Jim Gabbert, a SF bay area TV personality/former TV station owner/airline pilot/radio talk show host for those annoying little logos in the bottom corner of your screen. As he's won't to point out whenever he gets the chance, he invented those little f***ers. At least that's what he says. If *I* had invented them, I'd keep my mouth shut and lay low.
What I hate the most is when some station takes footage from another station w/o removing the original logo first. You then get to see two overlaid logos, making for a totally useless logo jumble.
I guess I'd hate the minilogos less if they'd only show them periodically instead of all the damn time, on top of your favorite show no less! I guess some stations do that, but not all.