Care to elaborate on how the Feds plan to deprive me of my rights based on what brand of jeans I buy?
You're missing the thrust of the argument. If a database is ever created which links YOU to a specific RFID tag, then any tag you have on will eventually make that same association. With the ubiquity of RFID will come the ubiquity of scanners. The "Feds" could track you whever you go just by scanning that database.
On a more personal level, what if the guy behind you in the car has a portable scanner and finds out the hundred or so RFID numbers you have associated with your car and you just happened to tick him off? People think cyber-terrorism is bad now. What's to keep someone from creating their OWN database of associations?
I know, I know. Adjust the tin-foil. The probably said that about phone tapping, too.
Actually, 2.6.2 is 'available', just not in stable yet. You would have to do the following:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS='~x86' emerge development-sources
and replace x86 with your platform. I think the gentoo guys have been doing a bang-up job of trying to get new ebuilds out to us, the huddled masses. Doing those tweaks and patches by myself would prove nightmarish.
...but you will have to build enough solar/wind/wave/hydro/whatever installations to nearly match the amount of energy being produced by hydrocarbons...
One possibility for producing this much power (for liberating hydrogen and energy storage) would be to employ large tracks of Arizona, NM, and Nevada as solar collection sites. The power would be clean in the sense no pollutants are being liberated, but there are the environmental impacts to the desert ecosystem to consider. The Southwest United States could become the new OPEC. To reduce the risk to "National Security" of having all of our hydrogen in one place, the electricty generated from solar collection could be distributed on the electrical grid to local hydrogen processing stations.
Of course, there are logistical concerns to take into account that I may not have considered. This is Slashdot after all.
... every judge in the US is going to throw the book at them.
If history is any judge, that book is probably going to be made of tissue. Nothing the judges have thown at Microsoft so far has done anything to deter them.
Not to be totally pedantic, but being fraternal twins could mean that two fathers impregnated two eggs at nearly the same time. If it were possible for these two zygotes to merge, which I _highly_ doubt, then the resulting Chimera twin could have seperate Y-chromosomes from two fathers.
Just think: if your friend stashed pot in your car and you had no idea that it was there, it would be your friend who recieves the blame if you two were ever busted.
The only problem with this argument is that most likely you WOULD be implicated if he stashed it in your car. Weed stashed in the car by a friend looks exactly like weed stashed in the car by you, especially in the eyes of the police. You're going to have to do some fancy tap-dancing to prove you aren't culpable.
The requirement here is evidence to the contrary. If SCO proves (through some astrologici^H^H^H^H^H^Hnomical feat) that code was improperly included in the code by an employee of IBM in his off-time, it would be like the cop finding dope in the car. IBM proving the employee was acting on his own and was not acting in the interests of IBM at the time would be like you having a videotape that your friend stashed the drugs in your ride.
Here's something to think about in light of the recent litigation from the RIAA: Will Microsoft be held responsible for "file sharing" using this new search technique? In essence they would be playing the same role as the unfortunate individuals in this article RIAA Grabs Student's Life's Savings and this article Interview with Student Sued by RIAA
If that were to happen, it would be interesting to see who would win: Microsoft, with its penchant for wriggling out of litigation or the RIAA, with its ability to crush the innocent. Would make a good celebrity-smack-down, no?
DRM and "Pop-up Audio"
on
Prince of Pop-ups
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From the article:
In lab tests, the response rate to what might be called "pop-up audio" has been outstanding, Shuster said, meaning such ads may soon be interrupting plenty of Web surfers, or at least those who don't manage to turn off their speakers fast enough.
Combine that with an earlier article on DRM and you'll have speakers you CAN'T turn down/off, unplug from the wall, or flip a circuit breaker to kill.
I realize the above is an Orwellian outlook on the stangle-hold Microsoft is hoping to foist on us, but DRM is a slippery slope indeed. Who knows how far down one will go once one gets started.
Speaking only from personal experience, drivers of any vehicle type (car, motorcycle, etc.) treat the road as if they own it. Car drivers get ticked off when motorcyclists can squeeze through traffic jams, motorcyclists think just because they can fit between two cars they should, and many drivers in general think everyone else is out there to get in "my" way.
I've seen some crazy stuff out there. Motorcyclists will accelerate like the Devil himself was on their tail and weave in and out of traffic like they were cafe racers. Generally, it's the 20-something with a brand new Honda who has no respect for the power of the machine he's on. I've seen cars deliberately pull out in front of other vehicles they think are going to fast. It's nuts out there.
Most car-motorcycle crashes are legally the fault of the driver of the car
. I suppose that's possible, but my experience doesn't bear that out. It seems to me everyone has forgotten what they were taught in driving school.
I guess the real question is, does the fact that the network already existed grounds for ruling this completely different than Napster?
To build on your question:
It may be important to consider the relationship between the network and it's index. The network can exist without the index (and it did before WAKE came along) but the converse is not true. The index is meaningless without the network. The metainformation about the network, that is filenames, locations and sizes, is what was being provided. The actual content was not under the control of the indexer.
...I will put in some extra time to plan out and implement a good shelving system...
Ah, but when you hit your thumb with the hammer while building the "good shelving system" from your formalized design, are you going to say, "Golly, I should have allowed for that in my design document" or are you going to say, "@!$#%^@$#"?:)
It would appear this AC hasn't read the Troll FAQ yet. Not only is it offtopic (Star Wars != Star Trek), s/he does a poor job setting up the Rabid Right-Wing Conservative position. Just jumps straight in.
Perhaps next time. *sigh*
What about quality
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Just as farm-raised meat has a different taste quality than game meat, I wonder what the flavor of lab meat would be?
Honestly, it's this type of attitude which gives M$ the teeth it needs to hang on to the consumer's wallet. "...it's only going to be $30." is a pretty lame excuse.
If I go to a nice restaurant and have a $20 dinner and pay with a $50, you better believe I'm going to be waiting for my $30 in change.
Additionally, it's not so much the money in refund which makes the difference but the statement being made about refusing to take monopolistic abuse.
Note that both Curious Yellow and Palladium are still theoric menaces.
Harking back to the article, Palladium would not start out as Curious Yellow. It could loosely be construed as Curious Blue, due to its attempt to prevent propogation of copyrighted materials and its ability to upgrade itself. It would not take much, however, to bastardize Palladium into Curious Yellow by those who feel "...a computer on every desk..." is a good thing.
This is probably redundant because I didn't wade through 500+ responses, BUT:
I got the strangest feeling I was reading a Knowledge Base article when I looked at this page. The fact that "she" went into how to setup your ISP information step by step instead of saying, "... and setting up my email was as simple as falling down a flight of stairs..." decided it for me that this was a hoax.
I've read about M$ doing some sketchy stuff before, but this takes the taco.
Though you make an interesting argument, I would like to point out the modifications you are suggesting in the above examples are all for the sole purpose of stealing a service from the provider . The cell phone may be a grey area, depending upon how the modification effects the operation of the phone. If 2 cells are required to ring both phones, then the mod could be considered theft.
As for the XBox mod chip, it can be legitimately used to unlock the bios of the box for use with other operating systems. Just because the XBox is being used for a purpose than the one it was designed for does not necessarily mean that that use is illegal. Using the XBox in this way would not be stealing products or services from Microsoft.
For example, if I decide to put my car up on blocks, remove the tire from one of the drive wheels, and use the vehicle as a crude engine for some kind of pumping operation (ala McGuyver), the Ford Motor Company or any other vehicle manufacturer you can think of cannot prevent me from doing this. They can only void my warranty.
The article didn't make it clear (at least to me) why [no[n] physical property] made a difference.
I have to agree with you that the physical nature of a stolen property is a vague point to make a legal defence on. According to copyright, I can steal the ideas in a book without having to steal the book. It's generally called plagerism.
Similarly, stealing the domain name for a high taffic pay-site (and being sex.com you KNOW it had to have huge amounts of traffic) and funneling those users to your pay-site is no less a crime. The logs on that domain would have to be staggering. I'm fairly certain that's where the $65 million judgement comes from.
As a side note, wouldn't it be interesting to grep those logs and see what your neighbor's been up to?;)
Slackware was my first distro (1994) and I had used it exclusively up 'til the beginning of this year. I have to say, though, that I've been very impressed with Gentoo and its abilities. If you have a spare machine, and who doesn't these days, you should give it a try.
...you can't blame Acme for having mold all over the floor and BiLo doesn't.. I'll just go to BiLo...
Acme == Microsoft
BiLo == Linux
In your example, Acme has not created artifical barriers to entry. You CAN go to BiLo if you wish.
A real world example would be that Acme has built all of its stores at the entrance to BiLo, removed Acme from the telephone book, and unlisted the number. Because Acme unreasonably restricts access to BiLo, the consumer has no choice but to go to Acme.
Re:Why can't we advance things like this?
on
Homemade Gauss Gun
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The heat loss due to friction is enough to bring this "perpetual motion" machine to a halt. There is no way in the universe to convert from one form of energy into another without some loss to heat.
If one person gets swindled out of a large amount of money, it may go unreported or be viewed as an isolated event. But if you can bilk hundreds of people out of a significant sum, then there's no doubt that those individuals have been had.
The old saying goes, "you can fool some of the people all of the time...". The consumate con artist looks to fool all the people all of the time.
...(c) opposite direction in time (whatever that means)
This is a rather simplistic way of looking at it, but an analogy may help.
Let's say you were to film a bowler rolling his bowling ball down the lane. As the you watch the movie run forward, the ball has a certain velocity, spin, orientation, etc. If the film was run backwards, the ball's properties would be reversed. If one were to apply this same process to matter/antimatter, it would appear that antiparticles are just regular particles moving backwards in time.
During annihilation, both particles disappear and a great deal of energy is realeased. If the processed were viewed in reverse, it would appear that matter and antimatter "condense" out of energy. This un-annihilation looks similar to what happened shortly after the big bang when matter and energy decoupled.
If you are talking about the pure economics of matter/antimatter engines, it will always take more energy to create the particle pairs than will be realized by their annihilation. Remember, there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. The real beauty of this system is not the energy savings, but the efficiency of the storage medium. Matter/antimatter fuel stores a great deal more energy than the equivalent mass of, say, gasoline. That means less mass can be used in propulsion and more mass can be devoted to payload.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to elaborate on how the Feds plan to deprive me of my rights based on what brand of jeans I buy?
You're missing the thrust of the argument. If a database is ever created which links YOU to a specific RFID tag, then any tag you have on will eventually make that same association. With the ubiquity of RFID will come the ubiquity of scanners. The "Feds" could track you whever you go just by scanning that database.
On a more personal level, what if the guy behind you in the car has a portable scanner and finds out the hundred or so RFID numbers you have associated with your car and you just happened to tick him off? People think cyber-terrorism is bad now. What's to keep someone from creating their OWN database of associations?
I know, I know. Adjust the tin-foil. The probably said that about phone tapping, too.
and replace x86 with your platform. I think the gentoo guys have been doing a bang-up job of trying to get new ebuilds out to us, the huddled masses. Doing those tweaks and patches by myself would prove nightmarish.
Does anyone else realize these viruses only make Anti-virus companies much much richer? Why write something like this to make corporations rich?
That's assuming the author is not an Anti-Virus company. Remember Faranheit 451?
...but you will have to build enough solar/wind/wave/hydro/whatever installations to nearly match the amount of energy being produced by hydrocarbons...
One possibility for producing this much power (for liberating hydrogen and energy storage) would be to employ large tracks of Arizona, NM, and Nevada as solar collection sites. The power would be clean in the sense no pollutants are being liberated, but there are the environmental impacts to the desert ecosystem to consider. The Southwest United States could become the new OPEC. To reduce the risk to "National Security" of having all of our hydrogen in one place, the electricty generated from solar collection could be distributed on the electrical grid to local hydrogen processing stations.
Of course, there are logistical concerns to take into account that I may not have considered. This is Slashdot after all.
If history is any judge, that book is probably going to be made of tissue. Nothing the judges have thown at Microsoft so far has done anything to deter them.
Not to be totally pedantic, but being fraternal twins could mean that two fathers impregnated two eggs at nearly the same time. If it were possible for these two zygotes to merge, which I _highly_ doubt, then the resulting Chimera twin could have seperate Y-chromosomes from two fathers.
Just think: if your friend stashed pot in your car and you had no idea that it was there, it would be your friend who recieves the blame if you two were ever busted.
The only problem with this argument is that most likely you WOULD be implicated if he stashed it in your car. Weed stashed in the car by a friend looks exactly like weed stashed in the car by you, especially in the eyes of the police. You're going to have to do some fancy tap-dancing to prove you aren't culpable.
The requirement here is evidence to the contrary. If SCO proves (through some astrologici^H^H^H^H^H^Hnomical feat) that code was improperly included in the code by an employee of IBM in his off-time, it would be like the cop finding dope in the car. IBM proving the employee was acting on his own and was not acting in the interests of IBM at the time would be like you having a videotape that your friend stashed the drugs in your ride.
Here's something to think about in light of the recent litigation from the RIAA: Will Microsoft be held responsible for "file sharing" using this new search technique? In essence they would be playing the same role as the unfortunate individuals in this article RIAA Grabs Student's Life's Savings and this article Interview with Student Sued by RIAA
If that were to happen, it would be interesting to see who would win: Microsoft, with its penchant for wriggling out of litigation or the RIAA, with its ability to crush the innocent. Would make a good celebrity-smack-down, no?
I realize the above is an Orwellian outlook on the stangle-hold Microsoft is hoping to foist on us, but DRM is a slippery slope indeed. Who knows how far down one will go once one gets started.
I've seen some crazy stuff out there. Motorcyclists will accelerate like the Devil himself was on their tail and weave in and out of traffic like they were cafe racers. Generally, it's the 20-something with a brand new Honda who has no respect for the power of the machine he's on. I've seen cars deliberately pull out in front of other vehicles they think are going to fast. It's nuts out there.
. I suppose that's possible, but my experience doesn't bear that out. It seems to me everyone has forgotten what they were taught in driving school.
I guess the real question is, does the fact that the network already existed grounds for ruling this completely different than Napster?
To build on your question:
It may be important to consider the relationship between the network and it's index. The network can exist without the index (and it did before WAKE came along) but the converse is not true. The index is meaningless without the network. The metainformation about the network, that is filenames, locations and sizes, is what was being provided. The actual content was not under the control of the indexer.
...I will put in some extra time to plan out and implement a good shelving system...
:)
Ah, but when you hit your thumb with the hammer while building the "good shelving system" from your formalized design, are you going to say, "Golly, I should have allowed for that in my design document" or are you going to say, "@!$#%^@$#"?
It would appear this AC hasn't read the Troll FAQ yet. Not only is it offtopic (Star Wars != Star Trek), s/he does a poor job setting up the Rabid Right-Wing Conservative position. Just jumps straight in.
Perhaps next time. *sigh*
Just as farm-raised meat has a different taste quality than game meat, I wonder what the flavor of lab meat would be?
Honestly, it's this type of attitude which gives M$ the teeth it needs to hang on to the consumer's wallet. "...it's only going to be $30." is a pretty lame excuse.
If I go to a nice restaurant and have a $20 dinner and pay with a $50, you better believe I'm going to be waiting for my $30 in change.
Additionally, it's not so much the money in refund which makes the difference but the statement being made about refusing to take monopolistic abuse.
Harking back to the article, Palladium would not start out as Curious Yellow. It could loosely be construed as Curious Blue, due to its attempt to prevent propogation of copyrighted materials and its ability to upgrade itself. It would not take much, however, to bastardize Palladium into Curious Yellow by those who feel "...a computer on every desk..." is a good thing.
This is probably redundant because I didn't wade through 500+ responses, BUT:
I got the strangest feeling I was reading a Knowledge Base article when I looked at this page. The fact that "she" went into how to setup your ISP information step by step instead of saying, "... and setting up my email was as simple as falling down a flight of stairs..." decided it for me that this was a hoax.
I've read about M$ doing some sketchy stuff before, but this takes the taco.
Though you make an interesting argument, I would like to point out the modifications you are suggesting in the above examples are all for the sole purpose of stealing a service from the provider . The cell phone may be a grey area, depending upon how the modification effects the operation of the phone. If 2 cells are required to ring both phones, then the mod could be considered theft.
As for the XBox mod chip, it can be legitimately used to unlock the bios of the box for use with other operating systems. Just because the XBox is being used for a purpose than the one it was designed for does not necessarily mean that that use is illegal. Using the XBox in this way would not be stealing products or services from Microsoft.
For example, if I decide to put my car up on blocks, remove the tire from one of the drive wheels, and use the vehicle as a crude engine for some kind of pumping operation (ala McGuyver), the Ford Motor Company or any other vehicle manufacturer you can think of cannot prevent me from doing this. They can only void my warranty.
Of course, IANAL.
Similarly, stealing the domain name for a high taffic pay-site (and being sex.com you KNOW it had to have huge amounts of traffic) and funneling those users to your pay-site is no less a crime. The logs on that domain would have to be staggering. I'm fairly certain that's where the $65 million judgement comes from.
As a side note, wouldn't it be interesting to grep those logs and see what your neighbor's been up to?
Slackware was my first distro (1994) and I had used it exclusively up 'til the beginning of this year. I have to say, though, that I've been very impressed with Gentoo and its abilities. If you have a spare machine, and who doesn't these days, you should give it a try.
Acme == Microsoft
BiLo == Linux
In your example, Acme has not created artifical barriers to entry. You CAN go to BiLo if you wish.
A real world example would be that Acme has built all of its stores at the entrance to BiLo, removed Acme from the telephone book, and unlisted the number. Because Acme unreasonably restricts access to BiLo, the consumer has no choice but to go to Acme.
The heat loss due to friction is enough to bring this "perpetual motion" machine to a halt. There is no way in the universe to convert from one form of energy into another without some loss to heat.
The old saying goes, "you can fool some of the people all of the time...". The consumate con artist looks to fool all the people all of the time.
This is a rather simplistic way of looking at it, but an analogy may help.
Let's say you were to film a bowler rolling his bowling ball down the lane. As the you watch the movie run forward, the ball has a certain velocity, spin, orientation, etc. If the film was run backwards, the ball's properties would be reversed. If one were to apply this same process to matter/antimatter, it would appear that antiparticles are just regular particles moving backwards in time.
During annihilation, both particles disappear and a great deal of energy is realeased. If the processed were viewed in reverse, it would appear that matter and antimatter "condense" out of energy. This un-annihilation looks similar to what happened shortly after the big bang when matter and energy decoupled.
If you are talking about the pure economics of matter/antimatter engines, it will always take more energy to create the particle pairs than will be realized by their annihilation. Remember, there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. The real beauty of this system is not the energy savings, but the efficiency of the storage medium. Matter/antimatter fuel stores a great deal more energy than the equivalent mass of, say, gasoline. That means less mass can be used in propulsion and more mass can be devoted to payload.