A software program is nothing but a number of ones and zeros in a file on your harddisk. Making changes to this program is as simple as changing some of those zeroes to ones and vice versa. Nothing is stopping you, except the time it takes with debugging tools to figure out which parts of the code implement the DRM features. It is logically impossible to try to secure a computer program from the person running it.
If you want practical evidence, look at games. If it were possible to make uncrackable software, then how come every game is cracked within hours of release?
It is much wider than that. The DMCA prohibits any "circumvention" of a device used to prevent access to some data.
So as long as any such function appears in the BIOS (and given MS current plans it is obvious that it will) any replacement BIOS will circumvent the function and be illegal. Regardless if it was constructed through stolen sourcecode, or as the output of a random number generated that miraculously created a working BIOS.
What's wrong with national IDs?
on
Beyond Fear
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't understand why Americans are so afraid of national ID cards. Where I live we have standardized national ID cards that are used in most situations, and I can't say how it has made me any less free.
In the modern world, we are counted and registered with our government. What is wrong with having a standardized card to show who we are?
I don't know if these cards would stop anybody from crashing airplanes, but they do help against things like identity theft, which is quite common in America but almost unheard of here. We don't have to have "three kinds of photo id" to go to bank, we don't consider our mother's maiden name or SS#'s security secrets, and we don't need to bring the electic bill to rent a movie.
Granted, my country is much smaller than the US, but I would support having an EU wide Identity card standard. I cannot see sensible argument against it.
Another problem is the PKI (public key infrastructure) issue. For remote attestation to work, it's necessary that the TC chips have some kind of crypto certificate that says that they are legitimate. Microsoft has said nothing about who will issue these certificates and who will revoke them if a machine gets broken into. Setting up a successful, global PKI is a prerequisite for DRM type applications and will be an enormous job.
More importantly, the embeddded certificates used for the remote attestation (TCG calls them "Endorsement Keys") are uniquely bound to the chip and computer in question. That means that every site that requires attestation can identify you and track you: think of it as Intel's processor ID on steriods!
"The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt"
How many watts you get out $0.40 of gas depends on how fast you burn it. The person who wrote the article clearly couldn't handle the difference between power and energy (hence the "over the cells 20 year lifetime" explanation before the power price ratio of the new technology.)
That is called a choice, my friend. Stop whining about the effects of the inflexible situation you have chosen.
Besides, there are ways to deal with that. People aren't plants, they can't be "uprooted". My family got up and moved to new countries four times during my childhood, and I think I'm better off for it (multilingual for instance). You or your spouse could do a weekly commute.
That may not be ideal, but what makes you think you are entitled to so much more?
"just need enough of a job to pay a few hundred $ a month in bills why should you have to travel half way across the world?"
Do you even listen to yourself?
You imply somehow that you are entitled to finding a job that suits your situation ("why should I?") You should travel half way across the world to make a few hundred bucks, because nobody around you is willing to hire you. It's that simple.
Much as I like both GAIM and Trillian, sooner or later, probably by some kind of hard wired authenication/security mechanism, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsft will manage to block these clients often enough and for long enough that they'll lose their utility.
It's called TCPA.
The point with TCPA and palladium is to be able to force people to use user hostile clients to connect to certain networks/data, and this is a perfect example: in order to connect to the IM networks you will have to use the official clients (which are user hostile in that for example they use screen space for ads that the user would presumably disable if they could.)
That being said, LaTex comes with a siginificant learning curve, and due to its nature misses some of the features that are important in a business environment (most notably changes tracking).
"The player appears as an external harddisk in Explorer on your PC. No installation is required."
This probably means that it uses the USB mass storage protocol, which the Linux kernel supports. Since other comments have implied that you play songs by just selecting the folder where you placed them, that would imply it should work just fine under Linux at least.
In the Two Towers movie ALL the elves died at Helm's Deep, so there aren't any elves to pass through paths of the dead with them either.
Maybe it will just be the three of them passing through, and PJ will skip the whole episode with the ships and have Aragorn lead the oathbreakers straight onto Pelenor (I haven't seen the trailer, so there could be something in there that refutes this)...
Nine thousand sites that previously used Linux now using a new version of Windows is not showing any meaningful trend. It hardly makes an anecdote.
Maybe machines that were previously home rolled were replaced by machines managed centrally by MS happy IT departments. Maybe people changed the consultant who runs the server. Maybe a new PHB came in who loves MS.
Some people will always be leaving Linux, it means nothing.
When I buy a car, I fully expect that how fast I drive it is between me and my community (as represented by the police). If cars were designed to restrict how I could drive them, then I would be pissed as hell.
When I buy a rifle, and I have a proper license for it, I expect that how I use it is between me and my community. If my contained electronics designed to restrict how I use it, I would be pissed (check how many gun owners are in favor of "smart guns" with even minimum restrictions).
When I buy a computer, I expect that what software I can run, and how I can communicate with other computers on the Internet is between me and my community. If my computer was designed to restrict what programs I could run because some could be used to break into banks I would be pissed as hell.
When I purchase music, I expect that the manner in which I can copy and distribute to be between me and my community. If my music service starts using my own computer against me to restrict what I can do with that music, I will be pissed as hell.
DRM is not like having laws. DRM places everyone in a cage, and provides prior restraint against breaking the law.
I think it is your incredible genius that needs help.
It's draconian because a computer should obey it's user, not its vendor or media corporations.
As has been said a million times: the nature of the restrictions don't matter. What matters is that your computer suddenly reserves the right to make them. Why is this so difficult to understand?
It's not as good as a blanket no to all software patents, but it is not as bad as it would have been without the tremendous effort that has been put in.
It is a compromise, but that in itself is a massive victory: the industry lobby has NEVER had to compromise with the consumers on these matters before. Look at laws like the DMCA and EUCD: compromises between the media and communication industries, where consumers where never even considered. The age of such laws ends here.
Even if we end up loosing this, a new political force has placed on the map.
peared to be full of pervs trying to pick up kids - or kids pretending to be pervs trying to pick up kids
Or maybe journalists acting like pervs who want to pick up kids to get an "exclusive", or LEOs acting as kids looking to be picked up by pervs, or just baiters looking to out pervs by publishing chat transcripts.
I have always had the feeling that if there really is a population of pervs out there who believe their are many kids who want to be "groomed" it is because their are so many LEOs and journalists and baiters out there acting like it.
At least in mozilla and the mozilla based browsers, you can load a url by pasting it (middle clicking) anywhere on an open page or empty tab.
So if I wanted to load a URL from a mail now, I would just highlight it and then middle-click on the background beside this text input box. No switching back and forth needed.
Slashdot Mirror
A software program is nothing but a number of ones and zeros in a file on your harddisk. Making changes to this program is as simple as changing some of those zeroes to ones and vice versa. Nothing is stopping you, except the time it takes with debugging tools to figure out which parts of the code implement the DRM features. It is logically impossible to try to secure a computer program from the person running it.
If you want practical evidence, look at games. If it were possible to make uncrackable software, then how come every game is cracked within hours of release?
Whether this system is secure or not, I don't know...
Yes you do. It isn't.
Software based DRM cannot be secure.
It is much wider than that. The DMCA prohibits any "circumvention" of a device used to prevent access to some data.
So as long as any such function appears in the BIOS (and given MS current plans it is obvious that it will) any replacement BIOS will circumvent the function and be illegal. Regardless if it was constructed through stolen sourcecode, or as the output of a random number generated that miraculously created a working BIOS.
I don't understand why Americans are so afraid of national ID cards. Where I live we have standardized national ID cards that are used in most situations, and I can't say how it has made me any less free.
In the modern world, we are counted and registered with our government. What is wrong with having a standardized card to show who we are?
I don't know if these cards would stop anybody from crashing airplanes, but they do help against things like identity theft, which is quite common in America but almost unheard of here. We don't have to have "three kinds of photo id" to go to bank, we don't consider our mother's maiden name or SS#'s security secrets, and we don't need to bring the electic bill to rent a movie.
Granted, my country is much smaller than the US, but I would support having an EU wide Identity card standard. I cannot see sensible argument against it.
Another problem is the PKI (public key infrastructure) issue. For remote attestation to work, it's necessary that the TC chips have some kind of crypto certificate that says that they are legitimate. Microsoft has said nothing about who will issue these certificates and who will revoke them if a machine gets broken into. Setting up a successful, global PKI is a prerequisite for DRM type applications and will be an enormous job.
More importantly, the embeddded certificates used for the remote attestation (TCG calls them "Endorsement Keys") are uniquely bound to the chip and computer in question. That means that every site that requires attestation can identify you and track you: think of it as Intel's processor ID on steriods!
So then what do they mean by:
"The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt"
How many watts you get out $0.40 of gas depends on how fast you burn it. The person who wrote the article clearly couldn't handle the difference between power and energy (hence the "over the cells 20 year lifetime" explanation before the power price ratio of the new technology.)
It can, but unfortunately the fans needed to cool the supercomputer change everything so it becomes useless.
Heisenberg - why do you taunt us so?
That is called a choice, my friend. Stop whining about the effects of the inflexible situation you have chosen.
Besides, there are ways to deal with that. People aren't plants, they can't be "uprooted". My family got up and moved to new countries four times during my childhood, and I think I'm better off for it (multilingual for instance). You or your spouse could do a weekly commute.
That may not be ideal, but what makes you think you are entitled to so much more?
"just need enough of a job to pay a few hundred $ a month in bills why should you have to travel half way across the world?"
Do you even listen to yourself?
You imply somehow that you are entitled to finding a job that suits your situation ("why should I?") You should travel half way across the world to make a few hundred bucks, because nobody around you is willing to hire you. It's that simple.
You aren't entitled to anything. Get over it.
Faster reaction times, and better memory. Uh-huh, sounds like hash alright... Really...
Maybe the fact that you are limiting yourself to that town is the problem?
Anyone who isn't willing to take any job they can get, anywhere in the world, is unemployed by choice.
Much as I like both GAIM and Trillian, sooner or later, probably by some kind of hard wired authenication/security mechanism, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsft will manage to block these clients often enough and for long enough that they'll lose their utility.
It's called TCPA.
The point with TCPA and palladium is to be able to force people to use user hostile clients to connect to certain networks/data, and this is a perfect example: in order to connect to the IM networks you will have to use the official clients (which are user hostile in that for example they use screen space for ads that the user would presumably disable if they could.)
Once rockets go up,
whether they come back,
"that's not my department",
says Johnny Carmack.
That being said, LaTex comes with a siginificant learning curve, and due to its nature misses some of the features that are important in a business environment (most notably changes tracking).
For changes tracking, why not just use cvs?
That site also says (translating from Swedish):
"The player appears as an external harddisk in Explorer on your PC. No installation is required."
This probably means that it uses the USB mass storage protocol, which the Linux kernel supports. Since other comments have implied that you play songs by just selecting the folder where you placed them, that would imply it should work just fine under Linux at least.
In the Two Towers movie ALL the elves died at Helm's Deep, so there aren't any elves to pass through paths of the dead with them either.
Maybe it will just be the three of them passing through, and PJ will skip the whole episode with the ships and have Aragorn lead the oathbreakers straight onto Pelenor (I haven't seen the trailer, so there could be something in there that refutes this)...
Nine thousand sites that previously used Linux now using a new version of Windows is not showing any meaningful trend. It hardly makes an anecdote.
Maybe machines that were previously home rolled were replaced by machines managed centrally by MS happy IT departments. Maybe people changed the consultant who runs the server. Maybe a new PHB came in who loves MS.
Some people will always be leaving Linux, it means nothing.
When I buy a car, I fully expect that how fast I drive it is between me and my community (as represented by the police). If cars were designed to restrict how I could drive them, then I would be pissed as hell.
When I buy a rifle, and I have a proper license for it, I expect that how I use it is between me and my community. If my contained electronics designed to restrict how I use it, I would be pissed (check how many gun owners are in favor of "smart guns" with even minimum restrictions).
When I buy a computer, I expect that what software I can run, and how I can communicate with other computers on the Internet is between me and my community. If my computer was designed to restrict what programs I could run because some could be used to break into banks I would be pissed as hell.
When I purchase music, I expect that the manner in which I can copy and distribute to be between me and my community. If my music service starts using my own computer against me to restrict what I can do with that music, I will be pissed as hell.
DRM is not like having laws. DRM places everyone in a cage, and provides prior restraint against breaking the law.
I think it is your incredible genius that needs help.
It's draconian because a computer should obey it's user, not its vendor or media corporations.
As has been said a million times: the nature of the restrictions don't matter. What matters is that your computer suddenly reserves the right to make them. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Thank you for the good work.
The DeCSS case was never about patents. The EU anti-circumvention law, EUCD, still stands.
And Norway (Jon's country) is not an EU member state.
It's not as good as a blanket no to all software patents, but it is not as bad as it would have been without the tremendous effort that has been put in.
It is a compromise, but that in itself is a massive victory: the industry lobby has NEVER had to compromise with the consumers on these matters before. Look at laws like the DMCA and EUCD: compromises between the media and communication industries, where consumers where never even considered. The age of such laws ends here.
Even if we end up loosing this, a new political force has placed on the map.
peared to be full of pervs trying to pick up kids - or kids pretending to be pervs trying to pick up kids
Or maybe journalists acting like pervs who want to pick up kids to get an "exclusive", or LEOs acting as kids looking to be picked up by pervs, or just baiters looking to out pervs by publishing chat transcripts.
I have always had the feeling that if there really is a population of pervs out there who believe their are many kids who want to be "groomed" it is because their are so many LEOs and journalists and baiters out there acting like it.
At least in mozilla and the mozilla based browsers, you can load a url by pasting it (middle clicking) anywhere on an open page or empty tab.
So if I wanted to load a URL from a mail now, I would just highlight it and then middle-click on the background beside this text input box. No switching back and forth needed.
Hydrogen based car != hydrogen fuel cell car
There are cars that are based on hydrogen combustion to directly power the wheels, as opposed to fuel cells which first create electicity.