The concept of patenting a living thing just seems so entirely silly to me. It's totally counter to the order of things.
If Monsanto wants to spend a billion dollars on a strain of corn that will yeild twice as much as a good old heirloom varieties, that's thier business (literally!). I'll even grant them the right to charge me $100/seed -- that's capitalism in its finest.
However, the "pay-per-play" scheme for seeds is just silly. If I want to propogate a living thing, I should damn well be able to. (Note, I also think outlawing living things -- like weed -- is also absurd.)
Got a garden in the Southwest? Support a heirloom line: http://www.nativeseeds.org
Break out your copies of wget, folks. It looks like another class of software will become contraband soon.
Someone needs to come up with a metta-mirror site, which mirrors all the controversial software (DeCSS, mp3 encodes, crypto, etc.) and puts it in a form that's easy for us mere mortals to mirror.
If I could put "wget -m http://www.metamirror.org" in my crontab and help
propogate endangered software for safe keeping, I'd do it in a heartbeat!
Well, they recently convicted a guy of welfare fraud. Serves 'im right, too. If I guy wants to boink 12 women, and those women have such low self-esteem as to need the arrangement, the more power too them.
However, I will not tollerate the State supporting the children via welfare with my taxes.
I work at the University of Utah. I'm no Mormon, but I wish these Olympic assholes would just get the fuck out of my life.
We, the taxpayers, have had to fund more shit -- all in the name of the Olympics and World Peace -- only to get little in return. Yeah, we have wider highways, but they're already as congested as they were before I-15 construction began. We have a light rail in town, but they had to up sales tax for that (and I'm sure it won't go back down when its done). The U. just lost a few thousand parking lots to accomodate the games -- and I'm sure all of you University admins know how parking on a large campus already sucks.
I'm so sick of these fucking Olympic organizations. The IOC and the SLOC (with phony Mr Romney at the helm), are are a bunch of corporate whores who rape the local communities for getting a few bucks in return.
This whole thing really pisses me off, if you haven't figured that out by now. If the network is hacked, I'll be laughing my ass off.
I'm gonna fly my Corporate Flag on my car when I crawl through downtown traffic when I'm on my way to/from work during the "games". Not that it'll change anything, but at least I'll feel better.
I actually paid for this great software. Bochs and plex86 just aren't there yet, but give it time. If Turbo Tax got ported to Linux, I'd probably ditch the emulation thing entirely.
Anyway, set up whetever flavor of Windows you want to in the VM. Linux can snarf stuff off the audio device while Windows pumps sounds to it. It might be a pain to set up (I've never tried this), but it should work in theory.
There are several known cases where CDs had errors introduced in production.
In my own collection, for example, I have a copy of Enya's The Celts, from 1987. The errors may span more than one track, but you can hear the "skipping" type sound very clearly in the track "I Want Tomorrow", which is unfortunately amplified in the ripping process (I use paranoia).
This has been a hot topic in the Enya newsgroups in the past, and I'm not sure if it was ever decided whether it was a pressing problem or a mastering problem.
Fortunately, that album was re-mastered and re-released in the mid-to-late 90's, sans the aforementioned flaws. If any other Enya geeks actaully have the 2 to compare side-by-side, please comment on the quality, as I haven't bought the newer release (and I love "I Want Tomorrow"!).
Also, I think the age of the CD has something to do with it. I have an import copy of Queen's Greatest Hits, and the surface is visually perfect, yet I simply cannot get good rips on about 4 or 5 songs. If I use paranoia's -z (--never-skip) option, it never gets through the entire CD. I picked this album up in Germany around 1992.
Oh, you said "Symbian"!
on
New Nokia Phone
·
· Score: 5, Funny
As I skimmed the headline, I first thought it said "sybian". My next thought was, " Great -- I'll by my wife one of these."
Next, I re-read and thought it said "simian", and I thought, "whoah -- a phone for my spider monkey!"
Admit it... you were running dnetc on that box, weren't you?
It's our arrogance is why others hate us.
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
Our corporations fight for the right to have a McDonalds in every country on the planet, snuffing out traditional staples of living, yet tax the shit out of imported food (sugar, bananas, etc.).
We preach about free trade, yet Shrub gets his panties in a bunch when some country can sell us steel for cheap.
Our companies fight tooth and nail for the ability to sell to the entire world, yet want people in the US (the richest general population on the planet) to only buy products domestically (no buying cheap drugs from Canada, region-enforced DVD players, etc.).
We, as a society, can't have it both ways, yet we try so damned hard to have it that way. We dictate to the world our standards which enrich our corporate world (NAFTA, WTO, intellectual property right protection, etc.), but balk at the idea that someone else may produce a better mouse trap for less.
Reminds me of the "shipbuilder problem" in philosophy class. Back in the days when ships were big, a shipbuilder is contracted to repair someone's vessel. Over the years, he'd take home each piece he replaced on the old ship, until he had the parts to build is own ship. The person who paid him sued for "his" ship back.
So, what's meant by "that PC"? Do I need a new license for each part I replace? If not, then if I've replaced everything (either over time or wholesale), then I should be able to use that license on the improved "old" machine.
As it is now, we can snarf up content over the airwaves or cable, and keep it to use for as long as the media is usable. Sure, the networks can still sanitize content, but there's still the chance that we can get the pre-sanitzed version.
In my hypothetical scenario, we don't even have that chance anymore. All content, past and present, is subject to the Ministry of Truth's whims.
Let's say that in 20 years, I have my 4'x3' DRM-enabled digital HDTV. I'm watching live coverage of some monumental event. I'm also taping the event on my Tivo^2 unit, which has 25TB of holographic storage.
Some protester jumps into the foreground and slams a cherry pie into Jack Vallenti's face, is wrestled to the ground and subdued by Thought Police, and dragged off.
Now I think, "Wow, that's really cool shit. I'm gonna add some footage to my next editorial on my web page!"
An hour later, I hit Play on my Tivo^2 only to find out that the network has instructed the device to not play back the event (or, worse yet, edits out the pie scene on the fly) because Vallenti has a 51% stake in ABC-MS-AOL-TW Network, and decides that the pie incident is too humiliating.
That evening on ABC-MSNBC-AOL-TW Network Sanitized Evening News, we see the day's event (recordable now) in its edited state.
Archivists now only have the version of history that the Network wants them to have.
An extreme scenario, to be sure, but technically feasible. Imagine if this happened when some really important event occurs.
In the rare event that I buy big-label stuff, I only buy via secondspin.com.
I may need to wait a few months, but I've always been able to find what I wanted eventually.
The only exceptions I've made to this policy in the past 4 years have been buying my wife a CD or two, and the latest Enya album (I simply couldn't wait).
I do stream a lot more off of MP3.com these days, too.
The point of my original Ask/. posting was to get a feel for what all of you do.
I use Linux on a modestly beefy machine (T-Bird 1.4GHz w/ 512MB RAM). I was thinking of encrypting an entire disk and running another full copy of Linux in a VMWare virutal machine for use in working on sensitive documents. No swap file on the host machine, so no information leakage that way.
My feel is that GPG is the best email encryption, though I'm concerned about traffic analysis (hey, don't laugh -- practicing paranoid procedures now can potentially save your butt later on). It seems Type II Mixmaster remailers are hard to find in a reliable state.
I can use stego on usenet, but how do I post in a reliably anonymous way?
Also, are there any good one time pad implimentations out there? Make a few thousand 1-4kb files from/dev/random, send copies to whoever, then use program xyz to XOR them correctly.
Also, is it time to revive the old "spook fodder" practice of the early 90's to pester Carnivore-type systems? How about email lists and moderated newsgroups that encrypt all messages to their users? This would make encrypted traffic the norm, so you don't look suspicous when you really do use it.
What real-world methods do all of you paranoid geeks use on a day-to-day basis?
Slashdot Mirror
If Monsanto wants to spend a billion dollars on a strain of corn that will yeild twice as much as a good old heirloom varieties, that's thier business (literally!). I'll even grant them the right to charge me $100/seed -- that's capitalism in its finest.
However, the "pay-per-play" scheme for seeds is just silly. If I want to propogate a living thing, I should damn well be able to. (Note, I also think outlawing living things -- like weed -- is also absurd.)
Got a garden in the Southwest? Support a heirloom line: http://www.nativeseeds.org
At the very least: trend analysis. It's always good to keep an open eye to what the Script o' the Day is.
Someone needs to come up with a metta-mirror site, which mirrors all the controversial software (DeCSS, mp3 encodes, crypto, etc.) and puts it in a form that's easy for us mere mortals to mirror.
If I could put "wget -m http://www.metamirror.org" in my crontab and help propogate endangered software for safe keeping, I'd do it in a heartbeat!
However, I will not tollerate the State supporting the children via welfare with my taxes.
We, the taxpayers, have had to fund more shit -- all in the name of the Olympics and World Peace -- only to get little in return. Yeah, we have wider highways, but they're already as congested as they were before I-15 construction began. We have a light rail in town, but they had to up sales tax for that (and I'm sure it won't go back down when its done). The U. just lost a few thousand parking lots to accomodate the games -- and I'm sure all of you University admins know how parking on a large campus already sucks.
I'm so sick of these fucking Olympic organizations. The IOC and the SLOC (with phony Mr Romney at the helm), are are a bunch of corporate whores who rape the local communities for getting a few bucks in return.
This whole thing really pisses me off, if you haven't figured that out by now. If the network is hacked, I'll be laughing my ass off. I'm gonna fly my Corporate Flag on my car when I crawl through downtown traffic when I'm on my way to/from work during the "games". Not that it'll change anything, but at least I'll feel better.
I actually paid for this great software. Bochs and plex86 just aren't there yet, but give it time. If Turbo Tax got ported to Linux, I'd probably ditch the emulation thing entirely.
Anyway, set up whetever flavor of Windows you want to in the VM. Linux can snarf stuff off the audio device while Windows pumps sounds to it. It might be a pain to set up (I've never tried this), but it should work in theory.
In my own collection, for example, I have a copy of Enya's The Celts, from 1987. The errors may span more than one track, but you can hear the "skipping" type sound very clearly in the track "I Want Tomorrow", which is unfortunately amplified in the ripping process (I use paranoia).
This has been a hot topic in the Enya newsgroups in the past, and I'm not sure if it was ever decided whether it was a pressing problem or a mastering problem.
Fortunately, that album was re-mastered and re-released in the mid-to-late 90's, sans the aforementioned flaws. If any other Enya geeks actaully have the 2 to compare side-by-side, please comment on the quality, as I haven't bought the newer release (and I love "I Want Tomorrow"!).
Also, I think the age of the CD has something to do with it. I have an import copy of Queen's Greatest Hits, and the surface is visually perfect, yet I simply cannot get good rips on about 4 or 5 songs. If I use paranoia's -z (--never-skip) option, it never gets through the entire CD. I picked this album up in Germany around 1992.
Next, I re-read and thought it said "simian", and I thought, "whoah -- a phone for my spider monkey!"
Damn, what a boring phone...
Admit it... you were running dnetc on that box, weren't you?
We preach about free trade, yet Shrub gets his panties in a bunch when some country can sell us steel for cheap.
Our companies fight tooth and nail for the ability to sell to the entire world, yet want people in the US (the richest general population on the planet) to only buy products domestically (no buying cheap drugs from Canada, region-enforced DVD players, etc.).
We, as a society, can't have it both ways, yet we try so damned hard to have it that way. We dictate to the world our standards which enrich our corporate world (NAFTA, WTO, intellectual property right protection, etc.), but balk at the idea that someone else may produce a better mouse trap for less.
It sickens me, really.
So, what's meant by "that PC"? Do I need a new license for each part I replace? If not, then if I've replaced everything (either over time or wholesale), then I should be able to use that license on the improved "old" machine.
Gets kinda sticky, doesn't it?
As it is now, we can snarf up content over the airwaves or cable, and keep it to use for as long as the media is usable. Sure, the networks can still sanitize content, but there's still the chance that we can get the pre-sanitzed version.
In my hypothetical scenario, we don't even have that chance anymore. All content, past and present, is subject to the Ministry of Truth's whims.
Some protester jumps into the foreground and slams a cherry pie into Jack Vallenti's face, is wrestled to the ground and subdued by Thought Police, and dragged off.
Now I think, "Wow, that's really cool shit. I'm gonna add some footage to my next editorial on my web page!"
An hour later, I hit Play on my Tivo^2 only to find out that the network has instructed the device to not play back the event (or, worse yet, edits out the pie scene on the fly) because Vallenti has a 51% stake in ABC-MS-AOL-TW Network, and decides that the pie incident is too humiliating.
That evening on ABC-MSNBC-AOL-TW Network Sanitized Evening News, we see the day's event (recordable now) in its edited state.
Archivists now only have the version of history that the Network wants them to have.
An extreme scenario, to be sure, but technically feasible. Imagine if this happened when some really important event occurs.
In the rare event that I buy big-label stuff, I only buy via secondspin.com. I may need to wait a few months, but I've always been able to find what I wanted eventually.
The only exceptions I've made to this policy in the past 4 years have been buying my wife a CD or two, and the latest Enya album (I simply couldn't wait).
I do stream a lot more off of MP3.com these days, too.
I use Linux on a modestly beefy machine (T-Bird 1.4GHz w/ 512MB RAM). I was thinking of encrypting an entire disk and running another full copy of Linux in a VMWare virutal machine for use in working on sensitive documents. No swap file on the host machine, so no information leakage that way.
My feel is that GPG is the best email encryption, though I'm concerned about traffic analysis (hey, don't laugh -- practicing paranoid procedures now can potentially save your butt later on). It seems Type II Mixmaster remailers are hard to find in a reliable state.
I can use stego on usenet, but how do I post in a reliably anonymous way?
Also, are there any good one time pad implimentations out there? Make a few thousand 1-4kb files from /dev/random, send copies to whoever, then use program xyz to XOR them correctly.
Also, is it time to revive the old "spook fodder" practice of the early 90's to pester Carnivore-type systems? How about email lists and moderated newsgroups that encrypt all messages to their users? This would make encrypted traffic the norm, so you don't look suspicous when you really do use it.
What real-world methods do all of you paranoid geeks use on a day-to-day basis?