DRM doesn't have to be a bad thing. In particular, open source software is in a particularly advantagous position to make DRM software that's durable and more of a two way street.
There's one tiny problem, the only way you can get working DRM is by magic. In the real world it is fundermentally impossible because anyone you allow to view or listen to your "content" can copy it. Whereas it might well be possible for a Hogwarts student to create text which can only be viewed by certain people, whilst inhibiting their ability to speak, write, type, etc whilst looking at the text, whilst failing to remember any of the text when not looking at it.
It wouldn't be a matter of just having twice as many phrases, because a phrase in one language could be recognised as a completely different phrase in English. Your point also doesn't take into account mid-sentence language switches ie. simply substituting words into otherwise English sentences. Also, your point is not valid unless the people analysing the traffic have prior knowledge of which two languages would be spoken, and therefore the system would have to cover the most common languages (at least 8 I would think).
It dosn't need to be a different "language", randomly using of jargon or slang, could have much the same effect. There's also the matter that a well though out code can be indistinguishable from "plain language". But has radically different semantics to the prople using it compared with any third party evesdropper.
Whatever. There are fines for jaywalking and speeding too, but I've never had to pay one. The kids smoking dope in the park near my house appear to do it with impunity. The law, as with most that don't involve physical injury or invasion, is basically unenforceable.
The problem with such laws is that they can be selectivly enforced...
Many "legit" OEM XP installs (and Vista) are "BIOS locked." Meaning that they are tied in to the actual hardware configuration that they are installed on. BR>In practice "BIOS locked" tends to mean locked to any machine from a specific OEM. e.g. a Dell version of Windows will work with any Dell machine. Typically they actually way this works is that there is code looking for a string in a certain part of the non volatile memory. Which is separate from that containing either the firmware code or it's variables. It's possible to defeat this locking either by modifying the check in Windows to always return true or altering the appropriate addresses in non volatile memory to contain the data its expecting.
You also have right of first sale for an OEM copy of windows. However it has to be used with the same system(usually defined as motherboard) as it was sold with/originally installed on. Yes it is a restriction but that is why it is sold at a discounted price.
All most certainly incorrect. So called "promo CDs" have a much greater level of discount (infinity) this makes no difference to resale rights. If someone tried to claim that a discounted price made a diffference to the doctrine of first sale they'd most likely to be laughed out of court. In Microsoft's case they'd probably sue, but try and drop the case if it looked likely to go anywhere near a judge.
Its legal for Retail copies. However you can not use OEM copies on any other computer than the one it was originally installed on.
Only if a court has ruled that the "Retail"/"OEM" distinction actually ment anything. In Germany courts have ruled that there is no distinction. In the US courts have ruled that the doctrine of first sale is just as applicable to "promo" CDs as it is to "retail" ones. Like many large corporations Microsoft tends to pretend that the law is something other than what it actually is.
Yes, it is more difficult, but any lock or security mechanism can be defeated. Suppose the terrorist was either a master lock pick or had some inside information about how to open the door.
That would be one terrorist trying to open the door and how many flight attendants and passengers trying to stop them?
BAM! Pilot is dead, and now nobody can get into the cockpit.
There are two pilots either one can control the plane. Even then unless said "terrorist" can jam the door from the inside it can still be opened by a crew member.
Some guys tried that at Glasgow Airport. It lead to a slightly scorched aluminium door fascia and a lot of jokes. One of the wannabe "terrorists" (hard to justify the word, quite honestly) died of his injuries (mostly burns, although they both had seven shades of shit kicked out of them by people nearby) at the scene, the other died in hospital a couple of weeks later. The airport was open again two hours after it happened.
Which actually made them less effective "terrorists" than the latest idiot who blew himself up in a restaurant toilet. It took longer than that to lift the police cordon and the restaurant closed for several days. The really daft thing about the Glasgow pair is that they were allegedly doctors, what kind of medical school accepts students who's knowlage of chemistry is that lacking?
Its called EMP, now a days just about everything is computerized, from cars and airplanes to your fucking toaster, the most important of these in this case would be the fact that most combustion engines now use a computer to dictate the firing timing on spark plugs, not to mention the fact that your gas pedal is probably more electronic than mechanical at this point as well.
Diesel engines don't have spark plugs. Gas turbine engines have spark plugs, but they are typically only used when starting or in conditions of heavy precipitation.
I don't think they intend to stop the plane literally. They intend to have a computer programmed with the no-fly zones and the plane automatically flys around that when the kill switch is activated.
What happens when an aircraft with damaged flight controls tries to do this? Also what happens when someone works out how to make the plane think that the runway it is trying to land on is a "no-fly zone"? These areas are not always static and you'd need some way to make sure that someone couldn't just upload the coordinates of airports into such a database. This would also be a major change to the way planes work they don't have automatic systems to avoid collisions with either other planes or the ground. A human pilot is expected to respond to a TCAS or GPWS alarm.
The computers on modern planes can actually fly the plane without really requiring the input of the pilot. Most of the flying is on auto pilot.
If it were that easy to do without pilots you'd expect airlines to be asking how they could replace the cockpit with additional rows of seats. (which they could probably charge at a premium because of the extra large windows.)
Corn is a pretty bad crop selection for making ethanol. The water, fertilizer, direct and indirect energy requirements for growing corn are quite high.
It certainly dosn't help using only part of the plant, the seeds, to feed to the yeast.
I don't know if switchgrass is a legume or not. Legumes make their own nitrogen fertilizer; and cellulosic ethanol could be made from some kind of leguminous grass. You wouldn't need much of the other nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, etc.)
I doubt it is, however nothing stops you planting something suitable along with the switchgrass. There are plenty of nitrogen fixing plants in the "weed" catagory.
No more dependent on oil than other products. Ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas; not oil. That stupid oil company TV ad that lumps the two together ("Two-thirds of the oil and natural gas consumed in the U.S. is produced in North America") is very misleading.
Unless what they are calling "natural gas" is actually petromethane. i.e. methane often found in conjunction with oil.
And what happens when things like switchgrass and waste products no longer decompose on the land that they grew from? Where are all of these nutrients and minerals going to come from to grow new plants?
There's a fairly old idea in agriculture called "crop rotation", which involves growing different crops on the same piece of land...
Unless you plan on replacing them with fertilizer, because we all know that fertilizer is a safe, renewable source that is completely independent of petroleum....
There's a material called "sewage" which is a not petroleum source of fertilizer. This is produced by just about all animals, including humans. Generally it's considered "hazardous waste" so lots of money gets spent on disposing of it. Converting any waste product into something useful would appear to be a good business opportunity...
Peak Oil is _not_ "that stuff running out". It is the production of oil reaching a plateau and then going into decline. The peak of a mountain doesn't happen when you reach the valley, it happens when you've got to the top and can't go higher.
It's also unlikely that any mineral resource will "run out". Rather that it becomes uneconomic to extract it. It's difficult to work out when this might happen because a change in technology may make extraction cheaper and the higher the price the more money there is to spend on extraction.
This is based on an economic consequence. The infrastructure of America is built around the car, and not just any car, but a car that had 60 years of dirt cheap fuel. Our cities and towns are modeled around this. More importantly salaries are also adjusted for a much cheaper transportation cost.
Changing all this would probably take rather longer than the 10 year estimate for changing all cars in the original article. Consider that fuel in the US is still considerably cheaper in many other places.
You have several options and none of them are particularly appetizing, and none of them have anything to do with global warming. You can produce your own fuel through biofuels, switch to electric cars, or produce more oil from costly hard to access oil reseviors which represent the last of your domestic supply.
A problem many bio fuels have is that they are not interchangable with petrofuels. This "SwiftFuel" is, which means that it is usable without modifications to existing infrastructure. The problem with electric cars is that you'd need to change considerably more than just the cars, there would be a need to completly rebuild power grids at the same time.
Actually, anyone who takes global climate change seriously is well aware that so-called 'biofuel' does far more harm than good.
The term "biofuel" covers a lot of fuel sources. Some of which make sense, some of which make less sense than "petro-fuel". Note that "making sense" does not imply anything about "global warming", "climate change", etc...
Only barbarians would ship their alleged criminals to some overseas outpost then claim they had no recourse to the laws of the country...
Especially if these people were abducted by force. And don't have access to the courts of the country they were abducted from or those of anywhere they claim citizenship of in addition to having no access to the courts of the country who abducted them!
It's a bit of a strange one for me The House of Lords. As a concept it's deeply flawed but for the large part it actually works pretty well.
For a bicarmal legislature to work effectivly the two houses need to have different methods of selection. However flawed those methods themselves might be. The method by which MP's are selected is by no means perfect. This is something which isn't the case in the US and Canada, even though it was the case in the past in the US. (Possibly this was also the case in Canada in the past.)
69% of the UK population in favour of 42 days detention without charge - if you believe the results of a YouGov Poll (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2107480/42-day-terror-detention-British-public-overwhelmingly-in-favour-,-poll-shows.html)
Even this had a qualification of "in exceptional circumstances". The article dosn't say what these people were actually asked. Doubt it would be so high if it was "Would you agree to yourself, a family member or friend being held for no good reason?" There is also a repeat of the conspiracy theory about complex terror plots.
You jest, but I don't think your average MP understands the seriousness of the matter. S/he gets wrongly held for 28 days, then at the end of it they go back to whatever it was they were doing and there's no harm done.
If they are a government minister they are likely to have been replaced. There's also going to be some period of detention beyond which the MP will be released to discover that a byelection has been held in their absence thus they have to consider getting a proper job. Probably one which dosn't come with "perks" like getting their house done up at tax payer's expense.
....as the Bill in question has only been passed by the House of Commons. It's got to go before the House of Lords yet. Many commentators think it is not going to do too well there.
However there are still 315 people who really should be held for 28 days without charge. Are there enough truely patriotic police to do this though.
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DRM doesn't have to be a bad thing. In particular, open source software is in a particularly advantagous position to make DRM software that's durable and more of a two way street.
There's one tiny problem, the only way you can get working DRM is by magic. In the real world it is fundermentally impossible because anyone you allow to view or listen to your "content" can copy it. Whereas it might well be possible for a Hogwarts student to create text which can only be viewed by certain people, whilst inhibiting their ability to speak, write, type, etc whilst looking at the text, whilst failing to remember any of the text when not looking at it.
It wouldn't be a matter of just having twice as many phrases, because a phrase in one language could be recognised as a completely different phrase in English. Your point also doesn't take into account mid-sentence language switches ie. simply substituting words into otherwise English sentences. Also, your point is not valid unless the people analysing the traffic have prior knowledge of which two languages would be spoken, and therefore the system would have to cover the most common languages (at least 8 I would think).
It dosn't need to be a different "language", randomly using of jargon or slang, could have much the same effect. There's also the matter that a well though out code can be indistinguishable from "plain language". But has radically different semantics to the prople using it compared with any third party evesdropper.
Whatever. There are fines for jaywalking and speeding too, but I've never had to pay one. The kids smoking dope in the park near my house appear to do it with impunity. The law, as with most that don't involve physical injury or invasion, is basically unenforceable.
The problem with such laws is that they can be selectivly enforced...
Many "legit" OEM XP installs (and Vista) are "BIOS locked." Meaning that they are tied in to the actual hardware configuration that they are installed on.
BR>In practice "BIOS locked" tends to mean locked to any machine from a specific OEM. e.g. a Dell version of Windows will work with any Dell machine. Typically they actually way this works is that there is code looking for a string in a certain part of the non volatile memory. Which is separate from that containing either the firmware code or it's variables.
It's possible to defeat this locking either by modifying the check in Windows to always return true or altering the appropriate addresses in non volatile memory to contain the data its expecting.
You also have right of first sale for an OEM copy of windows. However it has to be used with the same system(usually defined as motherboard) as it was sold with/originally installed on. Yes it is a restriction but that is why it is sold at a discounted price.
All most certainly incorrect. So called "promo CDs" have a much greater level of discount (infinity) this makes no difference to resale rights. If someone tried to claim that a discounted price made a diffference to the doctrine of first sale they'd most likely to be laughed out of court. In Microsoft's case they'd probably sue, but try and drop the case if it looked likely to go anywhere near a judge.
Its legal for Retail copies. However you can not use OEM copies on any other computer than the one it was originally installed on.
Only if a court has ruled that the "Retail"/"OEM" distinction actually ment anything. In Germany courts have ruled that there is no distinction. In the US courts have ruled that the doctrine of first sale is just as applicable to "promo" CDs as it is to "retail" ones.
Like many large corporations Microsoft tends to pretend that the law is something other than what it actually is.
Yes, it is more difficult, but any lock or security mechanism can be defeated. Suppose the terrorist was either a master lock pick or had some inside information about how to open the door.
That would be one terrorist trying to open the door and how many flight attendants and passengers trying to stop them?
BAM! Pilot is dead, and now nobody can get into the cockpit.
There are two pilots either one can control the plane. Even then unless said "terrorist" can jam the door from the inside it can still be opened by a crew member.
Some guys tried that at Glasgow Airport. It lead to a slightly scorched aluminium door fascia and a lot of jokes. One of the wannabe "terrorists" (hard to justify the word, quite honestly) died of his injuries (mostly burns, although they both had seven shades of shit kicked out of them by people nearby) at the scene, the other died in hospital a couple of weeks later. The airport was open again two hours after it happened.
Which actually made them less effective "terrorists" than the latest idiot who blew himself up in a restaurant toilet. It took longer than that to lift the police cordon and the restaurant closed for several days.
The really daft thing about the Glasgow pair is that they were allegedly doctors, what kind of medical school accepts students who's knowlage of chemistry is that lacking?
Its called EMP, now a days just about everything is computerized, from cars and airplanes to your fucking toaster, the most important of these in this case would be the fact that most combustion engines now use a computer to dictate the firing timing on spark plugs, not to mention the fact that your gas pedal is probably more electronic than mechanical at this point as well.
Diesel engines don't have spark plugs. Gas turbine engines have spark plugs, but they are typically only used when starting or in conditions of heavy precipitation.
I don't think they intend to stop the plane literally. They intend to have a computer programmed with the no-fly zones and the plane automatically flys around that when the kill switch is activated.
What happens when an aircraft with damaged flight controls tries to do this? Also what happens when someone works out how to make the plane think that the runway it is trying to land on is a "no-fly zone"? These areas are not always static and you'd need some way to make sure that someone couldn't just upload the coordinates of airports into such a database.
This would also be a major change to the way planes work they don't have automatic systems to avoid collisions with either other planes or the ground. A human pilot is expected to respond to a TCAS or GPWS alarm.
The computers on modern planes can actually fly the plane without really requiring the input of the pilot. Most of the flying is on auto pilot.
If it were that easy to do without pilots you'd expect airlines to be asking how they could replace the cockpit with additional rows of seats. (which they could probably charge at a premium because of the extra large windows.)
How in the world can you 'safely stop' and aircraft in flight?!
Also a "kill switch" which can operate "before takeoff" but after V1 is likely to live up to its name.
The final cost of the enzymes needed to digest the cellulose hasn't been very well established.
How do you make enzymes produced by micro-organisms expensive?
Corn is a pretty bad crop selection for making ethanol. The water, fertilizer, direct and indirect energy requirements for growing corn are quite high.
It certainly dosn't help using only part of the plant, the seeds, to feed to the yeast.
I don't know if switchgrass is a legume or not. Legumes make their own nitrogen fertilizer; and cellulosic ethanol could be made from some kind of leguminous grass. You wouldn't need much of the other nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, etc.)
I doubt it is, however nothing stops you planting something suitable along with the switchgrass. There are plenty of nitrogen fixing plants in the "weed" catagory.
No more dependent on oil than other products. Ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas; not oil. That stupid oil company TV ad that lumps the two together ("Two-thirds of the oil and natural gas consumed in the U.S. is produced in North America") is very misleading.
Unless what they are calling "natural gas" is actually petromethane. i.e. methane often found in conjunction with oil.
And what happens when things like switchgrass and waste products no longer decompose on the land that they grew from? Where are all of these nutrients and minerals going to come from to grow new plants?
There's a fairly old idea in agriculture called "crop rotation", which involves growing different crops on the same piece of land...
Unless you plan on replacing them with fertilizer, because we all know that fertilizer is a safe, renewable source that is completely independent of petroleum....
There's a material called "sewage" which is a not petroleum source of fertilizer. This is produced by just about all animals, including humans. Generally it's considered "hazardous waste" so lots of money gets spent on disposing of it.
Converting any waste product into something useful would appear to be a good business opportunity...
Peak Oil is _not_ "that stuff running out". It is the production of oil reaching a plateau and then going into decline. The peak of a mountain doesn't happen when you reach the valley, it happens when you've got to the top and can't go higher.
It's also unlikely that any mineral resource will "run out". Rather that it becomes uneconomic to extract it. It's difficult to work out when this might happen because a change in technology may make extraction cheaper and the higher the price the more money there is to spend on extraction.
This is based on an economic consequence. The infrastructure of America is built around the car, and not just any car, but a car that had 60 years of dirt cheap fuel. Our cities and towns are modeled around this. More importantly salaries are also adjusted for a much cheaper transportation cost.
Changing all this would probably take rather longer than the 10 year estimate for changing all cars in the original article. Consider that fuel in the US is still considerably cheaper in many other places.
You have several options and none of them are particularly appetizing, and none of them have anything to do with global warming. You can produce your own fuel through biofuels, switch to electric cars, or produce more oil from costly hard to access oil reseviors which represent the last of your domestic supply.
A problem many bio fuels have is that they are not interchangable with petrofuels. This "SwiftFuel" is, which means that it is usable without modifications to existing infrastructure. The problem with electric cars is that you'd need to change considerably more than just the cars, there would be a need to completly rebuild power grids at the same time.
Actually, anyone who takes global climate change seriously is well aware that so-called 'biofuel' does far more harm than good.
The term "biofuel" covers a lot of fuel sources. Some of which make sense, some of which make less sense than "petro-fuel". Note that "making sense" does not imply anything about "global warming", "climate change", etc...
Only barbarians would ship their alleged criminals to some overseas outpost then claim they had no recourse to the laws of the country...
Especially if these people were abducted by force. And don't have access to the courts of the country they were abducted from or those of anywhere they claim citizenship of in addition to having no access to the courts of the country who abducted them!
It's a bit of a strange one for me The House of Lords. As a concept it's deeply flawed but for the large part it actually works pretty well.
For a bicarmal legislature to work effectivly the two houses need to have different methods of selection. However flawed those methods themselves might be. The method by which MP's are selected is by no means perfect.
This is something which isn't the case in the US and Canada, even though it was the case in the past in the US. (Possibly this was also the case in Canada in the past.)
69% of the UK population in favour of 42 days detention without charge - if you believe the results of a YouGov Poll (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2107480/42-day-terror-detention-British-public-overwhelmingly-in-favour-,-poll-shows.html)
Even this had a qualification of "in exceptional circumstances". The article dosn't say what these people were actually asked. Doubt it would be so high if it was "Would you agree to yourself, a family member or friend being held for no good reason?"
There is also a repeat of the conspiracy theory about complex terror plots.
I'm for this 42 day thing myself.
:)
See you in 42 days then
You jest, but I don't think your average MP understands the seriousness of the matter. S/he gets wrongly held for 28 days, then at the end of it they go back to whatever it was they were doing and there's no harm done.
If they are a government minister they are likely to have been replaced. There's also going to be some period of detention beyond which the MP will be released to discover that a byelection has been held in their absence thus they have to consider getting a proper job. Probably one which dosn't come with "perks" like getting their house done up at tax payer's expense.
....as the Bill in question has only been passed by the House of Commons. It's got to go before the House of Lords yet. Many commentators think it is not going to do too well there.
However there are still 315 people who really should be held for 28 days without charge. Are there enough truely patriotic police to do this though.