If Microsoft would just do good encrypting on the address book, and update it every once and a while for new encryption, stuff like this wouldn't happen because the virii wouldn't be able to get the addresses of every person using Outlook.
Unless every use of the address book required the user to enter a key then this would do nothing especially useful. Since a virus could easily decrypt the data, assuming it even needed to.
At the least, this would slow a virus down.
Only if the encryption was complex enough that decrypting the data too a long period of time...
If you want something to re-enforce your first bullet, you should point out that copy protection is basically cryptography.
Used in a way in which cryptography dosn't work very well. Cryptography is a good method for sending information to people who you trust where evesedropping by people you don't trust is likely. However the idea behind DRM is to send information to people you don't trust. Using cypher machines in black boxes supplied as mass market commodities. Genetically engineering pigs with avian DNA may well be an easier task.
Bill Gates was a f**king lucky individual and if there was a slight change in history around about 1980 he would be here on SlashDot complaining bitterly about whoever did become the meglamanical monopolist.
The "slight change" would probably be something like him having had different parents. Also the idea that some other company would have been the "meglamaniacal monopolist" is pure conjecture. Maybe someone else would have been more reluctant to break the law:)
I'm sure implementing US laws on hardware shipped outside the US probably breaks a few trade agreements (not to mention it enforces US laws [legal or copyright] on other countries). How will this affect us (us being users outside the US)?
At a guess the US will claim that the trade agreements in question oblige the rest of the world to go along with this. If they manage to fool the rest of the world then this will get pushed everywhere in the name of "globalization" & "harmonization". The US would likely try very hard for this interpretation. Since as most of hardware in question simply cannot be sourced from within the US, including systems utterly vital to government.
I can't begin to describe how infuriating it is to sit and watch this happen. Every time there's an "open" discussion of the issues surrounding digital copying. there is always an unstated assumption that it is something that must be stopped/controlled/regulated/quashed, and how best that can be accomplished.
There is also a very telling comment on the story "They're taking public comments here according to the announcement, but they sure have hidden it well. Can anybody find the form?". Which sounds very much like the idea of having a "public meeting", where the time and venue are unknown to the public.
Let us be clear: Everyone agrees that artists should be rewarded for their good work.
Actually there isn't agreement in where between "paid minimum wage" and "guarenteed income for their grandchildren" a line should be drawn. Using the term "rewarded" also tends to imply some divine right for the creator to make some sort of profit.
The dissent centers around whether copyright is any longer the best way to provide that reward.
In the US "copyright" isn't sacrosanct anyway. The US Congress is under no obligation to create a copyright law in the first place.
With email, text messaging, instant messaging, unlimited internet forums, the internet pages themselves, snail mail, telephone, telegraph, morse, hundreds of languages, and god-knows what other methods, there are just too may ways to transmit info to plough through these and find hidden messages.
Which is why mass interception isn't really very effective. Unless you know where to look in the first place you simply have a large quantity of utterly useless information. Yet after September the 11th there were calls for more automated interception, even when it was revealed that security services in the US lacked people who knew Arabic.
Sometimes it isn't the content that gives you away, it's the fact that you're sending traffic between point A and point B, and B talks to C, D, and E
In which case Alice, Bob, Chris, Denise and Edward don't communicate directly at all. Instead they use some method to broadcast their steganography disguised messages in a way that will be seen by lots of people.
Is there another number system besides base 6 that allows you to easily convert the earth's rotation of 15 degrees an hour into human readable time? Except that we don't actually use the Earth's rotation period for the length of a day. Because the Earth dosn't just rotate it also moves in it's orbit. Anyway the 15 degrees is an arbitary measure. You could just as easily use 20 gradians or PI/10 radians.
The important thing to understand about Palladium is that it doesn't improve security for the end user.
Or indeed anyone other than the corporate publishers who are making noises about DRM. If anything it could make things less secure. Because tools to improve security might not be giving the blessing of these people...
Pallidum's sole purpose is to give IP owners control my computer
No it's about protecting the IP of a tiny minority of IP owners. Like most other DRM ideas, it won't do anything to protect the IP you or the other several billion (probably arround 10 billion if you include corporates) IP owners might happen to own.
Ofcourse, Windows XP will ask you, and then automatically set your display resolution and refresh rate to the optimal for your monitor when you first bootup.
Or it may set things to be sub optimal. The basic problem with "plug and play" is that it dosn't always work and if it can't easily be disabled it becomes "plug and pray".
The difference is, Control Panel -> Display -> Settings is a lot more obvious than running a program called 'xf86cfg'.
Only if they are already used to Windows. Indeed a complete novice probably would have less of a problem with having to put the box into a special mode to set it up. Because that's the case with their television, video, etc.
When Nimda was released, M$ had already released a patch for the vulnerability it exploited. That clueless admins did not update it is not the fault of M$, any more than clueless admins not updating, say, OpenSSH or Apache is the fault of the OpenSSH/Apache guys.
One of the things Microsoft sold Windows, to corporate users, was the idea of not needing well qualified admins. Thus it's hardly a suprise you end up with it being maintained by MSCEs and "power users". When did the Apache people say "You don't need a proper admin with our product"?
As you'd expect from that, the Presidential Oath or Affirmation in Article II.1.8 [emory.edu] is "merely" "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." with no "so help me God" or anything like that..
Or at least that was the version pre the 1950's putting "god stickers" on anything in the US the'd stick to.
Radioactive waste, while chronicly dangerous, isnt volitle (Im sure there are more 'correct' terms used by people who deal with risk management..). ie, its always putting off radiation but its not going to explode or anything.
Depends what physical form it is in. If it's an inert solid then it probably isn't too risky. If you have either powder, solution or slurry then you have a big problem if something leaks. Or someone blows up the place containing the waste.
No, it isn't. Nuclear waste sits there and does nothing. Air pollution affect the whole world. The "dangerous for millenia" contingent is spreading pure FUD. After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
Uranium mine waste is rather nasty stuff. Whilst it was rock it was not especially dangerous, but mine tailings tend to be dust, slurry, etc. What physical form in the waste from a reactor in? Especially if fuel is reprocessed. Some of it make not be left alone for a couple of hundred years. e.g depleated uranium munitions which contain U236...
Despite this, using spare diesel engines to generate power is a basically dumb idea except in emergencies. The efficiency isn't that good and diesels pollute more than any of the other popular forms of power generation.
Also are they frequency and voltage compatable to be simply hooked up to the power grid?
It turns out that this is more efficient, in money, fuel effeciency, and repair time (imagine replacing the drive train if it were not electrically driven). all you do is replace a motor, instead of a drive shaft and/or transmission. (simplified explanation, of course)
You'd also need to vary the engine speed, internal combustion engines which only need to run at once speed can be made a lot more efficent. Also mechanical transmission would be very complicated, probably need multiple clutches, gearboxes and differentials.
NPA-EEE-XXXX where EEE is the exchange and the XXXX is the local addressing within the exchange. Normally exchanges are only cell or only land line, not mixed.
This splitting up of numbers made sense about a century ago. Where the XXXX directly refered to a piece of, electro-mechanical hardware, capable of having 10,000 telephone lines connected it it. With any kit from the last few decades there is little reason for the physical hardware to follow in any way the numbering.
Why you guys in the US use the same types of telephone numbers for cell and land-line phones. In every country I've lived in, a mobile number is distinctly different (usually more digits), and the prefixes are usually recognisable.
In the rest of the world you don't have telephone numbering systems shared between nearly 20 countries either:)
It seems absolutely crazy to charge to receive calls, as this would cause the penetration of mobiles to drop dramatically as it would exclude poor people (e.g. many teenagers).
In most parts of the world mobile phones are numbered within psudo area codes, which are clearly identifiable as mobile phones. With no charges for incomming calls. In the US, probabaly the entire NANP mobile phones look much like normal numbers, unless you start looking at the entire number down to the 7th digit. With the cost to the caller being the same as any other number in the same area code. Hence paying for incoming calls, even though cellular infrastructure is probably cheaper to build and maintain than landlines. Digging a trench, especially in an urban area, is not cheap. One UK operator offered phones with numbering and charging similar to that in the US, they didn't sell very well.
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If Microsoft would just do good encrypting on the address book, and update it every once and a while for new encryption, stuff like this wouldn't happen because the virii wouldn't be able to get the addresses of every person using Outlook.
Unless every use of the address book required the user to enter a key then this would do nothing especially useful. Since a virus could easily decrypt the data, assuming it even needed to.
At the least, this would slow a virus down.
Only if the encryption was complex enough that decrypting the data too a long period of time...
If you want something to re-enforce your first bullet, you should point out that copy protection is basically cryptography.
Used in a way in which cryptography dosn't work very well. Cryptography is a good method for sending information to people who you trust where evesedropping by people you don't trust is likely. However the idea behind DRM is to send information to people you don't trust. Using cypher machines in black boxes supplied as mass market commodities. Genetically engineering pigs with avian DNA may well be an easier task.
Bill Gates was a f**king lucky individual and if there was a slight change in history around about 1980 he would be here on SlashDot complaining bitterly about whoever did become the meglamanical monopolist.
:)
The "slight change" would probably be something like him having had different parents. Also the idea that some other company would have been the "meglamaniacal monopolist" is pure conjecture. Maybe someone else would have been more reluctant to break the law
I'm sure implementing US laws on hardware shipped outside the US probably breaks a few trade agreements (not to mention it enforces US laws [legal or copyright] on other countries). How will this affect us (us being users outside the US)?
At a guess the US will claim that the trade agreements in question oblige the rest of the world to go along with this. If they manage to fool the rest of the world then this will get pushed everywhere in the name of "globalization" & "harmonization".
The US would likely try very hard for this interpretation. Since as most of hardware in question simply cannot be sourced from within the US, including systems utterly vital to government.
I can't begin to describe how infuriating it is to sit and watch this happen. Every time there's an "open" discussion of the issues surrounding digital copying. there is always an unstated assumption that it is something that must be stopped/controlled/regulated/quashed, and how best that can be accomplished.
There is also a very telling comment on the story "They're taking public comments here according to the announcement, but they sure have hidden it well. Can anybody find the form?". Which sounds very much like the idea of having a "public meeting", where the time and venue are unknown to the public.
Let us be clear: Everyone agrees that artists should be rewarded for their good work.
Actually there isn't agreement in where between "paid minimum wage" and "guarenteed income for their grandchildren" a line should be drawn. Using the term "rewarded" also tends to imply some divine right for the creator to make some sort of profit.
The dissent centers around whether copyright is any longer the best way to provide that reward.
In the US "copyright" isn't sacrosanct anyway. The US Congress is under no obligation to create a copyright law in the first place.
DRM won't insure that anyone makes money except the RIAA/MPAA. Artists won't make a penny more with drm than without.
More likely they will make less. The "advance" recording artists are given by their record companies having an additional clawback of "DRM charges"...
With email, text messaging, instant messaging, unlimited internet forums, the internet pages themselves, snail mail, telephone, telegraph, morse, hundreds of languages, and god-knows what other methods, there are just too may ways to transmit info to plough through these and find hidden messages.
Which is why mass interception isn't really very effective. Unless you know where to look in the first place you simply have a large quantity of utterly useless information. Yet after September the 11th there were calls for more automated interception, even when it was revealed that security services in the US lacked people who knew Arabic.
Sometimes it isn't the content that gives you away, it's the fact that you're sending traffic between point A and point B, and B talks to C, D, and E
In which case Alice, Bob, Chris, Denise and Edward don't communicate directly at all. Instead they use some method to broadcast their steganography disguised messages in a way that will be seen by lots of people.
Yeah. I'm also confused why anyone would want a "personalized" crypto algorithm in the first place.
It's a very effective way to get something which isn't very secure. Since the process may modify how the program works.
Is there another number system besides base 6 that allows you to easily convert the earth's rotation of 15 degrees an hour into human readable time?
Except that we don't actually use the Earth's rotation period for the length of a day. Because the Earth dosn't just rotate it also moves in it's orbit. Anyway the 15 degrees is an arbitary measure. You could just as easily use 20 gradians or PI/10 radians.
So is coal mine waste, and burning coal puts FAR more radiation into the environment than nuclear power.
Thus radioactive pollution appears to be an argument against both nuclear and coal.
If we were sensible enough to reprocess spent fuel and burn up the plutonium, the waste issue would be even less important.
You'd first need to build reprocessing facilities which don't leak badly.
The important thing to understand about Palladium is that it doesn't improve security for the end user.
Or indeed anyone other than the corporate publishers who are making noises about DRM. If anything it could make things less secure. Because tools to improve security might not be giving the blessing of these people...
Pallidum's sole purpose is to give IP owners control my computer
No it's about protecting the IP of a tiny minority of IP owners. Like most other DRM ideas, it won't do anything to protect the IP you or the other several billion (probably arround 10 billion if you include corporates) IP owners might happen to own.
Ofcourse, Windows XP will ask you, and then automatically set your display resolution and refresh rate to the optimal for your monitor when you first bootup.
Or it may set things to be sub optimal. The basic problem with "plug and play" is that it dosn't always work and if it can't easily be disabled it becomes "plug and pray".
The difference is, Control Panel -> Display -> Settings is a lot more obvious than running a program called 'xf86cfg'.
Only if they are already used to Windows. Indeed a complete novice probably would have less of a problem with having to put the box into a special mode to set it up. Because that's the case with their television, video, etc.
When Nimda was released, M$ had already released a patch for the vulnerability it exploited.
That clueless admins did not update it is not the fault of M$, any more than clueless admins not updating, say, OpenSSH or Apache is the fault of the OpenSSH/Apache guys.
One of the things Microsoft sold Windows, to corporate users, was the idea of not needing well qualified admins. Thus it's hardly a suprise you end up with it being maintained by MSCEs and "power users".
When did the Apache people say "You don't need a proper admin with our product"?
As you'd expect from that, the Presidential Oath or Affirmation in Article II.1.8 [emory.edu] is "merely"
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
with no "so help me God" or anything like that..
Or at least that was the version pre the 1950's putting "god stickers" on anything in the US the'd stick to.
The diesel engine was invented because it could run on coal dust.
IIRC the prototype used castor oil.
Radioactive waste, while chronicly dangerous, isnt volitle (Im sure there are more 'correct' terms used by people who deal with risk management..). ie, its always putting off radiation but its not going to explode or anything.
Depends what physical form it is in. If it's an inert solid then it probably isn't too risky. If you have either powder, solution or slurry then you have a big problem if something leaks. Or someone blows up the place containing the waste.
No, it isn't. Nuclear waste sits there and does nothing. Air pollution affect the whole world. The "dangerous for millenia" contingent is spreading pure FUD. After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
Uranium mine waste is rather nasty stuff. Whilst it was rock it was not especially dangerous, but mine tailings tend to be dust, slurry, etc.
What physical form in the waste from a reactor in? Especially if fuel is reprocessed. Some of it make not be left alone for a couple of hundred years. e.g depleated uranium munitions which contain U236...
Now, this is really wasted kinetic energy from the train. If there were some way to harness and store this power for a later hill,
That would require a large battery in the locomotive. Which would mean less space for fuel.
or if it could be transfered to another train, the fuel cost savings would be enormous.
The is only possible where the train is hooked up to either live rails or catenary.
Despite this, using spare diesel engines to generate power is a basically dumb idea except in emergencies. The efficiency isn't that good and diesels pollute more than any of the other popular forms of power generation.
Also are they frequency and voltage compatable to be simply hooked up to the power grid?
It turns out that this is more efficient, in money, fuel effeciency, and repair time (imagine replacing the drive train if it were not electrically driven). all you do is replace a motor, instead of a drive shaft and/or transmission. (simplified explanation, of course)
You'd also need to vary the engine speed, internal combustion engines which only need to run at once speed can be made a lot more efficent.
Also mechanical transmission would be very complicated, probably need multiple clutches, gearboxes and differentials.
NPA-EEE-XXXX
where EEE is the exchange and the XXXX is the local addressing within the exchange.
Normally exchanges are only cell or only land line, not mixed.
This splitting up of numbers made sense about a century ago. Where the XXXX directly refered to a piece of, electro-mechanical hardware, capable of having 10,000 telephone lines connected it it.
With any kit from the last few decades there is little reason for the physical hardware to follow in any way the numbering.
Why you guys in the US use the same types of telephone numbers for cell and land-line phones. In every country I've lived in, a mobile number is distinctly different (usually more digits), and the prefixes are usually recognisable.
:)
In the rest of the world you don't have telephone numbering systems shared between nearly 20 countries either
It seems absolutely crazy to charge to receive calls, as this would cause the penetration of mobiles to drop dramatically as it would exclude poor people (e.g. many teenagers).
In most parts of the world mobile phones are numbered within psudo area codes, which are clearly identifiable as mobile phones. With no charges for incomming calls.
In the US, probabaly the entire NANP mobile phones look much like normal numbers, unless you start looking at the entire number down to the 7th digit. With the cost to the caller being the same as any other number in the same area code. Hence paying for incoming calls, even though cellular infrastructure is probably cheaper to build and maintain than landlines. Digging a trench, especially in an urban area, is not cheap.
One UK operator offered phones with numbering and charging similar to that in the US, they didn't sell very well.