Not all of their software is bad. Ever use visual c++?
Slow down there cowboy. I'll grant you that Visual Studio is the best IDE interface I've ever worked with, but then again, I've only worked with a few, and I'm sure someone who had been weaned on X (that's X windows, not X box) interface conventions might have something to say about that. Regardless, the actual engine behind VC++ and a lot of the supplementary tools are shit. I used to think they were great too, but then I actually learned to code in C++ as opposed to C and tried a few things out there on the edge.
Template support is buggy, as are the actual template include files provided with the compiler. Check out www.dinkum.com for detailed information on that, but suffice to say that MS's templates are essentially incompatible with templatized object crossing DLL boundaries (because they use statics in the template definitions, if you must know). Turn on warning level 4 sometime in VC++ and watch all the warnings that MS's own headers generate, because they're doing stupid things.
The compiler is also fairly lazy, letting you get away with a number of things that it shouldn't. Some people may think that a compiler should let you make a few mistakes and do the 'obvious' right thing, but this is wrong wrong wrong. This can cause very subtle errors, especially if you expect the compiler to do the actual right thing and tell you that you made a mistake or that you're doing something questionable and dangerous. It also leads to code that works fine on windows but doesn't port easily without dozens of small modifications per file. Of course, I doubt microsoft minds if code written in Visual C++ doesn't work right on say, linux or Mac OS.
Finally, look at the dates on the executables. Its at least 2 years old. How many new processors have come out in that time? VC still wants to compile for 486 compatibility (which is sometimes needed for people who support old systems, I admit) but it won't even optimize for anything higher than a pentium pro.
Sorry.... offtopic I know, but I got carried away.
Working as an electronic technician I have this image of a bunch of PC Boards laying on a tabe with a bunch of jumper cables tying the mess together. I'm sure the X Box had to go through that stage.
Actually, from what I understand, the X-Box is essentially a fast PC with a custom graphics chip, and the API for using it is DirectX. Given that, the X Box never had to have gone through the stage of cards and wires in a scattered mess. At worst, it probably was a customized motherboard in a standard ATX case.
I'm reading a lot of comments along the lines of 'This is common. Why make such a fuss, just because its Microsoft.' I find this irritating. Even if deceptive practices are common doesn't make them justified. I've also read a few about the Microsoft retraction and 'apology'. Just because they apologized and said it was a mistake doesn't mean it really was a mistake. Certainly MS has been less than truthful in the past, and simply put, its just not possible public-relations wise for them to admit culpability if it had been intentional. Sadly, few in the world today are willing to accept culpability for anything, prefering intead to shout their innocence repeatedly in the face of any and all opposing evidence hoping perhaps that repitition will take the place of truth.
If Microsoft indeed did this intentionally, I see no problem with Slashdot reporting on it. Just because an evil is common, we should not learn to ignore it, not cease to report on it. If you stop bothering to care about the wrongs done to others, you will have no one to help you when the wrong is done to you.
I have personal experience that makes me distrust and occasionally loathe Microsoft. Certainly I think many others here do. Microsoft is essetially Slashdot's de facto nemisis. So don't get pissed when Slashdot posts something derogatory about M$. Call them on it if you think they are exaggerting the facts, as Slashdot has done to Microsoft, especially if you feel its intentional, but otherwise cope.
Or alternatively you could give the slash code to MS and see how popular they can make dotslash.org.
(Actually, they'd probably just populate it with neural net bots trained from reading slashdot posts but with a rule to transpose words like linux and microsoft).
In other words, MS didn't win that particular round.
By the nature of the dispute, we only know about it because they lost. That gives us precisely no information on how many times they might have succeeded at squashing results like this.
Jherico
At a molecular scale you can reproduce the functionality of the human brain in a few cc's - if you can keep it cold.
I wasn't aware that the complete workings of the human brain had been cracked as yet. As far as I know, whether the human brain is a quantum device is undecided as yet, and if it is, I bet it will take a lot more than a few CC's.
so it needs very low power consumption to make high performance come true, associated with an extended 5~6 hrs battery life using Lithium battery to complete superior wireless Internet access out of question
which leaves me to wonder if it wasn't written by someone with not the best grasp of english. Marketing by babelfish.altavista.com. Share and enjoy.
I not only built the bomb, I dropped it as well. I must hang my head in shame and admit that if you've ever registered at a Disney site (or now, at a GO.com site) and then recieved spam at that address, that I'm the person you might want to spend a little hate on.
I dind't write the copy or approve the mailings. I wasn't a marketeer. I wrote the software and executed it. Eventually I got tired of marketing constantly asking me to send out their stupid mailings and gave them an interface to do it on their own, or as I liked to refer to it, enough rope to hang themselves.
When I started working at Disney they used a bit of perl code in conjuction with a copy of sendmail running on an old Sparc. I wrote new software that was multi-threaded, customizable and damn efficient. I'll admit that there's a little bit of pride there. To be sure I always tried to encourage such ideas as an easy unsubscribe link built directly into the e-mail, but marketing never seemd to wrap their heads around the idea that someone might not want to recieve e-mail from Disney.
A word of caution, a lot of companies are playing dirty these days. See, HTML mail is becoming more popular, especially from 'respectable' companies who want to maintain that polished image. And HTML can benefit a company in more ways that just providing a slick look. TYake a look at the source of any HTML mail you read. Just by opening it, you might have told the company that a) you have a valid e-mail address, b) you open the mail, or at least saw it briefly, and c) that you have an HTML capable mail reader. See, the sender can encode the HTML so that there's an image, probably just a 1x1 transparent gif, that has a bunch of codes in the URL, codes that can identify which e-mail address a particular message is associated with. If you open the mail and your client asks their server for the image, you've just bared your soul to them. Its insidious. It should probably be illegal.
Jherico
Re:Only useful for very specific purposes
on
3D LCD's for Sale
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· Score: 1
staring at a stereoscopic image all day would have to be pretty tough on the eyes
I don't know about you, but I look at steroscopic images all the time. Pretty much whenever I'm not looking at a screen or reading a book or something.
So sure, the consumer was "forced" to install IE, just like they were "forced" to install Windows Explorer, Notepad, the Start menu, and dozens of other OS components. If we're going to tell Microsoft which products are allowed to be bundled with their OS, why stop with IE? Why not boot minesweeper, telnet, and probably dozens of other crappy add-ons?
None of these other programs act as a barrier to third parties or even Microsoft itself selling other products in the same arena. No copy of Notepad ever prevented someone from buying Word or some third party text editor that has some of the many features notepad lacks. Minesweeper doesn't make it harder for people to write game software for Windows, and the bundled telnet software doesn't keep me from purchasing a good terminal program. These are all examples of applets, small programs of limited functionality and usefulness that prevent Windows from being just a hunk of dead weight on install.
Internet Explorer is another matter entirely. Its very presence and behaviour make it difficult for a competing product to gain any market share. Personally I loved Netscape Navigator, but after it got caught up in the browser war, I eventually switched to IE, partially because I was tired of dealing with the two trying vying for control of all the HTML file types and partially because with all the effort MS poured into IE, it actually became a better product in some ways.
Of course I see differences, but not neccessarily ones that neccesitate getting the blessing of the Pope or any other religious leader.
Personally I disagree strongly with a lot of current religious opinion on the standard method for creating life.
As for whether we are wise enough to know when we should go about any scientific endeavour, my own view of history shows me that if left up to the church, the answer will always be "Not yet", because scientific advancement always seems to come at the cost of religious dogma, so the church never looks favorably on it.
Who then is to decide when we are wise enough? If not god, or its supposedly appointed diplomats here on earth, then ultimately the choice cannot but be left up to the people who have the capability to make any advancement.
Personally I think the willingness on the part of the scientists to open the debate shows tremendous wisdom in and of itself. I just think its too bad that somebody apparently things religious leaders are synonymous with moral or ethical leaders.
On the subject of hindsight, I'd be interested in where in history you think that it might have been better to have waited. Personally I see tragedies where science was held back far too long. At technologies current pace, people born a few generations from now might need never die. Had the church not held back science in so many ways for so long, we might be that immortal generation.
Also on the subject of hindsight, one must realize that we of this world are not all of one mind. As such, just because one group of scientists decide not to pursue a particular path of knowledge doesn't mean it won't be pursued. And on the principle of the enemy you know versus the enemy you don't I'd rather see these scientists do it than a team in a biowarfare lab that I won't see. Perhaps that latter team has already followed this path and created a deadly bio-weapon that can kill anyone, say all the clearly inhuman monsters walking among us with brown eyes. Our best defense to the release of such a weapon would be the open and disseminated knowledge of how one might make a custom virus to combat the weapon. That is, perhaps to have followed the path of knowledge in the open.
Clue Flash! Any sufficiently mature man and woman can create life. The big difference here is that team of scientists might actually have a better understanding of the ramifications of their actions that say your average inner city teenage mother.
How far exactly do you want technology and science to push ahead? Only as far as the church wants? Were such an attitude more prevalent, the sun might still be revolving around the earth, at least in the minds of we poor humans.
What exactly makes the creation of life the sole purbiew of any supposed god. Particularly what differentiates it from the ability to travel to the heavens, something which before this century was only in his domain?
I don't believe in god, but I do believe its man's responsibility to know as much as he can about himself and the world around him.
I'm guessing a mixture of 1 part long experience, 1000 parts blind self-serving arrogance.
Which isn't to say that scientists creating life aren't arrogant, but at least they're trying to increase human understanding, not surpress it as religious organizations have been known too.
The thing is, not everyone agrees that CD is "good enough".
True enough, but I think that the comparison of DVD-Audio to CD-Audio has more in common with the comparison of LaserDisc to VHS than DVD to VHS. The advantages of DVD-Audio are so high end that I think it will remain a fringe technology, as LaserDisc did. Consider past format changes. Records provided excellent quality. Tapes provided portability, but reduced quality and prevented easy random access. CDs provide higher quality than tapes and random access as well. While DVDs can provide higher quality than CDs, that argument wasn't enough to make LaserDisc a widely popular format, and while DVDs offer the portability that LaserDiscs didn't, any situation where portability is important , i.e. in the car, on headphones, probably defeats the point of the increased fidelity.
Consider, the biggest advantages that DVD-Audio can add are longer playing time and much higher fidelity. Longer playing time simply won't happen because of the economic reasons discussed elsewhere. Higher fidelity requires too much investment for the average user. I listen to music in my car, through car speakers and on my headphones while roller-blading. I also listen to music frequently while working on the computer for long periods of time. In the first two cases, car and headphones, the combination of relatively poor speaker quality and likely background noise will make any increase in fidelity pointless. In the last case, working at my computer, the music is background atmosphere and I don't need ultra-high quality audio for atmosphere any more than I need a real Monet on my wall instead of a print. The only time I could imagine really appreciating the full fidelity available on DVD audio is if I'm listening to the music entirely for the sake of listening to the music, which I virtually never do.
I really think the consortium is being perversly beauracratic in worrying about encryption for something that will be, IMHO, a fringe format. Jherico
Some will own a Quantum Computer and offer free (quantum) encryption (in return for banner ads).
I don't think so. As far as I understand it, quantum encryption is not simply a new layer of information that can be transmitted over standard channels. It involves the quantum state of the medium of information transfer, which can't be examined without modifying it (thus allowing one to be sure the information either has or hasn't been evesdropped on). Since existing modems, network cables, and so on don't preserve quantum state, quantum encryption can't work over them. You need something like fiber optics, where you can test the quantum state of the light as well as draw the encoded information out of it.
Companies are compelled to increase thier value for their shareholders, but not to the extent that they break the law. If a company could somehow gain a strategic market advantage from killing someone, and they went ahead and did it, they certainly couldn't use as a defense in court that they had to do it in order to avoid a suit by shareholders. Nor could the shareholders bring suit if the company failed to commit murder, no matter how absolutely it could be proven that such an act would increase the value of the company.
Note, I do not claim this will continue to apply if Bush wins the presidency. Flame away.
I suppose that the answer to that might be to allow existing shareholders to decide which BabyBill company they want shares in after the breakup. And I doubt it would be a one to one valuation. 1 MSFT share might be 4 MSN shares, or 2 MSApps shares or something like that. In this case, the resultant companies would definately not have the same set of shareholders.
A lot of the responses talked about the idea of multiple resultant entities of any punishment having access to the Windows Source code, to do with as they pleased, either through government intervention, i.e. a direct breakup, or a forced auction to provide for competition. While the government legally cannot simply take the code and make it public (I agree with that much), would there be anything to stop one of these Mini-Bills with posession of the source to simply GPL it?
Would there be any path for someone like the FSF to acquire the code with intent to GPL it? For instance, via government subsidy in any possible auction? I think that's unlikely of course as it would constitute government endorsement of open source, but one can dream.
I wonder, on a more personal level, if the amount of venom possesed by the open source community towards windows would be reduced signifigantly at that point. I would be a good measure of seeing how much is abhorrence at MS business practices and how much is pure bigotry. I for one think that there are technical gems to be found in the windows source code.
I follow the Livid mailing list and the faq answer you are refering to does NOT refer to the code posted yesterday on the mailing list. CSS is composed of two parts, the first is unlocking the drive and the second is decrptying the datastream. The faq refers to previously released code that did the former. The new code does the latter.
Most of the replies to this seem to be pointing out that not all crypto depends on factoring, but this is missing a more important point, i.e. that quantum computing can do more than just factor large numbers. Factoring is simply a very useful example to show the power of quantum computing.
Regardless of whether or not a given cryptographic algorithm works with products of large primes (and thus would take a breakthrough in factoring such primes to defeat), most cryptography (that is cryptography based on algorithms and not on the security of the physical channel) relies on trapdoor one-way functions. These functions have keys. The keys are the special bits of information that allow you to reverse the one way function, something that would normally be very difficult. The value of quantum computing is the ability to try every key in parallel, rather than sequentially.
So quantum computing can apply to virtually any crypto system.
Its nice to know that the art of missing the point completely is not lost. Sort of a can't see the forest for the trees.
I think a meaningful point (there was more than one) might best be summed up as "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", eh?
Yes, children, imho, should be encouraged to respect privacy and property. The law is another matter. Children should be taught to respect good laws, how to fight bad ones and most importantly the critical thinking process that allows them to determine for themselves, based on their own set of values, which are which.
Blind respect for law is too much like faith, and while faith might be fine for succor from fear of death, when you use it to relate to your government, you instantly abdicate your right to freedom.
I don't believe that this system will work. There might be some neat gimmicks built into it to make it seem to work, but ultimately the idea is flawed. Consider, the article says that it works with (interpreted by me as "can be read by") any existing mail system. In my mind this narrows down how it will work to a few possible methods. The first is that the information is stored on a central site that is gated and all the e-mail contains is a link into the site with cryptographically secure information on what message is being linked to. Then the site could ensure that no mail was displayed past a given date. The second method would involve sending an executable of some sort as the message with the date and time information in it. The executable, presumably java for cross platform support, would decrypt the message when appropriate and the first time the message was opened (read "executed") after the deadline date, the key to decrpyt would be erased. Both of these approaches have a problem in common. If at any point the message is to be used for its intended purpose, i.e. rendered to the screen for a person to read, then it will have to be done so in decrypted form and can be captured (almost laughably easily) in said form. This however requires planning on the part of the capturer and might require him or her to know that the message will not be available in the future. Depending on how seamless the interface is, you might not know that you're looking at a message that won't be available in 2 weeks. Certainly it will be in the selling companies best interest to make such a feature invisible to the recipients so that they will have no reason to capture to the message to a trusted data store. The second approach, that of an executable, has additional problems. An executable that isn't being run is just a piece of data. Again, this really only becomes valid if you know your message will self destruct, but if you're concerned a message will hari kari next time you open it as an executable that automatically executes might, then don't open it. Disect the executable. No matter how clever the coding is, if this product does not rely on any outside agency for decryption as it does in the example above, then all the information required to decrypt the message MUST be in the message itself. Its only security is the secrecy of the algorithm and that's no real security at all. Note that I am avoiding the entire topic of validating dates. Its absurd to think that you could simply set your clock back to defeat any mechanism that is supposed to be secure over time, particularly when that product is an e-mail system. I would assume that the product probably queries publicly available time server so that local time authority is ignored. At any rate, the products efforts to validate the current date and time and the hacker's efforts to spoof a date and time becomes and arms race unto its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Slow down there cowboy. I'll grant you that Visual Studio is the best IDE interface I've ever worked with, but then again, I've only worked with a few, and I'm sure someone who had been weaned on X (that's X windows, not X box) interface conventions might have something to say about that. Regardless, the actual engine behind VC++ and a lot of the supplementary tools are shit. I used to think they were great too, but then I actually learned to code in C++ as opposed to C and tried a few things out there on the edge.
Template support is buggy, as are the actual template include files provided with the compiler. Check out www.dinkum.com for detailed information on that, but suffice to say that MS's templates are essentially incompatible with templatized object crossing DLL boundaries (because they use statics in the template definitions, if you must know). Turn on warning level 4 sometime in VC++ and watch all the warnings that MS's own headers generate, because they're doing stupid things.
The compiler is also fairly lazy, letting you get away with a number of things that it shouldn't. Some people may think that a compiler should let you make a few mistakes and do the 'obvious' right thing, but this is wrong wrong wrong. This can cause very subtle errors, especially if you expect the compiler to do the actual right thing and tell you that you made a mistake or that you're doing something questionable and dangerous. It also leads to code that works fine on windows but doesn't port easily without dozens of small modifications per file. Of course, I doubt microsoft minds if code written in Visual C++ doesn't work right on say, linux or Mac OS.
Finally, look at the dates on the executables. Its at least 2 years old. How many new processors have come out in that time? VC still wants to compile for 486 compatibility (which is sometimes needed for people who support old systems, I admit) but it won't even optimize for anything higher than a pentium pro.
Sorry.... offtopic I know, but I got carried away.
Actually, from what I understand, the X-Box is essentially a fast PC with a custom graphics chip, and the API for using it is DirectX. Given that, the X Box never had to have gone through the stage of cards and wires in a scattered mess. At worst, it probably was a customized motherboard in a standard ATX case.
I'm reading a lot of comments along the lines of 'This is common. Why make such a fuss, just because its Microsoft.' I find this irritating. Even if deceptive practices are common doesn't make them justified. I've also read a few about the Microsoft retraction and 'apology'. Just because they apologized and said it was a mistake doesn't mean it really was a mistake. Certainly MS has been less than truthful in the past, and simply put, its just not possible public-relations wise for them to admit culpability if it had been intentional. Sadly, few in the world today are willing to accept culpability for anything, prefering intead to shout their innocence repeatedly in the face of any and all opposing evidence hoping perhaps that repitition will take the place of truth.
If Microsoft indeed did this intentionally, I see no problem with Slashdot reporting on it. Just because an evil is common, we should not learn to ignore it, not cease to report on it. If you stop bothering to care about the wrongs done to others, you will have no one to help you when the wrong is done to you.
I have personal experience that makes me distrust and occasionally loathe Microsoft. Certainly I think many others here do. Microsoft is essetially Slashdot's de facto nemisis. So don't get pissed when Slashdot posts something derogatory about M$. Call them on it if you think they are exaggerting the facts, as Slashdot has done to Microsoft, especially if you feel its intentional, but otherwise cope.
Or alternatively you could give the slash code to MS and see how popular they can make dotslash.org.
(Actually, they'd probably just populate it with neural net bots trained from reading slashdot posts but with a rule to transpose words like linux and microsoft).
Jherico
By the nature of the dispute, we only know about it because they lost. That gives us precisely no information on how many times they might have succeeded at squashing results like this. Jherico
You don't think people starve in america?
I wasn't aware that the complete workings of the human brain had been cracked as yet. As far as I know, whether the human brain is a quantum device is undecided as yet, and if it is, I bet it will take a lot more than a few CC's.
Abject terror sounds more like a coach option to me.
Are we on the verge of being wiped out by the dreaded Tyrano-hamsterous Rex?
The specs also say:
so it needs very low power consumption to make high performance come true, associated with an extended 5~6 hrs battery life using Lithium battery to complete superior wireless Internet access out of question
which leaves me to wonder if it wasn't written by someone with not the best grasp of english. Marketing by babelfish.altavista.com. Share and enjoy.
I not only built the bomb, I dropped it as well. I must hang my head in shame and admit that if you've ever registered at a Disney site (or now, at a GO.com site) and then recieved spam at that address, that I'm the person you might want to spend a little hate on.
I dind't write the copy or approve the mailings. I wasn't a marketeer. I wrote the software and executed it. Eventually I got tired of marketing constantly asking me to send out their stupid mailings and gave them an interface to do it on their own, or as I liked to refer to it, enough rope to hang themselves.
When I started working at Disney they used a bit of perl code in conjuction with a copy of sendmail running on an old Sparc. I wrote new software that was multi-threaded, customizable and damn efficient. I'll admit that there's a little bit of pride there. To be sure I always tried to encourage such ideas as an easy unsubscribe link built directly into the e-mail, but marketing never seemd to wrap their heads around the idea that someone might not want to recieve e-mail from Disney.
A word of caution, a lot of companies are playing dirty these days. See, HTML mail is becoming more popular, especially from 'respectable' companies who want to maintain that polished image. And HTML can benefit a company in more ways that just providing a slick look. TYake a look at the source of any HTML mail you read. Just by opening it, you might have told the company that a) you have a valid e-mail address, b) you open the mail, or at least saw it briefly, and c) that you have an HTML capable mail reader. See, the sender can encode the HTML so that there's an image, probably just a 1x1 transparent gif, that has a bunch of codes in the URL, codes that can identify which e-mail address a particular message is associated with. If you open the mail and your client asks their server for the image, you've just bared your soul to them. Its insidious. It should probably be illegal.
Jherico
I don't know about you, but I look at steroscopic images all the time. Pretty much whenever I'm not looking at a screen or reading a book or something.
Jherico
None of these other programs act as a barrier to third parties or even Microsoft itself selling other products in the same arena. No copy of Notepad ever prevented someone from buying Word or some third party text editor that has some of the many features notepad lacks. Minesweeper doesn't make it harder for people to write game software for Windows, and the bundled telnet software doesn't keep me from purchasing a good terminal program. These are all examples of applets, small programs of limited functionality and usefulness that prevent Windows from being just a hunk of dead weight on install.
Internet Explorer is another matter entirely. Its very presence and behaviour make it difficult for a competing product to gain any market share. Personally I loved Netscape Navigator, but after it got caught up in the browser war, I eventually switched to IE, partially because I was tired of dealing with the two trying vying for control of all the HTML file types and partially because with all the effort MS poured into IE, it actually became a better product in some ways.
Of course I see differences, but not neccessarily ones that neccesitate getting the blessing of the Pope or any other religious leader.
Personally I disagree strongly with a lot of current religious opinion on the standard method for creating life.
As for whether we are wise enough to know when we should go about any scientific endeavour, my own view of history shows me that if left up to the church, the answer will always be "Not yet", because scientific advancement always seems to come at the cost of religious dogma, so the church never looks favorably on it.
Who then is to decide when we are wise enough? If not god, or its supposedly appointed diplomats here on earth, then ultimately the choice cannot but be left up to the people who have the capability to make any advancement.
Personally I think the willingness on the part of the scientists to open the debate shows tremendous wisdom in and of itself. I just think its too bad that somebody apparently things religious leaders are synonymous with moral or ethical leaders.
On the subject of hindsight, I'd be interested in where in history you think that it might have been better to have waited. Personally I see tragedies where science was held back far too long. At technologies current pace, people born a few generations from now might need never die. Had the church not held back science in so many ways for so long, we might be that immortal generation.
Also on the subject of hindsight, one must realize that we of this world are not all of one mind. As such, just because one group of scientists decide not to pursue a particular path of knowledge doesn't mean it won't be pursued. And on the principle of the enemy you know versus the enemy you don't I'd rather see these scientists do it than a team in a biowarfare lab that I won't see. Perhaps that latter team has already followed this path and created a deadly bio-weapon that can kill anyone, say all the clearly inhuman monsters walking among us with brown eyes. Our best defense to the release of such a weapon would be the open and disseminated knowledge of how one might make a custom virus to combat the weapon. That is, perhaps to have followed the path of knowledge in the open.
Heh... too bad you're not moderating.
Clue Flash! Any sufficiently mature man and woman can create life. The big difference here is that team of scientists might actually have a better understanding of the ramifications of their actions that say your average inner city teenage mother.
How far exactly do you want technology and science to push ahead? Only as far as the church wants? Were such an attitude more prevalent, the sun might still be revolving around the earth, at least in the minds of we poor humans.
What exactly makes the creation of life the sole purbiew of any supposed god. Particularly what differentiates it from the ability to travel to the heavens, something which before this century was only in his domain?
I don't believe in god, but I do believe its man's responsibility to know as much as he can about himself and the world around him.
I'm guessing a mixture of 1 part long experience, 1000 parts blind self-serving arrogance.
Which isn't to say that scientists creating life aren't arrogant, but at least they're trying to increase human understanding, not surpress it as religious organizations have been known too.
True enough, but I think that the comparison of DVD-Audio to CD-Audio has more in common with the comparison of LaserDisc to VHS than DVD to VHS. The advantages of DVD-Audio are so high end that I think it will remain a fringe technology, as LaserDisc did. Consider past format changes. Records provided excellent quality. Tapes provided portability, but reduced quality and prevented easy random access. CDs provide higher quality than tapes and random access as well. While DVDs can provide higher quality than CDs, that argument wasn't enough to make LaserDisc a widely popular format, and while DVDs offer the portability that LaserDiscs didn't, any situation where portability is important , i.e. in the car, on headphones, probably defeats the point of the increased fidelity.
Consider, the biggest advantages that DVD-Audio can add are longer playing time and much higher fidelity. Longer playing time simply won't happen because of the economic reasons discussed elsewhere. Higher fidelity requires too much investment for the average user. I listen to music in my car, through car speakers and on my headphones while roller-blading. I also listen to music frequently while working on the computer for long periods of time. In the first two cases, car and headphones, the combination of relatively poor speaker quality and likely background noise will make any increase in fidelity pointless. In the last case, working at my computer, the music is background atmosphere and I don't need ultra-high quality audio for atmosphere any more than I need a real Monet on my wall instead of a print. The only time I could imagine really appreciating the full fidelity available on DVD audio is if I'm listening to the music entirely for the sake of listening to the music, which I virtually never do.
I really think the consortium is being perversly beauracratic in worrying about encryption for something that will be, IMHO, a fringe format. Jherico
Some will own a Quantum Computer and offer free (quantum) encryption (in return for banner ads).
I don't think so. As far as I understand it, quantum encryption is not simply a new layer of information that can be transmitted over standard channels. It involves the quantum state of the medium of information transfer, which can't be examined without modifying it (thus allowing one to be sure the information either has or hasn't been evesdropped on). Since existing modems, network cables, and so on don't preserve quantum state, quantum encryption can't work over them. You need something like fiber optics, where you can test the quantum state of the light as well as draw the encoded information out of it.
Brad
Companies are compelled to increase thier value for their shareholders, but not to the extent that they break the law. If a company could somehow gain a strategic market advantage from killing someone, and they went ahead and did it, they certainly couldn't use as a defense in court that they had to do it in order to avoid a suit by shareholders. Nor could the shareholders bring suit if the company failed to commit murder, no matter how absolutely it could be proven that such an act would increase the value of the company.
Note, I do not claim this will continue to apply if Bush wins the presidency. Flame away.
Jherico
I suppose that the answer to that might be to allow existing shareholders to decide which BabyBill company they want shares in after the breakup. And I doubt it would be a one to one valuation. 1 MSFT share might be 4 MSN shares, or 2 MSApps shares or something like that. In this case, the resultant companies would definately not have the same set of shareholders.
Brad
A lot of the responses talked about the idea of multiple resultant entities of any punishment having access to the Windows Source code, to do with as they pleased, either through government intervention, i.e. a direct breakup, or a forced auction to provide for competition. While the government legally cannot simply take the code and make it public (I agree with that much), would there be anything to stop one of these Mini-Bills with posession of the source to simply GPL it?
Would there be any path for someone like the FSF to acquire the code with intent to GPL it? For instance, via government subsidy in any possible auction? I think that's unlikely of course as it would constitute government endorsement of open source, but one can dream.
I wonder, on a more personal level, if the amount of venom possesed by the open source community towards windows would be reduced signifigantly at that point. I would be a good measure of seeing how much is abhorrence at MS business practices and how much is pure bigotry. I for one think that there are technical gems to be found in the windows source code.
Brad
I follow the Livid mailing list and the faq answer you are refering to does NOT refer to the code posted yesterday on the mailing list. CSS is composed of two parts, the first is unlocking the drive and the second is decrptying the datastream. The faq refers to previously released code that did the former. The new code does the latter.
Most of the replies to this seem to be pointing out that not all crypto depends on factoring, but this is missing a more important point, i.e. that quantum computing can do more than just factor large numbers. Factoring is simply a very useful example to show the power of quantum computing.
Regardless of whether or not a given cryptographic algorithm works with products of large primes (and thus would take a breakthrough in factoring such primes to defeat), most cryptography (that is cryptography based on algorithms and not on the security of the physical channel) relies on trapdoor one-way functions. These functions have keys. The keys are the special bits of information that allow you to reverse the one way function, something that would normally be very difficult. The value of quantum computing is the ability to try every key in parallel, rather than sequentially.
So quantum computing can apply to virtually any crypto system.
Its nice to know that the art of missing the point completely is not lost. Sort of a can't see the forest for the trees.
:)
I think a meaningful point (there was more than one) might best be summed up as "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", eh?
Yes, children, imho, should be encouraged to respect privacy and property. The law is another matter. Children should be taught to respect good laws, how to fight bad ones and most importantly the critical thinking process that allows them to determine for themselves, based on their own set of values, which are which.
Blind respect for law is too much like faith, and while faith might be fine for succor from fear of death, when you use it to relate to your government, you instantly abdicate your right to freedom.
Jherico
All zealots must be found and shot!
I don't believe that this system will work. There might be some neat gimmicks built into it to make it seem to work, but ultimately the idea is flawed.
Consider, the article says that it works with (interpreted by me as "can be read by") any existing mail system. In my mind this narrows down how it will work to a few possible methods. The first is that the information is stored on a central site that is gated and all the e-mail contains is a link into the site with cryptographically secure information on what message is being linked to. Then the site could ensure that no mail was displayed past a given date.
The second method would involve sending an executable of some sort as the message with the date and time information in it. The executable, presumably java for cross platform support, would decrypt the message when appropriate and the first time the message was opened (read "executed") after the deadline date, the key to decrpyt would be erased.
Both of these approaches have a problem in common. If at any point the message is to be used for its intended purpose, i.e. rendered to the screen for a person to read, then it will have to be done so in decrypted form and can be captured (almost laughably easily) in said form. This however requires planning on the part of the capturer and might require him or her to know that the message will not be available in the future. Depending on how seamless the interface is, you might not know that you're looking at a message that won't be available in 2 weeks. Certainly it will be in the selling companies best interest to make such a feature invisible to the recipients so that they will have no reason to capture to the message to a trusted data store.
The second approach, that of an executable, has additional problems. An executable that isn't being run is just a piece of data. Again, this really only becomes valid if you know your message will self destruct, but if you're concerned a message will hari kari next time you open it as an executable that automatically executes might, then don't open it. Disect the executable. No matter how clever the coding is, if this product does not rely on any outside agency for decryption as it does in the example above, then all the information required to decrypt the message MUST be in the message itself. Its only security is the secrecy of the algorithm and that's no real security at all.
Note that I am avoiding the entire topic of validating dates. Its absurd to think that you could simply set your clock back to defeat any mechanism that is supposed to be secure over time, particularly when that product is an e-mail system. I would assume that the product probably queries publicly available time server so that local time authority is ignored. At any rate, the products efforts to validate the current date and time and the hacker's efforts to spoof a date and time becomes and arms race unto its own.
Jherico