With more automobile traffic you have more people spending more time in their cars listening to more radio.
Yes, but why would this system displace traditional radio stations for that kind of local market? The only advantage I see is more selection, and the people who care about getting a specific kind of music that much will just bring their own CDs or whatever. /.
Er, you've stumbled into the wrong site. The one for people who believe in killing "freaks" is www.imanazi.com or something like that. /.
Re:Expires on 20010630? Well, isn't THAT special!!
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 1
It might have something to do with the fact that divx disks are/were encrypted (so that their ppv scheme couldn't be cracked) and the hardware had to decrypt them in real time while they were being played.
If that's the reason, then only DiVX disks would be affected. However, the reverse was the case -- standard-DVD disks produced lower quality output on DiVX players than on standard-DVD players.
This suggests that DiVX players were low-end hardware designed on the assumption that the Teeming Millions would be satisfied as long as the final result was better than VHS.
If, indeed, DiVX disks played on DiVX players produced output superior to standard-DVD disks played on the same DiVX players, this tends to support the theory that the designers engaged in a bit of monkey business to create the illusion that DiVX was a superior format. /.
Using the/. name in this manner certainly gives/. grounds to sue the perp. There is ample legal precedent, most notably the flowers.com case in which a spammer had to pay over $13K in damages and $5K in legal fees for forging somebody else's domain name in a spam.
The main reason spammers aren't sued more often is that, their claims of wealth through pyramid scams notwithstanding, their seizable assets usually consist of an old 386 and a pile of chicken bones. /.
The concept of anonymnity is the problem that makes spam possible.
No futher comment required. /.
Re:Could someone tell me why it was bad?
on
DIVX is dead
·
· Score: 1
A few answers to that question:
1. DiVX created an incentive for certain Mickey Mouse outfits to delay or completely avoid releasing on open DVD, thus reducing the available choices for users interested in building a long-term library. What will happen now that the marketplace has rejected DiVX remains to be seen, but at least there is a chance that formerly DiVX-only releasees will come out on DVD.
2. Users who had bought DiVX units with the notion of occasionally dusting off one of the disks and viewing it are now screwed as of July 1, 2001 (as foreseen by the DiVX critics):
All Divx discs, including those previously purchased by consumers and those remaining in retailer inventories, can be viewed on registered players anytime between now and June 30, 2001.
Extracting just the low bits from music or image files should produce a result which is fairly close to random noise. It won't be perfectly random, and therefore won't be absolutely uncrackable, but it should be pretty good. /.
When reading " The Impact of Encryption on Public Safety", I noticed that Freeh cited several examples in which the bad guys were caught and convicted anyway. If anything, these cases are evidence against his position: they prove that the police simply do not need these additional powers.
He then proceeds to silly analogies, such as "Would we allow a car to be driven with features which would evade and outrun police cars?" Well... yes, we would, unless high performance sports cars were banned while I wasn't looking.
Freeh concludes with a complaint that strong encryption will "drastically change the balance of the Fourth Amendment". Well, perhaps so, but he is conveniently silent about technologies which have already tipped the balance in the other direction. The net effect of Freeh's position is to create a one-way ratchet -- technologies which degrade privacy (e.g. drug testing, look-through-walls IR, etc) are deployed as widely as possible, while technologies which enhance privacy (e.g. strong encryption) are restricted as tightly as possible.
That said, there might be a case for mandatory key access if there were simply no other way for the police to surveil people who fall under legitimate suspicion. Fortunately, this is not the case -- just off the top of my head, I can think of three alternatives (planting a bug in the target's hardware, remote viewing of the target's monitor via Van Eck emissions, Trojan Horsing the target's crypto software).
The fact that these alternatives are more work than sitting in one's office and pulling up the target's key is, frankly, not my problem. The fact that these alternatives do not scale nearly as well as the government's desired mandatory-key-access regime (and are thus unsuitable for mass surveillance), is, IMO, a feature. The fact that the government seems to regard it as a bug raises a big red warning flag. /.
Just remember that Palpatine was not expecting the queen to escape. He expected her to sign a peace treaty. If that had happened, there would be no senate scandal. Therefore, he must have had a different plan for Naboo.
It seemed to me that she was simply tipping the balance in an existing debate, and there was already a crisis in the Senate whether she escaped or not.
IMO, it didn't much matter to Palpatine which side lost in the invasion -- he'd set it up so that he would win either way. Wrecking the Trade Federation's power at that point may have simply saved Palpatine the trouble of disposing of them himself. /.
There are some things I can understand, once I remember that the people in power serve their own interests, which may or may not coincide with mine.
The fact that the Chinese could get nuclear secrets after making illegal campaign contributions makes clear enough sense in that light. The fact that we have nonsensical rules like crypto export limits makes sense, once one cuts to the real agenda (preventing the creation of an infrastructure that would block out mass government surveillance).
This, on the other hand, just seems to be proof that I am marooned on Planet Moron. /.
I think it's rather funny that the statement harps very much on the economic need for strong crypto.
IMO, the friction between Megacorp and Government today is having many of the same effects as the friction between Church and King during the High Middle Ages -- resulting in much better prospects for freedom than would be possible if either side prevailed completely over the other. /.
As for the default terms, you're free to contract around them if you don't like them. By libertarian lights, this law is -- if anything -- too slanted in favor of consumers.
This statement would be true if copies of Windows 2000 or whatever has words on the outside of the box to the effect of "Software includes remotely triggered self-destruct feature. Microsoft reserves the right to disable this software at any time if Microsoft believes that this software is being used in violation of license".
The sleaze factor of this law is that it makes enforceable provisions which are unknown to the consumer at the time of purchase (i.e. neither disclosed before breaking the shrinkwrap nor matters which the "reasonable man" of the lawbooks would already expect). /.
Your writer apparently heard stories of suffering and pain, then checked a color bar and saw "white" and "male"
Er, no -- there was no color bar to check. The writer saw intelligence and from that inferred "white" and "male", just like Archie Bunker.
I've never been a fan of identity-politics -- I've always felt that the problem was "the system" was taking advantage of individuals, because individuals rarely have any way to fight the system or even of knowing that the system doesn't have to be that way.
They play divide-and-conquer; go hate the Jews or Blacks
Until the people stand up tall and dump it off their backs -- Leslie Fish, "No High Ground
Can we score the Village Voice a 0 for 'off topic'?
Too high.
How about 'flame bait'? Got it right the second time -- the correct score for the VV is -1. Making a value judgement about which sort of discrimination is worse becomes a 'forest-for-the-trees' situation.
VV Declension: I am opressed, you are a whiner, he is paranoid.
And significantly, you may not care whether or not Uncle Sam (or any other government) can read your online commmunications, but I explicitly care when my competition just has to make a little campaign contribution and my email's appear on his desk...
Don't you think it's a bit over the top to suggest that somebody might sell the government's copy of your key? Why, next you'll be suggesting that the leader of the Free World sold nuclear secrets to the ChiComs for campaign cash!
Wearing sports clothes show your support for the team. Wearing a Trek uniform more shows the desire to live in the Trek universe (or something.. Very badly formulated) You rarely see people walking around with full football or hockey gear. You'd also think those people were nuts.
That's not really a valid analogy -- full football and hockey gear includes protective equipment that is too bulky and uncomfortable for routine wear. Naturally, sensible people are going to wonder about somebody who insists on walking the streets wearing a helmet and shoulder pads.
Choose a sport that removes this factor (e.g. basketball), and ask yourself if mundanes would react differently to someone walking on the street wearing a basketball jersey, shorts, and sneakers versus someone walking on the street wearing a Star Trek uniform. I think you'll have to admit that the latter would attract a lot more negative attention.
Watermarking CD's is a VERY effective way to superimpose information on top of a song without it being audible, and without compromising the information if the song is encoded into an MP3 or whatever.
What if you superimpose your own information using steganography software? That would overwrite anything that was already stored in the low bits.
A number of respondants have brought up the unavailability of guns in this context. What the fuck do guns have to do with it?
It's a matter of establishing, to borrow a term of art from criminology, a "pattern of behavior". A politician's desire to control guns, for example, is typically a manifestation of an authoritarian mindset that naturally seeks to control computers, whether or not guns and computers have any logical connection to one another.
And to those complaining about compulsory voting, can I direct them to Stewart Fist's comments in the The Australian, 25th May?
If you wish to do so, then by all means post the URL. The newsstands here in Virginia don't seem to be carrying it for some reason. It's a bit off topic here, however.
What if Australians started complaining about every web site that's even marginal? The film board would be swamped, unable to cope with the huge number of sites to review.
"Jammer" complaints to the censorship board ought to slow them down a bit. In addition, I propose the following bit of Simon Jestering:
1. Find some sites with moderately entertaining material -- just enough that a neurotic with sexual hangups might be offended, but normal people would not. Use the typical sex-appeal advertisements in your area as a baseline of what to look for.
2. Send letters to the idiot senators responsible for this travesty, publications inclined to support censorship ("Do it to Julia!"), etc. Provide URLs of the "offensive" material as "evidence" of the need to Protect The Children[tm], but be vague about just exactly what is so dreadful.
3. Those people who actually investigate the "evidence" will be left with the impression that advocates of this law need to, in the immortal words of William Shatner, "Get A Life!"
4. (Optional) Explain that the whole thing was meant satirically. This avoids embarrassment if you had to put your name on the bogus "complaints" to get them published.
And proving the film was stolen will be somewhat difficult at best
Say what?? Any copy of the film found any place other than 1)Lucas' vault or 2)the projection room of a theater which rented a copy is obviously stolen.
If those thieves have an ounce of brains, they'll store the film in a very safe place and take good care of it. It'll be worth a fortune someday, I'll bet.
Er, where would they sell it? It's stolen property -- unless they can find a rich collector who is willing to pay for a rare prize that he can't even brag about, it can't be liquidated as is. It would be much less risky to cut it up for black-market cels or (if they got the whole movie and have the necessary equipment) copy it to black-market video.
I'm reminded of the Knights of the Dinner Table story where one of the characters steals the local king's pawn and scepter and attempts to pawn them intact in a nearby village.
He plans on making some changes during the year to the movie, like correcting some shots (the sand shots where Jar Jar Binks doesn't leave any trace is lame).
For convenience, you might want to just set up a macro that automatically appends the word "lame" when you type "Jar Jar Binks".;-)
You could do a number of things to protect IP with a digital copy that you can't with analog. For example, you could "salt" each frame of the movie with unique serial numbers so you can trace it.
True, but in a case like this it doesn't do any good. It would simply prove that any bootlegged copies came from the stolen print (duh!).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but why would this system displace traditional radio stations for that kind of local market? The only advantage I see is more selection, and the people who care about getting a specific kind of music that much will just bring their own CDs or whatever.
/.
Er, you've stumbled into the wrong site. The one for people who believe in killing "freaks" is www.imanazi.com or something like that.
/.
If that's the reason, then only DiVX disks would be affected. However, the reverse was the case -- standard-DVD disks produced lower quality output on DiVX players than on standard-DVD players.
This suggests that DiVX players were low-end hardware designed on the assumption that the Teeming Millions would be satisfied as long as the final result was better than VHS.
If, indeed, DiVX disks played on DiVX players produced output superior to standard-DVD disks played on the same DiVX players, this tends to support the theory that the designers engaged in a bit of monkey business to create the illusion that DiVX was a superior format.
/.
The main reason spammers aren't sued more often is that, their claims of wealth through pyramid scams notwithstanding, their seizable assets usually consist of an old 386 and a pile of chicken bones.
/.
The concept of anonymnity is the problem that makes spam possible.
No futher comment required.
/.
1. DiVX created an incentive for certain Mickey Mouse outfits to delay or completely avoid releasing on open DVD, thus reducing the available choices for users interested in building a long-term library. What will happen now that the marketplace has rejected DiVX remains to be seen, but at least there is a chance that formerly DiVX-only releasees will come out on DVD.
2. Users who had bought DiVX units with the notion of occasionally dusting off one of the disks and viewing it are now screwed as of July 1, 2001 (as foreseen by the DiVX critics):
/.
Extracting just the low bits from music or image files should produce a result which is fairly close to random noise. It won't be perfectly random, and therefore won't be absolutely uncrackable, but it should be pretty good.
/.
Geez, after Starship Troopers you think it would be common knowledge that the two do not necessarily have anything to do with each other.
/.
He then proceeds to silly analogies, such as "Would we allow a car to be driven with features which would evade and outrun police cars?" Well... yes, we would, unless high performance sports cars were banned while I wasn't looking.
Freeh concludes with a complaint that strong encryption will "drastically change the balance of the Fourth Amendment". Well, perhaps so, but he is conveniently silent about technologies which have already tipped the balance in the other direction. The net effect of Freeh's position is to create a one-way ratchet -- technologies which degrade privacy (e.g. drug testing, look-through-walls IR, etc) are deployed as widely as possible, while technologies which enhance privacy (e.g. strong encryption) are restricted as tightly as possible.
That said, there might be a case for mandatory key access if there were simply no other way for the police to surveil people who fall under legitimate suspicion. Fortunately, this is not the case -- just off the top of my head, I can think of three alternatives (planting a bug in the target's hardware, remote viewing of the target's monitor via Van Eck emissions, Trojan Horsing the target's crypto software).
The fact that these alternatives are more work than sitting in one's office and pulling up the target's key is, frankly, not my problem. The fact that these alternatives do not scale nearly as well as the government's desired mandatory-key-access regime (and are thus unsuitable for mass surveillance), is, IMO, a feature. The fact that the government seems to regard it as a bug raises a big red warning flag.
/.
It seemed to me that she was simply tipping the balance in an existing debate, and there was already a crisis in the Senate whether she escaped or not.
IMO, it didn't much matter to Palpatine which side lost in the invasion -- he'd set it up so that he would win either way. Wrecking the Trade Federation's power at that point may have simply saved Palpatine the trouble of disposing of them himself.
/.
The fact that the Chinese could get nuclear secrets after making illegal campaign contributions makes clear enough sense in that light. The fact that we have nonsensical rules like crypto export limits makes sense, once one cuts to the real agenda (preventing the creation of an infrastructure that would block out mass government surveillance).
This, on the other hand, just seems to be proof that I am marooned on Planet Moron.
/.
IMO, the friction between Megacorp and Government today is having many of the same effects as the friction between Church and King during the High Middle Ages -- resulting in much better prospects for freedom than would be possible if either side prevailed completely over the other.
/.
This statement would be true if copies of Windows 2000 or whatever has words on the outside of the box to the effect of "Software includes remotely triggered self-destruct feature. Microsoft reserves the right to disable this software at any time if Microsoft believes that this software is being used in violation of license".
The sleaze factor of this law is that it makes enforceable provisions which are unknown to the consumer at the time of purchase (i.e. neither disclosed before breaking the shrinkwrap nor matters which the "reasonable man" of the lawbooks would already expect).
/.
So you're annoyed by what you're reading here. Welcome to planet earth. Kids in Kosovo would kill to have problems as trite as yours. Hypocrite.
Er, no -- there was no color bar to check. The writer saw intelligence and from that inferred "white" and "male", just like Archie Bunker.
I've never been a fan of identity-politics -- I've always felt that the problem was "the system" was taking advantage of individuals, because individuals rarely have any way to fight the system or even of knowing that the system doesn't have to be that way.
Too high.
How about 'flame bait'? Got it right the second time -- the correct score for the VV is -1. Making a value judgement about which sort of discrimination is worse becomes a 'forest-for-the-trees' situation.
VV Declension: I am opressed, you are a whiner, he is paranoid.
Don't you think it's a bit over the top to suggest that somebody might sell the government's copy of your key? Why, next you'll be suggesting that the leader of the Free World sold nuclear secrets to the ChiComs for campaign cash!
Er... never mind.
That's not really a valid analogy -- full football and hockey gear includes protective equipment that is too bulky and uncomfortable for routine wear. Naturally, sensible people are going to wonder about somebody who insists on walking the streets wearing a helmet and shoulder pads.
Choose a sport that removes this factor (e.g. basketball), and ask yourself if mundanes would react differently to someone walking on the street wearing a basketball jersey, shorts, and sneakers versus someone walking on the street wearing a Star Trek uniform. I think you'll have to admit that the latter would attract a lot more negative attention.
What if you superimpose your own information using steganography software? That would overwrite anything that was already stored in the low bits.
It's a matter of establishing, to borrow a term of art from criminology, a "pattern of behavior". A politician's desire to control guns, for example, is typically a manifestation of an authoritarian mindset that naturally seeks to control computers, whether or not guns and computers have any logical connection to one another.
And to those complaining about compulsory voting, can I direct them to Stewart Fist's comments in the The Australian, 25th May?
If you wish to do so, then by all means post the URL. The newsstands here in Virginia don't seem to be carrying it for some reason. It's a bit off topic here, however.
"Jammer" complaints to the censorship board ought to slow them down a bit. In addition, I propose the following bit of Simon Jestering:
1. Find some sites with moderately entertaining material -- just enough that a neurotic with sexual hangups might be offended, but normal people would not. Use the typical sex-appeal advertisements in your area as a baseline of what to look for.
2. Send letters to the idiot senators responsible for this travesty, publications inclined to support censorship ("Do it to Julia!"), etc. Provide URLs of the "offensive" material as "evidence" of the need to Protect The Children[tm], but be vague about just exactly what is so dreadful.
3. Those people who actually investigate the "evidence" will be left with the impression that advocates of this law need to, in the immortal words of William Shatner, "Get A Life!"
4. (Optional) Explain that the whole thing was meant satirically. This avoids embarrassment if you had to put your name on the bogus "complaints" to get them published.
Say what?? Any copy of the film found any place other than 1)Lucas' vault or 2)the projection room of a theater which rented a copy is obviously stolen.
Er, where would they sell it? It's stolen property -- unless they can find a rich collector who is willing to pay for a rare prize that he can't even brag about, it can't be liquidated as is. It would be much less risky to cut it up for black-market cels or (if they got the whole movie and have the necessary equipment) copy it to black-market video.
I'm reminded of the Knights of the Dinner Table story where one of the characters steals the local king's pawn and scepter and attempts to pawn them intact in a nearby village.
For convenience, you might want to just set up a macro that automatically appends the word "lame" when you type "Jar Jar Binks". ;-)
True, but in a case like this it doesn't do any good. It would simply prove that any bootlegged copies came from the stolen print (duh!).