Ok, so you'll probably have to put a bunch of bullshit settings back in the control panel. If this works you will at least have your memory back. If that works then you can use something like Tech Tool Pro to save the contents of your MacOS sane PRAM. After a Linux session just use Tech Tool to put the correct PRAM settings back.
The potential is there to recover the file if the part of the disk it is on is not overwritten. Use a secure deletion utility that overwrites the file area with random noise three passes worth. That's what the military insists on.
For that matter, stenographic filesystems are available for Linux. Even if they discover you are using a steno filesystem they can never be sure you gave them the REAL passphrase. Anything a corporate or government trogolyte wants to use against you probably doesn't need much space to live in. How are they going to find something encrypted that is scattered all over a disk.....interleaved with a honeypot storage volume keyed to a bogus passphrase.
..is to solve someone's vexing problem. The majority of software is NOT written to allow it's creator to drive around in a Ferrari but to get some work done. If my motivation for writing some code is to solve a personal problem or more likely a problem I'm having at work, then open sourcing the best thing I could possibly do. Others who can use a similar solution can make suggestions or even give me patches to make it even better. There is a tangible reward for open sourcing a project. The developer gets patches back! Come to think of the submitters of patches know that others are contributing so they too enjoy what the primary developer/maintainer enjoys....better software. If you look at it as working for patches rather than money then a lot of the mystery of just what motivates people to write open software goes away. The fact that non-coders can enjoy the fruits of this labor is secondary. Even non-coders can note bugs so they can get better software too. Remember: most software will not earn scads of money even if it were closed up and sold for profit. I would rather be an open sourcer getting patches and bug reports than a shareware coder getting two or three registrations a month. It's obvious which tends to produce better software.
I've already seen flash rom images to make popular DVD-ROM region free. It probably won't be that big a deal to "chip" or "flash" a writer to do anything the owner wants. And why not? It's the owner's isn't it?
A proprietary format will accomplish NOTHING.
on
RIAA Sues MP3.com
·
· Score: 1
'ABSOLUTELY! People look at the music industry and see them fighting against MP3, and assume they're against on-line music distribution in genral (and perhaps people misinterpreted my post the same way). Nothing could be further from the truth - the music companies would benefit from online distribution immensely. But there NEEDS to be a proprietary format for it, so it can't be stolen. MP3's are NOT an acceptable format for the industry because they can be stolen. It would be absolutely foolish for the record companies to officially release their catalogs on MP3, because the existing MP3 user base has proven itself to be completely untrustworthy due to piracy.'
It would be another misguided attempt at technological content protection like CSS. To be able to view the content it must be decrypted at some point. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the recording industry comes up with a well designed and secure distribution format that was created with the help of the best minds in cryptography. It still won't help them. Eventually a clear stream of data has to be send to the sound card so the audio can come out of the speakers. It is fairly trivial to write a dummy driver that dumps to a disk file instead. At the very least, it will be easily possible to get the uncompressed audio to play with.
That might be a small problem. The uncompressed audio will be full of artifacts that might not be audibly obvious but will nonetheless pose a problem when the audio is recompressed in MP3 or some other open format. This problem is not a showstopper. It is an audio engineering problem. It's probably possible to use various noise reduction and guessing algorithms to make the audio file VERY closely resemble what came from the primary source(like a CD). With some work the audio can be redistributed in an open format with VERY little loss of quality.
Incidentally, physical media aren't going away either. Many people will still want cover art and the like and serious audiophiles will insist on uncompressed music. MP3s can still be made from those sources in addition to massaged decompressed and recompressed streams. A proprietary format will only be an inconvienience to consumers, nothing more.
The RIAA will need to have the following beaten into their heads: the old business model is obsolete and lawsuits will not prevent that. Circumstance will accomplish this even if every judge in the land rules in their favor and gives them everything they want.
Firmware replacements already exist to make popular DVD-ROM drives region free. I don't think reflashing a DVD-RAM drive to do nybble copying is going to be a hard obstacle to overcome. Once the firmware upgrades are workable they'll propagate all over net so clueful computer users can use them. The clueful users will show their friends how it works then everybody will be making bit for bit copies. The MPAA are idiots.
It's damn near impossible to grow into a competent adult without at least SOME cynicism about the motives of others. Furthermore, much of this cynicism will be focused on one is most informed about. Many of the members of the forum are VERY informed about Microsoft's past and current actions. As a group, we techies want to see the best technology win and we would prefer that winners accomplish this by Doing The Right Thing. For the most part, Microsoft's dominance is due to dirty tricks e.g. "If 123 runs then we ain't done..." and just plain bullying TRUE innovators when they couldn't buy them out. Microsoft is like algae bloom over what used to be a clear unmuddied lake; nothing else can breathe much less compete with it for resources. OF COURSE, there are a lot of bitter feelings towards them.
Most of us realize that the Best Right Thing simply cannot prevail against unscrupulous billionaires who can buy their way out of any threat against them. The bitter feelings that pain you are not without justification. Now if Microsoft were brought down a peg or three and had the smarts to realize why then perhaps our feelings might change. IBM used to be the Evil Empire you know.
It does not run X-Windows at all. It runs a unrefined NEXTish GUI. One of example of underefinment would be the HUGH icons in it's rather confusing filemanager (sorta like Windows Explorer but with the panes and slidebars in really odd places). As far as I know, there is no purely text shell like we get on BSD and Linux systems when X is not installed. One can, however run bash, tcsh and one other shell environment (name escapes me) in an Xterm-like windows. There are some ports of common free Unix utilities like Samba and dhcp (no, it doesn't come with it!) at www.darwinlinux.com. They may be out of date with current releases, though.
It does do a very good job of running Samba. I put this server up last September and it has been up continously since. It has been particularly useful to me. I am the hardware tech for a medium sized school district. Since OS X server comes with Appletalk server capabilites, the addition of Samba makes a handy place to store drivers for both Windows and Macs. I can mount my home directory from any networked machine in the district whether it is a Windows box or a Mac and it is reliably there.
It also has the ability to run regular Mac apps in a virtual machine. The virtual OS 8.5 takes up the entire screen. A keyboard combination or a special option in the Special menu changes screens back to the OS X interface. The machine runs with reasonable speed but it doesn't "feel" as fast as 8.5 running natively on a Blue and White G3. The Unix side runs quite well even with the virtual machine process running.
Overall, I found it to be a solid server OS but the interface is clearly in a very beta state in this release. If I had been the one spending the money, I would have installed NetBSD or LinuxPPC and got a much more mature and complete OS (things like dhcp missing). It seems reliable enough but it is incomplete in many ways and very expensive. Not only do NetBSD and Linux provide more complete UNIX toolsets. They provide much more mature interfaces and we are talking about Apple!!
I DO realize that the full consumer release will be much different.
I wanted to look at generic 28.8 modem description to see if it was generic enough to work with a 33.6 modem. This Apple box had no 33.6 description on it. These description files are ASCII text. The only editor on the machine was Simpletext. Guess what? It wouldn't let me just LOOK at the file. The OS pasted up a very huffy message about it being a system file. I had to put it on a floppy and look at the stinking init strings on an NT box. Turns out the file had 33.6 init strings in it. Go figure.
It seems to me that MacOS goes out of it's way to stymie users who have the least amount of clue. I'm aware there are third party tools that allow one to truly admin a Mac box but I shouldn't need them. Hey Apple, how about an Advanced folder with things like ping, traceroute, a fully general text editor that can look at any ASCII on the system and maybe a terminal emulator too? I've torn my hair out more than once for the lack of such basic tools. At least, they should be easy to add to OS X without spending an arm and a leg.
The Power Mac 5500/225, 5500/250, and it's 6500 counterparts use 486 type fans screwed to the heatsink. They make a lovely racket when their bushings wear out too. Incidentally, Apple laptops aren't fan free either. While it is true they don't employ CPU fans, the G3 Series Powerbooks do have a small recirculating case fan turned sideways in the rear of the units. Some of the other Mac techs could probably come up with more examples.
For instance the Remote Selector program will allow a wide range of DVD drives and MPEG decoders to view any region DVDs as many times as desired. It will also allow disabling Macrovision. This battle is in the process of being lost already. They can either provide an open unencumbered format or we will find a way to deal with irritating "features" ourselves. Open source players wouldn't even need firmware hacks to work, they can work properly from the start.
There are already firmware patches to allow certain Region 1 DVD drives to be made region free. It may take nothing more than a firmware change to allow reading ANY area on a DVD. Since the drive MUST read the "unreadable" area to get the keys in the first place then it is only necessary to figure out what they have done to keep this info inside the drive.
I think this trekker bullshit came about when trekiEs became defensive about the more ludricrous aspects of their subculture. C'mon no less a personage than Shatner ridiculed it to the dogs and back and the trekkies couldn't stand it. I think the trekkies wanted to jump on the political correctness bandwagon and generate a little artifical respect. I am forced to use politically correct language for various disabled and ethnic conditions. I REFUSE to use a politically correct term for FANS OF A TV SHOW! You parental basement dwellers are trekiEEEZE and no amount of PC is going to make you look dignified when you show up for jury duty in your Starfleet uniform.
We shouldn't let flaming bigots get in the way of open mindedness. When I have a spare box one of these days then I would like to give OpenBSD a try as a secure cable modem router. I'm worried that if I do that I might have a hard time getting newbie help. But maybe I shouldn't worry? After all, not all Linux advocates are flaming elitist bigots. Most Linux users I've run into are quietly helpful. Perhaps this is true of the BSD camp as well. It's been my observation that truely clued in computer users have little use for bigots, advocates and promoters. They simply use what works. In the LUG I attend, the strengths of the various BSDs are acknowledged and some the attendees use BSD boxen for various purposes. This does not have to be a "either or" world. If you're interested in a BSD then try one out. You might just make some friends instead of the enemies you're expecting.
I would think if most of us boycott Amazon then the dent in their sales of O'Reilly books and other technical literature would be VERY noticeable. We can't put a large dent in Amazon's overall business but we can badly hurt them in the technical book category and let them know exactly why they are hurting there. While we're at it we can remind them who gave them the technological ability to have a business like theirs in the first place. Let's take the boycott a step farther. It's a tight job market. We might as well do everything we can to make it harder for them to get technical help as well. I wouldn't prostitute myself to an Amazon or a Microsoft no matter how they paid me. If we play our cards right then maybe the next time they have one of those outages they will STAY down. Good riddance too.
Your method assumes the watermark is a static entity that is added to the image. But what if the watermark is affected by the content of any given image? If this is the case, your process wouldn't work. The inverse watermark will itself become part of the input to the watermark engine. If we are dealing with an engine rather than some sort of preset image then we need to find a way disable the engine in firmware without disabling the device.
It wouldn't do to have some smartass cop yelling, "Hey, what are you doing?!?!" as you are throwing that Scanjet and Stylewriter into drink. Just yank the boards out of the devices and make sure all the ICs and that serial tag get a good blowtorching. After that it doesn't matter if they see you disposing of the remains or not.
Hmm. So could a create simple test images of things like black crosshairs on a white background and scan it to obtain a simple water mark? And while I'm at it couldn't the algorithm be weakened further by printing out the scan and scanning it again? The equipment has to depend on a ROM. We don't need to be able to algoritmically remove the watermark from scans. We just need to be able to locate the algorithm in the firmware and NOP the hell out of it.
So what? We pull the cover off the display and solder some ribbon cable to the lines driving the display and then reconstruct the video. The hardware required is well within the capabilities of a good engineering student. If you can view it then you can copy it. Since LCDs are digital in nature, there won't be a quality hit. Anyone else ever notice that heavy handedness and stupidity go hand in hand?
Unfortunately, as stated in the GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman and the FSF consider such things as good salaries for programmers to be "obstacles" that must be removed. Stallman advocates "banning" them.
Is this what make you so sore on this subject? You seem to be worried that those evil GPL fanatics are going to come and take your job or at least reduce you to Burger King wages? Get real! A very few developers like Carmack get to drive Ferraris. Most of the rest have to subsist on upper middle class wages. How terrible for them! Even if ALL the software in the world were GPLed (never happen cool down Brett.....) quite a few people will be able to make a reasonable living making needed enhancements or spot bug fixing for.....hmmmm...Business users. Yes, you would still be able to make a good living. No, you are not "Going to get handjobs from women you hardly even know." on account of the Jaguar that proprietary software was going to buy you.
Why is there this insistance that Open Source has to be particularly sensitive to business? Most academic institutions can play by GPL rules; most nonprofits have no problem with it and most individual users have no problems with it. It seems that the only people who think the GPL is a "restrictive" license are pro business zealots. I have no problems with business using this stuff and even pitching in a hand. Even RMS doesn't have a problem with business using the software.
A business has no special right to Embrace and Extend community code. If a sufficiently large and powerful business were to Embrace and Extend free code then that version would become "canonical". This would impose restrictions...that word again..that the community users and developers would find intolerable. Why must we sanction attempts by large and powerful organizations to usurp this code? That is the freedom you are so ardently defending.
You are defending a paradox. Does your concept of freedom include the freedom to sell yourself into slavery? If so, then there is a problem. No reasonable concept of freedom will countanance slavery. You argue a related case. That developers should be free to let bigger fish steal their code. This is not freedom. You mention "major creative works" for which business has the right to demand compensation. This may be so but what if this "major creative work" is based on code that is the product of the sweat of others? They have no pride of place in this context. That is what the GPL prevents. The GPL insures that in the very worst case...say Microsoft having untrammeled power to borg the entire industry..that there is a base of software immune to the tactics necessary for this to take place.
Suppose the 'bravest of coders' untangle the mess and reimplement in clean GPL or BSD licensed code? Buggy software and draconian licensing schemes are already proving to be intolerable when an alternative exists. Why should the market tolerate code designed to cost money simply to maintain it in a sane fashion?
There are two issues: 1) If my client doesn't display ads, then Napster, Inc doesn't get any money, which will eventually make the server go down. If I release the source, it would be trivial for someone to "remove" the ads code. There is also the issue of "free software" when it has ADVERTISEMENTS in it. If you have already done this then others will do it as well. This may be an idea whose time has come but it ultimately will not be practical for Napster. Whether you release your client or not someone else WILL release one with adverts removed. This need not be a bad thing. It should enable others to set up servers as well. This will inevitably devolve to a kind of IRC/FTP hybrid. Napster should not be relying on the obscurity of his protocol to insure his revenue. 2) If I release the source, everyone will know the Napster protocol, opening lots of security holes. And why is this bad? You've basically stated that Napster relies on Security Through Obscurity. Security holes WILL be found whether you release your source or not. The worst thing that will happen is that the protocol may gain some security features.
Re:GPL Violation? SHUT UP
on
Linux on Palm
·
· Score: 1
psst...you're shouting. you've made a bigger ass of yourself than the most rabid GPL purist. let up on the caps lock key already......
If these things become common and cheap then I think it would be a Good Thing in a backhanded sort of way. Individuals and businesses will demand security against cheap and prevalent Tempest monitoring. In other words, Plug and play EMF protection. If the script kiddie next cubicle over can't monitor your workstation then it will probably be difficult for the spooks as well. This could turn into yet another way to really get the spooks' goats.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so you'll probably have to put a bunch of bullshit settings back in the control panel. If this works you will at least have your memory back. If that works then you can use something like Tech Tool Pro to save the contents of your MacOS sane PRAM. After a Linux session just use Tech Tool to put the correct PRAM settings back.
The potential is there to recover the file if the part of the disk it is on is not overwritten. Use a secure deletion utility that overwrites the file area with random noise three passes worth. That's what the military insists on.
For that matter, stenographic filesystems are available for Linux. Even if they discover you are using a steno filesystem they can never be sure you gave them the REAL passphrase. Anything a corporate or government trogolyte wants to use against you probably doesn't need much space to live in. How are they going to find something encrypted that is scattered all over a disk.....interleaved with a honeypot storage volume keyed to a bogus passphrase.
..is to solve someone's vexing problem. The majority of software is NOT written to allow it's creator to drive around in a Ferrari but to get some work done. If my motivation for writing some code is to solve a personal problem or more likely a problem I'm having at work, then open sourcing the best thing I could possibly do. Others who can use a similar solution can make suggestions or even give me patches to make it even better. There is a tangible reward for open sourcing a project. The developer gets patches back! Come to think of the submitters of patches know that others are contributing so they too enjoy what the primary developer/maintainer enjoys....better software. If you look at it as working for patches rather than money then a lot of the mystery of just what motivates people to write open software goes away. The fact that non-coders can enjoy the fruits of this labor is secondary. Even non-coders can note bugs so they can get better software too. Remember: most software will not earn scads of money even if it were closed up and sold for profit. I would rather be an open sourcer getting patches and bug reports than a shareware coder getting two or three registrations a month. It's obvious which tends to produce better software.
I've already seen flash rom images to make popular DVD-ROM region free. It probably won't be that big a deal to "chip" or "flash" a writer to do anything the owner wants. And why not? It's the owner's isn't it?
'ABSOLUTELY! People look at the music industry and see them fighting against MP3, and assume they're against on-line music distribution in genral (and perhaps people misinterpreted my post the same way). Nothing could be further from the truth - the music companies would benefit from online distribution immensely. But there NEEDS to be a proprietary format for it, so it can't be stolen.
MP3's are NOT an acceptable format for the industry because they can be stolen. It would be absolutely foolish for the record companies to officially release their catalogs on MP3, because the existing MP3 user base has proven itself to be completely untrustworthy due to piracy.'
It would be another misguided attempt at technological content protection like CSS. To be able to view the content it must be decrypted at some point. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the recording industry comes up with a well designed and secure distribution format that was created with the help of the best minds in cryptography. It still won't help them. Eventually a clear stream of data has to be send to the sound card so the audio can come out of the speakers. It is fairly trivial to write a dummy driver that dumps to a disk file instead. At the very least, it will be easily possible to get the uncompressed audio to play with.
That might be a small problem. The uncompressed audio will be full of artifacts that might not be audibly obvious but will nonetheless pose a problem when the audio is recompressed in MP3 or some other open format. This problem is not a showstopper. It is an audio engineering problem. It's probably possible to use various noise reduction and guessing algorithms to make the audio file VERY closely resemble what came from the primary source(like a CD). With some work the audio can be redistributed in an open format with VERY little loss of quality.
Incidentally, physical media aren't going away either. Many people will still want cover art and the like and serious audiophiles will insist on uncompressed music. MP3s can still be made from those sources in addition to massaged decompressed and recompressed streams. A proprietary format will only be an inconvienience to consumers, nothing more.
The RIAA will need to have the following beaten into their heads: the old business model is obsolete and lawsuits will not prevent that. Circumstance will accomplish this even if every judge in the land rules in their favor and gives them everything they want.
Firmware replacements already exist to make popular DVD-ROM drives region free. I don't think reflashing a DVD-RAM drive to do nybble copying is going to be a hard obstacle to overcome. Once the firmware upgrades are workable they'll propagate all over net so clueful computer users can use them. The clueful users will show their friends how it works then everybody will be making bit for bit copies. The MPAA are idiots.
It's damn near impossible to grow into a competent adult without at least SOME cynicism about the motives of others. Furthermore, much of this cynicism will be focused on one is most informed about. Many of the members of the forum are VERY informed about Microsoft's past and current actions. As a group, we techies want to see the best technology win and we would prefer that winners accomplish this by Doing The Right Thing. For the most part, Microsoft's dominance is due to dirty tricks e.g. "If 123 runs then we ain't done..." and just plain bullying TRUE innovators when they couldn't buy them out. Microsoft is like algae bloom over what used to be a clear unmuddied lake; nothing else can breathe much less compete with it for resources. OF COURSE, there are a lot of bitter feelings towards them.
Most of us realize that the Best Right Thing simply cannot prevail against unscrupulous billionaires who can buy their way out of any threat against them. The bitter feelings that pain you are not without justification. Now if Microsoft were brought down a peg or three and had the smarts to realize why then perhaps our feelings might change. IBM used to be the Evil Empire you know.
It does not run X-Windows at all. It runs a unrefined NEXTish GUI. One of example of underefinment would be the HUGH icons in it's rather confusing filemanager (sorta like Windows Explorer but with the panes and slidebars in really odd places). As far as I know, there is no purely text shell like we get on BSD and Linux systems when X is not installed. One can, however run bash, tcsh and one other shell environment (name escapes me) in an Xterm-like windows. There are some ports of common free Unix utilities like Samba and dhcp (no, it doesn't come with it!) at www.darwinlinux.com. They may be out of date with current releases, though.
It does do a very good job of running Samba. I put this server up last September and it has been up continously since. It has been particularly useful to me. I am the hardware tech for a medium sized school district. Since OS X server comes with Appletalk server capabilites, the addition of Samba makes a handy place to store drivers for both Windows and Macs. I can mount my home directory from any networked machine in the district whether it is a Windows box or a Mac and it is reliably there.
It also has the ability to run regular Mac apps in a virtual machine. The virtual OS 8.5 takes up the entire screen. A keyboard combination or a special option in the Special menu changes screens back to the OS X interface. The machine runs with reasonable speed but it doesn't "feel" as fast as 8.5 running natively on a Blue and White G3. The Unix side runs quite well even with the virtual machine process running.
Overall, I found it to be a solid server OS but the interface is clearly in a very beta state in this release. If I had been the one spending the money, I would have installed NetBSD or LinuxPPC and got a much more mature and complete OS (things like dhcp missing). It seems reliable enough but it is incomplete in many ways and very expensive. Not only do NetBSD and Linux provide more complete UNIX toolsets. They provide much more mature interfaces and we are talking about Apple!!
I DO realize that the full consumer release will be much different.
I wanted to look at generic 28.8 modem description to see if it was generic enough to work with a 33.6 modem. This Apple box had no 33.6 description on it. These description files are ASCII text. The only editor on the machine was Simpletext. Guess what? It wouldn't let me just LOOK at the file. The OS pasted up a very huffy message about it being a system file. I had to put it on a floppy and look at the stinking init strings on an NT box. Turns out the file had 33.6 init strings in it. Go figure.
It seems to me that MacOS goes out of it's way to stymie users who have the least amount of clue. I'm aware there are third party tools that allow one to truly admin a Mac box but I shouldn't need them. Hey Apple, how about an Advanced folder with things like ping, traceroute, a fully general text editor that can look at any ASCII on the system and maybe a terminal emulator too? I've torn my hair out more than once for the lack of such basic tools. At least, they should be easy to add to OS X without spending an arm and a leg.
The Power Mac 5500/225, 5500/250, and it's 6500 counterparts use 486 type fans screwed to the heatsink. They make a lovely racket when their bushings wear out too. Incidentally, Apple laptops aren't fan free either. While it is true they don't employ CPU fans, the G3 Series Powerbooks do have a small recirculating case fan turned sideways in the rear of the units. Some of the other Mac techs could probably come up with more examples.
For instance the Remote Selector program will allow a wide range of DVD drives and MPEG decoders to view any region DVDs as many times as desired. It will also allow disabling Macrovision. This battle is in the process of being lost already.
They can either provide an open unencumbered format or we will find a way to deal with irritating "features" ourselves. Open source players wouldn't even need firmware hacks to work, they can work properly from the start.
There are already firmware patches to allow certain Region 1 DVD drives to be made region free. It may take nothing more than a firmware change to allow reading ANY area on a DVD. Since the drive MUST read the "unreadable" area to get the keys in the first place then it is only necessary to figure out what they have done to keep this info inside the drive.
I think this trekker bullshit came about when trekiEs became defensive about the more ludricrous aspects of their subculture. C'mon no less a personage than Shatner ridiculed it to the dogs and back and the trekkies couldn't stand it. I think the trekkies wanted to jump on the political correctness bandwagon and generate a little artifical respect. I am forced to use politically correct language for various disabled and ethnic conditions. I REFUSE to use a politically correct term for FANS OF A TV SHOW! You parental basement dwellers are trekiEEEZE and no amount of PC is going to make you look dignified when you show up for jury duty in your Starfleet uniform.
We shouldn't let flaming bigots get in the way of open mindedness. When I have a spare box one of these days then I would like to give OpenBSD a try as a secure cable modem router. I'm worried that if I do that I might have a hard time getting newbie help. But maybe I shouldn't worry? After all, not all Linux advocates are flaming elitist bigots. Most Linux users I've run into are quietly helpful. Perhaps this is true of the BSD camp as well. It's been my observation that truely clued in computer users have little use for bigots, advocates and promoters. They simply use what works. In the LUG I attend, the strengths of the various BSDs are acknowledged and some the attendees use BSD boxen for various purposes. This does not have to be a "either or" world. If you're interested in a BSD then try one out. You might just make some friends instead of the enemies you're expecting.
I would think if most of us boycott Amazon then the dent in their sales of O'Reilly books and other technical literature would be VERY noticeable. We can't put a large dent in Amazon's overall business but we can badly hurt them in the technical book category and let them know exactly why they are hurting there. While we're at it we can remind them who gave them the technological ability to have a business like theirs in the first place. Let's take the boycott a step farther. It's a tight job market. We might as well do everything we can to make it harder for them to get technical help as well. I wouldn't prostitute myself to an Amazon or a Microsoft no matter how they paid me. If we play our cards right then maybe the next time they have one of those outages they will STAY down. Good riddance too.
Your method assumes the watermark is a static entity that is added to the image. But what if the watermark is affected by the content of any given image? If this is the case, your process wouldn't work. The inverse watermark will itself become part of the input to the watermark engine. If we are dealing with an engine rather than some sort of preset image then we need to find a way disable the engine in firmware without disabling the device.
It wouldn't do to have some smartass cop yelling, "Hey, what are you doing?!?!" as you are throwing that Scanjet and Stylewriter into drink. Just yank the boards out of the devices and make sure all the ICs and that serial tag get a good blowtorching. After that it doesn't matter if they see you disposing of the remains or not.
Hmm. So could a create simple test images of things like black crosshairs on a white background and scan it to obtain a simple water mark? And while I'm at it couldn't the algorithm be weakened further by printing out the scan and scanning it again? The equipment has to depend on a ROM. We don't need to be able to algoritmically remove the watermark from scans. We just need to be able to locate the algorithm in the firmware and NOP the hell out of it.
So what? We pull the cover off the display and solder some ribbon cable to the lines driving the display and then reconstruct the video. The hardware required is well within the capabilities of a good engineering student. If you can view it then you can copy it. Since LCDs are digital in nature, there won't be a quality hit. Anyone else ever notice that heavy handedness and stupidity go hand in hand?
Unfortunately, as stated in the GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman and the FSF consider such things as good salaries for programmers to be "obstacles" that must be removed. Stallman advocates "banning" them.
Is this what make you so sore on this subject? You seem to be worried that those evil GPL fanatics are going to come and take your job or at least reduce you to Burger King wages? Get real! A very few developers like Carmack get to drive Ferraris. Most of the rest have to subsist on upper middle class wages. How terrible for them! Even if ALL the software in the world were GPLed (never happen cool down Brett.....) quite a few people will be able to make a reasonable living making needed enhancements or spot bug fixing for.....hmmmm...Business users. Yes, you would still be able to make a good living. No, you are not "Going to get handjobs from women you hardly even know." on account of the Jaguar that proprietary software was going to buy you.
"not antagonistic to business"
Why is there this insistance that Open Source has to be particularly sensitive to business? Most academic institutions can play by GPL rules; most nonprofits have no problem with it and most individual users have no problems with it. It seems that the only people who think the GPL is a "restrictive" license are pro business zealots. I have no problems with business using this stuff and even pitching in a hand. Even RMS doesn't have a problem with business using the software.
A business has no special right to Embrace and Extend community code. If a sufficiently large and powerful business were to Embrace and Extend free code then that version would become "canonical". This would impose restrictions...that word again..that the community users and developers would find intolerable. Why must we sanction attempts by large and powerful organizations to usurp this code? That is the freedom you are so ardently defending.
You are defending a paradox. Does your concept of freedom include the freedom to sell yourself into slavery? If so, then there is a problem. No reasonable concept of freedom will countanance slavery. You argue a related case. That developers should be free to let bigger fish steal their code. This is not freedom. You mention "major creative works" for which business has the right to demand compensation. This may be so but what if this "major creative work" is based on code that is the product of the sweat of others? They have no pride of place in this context. That is what the GPL prevents. The GPL insures that in the very worst case...say Microsoft having untrammeled power to borg the entire industry..that there is a base of software immune to the tactics necessary for this to take place.
Suppose the 'bravest of coders' untangle the mess and reimplement in clean GPL or BSD licensed code? Buggy software and draconian licensing schemes are already proving to be intolerable when an alternative exists. Why should the market tolerate code designed to cost money simply to maintain it in a sane fashion?
There are two issues: 1) If my client doesn't display ads, then Napster, Inc doesn't get any money, which will eventually make the server go down. If I release the source, it would be trivial for someone to "remove" the ads code. There is also the issue of "free software" when it has ADVERTISEMENTS in it. If you have already done this then others will do it as well. This may be an idea whose time has come but it ultimately will not be practical for Napster. Whether you release your client or not someone else WILL release one with adverts removed. This need not be a bad thing. It should enable others to set up servers as well. This will inevitably devolve to a kind of IRC/FTP hybrid. Napster should not be relying on the obscurity of his protocol to insure his revenue. 2) If I release the source, everyone will know the Napster protocol, opening lots of security holes. And why is this bad? You've basically stated that Napster relies on Security Through Obscurity. Security holes WILL be found whether you release your source or not. The worst thing that will happen is that the protocol may gain some security features.
psst...you're shouting. you've made a bigger ass of yourself than the most rabid GPL purist. let up on the caps lock key already......
If these things become common and cheap then I think it would be a Good Thing in a backhanded sort of way. Individuals and businesses will demand security against cheap and prevalent Tempest monitoring. In other words, Plug and play EMF protection. If the script kiddie next cubicle over can't monitor your workstation then it will probably be difficult for the spooks as well. This could turn into yet another way to really get the spooks' goats.