I understand that SUN did an incredible donation to the community by GPL'ing OpenOffice (the Free Software version of StarOffice). But, as it stands, OpenOffice still depends on GPC (General Polygon Clipping Library) which is not free for commercial use. This means that business use of OpenOffice, if deemed a commercial use, might need an authorization from Alna Murta (GPC's author) or else be illegal, which is more likely because most people don't even know about this issue. Are there any plans to deal with this last roadblock ?
With the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), that is starting the process of getting incorporated into national laws, BMG would have the law on it's side and copying CDs with this kind of protection would be a crime, even if it was under a "fair use" clause. This is the main problem with this law, for the first time any company can restrict how you use its products. Until now copyright law only affected copying, distributing and modifying the product.
In the USA the won't probably do a recall because all this is legal under the DMCA. Providing "fair use" became optional.
As long as you don't distribute that work, you can do whatever you want with it, even linking it to proprietary code. Obviously you can never distribute it like that. But if the distribution occured only after the publication of the paper, then there's no problem whatsoever.
I wonder if a solar car is ever going to be a reality, after all, the potential market includes southern USA and a lot of developing and third-world countries. With OPEC controlling oil prices so it doesn't loose control of the energy market by making alternative energies cheap enough, I doubt that we'll ever see a solar power aided car (fueled by solar+gas) anytime in the next 30 years.
OTOH, I wonder if a plane wouldn't be an interesting use. After all they have a lot of area on top, they can fly over clouds, and the industry is always looking for ways to cut costs.
Can I contact govt officials via the net _and get an answer_? Some of them.
Can I get the contact of govt officials via the net ? Yes.
Can I do anything via the net instead of waiting in a queue? Yes. Mainly related with creating companies, but there are somethings.
Did they abolish the monopoly on leased lines and voice communications, held by a company that the govt ownes? Are the voice calls and modem calls cheap? Can I choose my phone operator? Officialy (if not in practice), no (when compared with USA) and yes.
The DMCA says that it is illegal to "communicate" any information that "facilitates" circumventing rights management information. The information in the changelogs falls in this category.
The EUCD - European Union Copyright Directive - has to be transposed to national law until December 22nd 2002. That means we'll also have a DMCA-like legislation in the near future.
The article says Cox is wrong because he shoould stand by full disclosure. While I know that Alan did this as a protest, I don't understand the reasoning of those who "attack" his position. Why should somebody like Alan risk to go to jail for disclosing information that can facilitate the circumvention of filesystem's permissions ?
We all know that that is illegal in the USA, thanks to the DMCA, and in a little over one year, will also be illegal in most of Europe, thanks to the EUCD - European Union Copyright Directive.
My question is: Why should he take the risk ? Until know, Sklyarov is still in jail, Felten hasn't got the courts permission to present his article and I still can't get a DVD player with any GNU/Linux distribution. Isn't this enough to make one think twice before entering the security field ?
- Plugin architecture for exploits.
- P2P sharing of exploits and vulnerability identification and hidding tricks.
- Polymorphic and stealth behaviour.
- 2 year incumbation time.
- Operating system independent (this means shell code for most used operating systems and probably a small scripting engine)
- Learning engine for exploits (should be simple for buffer overflow exploits)
- Action: undisclosed.
The result: not a worm, but a single distributed system with the objective of taking control of the net, and the ability to do it faster than any legislation...
Nobody has any need for broadband right know, and the market offerings always include some kind of idiotic bandwidth limits (my cable ISP limits "international" traffic to 1GB).
And then there's Copyright legislation that prevents me to share even buster keaton movies. For me movies would be one interesting use of broadband (and a obvious use of "interactive" TV), but if I have to pay for every time I see one, I'll keep using normal TV and going to a cinema from time to time, it's a lot cheaper.
One of the tricks of 'Deep Blue' was a library with every game of chess played at the master level in the last century. That's what made it play like a human. Kasparov lost the first game because of an error in his training, he prepared himself to play with a machine and got an almost human player.
The biggest advantage of the machine in this kind of games is that it's more difficult for it to make a mistake. I don't know what is the depth of moves that the machine can calculate, but someone at the level Kramnik can usually "see" 10 moves ahead. Then an error screws up everuthing. How long until we get a computer capable of doing this kind of search ? Then we could really see a computer playing a game completly different from a human, and winning ?
I thought that Euro governments were supposed to have opened up telecoms markets by this year.
Around here open the market means that other companies other than the monopolist telecom have access to licenses that allow them to deploy cabling and selling bandwidth to others. In any case the local loop here is government owned and only the the (ex-)monopolist telecom has access to it.
In Portugal (a small european country that's part of the euro zone) it is illegal for any person or company to carry voice traffic without a license from ICP (portuguese version of FCC). This includes voice-over-ip (and yes, they explicitly state that).
That means that the use of this kind of equipment, netmeeting, yahoo messenger or any other program that allows voice communication is forbidden if you don't use one of the 11 (minus 2 that become our version of dot.com bombs) licensees networks.
Most people have or had at a time or another a fake identity in the web. While being more common in IRC and services alike, I remember a study where a lot said that they entered fake data into web sites that required that kind of information, basically rendering useless such advertising.
And, as we know that youth is just a state of mind, who really cares ?
While these limitations would never be accepted in the US (the anti-virus and security industries are too big there), I'm getting scared about how much technically clueless politicians (if they had a clue they would be working somewhere) are affecting my ability to do my work. The existence of a European Community directive that states about the same than DMCA effectively prevents system's integration has its been done until now (reverse-engineering and binary modification to create entry points to proprietary software, reverse engineering of database schemas, libs reencapsultion and a lot other tricks that are usually considered to be used only by those black hats guys).
A cross-compiler is available (it's called gcc:)). Porting between architectures shouldn't be that much of a problem.
As we are talking about diskless machines, I would only need to burn a CD for each machine. As for the falling of computer prices, the only thing I've heard that can compare in price to a computer is thinknic at $199.99 and that's not easily available to me (I'm not in the US).
I'm starting to look for solutions for a home made cheap cluster. My first idea was to use game consoles.They seem to all be getting linux support (PS2 and Dreamcast) or to be PC based (X-Box and Nokia's media terminal). Anyone tried this ?
How about deaf and blind people ?
on
Protein Music
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· Score: 1
I recognize this as a huge scientific accessibility advance. Now blind people can easily access DNA. I wonder how good has the sound hardware to be for one be able to distinguish differente DNA.
Now you can see DNA models, you can hear DNA. When will it come the time when you can finally feel information ?
Well, actually, that's the thing. It's tough to claim that "users" are all programmers.
I don't make such a claim, and that's not even at stake. One of the four freedoms is the freedom to adapt the program to what you need. If you do it yourself (because you're a programmer) or if you ask someone to do it for you (paying or not) you need the code to do it. As any manager that ever had a program in its hand that he couldn't adapt nor pay someone to adapt because the company died, the problem of not having code is not only for programmers.
People that never used computers have different problems than the usual. My experience is that if you're going to teach old people about internet and computers use the social part. The first 2 concepts should be:
The internet is a network of people - it makes it easy to communicate cheaply, fast and ignoring geographic boundaries.
The internet is a chaos. It's not a well organized huge encyclopedia. It depends on the users adding content to it and you're welcome to participate.
The first concept serves to attract the old people (usually, one of their biggest problem is loneliness). The second is to put aside some concepts you get from TV, movies and advertising.
For me the next steps will be dealing with the mouse (the is usually a huge problem with old people). Some simple games for 3-years old kids could help (they usually use huge surfaces for you to click). Next the keyboard for writing a simple text in a word processor. Then the concept of e-mail addressand sending an e-mail (make sure they all have some kind of mail account, even if you create them yourself). Then go for the web (accessing pages and web searches).
A micropayment system has a big problem today: There is no way to transfer money cheaply around the world (I'm not an american citizen), especially low amounts. So, the only system of micropayments that I believe that could work would have to be supported by ISPs:
Why would they do it ? Something like this:
It would be an attempt to guarantee better content for its clients. The existence of quality content means that the ISPs will have more clients, not having to fight for each others clients.
How would it work ? For instance, with every month payment you (the user) would receive 100 points (each valued at a cent). You would a toolbar or a button in your browser where you would mark the sites you prefer. After some time (a week or a month) the browser (or a program integrated with the browser) would send the distribution of points to the ISP. Every month the ISP would send a payment to the sites.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that SUN did an incredible donation to the community by GPL'ing OpenOffice (the Free Software version of StarOffice). But, as it stands, OpenOffice still depends on GPC (General Polygon Clipping Library) which is not free for commercial use. This means that business use of OpenOffice, if deemed a commercial use, might need an authorization from Alna Murta (GPC's author) or else be illegal, which is more likely because most people don't even know about this issue. Are there any plans to deal with this last roadblock ?
With the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive), that is starting the process of getting incorporated into national laws, BMG would have the law on it's side and copying CDs with this kind of protection would be a crime, even if it was under a "fair use" clause. This is the main problem with this law, for the first time any company can restrict how you use its products. Until now copyright law only affected copying, distributing and modifying the product.
In the USA the won't probably do a recall because all this is legal under the DMCA. Providing "fair use" became optional.
As long as you don't distribute that work, you can do whatever you want with it, even linking it to proprietary code. Obviously you can never distribute it like that. But if the distribution occured only after the publication of the paper, then there's no problem whatsoever.
I wonder if a solar car is ever going to be a reality, after all, the potential market includes southern USA and a lot of developing and third-world countries. With OPEC controlling oil prices so it doesn't loose control of the energy market by making alternative energies cheap enough, I doubt that we'll ever see a solar power aided car (fueled by solar+gas) anytime in the next 30 years.
OTOH, I wonder if a plane wouldn't be an interesting use. After all they have a lot of area on top, they can fly over clouds, and the industry is always looking for ways to cut costs.
At least through this questions:
Can I file my tax returns via the net? Yes.
Can I contact govt officials via the net _and get an answer_? Some of them.
Can I get the contact of govt officials via the net ? Yes.
Can I do anything via the net instead of waiting in a queue? Yes. Mainly related with creating companies, but there are somethings.
Did they abolish the monopoly on leased lines and voice communications, held by a company that the govt ownes? Are the voice calls and modem calls cheap? Can I choose my phone operator? Officialy (if not in practice), no (when compared with USA) and yes.
The DMCA says that it is illegal to "communicate" any information that "facilitates" circumventing rights management information. The information in the changelogs falls in this category.
The EUCD - European Union Copyright Directive - has to be transposed to national law until December 22nd 2002. That means we'll also have a DMCA-like legislation in the near future.
We all know that that is illegal in the USA, thanks to the DMCA, and in a little over one year, will also be illegal in most of Europe, thanks to the EUCD - European Union Copyright Directive.
My question is: Why should he take the risk ? Until know, Sklyarov is still in jail, Felten hasn't got the courts permission to present his article and I still can't get a DVD player with any GNU/Linux distribution. Isn't this enough to make one think twice before entering the security field ?
Is it really worth to pay $3,000 for a distro with an Intrusion Detection System like snort configured ?
Here are the specs:
- Plugin architecture for exploits.
- P2P sharing of exploits and vulnerability identification and hidding tricks.
- Polymorphic and stealth behaviour.
- 2 year incumbation time.
- Operating system independent (this means shell code for most used operating systems and probably a small scripting engine)
- Learning engine for exploits (should be simple for buffer overflow exploits)
- Action: undisclosed.
The result: not a worm, but a single distributed system with the objective of taking control of the net, and the ability to do it faster than any legislation...
And then there's Copyright legislation that prevents me to share even buster keaton movies. For me movies would be one interesting use of broadband (and a obvious use of "interactive" TV), but if I have to pay for every time I see one, I'll keep using normal TV and going to a cinema from time to time, it's a lot cheaper.
The biggest advantage of the machine in this kind of games is that it's more difficult for it to make a mistake. I don't know what is the depth of moves that the machine can calculate, but someone at the level Kramnik can usually "see" 10 moves ahead. Then an error screws up everuthing. How long until we get a computer capable of doing this kind of search ? Then we could really see a computer playing a game completly different from a human, and winning ?
What are the steps needed to be taken until we have solar energy run cars in our cities ?
A good reference for schools to use in this area is SEUL.
Around here open the market means that other companies other than the monopolist telecom have access to licenses that allow them to deploy cabling and selling bandwidth to others. In any case the local loop here is government owned and only the the (ex-)monopolist telecom has access to it.
That means that the use of this kind of equipment, netmeeting, yahoo messenger or any other program that allows voice communication is forbidden if you don't use one of the 11 (minus 2 that become our version of dot.com bombs) licensees networks.
Are any other countries like this ?
And, as we know that youth is just a state of mind, who really cares ?
While these limitations would never be accepted in the US (the anti-virus and security industries are too big there), I'm getting scared about how much technically clueless politicians (if they had a clue they would be working somewhere) are affecting my ability to do my work. The existence of a European Community directive that states about the same than DMCA effectively prevents system's integration has its been done until now (reverse-engineering and binary modification to create entry points to proprietary software, reverse engineering of database schemas, libs reencapsultion and a lot other tricks that are usually considered to be used only by those black hats guys).
"What's the power of the tires you want with the car ?"
As we are talking about diskless machines, I would only need to burn a CD for each machine. As for the falling of computer prices, the only thing I've heard that can compare in price to a computer is thinknic at $199.99 and that's not easily available to me (I'm not in the US).
I'm starting to look for solutions for a home made cheap cluster. My first idea was to use game consoles .They seem to all be getting linux support (PS2 and Dreamcast) or to be PC based (X-Box and Nokia's media terminal). Anyone tried this ?
Now you can see DNA models, you can hear DNA. When will it come the time when you can finally feel information ?
I don't make such a claim, and that's not even at stake. One of the four freedoms is the freedom to adapt the program to what you need. If you do it yourself (because you're a programmer) or if you ask someone to do it for you (paying or not) you need the code to do it. As any manager that ever had a program in its hand that he couldn't adapt nor pay someone to adapt because the company died, the problem of not having code is not only for programmers.
The first concept serves to attract the old people (usually, one of their biggest problem is loneliness). The second is to put aside some concepts you get from TV, movies and advertising.
For me the next steps will be dealing with the mouse (the is usually a huge problem with old people). Some simple games for 3-years old kids could help (they usually use huge surfaces for you to click). Next the keyboard for writing a simple text in a word processor. Then the concept of e-mail addressand sending an e-mail (make sure they all have some kind of mail account, even if you create them yourself). Then go for the web (accessing pages and web searches).
Just my € 0.02
Why would they do it ? Something like this: It would be an attempt to guarantee better content for its clients. The existence of quality content means that the ISPs will have more clients, not having to fight for each others clients.
How would it work ? For instance, with every month payment you (the user) would receive 100 points (each valued at a cent). You would a toolbar or a button in your browser where you would mark the sites you prefer. After some time (a week or a month) the browser (or a program integrated with the browser) would send the distribution of points to the ISP. Every month the ISP would send a payment to the sites.