Jon Katz: Send that great story and analysis to every major newspaper out there. Go the bg time. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. Make that excellent piece of work heard by many more than us Slashdotters.
For all practical purposes, 1.3 is the latest. There was a maintenance release just recently put out - 1.3.1. Also released was 1.4 beta, with gold master expected in November.
I've heard about current research from colleagues into the topic of decentralized authentication. The notion is several parties "vote" on whether or not an entity is who they say they are. When querying for a request to authenticate a user, multiple parties reply saying yeah or nah based on the credentials given. A yeah majority means the user can reasonably be certified and granted access to the resource. Generally you ask for a large number of votes or a certain percentage of majority depending on how you want to enforce your security.
But what about bogus certifiers? Servers that always reply yeah or always nah, or always seem to go against the mainstream. Several methods exist. One is to give out bogus requests. If you send out 100 fake authentication requests and the same server returns 99 yeahs, you can assume that server doesnt know what it's doing and stop sending requests there. Other techniques like repeating requests (asking for authentication of the same subject more than once) and checking for consistent results is also common to weed out bogus servers and enforcing the integrity of the others.
Keep in mind this is a fresh topic for researchers. I dont have many more details other than that. I might be able to fill in gaps if questions arise......:)
This is a case of the lawyers of EData trying to enforce and protect their intellectual property. It doesnt matter to them that the patent is something that should be thrown out because it is of something that is to be considered obvious by even today's non-techiee. They're a small company protecting their assets.
Regardless of where this case goes, let's assume the court rules in favor of EData and they make billions from licensing the concept of downloads. The defendants can file an appeal and possibly even file for a patent revocation on the fact that such a concept is obvious. Experts on the topic can point out that such a concept is fndamental to operation of the Internet long before the patent was filed in 1985. The concept wasn't designed by EData, it was dreamed up by the original Internet founders in US Defense Dept and academia back in the 60s.
EData will eventually lose this battle. It's just a matter of time until that happens.
This may be an obvious question, but what about regular old CD copy feature of my burner's software? Will the duplicate CD still work in my walkman? Or will the duplicate be all scratchy like a mp3 ripped from one of these protected CDs?
That would explain why the most moderated posts are those found near the top of an article. Also moded are the accompanying threads of replies attached to them.
Yours was not the only one, i noticed SEVERAL posts that were modded down when they shouldn't have been. It looks to me that some moderator was simply on crack or something and marked a lot of posts as offtopic when they weren't, redundant when it was only one, and other unfairly moded posts. Thankfully there are a lot of moderators to conteract the idoit ones.
oops. I was originally gonna say it was Australian, but then something made me change it to British. Good thing all I do bad at are english classes, not classes on programming;)
You're absolutely correct. People only look at the clock speed when picking out a machine. Here's a did you know: The 500 MHz G4 processor by Apple performs roughly the same in benchmark tests as the 1 GHz Pentium III.
What hardware was your software written for? Probably a Pentium II. Most of today's software doesn't fully support the P4, hence apps written for previous chips may have varying results on the new chip. Until there is software out there written to exploit the architecture of the Pentium 4, most apps may still be better on a P III.
No, you are a little underinformend. Microsoft did state IE will be in the Add/Remove program list. Not to mention, you could remove the icon from the desktop already -- Under the Tools menu, choose Internet Options, then the Advanced tab, uncheck the box labled Show IE icon on desktop. No more icon on desktop.
Exactly my point. I've noticed over the past week or so a lot of comments having the effect of "Does anybody actually read the article"? Those rhetorical questions were being pointed at people who would comment about something within five minutes of a Slashdot editor's posting only to have their comment revoked and discredited by something in the article cited. Sadly, even the Slashdot editors themselves are being critisized for stuff like that.
all Microsoft has done is satisfy a few lawyers. They're still the same company. The same company that embraces new technologies only to claim them as their own and customize them to their own likeing. They're still the same company that will make unnecessary dependencies between applications to force users into more of their products. They're still the same company that refuses to port major applications to non-Windows systems. All they've done is admit that they lied about the dependency of Windows 9x on Internet Explorer and given users/OEMs/etc the ability to remove IE from future versions of Windows.
You're reading to much into what I wrote. That one line was a quick summary of what MS is up to. Focus on more the why this doesn't change their business plans or anything.
Maybe this is all the press is stressing, but Microsoft is still monopolistic. The DOJ has focused on the issue regarding browser wars, not much else. One of the major items they argued over was the ability to remove IE. Microsoft has given in and will now give OEMs and possibly end users the abiliy to remove IE from their Windows machines.
This may please the Justice Dept, but won't please the techies. Microsoft will continue to push their products as bundles by forcing dependicies between their products. They will continue to embrace&extend other technologies the same as they always have in recent years. They will continue to swipe the little guy's idea and make it theirs, leaving the little guy out in the cold.
But this may be a step in the right direction. If enough lawyers out there realize the effects of these other practices, they can use this case as a basis. If Microsoft claims they are unable to untie certain dependicies, the lawyers can argue back that Microsoft first said that IE and Windows were inseparable, yet today they made them able to separate.
My apologies, I have no idea what that I%5 crap is. My guess is the IE on my OS-X. It should read: "Especially if parties and witnesses have differing opinions..."
Such a system could also be used to reconstruct an accident for investigators. Especially if parties and witnesses have l%5{pinions of what happened, particularly in cases of road rage and accident fraud (people who fake accidents hoping for big insurance payoffs).
Data such as the speed of the cars, what lanes they're in, etc, can all be used by accident invetigators to build a formal description of the incident and determine who was actually at fault, and whose insurance rates go up.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon Katz: Send that great story and analysis to every major newspaper out there. Go the bg time. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. Make that excellent piece of work heard by many more than us Slashdotters.
For all practical purposes, 1.3 is the latest. There was a maintenance release just recently put out - 1.3.1. Also released was 1.4 beta, with gold master expected in November.
But what about bogus certifiers? Servers that always reply yeah or always nah, or always seem to go against the mainstream. Several methods exist. One is to give out bogus requests. If you send out 100 fake authentication requests and the same server returns 99 yeahs, you can assume that server doesnt know what it's doing and stop sending requests there. Other techniques like repeating requests (asking for authentication of the same subject more than once) and checking for consistent results is also common to weed out bogus servers and enforcing the integrity of the others.
Keep in mind this is a fresh topic for researchers. I dont have many more details other than that. I might be able to fill in gaps if questions arise...... :)
Regardless of where this case goes, let's assume the court rules in favor of EData and they make billions from licensing the concept of downloads. The defendants can file an appeal and possibly even file for a patent revocation on the fact that such a concept is obvious. Experts on the topic can point out that such a concept is fndamental to operation of the Internet long before the patent was filed in 1985. The concept wasn't designed by EData, it was dreamed up by the original Internet founders in US Defense Dept and academia back in the 60s.
EData will eventually lose this battle. It's just a matter of time until that happens.
This may be an obvious question, but what about regular old CD copy feature of my burner's software? Will the duplicate CD still work in my walkman? Or will the duplicate be all scratchy like a mp3 ripped from one of these protected CDs?
That would explain why the most moderated posts are those found near the top of an article. Also moded are the accompanying threads of replies attached to them.
Check the lenses in your glasses. I was comparing G4s to P3s.
Yours was not the only one, i noticed SEVERAL posts that were modded down when they shouldn't have been. It looks to me that some moderator was simply on crack or something and marked a lot of posts as offtopic when they weren't, redundant when it was only one, and other unfairly moded posts. Thankfully there are a lot of moderators to conteract the idoit ones.
The ones I did at work with some simple algorithms using linux and os-x. same source code for both programs compiled on each platform using gcc 2.96
i dont think they are. The aren't many 64 bit processors yet that designed for the desktop machine.
oops. I was originally gonna say it was Australian, but then something made me change it to British. Good thing all I do bad at are english classes, not classes on programming ;)
You're absolutely correct. People only look at the clock speed when picking out a machine. Here's a did you know: The 500 MHz G4 processor by Apple performs roughly the same in benchmark tests as the 1 GHz Pentium III.
What hardware was your software written for? Probably a Pentium II. Most of today's software doesn't fully support the P4, hence apps written for previous chips may have varying results on the new chip. Until there is software out there written to exploit the architecture of the Pentium 4, most apps may still be better on a P III.
actually, the American spelling is insight, insite is probably an British spelling.
I wonder, will the new set of protocols governing this new network allow for more security protection than is current in today's world of TCP and UDP?
No, you are a little underinformend. Microsoft did state IE will be in the Add/Remove program list. Not to mention, you could remove the icon from the desktop already -- Under the Tools menu, choose Internet Options, then the Advanced tab, uncheck the box labled Show IE icon on desktop. No more icon on desktop.
Exactly my point. I've noticed over the past week or so a lot of comments having the effect of "Does anybody actually read the article"? Those rhetorical questions were being pointed at people who would comment about something within five minutes of a Slashdot editor's posting only to have their comment revoked and discredited by something in the article cited. Sadly, even the Slashdot editors themselves are being critisized for stuff like that.
all Microsoft has done is satisfy a few lawyers. They're still the same company. The same company that embraces new technologies only to claim them as their own and customize them to their own likeing. They're still the same company that will make unnecessary dependencies between applications to force users into more of their products. They're still the same company that refuses to port major applications to non-Windows systems. All they've done is admit that they lied about the dependency of Windows 9x on Internet Explorer and given users/OEMs/etc the ability to remove IE from future versions of Windows.
If you were to actually read the article, the very first line states:
One down, eighteen to go.
Click here for 99,999 days of no pop-under X10 cameras.
You're reading to much into what I wrote. That one line was a quick summary of what MS is up to. Focus on more the why this doesn't change their business plans or anything.
This may please the Justice Dept, but won't please the techies. Microsoft will continue to push their products as bundles by forcing dependicies between their products. They will continue to embrace&extend other technologies the same as they always have in recent years. They will continue to swipe the little guy's idea and make it theirs, leaving the little guy out in the cold.
But this may be a step in the right direction. If enough lawyers out there realize the effects of these other practices, they can use this case as a basis. If Microsoft claims they are unable to untie certain dependicies, the lawyers can argue back that Microsoft first said that IE and Windows were inseparable, yet today they made them able to separate.
I wonder how long until Randy Johnson gets control of the machine, and John Kruk to step into the batter's box .... a la '93 All-Star Game.
My apologies, I have no idea what that I%5 crap is. My guess is the IE on my OS-X. It should read: "Especially if parties and witnesses have differing opinions ..."
Data such as the speed of the cars, what lanes they're in, etc, can all be used by accident invetigators to build a formal description of the incident and determine who was actually at fault, and whose insurance rates go up.