You know I've been to plenty of people's houses and I've never actually seen a vcr flashing 12:00.
Mine does. I never set the time. I could, but I don't use the timer, so why bother? I also leave it unplugged for several hours at a time, so I'd only have to keep doing it.
Found this ;he re:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Interception and the rights of individuals
Financial Times, Aug 8, 2000, 174 words
>From Patricia Hewitt MP.
Sir, Your article "Companies snooping on staff face curbs" (August 3)
suggests that the draft lawful business practice regulations, currently the
subject of a public consultation, will entail a "legal clampdown" on
companies' monitoring of electronic communications by "bringing private
business under the scope of interception laws for the first time".
This is not accurate. The regulations will actually reduce the burden on
business by making exceptions to the general rules on interception set out
in the regulation of investigatory powers act. They will permit businesses
to intercept communications on their own systems without consent for certain
purposes such as providing evidence of a commercial transaction, preventing
crime, or protecting a network against viruses or hackers. The regulations
will therefore help legitimate business practices regarding interception
while at the same time providing a high degree of protection to individuals'
civil rights.
The regulations have been drafted in the light of informal discussions with
business and other interests. We have already taken on board some of their
suggestions and I will take careful account of any further ones.
Patricia Hewitt, Minister for e-commerce, Dept of Trade and Industry, 1
Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET
Re:the way to "talk back" is with your wallet...
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 2
That's part of the answer. However, if you believe that the way they do business is wrong, then also tell your democratically elected representative, or their political rival of your choice, how you feel. I wrote a letter to my MP, and got a reply through him from Patricia Hewitt. Cool!
Do staff have any different posting priviliges to us mere mortals? If the poster of a story wants to say something in the comments section, I believe it shouldn't be possible for someone with more than one account, or a cadre of Katzhaters, to mod them down to -1./. crew's comments should be immune to moderation down below the original level that the post was made at, and should always have "Post at 2" option.
That's what I intended. Traditional (non-software) patents should generally get longer-term patents more easily than software, IMO. Of course, software patents are inherently evil, but I think we can give that battle up as lost.
2 - What happens to the little guy who now can't afford the 20 year patent? Is he somehow less deserving than the multi-national that could afford this no matter what price you set? Multiple times over no less.
Okay, the inventor could apply for an extension. With the initial patent granted, and royalty agreements starting to pay, there will be more incentive for prior art to come out of the woodwork.
When a patent is applied for, the applicant should specify how long they want the patent to be granted for. The patent office should charge accordingly, and spend a proportionate amount of time and effort analysing the patent for valididy. That way, you can get your dumb patent for a year reasonably quickly, but getting a 20-year patent is going to have to be well-justified and watertight.
(Read Cliff Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg to see what he had to go through for this to happen)
It's sitting on my desk right now, and I've tried to persuade colleagues to read it.
The reason black hats are often caught is through months (sometimes years) of systematic research and tracking their activities
Sure, I agree with you, but do the lawmakers know this and want to establish a precedent for "cracking" being ok? I concede the point, but we need to make sure that the lawmakers know the difference. I don't think it's going to wash.
I just took the test (which I'd never heard about before) and came up "INFP". It says I'm also in a 1% category, but that doesn't mean much because with 16 categories, that gives an average of 6% per category. 10% of the population could be in 1% categories.
I'd like to see a slashdot reader survey, something a little more structured than the polls. No doubt there would be "privacy! data mining!" complaints, though.
Also, I just noticed that you don't read comments under 1
I out interpret I just read all the comments at 1 or above as "I read, just now, all the comments that are at 1 or above" rather than a broader statement of his reading habits.
The dilemma is that if the law goes soft on crackers, then black-hat crackers caught while attempting to crack a system can just say "I'm a white hat! I was going to tell them!". Law makers and enforcers tend to err on the side of caution.
I`d like to see them `require` Linux (and other open source) drivers to respect arbitrary, foreign, protection systems.
I wouldn't! That would be awful! Or, do you mean, they couldn't? Can you buy a video recorder that doesn't have macrovision circuitry? They managed to enforce that one. Sure, there are ways around it, I've got a macrovision stripper box that sitd between my DVD and VCR, but 99% of the population don't even know what macrovision is, all they know is that their taped DVDs look awful. The FAA, FDA, RIA, or whatever the're called could prevent Red Hat et. al. from shipping drivers that bypass SDMI, and could prevent foreign distros from being legitimitely sold in the US. Europe, Japan, Australia etc. will all fall in line, we're all required to impliment DMCA-like (anti-circumvention) legislature by international convention.
Does anyone have some direct evidence that the patent is invalid?
I'm not an e-commerce expert, but from what I do know I'm 100% certain that if I went to any competent CGI programmer who hasn't heard of the Amazon patented system and said make me a "one click shoping" web site, they'd have it on the back of a cigarette packet within 5 minutes, and prototyped in another half hour. That leads me to believe that Amazon have patented an idea, not an invention, and also that it is "obvious to someone well versed in the state of the art", or whatever the wording is.
Recompressing the song will then mean that you can't play it back on equipment that needs that hash
No, the watermark is a "do not record this" signal that home audio equipment (probably including sound cards) will be required to respect. The watermark will be designed to survive recompression, so that your Ogg Vorbis file is still not recordable by an SDMI-compliant Sony Minidisk recorder, because the watermark is still there. AIUI, SDMI players will play and record music with no watermark, because it has to be usable for home recording, which won't be watermarked unless the kit has "add watermark" functionality.
Re-read my post - that is what Socratic irony is. Feigning ignorance in asking someone to answer a question, in order to demonstrate that they don't know the answer. I really like the hemlock definition, though!
Some kinds of watermark cannot be detected (that is, distinguished from noise-like signals) without knowing the right key. Some watermarks are very difficult to remove without knowing the right key.
The SDMI player is going to have to recognise it, so all you need to do is pull it apart and see how it works, like the DeCSS chaps did.
Defending someone else's right to say things which you personally find distasteful (to whatever degree) is a far more difficult thing as a person to do.
To give a soundbite to your sentiment, "It's easier to fight for your principles than to live up to them" - Alfred Adler.
It's a slippery slope that no one wants to go down.
Well, actually, lots of people do want to go down that road!
Seriously, the poster mentioned drug-making material - if you think it should be possible to remove drug-making information, then how would you stop the Islamic nations from removing any tobacco growing or brewery related information from freenet?
For instance, connect your soundcard "out" to your "in" and record--there's no getting around that
I think they're planning an inaudible watermark that the recording device can still detect. SDMI-aware sound cards would refuse to record watermarked audio.
I'd imagine it means bypassing an obvious access mechanism, like trying out passwords on default accounts, sending obvious buffer overrun packets, and other known and/or obvious script kiddie attacks. I can't imagine anyone getting done for a innocuous sendmail or http packet. Not even in Michigan.
Slashdot Mirror
Found this ;he re:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Interception and the rights of individuals
Financial Times, Aug 8, 2000, 174 words
>From Patricia Hewitt MP.
Sir, Your article "Companies snooping on staff face curbs" (August 3)
suggests that the draft lawful business practice regulations, currently the
subject of a public consultation, will entail a "legal clampdown" on
companies' monitoring of electronic communications by "bringing private
business under the scope of interception laws for the first time".
This is not accurate. The regulations will actually reduce the burden on
business by making exceptions to the general rules on interception set out
in the regulation of investigatory powers act. They will permit businesses
to intercept communications on their own systems without consent for certain
purposes such as providing evidence of a commercial transaction, preventing
crime, or protecting a network against viruses or hackers. The regulations
will therefore help legitimate business practices regarding interception
while at the same time providing a high degree of protection to individuals'
civil rights.
The regulations have been drafted in the light of informal discussions with
business and other interests. We have already taken on board some of their
suggestions and I will take careful account of any further ones.
Patricia Hewitt, Minister for e-commerce, Dept of Trade and Industry, 1
Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET
That's part of the answer. However, if you believe that the way they do business is wrong, then also tell your democratically elected representative, or their political rival of your choice, how you feel. I wrote a letter to my MP, and got a reply through him from Patricia Hewitt. Cool!
Do staff have any different posting priviliges to us mere mortals? If the poster of a story wants to say something in the comments section, I believe it shouldn't be possible for someone with more than one account, or a cadre of Katzhaters, to mod them down to -1. /. crew's comments should be immune to moderation down below the original level that the post was made at, and should always have "Post at 2" option.
That's what I intended. Traditional (non-software) patents should generally get longer-term patents more easily than software, IMO. Of course, software patents are inherently evil, but I think we can give that battle up as lost.
When a patent is applied for, the applicant should specify how long they want the patent to be granted for. The patent office should charge accordingly, and spend a proportionate amount of time and effort analysing the patent for valididy. That way, you can get your dumb patent for a year reasonably quickly, but getting a 20-year patent is going to have to be well-justified and watertight.
I just took the test (which I'd never heard about before) and came up "INFP". It says I'm also in a 1% category, but that doesn't mean much because with 16 categories, that gives an average of 6% per category. 10% of the population could be in 1% categories.
I'd like to see a slashdot reader survey, something a little more structured than the polls. No doubt there would be "privacy! data mining!" complaints, though.
The dilemma is that if the law goes soft on crackers, then black-hat crackers caught while attempting to crack a system can just say "I'm a white hat! I was going to tell them!". Law makers and enforcers tend to err on the side of caution.
BotF is a great game! Or is the story only referring to FPS games?
Re-read my post - that is what Socratic irony is. Feigning ignorance in asking someone to answer a question, in order to demonstrate that they don't know the answer. I really like the hemlock definition, though!
I was never entirely sure what the difference between irony and socratic irony is... could you explain it for me?
Seriously, the poster mentioned drug-making material - if you think it should be possible to remove drug-making information, then how would you stop the Islamic nations from removing any tobacco growing or brewery related information from freenet?
I'd imagine it means bypassing an obvious access mechanism, like trying out passwords on default accounts, sending obvious buffer overrun packets, and other known and/or obvious script kiddie attacks. I can't imagine anyone getting done for a innocuous sendmail or http packet. Not even in Michigan.