Telephony Standards and how to detect them on IP networks...
1) H.323 - If a gatekeeper exists on your network, you are required (by the spec) to use it. The gatekeeper lets you know how much bandwidth your are allowed to have, and finds the other endpoint for you. It will even tell you if you aren't allowed to keep the connection up any more. Easy detection and billing. The team I'm part of has already written a billing system for H.323. (supporting real-time prepaid accounts):)
2) SIP - In order to setup a connection, you have to find them. SIP is a lot like HTTP, and it talks on standard ports to nameserver-type systems. Again, easy to find, track and bill. It even supports proxying, and you should use the proxy. Again, easy to track and bill.
3) MGCP - I have no idea how this one works.:)
Everyone seems to forget that while the traffic is relatively anonymous right now, it doesn't have to be. ISPs are already running smart routers and gateways with transparent proxying, and it is a very small step from there to billing for the service. My ISP bills me for traffic, and differentiates the traffic in terms of cost based on destination (local/national/international).
You could always use some winnowing/chaffing method, but as soon as it becomes prevalent enough, it is detectable, simply because it has to be useable by enough people.
You physically can't. You can't even do it if you forget about the physical link. Even if you are using IP for long-distance, someone still has to pay exchange fees to get it to a regular phone. The FCC has already declared that IP voice traffic changes are to be treated/tariffed as inter-LATA (long-distance) calls. In other words, your ISP, or the other ISP will have to pay $$ to connect the call to a regular phone, and you had better bet that they will pass that charge back to you.
Also, if an appreciable portion of the traffic starts to be carried over pure IP, the FCC will force ISPs and equivalent carriers to charge for the service, even going so far as to tariff all data calls as inter-LATA (billable).
It may seem incredibly strange, but prices are regulated up as much as down in the telecoms market. This prevents the big companies, like ATT, MCI, AOL/TimeWarner from undercutting veryone else overnight and putting everyone out of work. This would also prevent anyone else from entering the market.
Yes, yes, voice is data just like everything else. But, would you really trust your 911 calls to your cable modem and the Internet in general?
And before anyone starts ranting about routing around the regulations and changing ports/etc. How would you find the person at the other end? You want to pick up the phone and dial. You can't do that without looking up the other person and initiating a connection. The connection initiation can be easily detected, simply because the software has to meet a standard in order to be usefull. Most high speed network providers already run hidden http proxies, do you think that they couldn't run H.323 gatekeepers if required by the FCC?
The SlashBoxes appear to be out of date, or at least the I Cringely, and Advogato ones are.
Otherwise, good job guys.
Jason Pollock.
New Features? Working well with existing projects?
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KDevelop 1.2 is out
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· Score: 1
I looked at kDevelop when it was 1.0/1.1. At that time the biggest reason that I didn't use it was that it was not possible to have source files in your project, and leave them "in place". It always forced you to move files around, and didn't play well with existing development projects.
For example, I want to use it at work, but we have our own directory structure, a build system that works well for us, etc... But since you have to move files into a kDevelop project, I can't use it to work on existing projects.
Has this changed? Until this happens, I will be sticking to ctags and emacs.:)
Well, I toughed it out and played the complete demo. So here's my review.
Up front, let me say that I had very high expectations. Romero has always said that "Design is King", so I while I wasn't expecting cool engine toys galore, I was expecting a good, solid story with lots of environmental interaction. I was also expecting to see what took them almost four years to produce (Romero quit/was fired from id in Aug, 96). Even more, what the extra 2.5 years over the initial "Christmas 97" release date meant.
The first time I started, I didn't notice the gun sitting right there at the start, it was so dark. Eventually I figured out that I must be missing something (after having bashed frogs and gators and mosies with the glove for 10 minutes. I restarted the game, and found the weapon (after cranking brightness to 129 and the other brightness value to 3. The game was more enjoyable after that.
The levels design and monsters were very remeniscient of Hexen II, another game I didn't purchase. I must say though, Hexen II wasn't this linear. At no point are you going to have to find something, everything is pretty obvious. It even includes my pet peeve, switches the size of your head, and everything is a huge pull switch.
I was expecting more interactivity from the NPCs as well, but they seem to be only good for target practice.
The monster AI is also pretty disappointing. They kept getting stuck, and considering that there was never more than 5 on the screen at once, I don't understand why they weren't smarter.
The "Greek" level was even less interactive. Most of the time, it was monsters jumping out of the walls at you. I believe I pushed a single switch in the whole level. Not much in terms of interactive there.
Finally the medieval level. The sidekicks were interesting, but generally useless. While better able to follow you, they still managed to frequently get confused. I would expect them to be able to follow me if they are core to the game. The monsters were just as annoying as the other levels. That worm especially. The werewolves, while interesting in that they could disappear and re-appear, didn't add a heck of a lot.
Perhaps some of this could have been saved if the demo had flowed more. But it all seemed disjointed. You really didn't get much feeling for what the story was about or what you are attempting to achieve. Perhaps if it had been the first couple levels in the whole game, that may have been more interesting.
In conclusion, I won't be buying this game, I'm going for SOF instead. It would have been a good game if it had come out a couple of years ago, (say around Hexen II, Heretic II, etc) but after all of the hype, Daikatana can't help but disappoint.
O.k. People tend to have several misconceptions about how the New Zealand market is working. I'll go through them 1 by 1.
0867, or tolled data calls. Telecom did this because of overloading in the local loop. They also did it because of the $$ they were having to pay to Clear to terminate data calls to Clear's ISP service. The agreement works like this:
You pay me 4c/minute for every call to someone on my network and vice-versa. Now, Clear doesn't go and offer much in the way of local service, so most of their calls are incoming. Lotsa cash. US ISP's turned CLECs are doing the same thing. This _really_ pisses off the incumbent carriers. That's why everyone wants to toll data calls differently. Especially in the US. Clear pulled one over on Telecom, and they made a lot of cash.
However, I agree that Telecom shouldn't have brought in a fee to make the switch. 0867 service is actually saving telecom money, so they should have passed the savings on, instead of raising the other fees.
Long distance competition:
Everyone and thier uncle offers long-distance. IHUG (an ISP) does over their backbone and sattelite data connections to the US. Clear does. Saturn does. There are many more small companies that do also.
Local competition:
Saturn has been rolling out in Wellington for a while now. They offer both cable-tv, cable-internet, and local phone. Telstra recently bought in to them (because Telecom bought into AAPT, an Australian carrier), so they will be ramping up and rolling out across the country soon.
The New Zealand phone market isn't doing bad for competition. There are some big problems though. The lack of a viable number portability (NP) solution would really open up the market, since local businesses wouldn't have to change their number in order to change carriers. However, as has been demonstrated in the US/Canada, this will never happen without legislation. If NP had been in the network, the move to an 0867 network could have been done without any of the customers really knowing about it, or caring.
People keep talking about keeping the wiring public property. However, all this does is result in the wiring not being upgraded as new technologies arrive. ADSL only works on good cabling, and only for short distances. However, if the wiring were public, there would be no incentive to upgrade to a fibre network to increase the distance/bandwidth of ADSL services. I have been told that this is what is happening in the UK. Since carriers don't own the local wiring, there is no incentive to invest money in it, or try new services. It is easier to sit back and earn the per-minute charges that everyone pays for local calls.
However, all this does is add a stage. Most countries already have this, I have friends who have framed Canadian dollar bills on their walls because they were granted patents. The company they worked for paid them CDN$1 for the patent. It was filed on the behalf of the individual, who then turned around and sold it to the company - British Telecom in this case.
Limiting who can apply for patents has no effect who ends up with the patents, just adds more paperwork and $$ for the lawyers.
This is a bad argument. The judge wasn't asked if the patches were derivative works, just if customers were allowed to apply the patches and create their own derivative work. I would expect that the right to apply the patch comes under the "fair-use" clauses. The right to create and distribute the patch is an entirely seperate issue.
Anyone know more about the case? All I saw from reading the WWW page was that the author took a narrowly specified decision about fair use and said it also applied to the distribution of the patch. If this is really what was said in the ruling is the crux of the question being asked today.
As I think about the problem, console games are never patched themselves, so everyone has the same version. Therefore, there is no need to include any original source in the patch, and the patch can be developed using clean room methods. Since reverse engineering is still legal (barely), Galoob gets away with the development and distribution. So, Nintendo tries to stop them by attempting to get a ruling saying that it was illegal to use, so it shouldn't be shipped.
However, Galoob's methods wouldn't work for GPL source patches, since they would include portions of the original source code, becoming derivative works, unless the patch was re-done in clean room fashion for each new release.
Nothing is ever free. Digital media reduce prices close to the marginal cost of delivery, never free. The only thing supporting napster is that the clients don't have to pay for their internet connection (or don't realize that they do).
Here in NZ, it costs me US$0.17 per megabyte of traffic internationally. Does that mean I don't download anything? Nope, because I have prepaid 512megs/month. Do I use napster? Nope, because I can't afford the traffic charges.
If universities started putting metered internet connections in the dorms, and made students pay for the traffic they are generating, then we might find out what the true values of the music/files/warez are. As it stands we have no idea because the distribution of the music is subsidized.
Did anyone else notice that it was an inside job? They didn't crack into the system from outside, they used (I'm guessing here, from the statement that one of them re-enabled the other's account), their administrator access to the systems to obtain the password file.
I think this just goes to show, that most problems are not external hackers, but disgruntled employees.
Jason Pollock
Network Topologies and sniffers
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SSH v. SRP
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· Score: 1
The university I went to had a problem with people attaching sniffer's to ports, so they went to a completely switched ethernet network topology for all of the lab terminals. Problem solved.:)
Security always comes down to trust. Do you trust the guy at the other end of the line or not? Can you really not trust ISP networks?
For example, if I am on a cable-modem, and my target is on the same cable-modem network, isn't the data already encrypted end-to-end?
If people had taken the time (perhaps their filtering is too selective?) they would have noticed that the response I made was to a portion of a post referring to Kevin Mitnick. It was especially discussing the idea that the poster thought that it was unfair to refer to Kevin as a thief.
I believe this becomes obvious later on when I talk about the subject of the discussion being in jail for five years. As far as I know, Jon has only been in for interrogation once, and that was for less than a day. Although from all accounts this interrogation was hardly pleasant.
I will be sure that I don't make use of too many pronouns in the future.:)
For the record, I feel that it was perfectly correct to reverse-engineer the CSS encryption method. However, many countries have provisions in their copyright legislation stating that creating something that can be used to avoid copy protection is illegal. This is what the RIAA attempted to get Diamond with. It is my belief that individuals should be prosecuted for individual acts of theft, and that people should be able to make use of their properly obtained DVDs/CDs/etc however they desire.
If it wasn't theft, what was it? He broke into other people's systems and downloaded software. Whether or not he did it for profit or for glory, or whatever is irrelevant. He stole from the company by making a copy.
The determination of the size of the damages was (in my opinion) skewed, but he did steal something. Even if it was only theft of computer time.
I don't, however, like the fact that it took so long for him to make it through the legal system. I don't like it when a government can lock someone up without trial for 5 years.
So, you are saying that the primary purpose of school is to teach students how to behave in a social setting with their peers. As such, we should advance them with their peers.
I believe this is what results in people graduating from high-school unable to read.
True, socialization is a primary reason for a school's existence. It does IMO, result in a student that is better able to integrate into society. However, if someone is not able to perform at a specific skill level, they should not be advanced based on the belief that the point of school is to teach them how to associate with others.
It is also true that the ability to "spot garbage" is important. This skill is the ability to learn. Yes this is important, and it is one that teachers should teach. However, it is a hard skill to teach, especially to bright students who do not have to make a large effort to learn the existing material. But, while the ability to learn is important, it doesn't make up for not knowing basic information about the world you live in. Everyone should be able to read, write and do basic algebra. Sadly this is not the case.
I was shocked to hear the lines people were spewing about E=MC^2 when Einstein was named person of the century. Come on, all you have to do is think a little. Even when they played Einstein stating, VERY clearly, what the equation meant, "A small amount of mass contains a large amount of energy", the announcer announced, "It is still too hard for me to understand". Personally I think that is someone who was advanced with her peers.
WalMart started this whole thing by suing Amazon for stealing it's patented business model.
Now, with that precedent set, of course Amazon is going to both patent as much as possible, and stick it to it's competitors. It has been demonstrated to them that this is a valid form of competition, and a good way to raise the barriers to entry in their market.
The idea of one-click shopping is perfectly patentable. If no one else was doing it that way, then they have every right to both patent it and enforce the patent.
As an aside, the computer players of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" show an interesting comparison. I believe that one of the more successfull programs was one that played nice until it got screwed, and then got vindictive until it got even. Hmmm, seems familiar.
In Canada, domain name speculation is avoided since every legal entity can have only 1 domain name. And it has to be related to a registered trademark/corporate name.
So, I had to register Pollock Inc (JJA) in order to get pollock.ca. Coke can have Coke.ca or CocaCola.ca, but not both. Seems to work well so far.
I just read the email thread, and there is nothing in there that has me concerned. All it is is standard corporate discussions on how to approach a competitor. They were even actively seeking to partner with TRG. Everyone seemed to consider the lawyers done with. However, it seems that Jeff doesn't see it that way, thus the post.
Many open-source companies use the low-end free model. Look at Kaffee, and Sendmail. You own the source, you can set the license. I have no problem with them implementing a subset in an open-source project. If the license is right, and Bruce Perens seems to say it is OpenSource compliant, you can always fork.
As for Novell wanting to control the market for their linux apps. I say good luck and more power too them. If it is open-source, we all win anyways, so what do I care if people want to pay money to get a newer release of NDS. You are always free to add the features to the current release.
Did anyone else notice that the plates on the "alien" skull were in the same orientation to the human skull? If it were an alien, I would expect to see differences in the alignment/count of the joints.
I remember reading that in order to get the signal to go far enough to be usefull, they have to dope the fiber at intervals. Wouldn't this equate to a re-transmission? So the problem is getting an undoped fibre long enough to be usefull, and cheap enough to be affordable.
Also, would Nortel's newly announced optical switch work? It uses refraction to switch the signals between fibers.
However, it is perfectly fine for the citizens of Australia to decide what content they wish to allow down their internet connections from overseas. They aren't restricting your right to speak, the majority are just choosing to ignore you. Perfectly right and proper, and most definitely in keeping with free speech. You have the right to speak, just not the right to force people to listen.
Several countries use local content legislation to provide funds for local culture. This isn't seen as a restriction on speech, so why should saying "We don't want to see X?"
The way I read the proposal says that they have to offer it to their customers, not that they have to use it. You are still able to "yell" about porn as much as you want (maybe not on Aussie sites), you're just more likely to be ignored.
It most definitely isn't an act of war. If it were an act of war to limit the presentation of speech by people not in the country, everyone would be at war with:
Canada - Canadian content broadcast legislation, Kiddie porn laws. USA - CDA and Cuban property appropriation laws. Australia - Content legislation. China, North Korea, and many many others.
I feel it is perfectly acceptable for people to decide what they do and do not want to see. What isn't acceptable is attempting to force your views on other people. That you feel they are correct/proper is generally irrelevent.
Telecom NZ has several solutions other than the basic "modem tax". They after all made NZ$900m (about US$500 - on 3m people) last year, so they should be able to afford some capital expenditures. If they had proper telephone switches and a real network, that supported open IN networking standards like ETSI|ITU INAP even ISUP, they wouldn't be in so much trouble. As it is, they are locked into a closed solution from NEC. They haven't been seen to be upgrading their network in a long time, and it isn't changing.
The inter-switch trunking problem is _very_ easy to solve. Telco's in the US have been doing it for a while now. Nortel, Ascend and other hardware providers have had solutions for years (well Nortel has had one for 3? years, Ascend coming up to 1), the only problem is the short-sightedness of Telecom network managers when they purchased the closed system many years ago....
The best part of many of the solutions, is that not only does it relieve congestion on the inter-exchange trunks, it actually gives the end user better performance! Also, you don't have to charge more for the service, since it pays for itself in cost savings. Obviously this is just another cash grab from a monopoly Telco looking for some way to prop up it's stock.
Thankfully, I'm a Saturn subscriber, a local loop competitor in Wellington.
Canada does this. They have very strict rules on who gets what type of domain name, and how many you can have. An organization can only have ONE domain name, and it either has to relate to their company name, or a registered trademark. So now, for example, you can have either coke.ca or coca-cola.ca, but not both. You wouldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through to get pollock.ca!
Slashdot Mirror
Telephony Standards and how to detect them on IP networks...
:)
:)
1) H.323 - If a gatekeeper exists on your network, you are required (by the spec) to use it. The gatekeeper lets you know how much bandwidth your are allowed to have, and finds the other endpoint for you. It will even tell you if you aren't allowed to keep the connection up any more. Easy detection and billing. The team I'm part of has already written a billing system for H.323. (supporting real-time prepaid accounts)
2) SIP - In order to setup a connection, you have to find them. SIP is a lot like HTTP, and it talks on standard ports to nameserver-type systems. Again, easy to find, track and bill. It even supports proxying, and you should use the proxy. Again, easy to track and bill.
3) MGCP - I have no idea how this one works.
Everyone seems to forget that while the traffic is relatively anonymous right now, it doesn't have to be. ISPs are already running smart routers and gateways with transparent proxying, and it is a very small step from there to billing for the service. My ISP bills me for traffic, and differentiates the traffic in terms of cost based on destination (local/national/international).
You could always use some winnowing/chaffing method, but as soon as it becomes prevalent enough, it is detectable, simply because it has to be useable by enough people.
Jason Pollock
You physically can't. You can't even do it if you forget about the physical link. Even if you are using IP for long-distance, someone still has to pay exchange fees to get it to a regular phone. The FCC has already declared that IP voice traffic changes are to be treated/tariffed as inter-LATA (long-distance) calls. In other words, your ISP, or the other ISP will have to pay $$ to connect the call to a regular phone, and you had better bet that they will pass that charge back to you.
Also, if an appreciable portion of the traffic starts to be carried over pure IP, the FCC will force ISPs and equivalent carriers to charge for the service, even going so far as to tariff all data calls as inter-LATA (billable).
It may seem incredibly strange, but prices are regulated up as much as down in the telecoms market. This prevents the big companies, like ATT, MCI, AOL/TimeWarner from undercutting veryone else overnight and putting everyone out of work. This would also prevent anyone else from entering the market.
Yes, yes, voice is data just like everything else. But, would you really trust your 911 calls to your cable modem and the Internet in general?
And before anyone starts ranting about routing around the regulations and changing ports/etc. How would you find the person at the other end? You want to pick up the phone and dial. You can't do that without looking up the other person and initiating a connection. The connection initiation can be easily detected, simply because the software has to meet a standard in order to be usefull. Most high speed network providers already run hidden http proxies, do you think that they couldn't run H.323 gatekeepers if required by the FCC?
Jason Pollock
The SlashBoxes appear to be out of date, or at least the I Cringely, and Advogato ones are.
Otherwise, good job guys.
Jason Pollock.
I looked at kDevelop when it was 1.0/1.1. At that time the biggest reason that I didn't use it was that it was not possible to have source files in your project, and leave them "in place". It always forced you to move files around, and didn't play well with existing development projects.
For example, I want to use it at work, but we have our own directory structure, a build system that works well for us, etc... But since you have to move files into a kDevelop project, I can't use it to work on existing projects.
Has this changed? Until this happens, I will be sticking to ctags and emacs. :)
Well, I toughed it out and played the complete demo. So here's my review.
Up front, let me say that I had very high expectations. Romero has always said that "Design is King", so I while I wasn't expecting cool engine toys galore, I was expecting a good, solid story with lots of environmental interaction. I was also expecting to see what took them almost four years to produce (Romero quit/was fired from id in Aug, 96). Even more, what the extra 2.5 years over the initial "Christmas 97" release date meant.
The first time I started, I didn't notice the gun sitting right there at the start, it was so dark. Eventually I figured out that I must be missing something (after having bashed frogs and gators and mosies with the glove for 10 minutes. I restarted the game, and found the weapon (after cranking brightness to 129 and the other brightness value to 3. The game was more enjoyable after that.
The levels design and monsters were very remeniscient of Hexen II, another game I didn't purchase. I must say though, Hexen II wasn't this linear. At no point are you going to have to find something, everything is pretty obvious. It even includes my pet peeve, switches the size of your head, and everything is a huge pull switch.
I was expecting more interactivity from the NPCs as well, but they seem to be only good for target practice.
The monster AI is also pretty disappointing. They kept getting stuck, and considering that there was never more than 5 on the screen at once, I don't understand why they weren't smarter.
The "Greek" level was even less interactive. Most of the time, it was monsters jumping out of the walls at you. I believe I pushed a single switch in the whole level. Not much in terms of interactive there.
Finally the medieval level. The sidekicks were interesting, but generally useless. While better able to follow you, they still managed to frequently get confused. I would expect them to be able to follow me if they are core to the game. The monsters were just as annoying as the other levels. That worm especially. The werewolves, while interesting in that they could disappear and re-appear, didn't add a heck of a lot.
Perhaps some of this could have been saved if the demo had flowed more. But it all seemed disjointed. You really didn't get much feeling for what the story was about or what you are attempting to achieve. Perhaps if it had been the first couple levels in the whole game, that may have been more interesting.
In conclusion, I won't be buying this game, I'm going for SOF instead. It would have been a good game if it had come out a couple of years ago, (say around Hexen II, Heretic II, etc) but after all of the hype, Daikatana can't help but disappoint.
O.k. People tend to have several misconceptions about how the New Zealand market is working. I'll go through them 1 by 1.
0867, or tolled data calls. Telecom did this because of overloading in the local loop. They also did it because of the $$ they were having to pay to Clear to terminate data calls to Clear's ISP service. The agreement works like this:
You pay me 4c/minute for every call to someone on my network and vice-versa. Now, Clear doesn't go and offer much in the way of local service, so most of their calls are incoming. Lotsa cash. US ISP's turned CLECs are doing the same thing. This _really_ pisses off the incumbent carriers. That's why everyone wants to toll data calls differently. Especially in the US. Clear pulled one over on Telecom, and they made a lot of cash.
However, I agree that Telecom shouldn't have brought in a fee to make the switch. 0867 service is actually saving telecom money, so they should have passed the savings on, instead of raising the other fees.
Long distance competition:
Everyone and thier uncle offers long-distance. IHUG (an ISP) does over their backbone and sattelite data connections to the US. Clear does. Saturn does. There are many more small companies that do also.
Local competition:
Saturn has been rolling out in Wellington for a while now. They offer both cable-tv, cable-internet, and local phone. Telstra recently bought in to them (because Telecom bought into AAPT, an Australian carrier), so they will be ramping up and rolling out across the country soon.
The New Zealand phone market isn't doing bad for competition. There are some big problems though. The lack of a viable number portability (NP) solution would really open up the market, since local businesses wouldn't have to change their number in order to change carriers. However, as has been demonstrated in the US/Canada, this will never happen without legislation. If NP had been in the network, the move to an 0867 network could have been done without any of the customers really knowing about it, or caring.
People keep talking about keeping the wiring public property. However, all this does is result in the wiring not being upgraded as new technologies arrive. ADSL only works on good cabling, and only for short distances. However, if the wiring were public, there would be no incentive to upgrade to a fibre network to increase the distance/bandwidth of ADSL services. I have been told that this is what is happening in the UK. Since carriers don't own the local wiring, there is no incentive to invest money in it, or try new services. It is easier to sit back and earn the per-minute charges that everyone pays for local calls.
Jason Pollock
Of course this doesn't work for the slashdot ads.
However, all this does is add a stage. Most countries already have this, I have friends who have framed Canadian dollar bills on their walls because they were granted patents. The company they worked for paid them CDN$1 for the patent. It was filed on the behalf of the individual, who then turned around and sold it to the company - British Telecom in this case.
Limiting who can apply for patents has no effect who ends up with the patents, just adds more paperwork and $$ for the lawyers.
Jason PollockThis is a bad argument. The judge wasn't asked if the patches were derivative works, just if customers were allowed to apply the patches and create their own derivative work. I would expect that the right to apply the patch comes under the "fair-use" clauses. The right to create and distribute the patch is an entirely seperate issue.
Anyone know more about the case? All I saw from reading the WWW page was that the author took a narrowly specified decision about fair use and said it also applied to the distribution of the patch. If this is really what was said in the ruling is the crux of the question being asked today.
As I think about the problem, console games are never patched themselves, so everyone has the same version. Therefore, there is no need to include any original source in the patch, and the patch can be developed using clean room methods. Since reverse engineering is still legal (barely), Galoob gets away with the development and distribution. So, Nintendo tries to stop them by attempting to get a ruling saying that it was illegal to use, so it shouldn't be shipped.
However, Galoob's methods wouldn't work for GPL source patches, since they would include portions of the original source code, becoming derivative works, unless the patch was re-done in clean room fashion for each new release.
Jason Pollock> Everything is free.
Nothing is ever free. Digital media reduce prices close to the marginal cost of delivery, never free. The only thing supporting napster is that the clients don't have to pay for their internet connection (or don't realize that they do).
Here in NZ, it costs me US$0.17 per megabyte of traffic internationally. Does that mean I don't download anything? Nope, because I have prepaid 512megs/month. Do I use napster? Nope, because I can't afford the traffic charges.
If universities started putting metered internet connections in the dorms, and made students pay for the traffic they are generating, then we might find out what the true values of the music/files/warez are. As it stands we have no idea because the distribution of the music is subsidized.
Jason PollockDid anyone else notice that it was an inside job? They didn't crack into the system from outside, they used (I'm guessing here, from the statement that one of them re-enabled the other's account), their administrator access to the systems to obtain the password file.
I think this just goes to show, that most problems are not external hackers, but disgruntled employees.
Jason Pollock
The university I went to had a problem with people attaching sniffer's to ports, so they went to a completely switched ethernet network topology for all of the lab terminals. Problem solved. :)
Security always comes down to trust. Do you trust the guy at the other end of the line or not? Can you really not trust ISP networks?
For example, if I am on a cable-modem, and my target is on the same cable-modem network, isn't the data already encrypted end-to-end?
JasonPerhaps people misunderstood my post.
If people had taken the time (perhaps their filtering is too selective?) they would have noticed that the response I made was to a portion of a post referring to Kevin Mitnick. It was especially discussing the idea that the poster thought that it was unfair to refer to Kevin as a thief.
I believe this becomes obvious later on when I talk about the subject of the discussion being in jail for five years. As far as I know, Jon has only been in for interrogation once, and that was for less than a day. Although from all accounts this interrogation was hardly pleasant.
I will be sure that I don't make use of too many pronouns in the future. :)
For the record, I feel that it was perfectly correct to reverse-engineer the CSS encryption method. However, many countries have provisions in their copyright legislation stating that creating something that can be used to avoid copy protection is illegal. This is what the RIAA attempted to get Diamond with. It is my belief that individuals should be prosecuted for individual acts of theft, and that people should be able to make use of their properly obtained DVDs/CDs/etc however they desire.
Jason PollockIf it wasn't theft, what was it? He broke into other people's systems and downloaded software. Whether or not he did it for profit or for glory, or whatever is irrelevant. He stole from the company by making a copy.
The determination of the size of the damages was (in my opinion) skewed, but he did steal something. Even if it was only theft of computer time.
I don't, however, like the fact that it took so long for him to make it through the legal system. I don't like it when a government can lock someone up without trial for 5 years.
Jason PollockSo, you are saying that the primary purpose of school is to teach students how to behave in a social setting with their peers. As such, we should advance them with their peers.
I believe this is what results in people graduating from high-school unable to read.
True, socialization is a primary reason for a school's existence. It does IMO, result in a student that is better able to integrate into society. However, if someone is not able to perform at a specific skill level, they should not be advanced based on the belief that the point of school is to teach them how to associate with others.
It is also true that the ability to "spot garbage" is important. This skill is the ability to learn. Yes this is important, and it is one that teachers should teach. However, it is a hard skill to teach, especially to bright students who do not have to make a large effort to learn the existing material. But, while the ability to learn is important, it doesn't make up for not knowing basic information about the world you live in. Everyone should be able to read, write and do basic algebra. Sadly this is not the case.
I was shocked to hear the lines people were spewing about E=MC^2 when Einstein was named person of the century. Come on, all you have to do is think a little. Even when they played Einstein stating, VERY clearly, what the equation meant, "A small amount of mass contains a large amount of energy", the announcer announced, "It is still too hard for me to understand". Personally I think that is someone who was advanced with her peers.
Jason PollockWalMart started this whole thing by suing Amazon for stealing it's patented business model.
Now, with that precedent set, of course Amazon is going to both patent as much as possible, and stick it to it's competitors. It has been demonstrated to them that this is a valid form of competition, and a good way to raise the barriers to entry in their market.
The idea of one-click shopping is perfectly patentable. If no one else was doing it that way, then they have every right to both patent it and enforce the patent.
As an aside, the computer players of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" show an interesting comparison. I believe that one of the more successfull programs was one that played nice until it got screwed, and then got vindictive until it got even. Hmmm, seems familiar.
Jason PollockIn Canada, domain name speculation is avoided
since every legal entity can have only 1 domain
name. And it has to be related to a registered
trademark/corporate name.
So, I had to register Pollock Inc (JJA) in
order to get pollock.ca. Coke can have Coke.ca
or CocaCola.ca, but not both. Seems to work
well so far.
I just read the email thread, and there is nothing in there that has me concerned. All it is is standard corporate discussions on how to approach a competitor. They were even actively seeking to partner with TRG. Everyone seemed to consider the lawyers done with. However, it seems that Jeff doesn't see it that way, thus the post.
Many open-source companies use the low-end free model. Look at Kaffee, and Sendmail. You own the source, you can set the license. I have no problem with them implementing a subset in an open-source project. If the license is right, and Bruce Perens seems to say it is OpenSource compliant, you can always fork.
As for Novell wanting to control the market for their linux apps. I say good luck and more power too them. If it is open-source, we all win anyways, so what do I care if people want to pay money to get a newer release of NDS. You are always free to add the features to the current release.
Jason PollockDid anyone else notice that the plates on the "alien" skull were in the same orientation to the human skull? If it were an alien, I would expect to see differences in the alignment/count of the joints.
Jason PollockI remember reading that in order to get the signal to go far enough to be usefull, they have to dope the fiber at intervals. Wouldn't this equate to a re-transmission? So the problem is getting an undoped fibre long enough to be usefull, and cheap enough to be affordable.
Also, would Nortel's newly announced optical switch work? It uses refraction to switch the signals between fibers.
Jason PollockTaber was hardly a massacre. One student dead, another shot. It could have been worse, but I would hardly call it a massacre.
If that is to be considered a massacre, there are hundreds of massacres occurring daily, in every major metropolitan city in the world.
It was regrettable, unpleasant, and sad.
A massacre it was not.
More to the point, I have yet to hear of any Canadian schools enacting draconian measures like their American counterparts.
Jason Pollock
I aggree that this is a bad law.
However, it is perfectly fine for the citizens
of Australia to decide what content they wish
to allow down their internet connections from
overseas. They aren't restricting your right
to speak, the majority are just choosing to
ignore you. Perfectly right and proper, and
most definitely in keeping with free speech.
You have the right to speak, just not the right
to force people to listen.
Several countries use local content legislation
to provide funds for local culture. This isn't
seen as a restriction on speech, so why should
saying "We don't want to see X?"
The way I read the proposal says that they have
to offer it to their customers, not that they
have to use it. You are still able to "yell"
about porn as much as you want (maybe not on
Aussie sites), you're just more likely to be ignored.
It most definitely isn't an act of war. If
it were an act of war to limit the presentation
of speech by people not in the country, everyone
would be at war with:
Canada - Canadian content broadcast legislation,
Kiddie porn laws.
USA - CDA and Cuban property appropriation laws.
Australia - Content legislation.
China, North Korea, and many many others.
I feel it is perfectly acceptable for people to
decide what they do and do not want to see. What
isn't acceptable is attempting to force your
views on other people. That you feel they are
correct/proper is generally irrelevent.
Jason
I distinctly remember downloading and playing :)
30 seconds worth of ZZ top's "Sharp Dressed Man"
onto my C-64 in 85. My 64 went everywhere
with me...
Jason
Telecom NZ has several solutions other than the basic "modem tax". They after all made NZ$900m (about US$500 - on 3m people) last year, so they should be able to afford some capital expenditures. If they had proper telephone switches and a real network, that supported open IN networking standards like ETSI|ITU INAP even ISUP, they wouldn't be in so much trouble. As it is, they are locked into a closed solution from NEC. They haven't been seen to be upgrading their network in a long time, and it isn't changing.
The inter-switch trunking problem is _very_ easy to solve. Telco's in the US have been doing it for a while now. Nortel, Ascend and other hardware providers have had solutions for years (well Nortel has had one for 3? years, Ascend coming up to 1), the only problem is the short-sightedness of Telecom network managers when they purchased the closed system many years ago....
The best part of many of the solutions, is that not only does it relieve congestion on the inter-exchange trunks, it actually gives the end user better performance! Also, you don't have to charge more for the service, since it pays for itself in cost savings. Obviously this is just another cash grab from a monopoly Telco looking for some way to prop up it's stock.
Thankfully, I'm a Saturn subscriber, a local loop competitor in Wellington.
JasonCanada does this. They have very strict
rules on who gets what type of domain name,
and how many you can have. An organization
can only have ONE domain name, and it either
has to relate to their company name, or
a registered trademark. So now, for example,
you can have either coke.ca or coca-cola.ca,
but not both. You wouldn't believe the hoops
I had to jump through to get pollock.ca!
Jason