802.11a or 802.11b _local only_ broadcasts?
on
P2P Streaming Radio
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Pirate radio stations tend to be low power, and serve their _local_ neighborhood. They can't be heard across the country, and thus they tend to avoid notice, so long as they don't interfere with other stations, and don't massively offend the listeners who discover them.
Since 802.11a and 802.11b traffic lives in parts of the spectrum where independent unlicensed transmissions are expected and are the norm, it might be possible to fly under the RIAA's radar with the following configuration:
- Set up a server with a 10.0.0.0/8 addressing space.
- DON'T hook it to the internet.
- Include a DHCP Server.
- Include a web page to describe what people have reached and allow links to software to listen.
- Include a submissions directory so anyone who wants to drop an MP3 or OGG on you, CAN.
- Play interesting music that YOU like, and even DJ the broadcast. (Voice changer might be desireable.)
Basically, all I'm doing is taking ideas presented in the movie "Pump Up the Volume" and thinking about how those ideas could be implemented using more modern methods. Done correctly, this could even be done with a mobile configuration in a vehicle.
'Cast Hard!;-)
Devices hostile to 3rd party peripherals
on
Analyzing Palladium
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· Score: 5, Interesting
From the article:
> For example, some mobile phone vendors use challenge-response > authentication to check that the phone battery is a genuine part > rather than a clone - in which case, the phone will refuse to recharge > it, and may even drain it as quickly as possible. Some > printers authenticate their toner cartridges electronically; > if you use a cheap substitute, the printer silently downgrades > from 1200 dpi to 300 dpi.
I wonder if there's a list of printers and/or phones that perform in such a manner. I'm not sure if the law would deem such behavior as "anti-competitive", but I as a customer certainly find it so, as well as offensive.
There's a phrase that could, and should be considered when examining a downturn of sales of _anything_ right now: "It's the economy, stupid."
There's a subset of the populace who don't have work (who DID during the dot.com bonanza). They aren't likely wasting any remaining saved income on non-essentials.
There's another subset of the populace who is just happy to have a job, and having recently experienced joblessness, or having watched people they know go through it, aren't real likely to be wasting any disposable income. They might even be saving for a rainy day.
1. If you jam radio frequencies, you deny yourself information you might otherwise be able to use to your advantage. Not real smart.
2. This does NOTHING to block visual signalling methods, or hard-line transmission methods that do not rely on radio frequency communication.
3. Remote control explosive devices that could be set off by the intended transmission could also be set off by the jamming, which is _also_ a transmission of considerable strength on multiple frequencies. Explosive crews use those "Turn off Transmitter next X miles" signs for a reason.
4. If you only block selective frequencies, you'll probably miss blocking transmissions in other alternate bands/frequencies you didn't expect "the forces of darkness" to use.
5. The methods they intend to use are akin to killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
Actually, I'm planning on mailing a letter to Blizzard and Vivendi Universal's staff congratulating them on Blizzard's new release of Warcraft III.
I'm also planning on saying that I had been really looking forward to continuing as a customer of theirs but that their unreasonable lawsuit against the makers of bnetd made me want to seek out products from competing companies that worked with their users rather than against them.
I don't care how much "Ooooo shiny!" factor it has, Blizzard and Vivendi Universal have annoyed me enough that I'm not interested in their latest offerings.
As the chain of emails grows, the liklihood of one or both of the parties' communication being faked diminishes quickly.
When you send an email, you can fake the headers, but if you have repeated two way communication, including quoted material, it's obvious you have a communication between two verifiable email addresses.
The questions then become:
1. Do the email addresses track back to the individuals in question?
2. Did the parties involved in the dispute engage in this conversation together, or not?
3. Could someone else have had complete send/receive control of the email account in question at the time over the time of the disputed conversation? (Man in the middle attack possibly?)
Claiming one did not send emails when one did is a dangerous game when testimony under oath comes into play.
What we have is a case of a "verbal" contract, though with written transcription as evidence.
The judge may be breaking some interesting ground with this decision, but I don't think he's too far off the mark.
And yes, digital verifiable signatures would be better.:-)
Yes, but beware this path. I had a problem with a club I belonged to (no, not Columbia House). They were marketing a series of videos on various home repair/remodelling ideas, and the series was pretty good.
I noticed that the series was starting to repeat itself, so I started using the postage pre-paid return labels. It became pretty quickly evident that I was going to be getting "essentially duplicates" and that they had run out of new ideas, so I cancelled the subscription.
Everything was fine until about 4 months later when a special 3 tape box set arrived introducing me to their "new" run of videos. If I didn't like it, I could just send the tapes back... ON MY DIME. No more postage pre-paid label? No problem. I wrote a letter off to the comany thanking them for their gift, but informing them that I did not wish to subscribe to the new series. I also informed them that they could send a postage-paid return label and I'd be happy to return their tapes. If not, I'd consider the tapes unsolicited merchandise and dispose of them as I saw fit.
I never watched the tapes. I kept them in their original packaging - I was really curious what the company would do. I was sorry I decided to find out. They sent reminder notices - I sent back copies of the original letter. They sent threats, I sent back documentation from the FTC. They sent a collection notice, I sent registered mail. This went on for four months.
FINALLY... I got a postage paid return label, returned their tapes, and haven't gotten very much in the way of promotional crap from them again. Something tells me I cost them a lot more money than they cost me.
Moral of the story is be careful about using the FTC regulations to claim that something sent to you is yours and that the vendor can go forth and multiply with extreme prejudice. Some can, and do bother you more than it's worth.
I was in Canada at the time the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was (finally) passed. The Notwithstanding Clause was a terrible disappointment to every non-politician I knew.
It was a compromise in the truest definition of the word. In other words, it compromised the rest of the document, rendering it mutable at the whim of any governmental body that wanted to pass a law that violated the provisions therein.
For those that don't know, the Canadian Federal Government, the Provincial, Territorial and the Municipal Governments can all make laws in contravention to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All they need to do is start the law with the wording, "Notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms..." and they can trample any provision within. The only requirement is that the law in question be reviewed and approved once every five years by the legislature that passed it.
Right after it was passed, the provision was used by the Quebec Provincial Government. I believe it was bill 106 that prohibited businesses in Quebec from using English on their signs on the outside of their buildings, or that faced outward such as a sign in the window.
That's right... Quebec outlawed one of the two official languages of Canada, notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, of course. And there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do in the judicial challenge and review process, because the Notwithstanding Clause was built right into the Charter itself and had constitutional authority.
I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that whole debacle, even years later.
For those buying, pick up the the player, the recorder, the DVD playable media, and the recordable media and pay for the transactions in cash. Give no identifying information.
The unique IDs are still present, but are now meaningless unless they can be traced back through a single internet userid to an actual individual. Then they can be used as evidence when a search warrant is executed, and the equipment is matched to the compromised unique IDs.
Mixmaster remailers and mail to news gateways, or non-centralized P2P strongly encrypted data streams may be the order of the day for those wishing to share copies of movies. In the P2P model though, you _could_ end up sharing your movie with someone who works for the MPAA, and then an encrypted P2P path won't necessarily help you. The mixmaster path might still work.
All the industry needs to do is successfully track and prosecute a few individuals (who weren't careful enough) in the first year after releasing the new watermarked media and equipment, make sure the cases are publicized widely, and they'll have successfully generated the public feeling of caution and fear that will keep _most_ people honest. Then they only need to make sure one or two instances get prosecuted/publicized per year as a public "reminder" that it doesn't pay to screw with the MPAA.
Am I happy about this? No... It casts a chilling effect on people who really _do_ want to use stuff fairly within the concept of "fair use" such as making personal backups, or using pieces of media for educational purposes.
And frankly, if the industry can't make their content interesting enough that a majority of people want to rush right out and buy it, then they should just admit that their stuff is priced too high to spark interest, or that they need to pay more attention to the quality.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I don't expect them to listen to me at all.
> Unfortunately, a nuke and reinstall is about the only option in most cases.
I ran into a problem recently where on a windows machine I have to look after, the system resources kept dropping (and not coming back) as the user loaded and unloaded programs throughout the day. They complained about having to reboot at least once or twice a day just to reclaim the resources.
It turned out to be a spyware program that was causing all the problems: "Webhancer".
I installed Lavasoft's "Ad-Aware" program on the user's computer to safely remove Webhancer as well as a bunch of other crap. "What's that? I never installed that!" was repeated many times when looking at the list of forty-or-so odd programs Ad-Aware came up with.
Anyway, in this case, Ad-Aware got rid of the offensive unapproved crap, and the system got a lot more stable on the next reboot. No reinstall needed!:-)
> Biometric-based I.D. cards for everybody are coming.
> Squint, look ahead 50 years and honestly tell me you
> can envision a world where such things are not simply
> assumed.
I think what bothered me most about the article was this particular foregone conclusion about the future. I hate to disappoint Brin, but I'm not so imaginatively myopic that his is the only future I can see.
> The important factor is not whether such cards exist,
> but whether they are a tool for robbing us of things
> we want and need.
This seems to imply that what we really want or need could be a _lack_ of such intrusive measures in our lives. There comes a point where if you're being challenged to validate your identity at every turn, we begin to adopt a mentality of "That which is not expressly permitted is automatically forbidden."
This flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. As others have pointed out, read through the first ten ammendments (Bill of Rights) to the U.S. Constitution. Disregard what the courts have done to this fine set of principles in the last hundred years, and just read it.
If that doesn't say, "Anything not expressly forbidden is permitted, oh and by the way, these are limits that the powers can be can place on those 'forbiddens'" then I don't know what does.
Quite simply, the society that Brin sees us moving more towards is unamerican in its principles. If our government and society are to collapse and fail eventually, then let it do so because of a failure of the principles that it was founded on, not because of our collective unwillingness to stick to those principles.
Re:Suse go bad
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 5, Informative
The 7.2 SuSE Distribution had definite problems. At our company, we kept all of our servers at 7.1, after hearing about and then experiencing problems with upgrades and installs with 7.2.
Because we waited a bit, and did some tests first, we weren't bitten.
However, seeing these kind of "not quite ready for prime time" errors ALMOST soured us on SuSE. Almost.
We concluded that from time to time _every_ distribution is going to have a less than stellar release, and well, that's just life and business. We concluded that we'd follow the same cautious pattern where 7.3 was concerned when it came out.
When 7.3 was released, we purchased it and did a bit of initial testing. We waited until it was available via rsync from the major mirrors and set up an in-house mirror of the 7.3 tree, and waited a bit longer to allow many more users to install from the ftp sites. Then we waited to see what kind of horror stories about installs/upgrades would show up on the SuSE mailing lists or the usenet news groups. There were very few.
We upgraded most of our main servers to 7.3, all of our workstations, and so far, everything's been running _really_ nicely.
Now for the fun part: Using VMWare 3.0 Workstation for Linux, we can run Windows operating systems like Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional if that's what a project we're working on for a client calls for. We refer to it as "Windows, in Jail", complete with the jokes to "Hi Dad, I'm in Jail" from the Was-Not-Was song.:-)
For us, it can be SuSE 7.3 and XP at the same time, but we let Linux control the underpinnings.
Oh: Tip to those wanting to go this route: Use the IDE-SCSI module, and configure your CDRom and DVD-Rom drives as SCSI drives and access them as virtual SCSI devices in Raw mode. This solves the infuriating problem of horridly slow access to the drives under VMWare when accessing drives in raw mode.
The thing is though, if it weren't for the United Statees' EPCA (Electronic Privacy Communications Act), there would be no expectation of privacy when talking on a cellular phone anyway. Of course, we all know how effective trying to control a technological ability with a law is.
There is _plenty_ of RF Scanning gear that was sold commercially before the EPCA came into effect that is still in private and corporate hands that can listen to the cellular portions of the 800MHz band.
Different countries tackled this problem different ways. So far, I have yet to hear of a truly effective solution.
Canada tackled the problem this way: If it's in the air, and you can pick it up and listen to it, no problem. BUT... you may not disclose the information to other individuals or organizations for personal gain.
Honestly, both laws are ineffective in controlling listening and use of cellular radio traffic in unethical ways.
The real solution would have been to respond to citizens *and* the cellular industry with this: "If you want privacy, encrypt the traffic, otherwise you should assume you are being monitored by the very people you don't want listening to your conversation."
Why wasn't this done? Because at the time, Louis J. Freeh, then director of the FBI during the Clinton administration had a serious burr up his backside about people being able to encrypt data. The whole "clipper chip" fiasco was being pushed as a solution, and neither the industry nor the customers swallowed that.
Like anything... it ended up a mess, and we're left with that legacy today. So... don't be too surprised when the NSA makes the comment that they were pouring through logs of thousands of cellular calls in the area. They're a government agency, and are probably exempt from the provisions of the EPCA that forbid citizens from monitoring cellular traffic.
I wonder how the BSA themselves would stand up to the cold light of an audit of every one of their machines.
Sure, they may have licenses for all of the products they use from member companies that subscribe to their services... But I wonder about Joe Employee and his favorite pirated pieces of software (utilities?) that he brought in. I wonder if every IT person is 100% clean.
Guilty until proven innocent goes BOTH ways.
Now the only thing we need to do is find a disgruntled ex-BSA employee who suspects this is going on, go before a judge in the BSA's home county,...
If the BSA is reading this, and you can pretty much bet they are, I wonder if the sweat beads just started on the forehead. I hope that simple suspicion is enough to get my point across about the way they do things.
If everyone here were to donate one dollar to a pool to hire a sufficiently powerful corporate lawyer to go after them, it might uncover some very interesting things.
Assuming that payment in some form equals "Work for Hire" in the aforementioned scenario: As terms of the contract, offering to license one copy of the software to the beta tester for free, for a limited time (say 6 months once release is made) would equate to "something of value" and thus wages. Even a singular perpetual license wouldn't be that costly.
Okay, shoot me now before I start thinking of offering large quantities of in-house software to people as payment for other things, a la Micro$oft.:-)
I just wrote a feedback to BBCShop explaining that where I grew up, I had access to the TV series via a PBS station. That's what got me started on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also mentioned that I had purchased this on VHS a long time ago, but the tape has long since died from age and tape wear.:-(
I explained I was really looking forward to purchasing a DVD of one of my favourite (spelling intentional, when in Rome...) series, but was vastly disappointed to learn that they had chosen to encode it for Europe (region 2) only.
I wonder what kind of response I'll get...
If I get one in a timely fashion, I'll follow up my own post and place the information in this thread.
If you go to write, don't forget to site the ISBN number for this product, specifically: ISBN: BBCDVD1092
I think what we're seeing is the first of many "oopses" that show that strong irradiation of mail may be approaching this problem in the wrong fashion. As I implied in the subject line, they're driving a finishing nail with a sledge hammer.
Rather than focus on irradication of what most probably is not there (anthrax), we'd do well to focus on methods that allow us to detect its presence in a non-destructive and non-damaging fashion to the contents of the mail. Once detected, we can use the irradication method, or perhaps we'd choose isolation and chemical testing in order to find the source of the moron that was putting anthrax in the mail.
For instance, we've come a long way in x-raying luggage, adding expert systems that attempt to assist the operator in identifying potentially hazardous items. Something similar is needed that can identify chemical compounds behind barriers such as paper, plastic, and perhaps even metal.
If I'm correct, what this method would need to look for (where anthrax is concerned) is a chemical residue or trace, in powder form. I like the idea of using a beam of radiation, since it can pass through a sealed package and its contents without causing us to become a society that searches people's mail by hand.
What I think would be optimum is a very low intensity radiation at just the right frequency to excite the structure of the Anthrax such that it immediately shows up as a "hot spot" on the detector circuitry, yet with the beam kept at a low enough power that flash memory cards don't get erased or damaged, film doesn't get fogged, paper doesn't release noxious fumes, etc...
Do I know how to accomplish this? Sorry, not my field... But I'm hoping someone whose field this is sees my comments. Perhaps it'll trigger an idea in the right direction.
Okay, it's now a very dated and obscure reference, but... For fans of the old Airwolf series:
Moffet's Ghost would have had a much better time destroying the jetcopter in Season Two if it had been equipped with chips like these.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Pirate radio stations tend to be low power, and serve their _local_ neighborhood. They can't be heard across the country, and thus they tend to avoid notice, so long as they don't interfere with other stations, and don't massively offend the listeners who discover them.
;-)
Since 802.11a and 802.11b traffic lives in parts of the spectrum where independent unlicensed transmissions are expected and are the norm, it might be possible to fly under the RIAA's radar with the following configuration:
- Set up a server with a 10.0.0.0/8 addressing space.
- DON'T hook it to the internet.
- Include a DHCP Server.
- Include a web page to describe what people have reached and allow links to software to listen.
- Include a submissions directory so anyone who wants to drop an MP3 or OGG on you, CAN.
- Play interesting music that YOU like, and even DJ the broadcast. (Voice changer might be desireable.)
Basically, all I'm doing is taking ideas presented in the movie "Pump Up the Volume" and thinking about how those ideas could be implemented using more modern methods. Done correctly, this could even be done with a mobile configuration in a vehicle.
'Cast Hard!
From the article:
> For example, some mobile phone vendors use challenge-response
> authentication to check that the phone battery is a genuine part
> rather than a clone - in which case, the phone will refuse to recharge
> it, and may even drain it as quickly as possible. Some
> printers authenticate their toner cartridges electronically;
> if you use a cheap substitute, the printer silently downgrades
> from 1200 dpi to 300 dpi.
I wonder if there's a list of printers and/or phones that perform in such a manner. I'm not sure if the law would deem such behavior as "anti-competitive", but I as a customer certainly find it so, as well as offensive.
There's a phrase that could, and should be considered when examining a downturn of sales of _anything_ right now: "It's the economy, stupid."
There's a subset of the populace who don't have work (who DID during the dot.com bonanza). They aren't likely wasting any remaining saved income on non-essentials.
There's another subset of the populace who is just happy to have a job, and having recently experienced joblessness, or having watched people they know go through it, aren't real likely to be wasting any disposable income. They might even be saving for a rainy day.
Let's see...
1. If you jam radio frequencies, you deny yourself information you might otherwise be able to use to your advantage. Not real smart.
2. This does NOTHING to block visual signalling methods, or hard-line transmission methods that do not rely on radio frequency communication.
3. Remote control explosive devices that could be set off by the intended transmission could also be set off by the jamming, which is _also_ a transmission of considerable strength on multiple frequencies. Explosive crews use those "Turn off Transmitter next X miles" signs for a reason.
4. If you only block selective frequencies, you'll probably miss blocking transmissions in other alternate bands/frequencies you didn't expect "the forces of darkness" to use.
5. The methods they intend to use are akin to killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
And that's just off the top of my head!
NASA tries to spin the lack of spin. There's just something wrong about this...
Actually, I'm planning on mailing a letter to Blizzard and Vivendi Universal's staff congratulating them on Blizzard's new release of Warcraft III.
I'm also planning on saying that I had been really looking forward to continuing as a customer of theirs but that their unreasonable lawsuit against the makers of bnetd made me want to seek out products from competing companies that worked with their users rather than against them.
I don't care how much "Ooooo shiny!" factor it has, Blizzard and Vivendi Universal have annoyed me enough that I'm not interested in their latest offerings.
Yes, yes you will! :-)
This is where I found an emulator that works very well: TRS-80 Emulator Web Site
Actually, according to the United States Postal Service ZIP+4 Code Look-up, the standardized address for 3600 North Clarck Street is:
:-)
3600 N CLARK ST
CHICAGO IL 60613-3808
According to the Chicago Cubs Ballpark page, (click on "Wrigley Field"), the address is:
Wrigley Field
1060 West Addison
Chicago, IL 60613-4397
If you look up the 3600 N CLARK address or the 1060 W ADDISON ST address at MapQuest you'll see both addresses are essentially correct.
Both Big Sean O and The Blues Brothers were right after all.
As the chain of emails grows, the liklihood of one or both of the parties' communication being faked diminishes quickly.
:-)
When you send an email, you can fake the headers, but if you have repeated two way communication, including quoted material, it's obvious you have a communication between two verifiable email addresses.
The questions then become:
1. Do the email addresses track back to the individuals in question?
2. Did the parties involved in the dispute engage in this conversation together, or not?
3. Could someone else have had complete send/receive control of the email account in question at the time over the time of the disputed conversation? (Man in the middle attack possibly?)
Claiming one did not send emails when one did is a dangerous game when testimony under oath comes into play.
What we have is a case of a "verbal" contract, though with written transcription as evidence.
The judge may be breaking some interesting ground with this decision, but I don't think he's too far off the mark.
And yes, digital verifiable signatures would be better.
Yes, but beware this path. I had a problem with a club I belonged to (no, not Columbia House). They were marketing a series of videos on various home repair/remodelling ideas, and the series was pretty good.
I noticed that the series was starting to repeat itself, so I started using the postage pre-paid return labels. It became pretty quickly evident that I was going to be getting "essentially duplicates" and that they had run out of new ideas, so I cancelled the subscription.
Everything was fine until about 4 months later when a special 3 tape box set arrived introducing me to their "new" run of videos. If I didn't like it, I could just send the tapes back... ON MY DIME. No more postage pre-paid label? No problem. I wrote a letter off to the comany thanking them for their gift, but informing them that I did not wish to subscribe to the new series. I also informed them that they could send a postage-paid return label and I'd be happy to return their tapes. If not, I'd consider the tapes unsolicited merchandise and dispose of them as I saw fit.
I never watched the tapes. I kept them in their original packaging - I was really curious what the company would do. I was sorry I decided to find out. They sent reminder notices - I sent back copies of the original letter. They sent threats, I sent back documentation from the FTC. They sent a collection notice, I sent registered mail. This went on for four months.
FINALLY... I got a postage paid return label, returned their tapes, and haven't gotten very much in the way of promotional crap from them again. Something tells me I cost them a lot more money than they cost me.
Moral of the story is be careful about using the FTC regulations to claim that something sent to you is yours and that the vendor can go forth and multiply with extreme prejudice. Some can, and do bother you more than it's worth.
I was in Canada at the time the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was (finally) passed. The Notwithstanding Clause was a terrible disappointment to every non-politician I knew.
It was a compromise in the truest definition of the word. In other words, it compromised the rest of the document, rendering it mutable at the whim of any governmental body that wanted to pass a law that violated the provisions therein.
For those that don't know, the Canadian Federal Government, the Provincial, Territorial and the Municipal Governments can all make laws in contravention to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All they need to do is start the law with the wording, "Notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms..." and they can trample any provision within. The only requirement is that the law in question be reviewed and approved once every five years by the legislature that passed it.
Right after it was passed, the provision was used by the Quebec Provincial Government. I believe it was bill 106 that prohibited businesses in Quebec from using English on their signs on the outside of their buildings, or that faced outward such as a sign in the window.
That's right... Quebec outlawed one of the two official languages of Canada, notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, of course. And there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do in the judicial challenge and review process, because the Notwithstanding Clause was built right into the Charter itself and had constitutional authority.
I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that whole debacle, even years later.
For those buying, pick up the the player, the recorder, the DVD playable media, and the recordable media and pay for the transactions in cash. Give no identifying information.
The unique IDs are still present, but are now meaningless unless they can be traced back through a single internet userid to an actual individual. Then they can be used as evidence when a search warrant is executed, and the equipment is matched to the compromised unique IDs.
Mixmaster remailers and mail to news gateways, or non-centralized P2P strongly encrypted data streams may be the order of the day for those wishing to share copies of movies. In the P2P model though, you _could_ end up sharing your movie with someone who works for the MPAA, and then an encrypted P2P path won't necessarily help you. The mixmaster path might still work.
All the industry needs to do is successfully track and prosecute a few individuals (who weren't careful enough) in the first year after releasing the new watermarked media and equipment, make sure the cases are publicized widely, and they'll have successfully generated the public feeling of caution and fear that will keep _most_ people honest. Then they only need to make sure one or two instances get prosecuted/publicized per year as a public "reminder" that it doesn't pay to screw with the MPAA.
Am I happy about this? No... It casts a chilling effect on people who really _do_ want to use stuff fairly within the concept of "fair use" such as making personal backups, or using pieces of media for educational purposes.
And frankly, if the industry can't make their content interesting enough that a majority of people want to rush right out and buy it, then they should just admit that their stuff is priced too high to spark interest, or that they need to pay more attention to the quality.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I don't expect them to listen to me at all.
> Unfortunately, a nuke and reinstall is about the only option in most cases.
:-)
I ran into a problem recently where on a windows machine I have to look after, the system resources kept dropping (and not coming back) as the user loaded and unloaded programs throughout the day. They complained about having to reboot at least once or twice a day just to reclaim the resources.
It turned out to be a spyware program that was causing all the problems: "Webhancer".
I installed Lavasoft's "Ad-Aware" program on the user's computer to safely remove Webhancer as well as a bunch of other crap. "What's that? I never installed that!" was repeated many times when looking at the list of forty-or-so odd programs Ad-Aware came up with.
Anyway, in this case, Ad-Aware got rid of the offensive unapproved crap, and the system got a lot more stable on the next reboot. No reinstall needed!
Brin writes:
> Biometric-based I.D. cards for everybody are coming.
> Squint, look ahead 50 years and honestly tell me you
> can envision a world where such things are not simply
> assumed.
I think what bothered me most about the article was this particular foregone conclusion about the future. I hate to disappoint Brin, but I'm not so imaginatively myopic that his is the only future I can see.
> The important factor is not whether such cards exist,
> but whether they are a tool for robbing us of things
> we want and need.
This seems to imply that what we really want or need could be a _lack_ of such intrusive measures in our lives. There comes a point where if you're being challenged to validate your identity at every turn, we begin to adopt a mentality of "That which is not expressly permitted is automatically forbidden."
This flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. As others have pointed out, read through the first ten ammendments (Bill of Rights) to the U.S. Constitution. Disregard what the courts have done to this fine set of principles in the last hundred years, and just read it.
If that doesn't say, "Anything not expressly forbidden is permitted, oh and by the way, these are limits that the powers can be can place on those 'forbiddens'" then I don't know what does.
Quite simply, the society that Brin sees us moving more towards is unamerican in its principles. If our government and society are to collapse and fail eventually, then let it do so because of a failure of the principles that it was founded on, not because of our collective unwillingness to stick to those principles.
The 7.2 SuSE Distribution had definite problems. At our company, we kept all of our servers at 7.1, after hearing about and then experiencing problems with upgrades and installs with 7.2.
:-)
Because we waited a bit, and did some tests first, we weren't bitten.
However, seeing these kind of "not quite ready for prime time" errors ALMOST soured us on SuSE. Almost.
We concluded that from time to time _every_ distribution is going to have a less than stellar release, and well, that's just life and business. We concluded that we'd follow the same cautious pattern where 7.3 was concerned when it came out.
When 7.3 was released, we purchased it and did a bit of initial testing. We waited until it was available via rsync from the major mirrors and set up an in-house mirror of the 7.3 tree, and waited a bit longer to allow many more users to install from the ftp sites. Then we waited to see what kind of horror stories about installs/upgrades would show up on the SuSE mailing lists or the usenet news groups. There were very few.
We upgraded most of our main servers to 7.3, all of our workstations, and so far, everything's been running _really_ nicely.
Now for the fun part: Using VMWare 3.0 Workstation for Linux, we can run Windows operating systems like Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional if that's what a project we're working on for a client calls for. We refer to it as "Windows, in Jail", complete with the jokes to "Hi Dad, I'm in Jail" from the Was-Not-Was song.
For us, it can be SuSE 7.3 and XP at the same time, but we let Linux control the underpinnings.
Oh: Tip to those wanting to go this route: Use the IDE-SCSI module, and configure your CDRom and DVD-Rom drives as SCSI drives and access them as virtual SCSI devices in Raw mode. This solves the infuriating problem of horridly slow access to the drives under VMWare when accessing drives in raw mode.
The thing is though, if it weren't for the United Statees' EPCA (Electronic Privacy Communications Act), there would be no expectation of privacy when talking on a cellular phone anyway. Of course, we all know how effective trying to control a technological ability with a law is.
There is _plenty_ of RF Scanning gear that was sold commercially before the EPCA came into effect that is still in private and corporate hands that can listen to the cellular portions of the 800MHz band.
Different countries tackled this problem different ways. So far, I have yet to hear of a truly effective solution.
Canada tackled the problem this way: If it's in the air, and you can pick it up and listen to it, no problem. BUT... you may not disclose the information to other individuals or organizations for personal gain.
Honestly, both laws are ineffective in controlling listening and use of cellular radio traffic in unethical ways.
The real solution would have been to respond to citizens *and* the cellular industry with this: "If you want privacy, encrypt the traffic, otherwise you should assume you are being monitored by the very people you don't want listening to your conversation."
Why wasn't this done? Because at the time, Louis J. Freeh, then director of the FBI during the Clinton administration had a serious burr up his backside about people being able to encrypt data. The whole "clipper chip" fiasco was being pushed as a solution, and neither the industry nor the customers swallowed that.
Like anything... it ended up a mess, and we're left with that legacy today. So... don't be too surprised when the NSA makes the comment that they were pouring through logs of thousands of cellular calls in the area. They're a government agency, and are probably exempt from the provisions of the EPCA that forbid citizens from monitoring cellular traffic.
Some of the stuff that comes bundled really makes you wonder if it could survive separately with a price sticker on it.
That may be the real reason the software publishers don't want you to have the right to resell it. The real value will become immediately obvious.
Anyone want to purchase these bundled clipart CD's? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?
So this is how Lucas is going to promote Episode II.
I wonder how the BSA themselves would stand up to the cold light of an audit of every one of their machines.
...
Sure, they may have licenses for all of the products they use from member companies that subscribe to their services... But I wonder about Joe Employee and his favorite pirated pieces of software (utilities?) that he brought in. I wonder if every IT person is 100% clean.
Guilty until proven innocent goes BOTH ways.
Now the only thing we need to do is find a disgruntled ex-BSA employee who suspects this is going on, go before a judge in the BSA's home county,
If the BSA is reading this, and you can pretty much bet they are, I wonder if the sweat beads just started on the forehead. I hope that simple suspicion is enough to get my point across about the way they do things.
If everyone here were to donate one dollar to a pool to hire a sufficiently powerful corporate lawyer to go after them, it might uncover some very interesting things.
Assuming that payment in some form equals "Work for Hire" in the aforementioned scenario: As terms of the contract, offering to license one copy of the software to the beta tester for free, for a limited time (say 6 months once release is made) would equate to "something of value" and thus wages. Even a singular perpetual license wouldn't be that costly.
:-)
Okay, shoot me now before I start thinking of offering large quantities of in-house software to people as payment for other things, a la Micro$oft.
I got my reply from the BBC regarding region 1 releases.
From: Laura Palmer address_removed@bbc.co.uk
Subject: RE: This is feedback the BBC Web Shop
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 15:04:37 -0000
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" will be released on DVD in North
America in late April.
I just wrote a feedback to BBCShop explaining that where I grew up, I had access to the TV series via a PBS station. That's what got me started on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also mentioned that I had purchased this on VHS a long time ago, but the tape has long since died from age and tape wear. :-(
I explained I was really looking forward to purchasing a DVD of one of my favourite (spelling intentional, when in Rome...) series, but was vastly disappointed to learn that they had chosen to encode it for Europe (region 2) only.
I wonder what kind of response I'll get...
If I get one in a timely fashion, I'll follow up my own post and place the information in this thread.
If you go to write, don't forget to site the ISBN number for this product, specifically: ISBN: BBCDVD1092
Given the name of the distribution:
;-)
They're going to wish they had a +25 magic staff of bandwidth in the next little while.
I think what we're seeing is the first of many "oopses" that show that strong irradiation of mail may be approaching this problem in the wrong fashion. As I implied in the subject line, they're driving a finishing nail with a sledge hammer.
Rather than focus on irradication of what most probably is not there (anthrax), we'd do well to focus on methods that allow us to detect its presence in a non-destructive and non-damaging fashion to the contents of the mail. Once detected, we can use the irradication method, or perhaps we'd choose isolation and chemical testing in order to find the source of the moron that was putting anthrax in the mail.
For instance, we've come a long way in x-raying luggage, adding expert systems that attempt to assist the operator in identifying potentially hazardous items. Something similar is needed that can identify chemical compounds behind barriers such as paper, plastic, and perhaps even metal.
If I'm correct, what this method would need to look for (where anthrax is concerned) is a chemical residue or trace, in powder form. I like the idea of using a beam of radiation, since it can pass through a sealed package and its contents without causing us to become a society that searches people's mail by hand.
What I think would be optimum is a very low intensity radiation at just the right frequency to excite the structure of the Anthrax such that it immediately shows up as a "hot spot" on the detector circuitry, yet with the beam kept at a low enough power that flash memory cards don't get erased or damaged, film doesn't get fogged, paper doesn't release noxious fumes, etc...
Do I know how to accomplish this? Sorry, not my field... But I'm hoping someone whose field this is sees my comments. Perhaps it'll trigger an idea in the right direction.
Okay, it's now a very dated and obscure reference, but... For fans of the old Airwolf series: Moffet's Ghost would have had a much better time destroying the jetcopter in Season Two if it had been equipped with chips like these. ;-)