> You can do whatever you want to a binary file, but the reality is that
> when the consumer wants to listen/watch the file (You know, guys,
> WHY you made it in the first place!),
Actually, I'm sure the MPAA and the RIAA see the actual viewing/listening to their product only as a secondary necessary concern that furthers the real reason they make the products and sell them: Revenue.
Everything that they've done with regards to innovation on the technology front the past couple of years has been to protect the content from copying, rather than focussing on what the consumer wants. This is a recipe for long term disaster where market share is concerned. First rule of business: MAKE MONEY. However, never ever forget that the first rule is very impacted by the second: SERVE YOUR CUSTOMER. Make them _want_ to come back to you. If you don't do this, you won't last.
Failure to innovate to the customer's needs will eventually be what leaves them looking around asking, "Oh no, where did our market share go? What did we do wrong?" Many of us will just look at them and shake our heads.
I keep returning in my mind to the video game copy protection conflicts in the 1980's, and how that turned out. The producers eventually got the crucial points:
1. Those who were going to copy the products rather than buy them weren't very likely to buy a manufacturer-produced copy anyway.
2. Annoyed customers don't buy more of your products - you lose future sales. In the 90's, copy protection on games has once again reared its ugly head. Electronic Arts found from me what annoying a customer does to future revenue from said customer. I purchased a copy of Electronic Arts' Dungeon Keeper 2 Best Buy, and could NOT run it on my Plextor UltraPlex CD-Rom due to the copy protection method (Safedisc/c-Dilla). After wasting a half hour on the phone to customer support to find out they knew about the problem with Plextor drives and weren't about to release a fix/patch, I finally informed them I would have to go download the crack, and play the game THAT way, and that this was a crazy way to make a customer go to play a fifty dollar game they just purchased. They actually tried to tell me I shouldn't do that. *shaking head* Now when I see an Electronic Arts logo on the box, I avoid the game, much as I might want to purchase it. Sucks that they want my money, but it sucks that they make their games unplayable on my equipment. Even if they fix the problem now, I'll probably never know and will keep avoiding their products.
3. For every way to protect media, there's a way to break it, and there are uncontrollable distribution methods to get the cracks/breaks out to people who want them.
Okay, enough of my rant. Time to go serve my own customers and make money.:-)
Re:Personalization? Creepy...
on
Making It Personal
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The better sites I have visited and do business with:
a) Use SSL the instant any personal information comes into play, such as my name, account number and address.
b) Ask me if I want to store sensitive financial information such as my credit card number, and honor my request.
Some personalization I like... Some I don't. I found it very creepy when I was visiting a page I had never been to before, and an Amazon advertisement banner had my name on it. That crossed my personal lines, because it felt as if Amazon had shared my info with others before I even got there. I investigated and found out that wasn't the case, but in business, impressions can be a lot more important than one realizes.
Consider that it's Clear Channel communications, one of the big five groups that own an ungodly amount of radio stations.
They don't want people who want high speed communications between each other because that means one of them is a content provider, and that's the entertainment cartel's turf.
So, by setting up the system such that the only speedy direction is "down", they better their odds that everyone subscribing to their service will be a good little _consumer_.
Okay, so I'm a cynic.
> There is a similar tracking requirement imposed on CD recorders (by
> the patent licenses issued by Philips). It requires that each CD
> burner record on the CD the serial number of the recorder, so that
> every burned CD-R can be traced back to which individual CD-burner
> recorded it.
Now _this_ was news to me. I'd like to see this proven or debunked. Is this software driven, or done by drives' firmware when a burn is started? Is there any way to disable this?
I don't mind my drive containing an electronic copy of its serial number for the purposes of identifying an individual unit with the manufacturer if I happen to need service.
I sure as hell mind if my drive is disclosing that information without my knowledge or consent!
As an example: John Doe works in a government agency, and notices some truly heinous and illegal activities going on with regards of that agency towards citizens of that government. John wants to blow the whistle, but he isn't stupid either. He anonymizes the information as best he can, cites several sources within the agency for the information in question, and writes it to a series of 5 CD-R's that he then sends to major newspaper editors in the hopes that they'll print it. CD-R's are the write-once/read-many diskette of the day, after all, and you don't have to worry about accidental magnetic erasure, so John thought he was being smart.
The story gets printed, there's a huge public outcry, the agency gets investigated, and this goes all the way to charges being laid and a lot of very powerful people being made _very_ uncomfortable, and quietly swearing to find the mole and give unto him a share of the misery that they are going through.
Fine, it's fictional, it probably has holes in it, and I've probably not drafted the perfect hypothetical scenario, but the basic gist of it is there.
There's a lot of cases where accidental disclosure of any information that would allow the source to be accurately identified is a _bad_ thing. Admittedly in some cases it can be a good thing, but I'm leery of making it _too_ easy.
Is there any way to prevent this little function from working correctly?
1. Change the electronic serial number of the drive?
2. Disable the routine that spits out a serial number?
3. Disable the routine that writes the serial number to the drive?
Possibly a really obvious question, but... I have to ask it anyway. If one had an older installer for Napster, pre the shutdown, and a copy of Napigator from the same era, could one not continue to use Napster in the "old" way, just with different sets of servers?
Hell, if you're paranoid about Napster II learning about you running Napster Classic, block their domain and IP range from connection on your open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.
You do have an open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.... don't you?:-)
Some theories on how to beat systems like this.
on
The Eyes Have It
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· Score: 5, Insightful
No, I don't know exactly how well some of these would work, but I figure if I can come up with more than 5 ideas off the top of my head in a few minutes, then how hard would it be for anyone seriously bent on beating this system to find and perfect a way of doing so?
Here goes:
1. Buy a thermal imaging camera of sufficient sensitivity so that you can see your own reactions, and learn how to modify them (feedback, negative or positive, does allow one to learn).
2. Know the questions being asked in advance. Practice giving rote answers to them so you're no longer thinking about the meaning of the question when it's actually asked, much like we no longer think about how exactly we tie our shoes.
3. Practice lying and learn not to give a damn about the fact that you're lying. In essence, practice becoming somewhat sociopathic. (Gee, shouldn't be too much of a stretch for a terrorist!)
4. If the expected answer is "no" (are you a known or suspected terrorist?), before answering, think of a question in your own mind to which the correct answer is no, and ask it of yourself before audibly answering "no".
5. Throw the baseline off before you even get close to the camera - get drunk enough to bring a flush to your entire skin but not so drunk that you are obviously impaired.
6. Like 5, get drunk, but don't stop at 'non-obvious'. Make it very obvious that flying scares the b'jeez out of you, and the only way you (especially after 9/11/2001!) and the only way you're getting on one now is if you're suitably numbed/happy.
7. Inhale a little powdered black pepper up the nose just before walking up to answer questions. The sneezing fit should throw off your reactions nicely. Blame it on allergies or a cold.
8. Take an emotion levelling drug before you get anywhere near the airport - the type that leave you not really caring about much. Surely you know a friend or two who has some psych-based drugs in their regimen of prescriptions...
9. Make like you have a toothache. Dig something sharp into your side through a pocket (a sliver of sharpened wood? A pencil?) to cause pain while being asked the questions such that your body's reactions are different.
10. Make like a person with a mild (or severe) disability, either mental or physical. Our social training has engrained that these people are "invisible", and that they CERTAINLY should not be unduly hassled, as that's cruel. An interesting physical choice might be "deaf mute", where you hand over a card asking the person to write what they want to say or ask on the small pad of paper you conveniently have with you. You write your answer as a response. So much for the instantaneous flush of heat from the eyes... You'll be looking down at a piece of paper, and will have time to "cool down".
Okay, not only five points, but ten. Much like physical locks only keep non-determined innocent people out of where you don't want them, this method will only catch nervous, embarassed, unprepared people, and thus is nothing more than the illusion of security. *sigh* It doesn't stop the really determined people, and those are the ones you wanted to catch, darn the luck.
Always consider that leak is intentional, and that you have been specifically targeted as part of a disinformation campaign.
Ask yourself what purposes might exist in getting you to buy into the message. Be skeptical, it pays off.
My own impression is that this message was too convenient and is attempting to convince me to underestimate Microsoft, or to misdirect me away from where their real efforts are.
Just look at the opening lines - it's practically _begging_ to be "leaked".
Of course, that's just my opinion...
> What most people seem to misunderstand about Australia is that while our politicians are
> very keen on making laws, enforcing those laws in another thing altogether.
Correct, but that only speaks of the current situation. The problem with bad laws on the books is twofold:
1. Laws are rarely enforced at the "never" end of the scale, unless they've become completely defunct (such as laws regarding placement of hitching posts for horses in modern cities). Instead, they're enforced selectively against people that are thorns in the side of the current power base. Selective justice is often injustice. Though people often flaunt 'stupid' laws, they do so at their own risk.
2. The level of enforcement is subject to change. If enforcement is suddenly deemed "the thing to do", all those bad or stupid laws on the books suddenly have a much greater effect on the people they apply to. This is why many countries, including the United States, attempted to set up a constitution that binds the hands of the government both at the time, and into the distant future. The people founding a given government may have the best of intentions, but they would be fools to assume that someone with dictatorial aspirations would not at some point attempt to sieze power within the constraints of the existing system, rather than overthrowing it completely.
On another related issue:
I've long wondered why it is that people haven't slapped their politicians around until they understand that it is not necessarily their job to keep passing more and more laws. Sometimes, effectiveness and "good government" could be equally measured by the review of and quite possibly repeal of existing laws that do NOT serve the public good.
It is my own personal opinion that complex laws serve only the legal _system_ and the people that work within its structure, rather than the people that must _use_ the legal system (us, the mere mortals who on occasion have the unhappy desire or need to get ground up in the system's gears).
One of my clients has a T-1 provided by Qwest. The running joke has become: "Ride the light, at the speed of sound."
I agree with austad - If they annoy you, and you have an option, dump them and go with someone else. If you're feeling _really_ benevolent, you might let Qwest know exactly why you're cancelling your service with them, which if enough people did, would give them an opportunity to correct their error, assuming the company has half a clue and compiles and analyzes reasons their customers are terminating service.
This reminds me much of Time Magazine's choice of Person of the Year for 2001. The guidelines for this choice tend towards choosing someone who had the largest overall impact on the world for that year, whether that impact be positive or negative.(1)
This year's choice is Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City. I find their choice to be unwise, probably prompted by feel-good patriotism rather than by clinical reasoning and good journalistic intregrity.
In New York City, Mayor Giuliani may have had the biggest effect after the September 11 events, and possibly would loom that large in the public eye in all of New York State, but I question his impact to the world, or even the entire United States.
A better choice would have been Osama Bin Laden, in spite of how reprehensible his actions may have been, or how hated the man has become in America and other NATO countries.
Bin Laden had an unarguably huge effect throughout the world with his successful attack and toppling of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Laws and personal freedoms throughout the world have been wrenched into a new status, and the ripple effect will be felt for years to come.
His is now a household name spoken as a curse or a blessing. We all know who he is and don't tend to have luke warm feelings towards the man.
Perhaps speculation about Bin Laden had saturated the press too much, or perhaps Time Magazine wished to focus on the positive rather than the negative, but their choice for POY 2001 is still, to me, very questionable.
Whereas I didn't agree with Time Magazine's choice for POY 2001, I don't disagree with Nature's choice of Shawn Fanning as the winner for both the categories of Entertainment and Entrepreneurship, or for being a finalist for the category of Marketing Communications.
Fanning's product and company (Napster) had a huge effect on the Entertainment industry, and he definitely qualified as a stand-out entrepreneur.
---
(1) Prior precedent for individuals with a very negative effect on history was set in 1938 by choosing Adoph Hitler, and in both 1939 and 1942 by choosing Joseph Stalin.
Know what? I'm willing to take a Karma hit on this. (It's only ones and zeros). So, mod me down if you wish. However, this is an issue which I feel strongly about, and after seeing the original poster get modded down as offtopic, I feel even MORE strongly about it.
The original poster shares a concern that I have. What bothers me is that a submitter goes to the trouble to find the story, compose the submission, and check their links, only to be rejected out of hand. The story invariably resurfaces, sponsored by one of the slashdot editors, with no mention of the original submitter or submitters of the story.
It's not like submitters expect money for their work. They just want a reasonable footnote of recognition as reward for their efforts in contributing to the slashdot community.
Does it take extra effort on the part of the editors to recognize the people who submitted the story? You bet it does. Does it pay off in easily measurable metrics and tangible returns? I'd bet not, but it's the paying of attention to the little extras that makes the difference between a good publication, and a great publication.
Re:Wonder which LARGE retailer it could be?
on
Gift Card Hacking
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· Score: 1
Got news for you: I'm in the Midwest U.S., and Sam's Club (the wholesale side of WalMart) does the same thing.
No country has a hammerlock on stupidity - it's so plentiful!
> Why would a mint operate at a loss? What possible reason could they have > for spending six cents to make a nickel?
I'm sorry Monte, you are entirely correct on this. As qintar was kind enough to point out in a subsequent followup post, I was indeed mistaken, at least where U.S. Currency was concerned. I grew up in Canada, and from what I remember of a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint when I was a young child, the cost to produce a penny there had managed to exceed its face value.
Interestingly, the Royal Canadian Mint *did* re-work the materials in their pennies such that they were no longer pure copper, thus reducing their unit cost. Perhaps they got pennies into the profitable range again. I tried finding out the current productions costs at The Royal Canadian Mint but was unsuccessful.
As to why they might produce a coin at a higher cost than the face value: Again, I'm supposing that if the sole client was the government of the country that holds the minting and stamping operation, and the cost of the coin could be justified as amortized over a number of years of predicted average use, then it might make fiscal sense.
> And would you be interested in buying this nice new twenty dollar bill > for the low, low price of $35.99? Hell, I'll even autograph it!
Sorry, I'm not a soverign nation or a coin/bill collector. Nice try though!:-)
Trying desperately to drag this back onto the original topic though: If they smart-chip money, how are they going to handle the break in chain of hands when the smart-currency trades hands through one or more private individuals? I can understand businesses being equipped to take in funds, and if they know the identity of the person they're receiving the funds from adding that person's id and their own to the funds trail, but if they don't know, or the person refuses, all they can do is add their own ID.
What prevents bills from changing hands between several private individuals?
1. Bill printed/initialized (gods that sounds odd) date/time 2. Passed to: Bank of America, St. Louis Missouri ATM # xxxxxx date/time 3. Passed to: John Q. Public SSN xxx-xx-xxxx date/time 4. Passed to: Mr. Submarine # xxxxxx date/time 5. Passed to: Jack Priest (imagine he's really a priest) 6. Depositied by Bazooka Showgirls, Kansas City Missouri date/time
See the problem here? Between (5) and (6), the bill actually exchanged hands from Jack to Dave, then Sarah, then Andy, then Bob, then Mark, then Me who went to Bazooka Showgirls and stuck it in some nice dancer's g-string, but the trail shows that Jack Priest was the last person to handle it before Bazooka Showgirls depositied it. Whoops. Sorry about that smudge on your character that came out when you were called as a character witness in that rape trial. Pity about justice denied. I'm sure they'll work out these glitches... someday.
The face value of currency is already close to meaningless. Something about "The Gold Standard" not having been followed in quite some time.
Coins, if I am not mistaken, already cost more to mint than their value. Given inflation and the devaluation of the monetary units across the world over time, it should come as no surprise that the production cost of larger denominations of currency outpaces their face value.
The real trick is to look at how often a unit of currency changes hands, and how durable it is over time. This in combination with its face value will give some idea of the true cost and/or value of the physical currency note or coin.
If I could invent a paper bill that could withstand 50 years of travel, exchange, and (well, let's face it) abuse, that was incredibly rip, tear, and wear resistant, could withstand repeated exposure to water, moisture, solvents, and other environmental nasties, it might not matter as much if the production cost per unit were ten times as much as the face value.
Okay everyone, I spent some time out at the Universal Music Group section of the Universal Music Studios website, and there's a fairly hefty list of music labels in this group.
Just saying you won't buy from Universal isn't enough. Here's the list I found:
A&M Records
Decca Record Company
Deutsche Grammophon
Geffen Records
Interscope Rercords
Island Def Jam Music Group
Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com
MCA Nashville
MCA Records
Mercury Records
Motown Records
Phillips
Polydor
Universal Records
Verve Music Group
I also went through their list of artists, and saw a shocking number of artists that I either currenly own CD's from, or want to purchase some or all from their discography.
My next quest is to find landmail addresses for all the record labels *and* the Universal Music Group, plus the RIAA, as well as the artists of UMG's that I listen to, and start writing a lot of letters stating my disappointment at what they're planning to do, and how it stands to completely wreck my ability to purchase and enjoy their music.
I don't have a "regular CD player". Not _one_. The CD player in my car is based on CD-Rom drive technology. I listen to my music on my computer, or I pipe the audio out straight to the stereo and listen on the big speakers. I listen to my headphones at work while I do my design documents, and that's to MP3's I ripped from CD's that I purchased.
Frankly, their decision sucks if they want me to keep purchasing music from their group. Simple as that.
What's really scary is thinking back to circa 1983 when external hard drives for some of the first PC's were in the 5 megabyte range, and those cost $4,000 to $5,000. Only for those that could afford such luxuries, or could justify a serious business need for such devices.
5 megabytes. $5,000.00. That just makes my head hurt now. Each single one of my self-ripped MP3's comes in at more space than that!
And then it occurred to me on this trip down memory lane that the real danger in the science (fiction for now) of time travel is getting ourselves killed by taking our relatively awe-striking hardware back in time and gloating to our younger selves.
By my calculations, assuming a 40 gigabyte drive, and a 650 hour storage capacity, and assuming MP3 fixed frame encoding, to be encoding their music at approximately 140 Kbit/sec.
At a 320Kbit/sec rate, it looks like one could encode about 285 hours of music. Substantially different.
Of course, not everyone feels the need to encode at such high bitrates.
The cost of the player still doesn't approach the cost of the music. 285 hours of music, making an assumption of 40 minutes for your average CD works out to about 427 CD's worth of music. At $12.99 per CD, that works out to $5,546.73 worth of music purchasing to put on the $1,500.00 player.
If you use their figure of 650 hours at approx 40 minutes for the average CD, you can store 975 CD's (at the lower bitrate), which would at $12.99 per album comprise a music cost to purchase of (brace yourself): $12,665.25.
Suddenly $1,500.00 for the player doesn't look too bad stacked up against the actual cost of the music.
Excuse me, I think I'm going to go enroll myself in consumer therapy now. I just calculated the cost of my own music collection over time at slightly higher than $12.99 per CD.
Imagine setting up a small standalone circuit with a timer, an infrared LED, and the necessary circuitry to emulate one small part of a cable box's remote: The channel up button. Every few seconds, perhaps with a bit of randomness introduced, change the channel up one. Leave this running when you're not actually watching the one-eyed-idiot.
Meanwhile, back at Microsoft:
"This guy has the worst case of channel surfing we've ever seen!"
Unable to target the viewer with anything but blipverts, landmail advertisements start arriving for Ritalin at wholesale prices.;-)
They (Microsoft) can stop weaving the rope they intend to hang themselves with. It's plenty long.
I won't support *any* operating system that treats the data as having more important concerns than the machine's operator (me).
Buying Microsoft anymore is like saying: Please, treat me like a two year old, stifle my creativity and learning, keep me in the dark and feed me crap, and whatever you do, don't let me question your 'authority'.
I'm classifiable as an audio addict, having taken my entire personal
collection of CD's and ripped them to MP3's at 320 bit, and wanted to
have them stored in a central place, accessible from any machine in my
home. Currently this collection is at approximately 620 full CD's of
music, and I'm pushing right at, or just above the 80 gigabyte limit.
Now when you factor in personal files, financial records, games,
downloaded material, installation software you don't want to lose,
etc...etc... Well, see for yourself. Here's my space breakdown for the
partitions on my main file server Fumus (Smoke, in Latin):
Tape: For the size I'd need: Way WAY too expensive. When I brought
the media down into the range I'd afford, I'd be swapping tapes all week
to get a backup done. Not time effective.
CD-R: Faster, yes, but at 650 megabytes per media, same problem as
tape, only you've traded magne tic for optical.
Extra hard drives in the same machine: Originally, this is exactly what
I had done with a single file server running Reiser file systems in the
more experimental days. I got the scare (and lesson) of my life when
Reiser went a bit nuts, and started corrupting some of my data. I only
lost about one percent, but I vowed, never never NEVER again would I
backup data on a critical machine on live media in the same machine.
Okay, so here's what I finally DID select as my solution: A second
machine called Ignis (Fire in Latin) that uses the absolutely identical
configuration, right down to the types and number of drives, partition
sizes, everything. They both connect into my 100Mb network switch, and
Ignis rsync's from Fumus every hour on the hour thanks to scripts in
/etc/cron.hourly
In fact, here's Ignis'/etc/cron.hourly/rsync_with_fumus script:
Is this a bit extreme? Yes. But... if, gods forbid, Fumus really does
let out its magic smoke, or Ignis does catch on fire, and the physical
media were actually damaged, hopefully the damage would be limited to
*one* case, and wouldn't end up taking both machines out. Then I really
would be crying the blues.
Oh yes, and each machine is on their own 900VA UPS. I'm not playing
THAT game.:-)
Given that this archive now stretches back to 1981, I'm left wondering how this will affect some of the younger politicians with aspirations of getting elected to grander seats of power. Politicians who follow in Clinton's footsteps, for instance, might have much more difficulty convincing people that they didn't inhale, if they have a long posting history to rec.drugs.cannabis.
Microsoft has Passport. This alliance offers another alternative. Both push our society towards a "know your neighbor", or perhaps "know your customer" model.
I remember a few years ago there being a pretty significant backlash against banks attempting the "Know your customer" model of business.
Let's not forget the "None of the above" option when contemplating these systems. Identification of a person is not always necessary or prudent, for a multitude of reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
> You can do whatever you want to a binary file, but the reality is that
:-)
> when the consumer wants to listen/watch the file (You know, guys,
> WHY you made it in the first place!),
Actually, I'm sure the MPAA and the RIAA see the actual viewing/listening to their product only as a secondary necessary concern that furthers the real reason they make the products and sell them: Revenue.
Everything that they've done with regards to innovation on the technology front the past couple of years has been to protect the content from copying, rather than focussing on what the consumer wants. This is a recipe for long term disaster where market share is concerned. First rule of business: MAKE MONEY. However, never ever forget that the first rule is very impacted by the second: SERVE YOUR CUSTOMER. Make them _want_ to come back to you. If you don't do this, you won't last.
Failure to innovate to the customer's needs will eventually be what leaves them looking around asking, "Oh no, where did our market share go? What did we do wrong?" Many of us will just look at them and shake our heads.
I keep returning in my mind to the video game copy protection conflicts in the 1980's, and how that turned out. The producers eventually got the crucial points:
1. Those who were going to copy the products rather than buy them weren't very likely to buy a manufacturer-produced copy anyway.
2. Annoyed customers don't buy more of your products - you lose future sales. In the 90's, copy protection on games has once again reared its ugly head. Electronic Arts found from me what annoying a customer does to future revenue from said customer. I purchased a copy of Electronic Arts' Dungeon Keeper 2 Best Buy, and could NOT run it on my Plextor UltraPlex CD-Rom due to the copy protection method (Safedisc/c-Dilla). After wasting a half hour on the phone to customer support to find out they knew about the problem with Plextor drives and weren't about to release a fix/patch, I finally informed them I would have to go download the crack, and play the game THAT way, and that this was a crazy way to make a customer go to play a fifty dollar game they just purchased. They actually tried to tell me I shouldn't do that. *shaking head* Now when I see an Electronic Arts logo on the box, I avoid the game, much as I might want to purchase it. Sucks that they want my money, but it sucks that they make their games unplayable on my equipment. Even if they fix the problem now, I'll probably never know and will keep avoiding their products.
3. For every way to protect media, there's a way to break it, and there are uncontrollable distribution methods to get the cracks/breaks out to people who want them.
Okay, enough of my rant. Time to go serve my own customers and make money.
The better sites I have visited and do business with:
a) Use SSL the instant any personal information comes into play, such as my name, account number and address.
b) Ask me if I want to store sensitive financial information such as my credit card number, and honor my request.
Some personalization I like... Some I don't. I found it very creepy when I was visiting a page I had never been to before, and an Amazon advertisement banner had my name on it. That crossed my personal lines, because it felt as if Amazon had shared my info with others before I even got there. I investigated and found out that wasn't the case, but in business, impressions can be a lot more important than one realizes.
Consider that it's Clear Channel communications, one of the big five groups that own an ungodly amount of radio stations. They don't want people who want high speed communications between each other because that means one of them is a content provider, and that's the entertainment cartel's turf. So, by setting up the system such that the only speedy direction is "down", they better their odds that everyone subscribing to their service will be a good little _consumer_. Okay, so I'm a cynic.
> There is a similar tracking requirement imposed on CD recorders (by
:-)
> the patent licenses issued by Philips). It requires that each CD
> burner record on the CD the serial number of the recorder, so that
> every burned CD-R can be traced back to which individual CD-burner
> recorded it.
Now _this_ was news to me. I'd like to see this proven or debunked. Is this software driven, or done by drives' firmware when a burn is started? Is there any way to disable this?
I don't mind my drive containing an electronic copy of its serial number for the purposes of identifying an individual unit with the manufacturer if I happen to need service.
I sure as hell mind if my drive is disclosing that information without my knowledge or consent!
As an example: John Doe works in a government agency, and notices some truly heinous and illegal activities going on with regards of that agency towards citizens of that government. John wants to blow the whistle, but he isn't stupid either. He anonymizes the information as best he can, cites several sources within the agency for the information in question, and writes it to a series of 5 CD-R's that he then sends to major newspaper editors in the hopes that they'll print it. CD-R's are the write-once/read-many diskette of the day, after all, and you don't have to worry about accidental magnetic erasure, so John thought he was being smart.
The story gets printed, there's a huge public outcry, the agency gets investigated, and this goes all the way to charges being laid and a lot of very powerful people being made _very_ uncomfortable, and quietly swearing to find the mole and give unto him a share of the misery that they are going through.
Fine, it's fictional, it probably has holes in it, and I've probably not drafted the perfect hypothetical scenario, but the basic gist of it is there.
There's a lot of cases where accidental disclosure of any information that would allow the source to be accurately identified is a _bad_ thing. Admittedly in some cases it can be a good thing, but I'm leery of making it _too_ easy.
Is there any way to prevent this little function from working correctly?
1. Change the electronic serial number of the drive?
2. Disable the routine that spits out a serial number?
3. Disable the routine that writes the serial number to the drive?
Rom microcode disassembly anyone?
Possibly a really obvious question, but ... I have to ask it anyway. If one had an older installer for Napster, pre the shutdown, and a copy of Napigator from the same era, could one not continue to use Napster in the "old" way, just with different sets of servers?
:-)
Hell, if you're paranoid about Napster II learning about you running Napster Classic, block their domain and IP range from connection on your open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.
You do have an open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.... don't you?
No, I don't know exactly how well some of these would work, but I figure if I can come up with more than 5 ideas off the top of my head in a few minutes, then how hard would it be for anyone seriously bent on beating this system to find and perfect a way of doing so?
Here goes:
1. Buy a thermal imaging camera of sufficient sensitivity so that you can see your own reactions, and learn how to modify them (feedback, negative or positive, does allow one to learn).
2. Know the questions being asked in advance. Practice giving rote answers to them so you're no longer thinking about the meaning of the question when it's actually asked, much like we no longer think about how exactly we tie our shoes.
3. Practice lying and learn not to give a damn about the fact that you're lying. In essence, practice becoming somewhat sociopathic. (Gee, shouldn't be too much of a stretch for a terrorist!)
4. If the expected answer is "no" (are you a known or suspected terrorist?), before answering, think of a question in your own mind to which the correct answer is no, and ask it of yourself before audibly answering "no".
5. Throw the baseline off before you even get close to the camera - get drunk enough to bring a flush to your entire skin but not so drunk that you are obviously impaired.
6. Like 5, get drunk, but don't stop at 'non-obvious'. Make it very obvious that flying scares the b'jeez out of you, and the only way you (especially after 9/11/2001!) and the only way you're getting on one now is if you're suitably numbed/happy.
7. Inhale a little powdered black pepper up the nose just before walking up to answer questions. The sneezing fit should throw off your reactions nicely. Blame it on allergies or a cold.
8. Take an emotion levelling drug before you get anywhere near the airport - the type that leave you not really caring about much. Surely you know a friend or two who has some psych-based drugs in their regimen of prescriptions...
9. Make like you have a toothache. Dig something sharp into your side through a pocket (a sliver of sharpened wood? A pencil?) to cause pain while being asked the questions such that your body's reactions are different.
10. Make like a person with a mild (or severe) disability, either mental or physical. Our social training has engrained that these people are "invisible", and that they CERTAINLY should not be unduly hassled, as that's cruel. An interesting physical choice might be "deaf mute", where you hand over a card asking the person to write what they want to say or ask on the small pad of paper you conveniently have with you. You write your answer as a response. So much for the instantaneous flush of heat from the eyes... You'll be looking down at a piece of paper, and will have time to "cool down".
Okay, not only five points, but ten. Much like physical locks only keep non-determined innocent people out of where you don't want them, this method will only catch nervous, embarassed, unprepared people, and thus is nothing more than the illusion of security. *sigh* It doesn't stop the really determined people, and those are the ones you wanted to catch, darn the luck.
Always consider that leak is intentional, and that you have been specifically targeted as part of a disinformation campaign. Ask yourself what purposes might exist in getting you to buy into the message. Be skeptical, it pays off. My own impression is that this message was too convenient and is attempting to convince me to underestimate Microsoft, or to misdirect me away from where their real efforts are. Just look at the opening lines - it's practically _begging_ to be "leaked". Of course, that's just my opinion...
> What most people seem to misunderstand about Australia is that while our politicians are
> very keen on making laws, enforcing those laws in another thing altogether.
Correct, but that only speaks of the current situation. The problem with bad laws on the books is twofold:
1. Laws are rarely enforced at the "never" end of the scale, unless they've become completely defunct (such as laws regarding placement of hitching posts for horses in modern cities). Instead, they're enforced selectively against people that are thorns in the side of the current power base. Selective justice is often injustice. Though people often flaunt 'stupid' laws, they do so at their own risk.
2. The level of enforcement is subject to change. If enforcement is suddenly deemed "the thing to do", all those bad or stupid laws on the books suddenly have a much greater effect on the people they apply to. This is why many countries, including the United States, attempted to set up a constitution that binds the hands of the government both at the time, and into the distant future. The people founding a given government may have the best of intentions, but they would be fools to assume that someone with dictatorial aspirations would not at some point attempt to sieze power within the constraints of the existing system, rather than overthrowing it completely.
On another related issue:
I've long wondered why it is that people haven't slapped their politicians around until they understand that it is not necessarily their job to keep passing more and more laws. Sometimes, effectiveness and "good government" could be equally measured by the review of and quite possibly repeal of existing laws that do NOT serve the public good.
It is my own personal opinion that complex laws serve only the legal _system_ and the people that work within its structure, rather than the people that must _use_ the legal system (us, the mere mortals who on occasion have the unhappy desire or need to get ground up in the system's gears).
One of my clients has a T-1 provided by Qwest. The running joke has become: "Ride the light, at the speed of sound."
I agree with austad - If they annoy you, and you have an option, dump them and go with someone else. If you're feeling _really_ benevolent, you might let Qwest know exactly why you're cancelling your service with them, which if enough people did, would give them an opportunity to correct their error, assuming the company has half a clue and compiles and analyzes reasons their customers are terminating service.
This reminds me much of Time Magazine's choice of Person of the Year for 2001. The guidelines for this choice tend towards choosing someone who had the largest overall impact on the world for that year, whether that impact be positive or negative.(1)
This year's choice is Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City. I find their choice to be unwise, probably prompted by feel-good patriotism rather than by clinical reasoning and good journalistic intregrity.
In New York City, Mayor Giuliani may have had the biggest effect after the September 11 events, and possibly would loom that large in the public eye in all of New York State, but I question his impact to the world, or even the entire United States.
A better choice would have been Osama Bin Laden, in spite of how reprehensible his actions may have been, or how hated the man has become in America and other NATO countries.
Bin Laden had an unarguably huge effect throughout the world with his successful attack and toppling of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Laws and personal freedoms throughout the world have been wrenched into a new status, and the ripple effect will be felt for years to come.
His is now a household name spoken as a curse or a blessing. We all know who he is and don't tend to have luke warm feelings towards the man.
Perhaps speculation about Bin Laden had saturated the press too much, or perhaps Time Magazine wished to focus on the positive rather than the negative, but their choice for POY 2001 is still, to me, very questionable.
Whereas I didn't agree with Time Magazine's choice for POY 2001, I don't disagree with Nature's choice of Shawn Fanning as the winner for both the categories of Entertainment and Entrepreneurship, or for being a finalist for the category of Marketing Communications.
Fanning's product and company (Napster) had a huge effect on the Entertainment industry, and he definitely qualified as a stand-out entrepreneur.
---
(1) Prior precedent for individuals with a very negative effect on history was set in 1938 by choosing Adoph Hitler, and in both 1939 and 1942 by choosing Joseph Stalin.
Know what? I'm willing to take a Karma hit on this. (It's only ones and zeros). So, mod me down if you wish. However, this is an issue which I feel strongly about, and after seeing the original poster get modded down as offtopic, I feel even MORE strongly about it.
The original poster shares a concern that I have. What bothers me is that a submitter goes to the trouble to find the story, compose the submission, and check their links, only to be rejected out of hand. The story invariably resurfaces, sponsored by one of the slashdot editors, with no mention of the original submitter or submitters of the story.
It's not like submitters expect money for their work. They just want a reasonable footnote of recognition as reward for their efforts in contributing to the slashdot community.
Does it take extra effort on the part of the editors to recognize the people who submitted the story? You bet it does. Does it pay off in easily measurable metrics and tangible returns? I'd bet not, but it's the paying of attention to the little extras that makes the difference between a good publication, and a great publication.
Got news for you: I'm in the Midwest U.S., and Sam's Club (the wholesale side of WalMart) does the same thing.
No country has a hammerlock on stupidity - it's so plentiful!
Monte writes:
:-)
... someday.
> Why would a mint operate at a loss? What possible reason could they have
> for spending six cents to make a nickel?
I'm sorry Monte, you are entirely correct on this. As qintar was kind enough to point out in a subsequent followup post, I was indeed mistaken, at least where U.S. Currency was concerned. I grew up in Canada, and from what I remember of a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint when I was a young child, the cost to produce a penny there had managed to exceed its face value.
Interestingly, the Royal Canadian Mint *did* re-work the materials in their pennies such that they were no longer pure copper, thus reducing their unit cost. Perhaps they got pennies into the profitable range again. I tried finding out the current productions costs at The Royal Canadian Mint but was unsuccessful.
As to why they might produce a coin at a higher cost than the face value: Again, I'm supposing that if the sole client was the government of the country that holds the minting and stamping operation, and the cost of the coin could be justified as amortized over a number of years of predicted average use, then it might make fiscal sense.
> And would you be interested in buying this nice new twenty dollar bill
> for the low, low price of $35.99? Hell, I'll even autograph it!
Sorry, I'm not a soverign nation or a coin/bill collector. Nice try though!
Trying desperately to drag this back onto the original topic though: If they smart-chip money, how are they going to handle the break in chain of hands when the smart-currency trades hands through one or more private individuals? I can understand businesses being equipped to take in funds, and if they know the identity of the person they're receiving the funds from adding that person's id and their own to the funds trail, but if they don't know, or the person refuses, all they can do is add their own ID.
What prevents bills from changing hands between several private individuals?
1. Bill printed/initialized (gods that sounds odd) date/time
2. Passed to: Bank of America, St. Louis Missouri ATM # xxxxxx date/time
3. Passed to: John Q. Public SSN xxx-xx-xxxx date/time
4. Passed to: Mr. Submarine # xxxxxx date/time
5. Passed to: Jack Priest (imagine he's really a priest)
6. Depositied by Bazooka Showgirls, Kansas City Missouri date/time
See the problem here? Between (5) and (6), the bill actually exchanged hands from Jack to Dave, then Sarah, then Andy, then Bob, then Mark, then Me who went to Bazooka Showgirls and stuck it in some nice dancer's g-string, but the trail shows that Jack Priest was the last person to handle it before Bazooka Showgirls depositied it. Whoops. Sorry about that smudge on your character that came out when you were called as a character witness in that rape trial. Pity about justice denied. I'm sure they'll work out these glitches
The face value of currency is already close to meaningless. Something about "The Gold Standard" not having been followed in quite some time.
Coins, if I am not mistaken, already cost more to mint than their value. Given inflation and the devaluation of the monetary units across the world over time, it should come as no surprise that the production cost of larger denominations of currency outpaces their face value.
The real trick is to look at how often a unit of currency changes hands, and how durable it is over time. This in combination with its face value will give some idea of the true cost and/or value of the physical currency note or coin.
If I could invent a paper bill that could withstand 50 years of travel, exchange, and (well, let's face it) abuse, that was incredibly rip, tear, and wear resistant, could withstand repeated exposure to water, moisture, solvents, and other environmental nasties, it might not matter as much if the production cost per unit were ten times as much as the face value.
At the risk of continuing the offtopicness... :-)
This ZDNet story contains information on creating a H.E.R.F. (High Energy Radio Frequency) gun.
This article was picked up and discussed on Slashdot here.
At the risk of making a redundant post, I'd like to make one small comment:
> Such radio-activated chips are already used to track cattle...
I think that pretty much says it all, right there.
Okay everyone, I spent some time out at the Universal Music Group section of the Universal Music Studios website, and there's a fairly hefty list of music labels in this group.
Just saying you won't buy from Universal isn't enough. Here's the list I found:
A&M Records
Decca Record Company
Deutsche Grammophon
Geffen Records
Interscope Rercords
Island Def Jam Music Group
Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com
MCA Nashville
MCA Records
Mercury Records
Motown Records
Phillips
Polydor
Universal Records
Verve Music Group
I also went through their list of artists, and saw a shocking number of artists that I either currenly own CD's from, or want to purchase some or all from their discography.
My next quest is to find landmail addresses for all the record labels *and* the Universal Music Group, plus the RIAA, as well as the artists of UMG's that I listen to, and start writing a lot of letters stating my disappointment at what they're planning to do, and how it stands to completely wreck my ability to purchase and enjoy their music.
I don't have a "regular CD player". Not _one_. The CD player in my car is based on CD-Rom drive technology. I listen to my music on my computer, or I pipe the audio out straight to the stereo and listen on the big speakers. I listen to my headphones at work while I do my design documents, and that's to MP3's I ripped from CD's that I purchased.
Frankly, their decision sucks if they want me to keep purchasing music from their group. Simple as that.
What's really scary is thinking back to circa 1983 when external hard drives for some of the first PC's were in the 5 megabyte range, and those cost $4,000 to $5,000. Only for those that could afford such luxuries, or could justify a serious business need for such devices.
5 megabytes. $5,000.00. That just makes my head hurt now. Each single one of my self-ripped MP3's comes in at more space than that!
And then it occurred to me on this trip down memory lane that the real danger in the science (fiction for now) of time travel is getting ourselves killed by taking our relatively awe-striking hardware back in time and gloating to our younger selves.
By my calculations, assuming a 40 gigabyte drive, and a 650 hour storage capacity, and assuming MP3 fixed frame encoding, to be encoding their music at approximately 140 Kbit/sec.
At a 320Kbit/sec rate, it looks like one could encode about 285 hours of music. Substantially different.
Of course, not everyone feels the need to encode at such high bitrates.
The cost of the player still doesn't approach the cost of the music. 285 hours of music, making an assumption of 40 minutes for your average CD works out to about 427 CD's worth of music. At $12.99 per CD, that works out to $5,546.73 worth of music purchasing to put on the $1,500.00 player.
If you use their figure of 650 hours at approx 40 minutes for the average CD, you can store 975 CD's (at the lower bitrate), which would at $12.99 per album comprise a music cost to purchase of (brace yourself): $12,665.25.
Suddenly $1,500.00 for the player doesn't look too bad stacked up against the actual cost of the music.
Excuse me, I think I'm going to go enroll myself in consumer therapy now. I just calculated the cost of my own music collection over time at slightly higher than $12.99 per CD.
Imagine setting up a small standalone circuit with a timer, an infrared LED, and the necessary circuitry to emulate one small part of a cable box's remote: The channel up button. Every few seconds, perhaps with a bit of randomness introduced, change the channel up one. Leave this running when you're not actually watching the one-eyed-idiot.
;-)
Meanwhile, back at Microsoft:
"This guy has the worst case of channel surfing we've ever seen!"
Unable to target the viewer with anything but blipverts, landmail advertisements start arriving for Ritalin at wholesale prices.
They (Microsoft) can stop weaving the rope they intend to hang themselves with. It's plenty long.
I won't support *any* operating system that treats the data as having more important concerns than the machine's operator (me).
Buying Microsoft anymore is like saying: Please, treat me like a two year old, stifle my creativity and learning, keep me in the dark and feed me crap, and whatever you do, don't let me question your 'authority'.
Disgustedly,
I'm classifiable as an audio addict, having taken my entire personal
/boot
/home
/pchome
/pub
/pub/mp3
/scratch
/pub/mp3_2
/pub/software
/etc/cron.hourly/rsync_with_fumus script:
/pub
/pub
/pub
:-)
collection of CD's and ripped them to MP3's at 320 bit, and wanted to
have them stored in a central place, accessible from any machine in my
home. Currently this collection is at approximately 620 full CD's of
music, and I'm pushing right at, or just above the 80 gigabyte limit.
Now when you factor in personal files, financial records, games,
downloaded material, installation software you don't want to lose,
etc...etc... Well, see for yourself. Here's my space breakdown for the
partitions on my main file server Fumus (Smoke, in Latin):
fumus:/pub/mp3 # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 3.0G 2.1G 804M 72% /
/dev/hda1 129M 6.8M 115M 6%
/dev/hda5 9.8G 1.8M 9.3G 1%
/dev/hda6 20G 13G 6.3G 67%
/dev/hda8 40G 22G 17G 57%
/dev/hdb1 75G 38G 33G 53%
/dev/hda7 1.9G 20k 1.8G 1%
/dev/hdc1 74G 34G 40G 46%
/dev/hdd1 74G 36G 37G 49%
So, here's what I looked at:
Tape: For the size I'd need: Way WAY too expensive. When I brought
the media down into the range I'd afford, I'd be swapping tapes all week
to get a backup done. Not time effective.
CD-R: Faster, yes, but at 650 megabytes per media, same problem as
tape, only you've traded magne tic for optical.
Extra hard drives in the same machine: Originally, this is exactly what
I had done with a single file server running Reiser file systems in the
more experimental days. I got the scare (and lesson) of my life when
Reiser went a bit nuts, and started corrupting some of my data. I only
lost about one percent, but I vowed, never never NEVER again would I
backup data on a critical machine on live media in the same machine.
Okay, so here's what I finally DID select as my solution: A second
machine called Ignis (Fire in Latin) that uses the absolutely identical
configuration, right down to the types and number of drives, partition
sizes, everything. They both connect into my 100Mb network switch, and
Ignis rsync's from Fumus every hour on the hour thanks to scripts in
/etc/cron.hourly
In fact, here's Ignis'
rsync -arul --one-file-system --quiet fumus:/pub/mp3_2
rsync -arul --one-file-system --quiet fumus:/pub/mp3
rsync -azrul --one-file-system --quiet --delete --force fumus:/pub/software
rsync -azrul --one-file-system --quiet --delete --force fumus:/pub /
rsync -azrul --one-file-system --quiet --delete --force fumus:/pchome /
Is this a bit extreme? Yes. But... if, gods forbid, Fumus really does
let out its magic smoke, or Ignis does catch on fire, and the physical
media were actually damaged, hopefully the damage would be limited to
*one* case, and wouldn't end up taking both machines out. Then I really
would be crying the blues.
Oh yes, and each machine is on their own 900VA UPS. I'm not playing
THAT game.
Given that this archive now stretches back to 1981, I'm left wondering how this will affect some of the younger politicians with aspirations of getting elected to grander seats of power. Politicians who follow in Clinton's footsteps, for instance, might have much more difficulty convincing people that they didn't inhale, if they have a long posting history to rec.drugs.cannabis.
Best hope you don't have to pick up an answer about the interview on a web page hosted by them. ;-)
Microsoft has Passport. This alliance offers another alternative. Both push our society towards a "know your neighbor", or perhaps "know your customer" model.
I remember a few years ago there being a pretty significant backlash against banks attempting the "Know your customer" model of business.
Let's not forget the "None of the above" option when contemplating these systems. Identification of a person is not always necessary or prudent, for a multitude of reasons.