You wouldn't even need PGP. Pick a cryptographic protocol. Encrypt your message and insert it into your message. I would imagine that if you try to "decrypt" steganographic information that isn't there, you get noise. I don't know for certain 'cause I've never done it, but I feel pretty safe in assuming that.
So when you have this noise, how in the world can you tell that there is even an encrypted message in there? How can you tell what what algorithm was used?
Having worked in the Compaq "headquarters" in Houston for a good 10 months recently, the employees there would agree that "Digital took over Compaq" rather than the other way 'round.
That said, I didn't find anything particularly Bostonian working in the Houston office. There was a hell of alot of infighting between the Boston and Houston factions. Lots of internal rebellion. I don't expect the situation to be any different not that HP has "taken over" Compaq. There are a whole lot of strong willed people working at COmpaq. They're not gonna rol over for these new masters at HP just because someone said that they're running the show now.
The only thing this'll really do is boost business for the independent news providers. The constant bandwidth consumption of a newsfeed is generally far less than the relatively few people who use the service.
And to respond to the people crying censorship, they're not filtering anything. They're just not drawing some newsgroups through their newsfeed. If they stopped the news port at their border, then you might have a complaint.
Besides, if you want to download shady stuff, you really ought to be using an independent news service anyways.
Leverage on the licensing terms? With Microsoft? They've already stated loud and clear that their strategy is to bully, cajole, spread FUD to every customer that does attempt to use such "leverage". Linux may have Microsot very worried, but they're not cowering in the corner by a long shot.
What it does give you is a way out if/when Microsoft's licensing shenanigans get to be more than your company financially can bear. If it's either switch to a license-fee-free operating system or you go out of business, my personal choice would be to make the switch.
Microsoft and it's sales force are going to laugh in my face if I try and hold out for better licensing terms. If I'm a 7000 employee firm, I might get _slight_ relief, but I seriously doubt that, with the muscle Microsoft has with their even larger customers, they'd get anywhere.
But I don't feel particularly inclined to cry for rapists and other felons, do you?
If this is cool with you, yu might want to work to get us off China's back, because using prison labor is one of the things that's got the international community all up in arms.
I haven't heard an argument that makes these poeple out to be anything but slave traders. Felons and rapists they may be, but they're no less slaves when they're put in the hands of these vultures. If that's fine with you, then have the balls to call it what it is.
Actually, the US government is starting to move toward open source more agressively. The NSA's version of Linux is part of that push. The US government has strict standards about how operating systems used by the DoD and other government agencies must conform to. Up until now, no one was willing to make Linux conform to those standards (mostly having to do with vastly increased accountability and granularity of the seperation of duties) so it wasn't allowed to be used for the big production environments that NT is currently being used on. There's been a big undeground open-source movement within the rank and file of the military (I've worked with alot of active-duty and former military IT/intelligence people) and projects like that are the outgrowth of that. The budget constraints are the other major reason, and were the real catalyst for getting this kind of thing moving. These things don't change overnight for large companies, and there's no valid reason anyone should expect the US government to change any faster.
You think Aussies don't read this? You think word of this discussion won't reach some hungry lawyer in Australian looking to get a high-profile case under his belt? I fully expect someone at Slashdot getting a summons to appear in court in Australia.
I expect the eventual outcome of this will be a national Australian firewall, where if you don't kowtow to hte Australian court, the entire nation is blocked from accessing your site.
Re:I'll get hammered, but Internet Explorer 6 is o
on
KOffice 1.1 Rolls Out
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If they were working towards OS monoculture, wouldn't they be trying to remove functionality from Mac IE?
Apple's continued existance has been one of their main points in the anti-trust defense. Hell, they've even propped up Apple in order to keep a high-profile "competitor" in the marketplace.
rather than a few rich Yanks (present company excluded of course;-)
Why excuse the most hypocritical materialistic Yanks of their views? More than a few people need to be reminded that their prowess/money doesn't give them license to make the world the way they want it.
If the Microsoft lawyers that drew up these things had any brains they would've made it so no OEM vendor could ship with another operating system, which is what I'm betting they did.
The only problem with the mass application of the Scarlet Letter punishment in America, is that Americans consistently waste no time making their Scarlet Letter the Red Badge of Courage. Countercultural judo.
If I can't come into a store because I was late on a bill, I go to a store that doesn't care. And if every store cares, then I go to the black market. Yeah, it may cost more but so what, i'll still be able to get it.
No argument at all that we're living in a corporate police state. I personally feel the similarities to China are far higher than most in either country care to admit or even let themselves believe. But legal and illegal are just a matter of money and influence anyways, and the all important rule "it's only wrong if you get caught" applies not only to us, but to the other side of the tracks as well. Maybe if all this stuff gets forced in, we'll see a higher percentage of high muckety-mucks getting their asses handed to them where normally they'd get off scot free. Camera never lies, eh.
odd, when dell first started shipping win2k, they reccomended a dual pIII 500 as an absolute minimum. with good reason at that. i had tried it here on a pIII 550, "zippy" was as far from the truth as possible.
What version of Win2K? Pro? Server? Advanced Server? Cluster Server? What applications were you running on Win2k? What kind of graphics card did your P3-500 have? How much RAM? Just saying that when you loaded it, it was sluggish, doesn't prove a whole bloody lot.
I ran Win2K Pro on a P2-350 and it ran just as well (except for obvious slower boot time) than Win98. With all the prety GUI doodads turned on. I also had a 32MB graphics card, which I imagined helped it's performance tremendously. If you're running it on a budget 2MB graphics card, yeah, I imagine it's going to be very sluggish until you turn off all the graphical addins. We're talking about workstations here, BTW. Not servers. Win2K Server and up add a whole lot of shit that people using workstations just don't need and add a mighty swathe of overhead, not to mention other applications.
Your operating system and processor speed are not the sole arbiters of how fast your particular system runs.
In the US, prisons are being dubbed "Correctional facilities", I believe. This is more the sort of attitude we need. "You've done the crime, been punished, now get out there and live your life normally. Don't do it again."
That may be what they're called but that's certainly not what 90% of of the population believes or wants to be the case.
For the vast majority of Americans, once a criminal, always a criminal. Prisons in the US are merely holding tanks. No effort is expended on recuperation. In many cases, corporate run prisons exploit the almost free labor to make goods/provide services at a pittance of a cost. A few cents/hour is the general rule. I imagine one of the reasons China and the US are so antagonistic toward each other, is that they're so much more alike than either likes to admit.
Re:XBox on Its Own Merits
on
$1200 Cheap!
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More like the SNES vs Neo Geo.
And the Xbox is certainly closer to the Neo Geo.
Don't be sad Microsoft foes, be glad
on
$1200 Cheap!
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And alot of hardcore gamers will buy the Xbox eventually. The truly hardcore gamers out there don't give a damn who makes the console. If the games are worth anything, they'll buy it. These are the people who own Sega Saturns and pay large sums for Panzer Dragoon Saga and $70 for the original cartridge version of Chrono Trigger, echewing the "flashy" PSX re-release. These are the people that bought the Neo Geo when it cost $500.
However, there aren't nearly enough of the truly hardcore gamers out there to make this profitable. The vast majority have a political opinion on who deserves their gaming dollar. Anyone who's spent any time talking to a gamer has probably gotten more than an earful about how Nintendo/Sony/Sega completely sucks or rules or whatever. These are the people that are going to make or break the new consoles.
Sony's got a serious foothold in the Next Gen market - just the anticipation of the PS2 killed off the Dreamcast (much to my chagrin). Their console also plays all PS1 games, which gave them the largest console video game library in the world right off the bat.
Nintendo has some of the most recognized characters in the world. They're also selling their new console for less than anyone else. They've also got a rabid, frothing fanbase. It's also probably the single most recognizable game name next to Atari.
Microsoft has so far done nothing to mitigate any of these advantages. They've announced a price point above all the other consoles (yes the console is @299, but if you want a controller you need to buy that seperately...want to watch movies on your DVD capable Xbox? Can't do that unless you buy the special DVD remote). They've announced some cool looking games, but compared to what their opponents are offering, they're woefuly behind the game.
And the biggest obstacle is that both Sony and Nintendo are not going to just let Microsoft have a free ride like most PC companies MS has gone up against. This is _their_ pool and they've already announced that they're going to fight MS tooth and nail. The Japanese market's opinion of the Xbox is tepid to say the least. They have zippo street cred there or here.
This isn't the nail in the coffin of the Xbox, but they certainly appear to be making every mistake Neo Geo made. Even Sega kept the Dreamcast going in the face of ridicule and harsh competition ofr over a year. Microsoft could put a whole lot more money into the Xbox, paying developers to make games for it, but eventually they're going to have to do something about their pricing structure or they're going to suffer the same fate (and hopefully be brought down a notch or two).
Re:Don't Like It That Way? Don't Buy It That Way?
on
$1200 Cheap!
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Hey, if MS wants to kill their system by completely overestimating the demand, they're more than welcome to. What exactly do they think economic conditions are? Why are they even encouraging retailers to do any bundling? You can preorder a GameCube for $199 or a Xbox for $499. Which do you think a gamer who just got laid off, or is paranoid that they might be laid off when everyone is freaking out about the shitty economy?
Not the Xbox, I can tell you.
Re:Did you even read the article's arguments?
on
Taming the Web
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Other services that encrypt and tunnel and decentralize and info-hide are not subject to this weakness, no matter how many silly red herrings some tech-ignorant journalist might pull out of his pants.
And there will always be new, exploitable, and fatal weaknesses which will be easily exploitable by a well funded government agency, no matter how invincible some cocky technicians might believe they are.
Re:As long as I can connect...
on
Taming the Web
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The problem with that is, this whole "information should be free" movement has always been the underground. Governments by their very nature, do not want information to be free, because that gives them less control over the governed. It's not necessarily the will of those in government, it's a property of the entity. Hence "Classified: Top Secret" information.
The "problem" with the Internet as it is today is that the Underground decided it wanted to see the light of day, and completely unexpected by everyone other than those within it, it threw the shadows to the side stepped out, and dared the Establisment to stop if from being where it wanted to be. The prime example of this being Napster. As every idiot knows, the primary purpose of most everyone who used Napster was to get for free something they'd normally have to pay for. Flaunting legal authority. You all know it, and you all loved that little thrill. I know I did.
The problem was the Underground is great at being sneaky and in the dark and shifty and eluding the occasional forays by the Establishment into it's world. It was smallish and nimble. However out in the open, and becoming popular as all hell, the Undergound got fat, dull, and sloppy. It slacked off when it had the Establishment on the ropes and it's been fighting back ever since (the DMCA, and all it's friends) and the Underground, while concerned, never really thought it could do anything about it. Now the Underground is starting to realize it fucked up not finishing the job and it's scrambling to hold on to it's gains, but it may be too late.
Eventually the Underground's going to get pushed back where it belongs, underground. The Establishment will have changed, and the Underground will have to make up for lost time. And even if they'd taken out the Establishment, they would only have taken up the mantle of it's foe and the Establishment would eagerly take up the banner of the Underground.
History is your friend. Take advantage of it's lessons in perspective. This kind of thing has been happening since societies have existed. My elders always used to say "You kids think you invented sex." To this crowd, they should have added "you kids think you invented rebellion". We haven't done a very good job of it, either. Even in losing there can still be honor, but with most people in this issue, I don't see that happening. Most of us are whiny jerks, believing somehow that the world owes us whatever WE WANT without daring to get in our way, but unwilling o do much more than whine about it if you don't get your way. Your enemy was determined, was defending their very livelyhood, and you backed them into a corner, which as any of the great military strategists studied in business school today would tell you, is a catastrophically stupid thing to do. Maybe you'll learn the next time.
I thought my post implied that I was talking out my ass without being able to provide any substantive proof. No sarcasm. I was serious that someone please mod down my stupidity. I looked and couldn't find anything even similar to Skylarov's case. IANAL. I should never have posted it. What do I have to say to get this concept through?
You're correct. My opinion on whether or not the law is enforced equitably doesn't preclude the existance of the law. Someone mod my stupidity down please.
True, but they're on far thinner ice than natives, and have less resources to fight with. There are more than a few people within the system who'll quietly fail to keep up equal protection for non-citizens, especially when they feel that the non-citizen "doesn't deserve" the equal protection rights for whatever reason.
Slashdot Mirror
You wouldn't even need PGP. Pick a cryptographic protocol. Encrypt your message and insert it into your message. I would imagine that if you try to "decrypt" steganographic information that isn't there, you get noise. I don't know for certain 'cause I've never done it, but I feel pretty safe in assuming that.
So when you have this noise, how in the world can you tell that there is even an encrypted message in there? How can you tell what what algorithm was used?
That said, I didn't find anything particularly Bostonian working in the Houston office. There was a hell of alot of infighting between the Boston and Houston factions. Lots of internal rebellion. I don't expect the situation to be any different not that HP has "taken over" Compaq. There are a whole lot of strong willed people working at COmpaq. They're not gonna rol over for these new masters at HP just because someone said that they're running the show now.
And to respond to the people crying censorship, they're not filtering anything. They're just not drawing some newsgroups through their newsfeed. If they stopped the news port at their border, then you might have a complaint.
Besides, if you want to download shady stuff, you really ought to be using an independent news service anyways.
What it does give you is a way out if/when Microsoft's licensing shenanigans get to be more than your company financially can bear. If it's either switch to a license-fee-free operating system or you go out of business, my personal choice would be to make the switch.
Microsoft and it's sales force are going to laugh in my face if I try and hold out for better licensing terms. If I'm a 7000 employee firm, I might get _slight_ relief, but I seriously doubt that, with the muscle Microsoft has with their even larger customers, they'd get anywhere.
If those in the content industries have their way, you won't be able to for much longer.
Some of us wouldn't exactly mind that.
If this is cool with you, yu might want to work to get us off China's back, because using prison labor is one of the things that's got the international community all up in arms.
I haven't heard an argument that makes these poeple out to be anything but slave traders. Felons and rapists they may be, but they're no less slaves when they're put in the hands of these vultures. If that's fine with you, then have the balls to call it what it is.
Actually, the US government is starting to move toward open source more agressively. The NSA's version of Linux is part of that push. The US government has strict standards about how operating systems used by the DoD and other government agencies must conform to. Up until now, no one was willing to make Linux conform to those standards (mostly having to do with vastly increased accountability and granularity of the seperation of duties) so it wasn't allowed to be used for the big production environments that NT is currently being used on. There's been a big undeground open-source movement within the rank and file of the military (I've worked with alot of active-duty and former military IT/intelligence people) and projects like that are the outgrowth of that. The budget constraints are the other major reason, and were the real catalyst for getting this kind of thing moving. These things don't change overnight for large companies, and there's no valid reason anyone should expect the US government to change any faster.
If Dimitri hadn't shown up in the US, there would've been nothing they could do. Get a clue.
No question...
I knew someone would do it, but I personally fail to see how my post was funny...
This is deadly serious...
You think Aussies don't read this? You think word of this discussion won't reach some hungry lawyer in Australian looking to get a high-profile case under his belt? I fully expect someone at Slashdot getting a summons to appear in court in Australia.
I expect the eventual outcome of this will be a national Australian firewall, where if you don't kowtow to hte Australian court, the entire nation is blocked from accessing your site.
Apple's continued existance has been one of their main points in the anti-trust defense. Hell, they've even propped up Apple in order to keep a high-profile "competitor" in the marketplace.
Why excuse the most hypocritical materialistic Yanks of their views? More than a few people need to be reminded that their prowess/money doesn't give them license to make the world the way they want it.
If the Microsoft lawyers that drew up these things had any brains they would've made it so no OEM vendor could ship with another operating system, which is what I'm betting they did.
If I can't come into a store because I was late on a bill, I go to a store that doesn't care. And if every store cares, then I go to the black market. Yeah, it may cost more but so what, i'll still be able to get it.
No argument at all that we're living in a corporate police state. I personally feel the similarities to China are far higher than most in either country care to admit or even let themselves believe. But legal and illegal are just a matter of money and influence anyways, and the all important rule "it's only wrong if you get caught" applies not only to us, but to the other side of the tracks as well. Maybe if all this stuff gets forced in, we'll see a higher percentage of high muckety-mucks getting their asses handed to them where normally they'd get off scot free. Camera never lies, eh.
What version of Win2K? Pro? Server? Advanced Server? Cluster Server? What applications were you running on Win2k? What kind of graphics card did your P3-500 have? How much RAM? Just saying that when you loaded it, it was sluggish, doesn't prove a whole bloody lot.
I ran Win2K Pro on a P2-350 and it ran just as well (except for obvious slower boot time) than Win98. With all the prety GUI doodads turned on. I also had a 32MB graphics card, which I imagined helped it's performance tremendously. If you're running it on a budget 2MB graphics card, yeah, I imagine it's going to be very sluggish until you turn off all the graphical addins. We're talking about workstations here, BTW. Not servers. Win2K Server and up add a whole lot of shit that people using workstations just don't need and add a mighty swathe of overhead, not to mention other applications.
Your operating system and processor speed are not the sole arbiters of how fast your particular system runs.
That may be what they're called but that's certainly not what 90% of of the population believes or wants to be the case.
For the vast majority of Americans, once a criminal, always a criminal. Prisons in the US are merely holding tanks. No effort is expended on recuperation. In many cases, corporate run prisons exploit the almost free labor to make goods/provide services at a pittance of a cost. A few cents/hour is the general rule. I imagine one of the reasons China and the US are so antagonistic toward each other, is that they're so much more alike than either likes to admit.
More like the SNES vs Neo Geo.
And the Xbox is certainly closer to the Neo Geo.
However, there aren't nearly enough of the truly hardcore gamers out there to make this profitable. The vast majority have a political opinion on who deserves their gaming dollar. Anyone who's spent any time talking to a gamer has probably gotten more than an earful about how Nintendo/Sony/Sega completely sucks or rules or whatever. These are the people that are going to make or break the new consoles.
Sony's got a serious foothold in the Next Gen market - just the anticipation of the PS2 killed off the Dreamcast (much to my chagrin). Their console also plays all PS1 games, which gave them the largest console video game library in the world right off the bat.
Nintendo has some of the most recognized characters in the world. They're also selling their new console for less than anyone else. They've also got a rabid, frothing fanbase. It's also probably the single most recognizable game name next to Atari.
Microsoft has so far done nothing to mitigate any of these advantages. They've announced a price point above all the other consoles (yes the console is @299, but if you want a controller you need to buy that seperately...want to watch movies on your DVD capable Xbox? Can't do that unless you buy the special DVD remote). They've announced some cool looking games, but compared to what their opponents are offering, they're woefuly behind the game.
And the biggest obstacle is that both Sony and Nintendo are not going to just let Microsoft have a free ride like most PC companies MS has gone up against. This is _their_ pool and they've already announced that they're going to fight MS tooth and nail. The Japanese market's opinion of the Xbox is tepid to say the least. They have zippo street cred there or here.
This isn't the nail in the coffin of the Xbox, but they certainly appear to be making every mistake Neo Geo made. Even Sega kept the Dreamcast going in the face of ridicule and harsh competition ofr over a year. Microsoft could put a whole lot more money into the Xbox, paying developers to make games for it, but eventually they're going to have to do something about their pricing structure or they're going to suffer the same fate (and hopefully be brought down a notch or two).
Not the Xbox, I can tell you.
And there will always be new, exploitable, and fatal weaknesses which will be easily exploitable by a well funded government agency, no matter how invincible some cocky technicians might believe they are.
The "problem" with the Internet as it is today is that the Underground decided it wanted to see the light of day, and completely unexpected by everyone other than those within it, it threw the shadows to the side stepped out, and dared the Establisment to stop if from being where it wanted to be. The prime example of this being Napster. As every idiot knows, the primary purpose of most everyone who used Napster was to get for free something they'd normally have to pay for. Flaunting legal authority. You all know it, and you all loved that little thrill. I know I did.
The problem was the Underground is great at being sneaky and in the dark and shifty and eluding the occasional forays by the Establishment into it's world. It was smallish and nimble. However out in the open, and becoming popular as all hell, the Undergound got fat, dull, and sloppy. It slacked off when it had the Establishment on the ropes and it's been fighting back ever since (the DMCA, and all it's friends) and the Underground, while concerned, never really thought it could do anything about it. Now the Underground is starting to realize it fucked up not finishing the job and it's scrambling to hold on to it's gains, but it may be too late.
Eventually the Underground's going to get pushed back where it belongs, underground. The Establishment will have changed, and the Underground will have to make up for lost time. And even if they'd taken out the Establishment, they would only have taken up the mantle of it's foe and the Establishment would eagerly take up the banner of the Underground.
History is your friend. Take advantage of it's lessons in perspective. This kind of thing has been happening since societies have existed. My elders always used to say "You kids think you invented sex." To this crowd, they should have added "you kids think you invented rebellion". We haven't done a very good job of it, either. Even in losing there can still be honor, but with most people in this issue, I don't see that happening. Most of us are whiny jerks, believing somehow that the world owes us whatever WE WANT without daring to get in our way, but unwilling o do much more than whine about it if you don't get your way. Your enemy was determined, was defending their very livelyhood, and you backed them into a corner, which as any of the great military strategists studied in business school today would tell you, is a catastrophically stupid thing to do. Maybe you'll learn the next time.
I thought my post implied that I was talking out my ass without being able to provide any substantive proof. No sarcasm. I was serious that someone please mod down my stupidity. I looked and couldn't find anything even similar to Skylarov's case. IANAL. I should never have posted it. What do I have to say to get this concept through?
You're correct. My opinion on whether or not the law is enforced equitably doesn't preclude the existance of the law. Someone mod my stupidity down please.
True, but they're on far thinner ice than natives, and have less resources to fight with. There are more than a few people within the system who'll quietly fail to keep up equal protection for non-citizens, especially when they feel that the non-citizen "doesn't deserve" the equal protection rights for whatever reason.