As far as my experience goes, this is fine for very low bandwidth data (sub-100KB text-only email) but no good for anything else. I used an SSB radio with a Pactor modem and SailMail while crossing the Atlantic, and it was great for staying in touch with friends but it wouldn't handle attachments, so photos and suchlike were out of the question. A lot of the sailors I've met opt for satphones with data capabilities, from providers such as Thuraya, which give something like 9600 baud at a reasonable cost, but the coverage isn't as complete as what you'll get with SSB. Either way, there's no chance a student can afford these: an SSB with a modem is way more expensive than a cheap satphone, and the cheapest Thuraya Hughes phone I found was around $500 second-hand (excluding any data topups).
It's pretty clear if you know a bit about marine data comms that Ubergamer's data quotas are actually extremely generous: 100 minutes of net access and permanent e-mail use with a megabyte message limit is a good deal. My advice would be to use a WordPress blog and set up the e-mail posting option, forget photographs or perhaps use them as part of the 100 minutes quota. Forget Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites; point your friends at your blog and stay in touch via e-mail and the occasional phone call (assuming you get a reasonable voice quota). Read more books, get to know the people you're sailing with and Enjoy the travels!
If you get arrested, and they charge you some for some piddling small offense, then you've just gone and screwed your freedom to travel permanently.
Don't forget, too, that after arrest they take your DNA and it stays on the register permanently, regardless of whether you're convicted or not, so after this event you're treated as a suspect in every crime that's checked against this database - innocent until proven guilty, my arse. Let's hope false positives, poor sampling techniques, theft of this highly personal information and any other troubling issues are rare events, eh?!
Just thought I'd mention, VoiceOver's Rate is not equal to WPM, it's a simple percentage scale. I think the maximum of 100 is actually over to 750WPM, which should be plenty fast enough;) I'd love to see/hear someone competent using this sort of screen-reading software, I reckon it'd be damn impressive.
To be fair, I think the new voice in Leopard, co-incidentally called "Alex", works remarkable well at high speed.
Anyone with Leopard can try it out pretty quickly:
Open System Preferences. Click on Universal Access. Under the "Seeing" tab, click on "Open VoiceOver Utility".
Go to the "Speech" item in the sidebar. Pick Alex as the voice, then adjust the "Rate" parameter to see how the voice works when sped up. He'll automatically say: "Nothing is as powerful as idea whose time has come." Try bumping the rate to its maximum (100).
Now change the voice to Victoria and compare. Personally, I think Alex sounds a lot better.
One of these "getting started with VoiceOver" manuals might help? (Leopard and Tiger versions, multiple audio and text formats.) http://w3.wmcnet.org/dtbmaker/books/vogs/
I think VO in 10.5 is an improvement over 10.4, but I'd agree that it's a bit inconsistent when it comes to navigating websites. Saying that, I've not used it much, only checking it out out of curiosity rather than need, and the learning curve seems pretty steep so I may be doing it wrong.
Indeed, even a small wave can sink a vessel if it hits it on the beam (side on). The general guideline is that a wave that's over the height of the ship's beam (its width) can capsize it if it hits side on.
I'm sure there are careers dedicated to stability in ship design, but most sailors would do well to learn the basics of the Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS - the higher the better), which is what's taught on the RYA Yachmaster course: http://www.sailtrain.co.uk/stability/vanishing_stability.htm
Manufacturers usually provide righting moment curves which will show the stability characteristics of their vessels. Powerboats (often called yachts in the US) have a much lower AVS that yachts (US: sailboats) due to a higher centre of gravity. Yachts tend to have a long keel with a big lump of lead on, and I know which one I'd rather go to sea in! Also, many powerboats don't have any protection on their engine air intakes, so will flood if they reach a certain angle. This was probably one of the downfalls of the unfortunate people that died recently off Whitby in their 25ft cabin cruiser, a 30ft swell in a small boat is very dangerous indeed, they'd have been better off heading straight into it rather than trying to turn around: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7109495.stm
There are also different types of sailing vessels. Light displacement, wide, high volume hulls with shallow draughts will have a lower AVS than heavy displacement, deep draught, narrow boats with low volume hulls. You'll see the differences in hull design between boats that are meant for coastal sailing and racing round buoys (Beneteau, Sunseeker, etc.) and ocean-going yachts like Contessas, Moodys, Amels and suchlike.
The first person convicted of this offence with relation to wireless internet access was Gregory Straszkiewicz in 2005. He was fined £500 and given a 12 month conditional discharge.
In fitting with Slashdot tradition, I'll give my own analogy. (Hopefully this fits a little better than some of the useless "house/front door" or "car/keys in ignition" ones.):-
Imagine you have a water tap on the wall bounding your property (so people have physical access to without trespass or any illegality). You pay a bill for your water supply, which may or may not be metered. If a passer-by takes water from this tap, are they "stealing" it? They may or may not be costing you money. If you put a lock on this tap it'd be obvious it was private, but by not putting a lock on it -- it came like that when you bought it, but is constructed to accept a padlock -- are you implying that it's free to use
Stretching it beyond its fit, say that the water from your tap had a unique mineral content that allowed it to be easily traced back to you. Now say that someone created a poison using that water, or some other heinous crime (think of the children!), would you be in some way liable for this crime, provided that water in itself is harmless and supplying water is not illegal (though maybe against the terms of service of your water provider)?
(a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and
(b)does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service,
is guilty of an offence.
(2)
It is not an offence under this section to obtain a service mentioned in section 297(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48) (dishonestly obtaining a broadcasting or cable programme service provided from a place in the UK).
(3)
A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable--
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to a fine, or to both.
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
(2)
The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at--
(a) any particular program or data;
(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
(3)
A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.
You're mostly right, but it's not really to do with DRM. The catchup window and limited series stacking were some of the restrictions placed on the service during the BBC Trust's draft public consultation, and they deliberately restricted it to make iPlayer less likely to impact on other competing services, such as 4OD (Channel 4's On Demand internet TV service). When it comes down to it, as much as I'd like it to be as good as possible, I do agree that these limits needed to be imposed: when you're a government-sponsored monopoly it just wouldn't be fair otherwise.
Speaking of which, everyone whining now seems to have completely missed that public consultation, which is strange as it was reported widely, including right here on Slashdot, and in many articles specifically targeted Mac & Linux users, who were asked to make their voices heard.
The DRM issue is actually fairly simple: the BBC didn't & doesn't want it, but unfortunately there's a big catch: they don't fully own the rights to most of the programmes in their archives. For instance, go look up the new series of Dr. Who and check the production companies: it's both BBC Wales and CBC. How about Rome? That'd be HD Vision Studios, BBC, HBO. As such, the DRM was forced on them by the 3rd party rights-holders, who wouldn't agree to the whole iPlayer/stream over the internet thing *AT ALL* if their content wasn't "protected" with DRM.
So, what do you do if you want to stream to the public in a way that's acceptable to the rights-holders but as good for your audience as possible? You use DRM, and you try to get it to cover the maximum audience with the currently available solutions. Hence they chose Windows Media. At the same time, you try to figure out a solution that will include *everyone* and commit to doing it within a reasonable timespan. They said exactly this in the public consultation -- specifically including Linux, I might add -- and they say it again in the linked article. Quote: "the corporation's governing body asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer *could run on different systems*...within 'a reasonable time frame', initially twenty-four months." The fact that two years may not be long enough to *write their own a fully cross-platform solution including DRM* that the 3rd party rights holders will be happy with is why the BBC have stated that they can't guarantee this timescale. It's a pretty mammoth task.
The BBC took the most practical and pragmatic approach possible, so quit your fucking whining, Open Source Consortium, if you'd paid any attention at all you'd know this. All this is doing is creating bigger problems and making an enemy out of a friend. I can see it getting to the point where the BBC just says: "sod it, we're going to shelve the whole thing" and I wouldn't blame them.
Or maybe, just maybe, the OSC know all this and are just kicking up publicity for themselves. Am I being cynical? I don't see them actually recommending any solutions, such as a cross-platform, open--source DRM system, which is precisely what the BBC needs. Oh wait, that's cause it doesn't exist. (The only thing I ever heard of that sounded reasonable was Sun's DReaM, which got an endorsement from Larry Lessig, but that's still in the specification stages over a year after it was announced.)
I write this as a Mac & Debian Linux user, who very, very rarely switches his Windows PC on and certainly won't be using it for iPlayer. Don't think that I don't want them to come up with something, because I really do, I just realise it's NOT THAT EASY.
I'd much prefer that they brought something out now that benefited the majority, even if that doesn't include me, than nothing at all for several years until they could support every platform. It seems the OSC prefer the latter, and if they get their way this may happen. And the majority will lose out because of it.
Unfortunately registration is required for the KnoppMyth forum (I'd encourage you to join as there's a wealth of information there and they're generally very helpful folks) so I've taken the liberty of posting the relevant info below:
[Posted by Cecil, KnoppMyth's lead developer. Note that I've added the information on how to get a terminal window and su to root.]
Not as clean as I'd like... But if you follow these instructions as root, you'll be 0.20. Make sure you backup first!
Open up a terminal in KnoppMyth by pressing Alt+X.
Why is suggesting an atheist president so stupid? Have I missed something?
I think you're not taking into account the general opinion of the America. In "the God Delusion" Dawkins quotes a Gallup poll conducted in 1999 that asked Americans the following question:
Would you vote for an otherwise well-qualified person who was: (Percentages are for a "yes" answer)
Female - 95%
Roman Catholic - 94%
Jew - 92%
Black - 92%
Mormon - 79%
Gay - 79%
Atheist - 49%
As you can see, more than HALF wouldn't have voted for an atheist. Now, while the US cultural landscape has no doubt changed in the last seven years, have people's opinions really changed that much? I don't think so.
Thanks for the reply. Those are some interesting questions, indeed; I would love to try that out -- for instance, does this (on OS X) cause a kernel panic or can arbitrary code be executed? -- if I could afford an Intel Mac myself;) (It'd also be handy to do an Intel build of MPlayer for OS X as the official site's Mac binaries are still out of date, I've done a PPC build which I'll distribute unofficially once I'm back home and off the slow-as-molasses GPRS.)
Speaking of which, while I definitely can't buy you an Intel Mac outright I certainly would donate some money. If you set up an official Metasploit-sponsored "get us an Intel Mac so we can fuzz it" site with a Paypal account and aim for a common model, say, a current Intel Mac Mini or entry MacBook, then I'd gladly throw you $20USD and I'm sure plenty of other people would, too. After all, I want as secure a machine as possible and would be happy for more security researchers to target the platform. (Though I do suspect that the Airport Express drivers may now be a significantly harder target than they were a few months ago. Perhaps focussing in a different direction would be more successful, e.g. the Bluetooth drivers?)
It'd be a real shame that Ellch and Maynor, if they truly did find a kernel exploit in the Apple Wi-Fi drivers as you imply, left the situation as it currently stands, their reputations to many have been severely tarnished. The handling of events on both sides has been poor and the truth, whatever it is, hidden under a big pile of spin. I'd like some straight answers, specifically to my previous questions and to the points and inferences you raise in your post, devoid of anger or resentment towards any particular party, and if the above donation would help me get that then it'd be money well spent.
Why is that Apple supporters are in such denial about their favorite products having security flaws? This bug was one of many in the Airport drivers and one an even bigger set of wireless exploits that we plan on releasing. A Broadcom bug was released today which likely affects more systems than Apple has ever shipped.
I don't think they are; in fact, I think most, myself included, are pleased that there are people working to improve the security of Apple's systems and who call them out when they get it wrong.
The entire problem with the Ellch & Maynor Black Hat affair is that there's been *absolutely no proof* presented of an exploit to Apple's Airport Express drivers, for whatever reason. To do a demo with an Apple laptop, 3rd party card and drivers AND only provide a videotape? That's not the recipe for a great presentation, by a long way. Still, I must admit to being conflicted about the whole thing. I've read the Daring Fireball/Jon Gruber coverage, which provides the more popular angle that Ellch and Maynor are full shit and did the whole thing purely for the publicity of hacking Apple hardware, and generally have a lot of respect for Gruber's journalism: he usually "hits the nail on the head", so to speak, providing an insightful angle more often than not. On the other hand, I broadly understand how buffer overflows work (thanks to the seminal Phrack article "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One), have read some of Ellch's papers (such as the SecurityFocus article on Wireless fuzzing and his discussion of a Centrino Wi-Fi bug/race condition) and he does seem to know what he's talking about. But why no proof? That's the central issue. As a responsible security professional he/they may be withholding information until a fix is provided, but there should be -- in my opinion, HAS to be -- limits to this. I've read many discussions on the issue of disclosure and think it's perfectly reasonable to put a timeframe on such information i.e. you've got, say, 50 days to fix this bug before I go public, otherwise companies may well do nothing to fix the problem. Pressure from Apple's legal department? I don't buy it, surely they'd have a decent lawyer who would be able to back up their side of things and allow them to release details with confidence? After all, similar situations have happened before with other companies and the researchers haven't been pressured into silence. I'm also not convinced that Apple's subsequent fix/update of the drivers was due to information provided by Ellch/Maynor because if it was, how come they've not published the exploit? But still, I'm not sure either way. Does the proof exist? I don't know. Like I said, I'm fairly conflicted about the entire thing!:)
The other problem I have is that, following on from the above media frenzy, the Airport exploit (your one? Presumably found by fuzzying?) is for the older generation of Apple hardware. It's NOT for *Airport Express* (802.11G) drivers, it's for the older 802.11B-only class of hardware. Apple haven't shipped these machines in what, two years? Frankly I find it hard to swallow all the hype of the media reports when it's for a previous generation of hardware, and find the whole media coverage disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading sensationalism at worst. Please don't take this as a criticism of your work, I find the exploit and the issues it raises interesting -- it proves that Apple's driver code wasn't (and therefore, may still not be) flawless, for one -- my problem is with the quality of the reporting, not the exploit itself. This type of journalism doesn't help anyone, it merely polarises both camps into "Apple is invulnerable" vs. "Mac users have their heads firmly in the sand", neither of which is particularly true.
What we need is more informed, insightful commentary... preferably along with some proof-of-concept Metasploit shellcode;)
Two-finger scrolling is a "new" feature, first added to the 4th or 5th gen of Powerbook G4's, as well as MacBooks and MacBook Pro's, if I remember correctly. So it does depend which Powerbook G4 you have, you may have one that predates this, probably under 1.6GHz. If so, and you still want two-finger scrolling, you can give this a go: http://iscroll2.sourceforge.net/
Be aware that it's still in relatively early development; it may work fine but may not, and I'd suggest not trying it unless you're comfortable enough using "beta" driver software. Check your hardware is supported using the supplied script first, and read the documentation thoroughly for any caveats. If you do have any problems, such as kernel panics on boot-up, you should be able to bypass the driver by holding shift down during boot-up, then uninstall iScroll2 by running its uninstall procedure or the supplied uninstall script.
It's not compatible with the iScroll2, so don't try and install both at the same time, but is worth checking out if you want scrolling on the edges, tap-to-click, etc.
Well said. Anyone else notice that the guy with the ginger afro appeared in a "Give Blood" (blood donation) advert and saved Gordon Ramsey's life in it? Obviously the casting people can't be trying that hard if an actor that's appeared on TV fairly recently can show up as a "legitimate" contestant. See the commercial here: http://www.blood.co.uk/pages/flashAdvert5L.htm
Oooh, it's the *same guy*, who'd have thought? (Incidentally, some friends met him at the Wickerman festival & said he was a thoroughly nice chap. And an actor.)
It's obviously exactly what you say, the next generation of reality show, but probably not quite so simple in that I think they KNOW that plants will be exposed, so plan on playing this out in the media for as much hype as possible. This does then imply that there must then be at least one REAL contestant who is blissfully unaware of all this (i.e. not the sharpest tool in the box) who gets to be "Truman".
Personally I'd prefer it if Channel 4 actually spent money on a decent programming instead of throwing their money at Endemol for crap like this. At least we've got the BBC, eh?
Yeah, it's been talked about before and it's blatantly obvious what's going on: this guy's abusing Slashdot's unholy Pagerank power to boost his crappy spyware-filled Beatles page and ScuttleMonkey's in on it, happily posting everything he submits. Wonder how much the kickback is? (Considering how much some pay for SEO, it's probably a tidy sum.)
I thought it might be an honest mistake at first, but it's just happened way too many times now to be a co-incidence. And Slashdot wonders why they're losing readers left, right & centre to Digg? DO YOUR JOBS PROPERLY AND SORT YOUR DAMN EDITORS OUT!
Firstly, he's a VLC *developer*, so it's no real surprise that he changed a few lines of (possibly his own) code to remove Google's limitations. Even so, it is admittedly a bit of a rubbish example to choose. Instead, let's try another one: who wrote the Apple/iTunes FairPlay DRM removal code? Here's a hint: it first appeared in VLC and was committed by a "jlj". Personally, I think the FairPlay crack is of a similar standing to DeCSS, though obviously not quite as widespread.
For those of you looking to improve your punctuation I'd highly recommend Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" (ISBN: 1861976127). It's a surprisingly funny book that's equally applicable to British and American English, although it's written with a British slant as Lynne's from London. If you've ever struggled with the humble apostrophe -- as the Angry Flower so eloquently observed that many people have -- and wish you knew the full rules of its use, this book's for you!
The other big thing that everyone jumping over each other to say, "I could've done that, big deal, he's not l33t." seems to have missed is that DVD Jon is a VLC DEVELOPER and has been for YEARS. Remember when the FairPlay crack first appeared? Where was it? Oh, that's right, it was in VLC and the source committed by a certain "JLJ". (And I'd like to see those same critics claim they could crack FairPlay!)
So is it really a big surprise that when someone changes code in a project that he's involved in he points out where and how to change it back, should you wish? Wow. Furthermore, everyone's reporting that he took 24 hours to do it; no, it probably took him about 5 minutes, if that. Give the guy a break, this is pure media hype, not his own.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as my experience goes, this is fine for very low bandwidth data (sub-100KB text-only email) but no good for anything else. I used an SSB radio with a Pactor modem and SailMail while crossing the Atlantic, and it was great for staying in touch with friends but it wouldn't handle attachments, so photos and suchlike were out of the question. A lot of the sailors I've met opt for satphones with data capabilities, from providers such as Thuraya, which give something like 9600 baud at a reasonable cost, but the coverage isn't as complete as what you'll get with SSB. Either way, there's no chance a student can afford these: an SSB with a modem is way more expensive than a cheap satphone, and the cheapest Thuraya Hughes phone I found was around $500 second-hand (excluding any data topups).
It's pretty clear if you know a bit about marine data comms that Ubergamer's data quotas are actually extremely generous: 100 minutes of net access and permanent e-mail use with a megabyte message limit is a good deal. My advice would be to use a WordPress blog and set up the e-mail posting option, forget photographs or perhaps use them as part of the 100 minutes quota. Forget Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites; point your friends at your blog and stay in touch via e-mail and the occasional phone call (assuming you get a reasonable voice quota). Read more books, get to know the people you're sailing with and Enjoy the travels!
Keep an eye on "S and Marper v United Kingdom", where two British citizens who've had their DNA taken argue that this retention is in breach of their human rights. More here: http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news-and-events/1-press-releases/2008/european-court-of-human-rights-dna-case-will-promote-national-database-deb.shtml
And how many would figure out IPv6 to get some free porn?
Just thought I'd mention, VoiceOver's Rate is not equal to WPM, it's a simple percentage scale. I think the maximum of 100 is actually over to 750WPM, which should be plenty fast enough ;) I'd love to see/hear someone competent using this sort of screen-reading software, I reckon it'd be damn impressive.
On a related note, to see a demo of what's possible with assistive technology check this video out, it's truly remarkable:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BhHwk9qSvI
To be fair, I think the new voice in Leopard, co-incidentally called "Alex", works remarkable well at high speed.
Anyone with Leopard can try it out pretty quickly:
Open System Preferences. Click on Universal Access. Under the "Seeing" tab, click on "Open VoiceOver Utility".
Go to the "Speech" item in the sidebar. Pick Alex as the voice, then adjust the "Rate" parameter to see how the voice works when sped up. He'll automatically say: "Nothing is as powerful as idea whose time has come." Try bumping the rate to its maximum (100).
Now change the voice to Victoria and compare. Personally, I think Alex sounds a lot better.
One of these "getting started with VoiceOver" manuals might help? (Leopard and Tiger versions, multiple audio and text formats.)
http://w3.wmcnet.org/dtbmaker/books/vogs/
For browsing sites, see some of the new shortcuts here:
http://alastairc.ac/2007/11/voiceover-html-navigation-updates/
I think VO in 10.5 is an improvement over 10.4, but I'd agree that it's a bit inconsistent when it comes to navigating websites. Saying that, I've not used it much, only checking it out out of curiosity rather than need, and the learning curve seems pretty steep so I may be doing it wrong.
Might be worth trying the latest version of Perian to improve other format support?
http://perian.org/
You'll also have to update to the latest version of Flip4Mac if you want to play Windows Media (WMV) files:
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm
Indeed, even a small wave can sink a vessel if it hits it on the beam (side on). The general guideline is that a wave that's over the height of the ship's beam (its width) can capsize it if it hits side on.
I'm sure there are careers dedicated to stability in ship design, but most sailors would do well to learn the basics of the Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS - the higher the better), which is what's taught on the RYA Yachmaster course:
http://www.sailtrain.co.uk/stability/vanishing_stability.htm
Manufacturers usually provide righting moment curves which will show the stability characteristics of their vessels. Powerboats (often called yachts in the US) have a much lower AVS that yachts (US: sailboats) due to a higher centre of gravity. Yachts tend to have a long keel with a big lump of lead on, and I know which one I'd rather go to sea in! Also, many powerboats don't have any protection on their engine air intakes, so will flood if they reach a certain angle. This was probably one of the downfalls of the unfortunate people that died recently off Whitby in their 25ft cabin cruiser, a 30ft swell in a small boat is very dangerous indeed, they'd have been better off heading straight into it rather than trying to turn around:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7109495.stm
There are also different types of sailing vessels. Light displacement, wide, high volume hulls with shallow draughts will have a lower AVS than heavy displacement, deep draught, narrow boats with low volume hulls. You'll see the differences in hull design between boats that are meant for coastal sailing and racing round buoys (Beneteau, Sunseeker, etc.) and ocean-going yachts like Contessas, Moodys, Amels and suchlike.
The first person convicted of this offence with relation to wireless internet access was Gregory Straszkiewicz in 2005. He was fined £500 and given a 12 month conditional discharge.
In fitting with Slashdot tradition, I'll give my own analogy. (Hopefully this fits a little better than some of the useless "house/front door" or "car/keys in ignition" ones.) :-
Imagine you have a water tap on the wall bounding your property (so people have physical access to without trespass or any illegality). You pay a bill for your water supply, which may or may not be metered. If a passer-by takes water from this tap, are they "stealing" it? They may or may not be costing you money. If you put a lock on this tap it'd be obvious it was private, but by not putting a lock on it -- it came like that when you bought it, but is constructed to accept a padlock -- are you implying that it's free to use
Stretching it beyond its fit, say that the water from your tap had a unique mineral content that allowed it to be easily traced back to you. Now say that someone created a poison using that water, or some other heinous crime (think of the children!), would you be in some way liable for this crime, provided that water in itself is harmless and supplying water is not illegal (though maybe against the terms of service of your water provider)?
A person who--
- (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and
- (b)does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service,
is guilty of an offence.It is not an offence under this section to obtain a service mentioned in section 297(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48) (dishonestly obtaining a broadcasting or cable programme service provided from a place in the UK).
A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable--
Here's the relevant section of the Computer Misuse Act 1990:
A person is guilty of an offence if--
The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at--
A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.
Well said! That's quite similar to my comment on this matter in a previous story, though I think yours reads better, mine was a bit ranty.
You're mostly right, but it's not really to do with DRM. The catchup window and limited series stacking were some of the restrictions placed on the service during the BBC Trust's draft public consultation, and they deliberately restricted it to make iPlayer less likely to impact on other competing services, such as 4OD (Channel 4's On Demand internet TV service). When it comes down to it, as much as I'd like it to be as good as possible, I do agree that these limits needed to be imposed: when you're a government-sponsored monopoly it just wouldn't be fair otherwise.
...within 'a reasonable time frame', initially twenty-four months." The fact that two years may not be long enough to *write their own a fully cross-platform solution including DRM* that the 3rd party rights holders will be happy with is why the BBC have stated that they can't guarantee this timescale. It's a pretty mammoth task.
Speaking of which, everyone whining now seems to have completely missed that public consultation, which is strange as it was reported widely, including right here on Slashdot, and in many articles specifically targeted Mac & Linux users, who were asked to make their voices heard.
The DRM issue is actually fairly simple: the BBC didn't & doesn't want it, but unfortunately there's a big catch: they don't fully own the rights to most of the programmes in their archives. For instance, go look up the new series of Dr. Who and check the production companies: it's both BBC Wales and CBC. How about Rome? That'd be HD Vision Studios, BBC, HBO. As such, the DRM was forced on them by the 3rd party rights-holders, who wouldn't agree to the whole iPlayer/stream over the internet thing *AT ALL* if their content wasn't "protected" with DRM.
So, what do you do if you want to stream to the public in a way that's acceptable to the rights-holders but as good for your audience as possible? You use DRM, and you try to get it to cover the maximum audience with the currently available solutions. Hence they chose Windows Media. At the same time, you try to figure out a solution that will include *everyone* and commit to doing it within a reasonable timespan. They said exactly this in the public consultation -- specifically including Linux, I might add -- and they say it again in the linked article. Quote: "the corporation's governing body asked the BBC to ensure that the iPlayer *could run on different systems*
The BBC took the most practical and pragmatic approach possible, so quit your fucking whining, Open Source Consortium, if you'd paid any attention at all you'd know this. All this is doing is creating bigger problems and making an enemy out of a friend. I can see it getting to the point where the BBC just says: "sod it, we're going to shelve the whole thing" and I wouldn't blame them.
Or maybe, just maybe, the OSC know all this and are just kicking up publicity for themselves. Am I being cynical? I don't see them actually recommending any solutions, such as a cross-platform, open--source DRM system, which is precisely what the BBC needs. Oh wait, that's cause it doesn't exist. (The only thing I ever heard of that sounded reasonable was Sun's DReaM, which got an endorsement from Larry Lessig, but that's still in the specification stages over a year after it was announced.)
I write this as a Mac & Debian Linux user, who very, very rarely switches his Windows PC on and certainly won't be using it for iPlayer. Don't think that I don't want them to come up with something, because I really do, I just realise it's NOT THAT EASY.
I'd much prefer that they brought something out now that benefited the majority, even if that doesn't include me, than nothing at all for several years until they could support every platform. It seems the OSC prefer the latter, and if they get their way this may happen. And the majority will lose out because of it.
You can fairly easily upgrade the latest KnoppMyth (R5D1) to the developer-provided packages, provided you're capable of using a command prompt, as explained in this thread:8 &highlight=
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1155
Unfortunately registration is required for the KnoppMyth forum (I'd encourage you to join as there's a wealth of information there and they're generally very helpful folks) so I've taken the liberty of posting the relevant info below:
[Posted by Cecil, KnoppMyth's lead developer. Note that I've added the information on how to get a terminal window and su to root.] It's also worth mentioning that Cecil says this won't affect the upgrade procedure to the next version, so don't let that hold you back.I think you're not taking into account the general opinion of the America. In "the God Delusion" Dawkins quotes a Gallup poll conducted in 1999 that asked Americans the following question:
Would you vote for an otherwise well-qualified person who was: (Percentages are for a "yes" answer)As you can see, more than HALF wouldn't have voted for an atheist. Now, while the US cultural landscape has no doubt changed in the last seven years, have people's opinions really changed that much? I don't think so.
Thanks for the reply. Those are some interesting questions, indeed; I would love to try that out -- for instance, does this (on OS X) cause a kernel panic or can arbitrary code be executed? -- if I could afford an Intel Mac myself ;) (It'd also be handy to do an Intel build of MPlayer for OS X as the official site's Mac binaries are still out of date, I've done a PPC build which I'll distribute unofficially once I'm back home and off the slow-as-molasses GPRS.)
Speaking of which, while I definitely can't buy you an Intel Mac outright I certainly would donate some money. If you set up an official Metasploit-sponsored "get us an Intel Mac so we can fuzz it" site with a Paypal account and aim for a common model, say, a current Intel Mac Mini or entry MacBook, then I'd gladly throw you $20USD and I'm sure plenty of other people would, too. After all, I want as secure a machine as possible and would be happy for more security researchers to target the platform. (Though I do suspect that the Airport Express drivers may now be a significantly harder target than they were a few months ago. Perhaps focussing in a different direction would be more successful, e.g. the Bluetooth drivers?)
It'd be a real shame that Ellch and Maynor, if they truly did find a kernel exploit in the Apple Wi-Fi drivers as you imply, left the situation as it currently stands, their reputations to many have been severely tarnished. The handling of events on both sides has been poor and the truth, whatever it is, hidden under a big pile of spin. I'd like some straight answers, specifically to my previous questions and to the points and inferences you raise in your post, devoid of anger or resentment towards any particular party, and if the above donation would help me get that then it'd be money well spent.
I don't think they are; in fact, I think most, myself included, are pleased that there are people working to improve the security of Apple's systems and who call them out when they get it wrong.
The entire problem with the Ellch & Maynor Black Hat affair is that there's been *absolutely no proof* presented of an exploit to Apple's Airport Express drivers, for whatever reason. To do a demo with an Apple laptop, 3rd party card and drivers AND only provide a videotape? That's not the recipe for a great presentation, by a long way. Still, I must admit to being conflicted about the whole thing. I've read the Daring Fireball/Jon Gruber coverage, which provides the more popular angle that Ellch and Maynor are full shit and did the whole thing purely for the publicity of hacking Apple hardware, and generally have a lot of respect for Gruber's journalism: he usually "hits the nail on the head", so to speak, providing an insightful angle more often than not. On the other hand, I broadly understand how buffer overflows work (thanks to the seminal Phrack article "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One), have read some of Ellch's papers (such as the SecurityFocus article on Wireless fuzzing and his discussion of a Centrino Wi-Fi bug/race condition) and he does seem to know what he's talking about. But why no proof? That's the central issue. As a responsible security professional he/they may be withholding information until a fix is provided, but there should be -- in my opinion, HAS to be -- limits to this. I've read many discussions on the issue of disclosure and think it's perfectly reasonable to put a timeframe on such information i.e. you've got, say, 50 days to fix this bug before I go public, otherwise companies may well do nothing to fix the problem. Pressure from Apple's legal department? I don't buy it, surely they'd have a decent lawyer who would be able to back up their side of things and allow them to release details with confidence? After all, similar situations have happened before with other companies and the researchers haven't been pressured into silence. I'm also not convinced that Apple's subsequent fix/update of the drivers was due to information provided by Ellch/Maynor because if it was, how come they've not published the exploit? But still, I'm not sure either way. Does the proof exist? I don't know. Like I said, I'm fairly conflicted about the entire thing! :)
The other problem I have is that, following on from the above media frenzy, the Airport exploit (your one? Presumably found by fuzzying?) is for the older generation of Apple hardware. It's NOT for *Airport Express* (802.11G) drivers, it's for the older 802.11B-only class of hardware. Apple haven't shipped these machines in what, two years? Frankly I find it hard to swallow all the hype of the media reports when it's for a previous generation of hardware, and find the whole media coverage disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading sensationalism at worst. Please don't take this as a criticism of your work, I find the exploit and the issues it raises interesting -- it proves that Apple's driver code wasn't (and therefore, may still not be) flawless, for one -- my problem is with the quality of the reporting, not the exploit itself. This type of journalism doesn't help anyone, it merely polarises both camps into "Apple is invulnerable" vs. "Mac users have their heads firmly in the sand", neither of which is particularly true.
What we need is more informed, insightful commentary... preferably along with some proof-of-concept Metasploit shellcode ;)
Two-finger scrolling is a "new" feature, first added to the 4th or 5th gen of Powerbook G4's, as well as MacBooks and MacBook Pro's, if I remember correctly. So it does depend which Powerbook G4 you have, you may have one that predates this, probably under 1.6GHz. If so, and you still want two-finger scrolling, you can give this a go:
http://iscroll2.sourceforge.net/
Be aware that it's still in relatively early development; it may work fine but may not, and I'd suggest not trying it unless you're comfortable enough using "beta" driver software. Check your hardware is supported using the supplied script first, and read the documentation thoroughly for any caveats. If you do have any problems, such as kernel panics on boot-up, you should be able to bypass the driver by holding shift down during boot-up, then uninstall iScroll2 by running its uninstall procedure or the supplied uninstall script.
Alternatively, and without two-finger scrolling but with a wealth of other options, is Sidetrack:
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/
It's not compatible with the iScroll2, so don't try and install both at the same time, but is worth checking out if you want scrolling on the edges, tap-to-click, etc.
Well said. Anyone else notice that the guy with the ginger afro appeared in a "Give Blood" (blood donation) advert and saved Gordon Ramsey's life in it? Obviously the casting people can't be trying that hard if an actor that's appeared on TV fairly recently can show up as a "legitimate" contestant. See the commercial here:
/ spacecadets/cadets/ryan-mcbride.html
http://www.blood.co.uk/pages/flashAdvert5L.htm
And here's the guy's profile:
http://channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S
Oooh, it's the *same guy*, who'd have thought? (Incidentally, some friends met him at the Wickerman festival & said he was a thoroughly nice chap. And an actor.)
It's obviously exactly what you say, the next generation of reality show, but probably not quite so simple in that I think they KNOW that plants will be exposed, so plan on playing this out in the media for as much hype as possible. This does then imply that there must then be at least one REAL contestant who is blissfully unaware of all this (i.e. not the sharpest tool in the box) who gets to be "Truman".
Personally I'd prefer it if Channel 4 actually spent money on a decent programming instead of throwing their money at Endemol for crap like this. At least we've got the BBC, eh?
Yeah, it's been talked about before and it's blatantly obvious what's going on: this guy's abusing Slashdot's unholy Pagerank power to boost his crappy spyware-filled Beatles page and ScuttleMonkey's in on it, happily posting everything he submits. Wonder how much the kickback is? (Considering how much some pay for SEO, it's probably a tidy sum.)
I thought it might be an honest mistake at first, but it's just happened way too many times now to be a co-incidence. And Slashdot wonders why they're losing readers left, right & centre to Digg? DO YOUR JOBS PROPERLY AND SORT YOUR DAMN EDITORS OUT!
Firstly, he's a VLC *developer*, so it's no real surprise that he changed a few lines of (possibly his own) code to remove Google's limitations. Even so, it is admittedly a bit of a rubbish example to choose. Instead, let's try another one: who wrote the Apple/iTunes FairPlay DRM removal code? Here's a hint: it first appeared in VLC and was committed by a "jlj". Personally, I think the FairPlay crack is of a similar standing to DeCSS, though obviously not quite as widespread.
For those of you looking to improve your punctuation I'd highly recommend Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" (ISBN: 1861976127). It's a surprisingly funny book that's equally applicable to British and American English, although it's written with a British slant as Lynne's from London. If you've ever struggled with the humble apostrophe -- as the Angry Flower so eloquently observed that many people have -- and wish you knew the full rules of its use, this book's for you!
The other big thing that everyone jumping over each other to say, "I could've done that, big deal, he's not l33t." seems to have missed is that DVD Jon is a VLC DEVELOPER and has been for YEARS. Remember when the FairPlay crack first appeared? Where was it? Oh, that's right, it was in VLC and the source committed by a certain "JLJ". (And I'd like to see those same critics claim they could crack FairPlay!)
So is it really a big surprise that when someone changes code in a project that he's involved in he points out where and how to change it back, should you wish? Wow. Furthermore, everyone's reporting that he took 24 hours to do it; no, it probably took him about 5 minutes, if that. Give the guy a break, this is pure media hype, not his own.
Indeed, I was going to say that. In fact, the first appearance of the cracking of Apple's FairPlay encryption was in VLC, and was coded by none other than a certain JLJ:e mux/mp4/drms.c
l c_and_a.html
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/log/trunk/modules/d
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/26/dvd_jon_on_v
For the Mac OS X version (eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz):
0 6271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
p se/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK- 3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
1 -200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
p se/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbo n.tar.gz
1 -200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
3 .1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar. gz
d rops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-car bon.tar.gz
l ipse/downloads/drops/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SD K-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar.gz
s e.org/R-3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-ca rbon.tar.gz
R -3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.ta r.gz
- 3.1-200506271435/eclipse-SDK-3.1-macosx-carbon.tar .gz
[Austria] Vienna University of Technology
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/softeng/eclipse/R-3.1-2005
[Canada] Groupe d'utilisateurs de Linux de l'UdeS
http://gulus.usherbrooke.ca/pub/appl/eclipse/ecli
[France] ObjectWeb Consortium (INRIA - French National Inst
http://eclipse.objectweb.org/downloads/drops/R-3.
[Germany] University of Applied Sciences Esslingen
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/ecli
[Hungary] Gabriel Consulting
http://eclipse.gabriel.co.hu/downloads/drops/R-3.
[Slovenia] bevc.net
http://mirrors.bevc.net/eclipse/download/drops/R-
[Switzerland] SWITCHmirror
http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/eclipse/downloads/
[Turkey] Hacettepe University, Department of Computer Science & Engineering
http://mirrors.cs.hacettepe.edu.tr/eclipse.org/ec
[United Kingdom] UK Mirror Service
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.eclip
[United States] Calvin College
http://mirror.calvin.edu/eclipse/downloads/drops/
[United States] Calvin College (ftp)
ftp://mirror.calvin.edu/eclipse/downloads/drops/R
Unfortunately as of 2005-06-29 02:26:39 BST none are updated yet, hopefully all the rsync mirroring cronjobs'll complete soon!