Richard Stallman wrote an interesting piece about what might be the best punishment for Microsoft from the perspective of Free Software. Hmm. Interesting:+) Forcing open publication of the APIs would be good in the short term, but has a couple of Big Drawbacks:
It leaves Microsoft with an instant lead in products - MS can develop their own products against a new and different API, then release the API simultaniously with the product - everyone else is left to play catch-up (yes, this favours OSS over commercial software, as patches could be out in days, but many of MS's commercial competitors would take weeks or months to modify their product to handle the new APIs and file formats, and would probably want recompense for the effort.
It makes MS an instant "industry standard" and reduces everything else to "MS compatable". I don't *want* MS to set the standards for how everything works, I want them to suit the job and the world, not a marketing plan. If we are going to go the Open API route, it should be a standards group designing that API, not MS.
Ok, rant over. If you are interested in alternative approaches, Cringely has put forward HIS masterplan (no doubt it has just as many holes, just in different places) --
The lamp is acting as a bridging transceiver. If the LAN was a 'sensitive' network, it would not be eg. wireless ethernet in the office. You would have a segment or twisted-pair, thin-coax, or twinax plugged into this lamp. Hmm. I can think of at least one theoretical route for this; if you "dummied" a network card to leak it's information to the power wire, encrypted to look like "noise", you could open communications to a comms repeater built into a lamp, along the power wire the lamp needs to work.... and I can't imagine many people finding it strange you need to plug a lamp into a wall socket. That said, you would need a LOT of unsupervised access to a Real PC on the lan before you could swap out a network board - however, if you could gain access to a wiring closet that has data runs, you might be able to imbed a splitter/transmitter unit into a plastered-in run, or into a hub or two... --
No but it cannot help. That bars him from getting a job in virtually any government office even as the janitor. Working in any company that would have government contracts or works on classified material. Basically any criminal reccord including traffic tickets are used routinely to prevent people from obtaining jobs. In the short term, certainly. In the longer term, I suspect the FBI will drop this one too, as more trouble than it is worth and may well only serve the purpose of distracting us from the 'Y2K riot' Videos until after the celebrations:+) --
However, if I'm put under investigation by the FBI for some computer crime (ie "hacking"... quotes used because i'm one of those guys who thinks that's the wrong term) then my name is forever tainted... this is the problem with our "trial by media" system. If my name is ever again mentioned by someone who doesn't know me directly, they are talking about that "hacker guy" who broke into... some government division with an acronym... and it is now impossible for me to get a job with anyone without them wondering if I'm breaking into their networks. Under investigation = guilty in the eyes of the public. A lot depends on the crime they are being "investigated" for - PZ's reputation didn't suffer in the long term - in fact, he became pretty much a celebrity due to the harassment. The "crime" he is accused of (and I haven't seen the site as it is/.tted out of sight as usual:+) is apparently 'challenging authorities and laws that may impinge upon his activities'. Provided he can make it clear he is fighting FOR civil liberties, he may well get the same sort of fame PZ did - possibly for much less effort:+) --
IIRC, Phil Zimmermann was "under investigation" for some time, after the release of PGP; after they finally decided he wasn't going to be intimidated, and the bad publicity, like any publicity, was just spreading PGP faster, they dropped the whole thing..... --
Microsoft does do that with their packages. Whenever someone launches IE 5 (and late versions of 4) it connects to their website first to check for more recent versions. It's on by default and you have to go under the advanced options property sheet to turn it off. Most users will not even look at the advanced options on that property sheet more than once, because the first time is enough to scare them away for good. Yes, I know (I always install from CD and turn it off for that reason). However,
It is obvious it is doing it (M$ aren't hiding it) and
You CAN turn it off - which you can't in this case.
How are they cooling these fast chips it must be more than multiple fans and heat sinks. Difficult to tell - the cooling information should be Here, but that seems to only go up to the 700. I suspect they haven't gotten around to updating that bit yet, or Marketing are outstripping Production - just like at Intel:+) --
It's nice to see that AMD is keeping ahead of Intel in the speed wars, but not so nice to see they seem to be pushing up into the same sort of price bracket to do so. One of the GOOD things about the AMD Vs Intel wars was that it was acting to push prices for chips down; I don't really *want* to be forced into buying the latest and greatest chip at enormous expense, just so I can play the latest games; I would much rather have a chip at a price I can afford, that is just below the leading edge That said, the tiny little trailer that points to the new 553MHz K6 at a reasonable price is a much more welcome sight.... --
I can't see it making THAT much difference what is sent - it is the fact they are getting a packet from you whenever you play the game, saying "person at IP address xx.xx.xx.xx is playing Quake". Microsoft would *kill* for the right to do that for their packages.... --
How do you know that he didn't post his reply BEFORE the parent post was moderated up? It's not good to assume things you can't prove. It's not a problem - as far as I know, he hadn't posted his response yet, as there were no replies to the topic at all when I composed it. That said, I had to read the topic, then the link, then compose my message. I got id #32, he got #4, so he was "before" me; however, I suspect the only ones that beat him into the list were "first post"ers, even if two of them didn't use those words. I didn't think it was worth worrying about - At worst, He would get a mod point that might have gone to me, but if his post was better, it deserved it, and it's not like I need the karma:+) --
I think the major point here is that the web is too "immediate" to give people time to get over their bouts of anger; Bruce heard about yet another case of Corel (or at least their legal department) demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the GPL. He understandably got annoyed, and while still annoyed dashed off a quick email to the appropriate user group. After an hour or so, he calmed down, but by then the echos of that note had spread across the planet.... --
The country where the purchaser resides can tax the credit-card purchase That's certainly possible, but given most systems depending on taxing the goods, and taxing diferently depending on type, it would be difficult to do. In particular, you may end up taxing some things four or five ways, depending on national rules (for example, the country that runs the credit card takes a cut, the country you phoned from, the one you registered in, and so forth)
, and the exporting country can tax the export at the dock. The intermediate countrieds might not be able to do too much, but that doesn't mean all must fail. Fail they would if I had my way, but unfortuniately I don't. Dock? so, for online services and downloading software.....? I suppose you could impose a goods tax on the D/L server, but that would mean all such companies almost instantly relocating their DL servers to whatever country charges the least..... --
But stop and think for a moment. If in a thousand years we will spend our life wired up, then surely in a hundred we will do all our shopping online! But at this point, the government won't be able to collect sales tax because of our silly "moratorium" on Internet taxes. So why now do we shout "keep the Internet tax-free" when in a hundred years the government will be mired in debt due to our shortsightedness? I can't see the problem here - no-one is suggesting a permanent ban on RW goods and services; all they are suggesting is that purely electronic transactions (software and online services) are so difficult to track and police, the cost of doing so far exceeds the benefit to be gained. I would't be too surprised to see a "internet tax" taxing the right to use the internet, though. that would be wrong as well, but the government already taxes the right to receive radio waves here in.uk, so..... --
I can't see how you could possibly keep track - for example, say bigsoftwarecorp.com sells a copy of superware V3 (tm) to an aol user at aol.com. ALL the following could be true:
bigsoftwarecorp.com is in the.com domain
bigsoftwarecorp.com's host is in New Zealand
bigsoftwarecorp.com has a download server in england that the software actually comes from (download.bigsoftware.com)
bigsoftwarecorp.com is actually an english company
john@aol.com is in the.com domain
john@aol.com registered in japan
john@aol.com is actually in england, and will be downloading and using the software there. so, which of the countries are entitled to duty? we are downloading from england to england, but the data is going to AOL's US server enroute... --
Could you explain aysemmetric(sp?) encryption to me? Too my knowledge I don't see why you can't just decrypt the message the same way that you encrypted it (this is obviously not XOR), so how do (simple, please) aysemmetric encryption algorithyms(sp?) work? Ok. The simplest to understand is RSA - it relies on the fact that for a very carefully chosen pair of numbers (x and p) you can do the following:
Take your original message as a number
raise it to a power (say, 512)
divide it by p, and take the remainder (this is called modulo arithmatic, but is the same as division-with-remainder you may have done when learning division)
the remainder is your ENCRYPTED MESSAGE that you send
the recipient gets your remainder, and raises it to the power (x/512)
HE then takes the remainder when divided by p
the remainder he gets is your original message!
for obvious reasons, the value "p" is the PUBLIC half of the code - you have to know it. the value "x" is the secret half - without it, you can encode, but not decode. that do? --
Most of the online communities I know of revolve around Usenet groups these days, rather that BBS (but then, I didn't know many BBS systems here in.uk due to the high phone charges) Groups like Alt.Fan.Pratchett and Alt.Fan.Eddings tend to have regular "Meets" and their own IRC channels, but the meets and channels are there to support the Usenetters, not the other way around... --
Apart from the fact that you can't spell 'concealing', It's a typo - as long as you know what I meant, I don't see it as worth the effort of a spelling flame...
steganography is NOT about hiding an encrypted file inside another! In the context used, it/is/. we are talking about crypography, and the application of steno to crypto is in concealing the message inside a more innocent file. Yes, the field is much wider than that, but if I had been copying from a dictionary, I would have spelt "concealing" correctly:+)
(Why has this post got a 2, when the AC was left at 0?) Because I used my Real Name. People willing to stand behind what they say rather than hiding their identities automatically get more points
<snipped stuff I don't disagree with> ...and talk in coded speech to his partner in crime... And so, are using an encrypted message (a verbal code is still encryption) and slipping it into innocent traffic (which IS a form of steno, if a crude one). The point to note was they still encrypted the information! They took efforts to make the data look like the traffic that subchannel was supposed to contain..... That said, there are examples that don't contain this flaw - for example, if you write in "invisible ink" on a existing "innocent" letter, the odds of you bothering to write in code are low. --
If the contract is not binding... then the 18, years clause would not be binding either. So what's the point? As far as I can tell, there isn't one - but from a practical standpoint, there is a lot of difference between agreeing to a contract that is non-enforcable, and making a false declaration of age to obtain goods or services. --
I suspect this is yet more Corel "standard boilerplate" stupidity - In many places, contracts with minors aren't binding on them (but are on you) so Corel would be justified in restricting licencing of products they want the licence to be enforcable on to those that they can hope to do so with. The fact that this is their Open Source licence and standard rules don't apply (I am sure you all remember the Recent screwup over a non-GPL for the beta) seems to be hard to install into the mindset of their legal department. I will Email Corel Politely and let them know - you never know, they may even post a reply here.....:+) --
It's not uncommon for IT support people to work over their "listed" time, and it is not uncommon for this to be "an expected part of the job" and therefore unpaid overtime. It has two factors:
Much support work is reactive - something goes wrong, and must be fixed. this means that you must be onsite and waiting, but does not mean you will always be engaged in a task at any given time (mind you, you also get PHB's that insist on you "being seen to be working" so make extra unneeded work):+(
Much maintainance MUST take place out of office hours - and IT Tech staff are expected, if not to do the work themselves, to supervise those that do.
Yes, this really is two completely different roles, and you would think you could get two completely different people to do it.. but unfortunately, (2) is frequent enough that it is common practice, but not frequent enough to justify it being a full-time position. --
Steganography is the method of "conceiling" an encrypted file inside another, larger file that has redundancy (for example, a.wav sound file or a.gif). There are utilities that will do this for you, and at least one crypto package (Scramdisk) that allows you to set aside such space in a.wav and use it as a virtual drive letter. --
...The Lords have a history of sending back for revision bills that take things a little too far, and the upper chamber is (IMHO) a pretty reasonable one, since the members are not elected,... Maybe this explains why so many hereditary peerages (those that aren't gifts from the government currently in power) seem to be losing their right to vote..... --
Re:That's why we told them to fuck off, and they d
on
Waiting for the Knock
·
· Score: 2
The UK government scrapped the whole mad keys idea last week. This story is very old, very out of date, and very not valid anymore. Sorry - but no. The bill it WAS part of (the eCommerce one) will go ahead without it, but the provisions have been moved to a "more appropriate vehicle" - in this case, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, and as far as I can tell, without even a cursory edit.
Isn't it about time Slashdot got a European correspondent to stop this kind of confusion? There IS a strong Merkin leaning on/., but then, the majority of web users are still merkins. I think what you are actually asking is for a european story reviewer, which is a different matter:+) --
Not sure about the US, but in the UK, teachers are simply not given the TIME to do so. one English teacher I know has the follwing duties:
Full time teaching schedule (on average, of three of the four teaching periods she has a class to teach)
School Library - she is responsible for purchasing, reshelving and repairing books, and anything else that comes up
A Minimumof one hour's prep/marking per class - that she has to do in the evenings at home
At least three "cover" lessons per month - covering for sickness or other absence of a collegue
"School activities". A catchall for extra stuff the school wants done in the evenings and lunch breaks, but isn't willing to hire staff for
"Pupil management". Meeting parents to discuss any problems, PTA meetings, and so forth.
this is a full time occupation, 8am-8pm weekdays and most of every saturday, and it is a wonder she can still walk and talk by the end of the week. If she could find space for keeping up with new stuff as well, I would be astounded. --
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. Interesting
Forcing open publication of the APIs would be good in the short term, but has a couple of Big Drawbacks:
- It leaves Microsoft with an instant lead in products - MS can develop their own products against a new and different API, then release the API simultaniously with the product - everyone else is left to play catch-up (yes, this favours OSS over commercial software, as patches could be out in days, but many of MS's commercial competitors would take weeks or months to modify their product to handle the new APIs and file formats, and would probably want recompense for the effort.
- It makes MS an instant "industry standard" and reduces everything else to "MS compatable". I don't *want* MS to set the standards for how everything works, I want them to suit the job and the world, not a marketing plan. If we are going to go the Open API route, it should be a standards group designing that API, not MS.
Ok, rant over. If you are interested in alternative approaches, Cringely has put forward HIS masterplan (no doubt it has just as many holes, just in different places)--
The lamp is acting as a bridging transceiver. If the LAN was a 'sensitive' network, it would not be eg. wireless ethernet in the office. You would have a segment or twisted-pair, thin-coax, or twinax plugged into this lamp.
Hmm. I can think of at least one theoretical route for this; if you "dummied" a network card to leak it's information to the power wire, encrypted to look like "noise", you could open communications to a comms repeater built into a lamp, along the power wire the lamp needs to work.... and I can't imagine many people finding it strange you need to plug a lamp into a wall socket.
That said, you would need a LOT of unsupervised access to a Real PC on the lan before you could swap out a network board - however, if you could gain access to a wiring closet that has data runs, you might be able to imbed a splitter/transmitter unit into a plastered-in run, or into a hub or two...
--
No but it cannot help. That bars him from getting a job in virtually any government office even as the janitor. Working in any company that would have government contracts or works on classified material. Basically any criminal reccord including traffic tickets are used routinely to prevent people from obtaining jobs. :+)
In the short term, certainly. In the longer term, I suspect the FBI will drop this one too, as more trouble than it is worth and may well only serve the purpose of distracting us from the 'Y2K riot' Videos until after the celebrations
--
However, if I'm put under investigation by the FBI for some computer crime (ie "hacking"... quotes used because i'm one of those guys who thinks that's the wrong term) then my name is forever tainted... this is the problem with our "trial by media" system. If my name is ever again mentioned by someone who doesn't know me directly, they are talking about that "hacker guy" who broke into ... some government division with an acronym ... and it is now impossible for me to get a job with anyone without them wondering if I'm breaking into their networks. Under investigation = guilty in the eyes of the public. /.tted out of sight as usual :+) is apparently 'challenging authorities and laws that may impinge upon his activities'. Provided he can make it clear he is fighting FOR civil liberties, he may well get the same sort of fame PZ did - possibly for much less effort :+)
A lot depends on the crime they are being "investigated" for - PZ's reputation didn't suffer in the long term - in fact, he became pretty much a celebrity due to the harassment. The "crime" he is accused of (and I haven't seen the site as it is
--
IIRC, Phil Zimmermann was "under investigation" for some time, after the release of PGP; after they finally decided he wasn't going to be intimidated, and the bad publicity, like any publicity, was just spreading PGP faster, they dropped the whole thing.....
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Yes, I know (I always install from CD and turn it off for that reason). However,
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How are they cooling these fast chips it must be more than multiple fans and heat sinks. Difficult to tell - the cooling information should be Here, but that seems to only go up to the 700. I suspect they haven't gotten around to updating that bit yet, or Marketing are outstripping Production - just like at Intel :+)
--
In case anyone is interested, here are links to the technical specs pages for the Athlon and the K6-2
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It's nice to see that AMD is keeping ahead of Intel in the speed wars, but not so nice to see they seem to be pushing up into the same sort of price bracket to do so. One of the GOOD things about the AMD Vs Intel wars was that it was acting to push prices for chips down; I don't really *want* to be forced into buying the latest and greatest chip at enormous expense, just so I can play the latest games; I would much rather have a chip at a price I can afford, that is just below the leading edge
That said, the tiny little trailer that points to the new 553MHz K6 at a reasonable price is a much more welcome sight....
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I can't see it making THAT much difference what is sent - it is the fact they are getting a packet from you whenever you play the game, saying "person at IP address xx.xx.xx.xx is playing Quake". Microsoft would *kill* for the right to do that for their packages....
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How do you know that he didn't post his reply BEFORE the parent post was moderated up? :+)
It's not good to assume things you can't prove.
It's not a problem - as far as I know, he hadn't posted his response yet, as there were no replies to the topic at all when I composed it. That said, I had to read the topic, then the link, then compose my message. I got id #32, he got #4, so he was "before" me; however, I suspect the only ones that beat him into the list were "first post"ers, even if two of them didn't use those words.
I didn't think it was worth worrying about - At worst, He would get a mod point that might have gone to me, but if his post was better, it deserved it, and it's not like I need the karma
--
I think the major point here is that the web is too "immediate" to give people time to get over their bouts of anger; Bruce heard about yet another case of Corel (or at least their legal department) demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the GPL. He understandably got annoyed, and while still annoyed dashed off a quick email to the appropriate user group. After an hour or so, he calmed down, but by then the echos of that note had spread across the planet....
--
That's certainly possible, but given most systems depending on taxing the goods, and taxing diferently depending on type, it would be difficult to do. In particular, you may end up taxing some things four or five ways, depending on national rules (for example, the country that runs the credit card takes a cut, the country you phoned from, the one you registered in, and so forth)
, and the exporting country can tax the export at the dock. The intermediate countrieds might not be able to do too much, but that doesn't mean all must fail. Fail they would if I had my way, but unfortuniately I don't.
Dock? so, for online services and downloading software.....?
I suppose you could impose a goods tax on the D/L server, but that would mean all such companies almost instantly relocating their DL servers to whatever country charges the least.....
--
But stop and think for a moment. If in a thousand years we will spend our life wired up, then surely in a hundred we will do all our shopping online! But at this point, the government won't be able to collect sales tax because of our silly "moratorium" on Internet taxes. So why now do we shout "keep the Internet tax-free" when in a hundred years the government will be mired in debt due to our shortsightedness? .uk, so.....
I can't see the problem here - no-one is suggesting a permanent ban on RW goods and services; all they are suggesting is that purely electronic transactions (software and online services) are so difficult to track and police, the cost of doing so far exceeds the benefit to be gained. I would't be too surprised to see a "internet tax" taxing the right to use the internet, though. that would be wrong as well, but the government already taxes the right to receive radio waves here in
--
--
Ok. The simplest to understand is RSA - it relies on the fact that for a very carefully chosen pair of numbers (x and p) you can do the following:
- Take your original message as a number
- raise it to a power (say, 512)
- divide it by p, and take the remainder (this is called modulo arithmatic, but is the same as division-with-remainder you may have done when learning division)
- the remainder is your ENCRYPTED MESSAGE that you send
- the recipient gets your remainder, and raises it to the power (x/512)
- HE then takes the remainder when divided by p
- the remainder he gets is your original message!
for obvious reasons, the value "p" is the PUBLIC half of the code - you have to know it. the value "x" is the secret half - without it, you can encode, but not decode.that do?
--
Most of the online communities I know of revolve around Usenet groups these days, rather that BBS (but then, I didn't know many BBS systems here in .uk due to the high phone charges)
Groups like Alt.Fan.Pratchett and Alt.Fan.Eddings tend to have regular "Meets" and their own IRC channels, but the meets and channels are there to support the Usenetters, not the other way around...
--
It's a typo - as long as you know what I meant, I don't see it as worth the effort of a spelling flame...
steganography is NOT about hiding an encrypted file inside another! /is/. we are talking about crypography, and the application of steno to crypto is in concealing the message inside a more innocent file. Yes, the field is much wider than that, but if I had been copying from a dictionary, I would have spelt "concealing" correctly :+)
In the context used, it
(Why has this post got a 2, when the AC was left at 0?)
Because I used my Real Name. People willing to stand behind what they say rather than hiding their identities automatically get more points
<snipped stuff I don't disagree with>
...and talk in coded speech to his partner in crime...
And so, are using an encrypted message (a verbal code is still encryption) and slipping it into innocent traffic (which IS a form of steno, if a crude one). The point to note was they still encrypted the information! They took efforts to make the data look like the traffic that subchannel was supposed to contain.....
That said, there are examples that don't contain this flaw - for example, if you write in "invisible ink" on a existing "innocent" letter, the odds of you bothering to write in code are low.
--
If the contract is not binding... then the 18, years clause would not be binding either. So what's the point?
As far as I can tell, there isn't one - but from a practical standpoint, there is a lot of difference between agreeing to a contract that is non-enforcable, and making a false declaration of age to obtain goods or services.
--
I suspect this is yet more Corel "standard boilerplate" stupidity - In many places, contracts with minors aren't binding on them (but are on you) so Corel would be justified in restricting licencing of products they want the licence to be enforcable on to those that they can hope to do so with. The fact that this is their Open Source licence and standard rules don't apply (I am sure you all remember the Recent screwup over a non-GPL for the beta) seems to be hard to install into the mindset of their legal department. I will Email Corel Politely and let them know - you never know, they may even post a reply here..... :+)
--
- Much support work is reactive - something goes wrong, and must be fixed. this means that you must be onsite and waiting, but does not mean you will always be engaged in a task at any given time (mind you, you also get PHB's that insist on you "being seen to be working" so make extra unneeded work)
:+( - Much maintainance MUST take place out of office hours - and IT Tech staff are expected, if not to do the work themselves, to supervise those that do.
Yes, this really is two completely different roles, and you would think you could get two completely different people to do it.. but unfortunately, (2) is frequent enough that it is common practice, but not frequent enough to justify it being a full-time position.--
Steganography is the method of "conceiling" an encrypted file inside another, larger file that has redundancy (for example, a .wav sound file or a .gif). There are utilities that will do this for you, and at least one crypto package (Scramdisk) that allows you to set aside such space in a .wav and use it as a virtual drive letter.
--
...The Lords have a history of sending back for revision bills that take things a little too far, and the upper chamber is (IMHO) a pretty reasonable one, since the members are not elected, ...
Maybe this explains why so many hereditary peerages (those that aren't gifts from the government currently in power) seem to be losing their right to vote.....
--
Sorry - but no. The bill it WAS part of (the eCommerce one) will go ahead without it, but the provisions have been moved to a "more appropriate vehicle" - in this case, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, and as far as I can tell, without even a cursory edit.
Isn't it about time Slashdot got a European correspondent to stop this kind of confusion? /., but then, the majority of web users are still merkins. I think what you are actually asking is for a european story reviewer, which is a different matter :+)
There IS a strong Merkin leaning on
--
- Full time teaching schedule (on average, of three of the four teaching periods she has a class to teach)
- School Library - she is responsible for purchasing, reshelving and repairing books, and anything else that comes up
- A Minimumof one hour's prep/marking per class - that she has to do in the evenings at home
- At least three "cover" lessons per month - covering for sickness or other absence of a collegue
- "School activities". A catchall for extra stuff the school wants done in the evenings and lunch breaks, but isn't willing to hire staff for
- "Pupil management". Meeting parents to discuss any problems, PTA meetings, and so forth.
this is a full time occupation, 8am-8pm weekdays and most of every saturday, and it is a wonder she can still walk and talk by the end of the week. If she could find space for keeping up with new stuff as well, I would be astounded.--