Good post, and to add a little devils advocacy to the fire:
(please note that I have not followed the specific weaknesses he has demonstrated so my theoretical situation may not be possible)
He may be, correctly or incorrectly associated with harrassing GameSpy infrastructure by exploiting the weaknesses found, perhaps out of frustration at being ignored or out of laziness/impatience as an easy way to force action on part of GameSpy. He could do this without human recognizable contact (voice/mail/email) and both harras and not contact at the same time. He may also be harrassing them (in a very loose usage of the term) by posting lots of Bad Stuff about them on boards without having actually contacting them first. yes that would be considered.. I dunno maybe slander or lible or some such in legal speak but some one could use the term harrass off the cuff.
An earlier poster touched on one issue with this, and that is that ISPs in the US owned or legally threatened by US corps and laws would start blocking access to the offshore systems/networks if they became too successfull.
Perhaps a hybrid between an anonymous distributed storage system (like freenet or the like) and offshore storage may work.
At any rate, success of a single offshore site would simply cause it to be blocked so the solution would need to be a bit more creative.
It is a great idea however and I would very much like to see it developed, in addition to political participation here in the US to get that D(amn)MCA revoked.
Your premise sounds fine until matched against (recent) history. As weapons technology improves less people (civillians) are killed and more specific targets are destroyed. This is in relation to WWII. Early warfare involved slaughtering of villages and sowing fields with salt where as later warfare involved a group of guys standing in a field shooting muskets at each other with the occasional burning of buildings. From a historical perspective in relation to population densities the amount of non-combatants killed in wars fluctuates a bit with technology and accepted societal norms. (lets leave the discussion of diseases out of it)
but the cryptonomicon was a good story. His writing style made it almost painful to read but the story kept me suffering through his vernacular till the end. Success of one book sometimes brings out the worst in an author so I am avoiding quicksilver. Sadly Scott Card and Frank Herbert had the same effect on me in their later books. The ego of their writing so overtook the story that it became hard to see past.
I would have to say that there are other factors to be considered.
1) how do you know he is a WH or a BH? by having a record? that just means he got caught, badly, and without a good lawyer. The line between a WH and BH isn't as clear as it seems in the movies.
2) if he has a record, is it because he was stealing money or destroying resources or because he published code to read DVDs on a Sony DiscMan?
3) when doing anything with your mission critical systems do you ever have just one of anything? I'm not talking engineering by committee here but checks and balances or redundancy.
I believe this is the best description for what the majority of coding proffesionals do. there are some software engineers (worked with them and as one at Motorola) but the majority of jobs are in IT where the high end skillsets are more analgous to apprentice-journeyman type fields. Although I am not as experienced in production of physical things (phones, bridges, cars, concrete, etc.) I suspect that there are a range of jobs presented to an ME or EE ranging from entry level monkey work up to serious engineering. Yet they are all called engineers.
On the subaru WRX you can get about 10-15% from remapping the ECU with no modifications to any of the negine components. With a new exhaust and up-pipe (connection from manifold to turbo) and the ECU reprogramming (for a grand total of ~$2000) you can get 25% more torque and HP (i.e. from 227 to 290)
I own a 2002 subaru WRX which I am in the process of building up. The next major work is a re-programming of the factory ECU to tune things like boost, air/fuel mixtures, timing, etc. in order to gain the most power from the factory components without breaking the safety threshhold. All you need as a laptop, serial port and some adapters and the applicable software and away you go..;-)
1) can an open standard be effectively developed that media companies will use, when, in all likelihood, the palladium crap that media companies desire will be a pure WinIntel monstrosity. this may be a dumb question as my knowledge of developing codecs and their applications is lacking. I do know that one huge neccessary component of a standard is adoption. (not saying we should give up and let MS dictate media apps but the question is how to address those issues)
2) Following on to the previous question, is there an IEEE or W3C (at least in relation to streaming media web content or somesuch) place in developing a competitive open standard, even perhaps just modifying and adopting one thats already been developed by the OS community? In other words, once a good solution is developed, which backers would be the most beneficial to adoption (assuming MS will try and kill it any way possible)?.. or maybe Apple? IBM? Sun?
3) Does anyone have an idea of the demographics or industry breakdown and uses for the existing codecs (i.e. addressable target audience). And, if so, which communities may be being underserved or have outstanding needs? (schools or edu's, hollywood, pr0n, advertising, news, entertainment, marketing and sales groups, etc.) Can that be the initial niche for adoption (hollywood for movie trailers or demos, edu sector for instructional material, etc.)?
Ah well. Sorry if these are dumb questions but I would like to see an open standard for this even though I have little-to-no use for the existing formats (dont do much multimedia stuff)..
so I use it as phone, calendar, light browsing for specific info, ssh into my server, email during meetings, alert pager for when things go wrong, note pad for the unimportant details I wouldn't normally remember, etc. etc. now if only it could do all this and handle MP3's... that is the last function it needs to be complete. then I will turn into a ball of light and become one with the universe.
I have the same setup and i wrote a browser interface that used big pretty pictures and was easy to manipulate with low-res TV display. It was pretty simple but effective.
here, at the large bank i work for, there are many linux servers and desktops in use, while there is a _very_ small number of OSX laptops around. at home i know a number of MAC people but far more linux boxes floating around. linux doesn't require new hardware where OSX does (unless you are already an apple user)..
but in the large bank I work in now its fairly easy. My FX trading application grosses $x, nets $y, costs $z. However with less obvious things like this intranet project, used to help branch offices understand and sell more investment products, you have get into special worldcom/enron math where numbers are relative... With things like HR, supply-chain, regulatory compliance, etc. some are simply costs of doing business while others are hard to measure as gain-in-competitiveness. Most corps use inbred numbers (i.e. last year with this volume of business, this many users, this much activity our costs and delivery time were x, this year they are y). Don't know how to do it the right way myself except to say that the majority of my time is spent teaching and explaining rather than quantifying.
I was also misquoted when talking about the mission impossible scenario being an invalid reason for closing source code. I explained that the improved security derived from larger audience peer review outweighed the marginal benefit of obscurity. Obscurity is usefull if we are talking about an entire system developed in a vault in NSA or DoD that is classified and physically inaccessible with no aspects of it publicly available. (i.e. certain intelligence systems and weapons systems and we are talking about every component of the system). But even then peer review improves the design and security of the system, albeit with internal peers.
OK... My name was associated with it after I mistakenly emailed him after reading the first post last week to urge him to do more research before he put forth that pile of sh!% and confuse politicians. I was explaining how some people use security through obscurity as an argument and went on to explain that peer-review (open source or just good engineering method) made more secure software. He took me completely out of conext and I am seriously pissed. I was trying to be fair and explain the various sides of the issue. Now that I have read his paper I realize I was dumb for trying to offer him what he denied his readers. Fair objective logic based on experience, knowledge, and research.
Slashdot Mirror
Good post, and to add a little devils advocacy to the fire:
(please note that I have not followed the specific weaknesses he has demonstrated so my theoretical situation may not be possible)
He may be, correctly or incorrectly associated with harrassing GameSpy infrastructure by exploiting the weaknesses found, perhaps out of frustration at being ignored or out of laziness/impatience as an easy way to force action on part of GameSpy. He could do this without human recognizable contact (voice/mail/email) and both harras and not contact at the same time. He may also be harrassing them (in a very loose usage of the term) by posting lots of Bad Stuff about them on boards without having actually contacting them first. yes that would be considered.. I dunno maybe slander or lible or some such in legal speak but some one could use the term harrass off the cuff.
An earlier poster touched on one issue with this, and that is that ISPs in the US owned or legally threatened by US corps and laws would start blocking access to the offshore systems/networks if they became too successfull.
Perhaps a hybrid between an anonymous distributed storage system (like freenet or the like) and offshore storage may work.
At any rate, success of a single offshore site would simply cause it to be blocked so the solution would need to be a bit more creative.
It is a great idea however and I would very much like to see it developed, in addition to political participation here in the US to get that D(amn)MCA revoked.
Cheers to that!
Your premise sounds fine until matched against (recent) history. As weapons technology improves less people (civillians) are killed and more specific targets are destroyed. This is in relation to WWII. Early warfare involved slaughtering of villages and sowing fields with salt where as later warfare involved a group of guys standing in a field shooting muskets at each other with the occasional burning of buildings. From a historical perspective in relation to population densities the amount of non-combatants killed in wars fluctuates a bit with technology and accepted societal norms. (lets leave the discussion of diseases out of it)
damn right. this is the point of open source, creativity and innovation over marketing and regulation.
but the cryptonomicon was a good story. His writing style made it almost painful to read but the story kept me suffering through his vernacular till the end. Success of one book sometimes brings out the worst in an author so I am avoiding quicksilver. Sadly Scott Card and Frank Herbert had the same effect on me in their later books. The ego of their writing so overtook the story that it became hard to see past.
I would have to say that there are other factors to be considered. 1) how do you know he is a WH or a BH? by having a record? that just means he got caught, badly, and without a good lawyer. The line between a WH and BH isn't as clear as it seems in the movies. 2) if he has a record, is it because he was stealing money or destroying resources or because he published code to read DVDs on a Sony DiscMan? 3) when doing anything with your mission critical systems do you ever have just one of anything? I'm not talking engineering by committee here but checks and balances or redundancy.
Its only illegal if it is done within the US. Last I checked Pakistan is not in the US.
I believe this is the best description for what the majority of coding proffesionals do. there are some software engineers (worked with them and as one at Motorola) but the majority of jobs are in IT where the high end skillsets are more analgous to apprentice-journeyman type fields. Although I am not as experienced in production of physical things (phones, bridges, cars, concrete, etc.) I suspect that there are a range of jobs presented to an ME or EE ranging from entry level monkey work up to serious engineering. Yet they are all called engineers.
aahh.. c'mon moderators +1 funy this thing ;-)
On the subaru WRX you can get about 10-15% from remapping the ECU with no modifications to any of the negine components. With a new exhaust and up-pipe (connection from manifold to turbo) and the ECU reprogramming (for a grand total of ~$2000) you can get 25% more torque and HP (i.e. from 227 to 290)
I own a 2002 subaru WRX which I am in the process of building up. The next major work is a re-programming of the factory ECU to tune things like boost, air/fuel mixtures, timing, etc. in order to gain the most power from the factory components without breaking the safety threshhold. All you need as a laptop, serial port and some adapters and the applicable software and away you go.. ;-)
a few questions regarding this subject:
1) can an open standard be effectively developed that media companies will use, when, in all likelihood, the palladium crap that media companies desire will be a pure WinIntel monstrosity. this may be a dumb question as my knowledge of developing codecs and their applications is lacking. I do know that one huge neccessary component of a standard is adoption. (not saying we should give up and let MS dictate media apps but the question is how to address those issues)
2) Following on to the previous question, is there an IEEE or W3C (at least in relation to streaming media web content or somesuch) place in developing a competitive open standard, even perhaps just modifying and adopting one thats already been developed by the OS community? In other words, once a good solution is developed, which backers would be the most beneficial to adoption (assuming MS will try and kill it any way possible)?.. or maybe Apple? IBM? Sun?
3) Does anyone have an idea of the demographics or industry breakdown and uses for the existing codecs (i.e. addressable target audience). And, if so, which communities may be being underserved or have outstanding needs? (schools or edu's, hollywood, pr0n, advertising, news, entertainment, marketing and sales groups, etc.) Can that be the initial niche for adoption (hollywood for movie trailers or demos, edu sector for instructional material, etc.)?
Ah well. Sorry if these are dumb questions but I would like to see an open standard for this even though I have little-to-no use for the existing formats (dont do much multimedia stuff)..
ow! ow! stop.. you hurt my brain.. haven't had the morning coffee yet. put a disclaimer on these posts moderators ;-)
so I use it as phone, calendar, light browsing for specific info, ssh into my server, email during meetings, alert pager for when things go wrong, note pad for the unimportant details I wouldn't normally remember, etc. etc. now if only it could do all this and handle MP3's... that is the last function it needs to be complete. then I will turn into a ball of light and become one with the universe.
killing them with beer..
I have the same setup and i wrote a browser interface that used big pretty pictures and was easy to manipulate with low-res TV display. It was pretty simple but effective.
here, at the large bank i work for, there are many linux servers and desktops in use, while there is a _very_ small number of OSX laptops around. at home i know a number of MAC people but far more linux boxes floating around. linux doesn't require new hardware where OSX does (unless you are already an apple user)..
but in the large bank I work in now its fairly easy. My FX trading application grosses $x, nets $y, costs $z. However with less obvious things like this intranet project, used to help branch offices understand and sell more investment products, you have get into special worldcom/enron math where numbers are relative... With things like HR, supply-chain, regulatory compliance, etc. some are simply costs of doing business while others are hard to measure as gain-in-competitiveness. Most corps use inbred numbers (i.e. last year with this volume of business, this many users, this much activity our costs and delivery time were x, this year they are y). Don't know how to do it the right way myself except to say that the majority of my time is spent teaching and explaining rather than quantifying.
another flawed API that is not fixable..
$85k/yr is avg salary for good unix engineer..
It is big news and it _was_ on the front page june 17th when it first came out. Then again june 18th when the fix was released.7 /1948249=thread=172
http://apache.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/1
I was also misquoted when talking about the mission impossible scenario being an invalid reason for closing source code. I explained that the improved security derived from larger audience peer review outweighed the marginal benefit of obscurity. Obscurity is usefull if we are talking about an entire system developed in a vault in NSA or DoD that is classified and physically inaccessible with no aspects of it publicly available. (i.e. certain intelligence systems and weapons systems and we are talking about every component of the system). But even then peer review improves the design and security of the system, albeit with internal peers.
OK... My name was associated with it after I mistakenly emailed him after reading the first post last week to urge him to do more research before he put forth that pile of sh!% and confuse politicians. I was explaining how some people use security through obscurity as an argument and went on to explain that peer-review (open source or just good engineering method) made more secure software. He took me completely out of conext and I am seriously pissed. I was trying to be fair and explain the various sides of the issue. Now that I have read his paper I realize I was dumb for trying to offer him what he denied his readers. Fair objective logic based on experience, knowledge, and research.
A TROLL!!! HA! I KNEW IT!.. that mosix stuff is just a front. good thing he is going into law..