This is a bit OT but surprisingly, Nebraska has seriously good telecom infrastructure despite being out "in the middle of nowhere". Especially around Omaha.
Now, think back and wonder why that is. Give up? Because of SAC. Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, the US Strategic Air Command operated in Omaha.
Nowadays, since SAC is shutdown, a lot of that infratructure is part of Level 3's network. To this day, they still have several fiber rings running around Omaha.
Essentially, what he is saying is this: while the crack is temporary, the method of attack is unassailable under the current model.
That's whats important here. If keys get revoked, its a trivial matter to go get them again. The hard work has been done. Now all you have to do is follow procedures and -voila- you can crack AACS too.
Despite other comments on this board, AACS IS cracked.
As smart as "they" are in building TAMPER resistant chips, explain to me how the TPM chip knows whether or not it is in virtual environment?
Tell me why a software version of the TPM chip is not possible.
If you can explain that, I might agree with you more than the parent you replied to. However, until I hear an answer, I am decidedly with the parent post. Given enough time, even the TPM can be reverse engineered.
Ok, your comment was funny. Real funny. So funny, in fact, that I found myself thinking of all kinds of situations where the "Mission Accomplished!" meme would be applicable. (note: you have to add the exclamation point). So, uh, without asking a stupid question: is this a new/. meme?
I am thinking of any situation that is declared "over and won" by one side or the other, when in fact, the battle is still raging and far from undecided.
As weird as it seems in today's society, it hasn't stopped her from living a full life.
Unless driving a car is required to live a full life...
Honestly, in this day and age, I do think she missed something. Just as I think those who can't use the internet effectively miss something that the rest of us get to see and participate in. People like that seem quaint and much of the world simply can not grasp how behind they are. Therefore, they never get the opporunity to participate in those aspects of a "fuller" life. They, simply, don't have the requisite skill set to attempt it so they plod along doing the same thing they've always done --- which is a throwback to a bygone era.
It's not the end of the world, of course. Different strokes for different folks. But lets not pretend she isn't missing something. She is. Full life or not.
(ps - no offense to grandma, of course. Mine is the same way.)
I wouldn't expect a standing ovation from you. But the tone of your post suggests he is "bad" for seeking solutions that minimize the tax effect.
That's just retarded. *IF* the tax break leads to "good behaviors" (ie: people donate more money), then what's the problem? Are you suggesting there are nefarious purposes to this arrangement? Or are you just bent out of shape they don't donate more? I don't understand the purpose of your post other than seeing your cynicism about tax writeoffs for charitable donations. If you don't like how that arrangement works, go lobby your congresscritter. Bill is just working within the system he was given (as we all are)....
Your post is like hanging a person for doing something they have a self-interest to do. "Man, you got a great deal at that store. But you are an ass because you didn't spend more, for the same thing, at store Y". Of course Bill Gates wants to minimize his taxes. Everyone does.
I mean, he could have given away $0 and lived happily ever after. That's the reason we give tax writeoffs for charity -- to encourage giving. Stop hanging him, unnecessarilyy, for (what you say are) his motives.
Heck yes everyone wins! Not to be a total Apple fanboy but I started recommending Macs about 8 months ago after I finally got fed up supporting everyone around me.
So far, 6 for 6 are asking me why I didn't recommend Macs before. Its been a very nice switch and yes, I do take pride in what I recommend to other people so I am a bit picky about what I recommend. After all, I usually wind up supporting them.
Yep, that's exactly right. But - that's why many of us put (2) WD Raptors in RAID 0 (stripe) and then you can move about 120-145 meg/s. This is because the stripe reads/writes both drives at the same time thus increasing total throughput to the bus.
So yea, its still a bottleneck. SATA2 increases things to 300 meg/sec so that will help some.
I was replying to the parent post who asked, "why won't everyone spend MORE money for green solutions than the current solutions?"
Yea, I understand this is R&D. And yes, I support that and its a cool project. But to suggest that a "more expensive" solution like this one will replace the current infrastructure is crazy. It won't. Not for a very long long time. Every "alternative" solution will inevitably be compared to its fossil fuel equivalent -- and unless that equation starts showing major gains on the alternatives side, we aren't even close to making this cost-effective. And if it's not cost-effective (and this is where I differ from the parent post), it will never be adopted. The parent post seems to think people will adopt it anyway and pay more simply for being more green.
People on Slashdot have a warped understanding of "energy" and what it takes to run this country. I work in the energy industries (gas, crude, coal, etc) and when you sit down and study what we actually consume, how we provide it, and where it comes from -- you start understanding the scale of the problem we are talking about. It is not a small amount of energy we consume. So whatever solution we wind up going with, it will have to scale exceptionally well. The energy industries have been scaling for 100+ years. There is a lot of catchup to do on the alternatives side.
Green energy is a good thing. But don't delude yourself that it is in the near future. As long as its easier (and cheaper) to pull our energy out of the ground, that's what we'll do. Momentum is a bitch to change, even though, sometimes change is needed.
I contrast that with the view on/. whereby some think Conoco, BP, and Exxon are just going to show up one day and go "yup, oil's too expensive to get out of the ground. Sorry folks". That is NOT going to happen. Oil is plentiful. It's only a matter of how much it costs to get it out of the ground. Some is cheap - $30 or so to get at. Other oil is more expensive, like $75/bbl. So if we start running out of $30 oil, we'll just increase the price, which makes it more attractive to get at that $75 oil.
At some point, this crosses the alternative energy price path. And THAT's the point where alternatives become cost-effective.
I hate to be so cynical but honestly, that's whats become of the civil courts lately. These people line up to sue company's because, hey, I *might* win and get a HUGE settlement. Combined with some slimeball attorney whispering in their ear and it's easy to see WHY these cases get brought.
They probably won't win. But still, the incentive is there because the civil courts are a modern day lottery ticket. Especially for the class action suits (even tho the atty's get the vast majority of winnings). We long ago abandoned "fairness" and "even handed judgements".
Yes, the only reason to switch commodity services is to save money. For rational people, that is.
Go ahead, stand your ground, and fight the ideological battle. Meanwhile, when the prisoner's dilemma wears off, you can ask yourself why YOUR standard of living went down while everyone's around you went up. (Answer: because you spent more money to get the SAME services, albeit, in a "greener" way)
The tragedy of commons kicks in with respect to commodity goods delivered to the general public. You are fighting an uphill battle in many different ways when you expect or ask others to spend more money because of ideologies or principles. It usually just doesn't work that way -- no matter how severe the problem is.
I wouldn't want to be inside his head on the day he shuffles off this earth.
Why? Cheney probably thinks he did just fine. Hell, even Al Capone still thought he'd done nothing wrong when he died in prison. People are that way. EVERYONE tends to think they are doing "the right thing". Some are correct. Some are wrong.:-) Either way, most people don't walk around knowing - deep down inside - that they are "bad". It just doesn't happen that way.
Evil (if it exists) and "bad" people are much more subtle so no, I don't think Cheney is going to be lying on his deathbed thinking of the terrible things in his life. Rather, he will look back and think "imagine how bad it would have been without me?"
Amen. A PC is the best "thing" I added to my HDTV home theater - by far. Hell, aside from my cable co, its the only other way to (inexpensively) see more HDTV content.
I have Cox Cable. Good service, great HDTV service, crappy - and I mean, absolutely the worst piece of shit device I have ever used in my life - DVR.
I can not overstate how great it would be to have a 2nd option. ANYTHING is better than the POS Motorola (Passport) DVR I have in the cabinet now. Tivo3 is enticing - but expensive. It's great news that there is a possible 3rd, 4th, and 5th option somewhere down the line.
My DVR makes me want to stab people in the eyes with wooden forks. It is, literally, painful for me to use it. It makes me want to jam the remote in a Motorola's executive's anus everytime I have a 2 second delay. And that's a lot.
Before you flame me into oblivion, tell me what I miss with IE7 when I already run Windows + Firefox 2.0. I ask in all honesty. Let's just say I have some legit XP machines and I have "friends" with illegitimate XP machines that won't bother with WGA as they know they'll fail. They'll happily go on downloading security updates but don't bother with IE7, Media player 10, etc. So what. Their computers run fine and they seem to be able to do everything that everybody else does - play movies, pictures, music, etc, etc
So in this case, what does IE7 get for people over the ones who are forever doomed to Firefox 2.0 and IE6? What are the benefits?
C'mon IE7 supporters, this is a lay-up. Lay it out for me...
there are tons of usenet providers. ISP's have no incentive to keep up with usenet. But if you pay for a premium usenet provider you will easily max out whatever ISP connection you have.
So what I am saying is: usenet doesn't need the ISPs. It has enough critical mass to exist on its own.
But in reality, what happens is that the extra time and luxury (aka: wealth) the worker is supposed to receive, is actually received by a few at the top -- and the worker winds up working the same amount that he always worked. Those benefits of extra time, money, and luxury are not realized by the workers -- they are realized by the owners, through lower costs. If there were more equity in the system, your ideal might be closer to realization. But as long as the "rich and powerful" control the system, the system will always be stacked against the worker and the benefits of cheaper costs will go up the chain, not down the chain.
Communism is about as close as you can get to addressing that inequality. And we all know how that worked out.
The long story short is this: there is a difference between owners and workers. Workers are contractors and receive a wage. That's it. And really, that's all there should be. Owners, on the other hand, take substantially more risk and therefore, stand to receive more of this wealth we are talking about.
(and I am not picking a side here. I am only laying out what actually happens when costs are lowered and efficiencies are gained)
At that price, MSFT put in a quote that was higher than what they charge for Academics and students. I checked a few links and prices and this one seems to be about the average price for students.
Now, if you were India, would you feel like you were getting a good deal when you know that students and academics are buying the product for about 1/2 of what you were quoted? I wouldn't be happy.
The problem with these, and all sites of their kind is simple.
They want us to pay more for "online content" and from what I can tell, that's the only feature above and beyond what you would get with a DVD or rental. Its "online" so they want me to believe it should sell for a premium compared to its offline equivalent. $6 for a movie (or so) AND you have to wait until tommorrow to watch it (because of bandwidth). And I am not even going to get into the DRM issues or the quality of the videos.
If they were really serious about this, they would offer online content at a discount. Doing this would increase adoption and might just make it a real business. As it stands now, only "testers" are playing in this market and with prices that high, for such a low quality product, its no wonder these sites are flops.
There is no online movie market because there is no "value" for the customer. In other words, the alternatives (offline, pirate sites, etc) are MUCH better offerings and people have clearly shown they will pay THAT cost because they are getting good value for their money. Not so with the online movie sites. They are, quite simply, a rip-off.
"Hard drives with platters will be completely extinct in 5 years"
That will happen as soon as people stop downloading and adding to the ever-increasing amount of data they are storing. In short, it will happen: never.
I do, however, expect to see hybrid drives that have a flash memory portion along with platters. So, when you are storing/loading the OS, it comes from the flash part and when you are storing/loading large data files, those will come from the platters.
The data density of platters is too large for it to be wholly replaced anytime soon. Hybrids are more likely for the next 10 years. If you disagree, consider what it would cost in flash memory, to replace your 750Gig Seagate.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a bit OT but surprisingly, Nebraska has seriously good telecom infrastructure despite being out "in the middle of nowhere". Especially around Omaha.
Now, think back and wonder why that is. Give up? Because of SAC. Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, the US Strategic Air Command operated in Omaha.
Nowadays, since SAC is shutdown, a lot of that infratructure is part of Level 3's network. To this day, they still have several fiber rings running around Omaha.
Mission Accomplished!
This is the real story here. Mod parent up.
Essentially, what he is saying is this: while the crack is temporary, the method of attack is unassailable under the current model.
That's whats important here. If keys get revoked, its a trivial matter to go get them again. The hard work has been done. Now all you have to do is follow procedures and -voila- you can crack AACS too.
Despite other comments on this board, AACS IS cracked.
As smart as "they" are in building TAMPER resistant chips, explain to me how the TPM chip knows whether or not it is in virtual environment?
Tell me why a software version of the TPM chip is not possible.
If you can explain that, I might agree with you more than the parent you replied to. However, until I hear an answer, I am decidedly with the parent post. Given enough time, even the TPM can be reverse engineered.
Ok, your comment was funny. Real funny. So funny, in fact, that I found myself thinking of all kinds of situations where the "Mission Accomplished!" meme would be applicable. (note: you have to add the exclamation point). So, uh, without asking a stupid question: is this a new /. meme?
I am thinking of any situation that is declared "over and won" by one side or the other, when in fact, the battle is still raging and far from undecided.
As weird as it seems in today's society, it hasn't stopped her from living a full life.
Unless driving a car is required to live a full life...
Honestly, in this day and age, I do think she missed something. Just as I think those who can't use the internet effectively miss something that the rest of us get to see and participate in. People like that seem quaint and much of the world simply can not grasp how behind they are. Therefore, they never get the opporunity to participate in those aspects of a "fuller" life. They, simply, don't have the requisite skill set to attempt it so they plod along doing the same thing they've always done --- which is a throwback to a bygone era.
It's not the end of the world, of course. Different strokes for different folks. But lets not pretend she isn't missing something. She is. Full life or not.
(ps - no offense to grandma, of course. Mine is the same way.)
I wouldn't expect a standing ovation from you. But the tone of your post suggests he is "bad" for seeking solutions that minimize the tax effect.
That's just retarded. *IF* the tax break leads to "good behaviors" (ie: people donate more money), then what's the problem? Are you suggesting there are nefarious purposes to this arrangement? Or are you just bent out of shape they don't donate more? I don't understand the purpose of your post other than seeing your cynicism about tax writeoffs for charitable donations. If you don't like how that arrangement works, go lobby your congresscritter. Bill is just working within the system he was given (as we all are)....
Your post is like hanging a person for doing something they have a self-interest to do. "Man, you got a great deal at that store. But you are an ass because you didn't spend more, for the same thing, at store Y". Of course Bill Gates wants to minimize his taxes. Everyone does.
I mean, he could have given away $0 and lived happily ever after. That's the reason we give tax writeoffs for charity -- to encourage giving. Stop hanging him, unnecessarilyy, for (what you say are) his motives.
Heck yes everyone wins! Not to be a total Apple fanboy but I started recommending Macs about 8 months ago after I finally got fed up supporting everyone around me.
So far, 6 for 6 are asking me why I didn't recommend Macs before. Its been a very nice switch and yes, I do take pride in what I recommend to other people so I am a bit picky about what I recommend. After all, I usually wind up supporting them.
Yep, that's exactly right. But - that's why many of us put (2) WD Raptors in RAID 0 (stripe) and then you can move about 120-145 meg/s. This is because the stripe reads/writes both drives at the same time thus increasing total throughput to the bus.
So yea, its still a bottleneck. SATA2 increases things to 300 meg/sec so that will help some.
Arbitrage.
You may not like it but capitalism doesn't really care.
Yes, I understand that.
/. whereby some think Conoco, BP, and Exxon are just going to show up one day and go "yup, oil's too expensive to get out of the ground. Sorry folks". That is NOT going to happen. Oil is plentiful. It's only a matter of how much it costs to get it out of the ground. Some is cheap - $30 or so to get at. Other oil is more expensive, like $75/bbl. So if we start running out of $30 oil, we'll just increase the price, which makes it more attractive to get at that $75 oil.
I was replying to the parent post who asked, "why won't everyone spend MORE money for green solutions than the current solutions?"
Yea, I understand this is R&D. And yes, I support that and its a cool project. But to suggest that a "more expensive" solution like this one will replace the current infrastructure is crazy. It won't. Not for a very long long time. Every "alternative" solution will inevitably be compared to its fossil fuel equivalent -- and unless that equation starts showing major gains on the alternatives side, we aren't even close to making this cost-effective. And if it's not cost-effective (and this is where I differ from the parent post), it will never be adopted. The parent post seems to think people will adopt it anyway and pay more simply for being more green.
People on Slashdot have a warped understanding of "energy" and what it takes to run this country. I work in the energy industries (gas, crude, coal, etc) and when you sit down and study what we actually consume, how we provide it, and where it comes from -- you start understanding the scale of the problem we are talking about. It is not a small amount of energy we consume. So whatever solution we wind up going with, it will have to scale exceptionally well. The energy industries have been scaling for 100+ years. There is a lot of catchup to do on the alternatives side.
Green energy is a good thing. But don't delude yourself that it is in the near future. As long as its easier (and cheaper) to pull our energy out of the ground, that's what we'll do. Momentum is a bitch to change, even though, sometimes change is needed.
I contrast that with the view on
At some point, this crosses the alternative energy price path. And THAT's the point where alternatives become cost-effective.
We are a long way from that right now.
Awesome -- another legal "lottery" ticket.
I hate to be so cynical but honestly, that's whats become of the civil courts lately. These people line up to sue company's because, hey, I *might* win and get a HUGE settlement. Combined with some slimeball attorney whispering in their ear and it's easy to see WHY these cases get brought.
They probably won't win. But still, the incentive is there because the civil courts are a modern day lottery ticket. Especially for the class action suits (even tho the atty's get the vast majority of winnings). We long ago abandoned "fairness" and "even handed judgements".
Yes, the only reason to switch commodity services is to save money. For rational people, that is.
Go ahead, stand your ground, and fight the ideological battle. Meanwhile, when the prisoner's dilemma wears off, you can ask yourself why YOUR standard of living went down while everyone's around you went up. (Answer: because you spent more money to get the SAME services, albeit, in a "greener" way)
The tragedy of commons kicks in with respect to commodity goods delivered to the general public. You are fighting an uphill battle in many different ways when you expect or ask others to spend more money because of ideologies or principles. It usually just doesn't work that way -- no matter how severe the problem is.
I wouldn't want to be inside his head on the day he shuffles off this earth.
:-) Either way, most people don't walk around knowing - deep down inside - that they are "bad". It just doesn't happen that way.
Why? Cheney probably thinks he did just fine. Hell, even Al Capone still thought he'd done nothing wrong when he died in prison. People are that way. EVERYONE tends to think they are doing "the right thing". Some are correct. Some are wrong.
Evil (if it exists) and "bad" people are much more subtle so no, I don't think Cheney is going to be lying on his deathbed thinking of the terrible things in his life. Rather, he will look back and think "imagine how bad it would have been without me?"
That's exactly what should have happened from the very beginning
It was obvious then and its obvious now.
Amen. A PC is the best "thing" I added to my HDTV home theater - by far. Hell, aside from my cable co, its the only other way to (inexpensively) see more HDTV content.
I have Cox Cable. Good service, great HDTV service, crappy - and I mean, absolutely the worst piece of shit device I have ever used in my life - DVR.
I can not overstate how great it would be to have a 2nd option. ANYTHING is better than the POS Motorola (Passport) DVR I have in the cabinet now. Tivo3 is enticing - but expensive. It's great news that there is a possible 3rd, 4th, and 5th option somewhere down the line.
My DVR makes me want to stab people in the eyes with wooden forks. It is, literally, painful for me to use it. It makes me want to jam the remote in a Motorola's executive's anus everytime I have a 2 second delay. And that's a lot.
Great question. Seriously.
Before you flame me into oblivion, tell me what I miss with IE7 when I already run Windows + Firefox 2.0. I ask in all honesty. Let's just say I have some legit XP machines and I have "friends" with illegitimate XP machines that won't bother with WGA as they know they'll fail. They'll happily go on downloading security updates but don't bother with IE7, Media player 10, etc.
So what.
Their computers run fine and they seem to be able to do everything that everybody else does - play movies, pictures, music, etc, etc
So in this case, what does IE7 get for people over the ones who are forever doomed to Firefox 2.0 and IE6? What are the benefits?
C'mon IE7 supporters, this is a lay-up. Lay it out for me...
there are tons of usenet providers. ISP's have no incentive to keep up with usenet. But if you pay for a premium usenet provider you will easily max out whatever ISP connection you have.
So what I am saying is: usenet doesn't need the ISPs. It has enough critical mass to exist on its own.
Thats a great ideal. And I hope it works...
But in reality, what happens is that the extra time and luxury (aka: wealth) the worker is supposed to receive, is actually received by a few at the top -- and the worker winds up working the same amount that he always worked. Those benefits of extra time, money, and luxury are not realized by the workers -- they are realized by the owners, through lower costs. If there were more equity in the system, your ideal might be closer to realization. But as long as the "rich and powerful" control the system, the system will always be stacked against the worker and the benefits of cheaper costs will go up the chain, not down the chain.
Communism is about as close as you can get to addressing that inequality. And we all know how that worked out.
The long story short is this: there is a difference between owners and workers. Workers are contractors and receive a wage. That's it. And really, that's all there should be. Owners, on the other hand, take substantially more risk and therefore, stand to receive more of this wealth we are talking about.
(and I am not picking a side here. I am only laying out what actually happens when costs are lowered and efficiencies are gained)
At that price, MSFT put in a quote that was higher than what they charge for Academics and students. I checked a few links and prices and this one seems to be about the average price for students.
Now, if you were India, would you feel like you were getting a good deal when you know that students and academics are buying the product for about 1/2 of what you were quoted? I wouldn't be happy.
The problem with these, and all sites of their kind is simple.
They want us to pay more for "online content" and from what I can tell, that's the only feature above and beyond what you would get with a DVD or rental. Its "online" so they want me to believe it should sell for a premium compared to its offline equivalent. $6 for a movie (or so) AND you have to wait until tommorrow to watch it (because of bandwidth). And I am not even going to get into the DRM issues or the quality of the videos.
If they were really serious about this, they would offer online content at a discount. Doing this would increase adoption and might just make it a real business. As it stands now, only "testers" are playing in this market and with prices that high, for such a low quality product, its no wonder these sites are flops.
There is no online movie market because there is no "value" for the customer. In other words, the alternatives (offline, pirate sites, etc) are MUCH better offerings and people have clearly shown they will pay THAT cost because they are getting good value for their money. Not so with the online movie sites. They are, quite simply, a rip-off.
The first rule of usenet is you do not talk about usenet.
The second rule of usenet is - see the first rule.
Now, be quiet and go have a glass of shut the hell up!
(p.s. I kid, I kid...)
"Hard drives with platters will be completely extinct in 5 years"
That will happen as soon as people stop downloading and adding to the ever-increasing amount of data they are storing. In short, it will happen: never.
I do, however, expect to see hybrid drives that have a flash memory portion along with platters. So, when you are storing/loading the OS, it comes from the flash part and when you are storing/loading large data files, those will come from the platters.
The data density of platters is too large for it to be wholly replaced anytime soon. Hybrids are more likely for the next 10 years. If you disagree, consider what it would cost in flash memory, to replace your 750Gig Seagate.
They also want their joke back. I suggest you take them up on their offer...