Does anyone other than Kenwood make a Sirius-ready in-dash CD/MP3 player? I definitely want Sirius rather than XM because of the various news programs not available on XM. I've never been terribly happy with Kenwood car audio products (I've always had better experiences with Alpine and others), but so far, all I've been able to find are Kenwoods. Does anyone have any recommendations?
As I understand it, Linux was devolped in Finland, and its author, Linus Torvalds, has not been paid for his work. So all you open source advocates who want Walmart to sell Linux-friendly PCs are really supporting the use of cheap foreign labor. Shame on you!
I don't see how that solves the problem of potential content control. The T3 cable has to be connected to an ISP at the other end. And that ISP is just as likely to have content "standards" as any other. Just because you're using a T3 line instead of a cable or telephone modem doesn't mean you don't have to deal with an ISP. It would solve the bandwidth problem as T3's have a fixed, well-defined bandwidth with no total monthly limit on gigabytes, but there still might be content standards.
What the hell are you talking about? You can't sign away basic rights and freedoms in any contract!
Of course you can. You sign away certain First Amendment rights every time you sign a non-disclosure agreement. You sign away Second Amendment rights if you sign a lease at an apartment with a no firearms policy. You implicity temporarily sign away Fourth Amendment rights by entering an airport, for instance, without even signing your name on a peace of paper (this is known as implied consent.) You sign away most of the bill of rights if you sign up for military service, etc.
Courts have held that EULAs (even the shrink-wrap or click-wrap variety) are legally binding, and often they involve signing away many rights, including presumption of innocence.
Talk to a lawyer before making uninformed posts. IANAL, but I have discussed these very issues with laywers at different times. The BSA really does, in practical terms, wield a lot more power than most people realize. Lets just hope the RIAA and MPAA don't take a lesson from them and start including similar shrikwrap licenses on CDs and DVDs!
Way, way back, when the first Star Wars movie was playing, Lucas originally planned a total of nine movies. He'd make the middle three first, then the others.
However, when writing "Return of the Jedi", it was becoming clear that he could really finish up everything in episode six and there wouldn't be any need for episodes 7-9. (He originally planned for the death of the Emperor and redemption of Annakin Skywalker in episode 9.)
If I recall correctly, it was this drastic change in plans that led to the dispute between George Lucas and Gary Kurtz, and why Gary Kurtz didn't stick around for episode 6. I'm not sure if this is a rumor, or fact.
But after Jedi, I don't think there were any plans for any episodes 7-9.
They add encryption on top of that so that it's hard to reprogram a phone.
But doesn't the DMCA explicitly allow reverse engineering for interoperability purposes? Is there some law preventing manufacturers from making phones and PDAs which mimic those blessed by the providers?
This sounds very much like the situation with telephones before deregulation. There was a day when only phones supplied by the phone company could be attached to their networks. Then deregulation forced them to accept other manufacturer's phones.
The question is, what is the current state of regulation in the wireless arena? Do regulations currently exist similar to the old phone regulations? If not, how do the wireless carriers enforce their hardware requirements?
True, and they are much less expensive than digital cameras with the same color depth and resolution. The whole advantage of digital cameras, I thought, was you could take a picture several times until you get it right, without wasting media.
They are intended for digital cameras, PDA's and similar small, battery driven devices.
Err, how about reading the article. Unlike the CF memory which you compare it to, these disks are write-once media. Who would want to use such a thing in a digital camera? This is not a technical breakthrough technology. They are smaller than a CD, yes, but have less storage space (250Mb vs. 700), and they have all sorts of yucky DRM crap built-in. I would be amazed if this succeeds.
Re:They MUST change the name
on
GeekPAC
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· Score: 1
I agree 100%. We may all be proud "geeks" and "hackers", but these terms conjure up other meanings for the unenlightened.
Specifically, "geek" conjures up an image of a sexually deprived teenager with greasy hair and no money.
It's the "no money" part that will turn off a politician.
P2P piracy? Someone please just come to my house and shoot me...
Any bets on how long it will be before we have to pay a per-minute levy to record companies and movie studios for all our Internet usage?
Of course, they'll make it "fair" by computing the fraction of total Internet traffic in the world that is piracy, and multiply that fraction by the amount they claim to be losing, so the fact that you're not using the Internet for trading music and movies will be "taken into account" in some average sense (like the Canadian CD-R levy).
Think that's absurd? That's what people thought of the blank media levies and the DMCA. But they're the law of the land now. Just wait...
Well, frequently, password management systems which store one-way hashes of passwords add some randomly "salt" characters to the password before running it through the one-way function, and then store this salt with the encrypted password. This makes it more difficult to use a pre-compiled dictionary to attack badly chosen passwords. The original Unix passwd file did this, for instance.
3.never write your passwords down (WHICH INCLUDES USING A PASSWORD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM).
Err, any password management system worth its salt (pun intended) will not store the plaintext passwords, but rather a one-way hash (eg. MD5, SHA, etc.) of the password. This would make it unfeasable to reconstruct the passwords if the system is compromised.
Just because the owner's of the Titanic claimed their ship was unsinkable, and were later proved wrong, that doesn't mean there are no unsinkable ships.
In fact, very few passenger ships since the Titanic have sunk.
And as has been pointed out before, a true Vernam cipher is uncrackable. Just because some in the past have claimed to be using a Vernam cipher, and their encryption was cracked, doesn't change that fact.
Things I don't enjoy about paper:
+ Indexing/searching is tedious
+ Backups can be difficult
You forgot the biggest disadvantage: no capability for rights management. With a paper book, what's to stop someone from buying a book at a bookstore, reading it, then lending it to a friend to read, thus stealing revenue from the publisher? This kind of crime is more common than you'd think even among children!
How can this be stopped? Write your Congressman and Senator and ask them to sponsor a bill to outlaw paper.
Its like a cabinet we all have a key to. Any DVD player can just unlock it.
Are you sure about that? As I understand it (and I could be wrong, please correct me if so) in order for a DVD player to decrypt and play a movie it needs two keys. One is stored in the player itself, but the other is stored on the disk, in a special area inaccessible to DVD burners. (In fact, blank media comes with this key area zeroed out, so it can't be recorded on.) Thus, I don't see how a copied, encrypted disk could play. Am I missing something here?
So it seems to me, these "pirates" must have been using DeCSS or something similar. Am I wrong?
As I understand the article, MP3 players are taxed by the megabyte. The solution is simple! Sell the MP3 players without memory! If people order the Smartmedia card or Compact flash memory separate from the player, it wouldn't be taxed, right? (After all, you could be using it for your digital camera.)
I bought my MP3 player from a Canadian store (mp3playerstore.com). I purchased the unit with 256Mb of memory, but I had the option of buying it with no memory at all.
So, I don't understand how this law is going to work. Am I missing something here?
This SSSCA is certainly legislatable, but hardly enforceable. Ya can't stop people from owning compilers.
No, but if you read the parent post you'll see that the solution is simple and not so difficult to enforce. Simply don't let non-trusted computers connect to the Internet. If ISPs are required to authenticate connecting clients, the game is up.
For instance a hardware negotiation would be required between the client PC and ISP whereby the client PC proves it is a "trusted" computer. Such a "trusted" client would only boot up after verifying the OS kernel is properly digitally signed by a certified signing authority. (All this signature checking would occur in tamperproof chips.) The "trusted" OS would be built so as to prevent tampering with the OS and all software it runs would have to be signed, including compilers, etc. A whole rights management framework would be built around this. You could compile and run untrusted code, but it would be very limited in what it could do. It could only play movies at a very limited resolution for instance, and it could only output to your soundcard in 12-bit mono.
Effectively, code would have to be part of a "trusted" framework to access your multimedia hardware resources to their full capacity.
There are really many possible schemes that are actually quite practical to enforce that could have a significant negative impact on the consumer.
I agree. I think it's never a good idea to "fix" one bad law by passing another bad law. Do we really want the government regulating technology this way? It may look like a good idea when it benefits us, the consumer, but what happens when this consumer-friendly anti-technology law is "balanced" in the future by a corporate-friendly anti-technology law like the SSSCA.
but they're not allowed specifically to make it impossible.
I was not aware of that. Can you cite a precedent or a section of the United States Code? I was unaware that publishers were under any obligation not to use perfect copy-protection (if such a thing exists).
Dr. Park did not simply come out and say these guys were crackpots. Instead he remarked that two respected nuclear scientists (which he names) could not reproduce the results. I think it is definitely worthwhile to bring that fact to people's attention before people get too carried away by this paper.
This sort of exists now -- Intel Pentium III [intel.com] CPUs have a 96-bit serial number that could be used as a public key in the way you describe.
Not really because the encryption/decryption would not be taking place wholly within the chip, but rather would be done in software making it totally insecure against a hostile user. In my scheme, the public-key and symmetric encryption would be completely contained within the chip, and the fixed private key and software session keys would never exist outside the chip.
What the Pentium III showed is that it is economically feasible to mass produce chips with unique numbers inside them. This would mean a unique keypair for each chip would be feasible.
I don't think it will be long before CPUs are deployed with built-in encryption units. Each CPU would have a public/private keypair with the private key sealed up forever in the chip and the public key readily available.
Commercial software could then be encrypted.
When you install a new piece of software your public key is read out and you type a product authorization key which is printed on a card in the box, and this is sent via the Internet to the vendor. The vendor checks that the product key hasn't been used before and then encrypts the session key for the software package with your CPU's public key. This encrypted key is sent back to you and stored in a file on your computer's hard drive. When you launch the application, the loader reads the encrypted session key into the CPU and issues a special machine instruction which causes the CPU to decrypt the session key and store it in a CPU register which can't be read out by anyone. But at this point the CPU can start reading the encrypted software code and execute it. The plaintext code is never exposed outside the CPU.
This would not only provide perfect copy protection for software, but also allow DRM in software that can't be cracked.
Expect this soon after the SSSCA passes. Technologically, it wouldn't be hard to implement.
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I don't see how that solves the problem of potential content control. The T3 cable has to be connected to an ISP at the other end. And that ISP is just as likely to have content "standards" as any other. Just because you're using a T3 line instead of a cable or telephone modem doesn't mean you don't have to deal with an ISP. It would solve the bandwidth problem as T3's have a fixed, well-defined bandwidth with no total monthly limit on gigabytes, but there still might be content standards.
Of course you can. You sign away certain First Amendment rights every time you sign a non-disclosure agreement. You sign away Second Amendment rights if you sign a lease at an apartment with a no firearms policy. You implicity temporarily sign away Fourth Amendment rights by entering an airport, for instance, without even signing your name on a peace of paper (this is known as implied consent.) You sign away most of the bill of rights if you sign up for military service, etc.
Courts have held that EULAs (even the shrink-wrap or click-wrap variety) are legally binding, and often they involve signing away many rights, including presumption of innocence.
Talk to a lawyer before making uninformed posts. IANAL, but I have discussed these very issues with laywers at different times. The BSA really does, in practical terms, wield a lot more power than most people realize. Lets just hope the RIAA and MPAA don't take a lesson from them and start including similar shrikwrap licenses on CDs and DVDs!
However, when writing "Return of the Jedi", it was becoming clear that he could really finish up everything in episode six and there wouldn't be any need for episodes 7-9. (He originally planned for the death of the Emperor and redemption of Annakin Skywalker in episode 9.)
If I recall correctly, it was this drastic change in plans that led to the dispute between George Lucas and Gary Kurtz, and why Gary Kurtz didn't stick around for episode 6. I'm not sure if this is a rumor, or fact.
But after Jedi, I don't think there were any plans for any episodes 7-9.
But doesn't the DMCA explicitly allow reverse engineering for interoperability purposes? Is there some law preventing manufacturers from making phones and PDAs which mimic those blessed by the providers?
The question is, what is the current state of regulation in the wireless arena? Do regulations currently exist similar to the old phone regulations? If not, how do the wireless carriers enforce their hardware requirements?
Err, how about reading the article. Unlike the CF memory which you compare it to, these disks are write-once media. Who would want to use such a thing in a digital camera? This is not a technical breakthrough technology. They are smaller than a CD, yes, but have less storage space (250Mb vs. 700), and they have all sorts of yucky DRM crap built-in. I would be amazed if this succeeds.
Specifically, "geek" conjures up an image of a sexually deprived teenager with greasy hair and no money.
It's the "no money" part that will turn off a politician.
Any bets on how long it will be before we have to pay a per-minute levy to record companies and movie studios for all our Internet usage?
Of course, they'll make it "fair" by computing the fraction of total Internet traffic in the world that is piracy, and multiply that fraction by the amount they claim to be losing, so the fact that you're not using the Internet for trading music and movies will be "taken into account" in some average sense (like the Canadian CD-R levy).
Think that's absurd? That's what people thought of the blank media levies and the DMCA. But they're the law of the land now. Just wait...
Well, frequently, password management systems which store one-way hashes of passwords add some randomly "salt" characters to the password before running it through the one-way function, and then store this salt with the encrypted password. This makes it more difficult to use a pre-compiled dictionary to attack badly chosen passwords. The original Unix passwd file did this, for instance.
Err, any password management system worth its salt (pun intended) will not store the plaintext passwords, but rather a one-way hash (eg. MD5, SHA, etc.) of the password. This would make it unfeasable to reconstruct the passwords if the system is compromised.
In fact, very few passenger ships since the Titanic have sunk.
And as has been pointed out before, a true Vernam cipher is uncrackable. Just because some in the past have claimed to be using a Vernam cipher, and their encryption was cracked, doesn't change that fact.
You forgot the biggest disadvantage: no capability for rights management. With a paper book, what's to stop someone from buying a book at a bookstore, reading it, then lending it to a friend to read, thus stealing revenue from the publisher? This kind of crime is more common than you'd think even among children!
How can this be stopped? Write your Congressman and Senator and ask them to sponsor a bill to outlaw paper.
Are you sure about that? As I understand it (and I could be wrong, please correct me if so) in order for a DVD player to decrypt and play a movie it needs two keys. One is stored in the player itself, but the other is stored on the disk, in a special area inaccessible to DVD burners. (In fact, blank media comes with this key area zeroed out, so it can't be recorded on.) Thus, I don't see how a copied, encrypted disk could play. Am I missing something here?
So it seems to me, these "pirates" must have been using DeCSS or something similar. Am I wrong?
I bought my MP3 player from a Canadian store (mp3playerstore.com). I purchased the unit with 256Mb of memory, but I had the option of buying it with no memory at all.
So, I don't understand how this law is going to work. Am I missing something here?
Whoa! I live in Windsor! Where do I find those teenage prostitutes?
No, but if you read the parent post you'll see that the solution is simple and not so difficult to enforce. Simply don't let non-trusted computers connect to the Internet. If ISPs are required to authenticate connecting clients, the game is up.
For instance a hardware negotiation would be required between the client PC and ISP whereby the client PC proves it is a "trusted" computer. Such a "trusted" client would only boot up after verifying the OS kernel is properly digitally signed by a certified signing authority. (All this signature checking would occur in tamperproof chips.) The "trusted" OS would be built so as to prevent tampering with the OS and all software it runs would have to be signed, including compilers, etc. A whole rights management framework would be built around this. You could compile and run untrusted code, but it would be very limited in what it could do. It could only play movies at a very limited resolution for instance, and it could only output to your soundcard in 12-bit mono.
Effectively, code would have to be part of a "trusted" framework to access your multimedia hardware resources to their full capacity.
There are really many possible schemes that are actually quite practical to enforce that could have a significant negative impact on the consumer.
I was not aware of that. Can you cite a precedent or a section of the United States Code? I was unaware that publishers were under any obligation not to use perfect copy-protection (if such a thing exists).
Not really because the encryption/decryption would not be taking place wholly within the chip, but rather would be done in software making it totally insecure against a hostile user. In my scheme, the public-key and symmetric encryption would be completely contained within the chip, and the fixed private key and software session keys would never exist outside the chip.
What the Pentium III showed is that it is economically feasible to mass produce chips with unique numbers inside them. This would mean a unique keypair for each chip would be feasible.
Commercial software could then be encrypted.
When you install a new piece of software your public key is read out and you type a product authorization key which is printed on a card in the box, and this is sent via the Internet to the vendor. The vendor checks that the product key hasn't been used before and then encrypts the session key for the software package with your CPU's public key. This encrypted key is sent back to you and stored in a file on your computer's hard drive. When you launch the application, the loader reads the encrypted session key into the CPU and issues a special machine instruction which causes the CPU to decrypt the session key and store it in a CPU register which can't be read out by anyone. But at this point the CPU can start reading the encrypted software code and execute it. The plaintext code is never exposed outside the CPU.
This would not only provide perfect copy protection for software, but also allow DRM in software that can't be cracked.
Expect this soon after the SSSCA passes. Technologically, it wouldn't be hard to implement.