Good thing you posted that anonymously otherwise he'd have taken all your karma away for suggesting it
4.Work as Tech Support Executive and answer (l)users for a month
That might be the worst punishment, then again it might not. That depends on what he has to do. If he's forced to actually be helpful and solve the problems its punishment, otoh if he's allowed to be BOFH then it's a reward
That would depend on what it could do. And it would depend on how many people died/went insane during tests before the beta
2. Would the answer to question One depend on the operating system in ran?
Yes. It would have to be open source if I should trust it. It may be developed as a cathedral instead of a bazaar but I would not trust it if I couldn't inspect it myself. If you hide it you have a reason to, and in this case that wouldn't be profit since the money could be made from the hardware
I have the exact opposite problem, when my wife gets annoyed at the computer[1] she start typing too strongly and I have to ask her to type more quietly[2] since the application in question[3] shows no improvement using strong typing.
[1]: because it doesn't do what she expects, she expect the wron thing
[2]: to prevent her from damaging the keyboard
[3]: msword
No sane court could find the author's intent to be to place the work in question in the public domain
And there is our problem: The courts (US or otherwise) aren't about sanity, or even justice, they are about the letter of the law and how that can be twisted to fit political agendas.
I assumed security flaws in web browsers involved activex, javascript, or basically *script that wasn't a problem in the days when HTML only rendered text and images. The image bug:
If you're interested to know, Phoenix [mozilla.org] wasn't affected by this bug
And why would you think it did? Why on earth would phoenix be affected by opera bugs? Maybe if they had been based on some common codebase that would have been relevant information.
Becuse when there's a security hole they have it patched within 24 hours? Never seen a patch come that fast from redmond
Admittedly (assuming you know what you are doing and reads security advisories) you can configure out a lot of IEs security holes while you're waiting for a patch
One beer (or a glass of wine or whatever is your favorite poison) a little time before you go to bed. Might not be too healthy if it's a constant problem, but I think it's less unhealty than sleeping pills
Hot showers and fresh sheets also helps, and you need fresh air and the right temerature in your bedroom. You'll need to experiment to figure out what makes you drowsy and/or makes the bed more comfortable
Does it antialias the text? The text in those shots are antialiased, and it looks too smartly-placed to be jpeg artifacts.
That would depend on the dvd player used wouldn't it? I don't think the font is antialiased here
Subpictures in dvd's can be up to 4 colors (ie 3+background) so depending on how the three colors are used (eg white + 2 grays) you could create an antialias (like) effect as long as the image beneath is dark. A more common use seems to be to have white text with a black border so that it is easily readable on any background. The subtitles in the images appear to be white + gray + black + transparent
The reason to use pictures for the subtitles instead of some kind of ascii or unicode text is probably that this way you can have titles in any language and any character set without any special support in the actual player
The (european) MiB (can't remember for sure if it was I or II) dvd uses subpicters in a rather novel way: When you choose one of the commentary soundtracks you get the silouette of two people sitting in front of the move (bottom part as like in a cinema) pointing at different details in sync with the commentaries
budget cut backs must be really hurting them if they're sending that computer to space
So what makes you think they didn't consider faster processors?
For all you (and I) know NASA could have performed tests indicating that modern 3Ghz prosessors are more prone to bit errors caused by radiation in space than older processors.
The difference in cost between a fast prosessor and a 233Mhz on isn't likely to affect the budget of a space shuttle launch, (hell, the 233 may be a custom job and cost more for all we know) so I expect that when nasa engineers went for the slower one they had a damn good reason
Besides the computer is supposed to be used for transferring data back to NASA, how much processor do you need for that? It's not like they'll be recompiling their kernel a lot in orbit is there?
mind you, perhaps pleading ignorance can get you out of doing all these trivial tasks for friends and family - time to rethink my strategy...
I'm seriously considering giving windows the boot once and for all, then I can honestly say "but I haven't used windows in ages, I can't help you. Maybe if you searched the internet you could find something?" That would probably save me from an ulcer or two.
Telecoms, ISP-s etc in some countries are required by law to intercept data when the police asks them to (with a warrant). Since the police isn't that bright we'll make a standard format to provide this information in to make it easier for them
The whole idea of the spoofing technique is to use a relative few machines to share a lot of different files that are corrupted
I don't think so, the whole ide is to make it hard to get a real file. To make sure you download their file instead of a good file the spoofers need to make sure you get a hit for it, that means using a lot of spoofing clients
but it would keep you from having part-real, part-fake file.
Not really, what would prevent them from creating a fake piece? Assume they already know the hash of the real file you found. What we would need is a clent thet knows enough about file types to verify downlooaded blocks, and redownload the bad ones.
The tactic can't be to make it impossible to spoof p2p networks, because you can't. The tactic need to be to make it harder / more expensive to spoof successfully
and if it were missing chunks wouldn't that reflect in that magical number?
You would still have to download the file completely before you could check it, and if they let you get halfway through the download and then cut your bandwith to a crawl you'll have to use a lot of time to rule out all the bad copies and get get a good one
No doubt there will be p2p clients that you can configure not to display a file if there are too many hosts for it, if it's only shared by a few users it's less likely to be part of this spoofing attack. Expect several even more creative ways to filter out suspect files/hosts to appea.
Eg: Every time you get a file you check it and mark it as either good or bad, when you later search, you include a search for these known-good and known-bad files. If a hosts shows hits for many of the known-bad files you ignore it. With a little tuning the job of the spoofers can get a lot harder.
Well as en evil overlord you should know that it's always preferable to get the key to the restroom, make a master key, and then copy the plans of the good guys without them ever knowing
You break down the door and steal the plans: they change the plans and install stronger door. That's a vicious circle
You make a master key and steal their plan, they know nothing, plan stays the same, locks stays the same. You screw their plan over without letting on you know it, then next week when they have a new plan you go get that too.
pff evil overlords these days, no respect for finesse. You should be EvlUndrLrd instead
And no Occams razor doesn't apply, "Out of two possible explanations the simplest one is most likely to be true". You seem to be thinking along the lines of "Out of two methods of breaking and entering, the simplest one has to be better" which may not be true depending on the situation
Compare the time it takes to make a master key and enter 100 rooms to the time to break down 100 doors
Nope. Believing in satan implies believing in God which implies believing in Jesus. And Jesus said something like "All those who believe in me shall not be lost but have eternal life". That means all satanists goes to heaven and we don't want that. We believe in Odin and Thor instead
And they "laak to eat bibies"!
Nope, the flavor isn't right, better to wait until about age 5
And they're mean to puppies!
Hell yeah, if we wait until they're grown they'll be able to bite back, don't want that
Hell, I bet they don't even put "Gnu" before "Linux".
No. This case was prosecuted under Norway's civil law, not her criminal law.
No it was tried under criminal law, under the norwegian legal system the case can still be appealed by the prosecution. It seems a few of the US people on slashdot have a problem grasping that this isn't nessesarily a bad thing, for instance we avoid the situation where the defendant is tried again for a "variation" of the crim
No this has nothing to do with the Norwegian situation, he is beeing tried for the same crime not a "variation"
The Norwegian legal system has three levels and you can always appeal to the higher court, but the higher court might not accept the case. Usually the supreme court doesn't take a case onless it has an impact on legal principles (eg how an old law applies to a new situation not tried before, or how a new law should be interpreted)
The dvd-jon case may well end up in the supreme court since it contains a mix of new technological issues and old copyright law, otoh the case might be rejected on the grounds that making a tool to play back dvds on linux falls under the norwegian equivalent of "fair use" and that there's nothing new
I think you need to brush up on your sense of humor: it was a joke.
Well that makes two of us
I was pointing out the fact that posing the question with exclusive or yes was still a valid answer, maybe you didn't think it was funny but that's your loss not mine
Slashdot Mirror
2.Be the moderator for Slashdot for a week ;-)
Good thing you posted that anonymously otherwise he'd have taken all your karma away for suggesting it
4.Work as Tech Support Executive and answer (l)users for a month
That might be the worst punishment, then again it might not. That depends on what he has to do. If he's forced to actually be helpful and solve the problems its punishment, otoh if he's allowed to be BOFH then it's a reward
Imagine the fun if foreign courts enforced laws in distant lands.
And the us hasn't been trying that as much as it possibly can?
Skylarov anyone?
1. Would you be willing to be a beta tester?
That would depend on what it could do. And it would depend on how many people died/went insane during tests before the beta
2. Would the answer to question One depend on the operating system in ran?
Yes. It would have to be open source if I should trust it. It may be developed as a cathedral instead of a bazaar but I would not trust it if I couldn't inspect it myself. If you hide it you have a reason to, and in this case that wouldn't be profit since the money could be made from the hardware
wife complains about the noise
I have the exact opposite problem, when my wife gets annoyed at the computer[1] she start typing too strongly and I have to ask her to type more quietly[2] since the application in question[3] shows no improvement using strong typing.
[1]: because it doesn't do what she expects, she expect the wron thing
[2]: to prevent her from damaging the keyboard
[3]: msword
No sane court could find the author's intent to be to place the work in question in the public domain
And there is our problem: The courts (US or otherwise) aren't about sanity, or even justice, they are about the letter of the law and how that can be twisted to fit political agendas.
I assumed security flaws in web browsers involved activex, javascript, or basically *script that wasn't a problem in the days when HTML only rendered text and images. The image bug:
.
open("file://localhost/images/file.gif?\">(scri pt here). .
That's javascript
If you're interested to know, Phoenix [mozilla.org] wasn't affected by this bug
And why would you think it did? Why on earth would phoenix be affected by opera bugs? Maybe if they had been based on some common codebase that would have been relevant information.
Tell me again why I need opera?
Becuse when there's a security hole they have it patched within 24 hours? Never seen a patch come that fast from redmond
Admittedly (assuming you know what you are doing and reads security advisories) you can configure out a lot of IEs security holes while you're waiting for a patch
and *everyones* got a cure
One beer (or a glass of wine or whatever is your favorite poison) a little time before you go to bed. Might not be too healthy if it's a constant problem, but I think it's less unhealty than sleeping pills
Hot showers and fresh sheets also helps, and you need fresh air and the right temerature in your bedroom. You'll need to experiment to figure out what makes you drowsy and/or makes the bed more comfortable
The whole point of the oracle was that she wasn't supposed to bet what you expected.
Does it antialias the text? The text in those shots are antialiased, and it looks too smartly-placed to be jpeg artifacts.
That would depend on the dvd player used wouldn't it? I don't think the font is antialiased here
Subpictures in dvd's can be up to 4 colors (ie 3+background) so depending on how the three colors are used (eg white + 2 grays) you could create an antialias (like) effect as long as the image beneath is dark. A more common use seems to be to have white text with a black border so that it is easily readable on any background. The subtitles in the images appear to be white + gray + black + transparent
The reason to use pictures for the subtitles instead of some kind of ascii or unicode text is probably that this way you can have titles in any language and any character set without any special support in the actual playerThe (european) MiB (can't remember for sure if it was I or II) dvd uses subpicters in a rather novel way: When you choose one of the commentary soundtracks you get the silouette of two people sitting in front of the move (bottom part as like in a cinema) pointing at different details in sync with the commentaries
budget cut backs must be really hurting them if they're sending that computer to space
So what makes you think they didn't consider faster processors?
For all you (and I) know NASA could have performed tests indicating that modern 3Ghz prosessors are more prone to bit errors caused by radiation in space than older processors.
The difference in cost between a fast prosessor and a 233Mhz on isn't likely to affect the budget of a space shuttle launch, (hell, the 233 may be a custom job and cost more for all we know) so I expect that when nasa engineers went for the slower one they had a damn good reason
Besides the computer is supposed to be used for transferring data back to NASA, how much processor do you need for that? It's not like they'll be recompiling their kernel a lot in orbit is there?
mind you, perhaps pleading ignorance can get you out of doing all these trivial tasks for friends and family - time to rethink my strategy...
I'm seriously considering giving windows the boot once and for all, then I can honestly say "but I haven't used windows in ages, I can't help you. Maybe if you searched the internet you could find something?" That would probably save me from an ulcer or two.
Real translation:
Telecoms, ISP-s etc in some countries are required by law to intercept data when the police asks them to (with a warrant). Since the police isn't that bright we'll make a standard format to provide this information in to make it easier for them
The whole idea of the spoofing technique is to use a relative few machines to share a lot of different files that are corrupted
I don't think so, the whole ide is to make it hard to get a real file. To make sure you download their file instead of a good file the spoofers need to make sure you get a hit for it, that means using a lot of spoofing clients
but it would keep you from having part-real, part-fake file.
Not really, what would prevent them from creating a fake piece? Assume they already know the hash of the real file you found. What we would need is a clent thet knows enough about file types to verify downlooaded blocks, and redownload the bad ones.
The tactic can't be to make it impossible to spoof p2p networks, because you can't. The tactic need to be to make it harder / more expensive to spoof successfully
and if it were missing chunks wouldn't that reflect in that magical number?
You would still have to download the file completely before you could check it, and if they let you get halfway through the download and then cut your bandwith to a crawl you'll have to use a lot of time to rule out all the bad copies and get get a good one
No doubt there will be p2p clients that you can configure not to display a file if there are too many hosts for it, if it's only shared by a few users it's less likely to be part of this spoofing attack. Expect several even more creative ways to filter out suspect files/hosts to appea.
Eg: Every time you get a file you check it and mark it as either good or bad, when you later search, you include a search for these known-good and known-bad files. If a hosts shows hits for many of the known-bad files you ignore it. With a little tuning the job of the spoofers can get a lot harder.
Well as en evil overlord you should know that it's always preferable to get the key to the restroom, make a master key, and then copy the plans of the good guys without them ever knowing
You break down the door and steal the plans: they change the plans and install stronger door. That's a vicious circle
You make a master key and steal their plan, they know nothing, plan stays the same, locks stays the same. You screw their plan over without letting on you know it, then next week when they have a new plan you go get that too.
pff evil overlords these days, no respect for finesse. You should be EvlUndrLrd instead
And no Occams razor doesn't apply, "Out of two possible explanations the simplest one is most likely to be true". You seem to be thinking along the lines of "Out of two methods of breaking and entering, the simplest one has to be better" which may not be true depending on the situation
Compare the time it takes to make a master key and enter 100 rooms to the time to break down 100 doors
They aren't communists in Norway,
Nope we're facist
they are just plain EEE-VIL!
Nope not PLAIN evil
And SATANISTS!
Nope. Believing in satan implies believing in God which implies believing in Jesus. And Jesus said something like "All those who believe in me shall not be lost but have eternal life". That means all satanists goes to heaven and we don't want that. We believe in Odin and Thor instead
And they "laak to eat bibies"!
Nope, the flavor isn't right, better to wait until about age 5
And they're mean to puppies!
Hell yeah, if we wait until they're grown they'll be able to bite back, don't want that
Hell, I bet they don't even put "Gnu" before "Linux".
What's linux? I use GNU/Stallmanix
No. This case was prosecuted under Norway's civil law, not her criminal law.
No it was tried under criminal law, under the norwegian legal system the case can still be appealed by the prosecution. It seems a few of the US people on slashdot have a problem grasping that this isn't nessesarily a bad thing, for instance we avoid the situation where the defendant is tried again for a "variation" of the crim
No this has nothing to do with the Norwegian situation, he is beeing tried for the same crime not a "variation"
The Norwegian legal system has three levels and you can always appeal to the higher court, but the higher court might not accept the case. Usually the supreme court doesn't take a case onless it has an impact on legal principles (eg how an old law applies to a new situation not tried before, or how a new law should be interpreted)
The dvd-jon case may well end up in the supreme court since it contains a mix of new technological issues and old copyright law, otoh the case might be rejected on the grounds that making a tool to play back dvds on linux falls under the norwegian equivalent of "fair use" and that there's nothing new
easy enough to write a counter exploit that hunts down and removes the Gobbles virus/worm
And then send the riaa a fake list of digital media
isn't it a no-no to put your legally ripped-from-cd tracks into your "share" directory for others to copy?
all digital media on the system is cataloged, and the list is sent to the RIAA.
So what exactly makes you think it'll only search your shared folder?
I think you need to brush up on your sense of humor: it was a joke.
Well that makes two of us
I was pointing out the fact that posing the question with exclusive or yes was still a valid answer, maybe you didn't think it was funny but that's your loss not mine
Is this really happening exclusive or is it early in the morning and I'm a sucker to a hoax?
Yes
I think you need to brush up your logic:
Shouldnt you append an "In Soviet Russia" to that?