It might, however, be just what movie studios and record labels need to market and distribute their own content efficiently on the Web.
This just isn't going to happen and shows a basic flaw in their greedy expectations of what they can get away with.
I just downloaded a new version of Knoppix by Bittorrent. I was happy to use my available uplink bandwidth to share with others and and still shareing it even after the download is complete. I even used a seperate computer so that I would not tie up my main desktop in any way and could keep the feed up longer. But I and most other users would not be willing to use our uplink bandwidth to let the MPAA or RIAA sell their product. I doubt that I would buy anything this way (just as I don't want to pay overpriced charges for lossy quality audio with DRM restrictions), but if I did I would certainly leech and not let my uplink bandwidth be used to further sell the product. I might even do whatever I could to corrupt any uploads. I expect that almost everyone would refuse to upload, so Bittorrent is not a viable business model for companies who have already demonstrated a hostility to their customers and to Bittorrent. I'll even gladly spend my time freely to make sure that others are aware of how the MPAA and RIAA are profiting from the use of uploading bandwidth that others are paying for if it ever comes to that.
The article quotes the CTO of ScanSafe as saying that '[j]ust switching away from IE does not give adequate projection. Now that Firefox and other alternative browsers have a toehold in the market the hacking community will get busy exploiting the vulnerabilities that exist in any complex browser.'"
While I'll agree that no browser may be perfect or imune to all problems, others like Firefox have a far better track record. More importantly, there is very good reasons that these attacks are sneaking in through Firefox and yet attacking IE rater than Firefox. One is that IE still has major problems that can be exploited this way, while Firefox may not. The other and very important issue is that the hackers know that IE will be there. Microsoft still insists that it is an integral part of the OS. Unfortunately, this means that a company that doesn't even want it's employees to have a browser can not easily completely remove IE from Windows, and so all of the vulnerabilities that IE brings with it are forced on it's users by Microsoft, even for users would would much rather remove it completely.
How can/. even ask this question? What would make it not journalism? How would a page or site that is called a blogg be any different than, for example, The Drudge Report, other than the first may have the letters blogg within it and the second might not? Clearly there might be some bloggs that might be nothing more than people telling what they had for lunch that day, but these are hardly the one that are being attacked here. The ones that are being attacked must be journalism as much as any other website is.
If someone posted the exact same information on the web before the term blogg came into popular use, whould it not have been journalism? Does the existance of other people's bloggs change that?
First ammendment rights (or any ammendment rights) must not be taken away by police or courts who decide who qualifies to get them and who does not. It's not OK to say that the NY Times is journalism but that the NY Post or the National Enquirer are not. It's not OK to do so in this case either.
Re:mnb Re:wrong for so many reasons
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DVHS on a Budget
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· Score: 1
I did read the article. I missed that it was a plastic pin. Do you believe that all decks will use a small plastic pin as a sensing pin, or do you think that some decks might end up using a metal pin for this function? Are small scraps of plastic a good thing to have inside an expensive video recorder? Personally, I would rather make a simple change that can be undone than one that cannot.
wrong for so many reasons
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DVHS on a Budget
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Just cut off the top four to five millimeters of the pin within the recorder itself.
This makes lots of sense, just cut of a metal pin (in a video recorder that will not react well to any stray metal filings) rather than bypass the switch that the pin connects to.
I feel that Fiorina's paying much more for Compaq when it was on it's deathbed than what was recently paid for IBM's PC division says it all. The purchase brought nothing to HP and many people including myself believe that the only reason Fiorina did it was to make a big change that would take a while for the finnancial numbers to react to, protecting her personal position that was extremely in danger of termination at the time. And to see what the HP stock holders are getting stuck with paying her as "severence" after she did such a poor job is just crazy.
This guy starts out talking about something happening at his office: reports had come back to me at my workplace that someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs. He then jumps to some event that he says was happening half way across the globe. OK, obviously I don't like spyware either, but what was the point of the story? What in the world did the events happening to Eric L Howes have to do with this guy's claim that at his office he saw someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs.??? I sure didn't see the connection.
Just how did Eric L Howes installing 65 meg of spyware and even worse Microsoft software (or anyone else) cause this guy to see someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs. Is this a 65 meg problem or a gigabyte problem? Or does this guy maybe work at the site that is hosting the spyware?
When saying that the jugde didn't buy that the FCC has the right to pass this rule, it should be noted that here was no actual ruling, and that the court might even decide that the case can't be brought by the parties that filed it (which leads to the crazy logic that the judge outright says that the FCC has no right to make this rule but he'll do nothing about it). Worse, with no rule set by the courts and the deadline fast approaching, manufacturers who want to stay in business have little option but to supprt the damn flag. They are less likely to spend more money later to redesign new hardware to omit support for it again, and if they do that will only drive the price of HDTV even higher.
Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who's being credited as AutoLink's creator.
Well, who more better qualified than Mr. Reyner to know that what Google is doing does not conflict with his previous patent, right?;-)
I'm not all that impressed by a "cure" that uses HIV. Both in that I don't trust it to be safe, but also in that there has already been knowledge of a much safer virus that can cure cancer for several years. At first glance one might think that we don't already have the older cure since it's naturally occuring and so the medical industry can't patent it and make millions from everyone who needs it, but look at other recent patents for naturally occuring things argues against that. Sure, with all of the different cancers we may need more than one treatment, but why does there not seem to be lot of research on this promising approach that might give us one real cure rather than tinkering with something as dangerour and unstable as HIV?
I think betas are very nice fish and we should recognize that they do have a life of their own. And we shouldn't make them spend it in those little glass jars with stinky water.
Although there are still issues about what makes a machine when there is a very tightly coupled network, this actually makes the most sense. After all, the major flaw in the per CPU (chip) but not per core argument is that it allows some companies (Intel, for example) to put multiple processors into a machine that only needs one license, but prevents another company (Asus, for example) to build a motherboard (machine) that takes multiple processors by acomplish the exact same end. By what logic should an Intel motherboard running one Intel chip but containing four complete core processors pay a lower licensing fee that an Asus motherboiard with (for example) two AMD cores, each one on it's own chip, for a total of only two cores?
And it can hardly be argued that it's an issue of chip count, what if I were to take a dozen or more chips (PLAs, slice processors, and other exotic devices) and from these build up a single 386 class CPU? Clearly such a device would only require one license to run software, even though it was made of multiple chips. And since there are already court rulings that instruction sets can not be copyrighted, it is clearly my right to build such a device and software vendors would have no valid reason to keep me from legally buying copies of their software and running it on my creation.
One should also consider that my "single core" desktop computer actually contains at least two significant processors, the CPU and the graphics card (which may very well have more processing power than the CPU). While software like Oracle doesn't take advantage of the processing power of the graphics processor today, if some sophisticated user were to enhance his OS such that some improvements were made that could take some small advantage of the processing power of the graphics card, would this somehow change the processor count as far as Oracle was concerned?
If a 386 computer with a 387 co-processor counts as only one CPU, shouldn't I be able to designate one of two Athlon processors on my dual CPU motherboard as a "co-processor" and pay for only one machine? Sure, each of the Athlon processors is far more powerful that the 396 and 397 combined, but that's not the issue. And if chip count is the issue then the 386 and 387 certainly use as many or more chips (and more support chips).
$246.49 for 512 meg of memory in todat's market and the post can call this "fare even better"? Hardly, it's a huge over charge for buying from Dell. Sadly, some Dell systems do require "special" memory, I had tried to help a girlfriend add memory to her Dell system a few years ago and we learmed that standard memory would not work in it. Dell used some memory with very strange clock requirements. Still, we were able to get the memory from any of several large memory suppliers for about half of what Dell wanted for it (although for significantly more than "standard" (and faster) memory would cost. The lesson is don't buy memory at all from Dell, and to avoid getting "locked in", don't buy at all from them.
James Gosling this week called Microsoft's decision to support C and C++ in the common language runtime in.NET one of the 'biggest and most offensive mistakes that they could have made.'
Gosling is dead wrong. I believe that Microsoft will soon prove they are capable of even bigger and more offensive security mistakes.
Also, the choice to actually use.NET is at least as big of a security error.
I don't know about SRP, but I advocated using a system that would let the user have a few password attempts and then lock the person attempting to gain access for some amount of time. My university used a system like this over 35 years ago, three failed user/password pairs and the terminal would lock up for a minute. No valid patent could prevent such a system, as the prior art would allow anyone to do it. Even this very simple step would solve much of the dictionary attack problems. There is no reason to wait to put such things in place.
None of this, of course, is an attempt to say that passwords are perfect and that other systems might not be better and more secure. Obviously there are problems and human errors that let a hacker learn a password. But passwords are a way that can be used right now with no extra hardware and across networks to remote systems, and the obvious things that can be done to protect system that do use passwords should be done, but in most cases are not being done.
Passwords are fine, the systems that are broken
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Password Security Panned
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Passwords can work fine and be easy for the users, it is the systems that make passwords weak. The ability to use a dictionary attack on passwords is insane. Any reasonable implimentation of password security would let a user try a very limited number of attempts to gain access by a password (to allow for typing errors and human error, even accidentally using the wrong password). After multiple failures, a reasonable system would lock out the user account for a period of time (at a minimum, it could also begin a notification process or take other measures to protect data if appropriate). After the imposed delay the user could be given another chance to enter the password, but again after one or more failed attempts a delay could be imposed again, perhaps with a longer delay after each failure. These delays would have little or no real impact on a user who made an error in password entry, but would be a major step in stopping dictionary attacks or other guessing approaches used by attackers. Not using them is simply poor system design.
It would certainly be easy for any on-line system to recognize a dictionary attack and distinguish it from user error or just a user who had forgotten his password. For example, a large number such as 25-30 hits against a small dictionary of vastly different but common words or passwords, without ever coming close to the actual password, should certainly trigger recognization of an attempt to break into an account and take appropriate steps (perhaps imposing a delay on the account, perhaps locking out the offending IP address, perhaps locking the account until there was human action, or some other action appropriate to the particular circumstances).
Users should always be advised of any failed attempts to gain access to the account after a sucessful login, a feature that is lacking from most current systems.
Agreed. But it strikes me as self serving that the press (even Slashdot) seems to focus on preserving the First Amendment, while the vast bulk of the press not only ignores incursions on may other amendments but actually encourages and supports it. And then they show surprise at loss of understanding of the Bill of Rights. By having this article focus on just the first amendment, Slashdot did a disservice to the others that are at even greater jeporady.
The important thing is that we are going to spend Billions building up oil-rich Iraq, so that the people there have things that tax paying American citizens don't even have (and, of course, they will still hate us). Bush can hardly afford to spend a little money on a proven and viable space technology when just this week at his coronation he declared himself in charge of making every country fit his image of what is right and wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
This just isn't going to happen and shows a basic flaw in their greedy expectations of what they can get away with.
I just downloaded a new version of Knoppix by Bittorrent. I was happy to use my available uplink bandwidth to share with others and and still shareing it even after the download is complete. I even used a seperate computer so that I would not tie up my main desktop in any way and could keep the feed up longer. But I and most other users would not be willing to use our uplink bandwidth to let the MPAA or RIAA sell their product. I doubt that I would buy anything this way (just as I don't want to pay overpriced charges for lossy quality audio with DRM restrictions), but if I did I would certainly leech and not let my uplink bandwidth be used to further sell the product. I might even do whatever I could to corrupt any uploads. I expect that almost everyone would refuse to upload, so Bittorrent is not a viable business model for companies who have already demonstrated a hostility to their customers and to Bittorrent. I'll even gladly spend my time freely to make sure that others are aware of how the MPAA and RIAA are profiting from the use of uploading bandwidth that others are paying for if it ever comes to that.
Lets start calling it by it's real name, Phonography.
While I'll agree that no browser may be perfect or imune to all problems, others like Firefox have a far better track record. More importantly, there is very good reasons that these attacks are sneaking in through Firefox and yet attacking IE rater than Firefox. One is that IE still has major problems that can be exploited this way, while Firefox may not. The other and very important issue is that the hackers know that IE will be there. Microsoft still insists that it is an integral part of the OS. Unfortunately, this means that a company that doesn't even want it's employees to have a browser can not easily completely remove IE from Windows, and so all of the vulnerabilities that IE brings with it are forced on it's users by Microsoft, even for users would would much rather remove it completely.
If someone posted the exact same information on the web before the term blogg came into popular use, whould it not have been journalism? Does the existance of other people's bloggs change that?
First ammendment rights (or any ammendment rights) must not be taken away by police or courts who decide who qualifies to get them and who does not. It's not OK to say that the NY Times is journalism but that the NY Post or the National Enquirer are not. It's not OK to do so in this case either.
I did read the article. I missed that it was a plastic pin. Do you believe that all decks will use a small plastic pin as a sensing pin, or do you think that some decks might end up using a metal pin for this function? Are small scraps of plastic a good thing to have inside an expensive video recorder? Personally, I would rather make a simple change that can be undone than one that cannot.
This makes lots of sense, just cut of a metal pin (in a video recorder that will not react well to any stray metal filings) rather than bypass the switch that the pin connects to.
I feel that Fiorina's paying much more for Compaq when it was on it's deathbed than what was recently paid for IBM's PC division says it all. The purchase brought nothing to HP and many people including myself believe that the only reason Fiorina did it was to make a big change that would take a while for the finnancial numbers to react to, protecting her personal position that was extremely in danger of termination at the time. And to see what the HP stock holders are getting stuck with paying her as "severence" after she did such a poor job is just crazy.
This guy starts out talking about something happening at his office: reports had come back to me at my workplace that someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs. He then jumps to some event that he says was happening half way across the globe. OK, obviously I don't like spyware either, but what was the point of the story? What in the world did the events happening to Eric L Howes have to do with this guy's claim that at his office he saw someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs.??? I sure didn't see the connection. Just how did Eric L Howes installing 65 meg of spyware and even worse Microsoft software (or anyone else) cause this guy to see someone, somewhere was downloading gigabytes of data onto their PCs. Is this a 65 meg problem or a gigabyte problem? Or does this guy maybe work at the site that is hosting the spyware?
Rather than Microsoft Will Pay If Its Bugs Damage Your Data, the headline should have read Microsoft Says Your Data Is Only Worth $5 .
When saying that the jugde didn't buy that the FCC has the right to pass this rule, it should be noted that here was no actual ruling, and that the court might even decide that the case can't be brought by the parties that filed it (which leads to the crazy logic that the judge outright says that the FCC has no right to make this rule but he'll do nothing about it). Worse, with no rule set by the courts and the deadline fast approaching, manufacturers who want to stay in business have little option but to supprt the damn flag. They are less likely to spend more money later to redesign new hardware to omit support for it again, and if they do that will only drive the price of HDTV even higher.
Any list that includes the POPEIL POCKET FISHERMAN in a list of greates gadgets isn't worth reading any further.
Well, who more better qualified than Mr. Reyner to know that what Google is doing does not conflict with his previous patent, right? ;-)
Mother Teresa gets away with things that Adolf Hitler couldn't, film at 11.
I'm not all that impressed by a "cure" that uses HIV. Both in that I don't trust it to be safe, but also in that there has already been knowledge of a much safer virus that can cure cancer for several years. At first glance one might think that we don't already have the older cure since it's naturally occuring and so the medical industry can't patent it and make millions from everyone who needs it, but look at other recent patents for naturally occuring things argues against that. Sure, with all of the different cancers we may need more than one treatment, but why does there not seem to be lot of research on this promising approach that might give us one real cure rather than tinkering with something as dangerour and unstable as HIV?
I think betas are very nice fish and we should recognize that they do have a life of their own. And we shouldn't make them spend it in those little glass jars with stinky water.
And it can hardly be argued that it's an issue of chip count, what if I were to take a dozen or more chips (PLAs, slice processors, and other exotic devices) and from these build up a single 386 class CPU? Clearly such a device would only require one license to run software, even though it was made of multiple chips. And since there are already court rulings that instruction sets can not be copyrighted, it is clearly my right to build such a device and software vendors would have no valid reason to keep me from legally buying copies of their software and running it on my creation.
One should also consider that my "single core" desktop computer actually contains at least two significant processors, the CPU and the graphics card (which may very well have more processing power than the CPU). While software like Oracle doesn't take advantage of the processing power of the graphics processor today, if some sophisticated user were to enhance his OS such that some improvements were made that could take some small advantage of the processing power of the graphics card, would this somehow change the processor count as far as Oracle was concerned?
If a 386 computer with a 387 co-processor counts as only one CPU, shouldn't I be able to designate one of two Athlon processors on my dual CPU motherboard as a "co-processor" and pay for only one machine? Sure, each of the Athlon processors is far more powerful that the 396 and 397 combined, but that's not the issue. And if chip count is the issue then the 386 and 387 certainly use as many or more chips (and more support chips).
$246.49 for 512 meg of memory in todat's market and the post can call this "fare even better" ? Hardly, it's a huge over charge for buying from Dell. Sadly, some Dell systems do require "special" memory, I had tried to help a girlfriend add memory to her Dell system a few years ago and we learmed that standard memory would not work in it. Dell used some memory with very strange clock requirements. Still, we were able to get the memory from any of several large memory suppliers for about half of what Dell wanted for it (although for significantly more than "standard" (and faster) memory would cost. The lesson is don't buy memory at all from Dell, and to avoid getting "locked in", don't buy at all from them.
Yup, I had come up with words that mean the same as brainlessly as soon as I read the price.
Gosling is dead wrong. I believe that Microsoft will soon prove they are capable of even bigger and more offensive security mistakes.
Also, the choice to actually use .NET is at least as big of a security error.
None of this, of course, is an attempt to say that passwords are perfect and that other systems might not be better and more secure. Obviously there are problems and human errors that let a hacker learn a password. But passwords are a way that can be used right now with no extra hardware and across networks to remote systems, and the obvious things that can be done to protect system that do use passwords should be done, but in most cases are not being done.
It would certainly be easy for any on-line system to recognize a dictionary attack and distinguish it from user error or just a user who had forgotten his password. For example, a large number such as 25-30 hits against a small dictionary of vastly different but common words or passwords, without ever coming close to the actual password, should certainly trigger recognization of an attempt to break into an account and take appropriate steps (perhaps imposing a delay on the account, perhaps locking out the offending IP address, perhaps locking the account until there was human action, or some other action appropriate to the particular circumstances).
Users should always be advised of any failed attempts to gain access to the account after a sucessful login, a feature that is lacking from most current systems.
Not a review (either), but this website http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php?sort= &showonly= list a lot more than 18 live CD's (and even it is not complete).
Agreed. But it strikes me as self serving that the press (even Slashdot) seems to focus on preserving the First Amendment, while the vast bulk of the press not only ignores incursions on may other amendments but actually encourages and supports it. And then they show surprise at loss of understanding of the Bill of Rights. By having this article focus on just the first amendment, Slashdot did a disservice to the others that are at even greater jeporady.
U.S. Law Makers Don't Understand the Second Ammendment.
The important thing is that we are going to spend Billions building up oil-rich Iraq, so that the people there have things that tax paying American citizens don't even have (and, of course, they will still hate us). Bush can hardly afford to spend a little money on a proven and viable space technology when just this week at his coronation he declared himself in charge of making every country fit his image of what is right and wrong.