For me at least, this seems to put another nail in the coffin of the smaller stores.
For the Supermarkets and large companies PCI DSS will be easily factored into their current IT budget and they will not have to change (raise) their prices or conversly they will use their buying power to pass the costs onto the producers.
For a smaller store there is little they can do other than raise prices.
Realistically this is only going to benefit the biggest companies at the detriment to the smaller ones out there.
This is not a biased argument towards legally purchasing disks, I am meerly pointing out that it is not free to have an internet connection, and it also would take a couple of months at normal DSL speeds to get all 100 movies.
Its like saying that I can get my groceries $1 cheaper at supermarket X but then neglect to factor in the fact that it costs $2 worth of fuel to go out of my way to do the shopping.
But of course if you live with your parents then yes it will be free for YOU, but the money for the connection needs to come from somewhere.
Luckily for you, it seems as though unlimited internet is the norm, and as I said in the original post, the equation might be different if your isp arnt as tight fisted as they are in Oz.
But of course this is slashdot, where YOUR opinion is THE ONLY opinion that matters.
$100 per month for ADSL that has a 80 Gig download limit (this is typically the maximum you can get in Australia, but it might be different in your part of the world)
100 movies * 20gig = 2000 gigabyte, that will take you 2000/80 = 25 months to download.
So the total cost to download and store is:
576 + 25*100 = $3076
So unless you can get an 80 Gig ADSL for $56.90 or less then it will STILL be cheaper to buy the disks.
At the very least, religion gives you the benefit of having other people around you with similar basic beliefs to occasionally tell you "no, you're wrong"... So that makes slashdot *our* religion then!
This is news due to someone who has made a name for himself (Linux Torvalds) on OSS (as in GNU free not beer) having (or is it had, I cant remember if he has quit) an association with a company that is now follwoing the tactics of many other companies that are completely opposed to freedoms in IP (mainly **AA types, but others such as SCO.... the list seems to be growing daily as this artive points out).
This does not seem to be a problem with just IPods, my Creative Jukebox showed simmilar non randoness.
In my case the player would, when given a playlist of any size, even over 100 tracks, would always show a preference to play two songs from the same album one after each other.
Humans are good at spotting patterns, and if it occours to me that the two consecutive tracks from albums seems to happen frequently, then it is likely that this is indeed a flaw in the algorithm.
Mind you as I have not done any mathematical tests, it is just as likely that because I have picked up on this anomoly, that I am only remembering when it happens and not realising how many other times it does not happen.....
Cedar will crack, just like any other 'unsealed' wood, due to expansion and compression of the wood fibers due to humidity. If you can control the humidity then you will be able to have an unsealed cedar case. (Cedar is also a good dehumidifier)
Cedar is commonly used in humidors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidor and is used unsealed on the inside, but it is encased in a pretty veneer, so it is kept at a constant humidity with a tight fitting lid.
The heat from the computer, on the other will limit the joinery options as the non-uniform expansion of the wood from heat will need to be meachanically limited by the type of joint (think dados) rather than chemically (glues).
weak encryption is a lot better than no encryption at all
There are many schools of though on this subject, but in general this train of thought will generally mean LESS security rather than more security.
The reason is that the sort of people who DO NOT know how to choose effective security measures in the first place, will also not be aware of other security measures required to really protect the data.
What this means in practice is that someone who believes the snake oil claims of a particular product will, under a false sense of security, be more reckless with the data, ie leaving it on laptops which get stolen etc.
This is kind of like believing that as my car has a good imobiliser I can leave it unlocked. This is of course great until someone steals the wheels on your car because the key to your wheel locking nuts was left in the glovebox. In this case you still have your car but you are still unable to use it.
"If given the choice to pay for and download movies online, I'd be all over it."
And I suspect that the movie companies would be all over you too, or would that be own you, as you would be one of the first to accept the fact that on-line movies will have DRM written all over it....
There is a security flaw with everything that runs locally on a windows machine configured by a home user, and that is simply that once infected all firewall / spam / virus software can theoretically be disabled by a program running.
The articles point out that if we have some limits set into a hardware product (ie the cable / adsl modem) then we limit the effectiveness of the attack. This is based upon the fact that the spam relay software is to be run on a badly configured system (aka casual home user).
I like the idea of a reverse firewall, and have throught for a long time that it is about time that something like Smoothwall should be altered to provide functionality as described in the articles.
By that I mean that home users need something that is simple to setup, has the ability to tell them about typically suspect activity (outgoing port X access, where X is a port known to be used by some unwanted program) and allow the user to define certain limits for users on their home network. And I do mean home network, after all, a corporate network should have a profficient IT person administering it all day and they can set up whatever is required to protect their network.
A home user needs something that will aid them to set limits for their own use of the internet. For example, if my mom installed such a product and the product asked her "1, Do you use email? 2, Do you use the web? 3, Typically how many emails do you send a day? 4, etc, etc surely this would setup a modem whereby a lot of untoward activity would be reduced by a spam relay infected machine.
Personally I would like to see a firewall that lets me define which applications are to be allowed on a per machine basis / port set basis. So you could define that the set of ports used by say unreal tournament, would be allowed on machine A, but not on machine B.
Another example would be if I have two machines, one for myself and one for my child, I would certainly want to only allow me to play violent games online eg RTCF: Enemy teritory which is free to download and install by my child, but I would be warned that they are using it as it would be rejected and logged on the firewall. This would happen for any other product that tried to get out of my lan.
There are a few flaws, the main one being if all the products started using port 80 (or read the computers configuration and used the proxy). In this case you would need to filter the port 80 requests, but still, it would be a good step to prevent a lot of abuse of infected machines.
Of course the firewall would also need to have email filters and a net nanny, but such a product should sell well to any parent who is worried about the internet and their childs use of it, assuming of course the manual is in PLAIN english and simply says something to the effect "To get email protection up and running do A, B, C then D".
It is strange that people working for free, I am talking open source here, do not produce something that is useful for home users. All the OSS firewalls I have looked out require you to have a good to expert knowledge (depending on firewall) of networking in order to effectivly use them. They all seem to be just creating replacements for professional products rather than somehting that is useable by the average Joe.
Perhaps if they grasped this usabilitly problem, then OSS might finally create a linux distro that is good for the desktop.
Sorry guys this was my first post...point to learn...use a spell checker!
To be honest, I already have a big keyboard, it's an MS Natural Pro (Which is flamebate enough I know). Although I would like to blame MS for a faulty keyboard I have found that their hardware is actually quite good, its a shame the same quality does not seep through to their software...
an attack would give an excuse for legislation
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There is only one problem with an attack on the infrastructure, and it is not the actual attack.
Indeed there would be a days work lost, but any company that has a good tech department / disater recovery plan would be able to sort themselves out within a day, although the backlog of mail might take a little longer. This is not in fact a massive deal.
The biggest problem would come from the fact that all the current anti privacy legislation would have an excellent excuse to go through with the backing of all in congress/parliment (for us in the UK)
I ahve made myself several PCs in the past 5 years. Although pound for pound buying a complete PC from scratch is not as good as say getting one from dell, if you progressivly cycle through the components buy buying the components you want now for your current PC and moving your old componets down to your secondary PCs you will find that you can keep up a relativly good PC for a little monthly cost.
My buying habbits seem to indicate that I buy something new every 6 months, eg a graphics card or new hard disk and every so often a new MB/CPU. If I get a new sound card, then the old sound card gets relegated to my second best PC and the second best PCs sound card etc, etc (I have 3 PCs at home)
The only problem with this is that you will need to have use of several PCs, for me it is a games PC (Fast snazzy sound cards etc) a server, and one for my girlfriend.
Any componets that drop out of the bottom of the cycle get put into simple PCs for the rest of my family. Unfortunately I still have to do tech support for them regardless if they have bought a new PC or not, so I dont mind giving them a simple PC out my spares.
The other side to the coin to go get a newe PC is that you get the software bundled with the PC, this can mean very good value especially if you get the full MS suite of Windows and Orrifice, which is very expensive to buy separately, and with the activation stuff it is not worth buying 'privately' anyway (whether it is *worth* buying at all is another matter)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we all know that the plural of idiot is idioii!
For me at least, this seems to put another nail in the coffin of the smaller stores.
For the Supermarkets and large companies PCI DSS will be easily factored into their current IT budget and they will not have to change (raise) their prices or conversly they will use their buying power to pass the costs onto the producers.
For a smaller store there is little they can do other than raise prices. Realistically this is only going to benefit the biggest companies at the detriment to the smaller ones out there.
This is not a biased argument towards legally purchasing disks, I am meerly pointing out that it is not free to have an internet connection, and it also would take a couple of months at normal DSL speeds to get all 100 movies.
Its like saying that I can get my groceries $1 cheaper at supermarket X but then neglect to factor in the fact that it costs $2 worth of fuel to go out of my way to do the shopping.
But of course if you live with your parents then yes it will be free for YOU, but the money for the connection needs to come from somewhere.
Luckily for you, it seems as though unlimited internet is the norm, and as I said in the original post, the equation might be different if your isp arnt as tight fisted as they are in Oz.
But of course this is slashdot, where YOUR opinion is THE ONLY opinion that matters.
But the math is still wrong ...
$2000 for the original HD-DVD disks OR,
$576 for the Hard disks to store the movies.
$100 per month for ADSL that has a 80 Gig download limit (this is typically the maximum you can get in Australia, but it might be different in your part of the world)
100 movies * 20gig = 2000 gigabyte, that will take you 2000/80 = 25 months to download.
So the total cost to download and store is:
576 + 25*100 = $3076
So unless you can get an 80 Gig ADSL for $56.90 or less then it will STILL be cheaper to buy the disks.
So that makes slashdot *our* religion then!
News at 12: another geek does not RTFA
This is news due to someone who has made a name for himself (Linux Torvalds) on OSS (as in GNU free not beer) having (or is it had, I cant remember if he has quit) an association with a company that is now follwoing the tactics of many other companies that are completely opposed to freedoms in IP (mainly **AA types, but others such as SCO .... the list seems to be growing daily as this artive points out).
In my case the player would, when given a playlist of any size, even over 100 tracks, would always show a preference to play two songs from the same album one after each other.
Humans are good at spotting patterns, and if it occours to me that the two consecutive tracks from albums seems to happen frequently, then it is likely that this is indeed a flaw in the algorithm.
Mind you as I have not done any mathematical tests, it is just as likely that because I have picked up on this anomoly, that I am only remembering when it happens and not realising how many other times it does not happen.....
Cedar will crack, just like any other 'unsealed' wood, due to expansion and compression of the wood fibers due to humidity. If you can control the humidity then you will be able to have an unsealed cedar case. (Cedar is also a good dehumidifier)
Cedar is commonly used in humidors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidor and is used unsealed on the inside, but it is encased in a pretty veneer, so it is kept at a constant humidity with a tight fitting lid.
The heat from the computer, on the other will limit the joinery options as the non-uniform expansion of the wood from heat will need to be meachanically limited by the type of joint (think dados) rather than chemically (glues).
There are many schools of though on this subject, but in general this train of thought will generally mean LESS security rather than more security.
The reason is that the sort of people who DO NOT know how to choose effective security measures in the first place, will also not be aware of other security measures required to really protect the data.
What this means in practice is that someone who believes the snake oil claims of a particular product will, under a false sense of security, be more reckless with the data, ie leaving it on laptops which get stolen etc.
This is kind of like believing that as my car has a good imobiliser I can leave it unlocked. This is of course great until someone steals the wheels on your car because the key to your wheel locking nuts was left in the glovebox. In this case you still have your car but you are still unable to use it.
"If given the choice to pay for and download movies online, I'd be all over it."
And I suspect that the movie companies would be all over you too, or would that be own you, as you would be one of the first to accept the fact that on-line movies will have DRM written all over it....
There is a security flaw with everything that runs locally on a windows machine configured by a home user, and that is simply that once infected all firewall / spam / virus software can theoretically be disabled by a program running.
The articles point out that if we have some limits set into a hardware product (ie the cable / adsl modem) then we limit the effectiveness of the attack. This is based upon the fact that the spam relay software is to be run on a badly configured system (aka casual home user).
I like the idea of a reverse firewall, and have throught for a long time that it is about time that something like Smoothwall should be altered to provide functionality as described in the articles.
By that I mean that home users need something that is simple to setup, has the ability to tell them about typically suspect activity (outgoing port X access, where X is a port known to be used by some unwanted program) and allow the user to define certain limits for users on their home network. And I do mean home network, after all, a corporate network should have a profficient IT person administering it all day and they can set up whatever is required to protect their network.
A home user needs something that will aid them to set limits for their own use of the internet. For example, if my mom installed such a product and the product asked her "1, Do you use email? 2, Do you use the web? 3, Typically how many emails do you send a day? 4, etc, etc surely this would setup a modem whereby a lot of untoward activity would be reduced by a spam relay infected machine.
Personally I would like to see a firewall that lets me define which applications are to be allowed on a per machine basis / port set basis. So you could define that the set of ports used by say unreal tournament, would be allowed on machine A, but not on machine B.
Another example would be if I have two machines, one for myself and one for my child, I would certainly want to only allow me to play violent games online eg RTCF: Enemy teritory which is free to download and install by my child, but I would be warned that they are using it as it would be rejected and logged on the firewall. This would happen for any other product that tried to get out of my lan.
There are a few flaws, the main one being if all the products started using port 80 (or read the computers configuration and used the proxy). In this case you would need to filter the port 80 requests, but still, it would be a good step to prevent a lot of abuse of infected machines.
Of course the firewall would also need to have email filters and a net nanny, but such a product should sell well to any parent who is worried about the internet and their childs use of it, assuming of course the manual is in PLAIN english and simply says something to the effect "To get email protection up and running do A, B, C then D".
It is strange that people working for free, I am talking open source here, do not produce something that is useful for home users. All the OSS firewalls I have looked out require you to have a good to expert knowledge (depending on firewall) of networking in order to effectivly use them. They all seem to be just creating replacements for professional products rather than somehting that is useable by the average Joe.
Perhaps if they grasped this usabilitly problem, then OSS might finally create a linux distro that is good for the desktop.
To be honest, I already have a big keyboard, it's an MS Natural Pro (Which is flamebate enough I know). Although I would like to blame MS for a faulty keyboard I have found that their hardware is actually quite good, its a shame the same quality does not seep through to their software...
There is only one problem with an attack on the infrastructure, and it is not the actual attack.
Indeed there would be a days work lost, but any company that has a good tech department / disater recovery plan would be able to sort themselves out within a day, although the backlog of mail might take a little longer. This is not in fact a massive deal.
The biggest problem would come from the fact that all the current anti privacy legislation would have an excellent excuse to go through with the backing of all in congress/parliment (for us in the UK)
I ahve made myself several PCs in the past 5 years. Although pound for pound buying a complete PC from scratch is not as good as say getting one from dell, if you progressivly cycle through the components buy buying the components you want now for your current PC and moving your old componets down to your secondary PCs you will find that you can keep up a relativly good PC for a little monthly cost. My buying habbits seem to indicate that I buy something new every 6 months, eg a graphics card or new hard disk and every so often a new MB/CPU. If I get a new sound card, then the old sound card gets relegated to my second best PC and the second best PCs sound card etc, etc (I have 3 PCs at home) The only problem with this is that you will need to have use of several PCs, for me it is a games PC (Fast snazzy sound cards etc) a server, and one for my girlfriend. Any componets that drop out of the bottom of the cycle get put into simple PCs for the rest of my family. Unfortunately I still have to do tech support for them regardless if they have bought a new PC or not, so I dont mind giving them a simple PC out my spares. The other side to the coin to go get a newe PC is that you get the software bundled with the PC, this can mean very good value especially if you get the full MS suite of Windows and Orrifice, which is very expensive to buy separately, and with the activation stuff it is not worth buying 'privately' anyway (whether it is *worth* buying at all is another matter)